by C. T. Wells
‘Stick with me, Shaka. We are invincible.’
Josef did not reply. The trouble with Brandt was that he assumed Josef identified with the victor. No, he knew what it was to be afraid. To have to make a stand.
They arrived at the airfield and Brandt parked the kubelwagen at the motor pool. Josef saw the Citroën staff car he had driven yesterday and a sudden thought smashed through the dull ache in his head like a squad of stormtroopers kicking in a door. Did they have a record of the vehicle at the bombed château? Surely it could be traced back to JG27. He had tried to dismiss the memory of his involvement in the bombing. He wanted it forgotten. He had spent last night trying to drink himself into oblivion. But he was still here, and it would only be a matter of time before the Gestapo came looking.
Brandt was talking.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I said, you’re in a bad way. Have a shower. Get some decent food, sleep, coffee whatever you need. We’re rostered for interception from fourteen hundred. A chance to boost our kill tallies. And this time, I’ll show you how to have a better time celebrating.’
Josef got out of the car and stretched.
‘How’s the tattoo?’ asked Brandt.
Josef looked at the darkly inked JG27 on his forearm. The crossed iklwa. ‘A bit bruised.’
‘Get some rest. You’ll be right.’
‘Sure. Thank you for the ride … sir. Would you like me to sign in the vehicle? I’ll walk over. I need to sober up.’
‘Thanks. See you this afternoon. Let’s hope those Brits come back for another thrashing.’
Jurgen Brandt strode away towards the manor with an unnatural energy. He had wasted no time in setting himself up in the squadron leader’s accommodation, and was probably on his way to find another hit of Pervitin.
Josef looked around the motor pool. A mechanic was servicing another kubelwagen in a large tent nearby, but otherwise there was no–one about. He walked into the tent that served as a makeshift office. There were folding chairs, a trestle table, a field telephone and ammunition boxes used for temporary files.
He quickly found the same cardboard–backed ledger he had used yesterday. He flipped it open and found the entry he had made to borrow the Citroën. His signature was next to the registration of the car that had been used in the bombing.
Josef closed the file and tucked it under his arm. He walked purposefully towards the house and the mechanic in the other tent didn’t even look up from the engine of the vehicle being serviced.
When he got into the house, there was nobody in the parlour. Most of the pilots had not yet returned from their night on the town. The fireplace had been set by the servants. Josef checked he was completely alone and placed the ledger amongst the kindling. He found matches above the hearth and lit the fire, watching as the flames licked at the cardboard and slowly turned the evidence against him to ash and smoke.
He sat down and knuckled his eyes. Burning the ledger was not enough. It would be little more than a delay in the investigation. He was still in danger. It felt like he was flying without instruments.
He decided he hated Jurgen Brandt and the SS and the Gestapo and the whole blasted war. But the thing he hated most was himself. He looked at the tattoo once again. No, JG27 was not his tribe. Not his family. He had wanted to belong, but now the ink shamed him. What had he become?
Picking up the heavy iron poker from beside the fireplace, he stabbed it into the ashes of the ledger. Dark curls of paper swirled and spun in the draft and rose up the chimney. Maybe one of them carried his own name, coming apart, burning up, flying away into oblivion.
XXXII
Reile showered and changed after the executions. He wanted to freshen up. He went into the hotel bathroom and brushed his teeth with a scented paste imported from Austria. He attended to each tooth, front and back and concluded by rinsing his mouth with an alcohol wash; the only alcohol that ever passed his lips. Reile could vividly picture the bodies of the young Frenchmen jerking and falling as the machine gun bullets tore through them. The shots echoed in his memory.
It was for the greater good, he told himself. He had read Nietsche extensively and he knew that all of life was a will to power. The key for the survival of any individual was to align himself to the greatest will. And at this point in time, there was no will on earth equal to that of the Führer. He said the words over to himself like a mantra. Align yourself to the greatest will. He finished his ministrations by oiling and combing his hair before returning to the main living room of the suite.
Boelcke’s heavy form was draped across a couch. He was snoring. Peaceful. Clearly not at all troubled by the reprisals. He would have to be roused soon.
On the table was an incomplete list of Luftwaffe Citroëns known to be currently in use in Normandy. They would have to be crossreferenced to a map so it could be ascertained where the saboteurs could have got hold of a German vehicle. He was about to settle down to the work when he wondered if his hands were really clean. He took another moment to return to the bathroom and scrub them one more time.
When he returned, Boelcke was wide awake, wearing the radio headset and rapidly transcribing a Morse message. The observer near the windmill was transmitting.
Reile watched the words being formed in Boelcke’s clumsy handwriting. ‘Observer One to Base. Zone is active. Confirm. Zone is active. Two people have just departed in an old truck that was hidden in the woods. One young male. One older female. Heading southwest. Two people remain, located in windmill. Young male. Young female. Awaiting instructions. Over.’
He had guessed correctly. The agent he had left hidden near Joubert’s farm had proved him right. The saboteurs had simply waited in the woods until the Gestapo had been seen to leave.
He stroked his smooth chin as Boelcke waited, his hand poised over the telegraph key. It was tempting to pounce. However, once a target was identified, it was possible to learn a lot more about their network with a little patience. He made his decision. ‘Have the first Mercedes follow the truck. Don’t intercept them yet. Keep watching the windmill. Keep the second team standing by near the farm.’
Reile permitted himself a smile as Boelcke began keying the message. They would have the Caen trio before long. In the meantime, he would pursue the lead relating to the Luftwaffe Citroën.
***
Josef stood in the shower allowing the jet of hot water on his scalp to restore some order to his mind. Within him, memories were emerging, distant and recent, appearing like mountains from a fog. A cold morning in Berlin. The winter of 1938. He was a cadet in a crisp new Luftwaffe uniform, trying not to shiver on the parade ground. He had sworn his allegiance to the Führer that day, chanting the oath with a thousand other men. He would never forget the words:
I swear by Almighty God this sacred oath: I will render unconditional obedience to the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht, and as a brave soldier, I will be ready to stake my life for this oath.
Rank upon rank of cadets stood on the parade ground in the chill air, spouting words in mindless unison. He remembered how vapour had poured from his mouth. All those young men had generated a cloud of breath above them and now, from a different vantage point, it seemed that ghostly vapour was a thousand souls departing.
He had been proud at the time. He thought he had become a Knight of the Air, immaculate and invincible in the dress uniform of a Luftwaffe pilot. Josef had left the parade ground ready to make his mark. Yet now, as he considered that ambitious youth, there was no chivalry in him. His only armour was conceit.
And as the words of the Hitler oath echoed through his memory, they were overridden by more recent sounds. The gunshots of the SS; the sound of the MG–34 cutting down the French workmen; the sound of his own machine guns firing into the British pilot.
And all the memories reared up like a cliff f
ace with which he would collide.
He could hate the cruel pride of the Reich. He could hate Hitler’s tyranny but, in doing so, he had to hate himself. He had chosen this path. He had participated in the horror of it. Josef detested the SS men mowing down the Frenchmen in the market, but was he not equally damned? He had shot a pilot under a parachute canopy.
Why had he done that? He was under orders from Brandt, the acting staffelkapitan. But Josef knew he could never convince himself it was acceptable. Even if the British pilot was doomed to die in the channel, it was wrong. Pilots were supposed to have a code of honour. This was not some primal struggle with a bayonet in a muddy trench. It was the air war. The planes he had shot down in combat ... perhaps he could live with that, but the parachute incident? Unforgivable. Josef scrubbed at the tattoos on his left arm, but it was futile. JG27 had stained him forever.
He turned off the shower and dried himself. Lathering his face to shave, he looked into his own eyes in the mirror. Who was it? With a meatier face and a ruddier complexion, it could almost be his father. Maybe he was his father’s ghost. A thinner, hollow–eyed version, risen up for another incarnation of failure.
No. They were his own eyes, but it didn’t help. It was hard to meet his own gaze. They were the eyes of a traitor. Was there anyone he hadn’t betrayed?
When was the last time he had felt proud? Or even alive? In it all, there had only been one moment of purity. Giselle had kissed him on the beach. In that instant he had believed she was genuine in her affection. Genuine in her sympathy. But now it was too late for such folly.
Too late. Too late. Hadn’t he said that to her last night? She had come for him, one last time, at great risk to herself, and he had told her it was too late for him.
It had been too late for his father in 1935. Failed crops. A foreclosure on the farm. The old man drunk and defeated. Josef would never forget the discussion. What was he? Fifteen? Still a schoolboy. His father had announced at the dinner table that it was all over. It was too late to make anything work and the farming was finished.
Melitta, still only a girl, had dared to challenge him. ‘Papa … It’s never too late. I will help you …’ Where did such devotion come from? Hadn’t he treated her badly for all of her short years?
Kurt Schafer had been too far gone to see the beauty or hope in his daughter. He was too far gone to get angry. He just walked out of the house. The rest of them had gone to bed early. There was not much more to be said. In the morning Josef had found his father. He spent an hour calling for him before the birds led him to the dam. Bloated crows were perched on the back of the floating corpse. He had to wade in and scare off the carrion feeders before he could tow his father’s body to the muddy bank. He knew his father hadn’t ended up in the dam by accident.
It had been too late for Kurt Schafer. And yet maybe there was something to be admired in meeting fate on your own terms.
The sale of some remnant farm machinery had paid for the rest of their schooling and their mother’s rent in Johannesburg. But Josef was still looking for a way out.
Two years later his German heritage gave him a chance. There was a future to be made in Germany. A future that might enable him to bring his mother and Melitta out of their circumstances too. But then Mutti had died in the accident, and soon the only one left was Melitta … and now she was gone too. 1935. 1937.1940. His family were all dead.
And now it was too late for him. He could find no home in Germany. He despised it. Despised what it stood for. Despised what it had made him become. And yet he had stubbornly rejected the best chance he would ever have to leave it all behind.
He had to face the reality of his situation. The Gestapo would be coming for him at any moment, and that would be the end of him.
He reached a conclusion as he finished shaving. The simple truth was there was no future for Josef Schafer. It was time to meet fate on his terms, as his father had. He dressed himself one final time in a German flight uniform.
XXXIII
Edouard smoked while Terese drove the truck. They headed generally south, keeping to the laneways rather than the major routes. Edouard watched the trees and fields go by as the old Renault shuddered across the terrain.
At least Terese could drive for him. She had little else to offer. He studied her weary face, set hard in grief. Perhaps she was not really all that old, just worn down by the farm, her husband and the war. In truth, he had no desire to be in her company. He had only offered to escort her south to impress Giselle.
Giselle had been affectionate in her farewell. She had hugged him tightly before he climbed into the driver’s seat of the truck. Now he was paying for it with Terese’s dull company. Only ten kilometres out of the gate he had asked Terese to drive. He was already regretting the promises he had made. He should have persuaded Giselle to come with them. It could be months before she returned to France. And then, would she really come and find him? Would she remember his kindness to a widow?
Edouard flicked the butt of his cigarette out the window and watched it vanish in the wind. He glanced back along the lane. Was that another vehicle in the distance? It was difficult to tell. There was bound to be some traffic, but it was far quieter than the Route Nationale which would be crawling with German vehicles.
He shifted in his seat and looked at Terese, considering her. Was there anything to like? ‘Have you ever heard of Le Spectre?’
It took a moment for her to respond. ‘Le Spectre?’
‘Yes. He’s famous.’
‘Let me guess. He’s a character from Le Comedie Francais, n’est–ce pas?’
‘Le Comedie? Mai non! It is a nom de guerre.’
‘Then no, I have not heard of him.’
Edouard slumped in his seat. ‘You will hear of him. Just wait.’ Clearly Terese was an ignorant peasant.
He shifted uncomfortably. The attaché case was at his feet, cramping him. It contained the remaining automatic pistol along with the plastic explosive and timer pencils. It would have been more comfortable to put them in the tray of the truck, but it seemed wiser to have them near. They could still be intercepted by Germans—even on the back roads, and it might help to have a weapon close at hand.
***
Reile and Boelcke stepped out of their black Mercedes at the JG27 airbase. Reile began surveying the scene, taking in details. He noticed, irritably, that Kriminalrat Boelcke lit a cigarette as soon as he got out of the car. Did the man have no self–control at all?
Reile turned his attention to the neat row of Messerschmitts on the far side of the grass runway. A dozen or more aircraft, but needing a whole village of supporters to keep them in the air. The airbase had something of the atmosphere of a carnival about it. There were tents and cabins clustered around the main house as though it were a bigtop.
Yet hadn’t Richthofen, Der Rote Kampfleiger himself, called his famous squadron ‘the flying circus’? Maybe because of the tent city that supported it as much as the aerobatics.
This airbase differed from a ramshackle circus in one significant regard, though. It was orderly in the way of the Luftwaffe, which Reile admired. Equipment was arranged systematically, perimeter guards were patrolling and vehicles were parked in neat rows.
And it was the vehicles that caught his attention. Yes, there amongst the ranks of supply trucks and kubelwagens were two Citroën Traction Avant staff cars. Reile would have wagered his daughters’ lives on the belief one of them had been at the château yesterday. Although of course he was never a man to wager, even when certainties were involved.
Apart from the intrinsic satisfaction he found in orderliness, it also made his job significantly easier when Gestapo investigations occurred within the military. There would be logbooks. Records. Accountability. They would start with the motor pool, and find out who had used the Citroën yesterday.
The crosshairs of this investigation had
well and truly settled on JG27. The dead squadron leader’s uniform. The vehicle. The proximity to Joubert’s farm. Yes, it was quite clear. JG27—or probably a single element within it—was intimately involved with the résistance and the sabotage plot. Amongst the orderliness of this Luftwaffe base, something was definitely out of line. And Reile sensed they were about to find their man.
***
Josef walked across the airfield to the row of Messerschmitts. There was White Five, looking as powerful and alluring as ever. He could see now these machines had bewitched him. He had trusted a fighter plane to fulfil all his childhood hopes. But now he saw beyond the mystique and knew that White Five was nothing more than parts engineered to serve the ambitions of Hitler. And really, he, himself, was just another component in a vast mechanism of conquest. He would fly her one last time, and neither he nor White Five would remain in the service of the Luftwaffe.
One of the ground crew appeared, helpful as ever. ‘Are you taking her up, sir?’
‘Ja. We took some fire in last night’s sortie and I want to see how she’s responding,’
‘I’ve checked over the airframe, sir. Couldn’t see any structural damage.’
‘Thanks. I still want to get her in trim. She seemed to be tugging a little to starboard.’
‘Very well, sir, I’ll do the chocks. She’s all fuelled up and reloaded.’
Josef nodded his thanks and climbed up into the cockpit. He moved automatically, fitting the leather flying helmet, attaching the air hose and radio leads, testing the rudder pedals.
The Daimler–Benz growled and he felt the familiar thrilling vibration run through the airframe. He let White Five idle for a few moments, savouring the oneness of man and machine. Then he taxied to the end of the strip and lined up for takeoff. It would be their final flight together.
