Drake gave her an almost imperceptible nod, then closed his eyes, following her lead; if the soldiers thought they were asleep they would be more likely to relax their guard.
The trouble was that he was finding it almost impossible to just act like he was sleeping; the combination of the fact they had walked all night and the warmth of the Muscovite parka, so much better suited to the weather than his greatcoat, meant that he kept dozing off for real. He drifted in and out of consciousness, jerking awake every so often as the wagon bumped along. He looked around with bleary eyes each time, but the guards never seemed to take their gaze off the two of them, most likely having seen what remained of the men in the bunker. The view through the open back of the wagon remained unchanged as well, just seemingly endless forest and an ever-receding dirt road that was not much more than a track between the trees.
At some point he must have dropped off completely because it was near midday when he felt Tanya’s hand squeeze his thigh. He was instantly awake, but this time he managed to keep his eyes shut and feign sleep.
‘Be ready.’
Her whispered words in his ear sent adrenaline surging through his body and it was all he could do not to twitch and give the game away. As it was, he couldn’t stop himself opening his eyes a crack to see what was going on.
He didn’t like what he saw - only two of the guards were asleep, their rifles limp on their laps, but the other two were still alert.
‘No.’
His reply was just a breath, but he knew she’d heard him because she stiffened and growled. ‘Yes. Now or never.’
He sighed. ‘Alright.’
‘I’m right, you’re left.’
Drake swivelled his eyes to look at the man on his left, sitting next to the tailboard of the wagon. Of the two awake guards he was perhaps the least threatening; he looked young, probably still in his teens, and his attention kept drifting to the passing scenery.
‘On three.’
Drake glanced down at Tanya and found her gazing up at him. She fixed him with her blue eyes, so determined and resolute and he found his doubts and fears receding slightly.
‘One.’
He took a deep breath, feeling Tanya’s hand on his arm squeezing him, giving him strength. He visualised what he had to do - the three steps to the young soldier, the punch to his jaw, then the grab for the gun which he would use to club the other guard.
‘Two.’
He tensed his muscles and clenched his fist, physically preparing himself for the violence to come.
Tanya’s mouth opened to give the word and he felt her body tense against his, but before she could say it, the wagon screeched to a halt and the opportunity to escape was lost as all four guards came instantly alert.
One of the soldiers at the front of the wagon shouted a question, which was answered by someone in the driver’s cab. Drake could understand neither, but the meaning was made perfectly clear when the wagon once more lurched into motion, swerving hard to the right as it did so.
Suddenly, the picturesque but monotonous view of empty forest that they’d had for hours through the gap at the rear of the wagon was replaced by a far more sinister one of grey Prussian vehicles in a line that stretched off into the distance.
Tanya stared at the sight, then sighed and sat up. She slumped on the bench and wrapped her arms disconsolately around herself. ‘Well, that’s that. No use pretending to sleep anymore.’
Drake smiled wryly. ‘We could always actually sleep, that way we’ll at least be a bit rested for whatever’s coming.’
Tanya grinned. ‘Good idea and that gives me an excuse to snuggle up with you again.’
It was dark by the time the wagon finally stopped.
They were shaken unceremoniously awake, then hustled out of the vehicle and handed over to a couple of Prussian soldiers with serious faces and efficient-looking machine guns. They barely had time to register the fact that they were on some kind of military installation before being shoved up a couple of steps and through the door of a brick building.
An officer in a smart grey uniform was waiting for them inside. He was short and weaselly, with slicked-back black hair and small round glasses and was carrying a clipboard. He would have been at home in any clerk’s office in the world, but instead he was standing within what looked like a sports changing room, with wooden benches against three walls and pegs above them for hanging clothes.
The man looked them up and down, taking note of Tanya’s uniform before pulling aside Drake’s Muscovite parka to peer at the rank insignia on his greatcoat. He nodded in satisfaction. ‘Name, please, Aviator Lieutenant?’
Drake gave him a smile. ‘Lord Rudyard Sebastian Augustus Cholmondeley Drake, but you may call me, “my Lord”.’
The man returned the smile, but it was cold and snakelike, had nothing of humour in it and lasted for less than a second. He looked down and scribbled on the sheet of paper attached to the clipboard, then turned his attention to Tanya. ‘And you, Praporshik?’
‘Tatiana Guseva.’
He made another note, then pointed to the bench at the back of the room. ‘Go there and strip, please. Take everything off.’
Drake glanced at Tanya and opened his mouth to protest, but she just shook her head and walked to the back of the room where she began undressing.
Drake gave the man a glare, receiving an impassive stare in reply, then went to join her.
When she saw him struggling with his arm, she stopped what she was doing and moved to help him.
She was down to just her extremely unflattering thermal underwear and Drake flushed, embarrassed and made a point of looking only at her face.
She saw his expression and smiled. ‘Show no weakness.’
She finished helping him out of his many layers, then stepped away and quickly took off the rest of her clothes, then turned to face the three men. She held her head up, not showing any emotion and making no effort to cover herself.
Drake removed his undershorts rather more hesitantly, then took a deep breath and turned to face the men, holding his broken arm tightly to his chest. He ground his teeth together when he saw the two guards leering openly at Tanya, but held his tongue and tried to emulate the Muscovite woman’s dignity. He couldn’t, though; he’d never liked being naked, even in the shower after games at Eton, it had always made him feel vulnerable. It also didn’t help that he was all too aware of how cold it was and the effect that had on him. Thankfully, at least for him, the guards were too busy staring at Tanya to make any jokes at his expense.
The clerk stepped forwards and inspected Drake clinically. ‘Your arm is broken, yes?’
Drake nodded.
He looked at the soiled bandages and frowned. ‘It has been taken care of?’
‘By Praporshik Guseva, yes.’
The man grunted disparagingly. ‘We will have a proper doctor look at it. Turn around.’
Drake turned to face the wall, feeling the man’s eyes roaming up and down him, searching for other injuries.
‘Good.’
Drake turned back around as the man moved to stand in front of Tanya. The two guards craned their necks to look around the clerk when he blocked their view and Drake winced when his fists clenched involuntarily, sending a shock of pain up his arm.
The man looked at Tanya’s face. ‘Open your mouth.’
She did as she was told, displaying her missing teeth, and he grunted again before making a note. He stepped back and looked her up and down. There was nothing remotely sexual or interested in the way he did so, though, and Drake was grateful for that.
‘Turn.’
Tanya turned in place and caught Drake looking at her. She gave him a quick wink before staring at the wall.
‘Good.’
The man pointed to a pile of clothes at the side of the room. ‘Leave your things here and put those on.’
Drake immediately scurried over to the clothes. They turned out to be very basic underwear, some gym shoes and
a jumpsuit, not unlike his flightsuit, but in red. Tanya followed him more slowly, to all appearances unconcerned about her nakedness, and began dressing unhurriedly.
They watched as the clerk began rummaging through their uniforms, pulling things out of pockets and emptying the survival pack, which the Finnish soldiers had brought with them.
He found Tanya’s knives in their concealed sheathes in her parka and gave her an inquisitive look.
She shrugged. ‘There are bears in these woods.’
The knives went in a pile, along with the discarded flightsuits, underwear and Drake’s bloody parka, but he put some of their belongings back in the survival pack, including what little food, water and medical supplies remained. He found Drake’s penknife, which Tanya had recovered for him, opened it, snorted, then put it in the pack as well, before walking over to them.
‘Take these.’ He gave Tanya her parka and the knapsack and Drake his greatcoat. ‘Put them on and follow me.’
Tanya helped Drake into his greatcoat, then the two of them followed the clerk out of the door and back out into the night.
They rounded the corner of the building and Drake stumbled to a halt in shock as the rest of the facility was finally revealed.
The guard following him roughly pushed him back into motion, but he continued to gape at the sight.
There were half a dozen more brick buildings next to the one they had come out of and other, more military-looking ones of various sizes beyond them, but it was the four huge floodlit hangars and the MU9’s and MU10’s half-hidden within them, a few hundred yards away across a large airfield, which were all he really saw - they had been brought to an airbase. He tried to slow down to get a better look at the aircraft, but a prod in the back kept him going and before he had taken more than a few steps, he was herded towards one of the newer military buildings. The exterior door led directly into a large room, which was filled with soldiers wearing grey uniforms similar to the clerk’s, working at desks, quietly performing administrative tasks. To a man, they looked up and went still as the two prisoners were brought in, but the clerk didn’t spare them a glance and just marched straight to a partitioning wall at the back of the room and knocked on a closed door.
‘Come!’
At the call from within, the clerk opened the door and smartly marched in, clicking his heels together as he came to a halt in front of a large wooden desk. As the guards shoved Drake and Tanya into position behind him, he bowed crisply, then straightened and stared at the wall in front of him, waiting to be noticed. The man behind the desk didn’t look up or acknowledge him in any way, though, he just continued writing in a small black book, which looked very like a flight log to Drake - he had a very similar one himself.
Drake gave the man a cursory glance, but when he didn’t bother to even acknowledge them he ignored him disdainfully and instead gazed around the room. It was almost as large as the one they had come through, taking up the entire width of the building and had windows on either side, through which the rest of the air base could be seen, although unfortunately the aircraft weren’t in view from where Drake was standing.
As for the office itself, there were the obligatory row of file cabinets behind the desk with maps of the local area pinned above them and the wall to one side was covered with grainy photographs of aircraft. There was no sign whatsoever of any personal effects of the man who occupied it, though, which Drake thought was strange; in his experience it didn’t matter how temporary an office or ready room were, the people who used them always found some way to make it their own.
Drake’s attention was drawn back to the desk as the man capped his fountain pen and laid it to one side, then sat back in his chair, finally lifting his head to look at them.
Which was when Drake got his biggest surprise of the evening; it was the man who had shot him down almost a week ago - Hans Gruber, leader of the Crimson Barons and erstwhile Hollywoodland movie star.
Drake had only ever seen the man in black and white motion pictures and newsreel, or on crudely coloured posters, so it was no wonder he hadn’t recognised him, especially seeing as the hair that was always pictured as being so blonde was in fact a dirty light brown. It was also receding quite sharply at the temples and he thought he’d detected a developing bald spot when he’d been looking down, although the man kept it quite long in an attempt to hide the fact. Drake was barely able to contain a smirk; no wonder the man wore a flight helmet as much as he could in his films and was always seen with a hat whenever he was out and about.
‘What have we here?’ Gruber asked in German.
In response to the question the clerk finally moved, snapping his clipboard smartly up in front of him as if it were a parade manoeuvre.
‘Praporshik Tatiana Guseva and Lord Aviator Lieutenant Rudyard uh... Drake.’
Drake had to hide another smirk as the man mixed up the order in which his titles should come, then didn’t bother giving his full name.
‘Drake?’ Gruber showed real interest for the first time when he heard the name. He looked at Drake and spoke in English with a heavy American accent. ‘Of the Oxfordshire Drakes?’
When Drake nodded in acknowledgement, Gruber surged to his feet and came out from behind the desk to stand in front of him, completely ignoring Tanya. He frowned when he saw the arm that Drake was holding against his chest and turned to the clerk, reverting to German. ‘Has his injury been seen to?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘Make sure it’s taken care of as soon as I finish with him.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Gruber turned back to Drake and the stern expression left his face, replaced by the wide smile that had made him so famous and had caused so many women, and not a few men, to throw themselves at his feet. Drake was amused to see that the smile, like his hair, was also deeply flawed, with many of the molars capped by a silvery metal. He also caught a distinct whiff of halitosis when he switched back to English.
‘Lord Drake, it is an honour to meet you. I would offer you my hand, but it seems both of yours are busy. Don’t worry, we will get that seen to soon.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I only recall shooting down one British aircraft recently, so I assume you are the man in the Harridan who killed one of my pilots?’
Drake nodded. ‘I am.’
‘I must admit I am surprised you survived, let alone with so few injuries.’
Drake shrugged. ‘I have superior British engineering to thank for that.’
‘Ah yes,’ Gruber nodded sagely. ‘The famous Gwenevere Hawking protective cage. It is a shame it has only saved you for captivity. We will speak again, after you have eaten and rested.’
Gruber turned away before Drake could reply and one of the guards immediately grabbed him and pulled him from the room.
Chapter 7
They were marched from the administration building directly to a medical centre, only two buildings down. It was filled with clean-sheeted beds in two long neat rows and fully-equipped with all sorts of electrical machines and mechanical marvels, most of which were switched off and silent and none of which Drake recognised.
He was sat on a bed while a doctor, assisted by a male nurse, took the splints off his arm then unwrapped the dirty and over-used bandages. When he gasped and squirmed at the fresh agony, clutching at the sheets with his free hand, the doctor injected something into the arm, half above and half below the break. The pain almost immediately went away, but Drake swayed, blinking and gasping for breath as his senses dulled and a humming began in his ears, like a swarm of bees.
The last thing he remembered before the darkness overwhelmed him was Tanya leaping off the bed next to his, calling his name.
Drake woke with the first light of dawn streaming through bar-covered windows. He was in a tiny room with bare brick walls, a metal door, a tin bucket in the corner and just enough room for two beds. Tanya was lying on the other bed, her hand outstretched towards him and he reached out to her, but st
opped short, amazed, when he realised that, while his arm itched like hell, it didn’t hurt in the slightest. In fact, for the first time since the crash he was feeling rested and like his normal self. He sat up and gingerly pulled up his sleeve to look at his injury and found some kind of waxy wrapper where the break was. He poked at it experimentally, wondering how he was going to scratch the itch.
‘Don’t you dare pick at it.’ His movement had woken the Muscovite woman and she lifted her head to smile at him, her eyes bleary with lack of sleep.
‘What happened to me?’
‘The doctors said you had a bad reaction to the drug they gave you. Something about it reacting with the willow pills. They forgot to ask you if you’d been taking anything and you almost died apparently.’
She said it so matter-of-factly that Drake just had to laugh. ‘Well that’s alright then.’ He flexed his hand, testing the muscles in his arm gently. ‘This is incredible! What on earth did they do? Give me a new one or something?’ He said it jokingly, but was fully prepared to accept it if she said yes; it was unbelievable that his arm was as good as new and he wouldn’t be surprised if it was one of the clockwork ones the Japanese were reported to have developed.
Tanya shrugged and waved a hand vaguely. ‘They used a few machines, shot some electrics into your arm and said something about knitting bones that I didn’t understand. They also said that it wasn’t completely healed, that it would still take a couple of weeks to do so, but that it would be as good as new when it does. Also, they will give you injections for the pain during the next couple of days, because it will hurt a lot.’
‘I had no idea they could do this kind of thing. I wonder if Whitehall knows.’ He looked at his arm, turning it back and forth, but then remembered the woman had been hurt as well and blushed. ‘I’m sorry, how about you? Did they take care of you too?’
‘They put some cream on my face and I feel almost as good as new.’ She turned her head to show him that the bruise on her cheek had faded to a dull yellow and was barely visible in the early morning light.
The Lion and the Baron Page 6
