‘Your call, captain,’ George said without looking up from his cards. You’d think he didn’t give a toss: he was a lot brighter than he pretended to be. Not for the first time I wondered what services George’s company provided.
Doris didn’t show at all that day. She kept to their room and Ean’s Margaret took her food up to her.
Later I asked George, ‘What’s happened to Doris?’ I thought it would be even more suspicious if I hadn’t asked.
Again George didn’t look up from his cards.
‘Sore guts I guess, Charlie. It must have been someone she ate. We’ll see her in the morning – she won’t let us up on that mountain without her.’
Chapter Six
Lost John
We set out the next morning, walking back along the road we had arrived by, each carrying a small pack with our essentials. Chris was carrying something else, but I’ll come to that later. Then we branched up along an old estate road past a farm, and up into the hills. Ean led the way. He wore a pair of cared-for army boots, and carried a nice old .243 rifle.
George asked, ‘What’s the gun for? I didn’t expect guns.’
I had my small pistol in a pocket, but I didn’t tell him that of course.
Ean said, ‘I might spot a nice fat buck – cheap meat for the table.’
‘Don’t you need the landowner’s permission to go shooting things?’ George persisted.
‘I gave myself permission this morning. Just before we set out.’
‘You own all this land?’
‘I think so. That’s what my father told me.’
I may have been mistaken, but I thought that George’s mouth might have turned down at that. He and Ean led us. Chris and Doris followed them, and I brought up the tail. Chris was carrying a golf bag. Yes, you read me right the first time: he was taking a golf bag up a mountain. Doris dropped back to walk with me for a while – it looked as if her sore stomach had given her a black eye. My enquiry was probably written all over my face. She told me, ‘I hit my head on the basin while I was being sick.’
‘It must have hurt.’
‘Just my pride.’
George looked over his shoulder, and she moved up to walk alongside Chris again. I watched George’s back – the small pack he carried between his shoulders – and wondered what I could do about him if he turned nasty. After an hour of zigzagging over the approaches to the hill my knees ached. Ean strode ahead with the ease of a feral goat. Twice Doris tripped in the scrubby heather, and twice I hauled her up. Each time she said, ‘Thanks.’
I nodded at George and waved that she was OK, but I told her, ‘I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand the guy.’
She said, ‘Snap!’ Her mouth set in a determined little line. That was interesting.
At least the sun was shining. I decided to stop watching George until the train arrived at the station. I watched Doris’s backside instead.
The last climb I did was in a dry summer, five or more years earlier and that had been easier. That approach had been along well established forestry tracks, and had been bad enough. This crumbly old mountain was wet, and it was falling to bits. You went from reasonably hard going into knee-deep boggy lichen without warning, and by the time we were making a serious attempt on the lower slopes my knees were aching badly from the boulders we stepped around. Ean called a halt. Breather. Doris disappeared around an outcrop for a spot of outdoor relief. Ean and Chris sat together, and being ex-army discussed the countries they had walked across during the war. George came and sat by me, handing me one of the small greaseproof-paper packets Ean had produced from his poacher’s pockets. Two Abernethies and a hunk of cheddar in each: I knew that I had been right about that slimy bugger in the FO.
George said, ‘I didn’t expect the Scotch bastard to bring a gun.’
‘Does it worry you?’
‘Yeah, if you must know.’
‘Why?’
He didn’t reply immediately. He took alternate nibbles from the sweet biscuit and the cheese. Then he said, ‘You saw I’d given Doris a black eye – I regret that now.’
‘Good, George. You can tell her.’
‘No, I can’t, she won’t come near me. I found one of the Scotch bastard’s sweaters under the bed, so I lost my temper, and stuck my elbow in her eye.’
It was my turn to stay quiet. When I thought that I could conceal the relief I felt I said, ‘I didn’t know.’
‘How could you? In a way I wish it had been you.’
Be careful what you wish for, George.
‘Thanks.’ It was an ironic thanks.
‘No hard feelings, pal, just that you ain’t exactly John Wayne, are you? She’s hardly gonna lay by me an’ think of you, is she?’
‘I suppose not. So what’s the problem with Ean?’
‘It’s obvious, ain’t it? He might try to whack me “by accident” for giving her a smack. He has a stern and unforgiving look an’ a rifle in his hand – I knew men like that in Oklahoma, and stepped wide around them. If I have to make a play I’ll expect you to back me up – I’m paying you, after all.’
‘What if I just try to keep the peace instead?’
‘Even better. I like you Limeys – you’re subtle. I appreciate that.’
‘I’ll just add it to your bill.’ We left it at that.
Half an hour later I caught up with Ean as the others trailed behind.
‘George thinks you might try to kill him because he slapped Doris.’
‘Not a bad idea, but who would pay us if I didn’t bring him off the hill safely again?’
‘I’m just warning you to be careful. He’s the type to get his retaliation in first.’
‘Like the Japs at Pearl Harbor. You’ve got to hand it to them, haven’t you?’
‘Who?’
‘The Yanks: fast learners. Why did he hit the lady?’
‘He found one of your sweaters under their bed.’
Ean stopped to allow the others to come up. He sniffed the air like a gun dog.
He didn’t speak for a ten-beat, and then said, ‘He made a mistake. I lost that a month ago. I’d wondered where it had got to.’
As I dropped back I told George, ‘You were mistaken. He lost that sweater weeks ago.’
I let the others draw ahead, and George fell back with me.
I asked him, ‘Were you out in the war, George?’
‘Sure, Charlie. Air force – jest like you.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Ordnance. I was out on the Marianas . . . Tinian Field.’
After the usual decent interval between two animals trying to size each other up, I asked him, ‘Now I’ve come this far with you, George, would you mind cutting out the bullshit, and telling me what we expect to find up here?’
After another decent interval between two animals trying to size each other up, he told me, ‘A bomb, Charlie.’
Bollocks. George had worked at Tinian Field in the Marianas. A very particular type of bomb had been delivered to Japan from Tinian. It’s what you call being dealt a crap hand.
I had one more chance to square things with Doris. She sat on a boulder and told the others to climb on. George looked doubtful, but I waved him away. Ean looked impatient and Chris looked bored. He was carrying twice as much as the rest of us, but hadn’t broken sweat yet.
‘I’ll stay with Doris,’ I told them. ‘I could do with a breather myself.’
Ean shrugged and said, ‘Don’t go off the track. You can get lost up here – too many little lochans that look all alike to an incomer.’ The mountainside climbed away from us, and the track – which was barely discernible – led between two massive boulders. The men were out of sight within a couple of minutes. I grinned at Doris’s shiner, and asked, ‘How are you feeling?’
‘My face hurts, Charlie. I think the bastard broke a bone.’
She winced as I ran a finger gently along her cheekbone.
‘No, just bruised. You’ll feel OK tomorrow.’
> ‘It’s not funny, Charlie. Did you just stay behind to gloat?’ But at least her lips had turned up at the ends. I rather admired someone who could see the funny side of a slap in the puss – but I didn’t tell her that of course.
‘No, and we can’t wait long. Do men always fight around you?’
‘It’s happened before.’
‘Come here . . .’ I reached down, and pulled her to her feet. As we began to follow the others I said, ‘I waited with you because I need to know where you fit in. The true story this time . . . not the one about the little brother flattened up against a cliff face.’
She winced. I noticed that particularly.
‘That’s true, in fact. My brother was flying the plane, and it’s why George needs me here.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘There was a law in the US banning US citizens from approaching within a mile of fatal aircraft wrecks . . . war graves. It was to discourage souvenir hunters and grave robbers, I think. Six months ago they relaxed it for relatives of the dead who wanted to visit the places their loved ones died. That’s me. I am George’s excuse for being here – his cover.’
‘Does that law run outside the United States as well?’
‘Not exactly, but there is one that states that any United States citizen doing anything abroad which would be a crime in the States is guilty of a felony. George is a coward at heart, and didn’t take a chance . . . so he did his research, found me and hired me.’
‘And he’s not related to you at all? He’s just some kind of hood?’
She nodded. ‘Yep, he told me that he had to visit the wreck, offered me a thousand dollars to accompany him, a holiday in the Old Country – and a chance to say goodbye to Petey. I thought that sounded like the best deal I was likely to make.’
‘Who does your box of money belong to then?’
‘George, of course. I think the government gave it to him.’
‘So you know he’s up here looking for something else?’
‘Oh, sure.’
For the first time since I’d met her in that park in Berlin her story was beginning to hold together – so why did I think she was still handing me a crock of old shit?
‘Can I think about this?’ I asked her. We were catching the others now – they were barely a hundred yards ahead. ‘And talk to you again later?’ Then I stuck in, ‘You still haven’t told me about the bomb.’
She stopped dead, and stared at me. I thought her black eye was less than black already.
‘What bomb?’ Ah. She looked levelly at me and explained, ‘He’s up here looking for a metal box of USAAF documents for a museum – the Smithsonian, I think.’ After a gap in the conversation she asked me, ‘What was that about a bomb?’
‘Nothing, honey, forget it. I must have misheard someone.’
We plodded up to the crash site an hour later. Mysterious Chris opened his golf club bag, and produced a mine detector. It did indeed look like a frying pan with a very long handle. Broken down into handy transportable parts it fitted neatly into a golf bag. He assembled it, and went detecting. Presumably for George’s bomb.
Ean sat on a rock pinnacle, and looked wary. George looked jumpy: he still spent most of the time watching Ean. For ten minutes Doris thought about the aluminium overcast we had strewn around us, and then burst into tears. We few, we happy few: I remembered the quotation, and opened the small pack I always carry and found a sandwich – freshly cut lean ham, and slices of apple between doorsteps of bread.
For those of you who haven’t stood on a hillside with the bits of an aircraft spread around you, I’ll try to explain. I’ve done it before.
What you have to imagine is a thirty-ton machine made of aluminium, steel, rubber and miles of electrical wire thumping into an unforgiving mountainside at two hundred and fifty. What is left, if she doesn’t burn, is a lot of pieces – and I’m sorry to be blunt, but that is often all that’s left of the poor sods who happened to be inside at the time. Got the picture? The Scottish highlands are full of them, and you can climb up to most – but if you do, read that Shelley poem ‘Ozymandias’ first, and expect your spirit to be humbled.
We were on a series of high ridges, crags and small flat plateaus. Just below us – and by that I mean about thirty feet below us – were four lochans: those small lakes. It was odd to find lochs up among the hilltops; as if God had popped them up there in some aberrant fit. The water in them was brown with peat or black . . . and they were full of bits of aeroplane. Everywhere I looked aluminium gleamed back at me from the shallows, under the water surface. On one small island a Wright Cyclone radial engine stood forlornly on its own.
In one of the small lochs a propeller stood upright among the shadows of the hills, one bent blade arching up like a tombstone.
Pieces of disassembled aeroplane glinted back at us from among the heather and coarse grass wherever I looked. It felt too much like a graveyard for me, and I wanted to get away as soon as I could. I still couldn’t believe I hadn’t set a price on this bloody job – can a woman really turn your head that quickly?
George suddenly lost his mind or his nerve. He shouted, ‘Geronimo!’ like the US Marines in cheesy war films, and ran at Ean. This was not a particularly sound strategy because he had to run steeply uphill to where Ean was perched, so by the time he reached him he was out of breath and going too slowly to be taken seriously, even though he was clutching a large American fighting knife in his hand. Ean simply moved out of the way. George couldn’t stop himself. He plunged over the top, fell twenty-five or thirty feet, and rolled into the shallows of the largest lochan to lie among the pieces of aluminium.
Nobody immediately went down to see if he was OK. Doris and I climbed up to Ean, who asked, ‘What the hell was that all about?’
‘I told you. Your rifle gave him the willies. He convinced himself that you’re going to kill him for giving Doris a black eye.’
It was big, silent Chris who moved. He put his metal detector down, clambered through the tussocky heather, and dragged George out of the water.
Doris asked us, ‘I suppose we can’t just leave him there?’
‘Not until he’s paid us all, miss.’ Ean smiled sympathetically. ‘Then we can put him back if you like.’
The whole bloody thing had turned into a disaster, and I was half inclined just to walk off the hill and leave them to it. George had howled every time Chris moved him; either he was a big nance or he’d broken something.
Eventually Chris looked up at me and said, ‘He fell on the knife. He’s bloody stabbed himself as well as breaking a leg. How the hell do we get him off the hill?’
Doris stood up, and dusted herself down.
‘Has he paid you yet?’ she called down.
George groaned. I thought things weren’t looking too good for him. We scrambled down to where he lay on his side in the heather.
‘Did you find the bomb?’ I asked Chris.
‘What bomb? I’m looking for a container of a medical radioactive isotope. Something for X-ray machines. Nobody said anything about a bomb to me.’
‘That isn’t a mine detector you dragged up here then?’
‘No, Charlie. It’s a Geiger counter – can’t you tell the difference?’
‘He told me we were looking for a box of documents for some museum,’ Doris complained.
Ean looked interested. Like an energetic working dog.
He asked, ‘What did he tell you, Charlie?’
I quite liked talking about George as if he wasn’t there. He groaned now and again to remind us he was. Maybe he was hoping to dissuade me from putting the words Geiger counter and bomb together in one sentence.
‘That we were escorting the lady to the spot where her brother had died – he was the pilot. That turns out to be true, after a fashion.’ I gave George a fraternal poke, and told him, ‘George, it’s time to come clean. Pay attention now, and tell me if we’re looking for an atom bomb.’
He groaned and t
urned away from me, saying, ‘That Scots maniac broke my leg.’
‘No, he didn’t, George. You broke it yourself because you are dumb. Let’s try again – are we looking for an atom bomb?’
‘Yes, fuck it.’
I was really pleased that everyone got it at once. However, nobody reacted quickly, until Doris said, ‘What say we just roll him back into the water, and hold him under until he stops wriggling?’ She had a point. If she had made the move I don’t think anyone would have stopped her.
It was at this point that Ean played the Highland lairdy card, and decided to start telling us all what to do. But he wanted some information first. He, too, prodded George, but he was less forgiving than me because he prodded George’s smashed leg.
‘If the American government has really dropped an atom bomb on my rather spectacular mountain, old thing, would you mind telling us what you were supposed to do if you found it?’
‘Mark it, go back down to the hotel and phone for some back-up.’ He groaned again, and said, ‘Shit, my leg hurts.’
‘Breaks are meant to, George. Then what?’
‘A US Army team would come and collect it. Discreetly. It would all depend on the condition the weapon is in.’
‘And none would be any the wiser, was that the idea? Not even our curiously craven government?’
The real pain must have been hitting George by now, because all he did was bite his lip and nod his head.
‘You Yankee bastards,’ Chris said. Then he asked, ‘What next?’
We all looked at Ean. We were on his patch, after all. He said, ‘I’ll go down and fetch a stretcher, some help to carry him down to the hotel – I’ll travel fastest alone. You stay put, and babysit him . . . and if you find that bloody bomb, don’t bloody touch it.’
Chris and I moved George further up the slope, and into the shadow of the low cliff face the aircraft had actually failed to clear. The pieces of airframe were noticeably smaller up against rocks. We moved sheets of ally around to give him some cover from the breeze. He moaned and groaned for America with every yard we moved him, even though we were as gentle as was practicable. I found his knife in the shallows, and put it in my pack. Doris took her revenge. She knelt down alongside George, smiled sweetly, and said, ‘George, you are an absolute fucking louse. If I’d had my way we would have left you in the water.’
A Blind Man's War Page 9
