by Nick Cook
The Junkers. There it was, revolving past his cockpit once every half second. Still making for the clouds. Almost there. So was he.
Fleming responded automatically, kicking on opposite rudder and pulling back on the stick. Two more revs and he was out of the spin. His head swam from the effects of the g and his body was damp from the hot flush of sweat that oozed from every pore during his brief plummet earthwards. The sweat of fear, not just physical exertion. Except this time he was going to beat it. He had to or it would consume him, Penny, everything. The remedy was here, in the clouds.
Fleming locked onto the tail of the Junkers, about three hundred yards behind, just as it entered the wall of stratocumulus. He followed, penetrating the cloud as close as he could to his opponent’s entry point.
A moment of thick cloaking mist swirling round the cockpit, then a bright searing flash as he shot out of it into the blue eye of the huge cloud formation. A great glint of silver as the Junkers split-essed away from him, downwards, the sun catching on the thin film of water vapour on its glistening underside, like light reflecting off the belly of a gamefish.
Down again through the great tunnel of steam, keeping the Junkers within the frame of his windshield, tantalizingly close to his sights. And all the time the thought was tumbling through his mind.
It shouldn’t be able to do this. A Junkers shouldn’t bloody well fly like this. How can a man throw a heavy fighter-bomber round the sky without tearing its wings off?
Fleming jinked with the Junkers down a narrow chasm of clear sky, two great white walls either side of him. The enemy aircraft banked into the cloud and disappeared. He felt sick with the exertion, he wanted to turn away, tell Staverton he had lost it.
No. Fight it.
The cloud was patchy, thinning out. The Junkers was split-essing away from him again, down . . . down, closer to the ground. He followed, levelling out as the Junkers pulled up over the New Forest. He was close now, closing faster. He had the speed.
His opponent knew it too, jinking his way over the contoured tree tops, then going lower as the forest gave way to heathland. A group of ponies scattered as the heavy, icy air was split by the noise of the twin Jumos and the Merlin, the two sounds merging as the Spitfire closed in.
With a monumental effort Fleming inched his thumb along the spade-grip of the stick, seeking the gun-button that would end the madness. The Junkers reared. Too late. He had him.
Then the Junkers dropped everything.
Fleming froze.
Monte Lupo; it was happening again.
It took place in an instant, yet to Fleming it was in excruciating slow-time, a reply of an earlier drama, an earlier battle, one which he had fought in his nightmares ever since. And the ending was always the same. He lost and there was nothing to do about it.
With flaps and wheels down, the Junkers juddered, bucked and slowed to the point of the stall, but it held there, and Fleming could only watch, rigid with fear as the blue belly slid by only feet above his cockpit.
He was dead. The German aircraft was positioned squarely in his mirror. The 20 mm cannon would rip into him any second.
“You’re dead, Wing Commander. I’ve got you on gun-camera. You’ll have to do better than that.” A voice in his head, echoing over and over again, tormenting him.
“I said you’re dead, Robert. Break off.” A sense of waking, coming out of the dream. Yet he was still in a hurtling piece of machinery, real machinery, with real ground whipping past him at 300 mph a few hundred feet below. Real voices . . .
“Break off, Robert, Goddammit. It’s me, Kruze.” The name burst through his headset.
Kruze . . . the exercise. Not Italian skies, but English.
He looked over his port wing tip to see the Junkers pull alongside, so close that Kruze was clearly visible in the cockpit. Kruze. It really was him. No nightmare this time, no FW 190, no cannon ... As if to reassure him, the RAF roundels stood out proudly where the once stark crosses and swastikas on the 288 had been.
Thick bile rose in Fleming’s throat as the exercise was replayed in his mind. He retched once into his mask, but nothing came up.
“Robert.” Kruze’s anxious face, thirty feet away, matched the tone of his voice. “Robert, for Christ’s sake answer me. Are you all right?”
Fleming nodded once.
“Let’s go home, then. That’s enough for one day.”
The Junkers peeled off towards Farnborough and Fleming banked after it.
* * * * * * * *
Kruze jumped from the wing of the Ju 288 onto the slushy tarmac of the dispersal point. The snow of the previous night had turned to a light drizzle, altering Farnborough, crisp and clean at dawn, to a dirty, wet, miserable place.
Fleming’s Spitfire had rolled to a stop several hundred yards away, parked untidily beside an otherwise immaculate row of test aircraft. Kruze started towards it, but was still a hundred yards away when Fleming emerged from the cockpit, threw his helmet onto the ground, and moved back towards his Nissen hut.
There was no point in pursuing him.
Instead, Kruze set off for the hangar, looking for Sergeant Broyles. Inside the cavernous shed, technicians worked frantically on a dozen different types of aircraft. Most of them were new marks of bombers, fighters and reconnaissance aircraft for the Air Force, but in a far corner were two which would never enter service with the RAF.
The Messerschmitt 110 night fighter stood alongside the spindly, awkward shape of the Fieseler Storch liaison aircraft under the intense gaze of the arc lights. Two fitters were busy in the cockpit of the fighter making last adjustments to the back seat operator’s console where the plots from the Lichtenstein radar were displayed when the Me no went about its work - stalking Bomber Command in the pitch black skies over the Third Reich. It was a bloody good system. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that their boss, Air Vice Marshal Staverton, had got so excited when the news had come through a month ago that Monty’s advancing army had come across an intact unit of the type. Staverton’s message to his team was simple. Find out what makes the thing tick, discover what its vices are and come up with an antidote within a fortnight. Eleven days into the flight test programme - and two hundred-odd downed bombers later - the EAEU had the answer. That same evening a report was on the Air Vice Marshal’s desk and two nights later a jamming system was flown on a thousand-bomber raid to Berlin. Losses were eighty per cent down. Not bad, they’d all thought. Not good enough, Staverton had said bitterly, pointing to Bomber Command’s intervening losses.
Staverton was not an easy man to please, but each of them would have followed him to the gates of Berlin and back if necessary.
Kruze found Broyles berating a young fitter for neglecting some minute detail in maintenance procedure on the Me 110. The sergeant, old enough to be Kruze’s father, if not his grandfather, saw the Rhodesian out of the corner of his eye and dismissed the trembling aircraftman with a hard, but paternal clip to the head.
Broyles wiped the grease from his hands onto his overalls. The lined, leathery face creased into a smile.
“I suppose you’ve been bending another of my bloody aeroplanes, Mr Kruze.”
Kruze pulled a packet of cigarettes from his flying jacket and tossed it to Broyles, who plucked it eagerly from the air. The big man appreciatively sniffed the bitter-sweet smell of the Lucky Strikes.
“Pipe down, Chief. A bit of tweaking here and there and she’ll be as good as new.” He took a cigarette from the pack returned by Broyles.
The chief snorted.
“Mr Kruze, sir, Jerry don’t build aeroplanes like we do.” The chief’s voice was laced with good-natured sarcasm. “Besides, when you go popping rivets and bending undercarriages, I can’t very well get on the telephone to Herr bloody Goering and ask him to send over a few bleedin’ spare parts, can I now?”
Kruze laughed. “Course you can, Chief. You’d scare the crap out of him and have the parts by morning.” He clapped his arm over Broyles’
shoulder and walked him over to the hangar door. The air outside was still as they strolled away from the sounds of activity within the maintenance shed towards the Junkers. Standing before the aircraft Broyles whistled above the gentle pinging noise of the two still Jumo engines as they cooled in the damp air.
“Sweet Jesus, there’s furrows on the skin where the wings have bent,” the chief said, burying his face in his hands. Kruze knew that this performance, though reflecting the concern of any maintenance sergeant at the repair work ahead, was also tongue-in-cheek. It had developed into something of a ritual.
Kruze patted the nose of the Ju 288.
“I’ve got about six seconds of gun-camera film in here needs developing. Get one of your boys to take it over to photographic would you, Chief?”
“Yes, Mr Kruze. Got him, did you?” Broyles nodded to the distant form of the Spitfire.
“Yeah, I got him all right.”
Broyles grunted satisfaction. “There’s a bit of justice for you.”
“What’s that, Chief?”
If there was one thing Kruze had learnt about Broyles, he didn’t pull any punches.
“I had Mister Fleming in here half the night sticking his nose in my business. That Spitfire was serviced perfectly, the manifest said so. Only Mister Fleming wouldn’t have any of it. Kept getting us to check it over and over again. You should hear what my men have to say about him, the bloody stuffed shirt.”
“Steady, Chief. He’s had a rough time of it.”
Broyles shrugged. “I dare say, Mr Kruze. But why doesn’t he just stay put in that place of his up in London? Put him near an aircraft and he’s trouble.”
“That’s enough, Chief, I get the picture.” Kruze realized it was a half-hearted admonition. His own view of Fleming wasn’t that different from the seasoned old engineer’s.
The chief scratched his head as he watched the tall Rhodesian amble over the debrief centre on the other side of the field. Funny bugger, Kruze. Wasn’t like the rest of the officers, thank God.
* * * * *
Air Vice Marshal Algernon Staverton, head of the RAF’s Enemy Aircraft Evaluation Unit, the EAEU, was standing with his back to the door, staring out between the peeling window frames towards the black maintenance sheds when Kruze entered his office.
There was damp in the air, but Kruze had become used to that during the long English winter. Staverton turned slowly when the door was closed behind the Rhodesian. The brightness outside made the lines of the Old Man’s silhouette appear even more gaunt than usual, Kruze thought. Staverton was hardly a man you could like, but his reputation as an RFC flier and the tough, efficient way in which he ran the EAEU made him someone to respect.
Staverton’s career had been somewhat oddball. The Old Man had established the top secret EAEU with little help from his RAF superiors, who in early 1941 believed there was not much value in setting up a costly unit to test captured enemy aircraft. Staverton, then only a group captain, persuaded them otherwise. Since then, the reputation of the EAEU - and Staverton - had grown in classified circles.
Four years later, and Staverton’s knowledge of enemy aircraft and Luftwaffe operations had made him the nation’s leading expert in aerial intelligence. Recognition of his expertise came in early 1944 when he was recruited onto Churchill’s small team of special cabinet advisers.
In the months preceding the Normandy landings, interpretation of enemy activity had never assumed such vital importance and Churchill wanted the very best advice from men who answered directly to him. Staverton was a natural for the job. Promoted to air vice marshal to give him equal status with the two other specialists, a major general from British Army Intelligence and a rear admiral from its naval counterpart, Staverton was reputed to be every bit as uncompromising with his superiors in Whitehall as he was with his pilots.
AVM Staverton had been allowed to retain command of the EAEU, even though, by rights, it should have passed to a younger man upon his promotion to Whitehall. He now divided his time between a dark basement office in the Air Ministry and the EAEU’s headquarters at Farnborough.
The AVM scarcely concealed his ambition. There were few pilots in the EAEU who doubted he would advance to air chief marshal before the war was out. Provided he did not put too many backs up in Whitehall, that was.
“Well, what happened up there?” Staverton gestured Kruze to the chair in front of his desk and sat down himself.
“The Ju 288’s good, there’s no question about it. For a big aeroplane it’s manoeuvrable - tight in the turn, good roll response, rugged . . . It’ll all be in my report.”
Staverton nodded.
“And Wing Commander Fleming, how did he do? Will we be seeing your Junkers on his gun-camera?”
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet, sir.” Not exactly a lie. “He followed me all the way down from thirty thousand feet to the deck, where he must have had me in his sights for a few seconds ...”
“And then he had a problem.” Staverton probed with the skill of a surgeon. “We heard something over the intercom. Sounded like trouble.”
“It looked as if he had a block in his air-supply system. A touch of hypoxia, I reckon. It seemed to clear as soon as he got down on the deck.”
Staverton waited till the rumble of a bomber taking off had subsided.
“You don’t think it was a touch of something else? After all, Robert has been through more than most of us.” Staverton’s blue eyes were cold. “He’s an extremely brave young man, but anyone who’s suffered as he has can only expect to recover slowly. Piet, if you think he’s been pushed too far, you have to tell me.”
Kruze bristled, but said nothing.
“We had codes of silence in the last show, too, you know, but it never did any good to some poor bastard who was too proud to admit that he had had enough. We operate a tight unit here, you know that. Robert has served it well, but if he’s gone over the edge, he can be replaced.”
“And we lose the best intelligence officer in the RAF.”
“There are others. Perhaps they will take time to train for our purposes, but it can be done.”
“Sir . . .” Kruze paused. “You know as well as I do that that’s impossible. Fleming’s work is indispensable to what we do down here. His presence may not always be welcome on the station, but it would take months to find the right man for his job, let alone train him.”
Staverton sensed he hadn’t finished.
“If there’s more, man, get it off your chest now. You know rank counts for little here.”
When it suits you, Kruze thought. “All right. Why the hell did you make him do that air-test if you suspected he was unfit to fly?”
“Because he requested it himself.”
“And you let him do it, just because you felt it might be good therapy? Well, the answer to your first question is, yes, I do think he’s had enough, but then perhaps we all have.”
Staverton seemed unconcerned by the outburst. “You know his wife -”
“I’ve met her.”
“How’s she coping?”
Kruze’s mind drifted back to the dinner at the cottage. It had been an awkward attempt by Fleming to get to know one of the Farnborough team a bit better. Just Fleming, his wife Penny, a recently widowed friend of hers and himself. Fleming had been much as usual; withdrawn, shy almost, seeming as ill at ease with Penny as he had been at the base.
She had saved the evening. Attractive and vivacious despite Fleming’s clumsiness with her and his guests, Penny never seemed to show any resentment. Once though, he had caught a look on her face, gently bathed in the candle light, as she watched her husband try to make polite conversation. At the time, Kruze thought it was pity; only on the way home did he realize that it was a look of immeasurable sadness.
“She’s fine, as far as I know. And so’s he.” As long as you leave him alone, he thought.
“All right, Piet, that’ll be all.”
Staverton rubbed his eyes. “J
ust get that report to me in London by midmorning tomorrow. I’ll not be staying here much longer today. Then take a few days of that leave that’s owing to you while you’re about it. It may be the last chance you get for quite a while.”
CHAPTER TWO
The officer was lying on his back in the tall grass, arms folded across his chest. The dawn sunlight was streaming down on him, but the peaked cap cast a thin shadow across his closed eyes.
He looks dead, Oberscharführer Dietz thought as he stood above him. The sergeant was seized by a desire to slip a shell into the chamber of his Mauser sniper’s rifle, put the barrel up against the officer’s head and blow his brains over the little grassy hillock on which they’d been holed up for the last two days. What’s the point? They’d all be dead before long anyway. Every man jack of the platoon, or what was left of it. Killing the pig of an officer would probably be doing him a favour.
The officer was awake and fully aware of Dietz’s presence. What did the fool want now? He had been thinking of home. It was almost seven years since he had been there, and it still haunted him. War hadn’t eased the contempt he felt for his father, and his so-called friends would be first in the queue to slit his throat if he ever did get back. But the place he could never forget. If only things had been different.
It was the same for the platoon, God help them. They were tired, dirty and sick and they wanted to go home, but all of them knew that even if they survived this mess, home was out of the question. For all except Dietz, that was. The Bavarian still had a place to go back to, but he was the only one who didn’t care. That was the irony. Dietz had probably been quite a pleasant young man before this campaign, but by the time they left Stalingrad, Dietz, too, was living on borrowed time.
They had been behind enemy lines now for five months, off and on. It had started when the big Soviet push came in November. His section had been cut off by the assault, but they’d managed to fight their way back to other German units a few weeks later. By that time the Germans had been pushed back into Eastern Czechoslovakia, but his commanding officer had been so impressed with the havoc that he had wrought behind the Russian lines that he was promoted and told to go back and do it all over again. “Don’t worry,” the General had told him, “you’re not the only ones who’ll be there. There will be enough SS units behind Ivan’s lines to cause real chaos. Supply lines will be cut and perhaps even their advance can be stemmed long enough to give our troops a chance to regroup and smash the Bolshevik army once and for all. Then the Third Reich will turn on the Americans and the British and then Germany will be great again.” That had been in November ‘44 . . . five months ago, was it? It seemed like a lifetime to the officer. For every filthy Ivan he’d put down, another ten seemed to take his place.
