There was a pilot waiting outside the office for us when I walked up from the hut the next morning, but it wasn’t our new man. This one was a stocky young fellow who wore old RAF blue trousers, scuffed lightweight flying boots and an old patched flying jacket. It looked almost as ill used as mine. The man looked almost as ill used as me. The grin he summoned up was strained, but he stuck out a paw. I said, ‘Are you looking for a job?’
‘I would be if I wasn’t under arrest.’
‘What for?’
‘Smuggling aircraft. I flew a second-hand Spit to France a couple of weeks ago. It ended up in Palestine. The Customs got me as I tried to take another one. Now I’m out on bail.’
‘Yeah, but what are you here for?’
‘Customs guys told me to report here. They want to photograph me alongside the evidence. It’s easier to produce a photograph in court than an aircraft.’
I said, ‘Tough break.’
‘Yeah. I know, but thanks for saying it.’
He seemed an all right type down on his luck, to me.
‘Are you allowed to have a cup of char with me while you wait?’
‘Thanks again. Don’t see why not. Are you the manager of this outfit?’
I know that you’ll think me slow, but it hadn’t occurred to me in as many words before.
‘Yes. I rather think I am. Come inside, and I’ll fix us up.’
In fact, in our small galley I sat at the table while he made the tea. His motions were neat and economic, and when he relaxed he smiled a lot. He said, ‘I should have come and asked you for a job before I took the money for the Spits.’
‘You should have done. I think that you might have fitted in here. What’s your name?’
‘Bozey . . . Boswell Borland.’
‘I’m Charlie Bassett.’
‘Weren’t you in the papers last year? Something to do with Germany in 1945.’
‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘but would you mind if we didn’t talk about it? It was a load of old cobblers.’
‘O . . . K.’ He spaced the two letters out. Uncomplicated.
‘Look, I know the Customs guy who’s dealing with your case. He told me you’d go to prison unless you ran away.’
‘Yes, he told me I’d go away.’
‘I got the impression that if you did run away he wouldn’t come looking for you. I think they’re satisfied with a shelf full of Spits. The court case is a complication he doesn’t need.’
‘Do you believe that?’
‘Yes, I do . . . and I’ll tell you something else. This is a small operation: we work out of here and Croydon. If you can get out of the country, to Germany, we could have office chairs in Celle, Wunstorf, Lübeck and Gatow – especially Gatow – in a fortnight. If you can make your own way there and you’re any good, I’ll find you a flying job one way or another.’
He wasn’t so dumb. He asked me, ‘Why?’
‘Search me. Something to do with running out of luck a few times myself perhaps.’
‘I’ll remember it then. Thanks.’
‘OK.’
We took our mugs of char into the outer office. Elaine wasn’t due in for another ten minutes, and the Old Man was back in London. It had been an unseasonably cold night, and in the sunshine the grass glistened with dew. We were still standing watching it when Holland rolled up in his fancy Jaguar. He had a woman in the passenger seat alongside him. I went round to open the door for her, and she gave me a dark red smile. Her lipstick was as red as Eve Valentine’s.
‘This is Charlie Bassett,’ he told her. ‘He runs things around here. This is Patsy,’ he told me. ‘Patsy works for the News Chronicle, but moonlights for us. She’s an ace photographer.’
Patsy looked about fourteen years old. She asked me, ‘Weren’t you in the news last year?’
‘Yes. But I’d prefer to forget about it.’
Holland asked me, ‘My smuggler turned up yet?’
I said, ‘I think your car’s much too flash for a servant of the Crown. It’s a spiv’s car.’
‘Has my smuggler . . . ?’
‘Yes he has.’ That was Borland’s voice from the door. ‘I was just putting on my make-up for your photos.’
I left them to it. I knew that I’d done the right thing telling Holland about our friends from the Stern Gang buying warplanes to use in Palestine, but I hadn’t expected to face the fall guy who was going to answer for it. In particular, I hadn’t expected to like the fall guy being prosecuted for it. Elaine came in, and I told her what was going on. She made a face. She didn’t like it either.
‘I’m going to revoke our Bozey’s bail.’ Holland said when they trooped back in half an hour later.
‘What for?’
‘For being sarky. Captured smugglers ain’t supposed to be sarky; they’re supposed to have a humble and contrite heart – just like the hymn says.’
‘Can you do that?’
‘I’m going to. With your permission I’m going to give him a little taste of prison right now, and lock him in your office. Then I’ll take you and Patsy up to that cafe for breakfast. I’m famished.’
They must have had words – as we used to say – because Bozey didn’t look sarky; he looked bloody angry. That was a good sign. I preceded him into my office, and checked both the catch and latch of the window while he watched me. They worked perfectly. I grinned as I met his eye, and nodded as I locked him in, and gave the key to the Customs man.
I told a few stories that kept them there for half an hour. Bob told a few more and kept us there for another. Patsy laughed at all his jokes, and none of mine. I decided that I didn’t fancy her anyway.
When we returned to my office Elaine looked smug. She said, ‘Someone’s pinched the Passion Wagon. I just turned around, and there it was gone. They must have been very clever.’
Holland unlocked my office door, and handed me the key. Then he opened the door with a flourish. The room was empty of humans, and the open window swung gently in the morning breeze. He said, ‘Dearie me,’ then after a short pause for breath, ‘Dearie, dearie me.’
‘I must have forgotten to tell you about the window. Sorry about that.’
That was me.
‘Wow!’ That was Patsy. ‘He’s gone on the lam. How exciting. Phone the police.’
Holland gave her a withering look. ‘Don’t talk daft, woman.’ No explanation, no observation, just Don’t talk daft woman. ‘. . . and don’t tell the bloody rag you work for either. Not if you want any more work from my lot.’
Elaine chipped in with, ‘Why don’t we all have a nice cup of tea?’ She’d been listening to too much radio.
As if she’d picked up on my thought she turned the radio on. Edmundo Ros was singing ‘Everybody Loves Saturday Night’. I’ve always loved that one.
Chapter Thirteen
I felt like bloody royalty. Not that I’ve ever had much time for that lot: they get paid far too much for holding garden parties and handing out gongs. I felt like royalty because it looked as if they’d sent two planes for me, not one.
The Pig made a neat landfall, but was followed in its surge up the slope towards the offices by another Dakota. The second one was a new all-American job; silver all over with the Yanks’ big stars, and the words Camel Caravan to Berlin painted big on its flanks, above the windows. The words were lettered in the same script used on packets of Camel cigarettes. If it actually majored in fag runs it was destined to become a very popular kite. The pilot was a bit flash, but that’s Yanks for you. If I thought about it, Randall’s flying always had a touch of Hollywood about it too. By contrast the Pink Pig sat alongside it in the colour of fresh steak in a butcher’s shop. They kept the props just ticking over, so they didn’t intend to hang around for long.
Elaine drove me out to it in the Passion Wagon, which she’d collected from the station where Borland had left it for us. I rode with my hand between her legs, loving the pressure from her thighs. Her cheeks burned red and she was smiling, so I guess
that it was all right. She gave me a peck on the cheek just as I got out, and said, ‘Come back safe, Charlie.’
‘Don’t worry. Take no chances are my middle names.’
‘Liar.’ She kissed me again. It was very light, like a spider on your skin. I suddenly realized that I’d seen this movie before: it felt just like going to war.
The Pig’s cargo door was open. I flung my bag into her, scrambled over the sill and helped the engineer dog the door shut. The pilot was already turning her into the wind and running her engines up. Through one of the windows I could see Camel doing the same, and they took off in parallel, like a couple of fighter planes. There was something about the way our aircraft skipper pulled her off the ground, before I found a seat to strap into, that was disconcertingly familiar. I’d seen flying like this before, but couldn’t quite remember where . . . or when. Then I remembered the Yanks of the 306th I’d met at Thurleigh years ago – they flew like this: wrenching an aircraft off the ground like they were riding a bronco. The American Dakota dropped into our airstream, and the two aircraft launched themselves across the Channel.
Our engineer was used to it. He easily clawed his way back to the front. When he disappeared through the curtain I began to move myself. We were in a climbing turn, and it seemed to take me years to clamber over our parcels and crates after him. The engineer turned, grinned and gave me the thumbs up. His agility belied his age – he looked as old as Old Man Halton. He already had a map open on his lap. The pilot had his head turned away. He was only a kid, but I knew that head. I had signed his papers up the day before. His name was not familiar – Rufus Padstow – but I knew that bloody head.
‘Hello, Max,’ I said. ‘How old are you these days?’
He turned and grinned: an older version of the red-haired, freckled boy I remembered.
‘Let me see. Sixteen and four. I reckon I’m over twenty – just the same as you when I met you. I must be getting old. Hello yourself, Charlie.’
‘Who’s Rufus Padstow, and where did he come from?’
‘Me, Charlie. Rufus because of my red hair, and Padstow because that’s where I was conceived, according to the gardener who was fucking my mother at the time.’
‘Padstow in Devon?’ I don’t even know why I was asking.
‘It’s in Cornwall actually. No: it’s our lot on Cape Cod. The Kennedys are our neighbours.’
‘Why can’t you still be Louis Maxwell? It was a pretty good name.’
‘They sent me to college when I got back to the States and took my flying licence away. I went down to a pilot school in Florida last year and got another, but I needed a new name for it.’
OK, so little Louis had got me up to date. In 1943 he’d joined up in the USAAF about five years too early, a big boy lying about his age – thousands did the same. I’d met him when he was AW OL: he’d run away when he’d found that he wasn’t too keen on war after all. It didn’t explain why he was piloting one of our aircraft.
‘Who hired you?’
‘Your owner: my father knows him, and I know the secretary my old man is knocking off at the moment. We worked out a deal to keep me quiet, and get me out of the way.’
‘What’s in it for Halton?’
The Pig suddenly found some thin air, and dropped about fifty feet. My stomach heaved, but Maxwell held her up very professionally. Maybe he was a halfway decent pilot. Without looking the engineer reached for the two throttle levers, eased them forward a fraction, and then back as we came out of it.
‘Gas. Petrol. At five cents the US gallon less than the marketplace price. Everybody’s happy. Have you met my engineer?’
I turned and made proper eye contact with the guy alongside him for the first time, and was chilled to the marrow.
It took just that one glance to tell me the old man was as mad as a monkey. When you meet the violently deranged for the first time, you know it immediately, don’t you? Three hundred years earlier he would have covered his straggly hair with a red bandanna, worn an eyepatch, and carried a cutlass between his teeth. Yo ho fucking ho. When he smiled his teeth didn’t look all that good, and I could smell the damage his breath was doing to his mouth from a couple of feet away. His eyes were askew – they moved independently in his head, and then, disconcertingly, would suddenly focus together. He was another Yank, but whereas Max’s speaking voice was modulated and the accent was soft, this guy sounded like biting a pumice stone. My teeth are set on edge even thinking about it. He held up his right hand, palm towards me, and said, ‘How.’
‘How what?’
‘It’s what the redskins say,’ Max told me. ‘It means Hi.’
‘Is he a redskin?’
‘He can speak for himself you know.’
‘Hell no,’ the pirate said. ‘I come from Cincinnati.’ He fished with one hand in the top pocket of his ovies. They look so threadbare and ragged that you’d think they’d been handed out at a soup kitchen. What he brought out was a rusty four-inch nail suspended at its C of G on a piece of greasy string. He held it up, squinted at it and then asked me, ‘Where you wan us to go?’
‘Celle. That’s in Germany.’
As soon as I spoke he flicked one end of the nail so that it spun horizontally. When it stopped spinning its head was towards Max and its sharp end pointed out of the window alongside the pirate.
‘Turn right,’ he told Maxwell. ‘Gain a bit o’ height.’
‘He’s the navigator as well,’ Max told me. ‘I flunked all my navigation courses because I couldn’t be bothered with the math.’ He saw me watching the nail swinging as the aircraft changed heading. ‘That’s his compass. Neat, ain’t it? The best things in life are free.’
I asked the engineer navigator pirate, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Red Ronson.’
‘This is Charlie Bassett,’ Max told him. ‘Now we all know each other.’
‘What do you do in this outfit, Charlie?’ the engineer asked me.
‘At the moment I run it, but I’m beginning to have second thoughts,’ I said grumpily.
Red was watching the swinging nail. ‘Bring her back ten degrees if you will, Pilot, and watch your heading. You were drifting.’
‘. . . and who hired you?’ I asked him.
‘We come as a package,’ Max jumped in. ‘He’s the gardener’s cousin. I guess you’re stuck with us, Charlie.’
There was something else about Max: we had been in love with the same girl for a while.
We let down for landing three hours later. On the glide path we passed between high blocks of flats, and over a couple of graveyards. These landmarks rang all the wrong kind of bells. I told Max, ‘This doesn’t look like Celle to me. I think we’re in Berlin.’
‘’s right.’ That was Red. ‘This is Tempelhof; a little bit of America in the big wicked world. Welcome to American Berlin, boss. We can all go to Celle tomorrow.’
‘You filed a flight plan for Celle: so why didn’t we go today?’
‘Because the Camel needed to get to Tempelhof, and it doesn’t have a navigator. We said we’d show him the way.’
‘. . . and what the Camel wants, comes before what your employer wants?’
Max sounded hurt by the question. ‘Sure, Charlie. Country before calling. I gotta help a fellow American in trouble.’
Ah bugger it. We’d flown two kites from Lympne to Berlin, guided by a maniac with a nail on a bit of string. That had to count for something, didn’t it? I had one last question.
‘What’s in Camel that’s so important?’
‘Nurses, Charlie. Twenny-six unsullied female nurses with clean undies. The American garrison is going to love you to pieces for getting them here.’
‘But I didn’t. I didn’t know anything about it.’
‘Yes you did. You authorized the in-flight change of destination . . . for humanitarian reasons.’
‘I never did.’
‘You did.’ Red turned round to look at me. He winked his right eye. It was a ter
ribly slow wink, like half his face was paralysed. His left eye roamed. ‘I forged your signature on the Dec. I’m good at that.’
I got the Kraut Customs to give me a lift over to the terminal buildings: there wasn’t much room in the rear seat of their funny little VW car . . . even for me. Camel’s pilot was there before me. Some guys were pummelling him on his shoulders. Someone stuffed a fag in his mouth, and a second guy lit it up for him. As I was about to push past he turned and stopped me. He had dark rings under his eyes. He asked, ‘Are you Mr Bassett from the Halton C-47?’ The Yanks called it C-47. We called the Dakota a DC-3. Do try to keep up.
‘Yes I am.’
He turned away, and shouted at the scrum, ‘Hey guys, this is the guy who led us in!’
I got the cigarette treatment after that, and a waxed paper cup of coffee was shoved into my hand. Eventually I was corralled by an older officer, who told me, ‘We’re in your debt, son. From now on anything you need, jest ask the army,’ and pumped my free hand. I’ll swear that he had tears in his eyes. It wasn’t until he moved away that I noticed that he wore stars. A general had just fallen in love with me. Not long after that a khaki bus brought the women from the plane, and the focus of attention switched away. They didn’t look much like nurses to me.
‘Concert party,’ Russian Greg explained. ‘They manifest concert parties and entertainers as nurses, so we won’t know. You bring in a big morale boost for our hard-pressed American allies.’
‘We aren’t your allies any more, Greg. You’ve shut down the transport network, and are trying to starve us out.’
‘Then why you still here? Wanna drink?’
‘Yes please. Whatever you’re having will do. Anyway, why are you here? Isn’t the Leihhaus in our zone?’
‘No, Charlie. This is the neutral zone. Here. This club is in No Man’s Land. If you look at the lines drawn on the map you see this is where the British Zone meets the US Zone, and where they both meet the Soviet Zone. There is a little triangle where the lines meet, and we are sitting in it.’ There was a heavy roll of thunder from the south. I think I knew there was a storm coming. My bones ached.
‘How’s Marthe? Did she get back?’
The Hidden War Page 18
