The Hidden War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘A little bird with tits as big as footballs. Where you get these women, Charlie?’ Ah.

  I ignored the question,

  ‘Is she with you now?’

  ‘Yes. I tol’ you . . .’ He hadn’t, but never mind.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the Neutral Zone.’ The club.

  ‘What’s she doing there?’

  ‘Negotiating access to some records she thinks I can get her.’

  ‘What’s she offered you?’

  ‘Tits as big as footballs.’ Then he couldn’t keep it up any longer, and laughed for about a day. When he got himself under control he said, ‘She said she got me a box of sweets from England as a down payment; that you were jus’ the delivery boy. That true?’

  The clicking noise I could hear might have been Greg picking his teeth.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘No. I think she never did that. I already delivered it, and I am a Hero of the Soviet Union. Thank you, Charlie. What should I do with this woman? Cut you out, and negotiate direct perhaps?’

  I thought quickly: never easy for me before the first drink. ‘That all depends on your sister, doesn’t it?’ There was the full five-beat wait before he replied. ‘You getting too good at this game, English, you know that?’ ‘You’ll kick her out then?’ ‘I’ll send her back with a flea up her arse.’ ‘You mean in her ear.’

  ‘I mean what I say, Charlie. I know the difference. I can speak English.’

  I sat in the office and studied the schedules. Things had moved on. They covered one complete wall. Bozey had separate sheets for each airfield: arrivals and departures, and a master sheet which integrated the lot. Any pilot could stand in front of them for five minutes and see his scheduled routes for the whole week.

  I was alone because he had taken a Lancastrian back to Lübeck. Hardisty had brought it in with blankets and winter clothes even this early in the year, and I was shocked by the state of him – pasty yellow face and hollow eyes. He had a mug of coffee in one hand and a doughnut in the other when he slouched in. I took one look at him and stood him down for twenty-four, telling him to get a bath and a meal then go to bed. He hadn’t even the energy to disagree.

  After he’d signed out I’d asked Bozey, ‘What the hell are the rest like?’

  ‘The pilots? Not much better. I did one or two trips to keep them going, but there’s not enough of us. The engineers and loaders seem to be able to take it better – you know we’re still flying radio ops on the Lancs?’

  ‘Christ! We’re going to wear the people out quicker than the kites at this rate. Time to get some more pilots, or slow everything down.’

  ‘That mad Yank is the exception. He’s been checked out on Lancs now, and even flew out a C-54 for the RAF when they ran out of pilots. When the others are dropping like flies around him he asks for more. I think he can fly anything.’

  ‘So can you.’

  After Bozey had rounded up Tin Man’s crew and taken off into the overcast I put a call through to Lympne. Halford wasn’t there. Elaine was. She had two or three telephone numbers for the boss and said she would try them, and get him to call me back. My telephone rang an hour later.

  ‘Morning, Charlie. Ankle healing?’

  ‘Almost as good as new, boss . . . we just gave it a fright. Give me a couple of days.’

  ‘I’m speaking from the House: I have fifteen minutes between committees.’

  ‘We’d better talk about the pilots then: they’re exhausted . . . everyone is in the same state as far as I can see – both the privateers out here, and the Air Force crews. We’re going to have people landing on houses soon if we’re not careful . . . we’re flying them to death.’

  ‘Solution?’

  ‘Slow things down, or get more pilots.’

  He coughed his thoughts together before answering, ‘Get some pilots then; there are hundreds of unemployed ones knocking about. Fly less until they come on stream if you have to, but every flight we complete puts money in the bank. I thought you were going to ask me for more aircraft.’

  ‘Not much point: the pilots would just have to fly more trips, and we’d be on the merry-go-round again. I’ll tell you when you can handle more capacity, OK?’

  ‘You’re the boss, Charlie.’ No; I wasn’t actually. That was his job, but I let it pass. Then he asked me, ‘How are you getting on with that inquiry for Frieda? Helping her out . . .’ Ah.

  ‘I’m getting something sorted out. It’s taking longer than I thought . . .’

  ‘She was on to me this morning. Seemed to think that you weren’t pushing enough . . . something to do with a Russian officer who might be able to help?’

  ‘Was she complaining about me, boss?’

  A two-beat. I could tell he felt uncomfortable because for once he forgot to cough.

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘She’s not the easiest person in the world to deal with, is she? Look, she tried to go over my head to someone, and may have messed up the whole deal. I’ll see her later, and try to straighten things out.’

  I couldn’t believe that she was still using Halton to pressure me. He chuckled, so that was all right. As usual it finished with a cough.

  ‘When are you coming back?’

  ‘I thought the end of the week.’

  ‘Leave it until Saturday. Claywell’s in Berlin on Friday afternoon with some special cargo. You could hop back with him; bring Frieda if she’ll come. I don’t know why she kicks around an empty flat in Berlin when there’s London . . .’

  ‘I’ll tell her, boss – OK?’

  I heard someone call out his name in the background, so we cut the rest short. He hung up first, and I was left looking at a buzzing handset. I replaced it slowly in its black cradle.

  I tried Elaine again. I could tell she was eating. I said, ‘Pilots.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Five for starters. They’ve got to have had current hours on Daks or Lancasters.’

  ‘By when?’

  ‘I want the first ones out here by next week.’

  ‘I’ve had a couple phone up looking for work. It shouldn’t be impossible.’ Then she giggled and laughed, ‘I love it when you’re being masterful.’

  ‘Stop taking the Michael. I’m coming back on Saturday, and going straight on down to the boys; then I’ll be back in the office for a few days.’

  ‘. . . anything you’ll need?’

  I thought of saying Norwich. That was the acronym that lonely servicemen used to put on the back of the envelopes of their letters home: it meant Nickers off ready when I come home, or some such. Poor lonely buggers. Then I realized that it wasn’t what I really wanted at all. I wanted company and I didn’t know how to ask. I said, ‘You could learn to make a decent cup of tea . . .’ She began to splutter, so before I got the thick end of her tongue I added, ‘Finish your sandwich now, and go back to work,’ and hung up.

  I waited to see Dorothy in; that was Dave Scroton. He didn’t look too bad. He had Mortensen with him. Mortensen didn’t look too bad either if you discounted the vague yellow glow in the air that seemed to frame his body like an aura: I’m sure that I imagined it. Magda had parked up the happy wagon, and was going to get a lift with them out to the Leihhaus. When they asked me if I would join them later on I told them the truth.

  ‘Maybe. I got things to do.’

  ‘Don’t work too hard, boss. All work, no play makes Charlie a . . .’ Scroton of course.

  ‘Get lost, the lot of you,’ I waved them away. There was a big grin on my face: I loved them really, and they knew it. Spartacus had been under my chair in the office when I arrived. He followed me out to the Merc, and hopped straight over to the front passenger seat when I let him in. Bozey had left it full of gas; I wondered who he’d got it from. I also wondered if Frieda would be back in the apartment when I reached it, and what she’d say about a three-legged dog.

  What she said was, ‘Oh!’ and then, ‘If that’s a dog, I used to like dog
s.’

  ‘It’s most of a dog,’ I told her. ‘We call him Spartacus. He’s adopted me.’

  ‘Like your boys did. Things like adopting you.’

  Why don’t you try it, I thought, and limped across the sitting room – one of at least three – to the large round table she was sitting at, and slipped into a chair opposite. I placed my stick on the floor beside me. Spartacus lay on it.

  ‘What were you trying to do at the Leihhaus?’ I asked her softly. ‘You could have really sodded things up.’

  She was playing solitaire with an old set of cards, and kept on laying them down one after the other. She didn’t look up at me.

  ‘What does sodded actually mean?’

  ‘Sodomized: biblical stuff.’

  She didn’t answer me, but this time she glanced up from her cards and looked at me from under an eyebrow which was cocked up. Bad choice of words, come to think of it. Then she asked me, ‘So. Is it all off? My search is stuck?’

  ‘No; it is not all off, neither are you stuck. But if you go off rattling around my friends again I’ll . . . I’ll . . .’

  ‘What, Charlie?’ Bloody incredible! She was smiling at me as if we were the best of friends again. I couldn’t help smiling back – it’s the way that signal works. ‘. . . You’ll do what?’

  ‘Never you bloody mind, but you’ll have bloody deserved it! What happened to you at the club anyway?’

  ‘They made me sweep out the floor before I left. With a dustpan and brush. A cook said it was a penance, and that I was lucky it wasn’t worse. A man named Otto grinned at me all the time. He followed me around and dribbled.’ I suppose that it was time Otto had had a slice of luck.

  ‘I also spoke to the Old Man . . . your Geoffrey . . . you complained to him as well: if you get me fired you’ll never see those records.’

  ‘I thought you had changed your mind, and I was angry after what they made me do in that club. I felt like a maid.’ Might have been a lot worse, I thought, but I didn’t say it. I went for tact; it was a skill I was learning.

  ‘Look, I don’t understand how this bad feeling you have for me started up. I thought that maybe we were getting on OK. Then I woke up one afternoon, and you suddenly hated me. Why?’

  She glanced out of the window. ‘No. I won’t tell you that, Charlie . . . but I can remember to be more careful in future. All right?’

  Our war hadn’t ended, she was telling me, whatever it had started over – but at least we could declare a local truce.

  ‘All right. Is there any more food in the house?’

  ‘More eggs. You like English eggs scrambled, with real toast?’

  ‘I’d love that.’

  I thought that it stretched her culinary skills, but I hung around her in the kitchen, and made her laugh. Then I took her back to the small room with the bed and the stove, and tested her other skills. I came nowhere close to exhausting those, and nowhere close to finding out what I’d done to annoy her in the first place.

  Russian Greg was wearing a new medal on his uniform. It had a livid red and silver ribbon. I asked him what it was.

  ‘The Medal for Patriotic Sacrifice . . . pretty, yes?’ We were speaking our usual make-believe German.

  ‘What did you sacrifice for it?’

  ‘Sacrificed half a kilo of liquorice to my General. It reminded him of his secret bourgeois childhood. Nobody seems to know how I obtained it. Possibly it was a miracle.’

  ‘Do communists still believe in miracles?’

  ‘Not often: but Georgians do,’ and he roared with laughter. The Leihhaus was going full swing, and they were serving a medley of any food you liked as long as it was potatoes. The REME blokes were back again, off duty from putting a new cross-runway into Gatow. Now all they had to do was repair the roads to the food warehouses in the centre and we’d be in business. The noise of people enjoying themselves washed across the table. I’d brought Frieda, although after her last appearance there she wasn’t too keen on it. Two guys cut in to ask her to dance as we walked across the club, but as soon as we were sitting at Greg’s table they let her alone.

  I leaned towards her and said, ‘If you want to dance with anybody it’s no business of mine.’

  ‘Last time I did that you walked out on me.’

  ‘I’d do it again.’

  ‘Why, Charlie? Jealous?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said shortly. I never had been before: I suppose there’s a first time for everything.

  ‘Are you Charlie’s woman?’ Russian Greg asked her. ‘He needs a woman of his own. We want him to be happy.’ That was a difficult one.

  A small combo in the corner launched into ‘On Green Dolphin Street’. People were suddenly playing it a lot. I tilted my chair back on two legs and hummed along with the opening bars.

  ‘I am happy,’ I told them. ‘I couldn’t be happier, but Frieda’s not my woman. She’s my boss’s woman. He told her to nurse me when I bent my ankle, so she’s probably my nurse.’

  ‘Is she a good nurse, Charlie?’ Red Greg almost had to shout to make himself heard.

  This time it was more difficult to duck the issue, so I turned to her instead, and said, ‘One of the very best.’ Then I said, ‘Thank you, Frieda.’

  ‘Eat your potato,’ she told me. ‘We need to keep your strength up.’ That seemed to suit everyone.

  Dave Scroton and Magda walked in. They were holding hands, but she immediately settled down to business and began to work the customers. He sat at the bar and chatted to Marthe. She looked over his shoulder at me, and smiled. Otto had graduated to emptying ashtrays and wiping them with a damp cloth. He waved to me from across the room when I caught his eye. The REME corporal danced a solo rumba with a broom balanced inverted on the bridge of his nose, and his arms outstretched. Frieda reached for my hand under the table and squeezed it. I think that she was scared that the broom was coming in her direction, and that she’d end up sweeping the floor again.

  Before the alcohol addled my brain cells I explained to Red Greg, ‘In two days’ time I’m going home for a week’s rest. Before I go we need to understand the arrangements we have for Frieda to look up her relatives, and for the parcels you wanted transporting. I need a picture in my head.’

  He understood that, and sobered immediately. ‘In two weeks you gonna be asked to visit the Soviet Zone, Charlie. They expect an important man like you to take his secretary with him.’ He nodded towards Frieda.

  ‘Why should I go? How do I know I’d be coming back?’

  ‘The British occupying authority will be asked to present you to give evidence in the People’s trial of the pilot who exceeded his orders and fired on your company’s aircraft. Just because we’re trying to starve you out doesn’t mean we ain’t talking.’ He seemed to find that funny. I wondered who’d taught him ain’t. ‘Your little aeroplane may have been out of position, but that was no excuse: he had not been released to fire on you. He jumped the gun: funny, yes?’

  ‘Funny, no. He almost killed me. He did kill two friends of ours.’

  ‘. . . and that has severely embarrassed my much maligned Socialist Republic . . .’

  ‘Only because some of us lived to tell the tale.’

  ‘My government is regretful. This is the second time we have unintentionally inconvenienced your airline, and this time the criminals will be made an example of. We wish you to see justice done, and report that back to your own people of course . . . as a voluntary witness your safety, and safe return, will be guaranteed.’ I missed the plural there. I wish I hadn’t.

  ‘You expect me to believe that? By whom?’

  ‘By my General of course.’

  ‘How will this help my secretary?’

  ‘The new East Berlin People’s Hall of Records, containing the latest East German census record, was completed a month ago. It is next door to the courthouse. Your secretary will be chaperoned separately while you are giving evidence in the court. Her chaperone will be an archivist at the Hall of Records. H
e will probably insist she visits his new facility.’ Ah.

  ‘Would we return immediately?’

  ‘Not necessarily. If you wished to inspect the sites of major Soviet victories in the East I am sure that can be arranged.’ In other words we might be free, in a limited fashion, to follow up on anything Frieda found in the census. Anyway, I hoped that’s what he meant.

  I leaned back in my chair and looked at him. It seemed like a practical deal. Frieda followed the conversation like a linesman watching a tennis match, although she didn’t pick up on the last bit of Greg’s chit-chat. ‘. . . and the export cargo for your aircraft will be ready within fourteen days of your return from giving evidence. Favour for favour.’

  ‘Favour for favour,’ I confirmed, and we shook hands across the table.

  It sounded even more dangerous for him than for me. I wondered what would happen to Greg if we got away with it.

  The REME corporal came out of the kitchen wearing a dirty white apron over his khakis. He said, ‘There’s an old three-legged dog in there, stealing the kitchen scraps. It says it’s with you, Charlie. That right?’

  ‘It’s my new bodyguard. It’s been trained to throw itself in front of the bullet if the Reds try to kill me again.’

  ‘What yer call it?’

  ‘Spartacus.’

  Red Greg looked away and pursed his lips. I was probably smirking. Frieda squeezed my hand under the table again. I thought it was time to round up the dog and go.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The flight back was awful. The thick weather kept us only a couple of hundred feet above a massive grey sea, and at that height every major upsurge of a wave seemed to throw the small aircraft upwards as well. Even Randall looked white when we landed at Lympne just after noon. Frieda sat behind us. For most of the flight I heard her retching into the brown paper carrier bag Randall had thoughtfully provided. Behind her, Spartacus howled and moaned for most of the trip, but managed to keep his breakfast down. Randall had told me, ‘We’ll be in big trouble if we’re caught bringing in a dog: they’re supposed to go into quarantine for six months.’

  ‘He will be in quarantine: Elaine will keep him on the airfield.’