Estocada

by Graham Hurley

  ‘I have.’ Dieter nodded, surprised by the directness of the question.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I had to bale out of an aircraft. I made a bad landing.’ He shrugged. ‘They mended most of me. Not all.’

  ‘You can still fly?’

  ‘Of course. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because my brother wants to fly with you. My name is Keiko.’ She gestured at the bench. ‘Please sit down. My brother apologises. He’s been delayed. He’ll be here soon. You like what we have here?’

  Dieter gazed out at the view while Keiko settled beside him. The Ayama family owned steel mills across the country but had made their home in Nagasaki, on the steep hillside overlooking the broad estuary of the river. The house was big, exquisitely furnished, and the garden had been designed in the Japanese style, every view framed by delicate explosions of pink blossom from carefully placed stands of cherry trees. From across the water, where giant shipyards lined the further bank, came the muted roar of heavy engineering. A wartime economy, Dieter thought. Not just here but in city after city along the coast.

  ‘Did your parents build the house?’

  ‘My grandparents. In summer it can get hot. Too hot. Up here you can breathe.’

  ‘So you grew up here? As a child?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you still live here?’

  ‘No.’

  Dieter wanted to find out more. Unusually, this woman seemed at ease with the give and take of Western conversation.

  ‘You’ve spent time abroad?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So how do you speak German so well?’

  ‘Because I listen hard, study hard. Speak other languages and people take you seriously.’ She was very close. Sea-green eyes in the paleness of her face. ‘You speak Japanese?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘No matter. Here—’

  From a bag she produced a newspaper and handed it to Dieter. On the front page, lapped by a sea of inky Japanese text, was a photo of Adolf Hitler on a huge dais, taking the salute. Columns of troops receded into the far distance. The pavement beyond the marching soldiers was black with onlookers. Most of them were women and most of them had their arms extended in an answering salute, their faces contorted in the kind of wild ecstasy that increasingly badged the regime.

  ‘Vienna,’ Dieter said. ‘Anschluss.’

  Anschluss meant annexation. Ten days ago, Wehrmacht troops had crossed the border and occupied Vienna. Austria was now part of the Greater Reich.

  ‘You know what we say about Germans?’ Keiko tapped the paper.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘We say that they always help themselves. And you know what else we say? We wonder what the rest of the world should make of it.’

  ‘They stand aside…’ Dieter said carefully, ‘… and watch.’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But this?’ She nodded down at the paper. ‘You think the British and the French will accept such a thing?’

  Dieter didn’t know but after his weeks of stiff diplomatic exchanges the opportunity for a real conversation was too good to miss. Keiko was bent towards him. She wanted an answer. He half-turned and looked her full in the face. He owed his presence here in Japan to the recent treaty between the two countries, a gesture calculated – in a phrase from Dieter’s letter of appointment – to cement the union at an operational level.

  ‘You invaded China last year,’ he pointed out. ‘You helped yourself.’

  ‘Our generals invaded China. Not me.’

  ‘You disapprove?’

  ‘Of the consequences? Of course. What happened in Nanking was shameful. Some of the military people should be locked up.’

  ‘You’d put them in a prison?’ Dieter blinked.

  ‘I’d put them in a zoo. They belong with the animals. They are the animals.’

  Dieter nodded. Nanking was on the Chinese mainland. He’d heard rumours about atrocities but nothing more.

  ‘And your brother? What does he think?’

  ‘My brother is a rich man’s son. With wealth comes blindness. He lives for flying. He sees what he wants to see. Nothing else.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I see everything.’ For the first time, she smiled. ‘You know about reiki?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a therapy, a treatment, a way of making people better.’

  ‘You do it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it works?’

  ‘Yes. Tell me more about your back.’

  Keiko was listening carefully to Dieter’s account of the moment his aircraft had taken a direct hit over the mountains in Northern Spain and the dizzying blur of events that had followed. With the aircraft’s engine on fire and the fuel tank still half-full he’d rolled the aircraft on its back, wrestled the canopy open and released his harness. Briefly in freefall, with less than five hundred metres in hand, he’d managed to open the parachute but had landed badly amongst rocks on the mountainside.

  Mercifully, it was a couple of Nationalist troops that had got to him first. The force of the landing had knocked him unconscious and his next real impression was a pain beyond description in his ribs and lower back as they carried him down the mountain. Two weeks immobilised in a hospital in Burgos had done very little to ease the pain but the Spanish doctors had certified him fit to travel, with no damage to the spinal cord, and an eight-hour flight had taken him to a hospital in Stuttgart where surgeons had operated on his lower spine. After that, thank God, he’d begun to recover.

  ‘You were flying the 109?’ The question came in Japanese. A male voice. Keiko supplied the translation.

  Dieter looked round. A stocky young man in a blue Western suit was standing behind the bench. He had a shock of black hair and wide grin.

  Dieter confirmed he’d been flying Willy Messerschmitt’s new fighter.

  ‘The canopy is shit, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It opens sideways. But only sometimes. Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So maybe that makes you lucky. My name’s Seiji.’ He patted Dieter on the shoulder. He appeared to have heard the whole conversation and made sense of most of it. ‘You know what they say about pain in this country? That it’s just an opinion. I like that. But then I’ve never fallen out of an aircraft.’

  He roared with laughter at his own joke, ignoring his sister’s wince of disapproval. It was nearly lunchtime. There was a favourite restaurant in the city that always looked after him very well. They’d take one of his father’s cars. The three of them would feast like kings and afterwards there’d be time for some flying.

  ‘You’re OK with that?’

  ‘Of course. Dual controls?’

  ‘It’s a trainer. A Yokosuka. Nothing special but no one shoots at us either.’ Another bark of laughter. ‘You like beef steak? Come… ’

  The restaurant was fifteen minutes away in the heart of the city. To Dieter’s slight surprise, Keiko took the wheel of the big Packard. Seiji sat beside her, his body half-turned in the passenger seat. He wanted to know everything about the flying in Spain, about the Condor Legion, and about what Dieter had made of the little Russian fighter that had so tormented the Japanese bombers. The questions bubbled out of him, a torrent of Japanese accompanied by brisk, savage chopping movements with his right hand, while Keiko did her best to keep up. After a while, Dieter caught her eyes in the rear-view mirror and he knew at once that the tiny shake of her head was an apology. Outside the restaurant, she helped Dieter from the car and gave his arm a squeeze as they headed across the pavement.

  ‘My brother is a child,’ she whispered. ‘Tomorrow we’ll take him to the zoo.’

  *

  The restaurant was busy, diners sitting cross-legged on tatami mats while women in exquisite kimonos emerged from a screen at the back with trays of steaming food. By now Dieter was used to the sense of theatre that attended so
much of Japanese life but this felt like something special. Eyeing a pile of clams at a nearby table, he felt the first stirrings of an appetite.

  Seiji had reserved a table. When a waitress appeared with a menu, he waved it away. He wanted to know whether Dieter liked fish.

  ‘Very much.’

  Seiji said something to Keiko, who nodded and then turned back to the waitress. Seconds later, she was gone.

  ‘My brother always knows what he wants,’ Keiko murmured. ‘My father says it’s part of his charm.’

  ‘Is he right?’

  ‘That’s for you to judge. I just hope you like oysters. And crab. And tuna with wasabi mash. Seiji loves giving presents. This is one of them.’

  Seiji had called another waitress over. She fetched two beers and poured them with a delicacy that brought a smile to Dieter’s face. This was a long way from the beerhalls of Hamburg or the dark Gallego bars he and Georg had patronised in Vitoria.

  Seiji had settled behind the table. He wanted to propose a toast.

  ‘We’re still flying this afternoon?’ Dieter nodded at his glass.

  ‘Of course. Happy landings.’

  Seiji swallowed most of the beer in a couple of gulps and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He wanted to know more about the ratas in Spain. How good were the Russians? And what did they make of the new Bf-109?

  Dieter took the question at face value, addressing himself to Keiko, pausing to let her translate. The Russians, he said, flew like Cossacks. Their discipline in the air could be poor. They were easily distracted. But they were brave to the point of madness and pushed their little fighters to the limit.

  Seiji followed the translation with a series of nods, his big-boy grin ever wider. Madness was a good word, the right word, the perfect description. These people were crazy. The last fight he’d had, a huge battle just north of Peking, he’d watched a single rata make attack after attack on the Japanese bombers. He’d been close to this lunatic, close enough to glimpse the big square goggles, the tan helmet, the light blue flying suit, close enough to snatch a deflection shot as the Russian banked and sped away. Seiji’s hands weaved above the table, reliving the encounter, and then his fist smacked into his open palm as he got to the point of the story.

  ‘Bam!’ he yelled, followed by a volley of Japanese.

  Diners stirred at nearby tables. Most of them looked like businessmen. Dieter glanced at Keiko.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said the Russian flew into the bomber. On purpose. He said he probably ran out of ammunition.’

  Dieter returned to Seiji. He’d heard similar stories in Spain and had always wondered whether they were true.

  ‘Did this happen often?’

  ‘All the time. The Russians hate us. Life is cheap in a war like this, even your own.’

  ‘You’d do the same thing? If you ran out of ammunition?’

  ‘Never. Where’s the satisfaction? Who would you tell afterwards?’

  He roared with laughter, rocking back and forth on the tatami mat. He wanted to know about the 109.

  ‘The Russians avoid us. Most days I never fired a shot.’

  ‘Not so crazy, then, the Russians.’

  ‘Not at all. All we had to do was take off, make an appearance, simply be there. Our bomber boys love the 109. The moment they saw us, they knew what it meant. No Ivans. Just a nice sunny day and the eggs on the target and an easy cruise back.’

  ‘Eggs?’ Keiko was frowning.

  ‘Bombs. One night we drove over to their airfield…’ Dieter was still looking at Seiji. ‘They bought us beer all night because they thought we were magicians, casting spells on the Ivans, and they never wanted the magic to stop.’

  ‘And what did you say? About the magic?’

  ‘We told them our glasses were empty. Then we told them our secret. That everything depended on beer. Life is simple, we said. No beer. No magic. No magic and the Ivans will be all over you. It was a game, of course. The bomber boys are lions in the air. You need to be brave to have their kind of patience. But they bought us beers all night. And so the magic worked.’

  Seiji waited for the translation and then slapped the table, rocking back and forth again.

  ‘Beer,’ he said. ‘We need more beer.’

  *

  It was mid-afternoon before they left the restaurant. Keiko took a rickshaw back to the house while her brother retrieved the Packard. Dieter had counted the beers during lunch and wondered whether they were still going to fly.

  The traffic was light. The wind had strengthened and a roadside park was carpeted with cherry blossom. Dieter sat back, watching a child as she splashed through the fallen leaves. Without Keiko, conversation was limited but nothing stopped Seiji giving it a try.

  ‘My sister? You like?’

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘Beautiful?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Bad girl…’ he looked sideways and grinned. ‘… Tokyo… very bad girl.’

  Dieter held his glance. More in hope than expectation he realised he urgently needed to know more.

  ‘Bad girl?’

  ‘Sure.’ The word carried an American inflection.

  ‘How?’

  Seiji struggled to find an answer. ‘Bad,’ he repeated. ‘Plenty bad girl.’

  ‘So why Tokyo? She lives there?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Is she married?’ Dieter tapped the third finger of his right hand.

  ‘Husband?’ Seiji barked with laughter, swerving to avoid an old man on a bicycle. ‘One time, yes.’

  ‘No more?’

  ‘No. My father…’ He shook his head in mock despair.

  ‘Your father what?’

  Seiji didn’t answer. At a crossroads beside a line of kerbside stalls he turned left, down towards the river. Then he reached across and put his hand on Dieter’s arm.

  ‘You like her?’ he asked again.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ He nodded. ‘Very good.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she…’ he frowned, hunting for the right tense, ‘… is liking you.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Seiji shook his head. Then came the grin again and the big white teeth, and Dieter caught a gust of stale beer as he failed to stifle a yawn.

  ‘Very bad girl.’ Seiji pulled the car to a halt and gave Dieter’s arm a reassuring squeeze. ‘Very, very bad.’

  Dieter was looking at a wooden pontoon that stretched out into the river. At the end of the pontoon, bobbing in the choppy green water, was a seaplane. It looked tiny in the brightness of the afternoon light. The fuselage aft of the big radial engine was streaked with oil and the unsecured rear cockpit cover, flapping in the wind, gave the machine an air of faint neglect. For Seiji, thought Dieter, this was a toy he’d once played with in his bath. He hoped to God his new friend would lose interest in showing it off.

  Far from it. Seiji led the way down the pontoon. Dieter could feel the heave and suck of water beneath his feet. At the end of the pontoon, Seiji stepped uncertainly on to the lower wing and removed both cockpit covers before folding them flat and tossing them down to Dieter.

  ‘Car.’ He pointed towards the Packard.

  Dieter carried the covers back along the pontoon. The Japanese were a race who set great store on the smaller courtesies. Even with a drunken pilot at the controls, refusing this invitation to fly was unthinkable.

  The car was unlocked. Dieter left the covers on the front passenger seat and searched for something to keep him warm. On the rear parcel shelf he found a long scarf. It was red, the softest wool, and the moment he wound it around his neck he knew it belonged to Keiko. It was a strange smell, a bitter sweetness he couldn’t quite place, and under the circumstances – given what might happen next – he couldn’t think of anything more appropriate to wear. Already, he’d sensed she was the beginning of something exotic, something utterly unexpected. If Seiji got it wrong on take-off, at leas
t he’d carry this scent to the afterlife.

  Back at the seaplane, Seiji had clambered into the rear cockpit. He had his head down and he appeared to be wrestling with something at his feet. Dieter was still freezing in the wind, trying to calculate what might happen next. The wind was blowing square across the river. Here in the heart of the city the river was barely a kilometre wide and the land on the other side shelved steeply upwards. In an ageing biplane, from a grass airstrip, Dieter wouldn’t have hesitated to give it a try. He’d never flown in a seaplane in his life but one glance at the bulky floats told him that the machine would be infinitely less nimble. How brave – or how immortal – would you feel after five bottles of Asahi?

  Still staring across the water, Dieter heard a snatch of Japanese and then a cackle of laughter from the rear cockpit. Seiji, just for a second or two, seemed to have mistaken the slight figure in the crimson scarf for his sister. Not a good sign.

  Seiji was signalling for Dieter to swing the prop. Even on dry land, this called for a degree of caution. Dieter sat on the end of the pontoon until his feet found the float. The moment he transferred his weight, he felt the little plane nose down. He reached back for support from the bottom wing, steadied himself, then inched forward again. Swinging the prop under these conditions called for perfect balance. At best, he’d probably fall in. At worst, once the engine caught, the wooden propeller would chop him to pieces.

  Mercifully, Seiji just wanted to purge the cylinders of oil. Dieter did his bidding each time the Japanese circled his finger in the air, hauling on the prop until the last of the cylinders was empty. Ignoring the stabs of pain from his lower back, Dieter returned to the pontoon, stepped on to the lower wing, and then lowered himself into the front cockpit. A single glance took in the controls and gauges. Joystick, airspeed indicator, throttle, rudder pedals, rudimentary compass, the bare minimum you’d need to get yourself airborne and return in one piece. This, he told himself, was flying in the raw.

  Dieter strapped himself in. Whoever normally flew in the front was a great deal fatter. He heard the engine cough once, then again, and suddenly – after the long months of convalescence – he was back in a world he understood, his face buffeted by the blast of air from the prop, his nerves tingling at the scent of aviation spirit and hot oil.