Estocada

by Graham Hurley

  ‘This hurts? Here?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘And here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bend for me, please.’ Dieter did his best. ‘That’s difficult?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Reach for the left. Now the right. Spread your legs. Bend down.’

  Her voice was soft. She appeared to know exactly what she was after. What little Dieter knew about reiki suggested it was a spiritual thing, a laying-on of hands, some mysterious transfer of energy, but this procedure belonged in a clinic. Except for the cat, Dieter might have been back with the army of surgeons and nurses in Stuttgart who had restored him to some kind of working order.

  Finally, she was finished. She asked him if he was cold and whether he wanted to put the garments on. He shook his head.

  ‘You want more?’ She nodded at his empty glass. ‘Water is important.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It purifies you.’

  ‘Then the answer’s no.’

  She held his gaze for a moment. Not a flicker of amusement.

  ‘Lie down, please.’ She nodded towards the floor. ‘On your back.’

  Every mattress Dieter had tried in Japan was hard. This was no exception. He did his best to make himself comfortable. Being naked had never embarrassed him, but he was aware of Keiko’s eyes on his body.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ she said. ‘You look like a child.’

  Dieter smiled. Other women in his life had said something similar. Der Kleine.

  Keiko sat cross-legged at his head, her upper body bent over him, the paleness of her face ghostlike in the darkness. Dieter felt her hands cupped on his temples, the softest touch, the tips of her fingers lingering for a moment then moving on, very slowly, pausing for minutes at a time, looking – it seemed to Dieter – for some purchase on what she might find inside his head.

  ‘Who matters to you?’ she asked at last.

  Dieter blinked. He liked the silence. He liked the way his body was surrendering to the candlelight, and the unexpected warmth of her touch. The question broke the spell.

  ‘My father.’ Dieter closed his eyes.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he was a like a god in my life. Because I worshipped him.’

  ‘He’s gone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He died after an accident. It wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘He was a flier? Like you?’

  ‘Yes. He flew in the war. Afterwards he taught others.’

  ‘Including you?’

  ‘Yes. He was a fine teacher. The best. He taught me that anything is possible as long as you want it badly enough.’

  ‘So what did you want?’

  ‘I wanted to fly. I wanted to be free.’

  He was staring up at her. Her very presence beside him had triggered memories buried deep in his brain. He began to tell her about his home town. Ulm, he said, lay beside the upper Danube. The river was still an infant here, a mere trickle compared to what it would become further downstream, but the city boasted the tallest Minster in Europe. As a child, his father had taken him up to the very top of the tower. He still remembered counting the steps. There were seven hundred and sixty-eight. At the time, the ascent had felt like a game, no stopping allowed, a long, long climb, ever higher, the roughness of the bare walls cold under his touch, his legs on fire, his young lungs bursting while his father quietly urged him ever upwards in the gloom.

  Then, quite suddenly, they were out in the open. It was early spring, the air crystal-clear after a series of showers, and in the far distance, away to the south, his father’s pointing finger had found the Swiss Alps. The blur of snow-capped peaks on the far horizon meant nothing to Dieter. What was far more interesting was the sight of a huge bird, ungainly, cartoon-like, slowly circling the cathedral spire. From this height, nearly a hundred and fifty metres, he was looking down at the bird and he raced round the viewing gallery on his tired little legs, keeping the creature in sight.

  ‘It was a stork,’ he said. ‘You know about storks?’

  Keiko smiled, said nothing. Her hands were mapping the flatness of Dieter’s belly. When he began to stir, she leaned back.

  ‘Tell me about storks,’ she said.

  ‘They were huge. Enormous. You saw them all the time in the marshes by the river. They built nests the size of bicycle wheels, maybe bigger, often on church towers, anywhere safe, anywhere they could bring up their young. My father had a pair of binoculars. We’d ride into the country, along by the river, along by the places where they hunted for food, and then we’d find a nest and the young waiting, and we’d watch the storks flying back, the way they circled the nest, the way they lost speed, their legs out, their wings spread, a perfect landing every time. At school I’d draw pictures of storks. At night I’d dream about them.’

  Dieter was smiling at the memory. Keiko wanted to know more about his father.

  ‘He taught me to fly,’ he said again. ‘He taught me how to become the stork. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘You miss him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She left us.’

  The questions stopped. In the silence, Dieter could hear the cat washing itself. He opened his eyes. Keiko’s face was very close. His father had survived for three days after the crash. At the hospital in Ulm, Dieter hadn’t left his bedside. At fifteen it was still OK to know nothing. Except that death had no place for a man like this.

  ‘I told him,’ he whispered.

  ‘Told him what?’

  ‘I told him he was a god. It made him laugh. I was holding him when he died. I think he was happy.’ He paused, swallowed hard. ‘He had a spare flying suit which came to me. I tried it on but it was much too big. I loved that suit. I gave it to a friend of mine in the end. Georg. He still wears it.’

  ‘It was just you, then? You and your father? After your mother left?’

  ‘Yes. Just him and me. When he was dying he told me he’d flown with the Richthofen Circus during the war. He’d kept it a secret all that time. Richthofen. Another god.’ Keiko was back beside his head. Dieter stared up at her. ‘And you know another thing he told me? When he was dying? He told me never to believe in fear. Only consequences.’

  ‘But you have fear now. I can feel it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Dieter thought about the proposition, then shook his head.

  ‘It’s not fear,’ he said. ‘It’s something else.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Resignation. Which is probably worse.’

  ‘Why?’

  Dieter didn’t answer, turning his head away. In Spain, he’d flown reconnaissance missions against foreign warships trying to keep the Republican port of Bilbao open. One of them was a huge British battleship. He could see it now, dwarfing the screen of smaller destroyers fussing around it. He’d never seen anything bigger in his life yet this grey giant was still troubled by the long Atlantic swells, wallowing beneath Dieter’s starboard wing.

  Tomorrow, he knew those same implacable weather gods would kill him. The barometer dropping. The ocean beginning to stir. The aircraft carrier heaving and pitching as the weather took a turn for the worse. Low cloud base. Maybe rain. The wind tossing him around like a leaf in the storm. One chance. Just one. One chance to drop the aircraft on the deck and come to a halt. But that would never happen because the odds were impossible. At best, he’d hit the throttle and stagger into the air like some wounded bird and stay aloft for long enough to fail all over again. At worst, they’d topple off the flight deck that first time and die in the roaring darkness beneath the oncoming carrier. Consequences, he thought. And maybe a surprise reunion with his father. Would he still be bandaged up? Or might the angels have made him whole again?

  He told Keiko about the carrier. He wanted to reach up to her. He wanted to hold her. Not because he was frightened but because
life had suddenly locked a door behind him and thrown away the key. Did this strange sorceress with the magic in her fingertips believe in immortality? Was she aware that a corner of paradise was reserved for fighter pilots? Did it even matter that three young men would end their lives in a brief spasm of terror, their lungs filling with water, the pressure bursting their ear drums as the aircraft sank into the depths?

  Keiko seemed to recognise the darkness in his eyes, the bewilderment behind the gathering frown. She asked him to turn over. Some time later, he didn’t know when, he felt one of her hands on the base of his spine, while the other found the nape of his neck. After a long pause she drew her hands together, a combing motion, up and down the length of his torso three times. Then she got to her feet and stepped away a moment before the rough knap of a blanket settled around him. Finally darkness came as she extinguished the candles one by one, the soft pad of her footsteps receding into the depths of the house. Dieter closed his eyes, surrendering to a deep and dreamless sleep that seemed to last forever.

  *

  Morning was a thin stripe of sunlight on the tatami mat.

  ‘Here…’ It was Keiko again. Green tea in a delicate porcelain bowl.

  Dieter struggled to sit up. For the first time since he’d bailed out in Spain the stiffness in his lower back had gone. Already, he was looking for his uniform. Keiko nodded towards the window.

  ‘Seiji is waiting outside. He has a car. And he wants me to give you this.’

  The bundle under her arm was a flying suit. Dieter was to put it on. The briefing for the morning’s flight would take place at an airfield down by the water.

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as you get there.’

  ‘And the weather?’

  ‘Scheisse.’

  Dieter winced. Then he heard footsteps crossing the road and moments later the door burst open. A torrent of Japanese accompanied by some forceful sign language announced the arrival of Seiji. Keiko was right. The weather was shit and they were already late for the briefing. Time to go.

  *

  They drove to the airfield on the edge of Tokyo Bay. The road led through an industrial estate, a wilderness of black puddles between factory after factory. Tangles of telephone wire hung from roadside poles, swaying and dipping in the gusty wind.

  Seiji was having trouble with the single windscreen wiper. Bent over the steering wheel, his face inches from the glass, he wanted to know about his sister.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Wunderbar.’

  The news seemed to please him. He wound down the window and cursed an old man doing his best to balance a clutch of bamboo canes on an ancient bike. The weather, if anything, was getting worse.

  Dieter wanted to know whether they’d still be flying. The question drew an emphatic nod.

  ‘No problem,’ Seiji said, flashing a grin.

  *

  The briefing, conducted in a leaky wooden hut, was in Japanese. Dieter did his best to make sense of the chalked lines on the big blackboard but failed completely. A small yellow oblong appeared to represent the aircraft carrier. A nest of Japanese ideograms seemed to contain comms information laced with approach vectors and wind speeds. Outside on the hardstanding, their bulk blurred by the rain streaming down the windows, were five torpedo attack bombers.

  The briefing over, the crews gathered briefly in the lee of the hut before making a dash for their aircraft. Aside from the pilot, each bomber had a commander and a rear-gunner who doubled as the wireless operator. Dieter was staring at the nearest of the five aircraft and for the first time he realised that it was carrying a torpedo.

  Seiji was taking a furtive last drag on a cigarette cupped in his hand. Dieter pointed out the torpedo. Why turn an already risky landing into a suicide bid?

  Seiji was frowning. Landing? Using both hands, Dieter mimed the approach to the carrier until Seiji finally understood.

  ‘You think we land?’ He gestured at the weather and then barked with laughter.

  ‘So what happens?’

  ‘We hit the carrier.’ He nodded towards the closest aircraft and smacked a fist into the softness of his palm. ‘Bam.’

  Within minutes, they were airborne. To Dieter’s enormous relief, it was Seiji at the controls; Seiji leading the loose little formation out over the heaving greyness of Tokyo Bay; Seiji taking the aircraft down to twenty metres as the looming bulk of the Soryu emerged from the murk.

  By now, Dieter had recognised his real role in this little exercise. Not for a moment had there been the slightest chance of Vice Admiral Kiyoshi risking a precious aircraft and a precious crew under conditions like these. On the contrary, Oberleutnant Merz was here strictly as a spectator, as a respected fighter pilot who was about to witness the sheer reach of the airborne arm of the Imperial Navy and report back to anyone in the West who might care to listen.

  So how come the nightmare images that had haunted him the last twelve hours? The inner conviction that his time was finally up? Eugen Ott, Dieter thought. The bastard was trying to intimidate me, trying to scare me, trying to extract an ounce or two of sweet revenge for the times when I might have been more polite, more deferential, less sure of myself.

  That in itself was bad enough. But what was infinitely worse was the fact that Dieter Merz, one of the Condor Legion’s genuine stars, had allowed himself to fall for the ruse. Combat pilots owed their very survival to lightning reflexes and an absolute faith in their own immortality. Yet Der Kleine had been cowed by a man who flew nothing more intimidating than a desk.

  The torpedo bomber was closing fast on the aircraft carrier. Seiji’s bulk filled the windscreen and from the seat behind him Dieter’s field of vision was less than perfect but through the side windows he could see the other aircraft in the group, a loose ‘V’ formation just metres from the boiling sea, and already he had an instinctive feel for the engine’s potential to get him out of trouble.

  He reached forward, tapping Seiji on the shoulder. They were flying the training version of the torpedo bomber with dual controls.

  ‘Me!’ Dieter shouted.

  ‘You?’ Seiji half-turned, straining against his harness. Then he nodded at the fast-approaching carrier. ‘You want?’

  ‘Ja.’

  Dieter’s hand had already closed around the joystick. For a split-second, he felt the competing pressure of Seiji’s input, then control was suddenly his. By now, Dieter estimated the carrier at less than a kilometre. The other aircraft would be taking their lead from Seiji. Only when Dieter hit the torpedo release and pulled the bomber into a steep climb would the rest of the attack group follow.

  Five aircraft, Dieter thought. Fifteen lives. Countless relatives. Not to mention a serious international embarrassment if he got it wrong.

  Dieter held his nerve. Seiji appeared to be singing to himself. The air speed indicator was reading 371 kpm. At speeds like this, any room for error had ceased to exist.

  Dieter’s left hand closed on the throttle, keeping it hard against the gate. He took the aircraft even lower and then came the moment when his whole world darkened, an unforgettable shade of aircraft-carrier grey, and his left hand found the release lever alongside the throttle.

  He pulled hard, feeling the aircraft lurch upwards after shedding the weight of the torpedo, and he hauled back on the stick and braced himself for the gut-wrenching suck of the sudden climb. The engine howled as the aircraft fought for altitude and for a split-second Dieter thought he might have left it too late but then came a blur of gleaming wet flight deck and the briefest glimpse of a figure in blue overalls gazing skywards before the Soryu was behind them.

  Dieter was grinning. He could have been doing this forever. He could have been a fully trained torpedo pilot. He was back in control. Eugen Ott was part of a world that would never be his. Wunderbar.

  They were at seven hundred metres before Seiji took control again. The torpedoes were armed with smoke warheads and already the rear-gunner had reported four hits.r />
  ‘Banzai!’ Seiji was roaring with laughter. ‘We sank her good.’

  6

  CLACTON-ON-SEA, 28 APRIL 1938

  Tam Moncrieff took the train to the coast, a two-and-a half hour journey that clattered through wind-rippled fields of early wheat to a handsome new station on the coast. He’d never been to Essex before and he was struck by the bigness of the sky and glimpses of white clapboard cottages as the train sped through village after village. Towards the end of the trip the railway line briefly followed a river. The tide was low and there were flocks of wading birds feeding on the gleaming mud banks. Beyond the reed beds on the far side of the river the broad blades of a windmill were slowly turning and that same sea breeze, still hinting at winter, greeted him as he emerged from the station at the end of the line.

  A ten-minute walk took Tam to the seafront. From the carefully tended gardens on the clifftop he gazed down at the pier. It was still too early for the holidaymakers but there were knots of fishermen at the seaward end, while a workman on a ladder beside the entrance was giving the fascia a coat of paint.

  Tam had seen Sanderson again last night. Turn right on the seafront, he’d said, and follow the promenade as far as you can. You’re looking for a place called Jaywick. They’ve got a little miniature railway there for when it gets busy in the summer. Ask for Karyl.

  Tam found the railway without difficulty. There was no sign of a train but an attempt had been made to mock-up a crude station guarded by a hut that appeared to serve as a booking office. Beside the hut, sitting in a deckchair, was a slim woman in her twenties. Blonde curls were escaping from a knotted scarf and her bare legs were tanned beneath a loose cotton skirt. A roll of tickets lay on her lap but the cashbox between her feet was empty.

  Tam asked where he might find Karyl. The woman peered up at him, shading her eyes, asking him to repeat the question. Her English, she said, was no good. She was trying her best but she found the language hard.