After Midnight

by Robert Ryan

  ‘Lang is mighty pissed at you. He put his best man on that plane you missed.’

  ‘I missed?’ spluttered Kirby. ‘There was a storm, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Not as big as the one at Bern when the news came through. I think Jimmy was special to Lang, if you get my—’

  ‘Get down.’

  Kirby pulled him to the ground as fast as he could, yelling the same warning to the others. All did as they were told, and there was silence, just a few early cicadas, then the others heard the buzzing. The skeletal German spotter plane was to the south of them, its wings wagging in the first of the morning thermals as it flew over the ridge, apparently without a glance in their direction.

  The Captain raised his head. ‘You have good hearing, at least.’

  ‘What are you here to do?’

  ‘Have a last crack at persuading these idiots to hold off till next spring.’

  They got to their feet and brushed themselves down.

  ‘Good luck,’ Kirby said.

  ‘Which one is Fausto?’ the Captain asked.

  Kirby pointed him out and gave a thumbnail sketch of him to Hirschfield. ‘What if you can’t persuade him?’

  ‘If he goes ahead and it fails, I’ll have him strung up by his balls.’

  ‘And if he succeeds?’

  He had the decency to smirk. ‘We’ll say he couldn’t have done it without us and take all the credit.’

  While Hirshfield and Fausto argued, Kirby trudged down the hill with Francesca, towards the Captain’s Green Flames escort, a surly couple armed with American burp guns. He stepped as gingerly as he could over the stone path, favouring his stronger ankle.

  ‘Are you avoiding me?’ Francesca asked.

  ‘Should I be?’

  ‘No.’

  Kirby stopped well short of the pair. ‘We shouldn’t have done what we did. It was wrong.’

  ‘Why?’ She fixed him with her eyes. ‘Because of Fausto?’

  ‘Partly. But because of the plane, too. It was dereliction of duty.’

  She took his hand and they headed off at an angle, deeper into the tree-cover. ‘You know Fausto was a bastard?’

  ‘Seems a bit harsh.’

  ‘No, literally. A foundling—abandoned by his mother. What happens then is that the orphanage pays a poor family to take him in.’

  Kirby leaned against a rock next to a small stream, took off his boot and sock and dipped his throbbing foot into the icy water. It felt better instantly. ‘So?’

  ‘Everything about Fausto stems from that. The way he likes to have this family around him, his need to be liked, admired, the fact that he finds it difficult to show his emotions.’

  The flat rattle of machine-gun fire came through the trees and Kirby struggled to get his boot on. As he did so he could hear raised voices, aggressive and unyielding on both sides.

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Francesca.

  Kirby ran as best he could back towards the main path down, just in time to meet the Captain, who was now flanked by his two guards, steaming past, an expression of disgust souring his face.

  ‘What happened?’ Kirby panted.

  ‘That little idiot threatened to kill me. Then he fired over my head,’ yelled the OSS man over his shoulder.

  ‘Fausto?’

  ‘No, his pet dog.’ That’d be Rosario.

  ‘Why?’

  He stopped and said quietly, ‘Because Fausto wants to get you all killed, Kirby. And the asshole has my best wishes for carrying it out.’

  Hirschfield pushed on without a backward glance, although his minders kept their weapons aimed back up the hill until they disappeared into a bank of hazel trees. A moment later, Kirby heard a car start and screech away. So much for the Secret Service, he thought. Driving around in daylight was hardly clandestine activity.

  Fausto and the others appeared moments later, their faces no less dark than the American’s. It looked as if the negotiations hadn’t gone well.

  Kirby waited until they had moved past and turned to Francesca. ‘Tell me again how Fausto just wants to be loved?’

  She shrugged. ‘He doesn’t like being told what to do either.’

  ‘Yes, I noticed.’

  ‘Penny for them?’

  I looked up at Lindy, who had placed a hand on my shoulder. I was sitting on an oil drum on the edge of the airfield, watching an assortment of mechanics and pilots playing a scratch game of football twenty years after my game with Fausto. There was lots of fancy footwork, and hysterical clutching of heads, but one of the kids was really rather impressive. He looked like he might be wasted as a grease monkey. As he leaped above a taller opponent and headed the ball in a flurry of swirling black hair I realised it was Diego, whom my partner Furio was paying to sleep with the plane, just in case anyone else thought it might double as a morgue. He was wasted doing that, too. He had furbizia—the kind of unpredictable cunning with a ball—and gamesmanship when that skill failed, which could thwart any defence. Fausto had it, too—furbo, the art of dodging, of bending the rules, that Italians admire so much.

  ‘I was just thinking about another game.’ I didn’t bother explaining about Fausto and his reaction to being leaned on by the OSS. ‘You know my team, Brighton and Hove Albion, was once beaten eighteen–nil by Norwich?’

  ‘They still your team?’

  ‘Yes. Extenuating circumstances. It was Christmas 1940 and the Albion had to appeal to the crowd for volunteers to make up the numbers.’

  ‘And you volunteered?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And they lost eighteen–nil?’

  ‘Yes. I was a better TT rider than a footballer,’ I explained.

  ‘I should hope so.’

  It also showed me the difference between a professional footballer and an enthusiastic amateur who had mainly played in parks and pits. Norwich had a full, fit pro squad that day and ran us ragged. I should have applied that lesson to Italy, perhaps, and realised I was out of my depth with Fausto.

  ‘Furio says he’s ready when you are.’

  I threw away the last of the coffee which had turned cold in my cup. ‘Right.’ I stood up stiffly and began to walk across to the Beech, watching the sun flare off its fuselage.

  ‘You OK?’ Lindy asked.

  ‘Yeah, why?’

  ‘You’re limping.’

  I laughed. ‘It’s an old war wound. It hurts sometimes.’ But I walked the next 200 yards just fine.

  Thirty

  I HAD UNDONE THE fasteners on the cowl of the Beech’s port engine, trying to locate a tiny oil leak that had spotted the apron overnight, when I was called to the hangar to take a call. It was the Professor, phoning from Milan.

  ‘How are you, Jack?’

  I ignored the odd tone and second-guessed what he was calling about. ‘I’m OK, thanks. Look, I talked to them about using this field for the club. It’s a bit of a longer drive—’

  ‘That is not why I am telephoning.’ This time, there was something in his voice that made the hairs on my neck prickle.

  ‘Right. How can I help?’

  ‘Have you upset anyone lately? I mean, anyone important?’ Fear, that’s what I could hear.

  ‘My bank manager, mostly. Although even he is smiling at the moment. Why?’

  ‘You remember I told you about my family connections?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, my friend called me and told me not to advise you on any more relics.’

  ‘Ah. And you said?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jack. He isn’t the kind of man you argue with.’ There was a pause. ‘I had to promise him.’

  ‘Fine. I won’t trouble you again about any of that stuff,’ I said, trying to sound as reasonable and unpissed off as possible. ‘Thanks for your help.’

  ‘Sorry, Jack,’ he repeated.

  ‘Forget it, Professor. And the skydiving offer still stands.’

  I hung up and walked back to the plane. Someone was leaning on the Professor? I made a ment
al note to tell Zopatti we had tickled some nerves somewhere along the line, and that by backtracking from the Prof—as long as the Dottore’s balls were big enough to take on his ‘friend’—he might find out who it was.

  When I reached the Twin, Furio was twisting the Dzus cowl fasteners shut. ‘Got it,’ he said. ‘Clip by the screen.’

  There was no oil filter as such on the engine, just a mesh screen, awkwardly placed round in front of the carb. ‘Good.’

  While we waited for Lindy, we drank coffee and did a leisurely external inspection. ‘Jack, what do we do once we find the plane?’

  ‘The champagne’s on you.’

  ‘No, I mean longterm. We can’t carry on like we did. I know this plane is good, but skydiving at her age …’ He shook his head. ‘One day she’ll come in heavy and you will crack that spar.’

  ‘Not me. I don’t do heavy,’ I countered.

  ‘Me then. One of us. You miss my point. This is a dead end, Jack. My mother says we should have a plan. A proper future for the business.’

  I winced as I hit coffee dregs and threw the sludge away. He was right. At one time I would have flown the Wright Brothers’ Flyer just to get in the air, moved dead sheep or grommets to pay the fuel bill, it was all the same to me. The game had changed now. Furio liked to fly, for sure, but he wanted the columns at the bottom of the page to add up at the end of the day. Me, I’d never even bothered filling in the pounds, shillings and pence.

  ‘You must not say anything, but my mother has found something out.’

  ‘That I’m a has-been who is ruining her son’s life?’

  ‘Jack, be serious for once,’ he said, with a sudden intensity.

  I leaned against the fuselage. ‘Fire away.’

  ‘The Aga Khan is building on Sardinia. In the north. Luxury hotels, apartments, villas … Millions and millions of lire. The first thing to go in is …’

  ‘An airstrip,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘An airstrip and docking facilities for all his pals with their floating gin palaces. Whisk them in, show them a piece of scrub, whisper in their ears about gold taps and tennis courts and swimming pools, take a deposit.’

  ‘Well, not the Aga Khan personally perhaps.’

  ‘No, but his minions. It’ll probably work. The rich like being among their own kind. They’re the only ones who understand them. So what’s Mummy thinking of?’

  ‘That they will be flying in investors from the mainland. Nice, Cannes, Corsica, Rome … some of them will have their own planes, but others …’

  ‘But others will be just dying to get in an old broken-down bomb-training crate.’

  He winced, as if the Beech could understand me.

  I tapped the hot aluminium behind my head. ‘Sorry—we love her, but love is blind. These guys are used to shiny new Pipers and Cessnas and Learjets, the Sophia Lorens and Gina Lollobrigidas and Monica Vittis of aircraft. They’ll think they aren’t being taken seriously if we turn up with our overmade-up sister who’s a little long in the tooth.’

  Furio became more animated. ‘My mother has a cousin who is a manager on the project. He says that we could arrange a loan through the holding company to buy something a little smarter. All right, a lot smarter. Maybe just a single, but new or nearly new. The development is going to take ten, twelve years, Jack. If we can get in as a favoured air carrier—’

  ‘Taxi service,’ I corrected, wondering why I was getting so irritated. Perhaps it was the thought of flying a single-engined job.

  ‘Jack—’

  I shook my head. ‘You know what the problem will be?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll listen to those pricks gabbling away about whether to have marble or granite in the kitchen and I’ll want to open the door and fling them out into the sea. That’s the problem.’

  I walked off to get some more coffee, confused as to why I was being so aggressive. It was a reasonable plan, and being a glorified air taxi was a lot better than being a skydiving shuttle-bus and we both knew it.

  I turned and shouted: ‘Hey, Furio!’

  ‘Yes?’ he replied sullenly.

  ‘I’ll think about it. OK?’

  He beamed back at me.

  I’d think about it and reject it, I knew. Because part of me was feeling it was time to go back home, sort out what was left of Kirby Motorcycles, make sure my father was all right. Just like Lindy was doing, in one sense. But it was right for Furio, he was young and unattached and I’d help him as much as I could, making sure he didn’t get stiffed on a plane and the like. It looked like Kirby & Gabbiano was about to run out of runway. Still, I’d known it would happen one day. After all, he had a life ahead of him, and mine was all in the rear-view mirror.

  Lindy was already at the counter getting a coffee and she bought me one. As we walked back, I said: ‘I think Furio is trying to make a businessman out of me.’

  She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Kinda late, isn’t he?’

  I had to laugh. ‘Yeah. That’s what I think.’

  Our first potential sighting of Bill Carr’s Liberator came that evening, after another long but seemingly futile day’s flying. We were in my room at my new hotel on Lake Orta, which was handier for the airstrip, when we found it on the photographs taken on day four. When I say we, it was Furio who spotted the oval. It was there all right, and the more you stared at it, the more pronounced it became. I checked the frame number and consulted the map.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Lindy.

  I thought it was the wrong shape, but it was probably best not to speculate at this stage. ‘Could be.’

  ‘But not the right shape,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I laughed. ‘But I wasn’t going to mention that. We are looking for something long and wide. It wouldn’t have made this pattern. Not unless it nose-dived in. And I don’t have Bill Carr down as a nose-diving kind of fellow.’

  ‘No. Not deliberately. But then, I figure he wouldn’t have chosen to go in at all if he had had any say in the matter.’

  ‘There’s that,’ I conceded. ‘He might have had no choice.’

  Furio looked at the map and back at the photographs. ‘Look, this track here. It is only about a few hundred metres from the site.’ He traced it with his finger. It was wider than most of the trails that criss-crossed the area; more likely to be an old drover’s road or a fire break. You could access it from the small town of Vogogna at the west of the park without too much difficulty.

  ‘I could get us in there,’ I said. ‘We could take a look on the ground and settle it.’

  ‘I’ll take the plane up,’ chipped in Furio. ‘If it’s nothing I’ll do the next sector with the remote. So we won’t have wasted a whole day.’

  ‘I’ll get us an air-ground radio link organised.’ I looked at Lindy and offered her a choice of going with me or Furio. ‘Plane or bike?’

  She hesitated. ‘I want to see what’s on the ground.’

  ‘You sure? Because …’ I was about to warn her about the state of any bodies we might find, but she was way ahead of me.

  ‘I know what you are going to say. I don’t expect to find him in the cockpit smoking a cigarette, asking what took us so long.’ The words were hard, but there was a glint of tears. ‘I’ll come with you, if that’s OK.’

  ‘Yeah. Let’s get some sleep,’ I said. I touched her arm. ‘Stay here tonight. In another room,’ I added hastily as Furio looked up. ‘We’ll go on the CrossCountry. It was built for this kind of thing.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You certain you are OK?’

  ‘Certain. Scared, that’s all.’

  I turned to my partner. ‘Look after her.’

  As they left, I saw his hand hover over her back, just at the base of the spine, and squeeze. I laughed to myself as the door clicked shut. I should have seen that coming. Not once did Furio object to driving into Milan with her to get the films. Normally he would have insisted on turn and turn about, or at least
have suggested it. Ah well, he was closer to her own age.

  ‘You are a difficult man to track down.’

  I shook my head to clear it of sleep, then wedged the phone under my chin and looked at my watch. It was just after midnight. ‘Shit, Francesca. You found me, though.’

  ‘A friend in the Polizia checked the registration cards for the last few days. Not as nice as the Cannero, eh?’

  ‘Less of a commute to the airfield.’

  There was silence while I blinked away my tiredness. ‘I came out to see you at the villa,’ I told her.

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Nosy neighbours. They called me, told me a man so scruffy he could only be an Englishman had called round. He was riding a motorcycle. Well, you don’t have to be Tenente Ezechiele Sheridan to work that one out.’ Sheridan was their version of Sherlock Holmes or Gideon of the Yard. ‘Why did you come out?’

  ‘To tell Riccardo he is being ridiculous.’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘So it is him trying to screw me up at every turn.’

  ‘Don’t put words in my mouth, Jack.’

  ‘Someone is making waves for me.’

  ‘He says not him. And anyway, what would you have done if he had been there?’

  ‘I thought I could convince him I am here for a plane. Not you.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I sat up and switched on the bedside light. I wasn’t going to get to sleep again in a hurry. ‘Why did you call?’

  ‘To see why you came to the villa. To hear you say you aren’t interested in me.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’ve had a wasted journey then.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Downstairs.’

  I let this sink in. I was an adolescent again, my imagination running away with me. Or perhaps the disappointment I thought I detected was real. I said: ‘You want to come up?’

  But the line was already dead.

  Thirty-One

  IT WAS HARD TO know which of us looked worst over what was a very late breakfast. Furio kept yawning, and I swear Lindy nodded off into her coffee at one point. I felt like I’d been through the wringer, but I also had to curb a desire to whistle, very loudly and cheerfully. I hadn’t thought that the registration cards would include the room number. Francesca had been tapping on the door before the phone was back in the cradle. She’d stayed until past dawn. We didn’t mention Riccardo Conti at all, even though we both knew he shared the bed that night.