“I’m sorry, sir. It was only——” He took the cigarette. “You must think me an awful funk. But it’s odd—I always like to know exactly what I’m facing. It makes it easier, somehow.”
Damn the kid! I’d always felt just like that myself. “I’ll see you at the plane at 21.46,” I said and got quickly to my feet. As I went out of the dining-hall I glanced at my watch. Still an hour to go! I left the mess and walked down to the airfield. The night was cold and frosty, the sky studded with stars. The apron was full of the huddled shapes of aircraft, looking clumsy and unbeautiful on the ground. Trucks were coming and going as the RASO teams worked to load them for the next wave. I leaned on the boundary fence and watched them. I could see my own plane. It was the left-hand one of a line of Tudors. Fuel loading and maintenance crews had completed their work. The planes stood deserted and silent. The minutes dragged slowly by as I stood, chilled to the marrow, trying to brace myself for what I had to do.
The odd thing is I never thought of refusing to carry out my part of the plan. I could have raised technical difficulties and put it off until gradually Saeton lost heart. Many times since I have asked myself why I didn’t do this, and I still don’t really know the answer. I like to think that Saeton’s threat of exposing my identity to the police had nothing to do with it. Certainly the audacity of the thing had appealed to me. Also I believed in Saeton and his engines and the airlift had only served to increase their importance in my eyes. Moreover, my own future was involved. I suppose the truth is that my attitude was a combination of all these things. At any rate, as I stood there on the edge of Wunstorf airfield waiting for zero hour, it never occurred to me not to do it.
At last my watch told me it was nine-fifteen. I went slowly back to the mess. Tubby came in as I was getting into my flying kit. “Well, thank God the weather’s cleared,” he said cheerfully. “I wouldn’t want to be talked down by GCA the first time we went in by night.” GCA is Ground Control Approach, a means of blind landing where the plane lands on instructions from an officer operating radar gear at the edge of the runway.
By nine-fifty we were climbing into the plane. Our take-off time was 22.36 and as I lifted the heavy plane into the starlit night my hands and stomach felt as cold as ice. Tubby was checking the trim of the engines, his hand on the throttle levers. I groped down and found one of my three pairs of wires and touched the ends of them together. The inboard port motor checked. It worked all right. I glanced quickly at Tubby. He had taken his hand from the throttles and was listening, his head on one side. Then he turned to me. “Did you hear that engine falter?” he shouted.
I nodded. “Sounded like dirt in the fuel,” I called back.
He stayed in the same position for a moment, listening. Then his hand went back to the throttles. I glanced at the airspeed indicator and then at my watch. Three-quarters of an hour to Restorf beacon at the entrance of the air corridor.
The time dragged. The only sound was the steady drone of the engines. Twice I half-cut the same motor out. On the second occasion I did it when Tubby had gone aft to speak to Field. I held the wires together until the motor had cut out completely. Tubby suddenly appeared at my elbow as I allowed it to pick up again. “I don’t like the sound of that engine,” he shouted.
“Nor do I,” I said.
He stood quite still, listening. “Sounded like ignition. I’ll get it checked at Gatow.”
I glanced at my watch. It was eleven-sixteen. Any minute now. Then Field’s voice crackled in my ears. “We’re over the corridor beacon now. Right on to 100 degrees. We’re minus ten seconds.” I felt ice cold, but calm, as I banked. My stomach didn’t flutter any more. I leaned a little forward, feeling for the metal clips. One by one I fastened them together in their pairs. And one by one the engines died, all except the inboard starboard motor. The plane was suddenly very quiet. I heard Tubby’s muttered curse quite distinctly. “Check ignition!” I shouted to him. “Check fuel!” I made my voice sound scared. The airspeed indicator was dropping, the luminous pointer swinging back through 150, falling back towards the 100 mark. The altimeter needle was dropping, too, as the nose tilted earthwards. “We’re going down at about 800 a minute,” I shouted.
“Ignition okay,” he reported, his hand on the switches. “Fuel okay.” His eyes were frantically scanning the instrument panel. “It’s an electrical fault—ignition, I think. The bastards must have overlooked some loose wiring.”
“Anything we can do?” I asked. “We’re down to three thousand already.”
“Doubt it. Not much time.”
“If you think there’s anything we can do, say so. Otherwise I’m going to order the crew to bale out.” I had kept my inter-com mouthpiece close to my lips so that Field and Westrop could hear what we were saying.
Tubby straightened up. “Okay. We’d better bale out.” His face looked stiff and strained in the light of the instrument panel.
“Get your parachutes on,” I ordered over the inter-com. “Field. You go aft and get the fuselage door open. We may have to ditch her.” Out of the tail of my eye I saw the two of them struggling with their parachutes. Field shouted something to Westrop and a moment later the bags containing the other two parachutes were slid on to the floor of the cockpit. “Get back to the fuselage door,” I told Westrop. “I’ll send Carter aft when I want you to jump.” I glanced at the altimeter dial. “Height two-six,” I called to Tubby.
He straightened up. “Nothing I can do,” he said. “It’s in the wiring somewhere.”
“Okay,” I said. “Get aft and tell the others to jump. Give me a shout when you’re jumping.”
He stood there, hesitating for a moment. “Okay.” His hand gripped my arm. “See you in the Russian Zone.” But he still didn’t move and his hand remained gripping my arm. “Would you like me to take her while you jump?” he asked.
I realised suddenly that he was remembering the last time I’d jumped, over Membury. He thought my nerve might have gone. I swallowed quickly. Why did he have to be so bloody decent about it? “Of course not,” I said sharply. “Get aft and look after yourself and the others.”
His eyes remained fixed on mine—brown, intelligent eyes that seemed to read my mind. “Good luck!” He turned and dived quickly through towards the fuselage. Leaning out of my seat, I looked back and watched him climbing round the fuel tanks. I could just see the others at the open door of the fuselage. Tubby joined them. Westrop went first, then Field. Tubby shouted to me. “Jump!” I called to him. The plane skidded slightly and I turned back to the controls, steadying her.
When I looked back down the length of the fuselage there was no one there. I was alone in the plane. I settled myself in my seat. Height one thousand six hundred. Airspeed ninety-five. I’d take her down to a thousand feet. That should put her below the horizon of the three who had jumped. Through the windshield I saw a small point of light moving across the sky—the tail light of one of the airlift planes holding steadily to its course. I wondered if those behind could see me. In case, I banked away and at the same time broke one of the wire contacts. The outboard port engine started immediately as I unfeathered the prop.
As I banked out of the traffic stream a voice called to me—“You bloody fool, Neil. You haven’t even got your parachute on.” I felt sudden panic grip me as I turned to find Tubby coming back into the cockpit.
“Why the hell haven’t you jumped?”
“Plenty of time now,” he said calmly. “Perhaps the other engines will pick up. I was worried about you, that’s why I came back.”
“I can look after myself,” I snapped. “Get back to that door and jump.”
I think he saw the panic in my eyes and misunderstood it. His gaze dropped to my parachute still in its canvas bag. “I’ll take over whilst you get into your parachute. With two engines we might still make Gatow.”
He was already sliding into the second pilot’s seat now and I felt his hands take over on the controls. “Now get your ’chute on, Neil,�
�� he said quietly.
We sat there, staring at each other. I didn’t know what the hell to do. I glanced at the altimeter. The needle was steady at the thousand mark. His eyes followed the direction of my gaze and then he looked at me again and his forehead was wrinkled in a puzzled frown. “You weren’t going to jump, were you?” he said slowly.
I sat there, staring at him. And then I knew he’d got to come back to Membury with me. “No,” I said. And with sudden violence, “Why the hell couldn’t you have jumped when I told you?”
“I knew you didn’t like jumping,” he said. “What were you going to do—try and crash land?”
I hesitated. I’d have one more shot at getting him to jump. I edged my left hand down the side of my seat until I found the wires that connected to the ignition switch of that outboard port motor. I clipped them together and the motor died. “It’s gone again,” I shouted to him. I switched over to the automatic pilot. “Come on,” I said. “We’re getting out.” I slid out of my seat and gripped him by the arm. “Quick!” I said, half-pulling him towards the exit door.
I think I’d have done it that time, but he glanced back, and then suddenly he wrenched himself free of my grip. I saw him reach over the pilot’s seat, saw him tearing at the wires, and as he unfeathered the props the motors picked up in a thrumming roar. He slid into his own seat, took over from the automatic pilot and as I stood there, dazed with the shock of discovery, I saw the altimeter needle begin to climb through the luminous figures of its dial.
Then I was clambering into my seat, struggling to get control of the plane from him. He shouted something to me. I don’t remember what it was. I kicked at the rudder bar and swung the heavy plane into a wide banking turn. “We’re going back to Membury,” I yelled at him.
“Membury!” He stared at me. “So that’s it! It was you who fixed those wires. You made those boys jump——” The words seemed to choke him. “You must be crazy. What’s the idea?”
I heard myself laughing wildly. I was excited and my nerves were tense. “Better ask Saeton,” I said, still laughing.
“Saeton?” He caught hold of my arm. “You crazy fools! You can’t get away with this.”
“Of course we can,” I cried. “We have. Nobody will ever know.” I was so elated I didn’t notice him settling more firmly into his seat. I was thinking I’d succeeded. I’d done the impossible—I’d taken an aircraft off the Berlin airlift. I wanted to sing, shout, do something to express the thrill it gave me.
Then the controls moved under my hands. He was dragging the plane round, heading it for Berlin. For a moment I fought the controls, struggling to get the ship round. The compass wavered uncertainly. But he held on grimly. He had great strength. At length I let go and watched the compass swing back on to the lubber lines of our original course.
All the elation I had felt died out of me. “For God’s sake, Tubby,” I said. “Try to understand what this means. Nobody’s going to lose over this. Harcourt will get the insurance. As for the airlift, in a few weeks the plane will be back on the job. Only then it will have our engines in it. We’ll have succeeded. Doesn’t success mean anything to you?” Automatically I was using Saeton’s arguments over again.
But all he said was, “You’ve dropped those boys into Russian territory.”
“Well, what of it?” I demanded hotly. “They’ll be all right. So will Harcourt. And so will we.”
He looked at me then, his face a white mask, the little lines at the corners of his eyes no longer crinkled by laughter. He looked solid, unemotional—like a block of granite. “I should have known the sort of person you were when you turned up at Membury like that. Saeton’s a fanatic. I can forgive him. But you’re just a dirty little crook who has——”
He shouldn’t have said that. It made me mad—part fear, part anger. Damn his bloody high and mighty principles! Was he prepared to die for them? I reached down for the wires. My fingers were trembling and numb with the cold blast of the air that came in through the open doorway aft, but I managed to fasten the clips. The engines died away. The cabin was suddenly silent, a ghostly place of soft-lit dials and our reflections in the windshield. We seemed suddenly cut off from the rest of the world. A white pin-point of light slid over us like a star—our one contact with reality, a plane bound for Berlin.
“Don’t be a fool, Fraser!” Tubby’s voice was unnaturally loud in the stillness.
I laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. My nerves were keyed to the pitch of desperation. “Either we fly to Membury,” I said, “or we crash.” My teeth were clenched. It might have been a stranger’s voice. “You can jump if you want to,” I added, nodding towards the rear of the cockpit where the wind whistled.
“Unfasten those wires!” he shouted. And when I made no move he said, “Get them unfastened and start the motors or I’ll hurt you.”
He was fumbling in the pocket beside his seat and his hand came out holding a heavy spanner. He let go the controls then. The plane dipped and slid away to port. Automatically I grasped the control column and righted her. At the same time he rose in his seat, the spanner lifted in his hand.
I flung myself sideways, lunging out at him. The spanner caught me across the shoulder and my left arm went numb. But I had hold of his flying suit now and was pulling him towards me. He had no room to use the spanner again. And at the same moment the plane dropped sickeningly. We were flung into the aisle and fetched up against the fuel tanks in the fuselage.
For a moment we stood there, locked together, and then he fought to get clear of me, to get back to start the motors again. I was determined he shouldn’t. I’d take him down into the ground rather than fly on to Gatow to be accused of having attempted to take a plane off the airlift. I clutched hold of him, pinning his arms, bracing myself against the tanks. The plane lurched and we were flung between the tanks into the main body of the fuselage where the wind roared in through the open doorway. That lurch flung us against the door to the toilet, breaking us clear of each other. He raised the spanner to strike at me again and I hit him with my fist. The spanner descended, striking my shoulder again. I lashed out again. My fist caught his jaw and his head jerked back against the metal of the fuselage. At the same moment the plane seemed to fall away. We were both flung sideways. Tubby hit the side of the open doorway. I saw his head jerk back as his forehead caught a protruding section of the metal frame. Blood gleamed red in a long gash and his jaw fell slack. Slowly his legs gave under him.
As he fell I started forward. He was falling into the black rectangle of the doorway. I clutched at him, but the plane swung, jerking me back against the toilet door. And in that instant Tubby slid to the floor, his legs slowly disappearing into the black void of the slip-stream. For an instant his thick torso lay along the floor, held there by the wind and the tilt of the plane. I could do nothing. I was pinned by the tilt of the plane, forced to stand there and watch as his body began to slide outwards, slowly, like a sack, the outstretched hands making no attempt to hold him. For a second he was there, sliding slowly out across the floor, and then the slip-stream whisked him away and I was alone in the body of the plane with only the gaping doorway and a thin trickle of blood on the steel flooring to show what had happened.
I shook myself, dazed with the horror of it. Then I closed the door and went for’ard. Almost automatically my brain registered the altimeter dial. Height 700. I slipped into the pilot’s seat and with trembling fingers forced the wires apart. The engines roared. I gripped the control column and my feet found the rudder bar. I banked and climbed steeply. The lights of a town showed below me and the snaking course of a river. I felt sick at the thought of what had happened to Tubby. Height two-four. Course eight-five degrees. I must find out what had happened to Tubby.
I made a tight, diving turn and levelled out at five hundred feet. I had to find out what had happened to him. If he’d regained consciousness and had been able to pull his parachute release … Surely the cold air would have revived him.
God! Don’t let him die. I was sobbing my prayer aloud. I went back along the course of the river, over the lights of the town. A road ran out of it, straight like a piece of tape and white in the moonlight. Then I shut down the engines and put down the flaps. This was the spot where Tubby had fallen. I searched desperately through the windshield. But all I saw was a deserted airfield bordered by pine woods and a huddle of buildings that were no more than empty shells. No sign of a parachute, no comforting mushroom patch of white.
I went back and forth over the area a dozen times. The aerodrome and the woods and the bomb-shattered buildings stood out clear in the moonlight, but never a sign of the white silk of a parachute.
Tubby was dead and I had killed him.
Dazed and frightened I banked away from the white graveyard scene of the shattered buildings. I took the plane up to 10,000 feet and fled westward across the moon-filled night. Away to the right I could see the lines of planes coming in along the corridor, red and green navigation lights stretching back towards Lübeck. But in a moment they were gone and I was alone, riding the sky, with only the reflection of my face in the windshield for company—nothing of earth but the flat expanse of the Westphalian plain, white like a salt-pan below me.
VI
THERE WAS NO problem of navigation to distract my mind on the homeward run. The earth lay like a white map below me. I found the North Sea at Flushing, crossed the southern extremity of it, flying automatically, and just as automatically picked up the Thames estuary, following the curves of the river till it met the Kennet. And all the time I was remembering every detail of what had happened. It seemed such waste that he should die like that. And all because he’d called me a crook. My face, ghostly in the windshield, seemed to reflect the bitterness of my thoughts.
I had three hours in which to sort the thing out and face it. But I didn’t face it. I know that now. I began that flight hating myself. I ended it by hating Saeton. It was he who had forced me into it. It was he, not I, who was responsible for Tubby’s death. By the time I was over the Kennet I had almost convinced myself of that.
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