Air Bridge

by Hammond Innes

  I stared at him. His tone was so easy and natural it was difficult to believe that there was any sort of a threat behind his words. “What do you mean by that?” I asked him.

  “Think it out for yourself, Neil. But remember this. I haven’t come all this way with those engines to be beaten now.”

  “And either way Tubby doesn’t get brought back for hospital treatment?”

  He nodded. “Either way Tubby remains where he is.”

  “By God, you’re a callous bastard,” I said. “I thought he was the only man you were ever fond of?”

  That touched him on the raw and his face darkened with sudden passion. “Do you think I like the thought of him out there in the Russian Zone? But I can’t help it. This thing is a lot bigger than the comfort of one man. I think I told you once that if one man stood between me and getting those engines into the air, I’d brush him aside. Well, that still holds good. As far as I’m concerned, Tubby is dead.” He glanced at his watch again. “Well, think it over, Neil.” His tone was once more even and friendly. “Either way you won’t help Tubby, so you might just as well tear up that report.” He hesitated and then he said gently, “We’ve come a long way together in a short time, Neil. I’d like to know that we were going on together. You’ve done all you could to help when the going was tough. Don’t shut yourself out from the thing just as it’s starting to go well. I’d like us to continue the partnership.” He nodded cheerily and opened the door. A moment later it had closed on his thick, burly figure and I was alone again.

  I lay there for a moment going over in my mind that incredible conversation, appalled at Saeton’s complete lack of any moral sense. This was the third time in our short acquaintance that he had forced a desperate choice on me. But this time it never entered my head to agree to his terms. I didn’t even consider them. I was thinking only of Tubby. Somehow I had got to get him out.

  I don’t know quite when I reached the decision to get out of the sick bay. It just seemed to come as a logical answer to my problem. So long as I remained there, I should be taken out on the P 19 flight in the morning and then there would be no chance of doing anything for Tubby. On the other hand, if I were clear of Gatow, free of the whole organisation, then there might still be a chance.

  As soon as I had reached that decision I set to work again on the report. By ten-fifteen it was done. After that I lay back, shielding my eyes from the light, waiting. Shortly before eleven the nurse came in. “Lights not out yet?” She patted the pillows into place. “You’re looking tired now. My! What a lot you have written to your girl-friend.”

  “It isn’t to my girl-friend,” I said rather sharply. “Where’s the M.O.?”

  “He’s not coming to see you to-night. But don’t worry. He’ll be here first thing in the morning.”

  The morning was no good. This must be read to-night by somebody in authority. “Do you know Squadron Leader Pierce?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Will you do something for me? Will you get this to him to-night?” I folded the numbered sheets across and handed them to her. “Will you see that he gets it personally?”

  “And I suppose it’s urgent?” She smiled indulgently as she took the sheets from me. “All right. I’ll see he gets it if you promise to be a good boy and go to sleep.”

  “I’ll sleep if I know that that will reach Pierce to-night. Will you promise that, sister? When he’s read it, he’ll understand the urgency.”

  She nodded seriously, humouring me with an imitation of my own mood. “Now, you go to sleep. Good-night.”

  The room was suddenly in darkness as she switched out the light. I had to suppress an urge to leap out of bed and go with her to the mess. But it wouldn’t help. She’d only think I was mad and she’d call the M.O. and between them they’d drug me into a coma until I was on that damned plane and out of Berlin. The door closed with a decisive click and I lay there suddenly aware that I was alone again and all that stood between Tubby and complete disbelief of his need for help were a few flimsy sheets of paper in the hands of a nurse who thought I was slightly nuts.

  I waited for about half an hour and then I slipped out of bed and groped my way to the door. A blast of cold air swept past me as I opened it. A blue-painted bulb showed me the top of some stairs and a corridor. The concrete flooring was bitterly cold against the soles of my feet.

  I found the cupboard. My clothes were still there and I bundled them over my arm and slipped back into the room. It took me some time to dress in the dark, fumbling awkwardly with the laces of my cold, wet shoes, tugging at the zip of my flying suit. Finally I struggled into the heavy German greatcoat and jammed the forage cap over the bandages that circled my head.

  Thinking back on it now I suppose I was still a little dazed with the exhaustion of the last few days, for I had no plan and as far as I can remember my mind made no effort to grapple with the problem of what I intended to do. I just knew I had to get out of the clutches of the Gatow authorities before they flew me out and, like an automaton who can only manage one idea at a time, I worked towards that end without a thought to the future.

  As soon as I was dressed I felt my way to the door and opened it. The single blue-painted light bulb threw a weird light on to the empty corridor and the deserted stair-head. There was no sound except the intermittent murmur of the planes. I closed the door and went boldly down the stairs. There were two flights, each with its blue light, and then I was in the entrance hall. The light was bright here and a man’s figure lounged by the open doorway where a car was drawn up. I hesitated. But there was no point in skulking in the shadows. I crossed the hall and went quickly out through the door to the accompaniment of a murmured “Gute Nacht” from the German driver who stood there.

  I replied “Gute Nacht,” my heart hammering against my ribs. But he made no move to stop me and in a moment the night had swallowed me with its blackness and its murmuring of the wind in the firs. I kept to the road, walking quickly, the sound of the planes on the airfield over my left shoulder, and in a few minutes I came out on to the road which ran from the entrance gates down past the mess to the terminal building. I recognised it at once in the lights of a Volkswagen saloon that went careering past me. I waited until its lights had completely disappeared and then I crossed the road and slipped into the sheltering anonymity of the fir woods.

  I had no difficulty getting out of Gatow unobserved. I simply pressed on through the woods, keeping the sound of the airfield at my back. I had occasional glimpses of the lights of buildings and the swift rush of cars’ headlights. The rest was utter blackness with the branches clutching at my bandaged head and roots tripping at my feet. I met no one and in a comparatively short time I was brought up by a wire boundary fence. After that I was in the open with the lights of a lorry showing me the Kladowerdamm and the way to Berlin.

  There was some advantage in wearing Hans’s discarded greatcoat and cap, for I was able to stop the first lorry that came along. The truck was a Bedford, one of a continuous line that moved through the night from the FASO apron to Berlin. I suppose the driver took me for one of the German labour teams slogging my way home. I climbed in and lay back on piled-up bags of flour that tickled my nostrils with their fine dust as we clattered over the pot-holed road.

  We went into Berlin by way of the An Der Heer Strasse with its glimpse of Havel Lake where the Sunderlands had landed through the summer. There were lights along the An Der Heer Strasse, for the power, like that of Gatow itself, came from the Russian Zone. But darkness closed in with the trees of the Grünewald and the broad, straight line of the Kaiserdamm was like a dark cleft in the waste of ruins dimly seen from the swaying back of the lorry.

  At length the truck slowed and the driver shouted to me, “Wo wollen Sie hin?”

  “Anywhere in the centre of Berlin will do,” I answered in German.

  “I drop you at the Gedachtniskirche.”

  The Gedachtniskirche I knew—the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial chu
rch, one of the most conspicuous buildings in Berlin. It had been pointed out to me more than once during operational briefings. “Dankeschön” I said.

  A few minutes later the lorry stopped again. Leaning out I saw a gigantic, ruined tower rearing above us into the darkness. A train hooted eerily and clattered by, wheels rattling hollow on the rails of a viaduct. I climbed over the tail-board and dropped to the ground. “Dankeschön,” I called to the driver. “Gute Nacht.”

  “Gute Nacht.” His voice was almost drowned in the roar of the engine as the heavily-laden lorry rolled on with its load of flour. I watched it disappear round the bend of the platz and then I was alone in the darkness with the monstrous hulk of the Gedachtniskirche above me, its colossal tower so battered by bombs that it looked as though it must topple into the street.

  I turned and walked slowly up the Kurfurstendamm. This had been the Piccadilly of Berlin. Now it was a broken, ruined thoroughfare, the shops ground-floor affairs of wood and plaster board whose flimsy construction seemed constantly threatened by the rubble of the upper stories. There was no lighting in the Kurfurstendamm; all allied Berlin was under drastic power-cut now that fuel had to be flown in. But it was possible to see as though the thousands who huddled behind the broken façades of the buildings emanated a sort of radiance.

  It was past midnight now, but despite the cold there were still prostitutes on the sidewalks, wandering up and down past the deserted street cafés. There were cars, too—black-marketeers’ cars and taxis with American negroes trading currency. Prowlers moved in the shadows, pimps and currency dealers, men who brushed by with a muttered, “Fünf Ost für eine West.” Bundles of rags lay huddled in doorways or dragged slowly along with a clop of wooden shoes as they searched the dustbins in the rich heart of Berlin.

  I drifted up the Kurfurstendamm, only half conscious of the dim, shadowy life around me, my mind suddenly face-to-face with the problem of what I was going to do now. Until that moment my only thought had been to escape from the organised world that centred around the airlift at Gatow and so avoid being flown out on the P 19 passenger service in the morning. But now, in the heart of occupied Berlin, dressed half as a British civilian flier and half as a German labourer with no German money and no one I knew, I felt suddenly lost and slightly foolish.

  But I wasn’t cold any more and I had food inside me. My head was painful, but my mind was clear as I grappled with the problem. A dim figure slid past me with its muttered, “Ich tausche Ost gegen West.” I stopped him. “Do you exchange English pounds?” I asked him in German.

  “Englische Pfunde?”

  “Ja.”

  “You want Deutschmark or Bafs?”

  “West Deutschmark,” I answered. “What is the rate of exchange?”

  “I give you thirty-two Deutschmark for one pound sterling.” Gold teeth glittered with a drool of saliva as the lights of a car slid past. The man had a wide-brimmed black hat and his face was swarthy with greasy sideboards. The long Semitic nose was thrust inquisitively into my face. A Greek or perhaps a Pole—certainly not a German.

  I changed ten pounds with this shadow of the Berlin underworld and with the Deutschmark forming a wad in the pocket of my flying suit I felt that the first hurdle was past. But what next? I stood on a corner by one of those circular poster hoardings that look like overgrown pillar boxes and wondered how I could get Tubby out of the Russian Zone. If I could get Tubby out, then there’d be no doubt about my story.

  But in all Berlin I had no friend to help me.

  IX

  TO HAVE NO friends, no sense of security, in a city occupied by one’s own people is not pleasant. There was no one I could turn to. I thought of Diana’s brother—Harry Culyer. Maybe he was still in Berlin. But would he believe me when my own people didn’t? And to contact any of the Allied headquarters and clubs would only be putting me back into the situation from which I had just been at such pains to escape.

  I don’t know what made me think of it. Maybe it was the prostitute who murmured an English, “Hullo, darling,” from the shadowy gloom of the sidewalk. The soft warmth of her voice came like the nuzzling of a friendly bitch. And when I didn’t turn away the dim shadow of her slunk to my side. “You are American?” she asked. The power of the dollar was strong on the Kurfurstendamm.

  “No. English,” I answered.

  I saw her eyes, soft and hungry in the darkness, looking me over and noting my clothes. Probably she thought I was a deserter. Deserters would be bound to make for the Kurfurstendamm. But she asked no questions. All she said was, “You come with me, honey? I have a room only two blocks away and it is comfortable.”

  I didn’t answer because her German accent had started a train of thought in my mind.

  “Please come.” Her voice was suddenly desperate. “I have been here all evening and I am hungry. You take me to a café. I know somewhere is cheap, very cheap.” Her hand reached out and slid along my arm. “Please, honey. I sing for you, too, perhaps. I was in opera once. I only do this when my baby and I are hungry and nobody will pay to hear me sing. My name is Helga. You like me? I give you love and music—you forget everything. Come on, honey.” She dragged at my arm. “Please, honey.”

  “Where is the Fassenenstrasse?” I asked.

  “It is just near here. You wish to go? I take you if you wish.” The voice was harder now, desperately urgent. “Please. It is cold standing here. Please, honey.”

  “All right,” I said. “Take me there.”

  “Okay.”

  We moved off together up the wide cleft of the Kurfurstendamm, her hand clutching my arm. She was tall and her hip was level with mine, pressing against it. She hummed a little aria, something from Verdi. “Where is this place you wish to go, honey?” she said, stopping at a corner. “Here is the Fassenenstrasse. It run right across the Kurfurstendamm. Which part do you wish?”

  “I want Number 52,” I said. “It’s near the Savoy Hotel.”

  “Ach. So! Das Savoy. It is this way.”

  She took me down a tram-lined street and underneath the iron girders of a railway bridge, and then we passed the Hotel Savoy and were at Number 52. She stared at the blank face of the closed door. “Why you bring me here?” she asked. “This is not a club. We cannot eat here. Why you bring me, eh?”

  “I have a friend here,” I said and tugged at the old-fashioned bell-pull. Then I pulled out my Deutschmark and gave her twenty. She stared at them. “Go and get something to eat,” I said. “And thank you for showing me the way.”

  Her eyes looked up into my face unbelievingly. “You do not want me?” She evidently saw that I didn’t for she made no protest. Instead she reached up and kissed me. “Dankeschön.” She turned away quickly and as the sound of her high heels faded away into the darkness I wondered whether perhaps she really was an opera singer with a baby and no job.

  There was the rattle of a chain from the other side of the heavy door and then it opened, just a crack, and a woman’s voice, old and hoarse and rather frightened, asked me what I wanted.

  “I am a friend of Fraulein Langen,” I answered in German. “I wish to see her please.”

  “I do not know any Fraulein Langen.”

  The door was closing and I put my foot against it.

  “Fraulein Meyer, then.” And I added quickly, “I have come all the way from England to see her.”

  “Aus England?” There was a moment’s pause. “You are English?” The old woman spoke the words slowly as though she had learned the language at school.

  “Yes,” I said. “I am an English flier. Neil Fraser, tell her.”

  The door opened to the full extent of the securing chain. Beady eyes stared at me through the crack. “You do not look to be very English,” she said suspiciously. “Where in England do you meet Fraulein Meyer?”

  “At Membury,” I answered. “I have had an accident. That’s why I’m dressed like this.”

  “Membury! So! It is very late, but come in. Kommen Sie herein.”
The door opened. She closed it hastily behind me and in the darkness I heard the rattle of bolts and chain. “We must be very careful. The Russians, you know. It is terrible. They come and take people away.” An electric torch gleamed faintly. “Poor Fraulein Meyer. So pretty, so clever! And all this trouble over her papers.” I followed the old woman’s shapeless figure up the stairs. The sound of our footsteps on the bare boards was very loud in the stillness of the house. “I do not like to think what the Russians do to her if the English send her to the East Sector police. The Russians are brutes—Schweinehunde. They rape everyone.” A door opened as the torch finally gave out. A match spurted and rose in a steady flame as a candle was lit.

  “Was ist los, Anna?” It was Else. Though I couldn’t see her I recognised her voice.

  “Ein Mann aus England. Herr Fraser. Er sagt er kennt Sie von Membury her.”

  “Herr Fraser?” Else’s tone was suspicious. The flame of the candle was lifted to my face. Through it I saw that she was peering at me with wide, frightened eyes, her dressing-gown clutched tightly round her. “Neil! It is you?” She began to laugh then. I think it was relief at finding it really was me. “You look so funny. Why are you in Berlin? And why do you dress yourself up in the uniform of the Wehrmacht?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  She smiled. “Another long story? That is what you say before. Remember?”

  “May I come in? I want to talk to you.”

  “Yes, of course. I have only a bedroom now, but——” She glanced uncertainly at the old woman. “So many peoples in Berlin have no homes,” she murmured. Then she glanced up at my face again and saw the bandages. “You have hurt yourself again also.”

  “I had an accident,” I said.

  “Come in then,” she said and pushed open the door of her room. “Anna. Have we any of that coffee left?”

  “Ja, but for two cups only,” the old woman answered.