by Wilbur Smith
‘Two?’ Saffron pulled back. Her emotions chilled as quickly as they had heated. ‘This had better not be about another woman.’
During the war Saffron had killed two men in hand-to-hand combat. She had told Gerhard as much, without going into details. Now there was a cold, hard look in her eye that told him how dangerous a predator she could be.
But Gerhard took a risk and pushed her a little closer to the edge. Giving a carefree shrug he said, ‘I admit a female is involved.’
Saffron’s eyes narrowed. His tone had been teasing, but she still had her guard up.
‘Go on . . .’ she said.
‘Well, she was small and her name was Baby,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t the prettiest thing you ever saw, a little dumpy from some angles, but when I got inside her . . . ach . . . she really made me fly . . .’
‘You beast!’ Saffron exclaimed, trying very hard not to find it funny as she beat her bunched fists against his chest. ‘You’re talking about a bloody aeroplane, aren’t you?’
Gerhard burst out laughing, which only made her hit him harder. He knew that she was playing at being angry. But it was wise not to push her too far.
‘You’re right! I confess!’ he cried. ‘The Grunau Baby was the first craft I flew solo. She was a glider. Some mechanics set up a winch, mounted on the back of a truck over there.’ He pointed across the airfield. ‘Then the rope was attached from the winch to the nose of the glider. The winch started turning, the glider was pulled forward, faster and faster and then suddenly I was up in the sky and . . . ach! There is nothing in all the world as incredible as making love to you. But flying is the next best thing. An Anglo-American pilot called John Gillespie Magee wrote the most beautiful poem about flying called “High Flight”. His words come back to me every time I fly: “Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.”’
He looked at the sky. ‘The moment I got up there, alone in the sunlight, the sound of the air rushing over the wings . . . I felt free. Konrad had done everything he could to make my life hell, but when I was flying he could not touch me. And it all started here.’
He looked at Saffron. ‘So, do you forgive me?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I’m thinking about it.’
‘Maybe I can help make up your mind.’
He took her in his arms, pulled her close to him and gave her a long, deep, intensely passionate kiss that left her insides melting and her knees about to give way.
‘That helped,’ she said, gathering her breath as they pulled apart.
‘Maybe I could help some more,’ Gerhard growled, and Saffron was about to let him try when she caught sight of something over his shoulder.
‘Wait,’ she said, putting a hand to his chest. ‘Why is there smoke over there?’
Gerhard gave the sigh of a man denied his pleasure, then followed the line of her hand. He saw that something was burning, not far from the old Zeppelin shed.
He gave a shrug and said, ‘How should I know? Does it matter?’
‘I think it does, we should find out.’
Gerhard could sense her concern.
‘All right . . . let’s go.’
The smoke was coming from a campfire burning in front of a small shack, cobbled together from rusty sheets of corrugated iron, bits of wood and a large oblong of camouflage material that Gerhard recognised was an old Wehrmacht groundsheet. A rusty bicycle was leaning against the side of the hut. A black pot was hanging from a tripod over the fire.
‘Someone’s having a brew-up,’ said Saffron. ‘Making a cup of tea,’ she added, by way of explanation.
‘Coffee,’ Gerhard replied with a grin. ‘They’re German.’
As they drew closer a man emerged from the shack, wearing field-grey battledress trousers and a matching blouson, stripped of all its ranks and unit badges, open to reveal a dirty white vest. He was unshaven. There were deep lines across his weather-beaten face and heavy bags under his slightly bloodshot eyes. His hair was shaved close to his scalp on the sides of his head, with an unkempt brown and grey mop on top.
One of the sleeves of the man’s army top was empty. His remaining hand was holding a cigarette to his mouth. Hand-rolled, Saffron noticed as they drew to a halt a few metres from where the man stood. He took one last drag as he watched them through narrow, suspicious eyes, threw the cigarette to the ground, and asked, ‘Who the hell are you?’
Gerhard smiled affably and held out his hand.
‘Gerhard von Meerbach,’ he said, and Saffron had to suppress a smile at the way he had reverted to his full name. ‘And this is my wife, Saffron.’
The man stood straight, eyes wide, quickly doing up the buttons of his top as he asked, ‘Count Konrad’s brother? The fighter ace?’
Gerhard nodded.
‘I heard you were dead,’ the man said. ‘In the camps.’
‘Almost – I was very ill. This is the first time I’ve been home. I wanted to show my wife the place where I learned to fly.’
The man’s face broke into a broad grin. ‘I remember! You went up in that glider – you wouldn’t know, but I was working the winch.’
‘But that’s incredible!’ Saffron exclaimed. ‘Gerhard was telling me about it.’
‘Herr von Meerbach had a gift for it, ma’am, I could tell. I’d seen the test pilots at work, putting our engines through their paces. I could recognise a real flyer when I saw one.’
‘Well, this is a stroke of luck,’ Gerhard said. ‘What is your name?’
‘Ferdinand Posch. But everyone calls me Ferdi.’
‘And you were in the army, eh?’
‘Panzergrenadiers – motorised infantry, Army Group Central.’
‘Russia . . .’ Gerhard murmured.
‘That’s right. Summer of ’41, cutting through the Ivans like a scythe through grass till a truck I was in got hit by a shell, outside of Minsk. That’s where I lost this.’
He pointed to the empty sleeve.
‘I’m sorry,’ Saffron said.
‘Don’t be. Best thing that ever happened to me. No more Russia.’
‘Yes, you got a good deal,’ Gerhard agreed.
‘Were you there too?’ Ferdi asked.
‘Three years. What happened after you were wounded?’
‘I got shipped home, came back to the Motor Works and they gave me a job as a security guard.’
‘Well, at least you still had two legs,’ Gerhard said. ‘You could run after an intruder, even if you couldn’t hold on to him.’
Ferdi laughed. ‘But there weren’t any intruders. No one would be that mad. They knew what the count would do to them.’
‘Do you have any family?’ Saffron asked.
‘Got a sister, lives in Stuttgart. But I haven’t seen her in years.’ He eyed his two unexpected guests. ‘Let me get you some coffee – the real stuff, not that ersatz shit we had to drink back then. Oh, sorry, ma’am, didn’t mean to offend you.’
‘That’s all right, Ferdi,’ Saffron assured him. ‘I’m used to military language. Don’t get out your best china, I can drink from an old mess tin. I’ve done it often enough before.’
Ferdi laughed. ‘I like your wife, sir. She’s not one of those fancy society types who looks down their noses at the common man – not like some I could mention.’ He opened his mouth to say more, grimaced and said, ‘Ach, what am I doing chattering when my guests need their drinks?’
Two hundred metres away, crouching behind a small gap in the sixty-metre-high wall of the Zeppelin shed, Fritz Werner relished his good fortune. He had chosen the giant ruin as his hiding place because it provided cover and the widest outlook. No matter where the traitor and his English bitch went on the airfield, there would be some point within the building from which he could observe them.
And then, by chance, they’d driven towards him. For a moment he’d been concerned. What if they were coming to inspect the place for themselves? It wa
s the most prominent landmark, only natural that they’d want to take a look.
He’d taken precautions. You didn’t serve eight years in the Geheime Staatspolizei, the secret state police, otherwise known as the Gestapo, without having the rules drilled so deep into you they were automatic, even after a six-year gap. His car was well hidden. He had faith in his ability to escape detection.
For some reason they stopped by the hut used by the one-armed tramp who played at being a security guard.
That bastard von Meerbach’s got good taste in women.
Werner took a good look at her through his field glasses. She was tall, slender but enough meat on her to give a man something to hold on to. Dark hair, blue eyes; then she smiled with such brightness that he wanted to punch her.
He thought back to the Russian women they used to arrest during his two years in Smolensk – ‘suspected partisans’. Find a pretty girl, let the lads have a go. Take her out onto some waste ground and put a bullet through the back of her head. Those were the days.
The von Meerbachs were standing around the fire, getting into a proper old conversation.
He frowned.
Why in God’s name do you want to talk to a tramp?
Ferdi dragged a couple of rusty oil drums towards the fire.
‘Sit yourselves down.’
He went into the hut and emerged with a couple of battered tin cups.
The water in the pot was now boiling. Ferdi took the pot off the stove, then opened the paper packet. Saffron caught the smell of coffee before he emptied it into the pot.
‘Got to let it settle,’ he said.
‘Would you like something stronger in yours?’ Gerhard asked, taking his new flask from his jacket. ‘Brandy, Martell Cordon Bleu, taken from the castle this very morning.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Ferdi said.
Gerhard poured in a healthy slug and then looked at Saffron, who was cradling the hot cup in her bare hands.
‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘This will do me. Thank you, Ferdi, I—’
Her sentence was cut short as something in the Zeppelin shed caught her eye: a glint of light amid the gloomy shadows of the ruin. She decided it must be sunlight striking an old window, and turned her attention back to Ferdi.
‘You were about to say something, before you made the coffee.’
Ferdi shrugged. ‘I don’t want to sound rude or disrespectful—’
‘Feel free to say what you please.’
‘Very well, but let me fix my smoke first.’
He took a battered tobacco tin from his trouser pocket, followed by a packet of papers. Within seconds he had fashioned a perfect roll-up and struck a light from a match, all with one hand.
Saffron applauded gleefully.
Ferdi grinned as he sucked on the cigarette. ‘The countess,’ he said. ‘Rolling a cig in her presence? She wouldn’t have stood for that and she’d have made sure I suffered for it.’
‘Really?’ Gerhard said, casually. ‘I used to know her when we were young. She wasn’t like that back then.’
‘Maybe it was the count who made her that way.’ Ferdi spat a shred of tobacco off his tongue. ‘Don’t know why I’m telling you this. Could get me into trouble. But I was here when they left. Saw them both go.’
Gerhard and Saffron looked at one another.
‘You mean, at the end of the war?’ said Gerhard.
‘Ja, right at the very end. But they didn’t go together. She went first, in a standard plane. He went a few days later. You should have seen that thing – fuselage like a V2 rocket, four jet engines—’
‘Four?’ Gerhard gasped incredulously. ‘There were no four-engined jets in 1945.’
‘There was at least one, sir, because I saw it with my own eyes. Looked like something out of a comic book. God in heaven, you should have heard the sound it made when it took off. Went up like a bullet . . .’ He pointed his hand to the sky. ‘Boom! And the next thing I knew it was out of sight.’
Saffron’s heart was pounding. She wanted to shake every last shred of information out of the man in front of her.
‘That sounds like an incredible aircraft,’ she said.
Ferdi nodded. ‘Oh yes, if we’d had a few squadrons of planes like that—’
‘Probably as well we didn’t,’ said Gerhard, ‘or those maniacs would still be ruling us now.’
‘What makes you think they aren’t?’ Ferdi asked. ‘They didn’t all leave. And they weren’t all caught. Trust me, they’re out there, waiting for a second chance.’
‘Let’s hope they don’t get it,’ said Saffron. ‘Those two planes – do you know where they went?’
‘No. They both took off from the main runway and went in that direction.’
‘West,’ said Gerhard, following the line Ferdi was pointing.
‘That’s right – but, see, the countess’s plane turned south, over the lake.’
‘Towards Switzerland?’
‘I reckon. Makes sense, doesn’t it?’
‘How about my brother’s plane?’
‘That kept going – but like I said, gone in the blink of an eye. Could have gone in any direction after that and we’d never have known.’
‘Did they take anything with them?’
‘I don’t know – it’s a few years now . . .’
‘Take your time,’ Saffron said.
‘Let me think . . . it’s coming back to me . . . I know the count didn’t take hardly anything – maybe a case, but nothing more than that. There wasn’t room in that space machine.’
‘And the countess?’
‘Ja, that’s it,’ he murmured. ‘She had more. Personal luggage for herself, but also there were wooden boxes, not very big but as heavy as lead, the lads who loaded them said. And long brown tubes . . .’ Ferdi looked at Gerhard. ‘You know those tubes the intelligence boys used to keep their maps in, all rolled up?’
‘Yes, absolutely.’
‘They were like that, but bigger.’
So that’s where the pictures went, Saffron thought.
‘Did the count tell anyone about his plans?’ she asked, knowing that the answer was almost certainly ‘no’.
‘He didn’t file a flight plan, if that’s what you mean.’ Ferdi grinned. ‘The only person who’d have known was the pilot. But he vanished, just like the count.’
‘You mean he never came back from the flight?’
‘That’s right – did a runner. Left his wife and little kiddies too. He was a decent lad, Berni, never thought he’d do a thing like that.’
‘What was his surname?’
‘Sperling,’ said Gerhard, before Ferdi could answer. ‘He was the company’s chief pilot. I remember him from the old days. And you’re right, Ferdi, I don’t see him as a man who’d desert his family. You don’t happen to know where he lived, do you?’
‘I don’t have an address, but he used to live in Friedrichshafen . . . Now, what was his wife called? Something like Klara . . . maybe Kora . . . No, Katya, that’s it. Try the phone book. Can’t be too many Katya Sperlings in Friedrichshafen.’
Saffron had been listening to Ferdi. But she saw the movement from the Zeppelin shed again.
‘There’s something going on over there.’
‘Ach.’ Ferdi shrugged. ‘It’s probably a deer. There’s a few out there.’
‘Do the deer round here carry binoculars? I saw a glint over there a few minutes ago. What’s the best way into the shed from here?’
‘You could drive in through the front. They took the main doors down years ago.’
‘Did you see anyone drive in within the past hour or so?’
‘No, but I was taking a nap before you got here. They could leave the car round the far side and sneak in without anyone seeing.’
‘Is there a back door?’
‘There was, but it’s overgrown.’
‘Damn!’
Ferdi smiled. ‘There is another way though. You’d ne
ver see it, but I’ve got in that way. Go round the back. Look for a rusted iron pipe pointing at the wall. Follow the line of the pipe. When you see the bushes, get on your hands and knees and crawl. You’ll see where to go.’
Saffron nodded. It was risky but she was determined to find out what was going on. Her husband wouldn’t approve but her old instincts kicked in. Then she looked at the terrain between their current position and the shed.
Two hundred yards away at most, she thought to herself. Maybe one-fifty.
The land between them was open, but to the left was a line of ruined buildings: the old control tower, a smaller hangar and a couple of other structures. They would provide cover.
‘Here’s what’s going to happen,’ she said. ‘You and I, darling husband, are about to have a furious argument. I’m going to storm off. Give me five minutes. Then both of you get in the Jeep, and drive towards the Zeppelin shed, fast as you can. If there really is a man watching us, you have to get there before he smells a rat and tries to get away. Okay?’
‘Get out of here, I’m sick of you,’ Gerhard said.
It took a fraction of a second for Saffron to realise he was acting the part. She leaped to her feet and started screaming at him. She’d been speaking German, but she switched to English.
Gerhard stood too and stepped across to her, his body tense, fists clenched, eyes blazing. He was shouting in German, making sure that anyone listening could hear and understand him.
Saffron slapped him, not hard enough to do any damage. She turned on her heel and stalked towards the empty building, with the insults of her husband echoing in her ears.
Fritz Werner was laughing. What a story to tell the boys tonight! The traitor and the bitch screaming at each other in two separate languages.
Then a thought came to him.
Why in God’s name talk to a tramp?
And then his blood chilled as the answer struck him: an answer that had been staring them all in the face for years, yet somehow never occurred to anyone. Why would it? Posch was just a tramp, subhuman, not worthy of a moment’s consideration.
But he’s not just a tramp, is he? He’s the airport security guard. He was here during the war. Which means he might have been here at the end, when anyone in the SS hierarchy was running like hell for the nearest exit from the Fatherland.
