The Mercenaries
Page 34
There had been no point in staying. There had been nothing he could hope to do. Nothing at all. Philippe Tsu would never play his violin round the concert halls of Europe and Madame Tsu would never have the pleasure of seeing his name in lights. And Ellie would never have that home she had wanted so much. She who had feared so often for Ira’s life and gone herself into the cold and darkness and oblivion, and all he seemed able to remember of her were the words she’d once said to him, years before it seemed, when they had been salvaging the De Havilland: ‘I’ll not grow old,’ she’d insisted. ‘I’ll never get the chance.’
Perhaps Sammy had always been right and perhaps she’d known it. Perhaps she and Fagan, branded with the mark of ill luck, had always had the look of doom about them.
He had parted company with Tsu at Siang-Chang where Lao had unloaded the money boxes. Tsu had marched straight from the aeroplane to the waiting car, leaving Lao to deal with the business of payment.
‘I am sorry about the lady,’ Lao had said, but Ira had shrugged off his sympathy.
He had still been trying to explain Ellie’s actions to himself, and he’d wondered several times if she’d made the trip to Tsosiehn in some sort of self-sacrifice for him. It would not have been unlike her.
Lao had still been watching him and, looking up, Ira had been surprised to see sympathy in his eyes.
‘I’ve always trusted you, Major Penaluna,’ he’d continued. ‘Though I know you’ve not always trusted me. I’m going to join General Chiang now. My future’s with a united China, not a defeated warlord, because there’ll be no more Tsus in China now. Our rulers failed us like the Czars failed Russia and we have been surrounded by enemies. Now it will be different. But, though your people will leave, there will always be a place here for you.’
They shook hands, if not with friendship, at least with mutual respect.
Sammy listened silently as Ira finished, then he blew his nose hurriedly, taking a long time over it. He had not always got on well with Ellie, but he stared now at Ira’s pitiless face with misery.
‘I think she knew, Sammy,’ Ira said. ‘I think she knew what was going to happen. That’s why she insisted so. She went to meet it deliberately. And it was all our doing. We thought of nothing but the machines.’
Sammy nodded. ‘I don’t suppose you could have stopped her, Ira,’ he said. ‘Any more than you could have stopped Fagan. But she never got much out of this bleddy life, really, did she?’
Ira shrugged. He was brisk and efficient and Sammy could see he was fighting with his emotions.
‘It’s no good bawling, Sammy,’ he said. ‘She was right when she said aeroplanes are dangerous. She was only wrong in thinking it would be me. I did this thing to her, so I’m packing up. I’m going home.’
Sammy’s eyes widened. ‘Ira, we’ve still got an aeroplane worth about a thousand quid and we can buy three new aircraft and a whole godown of spare parts if we want now. Spare engines. Propellers. Something we’ve never had before. We’ve got money in the bank.’
‘And the insurance we took out on Ellie when we started,’ Ira said bitterly. ‘But I’m not sure I want anything more to do with aeroplanes.’
Sammy gestured. ‘Ira, I don’t know anybody who knows more about them than you do. You’ve been working on ’em and flying in ’em since they were string and wire birdcages. Only the Wright Brothers know more than you. Don’t pack it in now. If it’ll help, leave it for a bit, but don’t give it up.’ He paused. ‘There’s just one other thing,’ he went on. ‘On the way down here I got talking to Jimmy Cheng. He wants you to teach him to fly, like his big brother.’
The grim expression on Ira’s face melted. Kowalski touched his arm. ‘There are hundreds waiting to learn, Ira,’ he pointed out. ‘Hundreds of guys. Chinese, Indians, God knows what, who’re beginning to realise that flying’s the future.’
‘You can’t just pack it all in and go and open a fag shop or something,’ Sammy went on, struggling for words. ‘It’s a bit like being a priest, Ira. You’ve got something to give ’em and they want it. You couldn’t turn your back on ’em any more than a priest could.’
Ira was silent for a moment. He’d seen the R.A.F. attaché the day before to arrange spares and petrol for the De Havilland. He was a man Ira had known in France and he’d been on the point of going home.
‘Better you than the Chineses,’ he’d said as he’d taken Ira’s list. ‘We’re completely re-equipped at home, anyway. We’ve got a Gloster now that’ll do two hundred and forty miles an hour and the Yanks have a new Curtiss that’ll do more than that. You could get whole planes at knock-down prices, if you wanted ’em, never mind spares.’
He’d managed a stiff smile. ‘Heard about that scrap of yours over Tsosiehn, old boy,’ he’d said. ‘That’s one you’ll not get a medal for.’
‘Curiously enough,’ Ira had said, ‘I did.’
The R.A.F. man had made no more comment than a raised eyebrow. ‘Just keep mum about the spares,’ he warned. ‘It’s getting bloody rough out here and they’ll be recognising Chiang as the government before long. And then what you did up there’ll be classed as anti-British. Those bloody lunatics in the House of Commons’ll be calling you a mercenary.’
Ira frowned, blinking suddenly. He could see Peter and Jimmy Cheng and about a dozen Wangs unloading the baggage and, just beyond them, on the staging, their crates of spares. After the way they’d fought to keep their machines flying it would have been ridiculous to stop now.
‘Sammy,’ he said, ‘I saw the R.A.F. attaché here. He said they’d call us mercenaries back home now. I never thought of it that way, did you?’
Sammy frowned. It didn’t seem to be worth worrying about to him.
‘I suppose he was right, though,’ Ira went on. ‘But what he ought to have said was “misfits”. That’s what we are, Sammy. We shan’t fit into an orderly way of life until aeroplanes are part of it, too.’
Sammy was looking hopeful suddenly.
‘We will start that carrying company, Sammy,’ Ira continued. ‘We’ll get it going, and we’ll make a damn good job of it, too.’
Sammy drew a deep breath and grinned at Kowalski. ‘I’m glad, Ira,’ he said with sincerity. ‘Honest I am. Not for me or the others. For you. You’d be such a bloody waste at anything else.’
Ira managed a smile. ‘I wouldn’t know how to do anything else, really, Sammy,’ he said. ‘So I might as well go into this and make it safe. Ellie said that it’d be the ones who came afterwards who got the benefit of the things we’d risked. So let’s make it that way. Let’s make it the best and safest there is.’
He drew a deep breath. There was still a frozen spot near his heart that would take a long time to heal, but he felt better with the need to do something. Work would make him forget. He slapped Sammy on the shoulder.
‘Let’s get those spares ashore, Sammy,’ he said. ‘And then we’ll nose around to buy a couple of new aircraft.’
Next in The Flying Ace Thrillers:
The Courtney Entry
A huge cash prize awaits anyone who can make the perilous transatlantic flight between Paris and New York, as well as global notoriety.
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First published in the United Kingdom in 1969 by The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by
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Copyright © John Harris, 1969
The moral right of John Harris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A
CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788636865
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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