Billy froze. This was the master beam and once it locked on, you were in real trouble because your radar co-ordinates were being automatically fed to the rest of the searchlights. Coned, you were easy meat for the flak batteries.
Pinned by the master beam, the nearby Lancaster dived into a tight corkscrew and disappeared, still pursued by the pencil of blueish light. At that point, inexplicably, V-Victor’s skipper did exactly the same thing, wrecking the Bomb Aimer’s calculations as the aircraft plunged earthwards. The Bomb Aimer, who happened to be Australian, curtly requested another run over the target and the Navigator was still trying to calculate the new heading when the skipper announced he was returning home. Dump the bombs now. And that’s an order.
Six tons of assorted ordnance tumbled into oblivion and nearly four hours later V-Victor landed safely back at Wickenby. At the debrief in front of the Intelligence Officer, Hammond blamed the incident on a false reading from the engine instrumentation. In the belief that two engines had caught fire, he’d aborted the bomb run and decided to turn back. It was a pitiful excuse. A single glance out of the cockpit would have established that there was nothing wrong with the engines.
No one else said a word while the Intel Officer nodded and made a couple of notes. Moments later, the debrief was over. That evening, after everyone had slept, the crew met up in the Mess as usual. There was no discussion of what had happened over Berlin, but when the skipper tried to buy a round of drinks, the Bomb Aimer eyeballed him for a moment or two and then left the building without a backward glance.
Billy, watching, felt nothing but dread. The next op would complete his tour. But if the Intel Officer neglected to press the issue and remove Les Hammond from operational flying then Billy’s final op might well turn out to be just that.
That night, Billy returned to his sleeping quarters to find the Bomb Aimer alone, sitting on his bed. They both knew the skipper had become a liability. At first, neither said a word. Then Billy voiced the obvious question.
‘So what do we do?’
‘Mate, we fly with him. They’ll probably give him one more chance.’
Billy nodded. They wouldn’t be operational again for a couple of days. Maybe the Bomb Aimer was wrong. Perhaps the Intel Officer had recognised all the symptoms of a nervous breakdown and would be taking the appropriate steps. Perhaps.
The Bomb Aimer hadn’t finished. Targeting was a closely guarded secret but he had his ear to the ground and he’d picked up some rumours. Billy wanted to know more.
‘I hear Chopburg.’
Chopburg was aircrew slang for Hamburg. Chopburg was where the Germans had things properly organised. Chopburg was where the night fighters and the searchlights and the flak batteries ganged up on you and made things extremely ugly. Getting the chop was when they blew you out of the sky.
Billy swallowed hard. It was at moments like this that he thought helplessly of Irene. Twenty-nine missions completed. Searchlights dodged. Flak survived. Night fighters outfoxed. Every prospect of getting back to Bristol, of leaving some flowers on her grave, of seeing out the rest of the summer. Now this.
The Bomb Aimer was fumbling for a cigarette. For reasons Billy couldn’t fathom there was a smile on his face. He lit the cigarette and expelled a long plume of blue smoke towards the ceiling before glancing across at Billy.
‘One day at a time, eh?’
2
Early the following morning, in a modest chateau 240 kilometres south-west of Paris, Hélène Lafosse stepped out into the still of dawn. A heat wave had settled over northern France: nearly a week of unbroken sunshine, of cloudless skies, of temperatures soaring beyond anything the older folk in Neaune could remember. The villagers, especially the women, had taken to staying indoors, grateful for the coolness afforded by the thick stone walls, and the handful of German soldiers that garrisoned the area had even been permitted to remove their shirts as they ambled through their working day.
Madame Lafosse was a newcomer to the Touraine. The Château de Neaune, like more or less everything else in her life, had been a gift from her husband, the Jew Nathan Khorrami. He’d presented it to her in the spring of 1938, knowing that war was around the corner. Khorrami was an art dealer of rare taste and iron nerve. With his easy charm, he was a negotiator of genius and he’d acquired a dense web of social and business connections in Paris: well-placed politicians, wealthy bankers, men of substance. Many of these individuals were clients of his and a number of conversations – increasingly troubled – had taught him to expect nothing from the French Army once Hitler deigned to make his intentions clear.
The Maginot Line, Khorrami had come to understand, was a joke, more a state of mind than a serious military obstacle. A small army of soldats squatted in semi-darkness on the eastern frontier beneath thirty metres of reinforced concrete, performing their drills, attending their periscopes, waiting for an enemy who’d never appear. ‘Look at a map and pretend you’re a German,’ one industrialist had murmured at a French Government reception for Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister. ‘There are a thousand other roads that lead to Paris.’
The industrialist had been a Jew, too. And, like Khorrami, he’d sensibly packed his bags, despatched the best of his furniture to a friend’s chateau in the south and bought a ticket to Lisbon within days of the first German units bursting out of the forests of the Ardennes and spearing into France. Hélène had missed her husband, especially the laughter and surprises he brought to her life, but accepted that it was prudent on his part to leave.
Now she walked across the cobbled courtyard to inspect the water level in the biggest of the wells. She was thirty-nine years old, Norman stock, tall, loose-limbed, pale complexion, big hands, fiercely practical. She had a physical presence that had always been a challenge for certain kinds of men and Nathan Khorrami had been one of them. She’d met him at a party at the Hôtel Meurice to celebrate the opening of his second art gallery, a small, stocky figure, immensely powerful. He wasn’t handsome in any way, far from it, but he had a wit and an intelligence that she’d found irresistible and after the soirée they’d spent the night together in his apartment on the Île de la Cité.
The following morning, he’d brought her coffee. She was sitting in the window, enjoying the view. It happened to be raining but she’d never seen Notre Dame look more impressive. Nathan had handed her a cup of coffee and kissed the back of her neck. Already she knew that she was falling in love with a man who’d turned hyperbole into a way of life. ‘You have the face of Jeanne d’Arc,’ he’d told her earlier, ‘the body of a goddess and the soul of my maternal grandmother.’
Nathan’s maternal grandmother, she was later to discover, had owned a substantial palace on the Caspian Sea. By that time, though, he’d given his new lover another name, infinitely shorter, and the name had stuck. He called her Mustafa, Arabic for the Chosen One, an appellation all the more curious for being male. Was she upset at being given a boy’s name? Did she mind the countless other little ways that Nathan had found to make her his own? Pas du tout.
The water level in the well was higher than she’d expected. There was an old iron cup on a chain and she lowered it into the semi-darkness. This was cool, sweet water from reservoirs deep in the limestone and she took a sip or two before tipping up the cup and letting the rest trickle down her face. Even at this hour she could feel the warmth in the sun and she crossed the courtyard to enjoy the early morning shadows cast by the plane trees that lined the road to the village.
The chateau estate included a farm, a smallish wood and a lake that Nathan had stocked with carp and perch. One of his parting gifts before he’d left for Lisbon had been a book of his mother’s recipes – things Persian housewives did with freshwater fish – and three years later Hélène was still using it. Only last night she’d conjured pickled carp with a dressing of fresh herbs for her little ménage, drawing nods of approval from most of them, and she smiled to herself to think of her Persian art dealer one da
y back in France. Would Nathan Khorrami ever have the patience for life in the country? Somehow, she doubted it.
The tall windows in the chateau were open. From deep inside came the chime of Malinowski’s precious clock. Six already. The old man would be up, pottering round the kitchen. On the far side of the courtyard was a line of stables. Valmy, her star performer, was corralled behind the blue door at the end. She’d ridden him only last night, for nearly an hour, hacking along the trail that led through the woods towards the water, and afterwards, rubbing him down in the courtyard before filling his bucket with oats, she’d nuzzled the blaze on his long face and whispered about the pleasures he could reliably expect once the people from Paris arrived. They’d be here by nine at the latest. That’s what Klimt had promised, and in the matter of time Klimt was very seldom wrong.
She unlatched the top section of the stable door and swung it open. The horse was waiting for her. Valmy was another present from Nathan, a down-payment – he’d promised – on surviving life under the inevitable occupation. As a two-year-old, this lovely creature – so leggy, so brave – had been a three-times winner at Longchamps before taking the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in 1938. That victory, said Nathan, gave Valmy a stud value beyond rational estimation and the prospects were even sweeter because the very name commemorated the battle in which the French had sent the Prussians packing. In a letter from London posted after he’d taken the flying boat from Lisbon, Nathan had told her that the Germans wouldn’t be able to resist helping themselves to Valmy’s bloodline. Treat them like clients, he’d written. And insist on payment in Louis d’or. Gold trumps currency. Especially in times like these.
He’d been right, of course, but it was never that straightforward because the Germans had a habit of helping themselves. The polite term was requisitioning but to the rest of France it was simple theft. How, therefore, to keep her precious Valmy out of German hands?
She kept a bucket of last year’s apples in the cool of the cellar and she’d slipped a couple into the pockets of her dress before leaving the chateau. This had become an early morning ritual and the moment the horse caught the movement of her hand towards the bulge of the apple it ducked its head and gave a sharp little whinny of expectation. She offered the apple on the palm of her hand, enjoying the rough warmth of the horse’s mouth. Then she became aware of a presence behind her and she sensed at once that it was Klimt. Half an hour ago she’d left him in her bed, fast asleep. Now here he was. No footsteps. No greeting. Not a single clue that he’d stolen up on her. So typical.
She half turned. Well over six foot, he was even taller than her. Light blue eyes, curiously depthless. A mane of blond hair, lightly oiled. And, with the exception of an English cellist with whom she’d once been briefly in love, the most beautiful hands she’d ever seen on a man.
‘Here. Before it gets cold.’ Klimt was carrying a bowl of coffee. His French was perfect.
‘And you?’ She took the coffee.
‘Malin is making another pot. He thinks we should have breakfast before they arrive.’ Malin was their pet name for her resident Pole. In French it translated as ‘smart’ or ‘shrewd’, both close to a perfect description.
‘Malin’s right. I’m famished.’
Klimt nodded, reaching beyond her and stroking the horse. There wasn’t a crease out of place on his green Abwehr uniform and the knee-length leather boots might have been brand new. She had no idea how he always managed to look so immaculate, especially in weather like this, but she knew him far too well to ask. There were parts of this man’s life that she’d never share and she’d learned to prefer it that way. Oberst Bjorn Klimt, her precious key to a Paris that Nathan would barely recognise.
‘Are they still coming for nine?’ she asked.
He shook his head. Otto Abetz’s attaché had telephoned the chateau a couple of minutes ago. The horsebox and escorts were already in Tours. Madame Lafosse was to expect them within the hour.
Otto Abetz was the German Ambassador to France. He lived in some style with his beautiful French wife in the Hôtel Beauharnais behind the Gare d’Orsay. Hélène wanted to know if the expected mare was his.
‘Not at all. It will be a present, une douceur.’
‘From whom?’
Klimt named a prominent French businessman, someone Hélène recognised from her pre-war outings to the patrons’ enclosure at Longchamps.
‘And he’s paying?’
‘Of course.’
‘In gold?’
‘I’m afraid not. He wonders whether US dollars will be acceptable.’
‘How much?’
‘He’s promising $50,000 once she’s in foal.’
Hélène frowned, trying to do the sums in her head. The village school was desperate for a new roof. The Packages for Prisoners’ Fund was undersubscribed. Nathan was asking for $40,000 to conclude a deal on a Picasso canvas smuggled out of Paris only the previous month.
‘I’ll need three times that.’
‘One hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Aucun problème. I’m sure the Frenchman will be happy to pay.’ The smile again. Ways and means. A pleasure to be of service.
3
The Bomb Aimer had been right about Chopville. Billy Angell sat in the Wickenby briefing room, along with the rest of the crew of V-Victor, watching the Wing Commander striding towards the tiny spot-lit stage. Behind him, a black curtain masked the display map that would reveal that night’s target, a small moment of theatre that Billy had always found rather comforting. The room smelled of tobacco and damp raincoats, and there was a feeling of intense anticipation, two memories that took him back to his pre-war days.
Billy was sitting between Les Hammond and the Nav. The previous evening he’d accompanied the skipper to a showing of Casablanca in the Sergeants’ Mess. The prospect of Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart had attracted a full house and the Station Commander had taken advantage by starting the programme with a Road Safety film in the ‘Crime Does Not Pay’ series. The presentation offered a stern list of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’, and ended with the presenter eyeballing the camera. ‘I can tell you people in the audience,’ he’d said, ‘that at the present rate of road accidents one out of every ten of you will be killed within the next five years.’ The Mess erupted. These were odds you could only dream about. At Billy’s side, V-Victor’s Nav was rocking with laughter. Then Billy stole a look at Les Hammond. He was stone-faced. His hands were knotted tightly in his lap. And he couldn’t take his eyes off the screen.
Now he was fidgeting nervously with his pencil as the Wing Commander mounted the stage. The news that V-Victor would be heading for Hamburg came as no surprise. Rumours of a 1,200-gallon fuel load had ruled out both Berlin and the Ruhr, leaving Kiel or Chopburg as favourites. Tonight, though, was to be a raid with a difference. Operation Gomorrah, he promised, would be seen as a turning point in the brief history of Bomber Command.
The Wing Commander was warming up. The map behind him extended deep into Europe. Lengths of red cord marked the outbound track to the target. Landfall on the other side of the North Sea would be the Frisian Islands that straddled the Dutch/German border and red and green celluloid overlays indicated flak and searchlight concentrations as the track dog-legged between them. This, said the Wing Co, was to be an outing in some force. Tally up the first, second and third waves and you were looking at nearly a thousand bombers. Vital, therefore, to be constantly mindful of other aircraft. Wickenby Lancasters would form part of the third wave. Time over target would be 02.10. Bomb the red TIs, and, failing that, go for the cluster of green flares.
TIs were target indicators, flares dropped by the Master Bombers who flew ahead of the bomber stream and orchestrated the entire raid, not a role for the faint-hearted. Billy gazed around at the upturned faces, the half-darkness pricked by the glow of cigarettes. He was one op away from saying goodbye to all this, six hours of flying that could – all too literally – save his life. Return to Wickenby intact and
he’d be back in the real world.
He’d only been flying operationally for four months but by now he was a great deal wiser about what it took to survive. Crew chemistry was all-important but the key was the skipper. The best ones, the ones who made it through, had a gruff self-belief you could recognise within seconds. Harry Williams, barely twenty-two, had it. Other skippers in this room, all survivors, had it. It came from the conviction that you were bloody good, that you had luck on your side and that you were therefore invulnerable. On all three counts, alas, Les Hammond would never belong to this select little group of press-on skippers. In his own mind, he was already a statistic. He wasn’t made for a war like this and sooner or later that same war would find him out. But not, please God, tonight.
The Met brief had started. A warm front was moving out over the North Sea but crews were to expect clear skies over the target. The forecaster began to detail expected winds at various altitudes and Billy watched the Nav beside him scribbling the figures on his notepad. Already, Billy had attended a separate brief for Wireless Operators and his own pad was full of jottings that would ease V-Victor’s passage through the thicket of transmissions over the coming hours. Operationally, he lived in a world of codes. They were all changed daily and if you got them wrong the consequences could be fatal.
The Met man had finished. Supplementary briefings followed before the Wing Commander returned to the stage and summed up. We have, he said, a real opportunity to take the war to the enemy. A thousand aircraft. Six thousand tons of ordnance. And the targets for all that high explosive? German shipyards mass-producing U-boats. Munitions factories. Training facilities. Dozens of other key installations. Hamburg, tonight, was a place you wouldn’t want to be.
The silence that followed wasn’t the reaction the Wing Commander had expected. He peered into the spotlight, gathered up his papers and then nodded towards the door. The flight meal would be served in fifteen minutes. Take-off at 11.30. Good luck and God be with you.
Aurore Page 2
