Gustov didn’t know what to make of it. Ellenor Jantz, as alluring as she might have been, had not stolen a bomber. “Has anyone seen her since dinner last night?”
No one had.
Again he watched their faces. With every passing second, his suspicions deepened. He kept his apprehension from his voice when he said, “I find it difficult to imagine that Miss Jantz is actually a man in disguise who was trained by French intelligence to infiltrate a German farm on the small chance that an air squadron would be stationed there so he could steal an observation plane from among a group of freshly painted Fokkers.” He smiled a little; that’s how strange it sounded. “Don’t you all agree?”
His eyes settled on the tall, rangy stablemaster. “You, sir. I’m sorry, but I can’t recall your name.”
“Um…I am Josef. Josef Rosenstein.”
“Of course. I won’t forget again. I couldn’t help but notice that you seem troubled, Mr. Rosenstein. The look on your face…I can’t quite read it. Could you enlighten me?”
Josef turned his cowboy hat over and over in his hands. His friends looked at him askance.
“Mr. Rosenstein? It seems you have us all at a disadvantage. Can you share?”
“It’s that, uh…Ellenor…well, she was…helping someone.”
Gustov moved closer. The crowd parted. He stood before Josef and extended his hand. He’d always liked shaking hands, clasping another’s fingers, making contact. Some days that simple act seemed like the last civilized gesture in the world.
Josef, surprised, shook vigorously.
“Call me Gustov, and I shall call you Joe.”
Josef nodded.
“Joe, I am at a loss. Ellenor did not steal that plane.”
“No, sir.”
Gustov dismissed the sir with a wave. “You’re ten years my senior, Joe. Please call me by the name my mother gave me.”
“All right.”
“So. Ellenor. Our clever American. She was helping someone, you say?”
“Yes, Gustov.”
For some reason, Gustov recalled the line Ellenor had quoted at supper to demonstrate her command of German: Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law. Gustov’s universal law was honor. What was Ellenor’s?
He leaned so close that only Josef could hear: “Helping whom?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Josef whispered the answer in his ear.
Chapter Twelve
Alec nudged the rudder bar with his foot, putting the plane into a smooth, arcing turn. The morning sun waited just ahead, huge but not quite warm, at least not at eight thousand feet above the ground. The engine produced a constant, reassuring hum. Safe behind his goggles, he watched the clouds break apart like things made of gossamer threads. The ground winked by in little patches of brown and green, visible only when he waggled his wings and got a glance over the side.
His plan, of course, was ruined. He tried not to think about that. Not right now. Ellenor was supposed to be distant miles behind him, quietly going about her life as she’d done before she found him crumpled in the wildflowers on the hill. But wasn’t it a German field marshal who warned that no plan survived contact with the enemy? Alec remembered hearing such a thing during his officer training, and it certainly applied now. Enemy bullets had changed everything, and now what in the bloody hell was he supposed to do?
“Just fly, old boy,” he said to himself.
He flew.
The Rumpler impressed him. Seated below the upper wing, with the engine directly in front of him, he felt a sense of stability that he’d not experienced in lighter craft. The gauges were labeled in German on stamped metal plates, but Alec didn’t need to read them, as their function was immediately clear: oil pressure, compass, airspeed, altimeter. He knew them by heart, and he felt a kinship with the Boche pilot who’d most recently occupied this seat. The two of them would never meet. But they both appreciated this small space, where you barely had the room to shift your arse on the seat, yet at the same time, you commanded the pitiful ground below. At any moment you could fall upon the pointless people there and scatter them with your guns.
So caught up was he in his reverie that he almost cried out in surprise when a hand clutched his shoulder.
Ellenor’s shout issued from immediately behind him: “I. Am freezing. To death.”
Shit, he hadn’t even considered her comfort. He nodded hastily to acknowledge her, then eased the plane into a gentle descent, the wires humming between the wings. The land came into focus swiftly, the farms, the fields, the country roads connecting them. Miles of rural Germany lay before them; the streams, plowed fields, and villages looked more like a painting from this distance than real life. Alec brought the plane down even lower, the air warming as he dropped. Though wooded areas were prominent, plenty of open spaces offered impromptu airfields. Alec had memorized the maps and knew his way to Metz, more or less, but he saw no prominent landmarks. Lifting off in the dark had thwarted potential pursuers but removed him from his original flight plan.
He chose a clear pasture with a few head of livestock at the near end but nothing else other than an inviting stretch of native grasses for at least five hundred yards. The morning sun turned that grass to a pale, perfect green.
He dumped his speed and then cut off his engine entirely so that he glided those last few feet before his wheels bumped the ground.
No landing field—improvised or intentional—was ever as smooth as it looked from the air. Holes and ridges abounded, drumming into Alec’s tailbone and knocking him back and forth into the leather-wrapped rim of his hole. He’d learned to absorb much of the force in his shoulders, holding a hunched position while the plane bounded across the ground. He only hoped that Ellenor wasn’t having too poor a go of it behind him.
Momentum carried the Rumpler along, high grasses whipping at the wheels. The back end of the crate touched down, the landing skid creating a jagged wake of weeds and dirt. As friction devoured their momentum, Alec tugged his goggles off and let them hang around his neck. Finally the plane stopped, the prop coming to a standstill like a broken clock.
He twisted in his seat. “Hanging in there?”
She gave him a half-hearted thumbs-up but said nothing. She had a blanket wrapped around her and her pith helmet pulled down over her face.
Alec stood, thrilled and angry at the same time. He needed to reassess the situation but wasn’t sure where to begin. Hauling himself up and out, he noticed something on his seat that he hadn’t seen when climbing inside in the dark. Someone had stitched a single word into the leather: HILDEGARD.
He offered both hands to Ellenor. “Let me help you get out.”
She said nothing, but she grabbed onto him and allowed herself to be hauled from the observer’s seat, a machine gun mounted directly behind her. He assisted her to the ground, and then for several awkward seconds the two of them stood there, one in beekeeping gloves and the other in a helmet that hid her eyes.
Not knowing what else to do, Alec said, “Our bus here has a name.”
Moments passed, and finally she replied: “I don’t know what that means.”
“Bus means plane. Ours is apparently named Hildegard.”
“I thought it was called a Rumpler.”
“Well, I was mistaken. She’s a female, it would seem. And probably once loved by her pilot and observer before she was taken as plunder. Come on. Let’s get you in the sun and warmed up.”
They left the plane’s shadow but took only a few steps before Ellenor stopped. She took off the helmet and let it fall. Her hair was wild around her shoulders. “What have I done? Everything is lost. I can’t go back now.”
“They would have killed you had you stayed.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“They were firing blindly in the dark, quite willing to murder anyone near this plane. Yes, I’m afraid you would have died. I’m glad you got in.”
“But…it wasn’t supposed
to happen like that.”
“Such is daily life in a war.”
“And what am I supposed to do now? Walk back and beg for forgiveness?”
“I shouldn’t think that’s possible.”
“Of course it’s not possible. Everything I had just a few hours ago…it’s gone. That was my life. I agreed to help you, and before I even knew what was happening, it was over.”
“And before I even knew what was happening, you took the seat that is intended for Sarah. I can’t fly both of you out of Germany.”
“I don’t want to leave Germany. This is my home.”
“Well, I’ve spoiled home for you, it seems. Sorry, but there was no way for me to—”
“I know, I know, two people are required to start your damn plane. You’re welcome, by the way.” She sat down on the ground, forearms on her knees.
Alec pinched that place between his eyes and rubbed. The sun rose behind him, revealing dots of lavender and white, a constellation of color across the pasture. He knelt and picked one of the flowers. The French squadron would fill the sky above Metz in three days, at approximately 0400 in the morning. And Sarah’s seat in Hildegard had been taken by a woman who didn’t even want it.
“They’re called die Akelei,” Ellenor said.
He turned. “I’m sorry?”
“That flower in your hand. It’s a Columbine.”
“Ah. I’m assuming you know this because of the bees.”
“I know everything because of the bees.” She hooked her errant hair behind her ear. Her black sweater would warm her quickly in the sun.
Alec felt like challenging her because—even though it wasn’t her fault—she was now an impediment. At the same time, it was his nature to try and lighten the mood. One of his mates back at the aerodrome had said all that optimism was bound to be his undoing. “I bet those bees didn’t teach you the meaning of cootie carnival.”
She finally looked at him. “War slang, I assume?”
“Indeed. A cootie carnival is an act of hygiene in which a soldier attempts to rid himself lice.”
“That is…disturbing.”
“Soldiers do so love a silly phrase. For instance, if you’re said to be ‘fighting on the cognac front,’ that means you’re drunk. And those metal struts there on Hildegard’s undercarriage where the bombs are, that’s called an egg basket.”
“I see.”
“How about a honey wagon?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“It’s an overflowing French manure cart.”
“That’s disgusting.”
He smiled without humor. “Men are a disgusting lot. Pigs, really, every bleeding one of us.”
She was silent for a moment, then: “I’m sorry I’ve ruined things for you.”
He stood up, flower in hand. “Ruined remains to be seen. In the meantime, I don’t know what to do with you.”
“I think I have to go back to Father’s house.”
“You’ll be arrested.”
“What choice do I have?”
“You abetted an enemy soldier. They will not take that lightly. Considering you’re a woman, I doubt they will go so far as to beat the truth out of you, but it still won’t be pretty. They’ll see it as espionage, gender notwithstanding.”
“Espionage? That’s preposterous.”
“They’ll lock you up, preposterous or not. You are not a German citizen. You’re an undocumented foreign operative who will spend the remainder of this endless war in a prison cell in Nuremberg or Heidelberg or some other bloody damn berg.”
“I’m nobody’s operative.”
“An accidental operative, then.”
“I shouldn’t have gotten into the plane. I could have turned around and explained to them—”
“You would have been shot, in the dark.” He went to her and looked down at where she sat in the grass. “That kit you brought along for me. Yesterday you mentioned a blanket and cigarettes. I’m assuming this is the blanket here, so I’m wondering about the tobacco. If we’re going to be miserable, we might as well be miserable and smoke.”
“It’s in the bag.”
He flicked the Columbine away and mounted Hildegard’s wing. The observer’s seat—a wooden stool on a swivel—was surrounded by a steel ring, allowing the Parabellum MG14 machine gun to move in a complete circle. He looked around the small space. On one side of the stool was a hole in the floor, into which had been placed the long, boxy lens of a powerful reconnaissance camera the observer employed to take photographs of the land below. A bomb range finder was fixed beside it. On the other side was a Telefunken wireless transmitter unit for sending Morse messages to the ground. Alec reached down and extracted a well-traveled valise from under the seat.
The valise was unlatched—Ellenor had retrieved the blanket from it—so he quickly located the tobacco and put a match to his first cigarette since departing the aerodrome. It felt divine, like scripture on a Sunday morning. He jumped off the wing, leaned against the plane, and inspected the cigarette package. He couldn’t read a word of it. He exhaled a funnel of smoke. “What does Nil mean?”
“It’s the German word for the Nile.”
“You mean the river?”
She kept her eyes on the pasture. “I suppose so.”
He sat on the ground a few feet away from her, the morning world opening up before them. The only sound was that of the chatting birds. “When we go up again, we’ll need to keep you warm.”
“I have no coat.”
“You can wear mine.”
“And what will you wear? I know little about flying, but I have recently learned that it’s incredibly cold up there.”
True enough. And they’d been at only eight thousand feet, which meant the temperature was about thirty degrees colder than it was at ground level. Hildegard could reach over twice that elevation. No one could survive up there without adequate insulation. “I have an idea,” he said.
She looked at him and waited.
“There’s a village about a mile from here.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it before we landed. It’s east, just down the way there. I’ve no idea who lives there or if it’s any kind of proper place at all, but you need better clothing, and I need a bit of time to ponder our situation and find a solution.”
“So…we’re going to visit this town and…purchase an overcoat?”
“Perhaps. Have you any money?”
She snorted. “Yes, I always keep fifty Deutsche Marks in my left boot whenever I’m stealing airplanes.”
“Oh, is that all? I’ve got at least three hundred hidden in my shorts.”
She acknowledged his retort with a partial smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Sorry. What I should have said is no, I don’t have any money. I don’t have anything but what I’m wearing. I left it all behind.”
A lesser woman might have broken down and cried. Ellenor just ripped blades of grass between her fingers.
“Well…” He got back to his feet, then tried and failed to blow a smoke ring. “I guess there’s nothing for it but to keep up our thieving ways and steal a coat.”
He held his hand out to her and waited.
Chapter Thirteen
Trudging through the wilderness in a part of Germany she’d never visited, Ellenor decided she would personally—by herself, if necessary—end the Great War. She’d do it like this: One, wash her face and apply fresh cosmetics. Two, drive to Kaiser Wilhelm’s imperial palace in Berlin. Three, give him a good American kick in the shin and tell him to stop ruining everything.
And what would old King Willy tell her as he rubbed his lower leg? I didn’t ruin everything, Fräulein. You’re quite adept at that yourself.
She walked beside Alec, two hours after dawn. They crossed a heath of mostly open land, dotted with copses of stout evergreens and the occasional elaborate elm. Nothing here was spoiled. Half a mile back they’d come upon a mostly buried caisson stamped with a fading Iron Cr
oss, but otherwise they had seen no evidence that the Fatherland was at war with enemies on two fronts. They found an array of flat stones that allowed them to cross a stream so clear that every glossy pebble was visible under the water.
We gave you employment and a surrogate family, Wilhelm reminded her.
It was true. Despite the war that the Kaiser had declared from his balcony three years ago, Ellenor had constructed a fine and rewarding life, even while men were shredded not far away at Verdun. The French town of Fleury changed hands sixteen times over the course of the protracted battle, and each time, thousands died either to seize it or hold fast to it. That was the definition of futility. And all the while, Ellenor was making fast friends with Germans like Josef and Dagmar. She ate dinner with them almost every evening. They were her family. They liked to laugh. Now she would likely never see them again.
“Care to share your thoughts?” Alec asked. They’d walked silently for the last several minutes, leaving tracks behind that would be gone by noon.
“Sometimes I find it hard to recall what I was doing before my life here in Europe,” she said. “It wasn’t so long ago. Is that strange?”
“Hardly. I don’t think I even existed before the RFC found me.”
“What did you do? Before the war, I mean.”
“As little as possible. I studied, but not much. I played cricket, but not well.”
“That’s what I mean. The details seem very far away now.”
We gave you Father, Wilhelm said, and you stabbed a knife in his heart.
Ellenor pushed the voice away. It was her own.
Alec walked with his hands in the pockets of his flannel pants. “It’s enough to make one wonder what the days will hold after the fighting has stopped.”
“Have you thought about what you’ll do?”
“Fly on, I imagine.”
“Fly to where?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They say there’s a future for aircraft in delivering the post.”
“You’ll carry mail in an airplane?”
“Sounds unlikely, doesn’t it? I suppose I’ll just have to take up beekeeping.”
The Beekeeper's Bullet Page 8
