Operation Afterlight, page 16
“What’s a night intruder?” She said it before Durban could continue, knowing the answer but needing to distract herself from the thought of who else might join the Nazis in their damnation. After six years of bloody war, no one’s hands were unstained. Hers, least of all.
“Me,” Durban said. “In a radar-equipped Mosquito night fighter. Not alone, of course. For eleven months, I flew with the same navigator and radar operator. Clive Lampeter. My friend.” There was a catch in his voice, the first chink in that infuriatingly British calm resolve of his. “As part of 100 Group, our job was to catch the Germans with their trousers down. As they got airborne,” he added, possibly seeing the look on her face.
Certain English idioms still confused her, even after all these years. It was her third language, after all.
He looked away from her, staring at the wall. The shadows under his eyes darkened as his face turned from the light. “People think of air combat as somehow noble,” he said. “Knights of the sky. It’s rubbish, all of it. A man doesn’t get seven kills by playing fair. He gets them by circling over enemy airfields at night, waiting for some scared boys to get airborne with dreams of protecting their country, and then hunting them down before the poor bastards even have time to get their landing gear up.”
She let the silence hang for a good ten seconds. “Tell me about Gisela.”
He nodded. Resumed, as if nothing had happened, tone dispassionate. A history lesson, nothing more. “The Luftwaffe did to us what we were doing to them. Instead of meeting us over the target, they would get us when we were landing. Getting a heavy bomber on the ground safely is never easy. After ten hours in the air, fuel running low, battle damaged over the target, possibly with dead or wounded onboard, it becomes a nightmare. Can you imagine it?”
She shook her head. She didn’t want to.
“The night of 3 March,” he said. “Our intelligence chaps put it all together afterwards. We sent over eight hundred bombers that night. Mission successful, lots of damage. Eight bombers lost over Germany. Less than one percent loss rate. We used to dream of figures that low. My 100 Group colleagues killed two of their night fighters over their bases. Clive and I didn’t find any targets. I remember being disappointed that there weren’t more German aircraft up. I felt like we’d missed out. Still, it all looked good. Another job well done. What we didn’t know was that the Luftwaffe never intended to fight us over the target that night. They followed us home instead.”
His hand shook. “Ju-88s. The only fighter the Germans had left with the range to pull it off. They came in low, below our radar coverage. No one expected them. Certainly not me.” He glanced at her, then closed one hand over the other, tilting his body away from her to hide the motion.
“Even low on fuel, a bomber burns brightly. The first Clive and I knew was when they started lighting up the skies before dawn, like new-born stars. I don’t know how many German night fighters there were. One hundred and fifty? You would think they were everywhere. Attacking bombers by the glow of the runway lighting, homing in on their navigation lights, hitting tired crews already thinking of supper and bed. I know how many they lost. Six over England. Clive and I got one of those. Best part of twenty if you include crash landings and bail outs over the Channel. I know how many we lost. Twenty-five, including my own. Seventy-nine men. Including Clive Lampeter.” His voice sank to a whisper. “That one’s on me.”
“How do you mean?”
He turned back to her. To the sound of her voice, she corrected herself. Nothing in his eyes suggested he saw her. He was somewhere else.
“Clive wanted me to land. We were short on fuel, even shorter on options. Airfields were going dark across England, trying to deny the Germans easy targets. Clive’s job was to get me home, and he’d done it twenty-nine times before. You’d think I would be smart enough to listen, but my job was to kill enemy fighters. I took us back into the fight. I got a Ju-88, too, only for one of our own side, another bloody Mosquito, to return the favour. Clive died instantly, leaving me to crash land alone.”
“One of ours hit you?”
“Friendly fire,” Durban said, a bitter chuckle escaping his throat.
“And yet you blame yourself?”
He snorted. “Of course. Who else would you blame? The other Mosquito? He was supposed to be there. I wasn’t.”
She didn’t flinch at the anger in his voice. After all, it wasn’t directed at her. “How many other men might have died if you hadn’t got that Ju-88? You did your job.”
“I ignored my navigator, and my arrogance got him killed.”
“You did your job,” she repeated. “Surely, you’re too smart to blame yourself for that? The guilt comes because he died while you walked away, and that isn’t fair.”
He mumbled something.
“I’m sorry?”
“I didn’t exactly walk away,” he said.
“You were hurt?” She remembered the way he had winced when Embry had clapped him on the shoulder.
“Not badly. A broken rib, some bruising. A few stitches.” He sounded like a man confessing to a crime, but still holding something back. Underplaying the damage. “They carried me on a stretcher and straight off to the hospital. Rather efficient of them, if I’m honest.”
She frowned. “That was the third of March?”
“Morning of the fourth.”
“Andy, the first time we met was the fourteenth.”
“Well remembered.”
“With injuries like that, you should still have been in the hospital.”
“The doctors said much the same thing, yet here I am. I have a squadron to command.”
“You have a job to do.” She wondered if he heard it as affirmation or accusation. His face betrayed nothing. Truth was, she didn’t know herself.
“Look,” he said, rubbing his eyes as if to clear them, “I may have taken us a little off the subject there. What were we supposed to be doing now?”
“Finding Stahl.” She forced a smile. “Then you said something about a drink.”
“Right,” he said, then paused. He swallowed. “Sod it. I need a drink more than I need Stahl. Let’s get one in the bar. Better still, two. Then we’ll dig him up. Does that sound ok?”
“It sounds good.”
He sucked in a deep breath, grabbed his hat, and patted his trouser pockets. “Can you see my car keys anywhere?”
She shook her head.
“Never mind.” He shrugged. “I’m sure they will turn up.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Norfolk, 23 March
With Grant waving to the dithering guards, they left the front gate and turned right onto the main road. Stahl genuinely wanted to see more of the local area, and he felt an immediate softening of the pressure on his chest the moment the airfield was behind them. The surrounding fences looked too much like those around Flossenbürg, and every glimpse of a Mosquito brought fresh memories of what he had seen below the smoke on the photographs of Hildesheim. Durban would be furious if he knew, but Stahl reckoned that, with luck, he could return the car with the Wing Commander none the wiser. Even if Durban noticed the lowering of the fuel needle, the man had no meaningful power over him.
“We have about an hour of daylight left,” Grant said. “What do you want to see?”
“Show me something beautiful.”
“Around here?” Grant laughed. “I’ll try my best. It’s all a lot like this, though.”
“Flat?”
“You think this is flat? You should see where we trained to fly in Canada. Just like this, but fewer trees and villages, and it just went on forever, horizon to horizon. Boring as hell. Take a left up here.”
“Boring can be beautiful,” Stahl said. “I have not been bored since 1939.” He slowed for the junction, waiting for three army lorries to pass before turning. “I grew up in the mountains of Bavaria, not like this at all. Your island home, it is beautiful?”
“Oh, yes,” Grant sighed. “I didn’t realise how amazing it was until I left. As a kid, I didn’t appreciate things like the trees or the colour of the sea.” His voice wavered as he spoke. “I was too busy wondering whether our Murr would find food for us to eat that day.”
“You were poor?”
A shrug. “No more than the other children.”
“You miss it. So why are you here, Grant? After all, you are…”
“Black, sir?”
“Not British.”
“Same King,” Grant sniffed.
“Is that it? King and country?” He put on his best British accent for the phrase.
“Not really.” For a few seconds, Grant just stared out to the side at the Norfolk countryside, spreading away in all directions. “It’s not just me. There must be five hundred of us in Bomber Command alone, counting all the islands. We’re doing our bit, don’t doubt that. But when the war is over, I’ll be going home and doing my best to make sure Barbadians never have to fight in a British war again.”
“You surprise me. A revolutionary?”
“A politician,” Grant said. “There is already an independence movement at home. Once we have peace, the clamour will only get stronger. We need changes. I want to be part of that.”
Stahl laughed. “You could be the first Prime Minister of the independent Barbados.”
“Why not?” Grant fixed him with a furious gaze, and Stahl realised he had caused offence. The young man intrigued him. He had taken Grant for a youth, a child playing among men, but there was true strength in those flashing eyes. Perhaps if the young men of the Weimar Republic had been more like Grant, they would have fought back against Nazi ambitions instead of joining the Party in their droves.
“You do not wish to be ruled by the British Empire,” Stahl said, “and yet you fight for it.”
Now it was Grant’s turn to laugh, a mirthless bark dragged from him. “Do you think life on the islands would be better under the Führer?”
“I know it would not. But Germany lost the war the day Hitler turned on Russia. We stopped posing a threat to your home long ago. So, I ask again. Why?”
“Because I don’t like bullies,” Grant snapped. “And because you don’t make a better world by ignoring the horrors in this one.”
Yes, Stahl told himself. More German youths like this one, and the Nazis and their whole twisted ideology would have been stillborn on the altar of forgotten history.
If he’d been more like Grant himself…
Ahead of them, stone buildings rose out of the deepening gloom beyond a narrow bridge. Stahl forced levity into his voice, even as his hands threatened to crush the steering wheel in his pained grip. “Thank you, Grant.”
“Johnny.”
“Thank you, Johnny Grant. This trip has been most illuminating. Perhaps I could buy you a drink in this lovely little town?”
“I think not. The Wing Commander would definitely not approve of that.”
“This is a two-seat car, Johnny. And I am the only one in it with you.” Their headlamps illuminated a square ahead, and the swinging sign above the door of a pub. “And as I am the driver,” he added, “I think I insist.”
Grant was not quite ready to give up. Not yet. “This isn’t a good idea,” he mumbled as Stahl parked.
“Nonsense.” Stahl found his British accent again. “I speak perfect English. I assure you, I will not stand out.” To his own ears, at least, he sounded exactly like Andrew Durban. “And I would very much like to try this warm beer I have heard so much about.”
“One drink. That’s it.”
The pub did not exactly fall silent as they walked in the door, but reputations were hard to earn in the SS, and Stahl could not have survived to garner his own without being able to read the danger in a changing mood. It didn’t matter that he had only been in British pubs three times before, including one memorable occasion when he had eliminated a traitorous double-agent in the stinking toilets of an underground London tavern, cutting the man’s throat before calmly washing his hands and leaving. He didn’t need more experience than that. The warning signs of potential hostility and violence were universal.
Sweeping the room with a practiced gaze, he counted seventeen people. He dismissed four immediately. Older men and their wives. Of the rest, the six young men watching from the far end of the bar stood out. Farmers, he guessed, their hands calloused, the exposed skin of their thick forearms tanned despite the early season. He noted the way the two young women with them stared at Grant with wide, appreciative eyes. The navigator wore the only uniform in the pub.
The sensible move was to walk straight out.
He thought of the aerial photographs of Hildesheim.
He was not feeling sensible.
Grant swept past Stahl on his way to the bar, obviously oblivious to the atmosphere. Brave, but not too smart. He greeted the older woman behind the counter with a big smile. “Evening,” Grant said. “Two pints of Best, please.”
“We don’t often see men in uniform on their own here, Johnny,” the woman said. “Not on a locals’ night. Who is your friend?”
“Sorry, May. This is…” He hesitated.
“John,” Stahl said. “John Steel. It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“I’m sure it is,” May said, ignoring his offered hand. She made no move towards the long-handled beer pumps, either. “Look, Johnny, tonight isn’t a good night.”
“It’s alright, May,” one youth said, walking towards them. “We’re always happy to see the brave boys from the RAF.”
There was the hint of a slur in his words. Sunburnt skin at his temples. A long day in the field on an unseasonably warm afternoon, probably some dehydration, followed by several pints. Tipsy.
Belligerent.
“Are you a pilot, mate?” The youth ran his fingertip along the breast of Grant’s uniform, picking at the wings of the aircrew brevet, pushing a little harder than necessary.
“Navigator,” Grant said. The smile was still on his face, though a little forced now. He didn’t back away, Stahl noted, even as the rest of the farmers moved closer.
“Isn’t that just a passenger?” The man laughed at his own cleverness. A few others joined in. Stahl guessed the rest did not understand the joke. “Still get flying pay, though, I guess. Must be nice. Come on, May, why don’t you pour us all a pint? Flyboy here can spare the money, I’m sure.”
“I think the young man and his friend were just leaving,” May said firmly.
“No, they’re not,” the farmer said. “That would be rude of them. Why don’t we all have a drink together? Like the friends we are.”
“Go ahead, May,” Grant said. “Eight pints, and whatever the ladies want.”
“Rum and lime, please,” the first girl said.
Stahl leaned back against the bar and let his fingertips close together in front of his chest.
“Phil,” the second girl said to the farmer, “can we just go back to our table?”
“Shut up,” he hissed at her, then looked at Stahl. “What about you, mate? You a hero too?”
“Just a friend,” Stahl said mildly, “enjoying the local scenery.”
“I’ll bet,” the man said, leering, revealing teeth stained by tea, with a few missing altogether. “You like them a fair bit younger, don’t you?”
The other men snickered. It took Stahl a moment longer to realise what that comment meant. Perhaps his English was not as good as he thought it was. It mattered little. Languages had never been his primary skill set.
There was still time to walk away, a small part of his brain told him. Buy the men some drinks, mutter a bland apology, walk out of the door and ignore the laughter behind. That would be the efficient option.
May began placing pints on the bar. “If you cause trouble in here, Philip Mugleston, you’ll be looking for somewhere else to drink. And I’ll be having words with your father.”
Mugleston. Stahl was glad for a name.
The drinks were not well-poured. Rushed. A pity. He had been looking forward to an English pint, even if only to remind himself how much better the beer was in Bavaria.
“No trouble, May,” Mugleston said. “Just a drink with our heroes.” He grabbed a pint and took a deep swig before wiping his mouth with the back of one dirty hand. “Pay the woman,” he said.
“These are on the house, Johnny.”
“Rubbish, May. Johnny here can afford it, can’t you? So go on then. Eight pints.”
“And a rum and lime,” the first girl added brightly.
The navigator did not move, and Stahl felt a sudden surge of admiration. The young man really did not like bullies. A truly impressive individual. If only he had known more men like Johnny Grant.
“I will get these, May,” Stahl said. Familiar sensations flooded into his limbs. He welcomed them. Right now, he needed them. Needed the reminder that he still lived. He held up a thumb and one finger, then let the hand drop back in front of his chest. “Two pints, anyway. The little ones can pay their own way.”
Now, at last, the room fell truly silent.
A couple of the farmers, the ones least blinded by drink, backed off. Not physically, but Stahl saw the retreat in their eyes, like a partial release of air from an overfilled balloon. The girls, too. Whatever they thought was happening, it had just stopped being fun for them.
The other men, less so.
“That’s not very friendly, mate,” Mugleston said. “All we wanted was to have a drink with you.” He looked down at the half-finished pint in his hand.
This close, Stahl smelt the beer on his breath. Far more than one pint. He saw the telltale signs of tension in the farmer’s body, the little glimpses of the mental script that the man was following, preparing himself, the same script that had roamed his stupid, overconfident brain since the moment Grant had opened the front door.
If he had been feeling more generous, Stahl might have thanked him. Images of Hildesheim fled his mind, driven out by the now. Flossenbürg. Paris. London. Vienna. The teenage soldiers on the Swiss border. All faded to nothing.
