‘Because it’s Russian territory.’
‘You mean because those engines are more important-’
‘For God’s sake stop it, Neil.’ His voice was suddenly violent. ‘I’ve made a bargain with you. To land there at night will be dangerous enough. But I’m willing to do it — for the sake of your peace of mind.’
‘But not for Tubby?’
He didn’t answer. I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that if I’d described the scene accurately Tubby couldn’t be alive. But at least he had agreed to look for him now and I held on to that.
The urge to find him drove me to work as I’d never worked the whole time I’d been at Membury. I worked with a concentrated frenzy that narrowed my world down to bolts and petrol unions and the complicated details of electrical wiring. Yet I was conscious at the same time of Saeton’s divergent interest. The clack of his typewriter as he cleared up the company’s business, the phone calls instructing the men he’d picked as a crew to report to R.A.F. Transport Command for priority flights to Biickeburg for Wunstorf — all reminded me that, whatever had happened, his driving purpose was still to get his engines on to the Berlin airlift. And I hated him for his callousness.
It was past midnight when the second engine was in and everything connected up. Saeton left at dawn the next morning. The pipes were all frozen and we got water by breaking the ice on the rainwater butt. Membury was a frozen white world and the sun was hazed in mist so that it was a dull red ball as it came up over the downs. The mist swallowed the Tudor almost immediately. I turned back to the quarters, feeling shut in and wretched.
The next two days were the longest I ever remember. To keep me occupied Saeton had asked me to proceed with the cutting up of the old aircraft into smaller fragments. It occupied my hands. Nothing more. It was an automatic type of work that left my mind free to think. I couldn’t leave the airfield. I couldn’t go anywhere or see anybody. Saeton had been very insistent on that. If I showed my face anywhere and was recognised then he wouldn’t go near Hollmind. It meant I couldn’t even visit the Ellwoods. I was utterly alone and by Friday morning I was peering out of the hangar every few minutes searching the sky, listening for the drone of the returning Tudor, It was Saturday afternoon that Saeton got in. He had got his C of A. His crew were on their way to Wunstorf. ‘If it’s clear we’ll go over tonight,’ he said. And we got straight on with the work of preparing for our final departure. We tanked up and he insisted on filling the fuselage of the plane with pieces of the old Tudor. He was still intent on going through with his plan. He kept on talking about the airworthiness tests. The inspectors were pretty puzzled by the engines,’ he said. ‘But I managed to avoid any check on petrol consumption. They know they’re a new design. But they don’t know their value — not yet.’ The bastard could think of nothing else.
Dusk was falling as we finished loading. The interior of the hangar was still littered with debris, but
Saeton made no attempt to dispose of it. We went back to the quarters. Night had fallen and I had seen the last of Membury. When the moon rose I should be in Germany. I lay in my blankets, barely conscious of the gripping cold, my thoughts clinging almost desperately to my memory of the place.
Saeton called me at ten-thirty. He had made tea and cooked some bacon. As soon as he had finished his meal he went out to the hangar. I lingered over a cigarette, unwilling to leave the warmth of the oil stove, thinking of what lay ahead of me. At length Saeton returned. He was wearing his heavy, fleece-lined flying jacket. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes, I’m ready,’ I said and got slowly to my feet.
Outside it was freezing hard, the night crystal clear and filled with stars. Saeton carried the oil stove with him. At the edge of the woods he paused for a moment, staring at the dark bulk of the hangar with the ghostly shape of the plane waiting for us on the apron. ‘A pity,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’ve got fond of this place.’ When we reached the plane he ordered me to get the engines warmed up and went on to the hangar. He was gone about five minutes. When he climbed into the cockpit he was breathing heavily as though he had been running. His clothes smelt faintly of petrol. ‘Okay. Let’s get going.’ He slid into the pilot’s seat and his hand reached for the throttle levers. But instead of taxiing out to the runway, he slewed the plane round so that we faced the hangar. The wicket door was still open and a dull light glowed inside. We sat there, the screws turning, the air frame juddering. ‘What are we waiting for?’ I asked.
‘Just burning my boats behind me,’ he said.
The rectangular opening of the hangar door flared red and I knew then what he had wanted the oil stove for. There was a muffled explosion and flames shot out of the gap. The whole interior of the hangar was ablaze, a roaring inferno which almost drowned the sound of our engines.
‘Well, that’s that,’ Saeton said. He was grinning like a child who has set fire to something for fun, but his eyes as he looked at me reflected a more desperate mood. Another explosion shook the hangar and flames licked out of the shattered windows at the side. Saeton reached up to the throttle levers, the engines roared and we swung away to the runway end.
A moment later we turned our backs on the hangar and took off into the frosted night. At about a thousand feet Saeton banked slightly for one last glimpse of the field. It was a great dark circle splashed with an orange flare at the far end. As I peered forward across Saeton’s body the hangar seemed to disintegrate into a flaming skeleton of steel. At that distance it looked no bigger than a Guy Fawkes bonfire.
We turned east then, setting course for Germany. I stared at Saeton, seeing the hard inflexible set of the jaw in the light of the instrument panel. There was nothing behind him now. The past to him was forgotten, actively erased by fire. There would be nothing at Membury but molten scraps of metal and the congealed lumps of the engines. As though he knew what I was thinking he said, ‘Whilst you were sleeping this evening I went over this machine erasing old numbers and stamping in our own.’ There was a tight-lipped smile on his face as he said this. He was warning me that there would be no proof, that I would not be believed if I tried to accuse him of flying Harcourt’s plane.
The moon rose as we crossed the Dutch coast, a flattened orange in the east. The Scheldt glimmered below us and then the snaking line of water gave place to frosted earth. ‘We’re in Germany now,’ Saeton shouted, and there was a note of triumph in his voice. In Germany! This was the future for him — the bright, brilliant future to replace the dead past. But for me … I felt cold and alone. There was nothing here for me but the memory of Tubby’s unconscious body slumping through the floor of this very machine — and farther back, tucked away in the dark corners of my mind, the feel of branches tearing at my arm, the sight of the barbed wire and the sense of being hunted.
My brain seemed numb. I couldn’t think and I flew across the British Zone of Germany in a kind of mental vacuum. Then the lights of the airlift planes were below us and we were in the corridor, flying at five thousand feet. Saeton put the nose of the machine down, swinging east to clear the traffic stream and then south-west at less than a thousand with all the ground laid bare in brilliant moonlight, a white world of unending, hedgeless fields and black, impenetrable woods.
We found Hollmind, turned north and in an instant we were over the airfield. Saeton pressed the mouthpiece of his helmet to his lips. ‘Get aft and open the fuselage door.’ His voice crackled in my ears. ‘You can start shovelling the bits out just as soon as you like. I’ll stooge around to the north of the airfield.’ I hesitated and he looked across at me. ‘You want me to land down there, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Well, this machine’s heavily overloaded. And that runway hasn’t been used for four years. It’s probably badly broken up by frost and I’m not landing till the weight’s out of the fuselage. Now get aft and kick the load out of her.’