There was no point in arguing with him. I turned and went through the door to the fuselage. The dark bulk of the fuel tanks loomed in front of me. I climbed round them and then I was squeezing my way through the litter of the old Tudor that was piled to the roof. Jagged pieces of metal caught at my flying suit. The fuselage was like an old junk shop and it rattled tinnily. I found the fuselage door, flung it back and a rush of cold air filled the plane. We were flying at about two thousand now, the countryside, sliding below us, clearly mapped in the white moonlight. The wings dipped and quivered as Saeton began to bank the plane. Above me the lights of a plane showed driving south-east towards Berlin with its load of freight; below, the snaking line of a river gleamed for an instant, a road running straight to the north, the black welt of a wood, and then the white weave of ploughed earth.
The engines throttled back and I felt the plane check as Saeton applied the air brakes. I caught hold of the nearest piece of metal, dragged it to the wind-filled gap and pushed it out. It went sailing into the void, a gleam of tin twisting and falling through the slipstream. Soon a whole string of metal was falling away behind us like pieces of silver paper. It was like the phosphorescent gleam of the log line of a ship marking the curve of our flight as we banked.
By the time I’d pitched the last fragment out and the floor of the fuselage was clear, I was sweating hard. I leaned for a moment against the side of the fuselage, panting with the effort. The sweat on me went cold and clammy and I began to shiver. I pulled the door to and went for’ard. ‘It’s all out now,’ I told Saeton.
He nodded. ‘Good! I’m going down now. I’ll take the perimeter of Hollmind airfield as my mark and fly in widening circles from that. Okay?’ He thrust the nose down and the airfield rose to meet us through the windshield. The concrete runways gleamed white, a huge cross. Then we were skimming the field, the starboard wing-tip down as we banked in a right turn. He was taking it clockwise so that I had a clear, easy view of the ground through my side window. ‘Keep your eyes skinned,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll look after the navigation.’
Round and round we circled, the airfield sliding away till it was lost behind the trees. There was nothing but woods visible through my window, an unending stream of moon-white Christmas trees sliding away below me. My eyes grew dizzy with staring at them, watching their spiky tops and the dark shadows rushing by. The leading edge of the wing seemed to be cutting through them, we were so low. Here and there they thinned out, vanishing into patches of plough or the gleam of water. The pattern repeated itself like flaws in a wheel as we droned steadily on that widening circle.
At last the woods had all receded and there was nothing below us but plough. Saeton straightened the plane out then and climbed away to the north. ‘Well?’ he shouted.
But I’d seen nothing — not the glimmer of a light, no fire, no sign of the torn remains of parachute silk — nothing but the fir trees and the open plough. I felt numb and dead inside. Somewhere amongst those woods Tubby had fallen — somewhere deep in the dark shadows his body lay crumpled and broken. I put the mouthpiece of my helmet to my lips. ‘I’ll have to search those woods on foot,’ I said.
‘All right,’ Saeton’s voice crackled back. ‘I’ll take you down now. Hold tight. It’s going to be a bumpy touchdown.’
We banked again and the airfield reappeared, showing as a flat clearing in the woods straight ahead of us. Flaps and undercarriage came down as we dropped steeply over the firs. The concrete came to meet us, cracked and covered with the dead stalks of weeds. Then our wheels touched down and the machine was jolting crazily over the uneven surface. We came to rest within a stone’s throw of the woods, the nose of the machine facing west. Saeton followed me out on to the concrete. No light showed in all the huge, flat expanse of the field. Nobody came to chal lenge us. The place was as derelict and lonely as Membury. Saeton thrust a paper package into my hand. ‘Bread and cheese,’ he said. ‘And here’s a flask. You may need it.’
‘Aren’t you coming with me?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘I’m due at Wunstorf at 04.00. Besides, what’s the use? We’ve stooged the area for nearly an hour. We’ve seen nothing. To search it thoroughly on foot would take days. It doesn’t look much from the air, but from the ground-’ He shook his head again. ‘Take a look at the size of this airfield. Just to walk straight across it would take you half an hour.’
I stood there, staring at the dark line of the woods, the panic of loneliness creeping up on me. ‘I won’t be long,’ I said. ‘Surely you can wait an hour for me — two hours perhaps?’ The plane was suddenly important to me, my link with people I knew, with people who spoke my own language. Without it, I’d be alone in Germany again — in the Russian Zone.
His hand touched my arm. ‘You don’t seem to understand, Neil,’ he said gently. ‘You’re not part of my crew — not yet. You’re the pilot of a plane that crashed just north of here. I couldn’t take you on to Wunstorf even if you wanted to come. When you’ve finished your search, make for Berlin. It’s about thirty-five miles to the south-east. You ought to be able to slip across into the British Sector there.’
I stared at him. ‘You mean you’re leaving me here?’ I swallowed quickly, fighting off the sudden panic of fear,
‘The arrangement was that I should fly you back to Germany and drop you there. As far as I’m concerned that plan still holds. All that’s different is that I’ve landed you and so saved you a jump.’
Anger burst through my fear, anger at the thought of him not caring a damn about Tubby, thinking only of his plans to fly his engines on the airlift. ‘You’re not leaving me here, Saeton,’ I cried. ‘But I must know whether he’s alive or dead.’
‘We know that already,’ he said quietly.
‘He’s not dead,’ I cried. ‘He’s only dead in your mind — because you want him dead. He’s not dead, really. He can’t be.’
‘Have it your own way.’ He shrugged his shoulders and turned away towards the plane.
I caught him by the shoulder and jerked him round. ‘All right, he’s dead,’ I shouted. ‘If that’s the way you want it. He’s dead, and you’ve killed him. The one friend you ever had! Well, you’ve killed your one friend — killed him, just as you’d kill anyone who stood between you and what you want.’
He looked me over, measuring my mood, and then his eyes were cold and hard. ‘I don’t think you’ve quite grasped the situation,’ he said slowly. ‘I didn’t kill Tubby. You killed him.’
‘Me?’ I laughed. ‘I suppose it wasn’t your idea that I should pinch Harcourt’s Tudor? I suppose that’s your own machine standing there? You blackmailed me into doing what you wanted. My God! I’ll see the world knows the truth. I don’t care about myself any more. What happened to Tubby has brought me to my senses.
You’re mad — that’s what you are. Mad. You’ve lost your reason, all sense of proportion. You don’t care what you do so long as your dreams come true. You’ll sacrifice everything, anyone. Well, I’ll see you don’t get away with it. I’ll tell them the truth when I get back. If you’d got a gun you’d shoot me now, wouldn’t you? Or are you only willing to murder by proxy? Well, you haven’t got a gun and I’ll get back to Berlin somehow. I’ll tell them the truth then. I’ll-’
I paused for breath and he said, ‘Telling the truth won’t help Tubby now — and it won’t help you either; Try to get the thing clear in your mind, Fraser. Tubby’s dead. And since you killed him it’s up to you to see that his death is to some purpose.’
‘I didn’t kill him,’ I shouted. ‘You killed him.’
He laughed. ‘Do you think anybody will believe you?’
‘They will when they know the facts. When the police have searched Membury, when they have examined that plane and they’ve interrogated-’