For an hour or more I limped along that arrow-straight road without seeing a living soul, with only the constant drone of Gatow to remind me I was still in a living world and to give me hope. Then at last, when I was tottering with weakness, I saw the distant gleam of lights shining on a road barrier. I was nearing the limits of the Russian Zone. That knowledge gave me fresh strength. I walked to within five hundred yards of the barrier and then turned down a side-street.
At a crossing a small truck slipped quietly eastward without lights. I followed it on to a quiet, rubble-packed track that ran close beside the railway. A goods train clanked noisily, a rattle of buffers that seemed to split the night it was so loud in the utter stillness.
For half an hour I walked eastward, searching the track ahead, trembling and scuttling into the shadows at every sign of movement. But always it was nothing but my eyes playing me tricks. And at the end of half an hour I knew I must have passed over into the British Sector. A blockade-running German lorry had shown me the way through the road checks.
I followed thei railway right into Spandau and there a German railway worker going on duty at five in the morning directed me to a British Army M.T. Section. I must have looked a pretty sight, for all the time he was talking to me the German kept looking nervously about him and when he had given the directions I wanted he was almost running in his hurry to get away from me.
I found the place without difficulty. It was an R.A.O.C. Depot and a big board directed me into the sidings of what had once been a huge factory. I was trembling with fatigue and feeling sick with relief when I faced the German orderly who seemed to be the only person awake in the depot. At first he refused to do anything about me. His eyes were coldly contemptuous. I began to curse him in English, all the filthy words I could think of spewed off my tongue as I consigned the whole German race to perdition with tears of frustration hot on my eyeballs. Still he didn’t move, and then I saw hanging on a peg a web belt complete with holster and revolver. I dived towards it, pulled the revolver out and thumbed forward the safety catch with trembling fingers. ‘Now, get the duty officer,’ I shouted. ‘Quick! Or I shoot.’
The man hesitated and then hurried out, returning a few minutes later with a tall, lanky youth who had an officer’s greatcoat wrapped over his pyjamas, a solitary pip gleaming on its shoulder. ‘What’s the trouble?’ he asked sleepily, rubbing at his eyes.
‘My name’s Fraser,’ I said. ‘Squadron Leader £ Fraser. I’ve just got out of the Russian Zone. I’ve got to get to Gatow at once.’
He was staring at the weapon in my hand. ‘Do you usually go about threatening people with revolvers?’ He came across to me and took the revolver out of my hands. ‘This is an Army revolver. Is it yours?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I got it there.’ And I nodded to the belt hanging on the hook.
The lieutenant swung round on the orderly. ‘What’s that equipment doing there, Heinrich?’
They began a long discussion as to why an officer had left it in the orderly room. At length I shouted at him, ‘For Christ’s sake!’
He turned and stared at me blankly. ‘Heinrich here says you threatened him with this revolver,’ he said accusingly.
‘Look!’ I couldn’t keep my hands still, I was so angry. ‘Can’t you understand what I’m trying to tell you? I’m an R.A.F. officer. I’m a pilot on the airlift and my plane crashed at Hollmind. I’ve just got out of the Russian Zone. I must get to Gatow quickly. I want transport. Do you understand? Some transport. I’ve got to get to Gatow.’ I was talking wildly. I knew that. I knew I must seem like a lunatic, but there was nothing I could do about it. My nerves were all to pieces.
‘May I have a look at your papers, please?’
I fumbled for my wallet, dropping the papers on the floor in my nervous haste. The German orderly picked them up for me and handed them back with a click of the heels. His eyes were no longer contemptuous.
The lieutenant glanced through them. ‘You say you crashed at Hollmind?’
I nodded.
‘When?’
When? Was it the night before last or — no I mustn’t say that. It was the original night he wanted, the night when Tubby had gone out through the door. My mind searched desperately for a date, but I’d lost all sense of time. ‘Several days ago,’ I mumbled. ‘What’s it matter when I crashed?’
‘What’s your base?’
‘Wunstorf.’
‘You were flying a York?’
‘No. A Tudor tanker.’
‘A Tudor. His face suddenly cleared and he gave me a sheepish grin. ‘I say, I’m awfully sorry, sir. Of course, I know who you are now. You’re the chap who flew that Messerschmitt out of Germany during the war. I mean — well, there’s been a lot about it in the papers. Nobody could find any trace of the plane and you and Carter were missing.’ He looked at me, hesitating awkwardly. ‘You look as though you’ve had a rough trip, sir. Are you all right? I mean, oughtn’t I to run you down to a first-aid post?’
‘I must get to Gatow,’ I said.
‘Yes, of course. I’ll drive you myself. I’ll just put some things on. Won’t be a jiffy.’ He hesitated in the doorway. ‘Would you like a cup of char? And you’d probably like to get cleaned up a bit. That’s an awfully nasty cut you’ve got.’
He took me through to the washroom. The water was icy cold. However, I cleaned off some of the dirt and he produced a proper bandage from a first-aid kit. Then the German orderly appeared with a steaming tin mug of dark, sweet tea. Ten minutes later we were in an Army fifteen hundredweight roaring along the Wilhelmstrasse.
We turned left on to the Gatower Damm. I knew I was home then, for planes were thundering low overhead with their flaps down and the underbelly of the low cloud was illumined by the brilliant fire-glow of the sodium lights and high-intensity cross bars that marked the approach to Gatow.
We were stopped at the barrier to Gatow Airport and a corporal of the R.A.F. Police came out and peered at the car, a gleam of white-blancoed webbing against the blue of his battledress. Then he asked for our papers. ‘Squadron Leader Fraser is just out of the Russian Zone,’ my lieutenant explained quickly. ‘He’s the pilot of that Tudor that crashed.’
The corporal handed my papers back without looking at them. ‘Glad you’re safe, sir.’ He drew himself up stiffly and saluted. The truck ground forward. ‘Where do you want to go?’ the lieutenant asked. ‘Terminal building?’
All the time I’d been getting closer to Gatow I’d been wondering about what I should do when I got there. There was Diana. That was the first thing I had to do — tell Diana that Tubby was alive and safe. And I wanted to get hold of Saeton. Now that I was back in the organised life of Occupied Berlin I had a feeling that there might be difficulties raised about landing an R.A.F. plane in the Russian Zone. Officially it would be embarrassing. If the plane were captured by a Russian patrol the diplomatic repercussions would be endless and far-reaching. But if Saeton would land there unofficially… He had the nerve to do it. He wouldn’t be hide-bound by regulations and diplomatic dangers. Saeton was the person I had to see. ‘Will you take me straight to the Malcolm Club, please,’ I said.
‘Malcolm Club? That’s down by FASO, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Sure you don’t want to report in to Ops first?’ he asked.
‘No. The Malcolm Club, please.’
‘Okay.’
The truck slipped down through the trees, past the lighted entrance of the mess and then suddenly there were the yellow and purple runway and perimeter lights of Gatow with the concrete square box of the terminal building to the right, rising to the tall, lighted windows of the control tower. The truck turned left through the white-painted boundary fence, skirted a B.E.A. Skymaster and hummed across the tarmac which was streaked with a white, wind-driven powder of snow. The hangars were dark, rectangular shadows to our left and ahead the lights of Piccadilly Circus shone yellow, showing the PLUME standing empty of aircraft. Planes moved along the perimeter track, engines roaring, drowning the thinner sound of planes streaming in along the runway. Everything was normal, familiar. I might never have been outside the organised bus-service of the airlift.