It wasn’t Billy, it was the man I didn’t know, Giuseppe. He was standing at the root of the starboard wing painting out the airline’s name on the fuselage, and he saw me as soon as I opened the door not far below him. I pulled the door shut behind me and started down the ladder, hearing Giuseppe shouting and warning all the others. They had ladders to get down too, I thought. I could still make it.
Giuseppe was of the hard core, a practising militant communist. He was also young and extremely agile. Without attempting to reach a ladder he ran along the wing to its tip, put his hands down, swung over the edge, and dropped ten feet to the ground. Seeing his running form outlined on the wing against the stars I veered away to the left as soon as I had slid down the ladder, and struck out forwards, more or less on the same axis as the plane.
My eyes weren’t accustomed to the light as theirs were. I couldn’t see where I was going. I heard Giuseppe shouting in Italian, and Yardman answering. Billy tried a shot which missed by a mile. I scrambled on, holding my arms up defensively and hoping I wouldn’t run into anything too hard. All I had to do, I told myself, was to keep going. I was difficult to see in black and moved silently over the grass of the field. If I got far enough from the plane they wouldn’t be able to find me, not five of them with Alf no better than a snail. Keep going and get lost. After that I’d have all night to search out a bit of civilisation and someone who could speak English.
The field seemed endless. Endless. And running hurt. What the hell did that matter, I thought dispassionately, with Billy behind me. I had also to refrain from making a noise about it in case they should hear me, and with every rib-stretching breath that got more difficult. In the end I stopped, went down on my knees, and tried to get air in shallow silent gulps. I could hear nothing behind but a faint breeze, see nothing above but the stars, nothing ahead but the dark. After a few moments I stood up again and went on, but more slowly. Only in nightmares did fields go on for ever. Even airfields.
At the exact second that I first thought I’d got away with it, bright white lights blazed out and held me squarely in their beams. A distant row of four in front, a nearer row of four behind, and I a black figure in the flarepath. Sick devastating understanding flooded through me. I had been trying to escape down the runway.
Sharply, almost without missing a step, I wheeled left and sprinted; but Giuseppe wasn’t very far behind after all. I didn’t see or hear him until the last moment when he closed in from almost in front. I swerved to avoid him, and he threw out his leg at a low angle and tripped me up.
Even though I didn’t fall very heavily, it was enough. Giuseppe very slickly put one of his feet on each side of my head and closed them tight on my ears. Grass pressed into my eyes, nose and mouth, and I couldn’t move in the vice.
Billy came up shouting as if with intoxication, the relief showing with the triumph.
‘What you got there then, my friend? A bleeding aristocrat, then? Biting the dust, too, ain’t that a gas?’
I guessed with a split second to spare what he would do, and caught his swinging shoe on my elbow instead of my ribs.
Yardman arrived at a smart military double.
‘Stop it,’ he said. ‘Let him get up.’
Giuseppe stepped away from my head and when I put my hands up by my shoulders and began to push myself up, Billy delivered the kick I had avoided before. I rolled half over, trying not to care. The beams from the runway lights shone through my shut eyelids, and the world seemed a molten river of fire, scarlet and gold.
Without, I hoped, taking too long about it I again started to get up. No one spoke. I completed the incredibly long journey to my feet and stood there, quiet and calm. We were still on the runway between the distant lights, Yardman close in front of me, Giuseppe and Billy behind, with Rous-Wheeler struggling breathlessly up from the plane. Yardman’s eyes, level with mine, were lit into an incandescent greenness by the glow. I had never clearly seen his eyes before. It was like drawing back curtains and looking into a soul.
A soldier without patriotism. Strategy, striking power and transport were skills he hired out, like any other craftsman. His pride was to exercise his skill to the most perfect possible degree. His pride overrode all else.
I think he probably meant it when he said he liked me. In a curious way, though I couldn’t forgive him Gabriella, I felt respect for him, not hatred. Battle against him wasn’t personal or emotional, as with Billy. But I understood that in spite of any unexpected warmth he might feel, he would be too prudent to extend foolish mercy to the enemy.
We eyed each other in a long moment of cool appraisal. Then his gaze slid past me, over my shoulder, and he paid me what was from his point of view a compliment.
‘You won’t crack him, Billy. Kill him now. One shot, nice and clean.’
Chapter Fifteen
I owed my life to Billy’s greed. He was still hungry, still unsatisfied, and he shook his head to Yardman’s request. Seeing the way Yardman delicately deferred to Billy’s wishes it struck me that Rous-Wheeler’s simile of a tiger on a leash might not be too far off the mark. In any case for the first time I was definitely glad of Billy’s lust to spill my blue blood ounce by ounce, as I really was most averse to being shot down on the spot; and I acknowledged that I already had him to thank that I was still breathing at all. If I’d been anyone but who I was I would have died with the crew.
We walked back up the runway, I in front, the other four behind. I could hear Rous-Wheeler puffing, the only one not physically fit. Fit... It was only yesterday, I thought incredulously, that I rode in the Gold Cup.
The plane was a faintly lit shape to the left of the end of the runway. A hundred yards short of it Yardman said, ‘Turn left, dear boy. That’s it. Walk straight on. You will see a building. Go in.’
There was, in fact, a building. A large one. It resembled an outsize prefabricated garage, made of asbestos sheets on a metal frame. The door was ajar and rimmed by light. I pushed it open, and with Billy’s gun touching my back, walked in.
The right hand two-thirds of the concrete floor space was occupied by a small four-seater single-engined aeroplane, a new looking high winged Cessna with an Italian registration. On its left stood a dusty black Citroen, its bonnet towards me. Behind the car and the plane the whole far wall consisted of sliding doors. No windows anywhere. Three metal girders rose from floor to ceiling on the left of the car, supporting the flat roof and dividing the left hand part of the hangar into a kind of bay. In that section stood Alf.
‘Right,’ said Yardman briskly. ‘Well done, Alf, turn them off now.’ His voice echoed hollowly in space.
Alf stared at him without hearing.
Yardman went up to him and shouted in his ear. ‘Turn the runway lights off.’
Alf nodded, walked up to the wall on the left of the door I had come in by, and pushed up a heavy switch beside a black fuse box. A second similar box worked, I suppose, the fluorescent strips across the ceilings and the low-powered radiant heaters mounted high on both side walls. Beside the switches stood a mechanic’s bench with various tools and a vice, and further along two sturdy brackets held up a rack of gardening implements; spades, fork, rake, hoe and shears. Filling all the back of the bay was a giant motor mower with a seat for the driver, and dotted about there were some five gallon petrol cans, funnels, tins of paint, an assortment of overalls and several greasy looking metal chairs.
That Cessna, I thought briefly; I could fly it like riding a bicycle. And the car... if only I had known they were there.