Kleiss said, “What’s wrong with the machine?”
“Er, it ran over a boulder and buckled the frame.”
Kleiss took the strut from him. Harald hoped he did not know what he was looking at. Horses were the man’s business, and there was no reason why he should be able to recognize part of the undercarriage of an aircraft. Harald stopped breathing, waiting for Kleiss’s verdict. At last the man gave him back the strut. “All right, on your way.”
Harald walked into the woods.
When he was out of sight, he stopped and leaned against a tree. That had been an awful moment. He thought he might vomit, but managed to suppress the reaction.
He pulled himself together. There might be more such moments. He would have to get used to it.
He walked on. The weather was warm but cloudy, a summer combination dismally familiar in Denmark, where no place was far from the sea. As he approached the farm, he wondered how angry old Nielsen was that he had left without warning after working only one day.
He found Nielsen in the farmyard staring truculently at a tractor with steam pouring from its engine.
Nielsen gave him a hostile glare. “What do you want, runaway?”
That was a bad start. “I’m sorry I left without explanation,” Harald said. “I was called home to my parents’ place quite suddenly, and I didn’t have time to speak to you before I left.”
Nielsen did not ask what the emergency had been. “I can’t afford to pay unreliable workers.”
That made Harald hopeful. If money was what the mean old farmer was concerned about, he could keep it. “I’m not asking you to pay me.”
Nielsen only grunted at that, but he looked a shade less malign. “What do you want, then?”
Harald hesitated. This was the difficult bit. He did not want to tell Nielsen too much. “A favor,” he said.
“What sort?”
Harald showed him the strut. “I’d like to use your workshop to repair a part from my motorcycle.”
Nielsen looked at him. “By Christ, you’ve got a nerve, lad.”
I know that, Harald thought. “It’s really important,” he pleaded. “Perhaps you could do that instead of paying me for the day I worked.”
“Perhaps I could.” Nielsen hesitated, obviously reluctant to do anything helpful, but his parsimony got the better of him. “All right, then.”
Harald concealed his elation.
Nielsen added, “If you fix this damn tractor first.”
Harald cursed under his breath. He did not want to waste an hour on Nielsen’s tractor when he had such a short time to repair the Hornet Moth. But it was only a boiling radiator. “All right,” he said.
Nielsen stomped off to find something else to grumble about.
The tractor soon ran out of steam, and Harald was able to look at the engine. He immediately saw that a hose had perished where it was clamped to a pipe, allowing water to leak out of the cooling system. There was no chance of getting a replacement hose, of course, but fortunately the existing one had some slack in it, so he was able to cut off the rotten end and reattach the hose. He got a bucket of hot water from the farmhouse kitchen and refilled the radiator-it was damaging to run cold water through an overheated engine. Finally he started the tractor to make sure the clamp held. It did.
At last he went into the workshop.
He needed some thin sheet steel to reinforce the fractured part of the axle strut. He already knew where to get it. There were four metal shelves on the wall. He took everything off the top shelf and rearranged the items on the three lower shelves. Then he lifted the top shelf down. Using Nielsen’s metal shears, he trimmed off the flanged edges of the shelf, then cut four strips.
He would use these as splints.
He put one strip in a vise and hammered it into a rough curve to fit over the oval tube of the strut. He did the same with the other three strips. Then he welded them in place over the dents in the strut.
He stood back to look at his work. “Unsightly, but effective,” he said aloud.
Tramping back through the woods to the castle, he could hear the sounds of the army camp: men calling to one another, engines revving, horses whinnying. It was early evening, and the soldiers would have returned from their day’s duties. He wondered whether he would have trouble getting back into the church unnoticed.
He approached the monastery from the back. At the north side of the church, a young private was leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. Harald nodded to him, and the soldier said in Danish: “Good day, I am Leo.”
Harald tried to smile. “I’m Harald, nice to meet you.”
“Would you like a cigarette?”
“Thank you, another time, I’m in a hurry.”
Harald walked around to the side of the church. He had found a log and rolled it under one of the windows. Now he stood on it and looked into the church. He passed the wishbone strut through the glassless window and dropped it onto the box that stood below the window on the inside. It bounced off the box and fell to the floor. Then he wriggled through.
A voice said, “Hello!”
His heart stopped, then he saw Karen. She was at the tail, partly concealed by the aircraft, working on the wing with the damaged tip. Harald picked up the axle strut and went to show it to her.
Then a voice said in German, “I thought this place was empty!”
Harald spun around. The young private, Leo, was looking in through the window. Harald stared at him aghast, cursing his luck. “It’s a storeroom,” he said.
Leo wriggled through the window and dropped to the floor. Harald shot a glance back to the tail of the aircraft. Karen had vanished. Leo looked around, seeming curious rather than suspicious.
The Hornet Moth was covered from propeller to cabin, and the wings were folded back, but the fuselage was visible, and the tail fin could be made out at the far side of the church. How observant was Leo?
Luckily, the soldier seemed more interested in the Rolls-Royce. “Nice car,” he said. “Is it yours?”
“Unfortunately not,” said Harald. “The motorcycle is mine.” He held up the axle strut from the Hornet Moth. “This is for my sidecar. I’m trying to fix it up.”
“Ah!” Leo showed no sign of skepticism. “I’d like to help you, but I don’t know anything about machinery. Horseflesh is my specialty.”
“Of course.” They were about the same age, and Harald felt sympathy for the lonely young man far from home. But he wished all the same that Leo would go before he saw too much.
A shrill whistle sounded. “Suppertime,” Leo said.
Thank God, Harald thought.
“It was a pleasure talking to you, Harald. I look forward to seeing you again.”
“Me, too.”
Leo stood on the box and pulled himself out through the window.
“Jesus,” Harald said aloud.
Karen emerged from behind the tail of the Hornet Moth, looking shaken. “That was a nasty moment.”
“He wasn’t suspicious, he just wanted to talk.”
“God preserve us from friendly Germans,” she said with a smile.
“Amen.” He loved it when she smiled. It was like the sun coming up. He looked at her face as long as he dared.
Then he turned to the wing she had been working on. She was repairing the rips, he saw. He went closer and stood next to her. She was dressed in old corduroy trousers that looked as if they had been worn for gardening, and a man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled. “I’m gluing patches of linen over the damaged areas,” she explained. “When the glue is dry, I’ll paint over the patches to make them airtight.”
“Where did you get the material, and the glue, and the paint?”
“From the theater. I fluttered my eyelashes at a set builder.”
“Good for you.” It was obviously easy for her to get men to do anything she wanted. He was jealous of the set builder. “What do you do at the theater all day, anyway?” he said.