The Final Flight

by James Blatch

  She looked away across the field to the fences that surrounded the airfield. “My father came out of the First World War like that. Part of a generation of British men who don’t look in the mirror. This whole head-down, get-on-with-it, stiff-upper-lip stuff. It has a function because it allows you to carry on in desperate times, but believe me, it’s not without consequences. You’ll pay the price with the rest of your life.” She turned to him. “And so will your children.”

  The Moon crept up beyond the trees; the orange glow gave way to a silvery light that played across her face.

  She reached across and brushed a tear from his cheek.

  “I’ll need to go back and talk to JR as soon as possible,” said Rob. “This is going to take some planning.”

  Headlights swept across the airfield to their right, and a vehicle approached the fence. She grabbed Rob’s hand and lowered him to the ground behind the trunk.

  They lay still, next to each other. He basked in the warmth of her body, his heart thudding in his chest. Susie wrapped an arm around him.

  The vehicle moved away and they stood up.

  “You can talk to JR tomorrow. We’re running out of time so don’t dilly-dally.”

  “It might actually be easier if I go and see JR now. I’ve got a front door key for the mess at home.”

  Rob pulled up in front of the house; there was a light on downstairs.

  He breezed in, picked up his mess keys from a set of hooks just inside the back door.

  He looked across to the lounge where the light was on, and hesitated.

  On the kitchen table was a half drunk cup of tea. He touched it.

  Still warm.

  Rob stood and listened carefully, but the house was silent.

  He turned and left for West Porton.

  After fiddling with the mess side door, he made his way along one wing to the central lobby to identify JR’s room number.

  First Floor, Room 12.

  The place wasn’t completely quiet; he could hear some laughter coming from somewhere. A few of the boys playing cards, no doubt.

  Next to a batting room on the first floor was a door with the number ‘12’, and the label SQ LDR JL RICHARDSON DFC.

  Rob tapped gently, but got no response and tried again more firmly.

  Eventually, he heard some movement. The door opened to reveal a surprised-looking old pilot in a red silk dressing gown.

  “Flight Lieutenant May.” JR glanced down the corridor. “Twice in one night. I suppose you want to come in?”

  JR’s room was large, with two single beds and a basin.

  “Nice,” Rob said, looking round.

  “I bagged it when TFU was just a twinkle in Mark Kilton’s eye. They’ll get me out of it in a wooden box. Smoke?” JR offered him a silver case, opened to reveal about twenty filter tipped cigarettes.

  “Thank you.” Rob took a cigarette and a box of matches from the engraved case.

  He took a seat in an armchair; JR perched on the end of his bed.

  “What are the chances that you could replicate the trip to Abingdon with me on board?”

  JR thought about it. “I don’t see why not, but it’s risky. A lot could have gone wrong and Millie could have ended up in very deep water. Are you happy to take that risk, even in this febrile atmosphere at West Porton?” JR raised his eyebrows.

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Well, we’ve still got the Anson; but I fear it’s in a few pieces at the moment. Might have it ready for Friday.”

  “That’s too late. Can you do Wednesday?”

  JR shook his head. “Not Wednesday. Station Commander’s annual inspection. No flying. We’ll be standing by our beds saluting. I dare say we could encourage the engineers to have it ready for Thursday, though. Best I can do.”

  “There are no other options over there?”

  “Not really. We have a Beverley destined for the scrap heap, but it’s a team effort to get that airborne and not quite the discretion you’re looking for. The Twin Pioneer’s dead, and I can’t see it being resurrected this month. No, sorry, it’s the Anson or bust, and they’ll need tomorrow at the very least to get it back together. So with the inspection on Wednesday, Thursday’s the best I can do.”

  “It’s fine, JR. Incredibly kind of you, actually.”

  “So. How will this work?”

  Rob puffed out a breath. “I haven’t got that far yet. I’ll have to call in sick. I can’t think of anything else that would excuse me for the day.”

  JR nodded. “OK. But you live in the middle of a married quarter patch, surrounded by TFU officers. Won’t they see you?”

  “I hadn’t really thought of that.”

  “And the main gate? Lots of eyes as the cars crawl through at that time in the morning.”

  Rob sagged in his seat. “As I say, I hadn’t really thought it through.”

  JR drummed his fingers on his thigh for a moment before sitting up. “We can do this. How about I pick you up? You drive that red Healey don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Far too conspicuous. Nestle into the passenger seat of my old banger. I’ll come and get you. Let’s choose somewhere you can walk to, away from the patch. How about that shop on Church Street? Do you know it?”

  “The newsagents? Yes.”

  “I’ll scoop you up, drive you onto the station and around to 206. Your Healey can stay in front of your house. It’s not perfect, but it’s better.”

  “Thank you, JR. You really are a different breed across that side of the airfield.”

  “Chap, when you’ve delivered thousand pounders to a heavily defended Berlin a dozen times, the odd clandestine trip around here doesn’t seem so bad.”

  Rob stood up and held out a hand. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’m looking forward to it. Nice for an old warhorse to be on operations again.”

  As Rob switched off the car lights in the driveway, he noticed a vehicle parked across the road with a man sat at the wheel.

  He stared in his wing mirror but couldn’t make out any features; just the outline of a figure.

  As he locked the Healey, a terrible thought occurred.

  He was being watched.

  Had they followed him everywhere?

  Or was this man with Susie? Protecting her? Monitoring him?

  He stood by his car, unsure what to do.

  If it was West Porton security, he was done for, surely?

  “Bugger this.”

  He marched across the road.

  As he approached the car, the man turned toward him and looked alarmed.

  He wound down the window.

  “Can I help you?” Rob said.

  The man stared, mouth open, apparently at a loss.

  “Who are you?” Rob said.

  “I’m Derek Laverstock. We met at church a few times. My wife knows your wife.”

  “What are you doing here, Mr Laverstock? Are you watching me?”

  Laverstock shifted in his seat.

  “I think you need to speak to your wife.”

  Rob looked back at the house and then back to Laverstock. “What’s going on?”

  “Just speak to Mary, Mr May.”

  Rob slowly turned and walked back to their married quarter.

  He found Mary exactly where he’d left her, on the sofa.

  “What’s going on, Mary? Why is a man called Derek Laverstock outside watching us?”

  Mary stared at him for a moment and then said, “What’s her name?”

  “Whose name?”

  Mary’s face creased up into tears. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

  Rob took a seat opposite her in the armchair.

  “Oh, Mary. No. It’s not what you think—”

  “Really? You lied to me, Rob. You lied tonight, didn’t you? I called the mess. There was no meeting to plan the wake.”

  “No, there wasn’t. But it’s not what it looks like.”

  “You lied on Tuesday night a
s well, didn’t you? You weren’t at the mess then. You stood in our kitchen and looked me in the eye and you lied. You lied to me.”

  Her voice trembled.

  He stood up.

  “Keep away from me.”

  “Mary, you’ve got it wrong—”

  “No, Rob, I haven’t.” Her voice settled. Now she sounded steady, defiant. “They saw you. You’ve been caught. Janet and Derek from church saw you last week in a pub with her. Just the two of you. Janet thought it might be innocent, but she saw you kissing.” She began to sob. “For Christ’s sake, Rob. Just down the road from us, for everyone to see? And just when… just when I thought you were back. Back in our relationship. But you’ve betrayed me in the worst possible way.”

  “No, Mary, no. That’s not right. It’s not what you think.”

  As he stepped back from her, he noticed a suitcase by the front door.

  “For Christ’s sake, Mary, you’re not going to leave, are you? You haven’t even heard what I’ve got to say. She isn’t a lover. She’s helping me. The kiss was a cover. It’s how she operates.”

  Mary stood up and snorted her contempt.

  “Helping you? With what?”

  “The box. She stole it.”

  “It’s her? The CND woman? Bloody hell Rob, have you lost your mind?”

  “She’s not CND. She’s working against them. She’s helping me now. She works for…” He hesitated. If Mary was determined to leave, what if she told the Laverstocks? What if they told someone else and it got back to Kilton?

  “I’m waiting, Rob.”

  “Look, I can’t say too much and you mustn’t say anything to anyone. But Mary, please trust me. Please.”

  Mary glared at him. “How old is she? Twenty? You expect me to believe a bloody twenty-year-old girl is somehow helping you? And by the way, you don’t tell me anything anyway, Rob. Not one thing and now…” She sobbed harder. “And now you’re telling this twenty-year-old everything?”

  Rob knelt down in front of her. “I don’t know what to say, Mary. I know it looks bad, and I can see how that’s hurt you. But please believe me. I haven’t told you to protect you—”

  She stared at him. “I’m hurt, Rob. You’ve betrayed me. But even before this, I was unhappy. I don’t suppose you noticed, because you were never here, but things haven’t been right for a long time. I thought you’d changed after the crash, but all you’ve done is create another life that doesn’t involve me.”

  She walked to the front door and placed a hand on the suitcase.

  “It’s time to reap what you’ve sown, Rob. You had your chance to involve me, you chose someone else.”

  “Mary, no. You’ve got this wrong. She’s helpful to me and I need help at the moment. It will be done this week, I promise, and then I’ll be back. I’ll never see Susie again, I promise.”

  Mary’s face changed. The hand holding the suitcase was shaking.

  “‘Susie’. How lovely. I hope you and that little slut will be very happy together. How could you, Rob? How could she? Does she know what she’s done?”

  He moved toward her; she flinched and took a step back.

  He was crying now. “Please don’t back away. I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t leave me. I love you, Mary.”

  She opened the door. This time Rob held back.

  “You know what hurts the most, Rob? That’s the first time you’ve told me you loved me in two months. Something happened to you when you joined this place. First you dumped Millie and now you’ve dumped me.”

  “That’s not fair. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I don’t know anything, remember? Perhaps I should ask Susie what my husband’s thinking.”

  Before he could respond, Mary disappeared into the night. He watched through the small window next to the front door as she walked to Laverstock’s car. She pushed her suitcase onto the back seat and climbed into the front passenger side and held her head in her hands.

  As he pulled away, Laverstock glanced back towards him.

  29

  Tuesday 5th July

  “You’re planning what?” Roger asked.

  “It’s the best way,” said Susie. “He retraces Milford’s steps. There’s a limited number of places he could have got to from an aeroplane on the Tarmac at Abingdon.”

  “This is irregular. You’re supposed to be keeping it low-key. You know they’re jumpy about this. I can’t see them going for it.”

  “Well, your job is to persuade them, Roger. There’s something rotten here. Milford got the evidence before he was killed. We just need to identify who he was working with and the whole thing’s blown open.”

  “Blowing the whole thing open is precisely what they’re trying to avoid, Susie.”

  “Even if there’s corruption at the centre of a UK arms project?”

  “Obviously not. If that’s the case, then bring it in, but you’ll need irrefutable, solid evidence. Nothing less will do.”

  “We’ll get it, if we retrace Milford’s steps.”

  She heard shuffling at the other end of the line and then a muffled conversation. Roger must have his hand over the phone.

  Eventually he came back on. “I’ll ask. That’s the best I can do. But don’t expect them to say yes. When exactly are you planning this little jaunt?”

  “Tomorrow, hopefully.”

  “Bloody hell. You are a firecracker.”

  TFU was the last place Rob wanted to be.

  He pulled over while they searched his car. Guards shuffled around the Austin Healey.

  Sleep had come to him eventually, in the early hours. But it was fitful and he ached with exhaustion.

  “You can go, sir.”

  He sat motionless in the driver’s seat, staring ahead.

  “Sir!”

  At TFU it was business as usual. Pilots and air crew hunched over charts and flight planning paperwork.

  Men in orange vests and light blue coveralls heading out to shiny jets.

  “Hey, Buddy. Wales OK?”

  Red held a chart in front of him. He’d drawn a familiar line through the central valleys to Aberystwyth.

  “Fine.” Rob turned away.

  “Don’t be too enthusiastic,” Red called after him. “It might catch on.”

  Like a robot, he pulled on his coveralls, dressed for the Vulcan and headed out.

  He was co-pilot for the trip, which suited him.

  At the aircraft, he waited for a member of the ground crew to open the hatch. While he did so, Rob walked around, pausing at the glass-covered laser mounted under the nose. He peered in at the swivel head, noticing for the first time an intricate series of small mirrors set inside the mechanism. A delicate system that decided their fate.

  Arriving back at the hatch, he climbed in. Red strapped into the left hand seat, the mirrored visor on his USAF helmet and oxygen mask giving him the look of an illustration on the front cover of an Isaac Asimov novel.

  He pulled the mask away to speak.

  “All good?”

  “Sorry?”

  “The walkaround, Rob. All good?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Red’s stare lingered. “You OK?”

  Rob pulled on his straps. “Yes. Let’s get going.”

  “OK, then.”

  Rob busied himself with procedure: checklists, radio calls, liaison with Berringer in the rear bay.

  Brunson got them airborne and put the Vulcan into a smooth ascending turn to the west.

  By the time they’d let down over the borders, Rob had taken the controls, glad of the distraction.

  As they handed the jet over to Guiding Light, he monitored the ground ahead, noting every approaching rise and fall of the green and brown landscape.

  Ready to disengage.

  If something went wrong now, even at the relative safety of one thousand feet, it would save a lot of trouble. With testimony from Brunson and the others, that would surely prompt a stay of execution for the project.
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  But the equipment performed flawlessly, and they climbed out over the Rheidol estuary.

  Rob banked the jet one hundred and eighty degrees and Brunson took over for the transit home.

  Another forty minutes low-level ticked off. Another step toward the United Kingdom presenting the United States with a system to beat the Soviets and maybe even end the Cold War.

  Rob flew a repeat of the track in the afternoon. This time Red supervised the low-level and he handled the transits.

  At 4.45PM he walked the completed reels over to the safe, returned to his car and drove home.

  He called the operator, who put him through to the Laverstock’s.

  “Hello?” Derek’s voice.

  “It’s Flight Lieutenant May. Can I speak to my wife, please.”

  There was a pause.

  “Mr May?” Janet Laverstock’s voice came on the line.

  “Yes. Can I speak to my wife, please?”

  “She’s resting.”

  “Can you tell her I’m on the line? She’s my wife.”

  “I’m sorry, she’s had a very difficult day and I don’t want to wake her. I’ll tell her you called and if she wants to speak, she will call you back.”

  “Excuse me, Mrs Laverstock—”

  The line went dead.

  He kicked the telephone table; it collapsed to the ground, taking the phone with it.

  For a change of scenery and because of the outside chance she was being watched, Susie walked all the way across Salisbury and found a different phone box for her afternoon call.

  The greeting with Roger was more perfunctory than normal. He wasted no time in passing on the bad news.

  “Sorry, my dear. They just can’t have an agent involved in such a flagrant breach of rules and with such flimsy evidence. Well. No evidence, in fact.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Roger. Did you even try?”

  “Of course I did. You know me, I can be very persuasive.”

  “I want to talk to them myself.”

  “Why? They’ve given their answer.”

  She should have gone back to London to present the case herself.