The Challenging Heights

by Max Hennessy

  As they drew closer to the Italian Legation, a fleet of horse-drawn ‘growlers’, such as had graced London’s streets at the turn of the century, passed them, carrying officials in frock coats and top hats but without ties, the last traces of the King’s modernisation campaign.

  The Italians added their fleet of cars to the procession and they set off again through the snow. The aircraft were flying in even as they arrived, four Victorias and the Hinaidi and half a dozen DH9s. One of the top-hatted, frock-coated tieless diplomats was arguing with MacAllister. The King had bolted with his luggage, two of his wives and their children and the Foreign Minister and his family, leaving the rest of his harem and their children and his agonised officials to face the mob.

  The Hinaidi was just turning as they reached her. The pilot had a rim of ice attaching his moustache to his scarf but, with a grin, he produced a bottle of beer which he’d brought for Dicken. It had frozen on the way, however, and they had to break it with a spanner and distribute the pieces of iced beer to anyone who wanted one.

  The airfield was several inches deep in snow, so, threatening, arguing, disputing, pleading, Dicken, Hatto, MacAllister and Father O’Buhilly and all the young men persuaded everybody who could walk to tramp up and down the landing strip to flatten it for aircraft to take off. Even the top-hatted ministers added their weight and soon there was a horde of people moving up and down.

  The King’s harem left first. They were shrouded from head to foot, not even their eyes showing, and they climbed into the interior of the Hinaidi like a troop of ghosts, not speaking, doing exactly as they were told. They refused the proffered blankets and sat in silence like huddled bundles of dirty washing. When they were all aboard there was room for two more so the German Minister, who was very fat and had a history of heart trouble, was pushed in after them with his wife. They were enormous under the layers of clothing they were wearing, the Minister’s wife even wearing three hats, one on top of another, and the door seemed to be an insuperable obstacle but, with the aid of a shoulder behind them, they were successfully injected inside.

  As the women began to enter the Victorias, Marie-Gabrielle refused to leave Dicken’s side but the machines finally took off full, leaving only thirty of the women behind until the next day. The top-hatted ministers were stuffed with their luggage into the rear cockpits of the DH9s and the fleet of aircraft began to manoeuvre round the field, until with a roar, the engines opened up and they slid away over the tightly packed snow to lift off one after the other and head for the hills.

  The night was very dark because the moon was late rising and they made a point of fortifying the few sheds near the hangars in case of an attack, but, with the King gone, the rebels had poured into Ambul, looting, raping and murdering. Part of the city was in flames, the strong breeze wafting the fires across the ancient, wooden-framed buildings. From midnight until the next morning, they could hear firing going on, long rattles of musketry and machine gun fire as the King’s troops, knowing what their fate would be, tried to hold out.

  Dicken spent the whole night sitting next to Father O’Buhilly with his revolver in his hand, his arm round Marie-Gabrielle. She said nothing, merely huddling against him until she fell asleep. They were awakened by the sun in their faces and almost at once they caught the low hum of aircraft and soon afterwards saw the first Victoria appear over the mountains to the south.

  ‘This time you’ll have to go,’ Dicken said as it landed and swung to face the breeze.

  Marie-Gabrielle nodded. ‘Yes. I understand. I’ll go now.’ She turned and, putting her hands on his shoulders, kissed him on the mouth.

  He watched her climb into the Victoria and saw her take a seat where she could look through the window. Other women were pushed aboard and the door slammed. The idling engines roared, the tail swung and the window framing her pale face disappeared. Seconds later the Victoria was roaring off the ground and heading south.

  As Dicken stared after it, a hand gripped his shoulder. It was Father O’Buhilly.

  ‘I think you’d better pray for me, Father,’ Dicken said quietly. The Rezhan air force commander was looking nervous by this time because he’d heard that the Bachi’s troops, having destroyed the city, were now heading for the airfield. They watched anxiously, one eye on the south, the other on the road from the city. People were moving in the distance and they could even make out their individual shapes, black against the snow, when the first of the Victorias reappeared.

  As soon as it touched down, MacAllister gestured to twenty of the refugees to be ready. As it swung round and the door opened, the twenty clambered aboard, and as it started to move again, a second Victoria arrived. As it did so the mob appeared on to the edge of the field, surrounding one of the sentries. In a moment they were hammering him with rifle butts and they finally started tossing him into the air and catching him on bayonets as he came down. His screams died as MacAllister signalled to the second batch of refugees.

  ‘Let’s hope,’ one of his young men said, ‘that none of the aeroplanes conks out.’

  When the last Victoria arrived, there were still over thirty of them left, Dicken, Babington, Handiside and the ground staff, MacAllister and his young men, the airfield commander who was clearly taking no chances, and several of his pilots. The pilot this time was Hatto and he didn’t hesitate. ‘Shove ’em all aboard,’ he said. ‘We’ll manage.’

  The mob were streaming across the field now, their chests criss-crossed with bandoliers of bullets, and they halted in a long straggling line about a hundred yards away. Agitators were shrieking abuse and demanding that they attack the aeroplane, but the mob stood watching, the line broken now into scattered groups.

  There was a gap in front of them and Hatto shouted out. ‘Hold your hats on,’ he said.

  As he opened the throttles and the Victoria began to gather speed, Dicken found MacAllister clutching the Union Jack he had rescued and looking at him with apprehension.

  Dicken managed a smile. ‘The usual procedure at a time like this, sir,’ he said, ‘is to cross all disengaged fingers and hope.’

  The Victoria was rumbling towards the scattered line now, until it seemed it was going to plough into them, but at the last moment, realising what would happen if one of the whirling propellers hit them, the mob began to scatter, yelling with fright. A few slow movers flung themselves flat and one of the agitators flung a stick. It bounced off a strut then the rocking wings steadied, and, as the tail came up, Hatto pulled back on the control column.

  For a minute the wheels continued rumbling beneath them and Dicken could see the end of the field with the hangar rushing towards them. Then as the shaking stopped, he realised they were airborne. For a long time, Hatto held the machine down, allowing it to build up speed until it seemed they were going to fly straight through the hangar, then Dicken felt it lift, agonisingly slowly until the roof of the hangar flashed past beneath them, no more than a few feet from the wheels. There was a yell from the cockpit and Hatto’s voice came, elated and joyful.

  Looking back, Dicken saw the mob had reached the ancient DH9s belonging to the Rezhan air force. The remaining Russian pilots were in a group, clearly intending to defend them, but the mob swept over them and the sticks, swords and guns rose and fell as the mob surged over them. Fragments of clothing flew through the air, then the bloody wreckage of what had been men was hoisted up on the bayonets and he could see the open mouths of the howling mob.

  MacAllister’s face had grown stiff and taut, as though he were watching the end of a world, a world of grace where the prestige of the British Empire had been important enough to stop a war and protect its citizens. For a while it had worked, then it had all fallen apart, and the butchery seemed to go to his heart like a dagger thrust.

  Eight

  It was wonderful to feel the warmth of the Indian sun as they stumbled out of the fuselage. They had bee
n shockingly cramped for the hour and a half flight, so many of them packed inside the fuselage they could barely move. An airman, counting them as they appeared, looked at Hatto.

  ‘My God, sir,’ he said, ‘where did you put ’em all?’

  Hatto shrugged. ‘You might well ask.’

  As Dicken appeared, his grin died and he slapped him on the back.

  ‘Nice to have you home, old lad,’ he said quietly. ‘I expect they’ll be sending me back to Iraq now that the job’s done. Perhaps they’ll even give us leave and send us home.’ He paused. ‘What’ll you do?’

  Dicken looked up, unable to thrust from his mind the incredible conversations he’d had with Marie-Gabrielle. ‘Go and find Zoë, I suppose,’ he said.

  Hatto frowned and was silent for a moment. ‘Dick, old lad,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you get my message?’

  ‘What message was that?’

  Hatto looked uncomfortable. ‘Someone should have told you. A message was sent, I know. I expect it was overlooked in the panic. She went missing between Singapore and Java.’

  Dicken was silent, uncertain what to say. ‘She’ll be all right,’ he said slowly. ‘She’s always all right. She’s got the luck of the devil.’

  Hatto sighed. ‘Not this time, old lad. They fished the wreckage out of the sea two days ago. They were still inside.’

  For a long time, watched by curious airmen, Dicken walked slowly about the airfield. Babington approached him, then, seeing the expression on his face, turned away and Dicken guessed that someone had told him the news.

  What happened, he wondered? Had Angus Packer, the navigator, been another of Zoë’s bad choices, like Charley Wright and Harmer and George Peasegood? He tried to avoid the thought of her struggling in the water, her hair plastered across her face, blood on her cheek, her eyes wild and afraid, gasping as she fought for breath. It was too painful and as it kept returning he brushed it away with a movement of his hand. He’d never see her grin again, or hear that blunt forthrightness that had captivated him as a boy and hurt him so often as a man. Drowning was a wretched way to die and the thought of her struggling in the water came back again, stark and nauseating, so that he had to put aside the image of her terror as the water filled her throat and nose and eyes and nostrils.

  When he returned to the headquarters building, he found a message waiting for him from Diplock, insisting that he write a report on what had happened. It was marked ‘Urgent’ and stressed the importance of immediacy. He recognised it as another of Diplock’s ploys to irritate him and simply tore it across and threw it into the orderly room waste paper basket.

  Curiously, though, it seemed to start him from his mood and he decided to look up Father O’Buhilly. He found him in a hotel in a poor part of the city. His room seemed as bare as all his rooms. The moment he entered them, it seemed as if the furniture flew out of the window, leaving nothing but an iron bedstead, a chair and a table.

  ‘I heard what happened, me boy,’ the priest said. ‘I’ve said a prayer for her soul.’

  ‘Thank you, Father. What shall I do now?’

  ‘In what way, my son?’

  ‘For ten years I’ve been chasing her round the world. I even started a divorce. Now she’s gone. For ten years Marie-Gabrielle was chasing me. Ought I to try to find her?’

  ‘What do you intend?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just talk, I think. I could do with someone to talk to.’

  ‘Will not I do, me boy?’

  Dicken smiled. ‘She’d perhaps be better, Father.’

  Father O’Buhilly smiled back. ‘Then why not? God’s grace is about us and He’s more understanding than people realise. I think you should.’

  ‘So soon after–?’

  ‘Now, me boy. Do you wish any help?’

  ‘No, Father. I’ll be all right.’

  Returning to RAF headquarters he found, as he expected, that the sergeant clerk in the orderly room had a typed list of everybody who’d been brought from Ambul. The air force was at its efficient best with lists. You could always rely on a list being made and you couldn’t carry anything from anywhere to anywhere else without someone insisting on setting it down on paper. It was one of the exercises Diplock was good at.

  He wondered what Annys would have to say in the inevitable note she would send about Zoë. The usual platitudes, he supposed. But what else could you offer for a death except platitudes?

  He found the name, ‘Marie-Gabrielle Aubrey, spinster, 20, governess to Major Basil Forsythe’, and placed his finger against it.

  ‘This one, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Where’s she staying?’

  He didn’t know what he wanted, except sympathy, and he felt that Marie-Gabrielle, young as she was, could give it to him, saying little, just reassuring him with her silences.

  The sergeant was looking at him, a worried frown on his face. ‘She wouldn’t tell us, sir,’ he said. ‘She just said she wanted to go away.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘She didn’t say, sir.’

  ‘What about the Forsythes? Where are they?’

  ‘They’re staying with Major and Mrs Harvey, Army Medical Corps, sir. Some relation, I believe. Everybody’s offering help until they can be found somewhere to go.’

  ‘Do you have the telephone number?’

  The sergeant did and Major Harvey brought Forsythe to the telephone.

  ‘Hello, old man,’ he said briskly. ‘We have you flying chaps to thank for our lives.’

  Dicken was brusque. ‘Have you got Miss Aubrey there?’

  ‘No, old man.’ Forsythe sounded worried. ‘We met her when she landed, of course. Expecting her to join us. But she said she didn’t want to and that we’d better get an ayah for the children. It was damned odd.’

  ‘Does your wife know where she is?’

  ‘I’ll ask. Hang on.’

  Forsythe’s wife didn’t know. Several hours later, having checked everywhere in the cantonment and the hotels, Dicken had found out only that she’d stayed long enough to sleep one night in the city and had then caught a train south to Delhi.

  Putting the telephone down for the last time, he was suddenly aware how tired he was. It would be impossible to find her in the teeming millions in Delhi, especially since he didn’t for a moment imagine she intended staying there. By this time, she could even be somewhere on the high seas heading for England, Australia or China.

  He lit a cigarette and nodded his thanks to the sergeant.

  ‘No luck, sir?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  As he walked outside, almost the first person he saw was Babington heading for the wireless section. He grinned and slammed up a tremendous salute.

  ‘I don’t think we let anybody down, sir,’ he said. Dicken returned the salute. ‘No, Babington,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we did.’

  Only me, he thought, as he headed for the sunshine. Only me. Only me and Zoë and, above all, Marie-Gabrielle.

  ‘Kelly Maguire’ Titles

  (in order of first publication)

  These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  1. The Lion at Sea 1977

  2. The Dangerous Years 1978

  3. Back to Battle 1979

  ‘Goff Family’ Titles

  (in order of first publication)

  These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  1. Soldier of the Queen 1980

  2. Blunted Lance 1981

  3. The Iron Stallions 1982

  RAF Trilogy

  (in order of first publication)

  These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  1. The Bright Blue Sky 1982

  2. The Challenging Heights 1983

  3. Once More the Hawks 1984

&nbs
p; Synopses of Hennessy Titles

  Published by House of Stratus

  Back to Battle

  The third title in the exciting naval trilogy featuring the courageous Kelly Maguire. Commander Kelly Maguire, leader of men in the British Navy, finds himself plunged into blistering attacks at the battle of Dunkirk. From bitter fighting in the Mediterranean, to the landings at Normandy, this action-packed saga takes Maguire through trial to triumph. Against a background of personal tragedy, this is a compelling story of love and adventure.

  The Blunted Lance

  The second novel in the Goff family trilogy. The Goffs, a family devoted to The Regiment - the Nineteenth Lancers - find themselves charting a history of the world from the Sudan to South Africa, Flanders to Palestine. Charging and retreating on the wide plains of a failing British Empire, Coby Goff rises to the rank of Field Marshal and Dabney is honoured as a hero. But they witness the decline of the beloved cavalry, defeated in the face of pounding artillery, the tank and machine gun.

  The Bright Blue Sky

  The first in Hennessy’s breathtaking RAF trilogy. The reckless days of early aviation are brought to life in a tale of daring, dashing young pilots waging war, and of the raging struggle between the hearts of two brave men for the heart of a beautiful woman. This is the first story in the trilogy involving Corporal Quinney, an air ace in the RAF; a hero blazing through the skies to dogfight high above the Italian front, confronting deadly foes and challenging a treacherous rival in love and war.

  The Challenging Heights

  The second in Hennessy’s breathtaking RAF trilogy. Dicken Quinney, a brilliant, heroic character, comes to life in this turbulent action novel. Quinney finds himself flying in the Baltic in a fight against the Bolsheviks. But tragedy mixes with adventure as Quinney loses his lover, Zoe.