High pressure had moved in behind the cold front. He could feel it in the dry crisp air, and see it in the stars blinking hard and cold as diamonds. The day would break clear, the driving would remain good, while he attended to money and automobile business in Switzerland.
He forced himself to eat, as he always did during periods of peak stress, then got back in his car, selected a classical station and proceeded toward Zürich.
As the night wore on and the driving became monotonous, he let himself fantasize about the future. Sometime tomorrow evening he would pick up his memoirs and the boxes of records from old KGB and Stasi files, all of which he kept at his home near Altenhagen. He would then travel as Reinhart Schmidt from Berlin to La Paz, taking a backwards route over Asia just in case they were on the lookout for him in the West.
Once he reached Bolivia, the good life would begin. He had set up a second identity in an elegant suburb outside of La Paz at the beginning of Operation Litvyak, a safety valve in case he ever had to flee. He owned a villa, kept a small permanent staff, and had deeply indebted friends in the government, police and military he had treated well over the years. He activated his second identity and touched base with his second home every few months, a practice begun almost thirty years ago. Cautious and intelligent men did not get caught. It was the fools, like Michelet.
Walter Claussen, or rather Reinhart Schmidt, was known, simply, as a business man on the go. Now he would be seen as retiring at last.
Retiring not to shrivel and die but to complete his memoirs in a German prose unequaled since Nietzsche – and to watch his revelations shock the world while the CIA blundered to new heights trying to cover up its own little Holocaust and find out where he was.
A fitting retirement, one which he deserved, one for which he had planned his entire adult life.
Dawn came, and with it scattered clouds and reports of a vile murder in France. He was bored. He switched off the car radio and reached over to the passenger seat for the piece of fake parchment he had gathered up with the rest LeConte’s papers. Holding it up to the windshield, he read it with perfect backlight.
“LeConte’s List of Lacking Virtues.” He laughed. Didn’t that say it all? America with its pathetic failings wrapped up in one underachieving young man. If Sophie Marx had not become infatuated with this loser, she might be alive today.
The light faded, a cold rain slapped the windshield and fog swirled across the highway. The front must have stalled, Claussen thought, lighting another cigarette.
The front, but not his plans. A minor delay because of the weather was of no importance. In a few days, Reinhart Schmidt would be enjoying the sun on his Bolivian flagstone terrace.
Chapter Forty-Three
One leather flying hat, one pair of goggles and two mildewed sheepskin jackets were the extent of the wardrobe the pilot kept in the barn. Better than nothing, thought Warner, but it left a lot to be desired.
The Stearman had two cockpits, one behind the other, with seats hard as bicycle leather. The passenger, Nicole, would have to travel more like luggage than human cargo, lying across the skeleton of wooden spars in the hollow section of fuselage between Steven’s seat and the tail. Heat and windows she wouldn’t have, so Warner showed her how to make a cocoon with clothes and blankets.
He pointed out the control cables running to the stabilizer, impressing on her the need to keep them free of any obstruction – hair, feet, blankets. He asked if she was claustrophobic, and was glad she said no.
Following his instructions, Nicole entered her cabin head-first so that she would be facing forward and would have the use of her legs to brace herself against the back of Steven’s seat for the eventuality of an emergency landing. Her head was in the thinnest part of the tail, surrounded by ancient creaking pulleys and cables.
Warner and Steven put on every piece of warm clothing they had before squeezing into the flying jackets, which were as large as they were odorous. Warner wore the hat and goggles, Steven donned the motorcycle helmet. They climbed up on the wing and slid into their seats.
Although primitive, the plane’s instruments were adequate for flying in poor conditions. Warner was glad to see an artificial horizon and a vertical speed indicator. He would need them for the second leg of their journey if the night turned stormy.
He entrusted Steven with the field glasses and infrared camera. His partner was going to have to function as night copilot, a prospect Warner tried not to think too much about.
Shortly after nine a.m. Warner revved up the loud 7-cylinder engine. He taxied to the end of the strip, studied the sock and pushed the throttle forward. They bumped along the sodden earth, sinking into muddy troughs that slowed their acceleration. The northwest wind hit them at an angle, the morning sun blazed behind them, the engine sounded like a giant lawn mower with a defective bearing.
Warner knew after a short roll that they were too heavy. He was about to abort the take-off and jettison more fuel when he saw the farmer with the scythe running onto the muddy strip, gesticulating wildly with his free hand.
What was safety? Turning around? Hell no. The crate would have to fly.
They were almost halfway down the strip now. The throttle was buried, the engine was howling like a tortured beast, the airspeed indicator read 40 kilometers an hour. Warner felt as though a fast dog could have caught them and chewed their tires.
He glanced at the trees looming ahead. The huge oaks towered at least 100 feet too high. He spotted a gap in the forest to his left. It was his only hope. Working skillfully with pedals and rudder, he transformed their take-off roll from a straight line into a sweeping curve.
When he hauled back on the stick at the last possible moment, they were traveling at 85 kilometers an hour, the slowest take-off he had ever attempted.
The old Stearman struggled into the air, fell back and lifted off again.
The gap was a dirt road. Their wing tips nearly brushed the trees to either side as the plane fought, shuddering and creaking, for every foot of altitude. When they reached a house at the end of the road, they were so low that Warner had to fly between the twin chimneys.
Behind the house was a lawn, a meadow and a long plowed field. Things were looking better. He lashed the old crate up to 90 feet – and had to dive like a bird of prey when he spotted high tension wires glinting across his path.
They brushed the ground but had more airspeed now. Warner coaxed his craft up to 120 feet and held her there, dodging the higher trees.
Keeping low was the secret, so low radar could not detect them.
He crossed a heavily forested stretch of the French-Belgian border and wove a northward course, avoiding the population centers of Tournai and Gent.
A lovely patchwork of farmland and forest passed beneath their wings as they neared the English Channel. As soon as they were over water, Warner descended to 50 feet. Steven slapped him on the back and yelled the good news to Nicole.
Warner allowed himself a sigh of relief. They had done the impossible. They had broken out of a noose made up of hundreds of thousands of police and military people. Warner throttled back to save fuel and oil, and shed another 20 feet of altitude.
Two hours later, as a brisk tail wind pushed them from the west, he spotted the first of the sandy islands running along the Dutch coast. Some were large, with posh bathing resorts and ferry service from the mainland. But others were small and uninviting, desolate islands whose beaches were littered with flotsam.
Warner chose his island carefully, crisscrossing above it until he was certain they would be alone and measuring the only stretch of unbroken beach to make sure it was long enough for a landing and take-off. He feathered the prop seconds after they touched down and barked orders at Steven while they were still rolling.
“We’re going to rest, but not until we have this aircraft totally camouflaged. As soon as I park, I want both you and Nicole to start dragging scrub brush over here. We’ll cover the plane first, then hide under th
e wings. I don’t want a half-assed job. Yellow stands out like a beacon to anyone looking down from the air.”
Warner got no response. He twisted around and looked behind him. Steven was asleep, his motorcycle helmet between his knees.
Warner poked him. “Wake up, buddy, and wake up Nicole. We’ve got work to do, lots of it.”
“No problem, chief.” Steven was alert by the time the plane came to a stop. He jumped down easily from the wing and held out his hand for Nicole. Minutes later the two of them were rolling and shoving the first load of scrub from the sandy earth above the beach toward the plane.
***
When Warner awoke, night had fallen. He pushed his way out of the canopy of brush covering the plane. It was a lot darker than he had anticipated. A thick overcast hung over the water, blocking the light from the moon and stars he had counted on for take-off. The tide was out, the wind had died, the sea was quiet. He felt as though he was at the end of the earth.
He roused Steven and Nicole, instructed them to start clearing the brush off the plane, and walked toward the surf. The tide had deposited a line of debris in the wet sand. Using his flashlight for a brief search, he found two bottles and shook the water out of them. Back at the Stearman, he felt around the underside of the engine until he located the fuel inspection drain cock.
After filling the bottles with aviation fuel, he planted them in the sand a safe distance away from Steven and Nicole, who were hauling off armfuls of brush without regard for where they stepped.
“I’m going to top up the oil,” Warner said. “You two keep up the fast pace. We’ll be ready to go in a few minutes.”
Steven stopped in his tracks. “A few minutes? How the hell can we take off in blackness, Frank? Can you see anything?”
“Not yet, but you and Nicole are going to build me a big-city runway.”
“How?”
“First things first.”
When the brush had been cleared away, Warner directed Steven to heave on the prop. The engine roared to life on the third try. Warner let it idle and climbed down. “Come with me, you two,” he said, feeling his way to the bottles of aviation fuel. He handed them each one.
“I drained a little fuel from the engine. Listen carefully. The beach runs in a straight line for about a thousand feet. I want you and Nicole to gather up a bunch of twigs from that brush heap you pulled off the plane. I want you to walk down the beach parallel to each other, about fifty feet apart, using the surf as your guide. Make a wood pile every hundred feet or so. Just a few sticks, understand, nothing massive. We don’t want this looking like Kennedy Airport an hour after we take off. Douse each pile with some fuel from your bottle. Don’t light it, just douse it.”
Warner handed them each a book of matches he had picked up in the White House conference room. “When you get to the end of the beach, you’ll damn well know it,” he said. “There’s a deep inlet. You would have gotten a bird’s eye view of it, Steven, if you hadn’t slept through the landing.”
“I was awake. What are you talking about?”
Warner ignored him. “Stop when you get there, put a match to your final wood pile, then turn around and head toward the plane. You should have enough light from that first little blaze to see where you’re going. Once you start back, I want you to hurry – but make sure each pile will stay lit before you move on. The wood should burn long enough to get us airborne. Do you understand, Nicole?”
“Yes, Frank.”
“Then let’s go.”
Warner slid into the cockpit and put the radial engine through its warm-up, listening for irregularities. There were none.
Minutes later, a flicker of light caught his eye. A thousand feet down the beach, two tiny flames were burning, marking the spot at which he would have to lift his wheels out of the sand.
Steven and Nicole had made torches. He couldn’t see what they had used, but it seemed perfect.
They came toward him rapidly, like runners bearing an urgent message, stopping briefly to put fire to each little pile of fuel-soaked wood. When they clambered into the plane, Warner had his runway – a little wavy in spots, but what the hell.
He pushed the throttle forward. The engine howled, the old Stearman rolled slowly at first, shaking and groaning. But the sand was harder and smoother than the mud of Bonier’s field. By the time they reached the ninth pair of flickering piles, they were airborne.
Warner glanced in the direction of the island as they banked steeply over the sea. He saw nothing but blackness. The propeller backwash and swirling sand must have blown out each little flame as they passed it. The lighted runway had lived exactly as long as needed, he thought, and not a second more.
Warner leveled off at 60 feet, skimming the bottom of the sagging overcast, an eye on the altimeter, an eye on the artificial horizon. As midnight approached he spotted a row of lights up ahead, softened by the fog. They were nearing the coast of Denmark.
The one-hour flight over the Danish peninsula was the segment of the flight he considered most dangerous. They would be crossing a densely populated area with TV towers, smoke stacks, high-voltage lines and tall buildings. If the moon didn’t break through so that he could dodge potential obstacles, he would have no choice but to climb to 600 feet. At that altitude, he would show up on the radar screens of one of the Europe’s most vigilant air defense systems. Not a reassuring prospect.
He glanced back at Steven, whose head in his motorcycle helmet hung limply to the side. The copilot was sleeping again. Probably a good thing, Warner thought. He might well be in for a strenuous workout later if they had to find Claussen’s place in this soup.
The clouds opened as they overflew the coastline. They passed low over a sandy marsh, glowing eerily in the moonlight. Warner did a visual estimate of his altitude, and found that it was within ten feet of the reading on the venerable old altimeter. No need to change settings.
The engine was running well, the temp and oil pressure holding steady. The aircraft had been maintained a lot better than he had anticipated. If the moon would only stay out, he thought, he could keep on flying low and forget about radar.
It was not meant to be. The overcast thickened again, and a cold rain began to fall. His visibility, which hadn’t been great before, dropped to zero. He pulled back on the stick and tried to look at the bright side.
At 600 feet they might pick him up on radar. In fact, he was almost certain they would. But picking him up and finding him were two different things. If he increased his air speed, he could make it across Denmark in less than 45 minutes. When he came to the Baltic, he’d dive to 50 feet again and disappear from their screens forever . . .
Turbulence increased, causing the old biplane to groan like a ship about to break up. Rain splattered on Warner’s goggles and ran under his collar. The air grew colder, the muscles of his arms and back grew stiffer.
He kept a flashlight trained on the instruments, whose illumination had picked a fine time to die. His feet were busy with the rudder pedals, holding her level and trimmed though he often felt as if he were banking or flying in loops. Thank God for the artificial horizon.
His airspeed indicator remained at a 155 kilometers an hour, and he knew he had a pretty stiff tail wind. This gave him an ETA in Claussen’s neighborhood of roughly 2:45 a.m. Perfectly timed, he thought, if he could see anything: the world would be asleep.
He turned around to look at Steven, who was still asleep, his head now tilted to the other side. He consulted his watch. In his mind’s eye, he heard the screech of jets sent up to intercept him. He heard the clatter of canon, and felt the Stearman’s wooden frame explode in a hail of gunfire. But the night remained wet and calm, and the flight proceeded without incident.
Half an hour later he whacked Steven on the helmet. “Wake up, first officer. We should be over the Baltic by now. We’re going down for a look.”
“Okay, good,” Steven said groggily.
“Two hundred feet,” Warner called back
. “Get the infrared camera lens trained on what’s below. Let me know as soon as you see something other than clouds.”
“Okay.”
“One hundred fifty feet. One hundred feet. Anything?”
“Soup. Thick as before,” Steven shouted.
“Seventy-five feet . . . sixty . . . fifty.”
“Soup.”
Warner turned around and glanced at Steven, who had taken off his helmet and seemed to be using the camera correctly. He decided to descend a little more.
“Forty feet. Thirty five.” He licked his lips. The rain was mixed with the salty taste of sea spray.
“It’s gotta be close,” Warner shouted. “Ten more feet and we go back up.”
“Hey, hold it!” Steven screamed. “Ocean below. There she is. Big waves, mean looking mothers. Can’t you see it?”
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