The Two-Headed Eagle поп-3

by Джон Биггинс

  “You see, Excellency,” he said earnestly, “this war’s not going to go on for ever, and when I get home I’m going to help build a new Russia: a Russia of the twentieth century, with motor cars and aeroplanes and electricity. I’ve taught myself to read since I’ve been here, you know.”

  I often wonder whether he got home after the war, and what hap­pened to him later.

  We spent the night at St Jakob, lying on the field under the aeroplane’s wing, sheltered against the unseasonable chill only by our blankets and an old tarpaulin procured for us by the Russians. The Kommandant had returned from Bozen unexpectedly that evening and had caught us in the workshop. We told him that the door had been open, but we could see that he did not believe us. He kicked us out, then locked up the hut and posted a sentry with instructions to fire if he saw anyone trying to break in again. For good measure he ordered us to be on our way at first light next morning, saying that he was running a base repair unit and not a hostel for tramps.

  We woke and breakfasted on bread and tea supplied us by the Russians, who seemed delightfully free of petty prejudices on the matter of nation­ality. They even made us packed lunches to take with us, and provided us with an old winebottle full of “samgonka,” a probably lethal home-made vodka distilled from mashed potatoes. All they asked in return were some old newspapers. Puzzled, I asked why. After all, most of them looked illiterate even in Russian, and all that I had was an old copy of the Triester An%eiger which someone had left in the cockpit. No matter, they said: they only wanted it for rolling cigarettes from the foul-smelling tobacco which they grew for themselves on the airfield. I asked whether they would prefer proper cigarette papers? I was a smoker myself and had a few boxes in my jacket pockets. No, they said; newspapers had more flavour, on account of the ink.

  After breakfast we washed, shaved and smartened ourselves up, more for reasons of morale than of appearance. It was a good thing that we did, however, for just as we had climbed into the cockpit and were about to signal to Arkady Feodorovich to swing the propeller (a privilege which he had wheedled out of me), we heard the distant honking of a car horn. We turned to see the Herr Kommandant running across the field towards us, followed some way behind by a large, open motor car.

  “Stop, stop!” he shouted. “Wait a moment if you please!” He was panting fit to choke by the time he reached us, to a degree where a heart attack looked imminent. “Herleutnanteinmomentbitte!” he gasped, “. . . if you please . . . just wait a moment . . .”

  I must say that after our reception the day before I was in no mood to be polite.

  “Herr Major,” I replied coldly, “a letter thanking you for the particular warmth of your hospitality will be sent to you when we get back to our base. In the mean time, if you think that we are trying to leave without paying the bill I can show you the receipt.”

  “No . . . No . . . There is something most important. Please to wait a moment . . . I shall explain.” The motor car was close enough now for me to see that it was no ordinary army staff car but the very plushest, most sumptuous vehicle that one could hope to find in that category, short of the Emperor’s limousine itself. It was a beautiful sleek Mercedes of the very finest pre-war make, though now painted over in khaki drab. In the back were two very high-ranking officers indeed. Toth and I scrambled out to stand by our aeroplane at the salute. Could it be an archduke? No, there was no black-and-yellow eagle-pennant on the mudguard. An orderly opened the door and the two officers got down. One was a general, the other a full field marshal: a smallish, slim man in his early sixties with grey hair and a moustache in which traces of blond still showed, and with a nervous, rather irritable air about him. This, I realised, was none other than Field Marshal Franz Conrad, Freiherr von Hotzendorf, Commander- in-Chief of the entire Austro-Hungarian armed forces. As he walked up to me I saw that he had a constant faint twitch running from the corner of his mouth to his left eye. He surveyed me for a moment, then smiled. “Stand easy,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “Prohaska, Excellency. Ottokar, Ritter von Prohaska, k.u.k. Linien- schiffsleutnant.”

  “Aha, a sailor. Of course, you’re the Maria-Theresien Ritter aren’t you? The one who commanded a U-Boat and then got bored with it and took up flying. How are you enjoying it? ”

  “I obediently report that I enjoy it well enough, Excellency,” I said, lying in my teeth as prescribed by regulations.

  “Splendid, splendid. Well Prohaska, I’ve got a little errand here that’s right up the street of a man of your calibre. Can I rely upon you?”

  “You may rely absolutely upon Zugsfuhrer Toth and myself, Excel­lency.” I saw that he looked rather doubtful about that when he saw Toth, but he said nothing.

  “Well Prohaska, I have here a despatch-case of documents for you to deliver for me: papers of such importance that they must be flown direct to their destination in conditions of the utmost secrecy by a courier of the greatest courage and integrity. That is why we have chosen you.”

  “I obediently report that I am flattered by your confidence in me, Excellency, and I shall guard these documents with my very life. But might I enquire where you wish them delivered?”

  “You were flying to Villach, were you not? That is what the Herr Kommandant told us when we asked if there was an aeroplane ready to take off.”

  “I obediently report, to Villach.”

  “Well, I want you to fly a little further than that: in fact all the way to Imperial and Royal Supreme Headquarters in Teschen.” This was indeed quite a journey: Teschen was on the very northeastern edge of the Monarchy, quite near to my own home town on the borders of Prussian Silesia. “It should take you about four hours, my staff officer assures me, but if you could make it shorter I would be grateful. You are to make your way up to Brixen and then follow the valley to Lienz, where you can cross over into the Mur valley and fly down to Vienna before heading across Moravia. You will refuel at Judenburg, and during that stop you are on no account to leave the aeroplane, do you understand? When you arrive at Teschen flying field, for reasons of secrecy a lady will be waiting with a staff officer in a green Graef und Stift motor car to collect the documents. In the event of your being forced down by engine failure or other mishap on the way you will keep the documents with you at all times to prevent them from falling into unauthorised hands. This whole mission, I need hardly stress, is so secret that not even our own people must know about it, except for those who need to know. Is that all clear?”

  “Perfectly clear, Excellency.”

  “Good then, fill up your tanks with petrol and be on your way at once. Austria flies with you.” He turned to leave.

  As he did so the base Kommandant bowed and bobbed his way up to him. “Excellency, if you please, your signature will be required upon these petrol requisition forms. Aviation fuel provided for this unit cannot be supplied without authorisation . . .”

  “Damn you and your bureaucratic pettifogging—fill the aeroplane up or you’ll find yourself in the front line before you can draw breath.” As if to underline what he had just said, Conrad took the proffered sheaf of forms and flung them contemptuously over his shoulder to scatter in the mud. “Furthermore, imbecile, I wish you to be aware that this flight is of such secrecy that there must be no record of it whatever in the airfield logbook, is that clear? Try to pay more attention to what your superiors say to you in future.” And with that he turned and got into the car without say­ing a further word to any of us and without giving a single wave or even a backward glance. I supposed that the cares of the supreme direction of the Monarchy’s military effort for two long years must excuse such behaviour, which in anyone else would be considered plain rudeness.

  We took off just before 0800. It was not going to be an easy flight by any means, with the weather coming down over the Alps, but it should still not be too arduous. We would by flying along mountain valleys most of the way, and beyond Vienna the country would open out into the plains of Moravia. I thought th
at it might take about five hours, weather per­mitting and inclusive of the stop for refuelling at Judenburg. My spirits rose as we climbed away from Bozen. We had been specially selected to undertake a vital mission to deliver despatches—perhaps even plans of attack for a grand war-winning offensive—which might decide the fate of the Monarchy. The gravity of our task and our pride at being chosen for it gave a keen sense of urgency to the proceedings, especially after two miserable days of creeping from depot to depot like vagrants beg­ging cigarette ends.

  But quite apart from that it was a marvellous jaunt in itself, a sudden and totally unexpected break from the routine business of wartime flying. The engine was purring like a well-fed cat, the tank was full of petrol and the sun had at last broken through the clouds to reveal the full autumn glory of the Dolomites before us. Even the aeroplane seemed to sense the mood, climbing with us like Pegasus. And of course, not the least of the reasons for a certain high spirits was that when we arrived back at Caprovizza sometime on Monday, a whole two days late, I would be able to confront the odious Kraliczek with a smug smile and say, “Sorry, Herr Kommandant, can’t tell you where we’ve been: secret orders from the High Command and all that. You had better ring up the Commander-in- Chief if you want further details.” Let me see now, if we arrived at Teschen about 1300 hours and waited half an hour to refuel they could not reason­ably expect us to get back to Caprovizza that evening, not in mid-October. Elisabeth was staying with my aunt in Vienna now. I smiled to myself as I imagined her delighted surprise a few hours hence when the housemaid Franzi would usher me in, still wearing my flying kit, stopping off for an unexpected overnight visit.

  Toth and I had conferred briefly about the route just before we took off from St Jakob. I had indicated the line on the map and he had nodded and grunted his assent. But now I saw that we were deviating from our course, heading more to the south to fly over the northern edge of the Brenta Dolomites and cut off the corner where the Rienz flows into the Eisack, just north of Brixen. No matter, I thought: these mountains were low—about 2,500 metres or so. The aeroplane was maintaining her alti­tude with no trouble and we would save a good few kilometres, picking up the railway line as planned at Bruneck or Toblach. I looked southward to see the great massif of the Marmolada, Queen of the Dolomites, looming on the horizon with her permanent lace cap of snow: so vast that I could make out no sign whatever of the trench lines and belts of barbed wire that now scarred the summit.

  It was only after we had been flying for twenty minutes or so that I began to have misgivings about Toth’s choice of route. Away to northward an indigo cliff of stormclouds was bearing down on us, its sunlit upper edges that curious orange-brown colour that betokens snow. It was mov­ing fast, blotting out mountain peak after mountain peak of the High Alps to the north of the Rienz valley. I leant out into the rushing wind to look ahead—and saw to my dismay that, while the storm had not yet reached us, it was only because it was advancing in a deep crescent shape, with its two horns cutting off our escape both to west and to east. We could not fly under it because of the mountains, we could certainly not fly over it, and we could no longer avoid it by flying around it. Our only line of retreat now was to turn around and fly due south—straight towards the Italian lines with a pouch of ultra-secret documents on board. No. I swallowed hard; duty left only one course open: we would have to try to fly through it, hoping that it was only a line storm and that we would emerge on the other side before we ran into a mountain-top.

  The edge of the storm hit us like a moving brick wall, flicking us and dashing us down again in the violent turbulence at its edge. Toth struggled with the control column to bring us level again as we buried ourselves in the swirling eerie murk inside the cloud. I was right: it was snow, the first of that early and bitter winter. It was wet stuff, but thick and mixed with freezing rain. We had taken a compass bearing before we entered the clouds, but it was hopeless: before long any sense of up and down and sideways had been lost and jumbled, however desperately we checked the spirit-levels to try and judge our angle. Sometimes the curtains of snow were falling down: sometimes they seemed to be falling upwards. Or was it us moving relative to them? I could no longer tell, wiping the snowflakes off my goggles as demon air currents inside the cloud attempted to pull our fragile aeroplane to pieces.

  I wiped the snow off my goggles once more and peered over Toth’s shoulder at the altimeter in the dim yellow light. Holy Mother of God! We had lost nearly a thousand metres already. I looked up at the wings—and at once saw why. A thick crust of ice was forming on the doped canvas. Toth stood up in the cockpit with the control column gripped between his knees and tried to bang it loose with his fists. I scrambled out over the cockpit edge in the howling slipstream, too frightened to be afraid any longer, and kicked desperately at the ice on the lower wing with the heel of my boot. It cracked, and sheets flew away astern. But it was hopeless: fresh ice formed almost as soon as the old had gone, stuck to the wings by the freezing rain. We were coming down, but where? I peered out into the swirling sheets of snow, billowing like theatre curtains in a wind. At last the air cleared a little. I saw a dark smother beyond. Perhaps it was mountain forest in the distance, glimpsed through a chink in the cloud. I looked again—and realised aghast that it was indeed a mountain side: sheer naked rock-face hurtling past about four metres from our port wing- tip! Toth saw it as well and lugged at the column to bank us away. At that moment the clouds chose to part to let the sunlight pour through.

  These might well be the last moments of our lives, but I still caught my breath at the vision of unearthly splendour as the sun streamed through the eddying snow to reveal where we were; flying along a high mountain valley surrounded on every side by vast precipices and snow-covered pin­nacles so fantastically shaped that any stage-set designer who had repro­duced them would have been denounced as a madman. But we had to land. I leant out and looked below. We were only ten or fifteen metres above a level, smooth-white surface: perhaps a high mountain pasture covered in the first of the winter snow, I thought. Well, there was no choice: a sheer wall of rock towered a few kilometres ahead of us, so high that it would have taken us half an hour to climb over it even in calm weather. The snowstorm would soon close in again. It was now or never. I signalled to Toth to come down. He nodded. But amid the crazed vortices in the heart of the storm it was impossible even for such a pilot as Toth to maintain our height: in the end we managed a landing of the kind described by my old flying instructors as “ground three metres too low”: in other words dropping out of the air on the last part of the landing to belly-flop on the ground.

  It was no mountain meadow under snow: we discovered that the mo­ment our undercarriage touched and was ripped off. It was a glacier, its jagged, rasping surface of ice-lumps temporarily smoothed out by feathery, drifting snow into an illusory flat sheet. We skidded along it for perhaps fifty metres before coming to a halt: us two and what was left of the aero­plane after each ice-claw had torn off its portion. It seemed to last several minutes, even though I suppose that it must have been no more than a few seconds. I came around smothered in snow and scalded by water hissing from the fractured radiator tubes. All was deathly quiet now apart from the moaning of the wind. It was snowing again. I picked myself up from on top of Toth’s still form on the cockpit floor. The forward bulkhead had collapsed and the engine had been smashed back into the crew space to join us. I checked myself limb by limb. I was shaken and badly bruised and suspected a couple of cracked ribs, but otherwise everything seemed to work. I dragged Toth out. He was alive but unconscious, bleeding pro­fusely from a gash on his forehead. I found the first-aid kit and bandaged the wound after making a compress of snow to reduce the bleeding. Then I found the bottle of samogon given us by the Russians and uncorked it to trickle a few drops on to his tongue. This brought him back to con­sciousness as brutally as if I had stuck a red-hot poker into his mouth. He moaned something, badly concussed. I tried to move him and he howled with pa
in. Both his ankles were broken. I found the blankets and wrapped him up as best I could, then took the saw from the tool kit and hacked off the upper wings at the roots to make a rough shelter over him. Then I huddled up with him to keep him warm and myself out of the snow.

  It must have been about three hours before it let up. The sky cleared and the sun shone once more to reveal that we were in one of the very highest valleys of the Dolomites, way above the snowline and far from human help. I had to go and get assistance. Luckily I had done quite a lot of mountaineering in my youth when my brother Anton and I were junior officers, back in the days when ample leave made up in some degree for our miserable salaries. I knew in particular that I must not attempt to fol­low the glacier down to wherever it went, winding out of sight among the peaks: my brother and I had both nearly perished on the Oetztal glacier in 1908 when we had attempted something similar. No, I must leave Toth and head for the edge of the glacier, then climb the rock-face of the valley side and get over the ridge into the next valley, which might be deeper and extend below the snowline.

  I was loath to leave him, still dazed and confused. But in the end I brought our remaining supplies up to him, gave him a half-syringe of morphine from the first-aid kit and put together a flare made from the hacked-open fuel tank filled with sump oil and petrol and with a wick of rag for him to light if he heard an aeroplane above. Surely we would have been missed at Judenburg by now. I also moved up the machine gun near him, cocked it and told him to fire it if he heard searchers. For myself I took the aeroplane compass and the rocket pistol. Before I left I assured Toth as best I could in my execrable school-Latin that he would soon be rescued: that the Dolomites were really not much more than a mountain park criss-crossed with paths, where even maiden aunts could come “rock- climbing” in their long loden skirts and little hats with the cord around the brim. As I set off I wished that I felt as confident as I sounded about the suburban tameness of this particular Alpine range.