Mirage

by James Follett

  ‘You’re wasting time and money,’ General Yadin commented on one of his rare visits to the office. ‘We need information on our enemies.’

  ‘That’s what I’m aiming to get, general,’ said Emil. ‘First let us find out who our friends are, and they will tell us who the enemies are. Whereas our enemies won’t tell us who our friends are.’

  Another visitor was Jacob Wyel - now a senior officer in the newly-formed air force, the ChelHa’Avir. Promotion had made him even more austere and had effectively drained what little humour he had possessed.

  ‘You’ve done well,’ he remarked, glancing around Emil’s spartan office.

  Emil smiled. ‘Thank you, Jacob. But if only I knew what I’m supposed to be doing well at.’

  ‘I’ve been told that you might be able to help us out with a problem.’

  ‘What sort of problem?’

  Jacob hesitated as though reluctant to divulge sensitive information to someone he had recently fished out of the sea as a rebel.

  ‘When it comes to buying arms from friendly countries, Ben Gurion has ruled that we can deal with them direct. But dealing with hostile countries is the responsibility of the Foreign Ministry. That means your department.’

  Emil tipped his chair back and grinned amiably at his visitor. ‘Clandestine dealings, Jacob?’

  ‘We’ve just negotiated the purchase of ten secondhand Spitfires from Czechoslovakia. We need those fighters badly. The first ones have already arrived. They were flown in and they only just made it.’ ‘They’re in a bit of state?’ Emil ventured.

  Jacob gave a wry smile. ‘The understatement of the year. They all need new engines. Rolls-Royce Merlins.’

  Emil understood the situation: fearful of upsetting Arab countries upon whom they depended for oil, the British had embargoed the supply of arms to Israel. They had even ended their mandate on a sour note by withdrawing in such a manner that strategic materials fell into the hands of the invading Arabs.

  ‘How many engines do you need?’

  ‘At least twenty - the extra engines we’ll need for cannibalizing for spares.’

  Emil doodled on his notepad. ‘I haven’t established any contacts yet in Britain,’ he pointed out.

  The answer seemed to satisfy Jacob. He stood. ‘Well I have. I used to live there. So it would sensible if we persuaded Ben Gurion to let me deal with him direct.’

  ‘Sit down, Jacob,’ said Emil mildly.

  ‘I guessed you’d be useless—’

  ‘I said, sit down ... .’

  There was an unexpected hard note in Emil’s voice. Jacob was about to argue but he made the mistake of catching Emil’s eye. The resolution in the Dutchman’s gaze was such that it prompted Jacob to resume his seat.

  ‘There’s something we have to get straight right now,’ said Emil. ‘Your air force and this department are about the same age—’

  ‘The Sherut Avir has been fighting for months,’ Jacob interrupted. ‘The Sherut Avir doesn’t exist any more,’ Emil pointed out. ‘You’re no longer a bunch of free-booting Mahals flying beaten up old Austers and grubbing around on British army dumps for spares to keep them flying. Don’t get me wrong, Jacob - you and your comrades did a fantastic job. But those days are over. The Chel Ha’Avir is a professional air force that’s going to need professional support from a professional intelligence organization - an organization which I aim to provide. So you stick to your job - flying aircraft - and I’ll stick to mine which is finding them for you.’ Emil picked up a pencil. ‘So who is your British contact?’

  Jacob’s fleshy face went even paler than usual. It was obvious that he was unaccustomed to being spoken to in such a blunt manner. For a moment it looked as if he was going to start shouting. Instead he controlled himself and said in a voice that matched Emil’s for mildness: ‘Those are not your terms of reference, Mr Kalen.’

  Emil had not had enough time to consider himself an officer therefore the implied insult in the ignoring of his rank had little effect. If anything his smile became even more bland. ‘My terms of reference are what I decided they should be, Jacob. We both know that our political masters are certain to see the sense in not permitting the Chel Ha’Avir to go blundering into clandestine dealings with hostile countries. So, Jacob ... the name of your British contact please ... .’

  It was some seconds before Jacob spoke. ‘He was an RAF flight- sergeant attached to the Royal Aircraft Establishment. If we needed any spares for any aircraft, he would find it for us.’

  ‘He was a brilliant scrounger?’

  Jacob shook his head. ‘No - not brilliant. “Lucky” Lew Nathan was ruthless. The most cunning and most ruthless man I’ve ever met.’

  13

  ENGLAND Summer, 1948

  Lucky Nathan was twenty-seven when Germany surrendered. He made few friends during the war and was one of the first to be demobilized out of the RAF.

  He left the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough with £50 back pay, a burning ambition to own his own airline, and a truckload of stolen Douglas DC-3 Dakota spares which he hid in his mother’s garage at Farnham - a small Surrey town near the RAE. His mother died a month later. Lucky sold her house for £700 and used the proceeds to bid for a Dakota - one of over a hundred of the DC-3s that the Air Ministry were disposing of at a huge open-air auction held at Stoney Cross in the New Forest. With a day to spare before its certificate of airworthiness expired, Lucky flew the clapped-out air freighter from Stoney Cross to Blackbushe airfield in Hampshire.

  He paid ten shillings a week to store the aircraft near the airfield’s perimeter. The aft fuselage became his home while he worked on the aircraft’s restoration - sometimes working sixteen hours a day. For supplies - paint, tools, materials - he shamelessly exploited his contacts to beg, borrow or steal whatever he needed; usually the latter. At weekends school kids were happy to work for a few pence an hour, laboriously rubbing down the old camouflage paintwork, and fetching and carrying for Lucky. They soon learned that their wiry, lantern-jawed employer with the permanent six o’clock shadow had a quick temper and a tendency to solve problems with his fists. The only boy who lasted was Robbie Kinsey - a semiilliterate sixteen-year-old ex-borstal tough who was prepared to put up with Lucky’s temper and miserly pay in return for the privilege of working on the Douglas. Robbie had become obsessed with aircraft eight years earlier when he had watched the great aerial duels between the RAF and the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. Robbie proved a quick-learning hard worker and was soon indispensable to Lucky although the older man would never admit it.

  Following the departure of the two Air Registration Board inspectors who had test flown the Dakota and approved its certificate of airworthiness, Robbie smashed a bottle of cider on the aircraft’s nose while Lucky solemnly named it Lucky One.

  Lucky lived up to his nickname because two weeks later the Soviets isolated West Berlin by closing the city’s only access road to West Germany. Suddenly there was work for every aircraft that could fly a payload. Within two weeks he was flying Lucky One virtually round the clock, airlifting essential supplies into the blockaded city and quickly becoming a part of the freebooting fraternity of hard-working, hard-living Berlin Airlift entrepreneurs who included Freddie Laker and Donald Bennett.

  There were two reasons why Lucky opted to fly coal. Firstly, he could charge an extra twenty dollars a ton premium on the stuff because, being shovelled in loose, it buggered the interior of any aircraft. Secondly, customs officials and police on the lookout for black market goods rarely risked their uniforms by delving into the black hole of Lucky One's freight hold. With cigarettes fetching twenty dollars a carton in post-war Berlin, Lucky was netting five hundred dollars extra a week within two months of the blockade being imposed. Naturally, the cigarettes were Lucky Strikes. He beat Laker to an engineless DC-3 rotting in a bombed hangar at Frankfurt and harangued Robbie into getting it airworthy in three weeks as Lucky Two. There was no shortage of experienced ex-RAF pilot
s willing to fly the DC-3 on a fee-per-trip basis. By October 1948, when the Berlin Airlift was into its fourth month, Luckair - as he had named his company - had three aircraft clocking up a total of two hundred hours a week and earning him a clear ten dollars an hour on his legal activities.

  A threat to Lucky’s rapidly accumulating wealth came with the arrival in Berlin of a new ordnance supplies officer, Warrant Officer Pickering - a sour, lacklustre little man, elevated by war to a position he could not have attained in peace. In some ways he was like Lucky: unscrupulous and devious. His failings were his greed and that he was a poor judge of character - particularly Lucky’s character. The two men first met late on a Friday afternoon in mid-October when Lucky had touched down in Lucky One with a two-ton load of low-grade furnace coal on board: grey, filthy stuff that was concealing an extra large consignment of cigarettes. He taxied to the unloading point to await a truck and instead was met by Warrant Officer Pickering wearing a boiler suit.

  ‘Just a routine check, Mr Nathan,’ said Pickering curtly in answer to Lucky’s query.

  Lucky leaned casually against the DC-3’s open cargo door and watched Pickering wading into the heap of coal with a pick and shovel. ‘There’s two tons there,’ he observed. ‘It usually takes four blokes to unload it.’

  ‘It only needs one to do what I have to do, Mr Nathan.’ Pickering dragged an orange box out of the coal and broke it open. He ripped open the wrapping paper and pulled out a carton of two hundred cigarettes. He smiled at Lucky. ‘Two thousand cigarettes. Well. Well. Well.’

  ‘Four thousand,’ Lucky corrected. ‘There’s another box under that lot. Kind of you to save me the bother of digging it out.’ He reached into his pocket and produced a grubby wad of white five- pound notes secured with an elastic band. ‘Okay - so how much is the duty?’

  Pickering’s eyes became animated with greed although he tried hard not to show it. ‘Five pounds should cover it, Mr Nathan ... per box.’

  Without a word, Lucky peeled off two of the fivers and handed them to Pickering.

  Had Pickering been content with ten pounds per delivery, the likelihood was that Lucky would have accepted the dent in his profits as a necessary business expense, and Pickering would have gone on making an average of a hundred pounds per week out of Lucky for the duration of the airlift. But Pickering became greedy. By the end of the first week he was demanding eight pounds per box of cigarettes - a figure that he upped to ten pounds in the middle of the second week.

  ‘This is crazy,’ said Lucky, handing over twenty pounds to Pickering at the end of a trip. ‘Why don’t we pay the duty in a lump sum? Save me having to carry money about all the time.’

  Pickering was interested. ‘How much did you have in mind, Mr Nathan?’

  Lucky pretended to consider. ‘Let’s say seven hundred pounds.’

  Pickering’s eyes gleamed. ‘One thousand pounds is a nice, round figure, Mr Nathan.’

  ‘So it is,’ Lucky agreed. ‘But it’ll take me a day or so to get that sort of money together.’ He pretended to think for a few moments. ‘I’m flying Lucky Two back to Blackbushe for a new engine first thing tomorrow. At oh-five-hundred. Can you be here then?’

  ‘I’ll be here, Mr Nathan.’

  I bet you will, thought Lucky savagely. ‘Okay. Get here early. I’ll leave the aircraft unlocked so that you wait for us inside. Make sure no one sees you. If anything goes wrong, we don’t want a lot redcaps nosing around, wanting to know what you’re doing with a grand on you.’

  Pickering smiled thinly. ‘No one will see me, Mr Nathan.’

  But Pickering was seen. From the cockpit of Lucky Two, Robbie and Lucky watched him crouching in the shadow of a hangar. He made certain no one was about and dashed towards the darkened, waiting DC-3. The rear door was open. He hauled himself into the cabin and gave a cry of fear when a huge pair of powerful hands yanked him to his feet.

  ‘Good morning, Warrant Officer,’ said a voice. ‘Come for payment, have we?’ And then something akin to an express train hit him on the side of the head.

  He came to with his head resting on the floor of the freight hold. The noise and vibration puzzled him at first. An icy wind was blasting around him. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but blackness. Terror seized his senses. He tried to roll over and realized that he was trussed up by what felt like a heavy chain. Curiously his arms were free: the chain was wound around his legs and waist.

  ‘Bastard!’ Lucky yelled above the roar of the Dakota’s engines.

  Pickering twisted his head away from the open door. He looked up. Lucky was staring down at him, his face contorted with rage. He would have kicked his victim in the groin but he wanted Pickering conscious to appreciate another type of hell that was awaiting him.

  ‘Stinking, lousy scum! No one takes me for a sucker! No one!’

  ‘Mr Nathan. Please—’

  ‘Mr Nathan please nothing!’ Lucky snarled. He caught hold of a grab handle and used his feet to shove Pickering half out of the open door.

  Pickering screamed as the weight of chain around his waist dragged his hapless body out of the opening. His fingers scrambled wildly at the opening and found a purchase. He hung there, his eyes bulging as the weight and slipstream clawed at him. Terror lent an awesome strength to his fingers.

  Lucky grabbed a heavy wrench and stretched out on his stomach so that his hate-filled eyes were inches from those of his victim. ‘You’re going to die, you scum. I want to see your eyes when you let go.’

  ‘Please!’ Pickering pleaded hysterically. ‘I beg of you—’ The sentence ended with a scream of agony as Lucky savagely smashed the wrench on the hapless man’s straining fingers. He brought the wrench down again and again, Pickering’s agonized screams seeming to fuel his madness.

  ‘Die, you fucker! Die! Die! Die!’ Each ‘Die!’ was punctuated by a merciless blow with the wrench. Pickering’s fingers became bloody stubs of splintered bone gleaming whitely through the mangled flesh. He managed to hang on for another thirty seconds while Lucky rested his aching arm. He was about to renew the attack when Pickering fell. His scream was whipped away by the slipstream as his chain-weighted body plummeted down to the grey North Sea waiting for him five thousand feet below.

  14

  BERLIN November 1948

  The stripper leaned over Lucky and twirled her tasselled nipples in perfect time with the blaring jukebox. It amused him to think that her silvery tassels, her sequined G-string and all the drink disappearing down the throats of the noisy US servicemen in the packed, sweaty beer cellar had been flown into the city by operators like himself. The servicemen were celebrating Harry Truman’s election victory. Not necessarily because they were Democrats but because any victory was a good excuse for getting smashed. A reeling marine started a screaming altercation with the girl by snatching away the lower thirty per cent of her costume. A fight broke out. Lucky grabbed his litre of beer and headed for a corner table to be out of the way when the snowdrops burst in. The owner and two heavies were restoring some sort of order with their fists when a smiling, stockily-built man approached Lucky’s table and sat down uninvited.

  ‘Mr Nathan? You are the owner of Luckair, I believe?’ said Emil in stilted but good English, holding out his hand. ‘I was told I would find you here.’

  Lucky’s hostile stare took in the stranger’s well-cut business suit, bland smile, and hard grey eyes. ‘Who told you?’

  ‘You have many friends in this benighted city,’ Emil observed, catching a serving girl’s eye and ordering a beer in German.

  ‘Who the hell are you and what do you want?’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Emil smoothly, sliding a visiting card across the beer-ringed table. ‘Eric Leyman. I’m the property manager for Modern Films. Our European office is based in Paris. We are planning a feature film about the desert war. Rommel. Montgomery. We need someone to help us with the supply of warplanes and spares.’

  Lucky relaxed a little. It seemed unlikely tha
t the stranger was a CID man. ‘Who put you on to me?’ he asked guardedly.

  ‘An old colleague of yours - Jacob Wyel.’

  ‘Jacob? Last I heard from him he was flying for the Israelis.’ ‘Not now,’ said Emil. ‘But he is living in Israel. He said that you would be just our man for obtaining ... film props I think they are called in English. Jacob told us that you were known as the lucky scrounger during the war.’

  ‘How is the old queer?’

  Emil was genuinely nonplussed. ‘Queer? I do not understand?’ ‘Forget it. How is he?’

  ‘He seemed well. He asked me to pass on his regards.’

  Lucky grunted and sipped his drink thoughtfully. The stranger’s use of his wartime nickname partly convinced him that this so-called Eric Leyman was genuine. ‘So what do you want me for, Mr Leyman?’

  Emil folded his arms across the table and leaned forward. ‘We’re sinking a lot of money in this film, Mr Nathan. We’re going to need many aircraft in good order: Spitfires; Hurricanes; Beaufighters; Mosquitoes. Anything we can lay our hands on. And plenty of spares. England is bursting at the seams with such aircraft. We need someone such as yourself with a base in England to act as our purchasing agent and to make the aircraft airworthy to be flown out.’

  ‘Flown out where?’

  ‘Our base will be in Bordeaux. We might be doing all our aerial shots in south-west France but we have not decided yet.’

  Lucky considered for a few moments. The enterprise sounded like a lot of work for precious little return. ‘Look, Mr Leyman. Don’t get me wrong or nothing but I don’t think Luckair is what you want. I’ve got three DC-3s, which will be so much scrap by the time this lot’s finished, and the lease on a rusty Nissen hut at Blackbushe airfield. That’s Luckair. What you want is someone like Airwork.’ Emil shook his head. ‘We need your services, Mr Nathan. And we are prepared to help financially with the expansion of your company. We will pay you a setting-up fee in advance and a five per cent commission on every aircraft you purchase for us.’