Peter Gericke loved aeroplanes as some men love horses with a deep and unswerving passion. He reached up and touched a wing gently and his voice was soft when he said, 'You old beauty.'
'You know this aircraft?' Radl said.
'Better than any woman.'
'Six months with the Landros Air Freight Company in Brazil from June to November, nineteen-thirty eight. Nine hundred and thirty flying hours. Quite something for a nineteen-year-old. That must have been hard flying'
'So that's why I was chosen?'
'All on your records.'
'Where did you get her?'
'RAF Transport Command dropping supplies to the Dutch Resistance four months ago. One of your night fighter friends got her. Superficial engine damage only. Something to do with the fuel pump I understand. The observer was too badly wounded to jump so the pilot managed to bring her down in a ploughed field. Unfortunately for him he was nextdoor to an SS barracks By the time he got his friend out, it was too late to blow her up.'
The door was open and Gericke pulled himself inside In the cockpit, he sat behind the controls and for a moment he was back in Brazil, green jungle below, the Amazon twisting through it like a great, silver snake from Manaus down to the sea.
Radl took the other seat He produced a silver case and offered Gericke one of his Russian cigarettes 'You could fly this thing, then?'
'Where to?'
'Not very far Across the North Sea to Norfolk Straight in, straight out.'
'To do what?'
'Drop sixteen paratroopers.'
In his astonishment, Gericke inhaled too deeply and almost choked, the harsh Russian tobacco catching at the back of his throat.
He laughed wildly 'Operation Seahon at last. Don't you think it's a trifle late in the war for the invasion of England?'
'This particular section of the coast has no low level radar cover,' Radl said calmly. 'No difficulty at all if you go in below six hundred feet. Naturally I'll have the plane cleaned up and the RAF roundels replaced on the wings. If anyone does see you, they see an RAF aircraft presumably going about its lawful business.'
'But why?' said Gericke 'What in the hell are they going to do when they get there?'
'None of your affair,' Radl said firmly 'You are just a bus driver, my friend.'
He got up and went out and Gericke followed him 'Now look here, I think you could do better than that.'
Radl walked to the Mercedes without replying He stood looking out across the airfield to the sea 'Too tough for you?'
'Don't be stupid,' Gericke told him angnly 'I just like to know what I'm getting into, that's all.'
Radl opened his coat and unbuttoned his tunic. From the inside pocket he took out the stiff manilla envelope that housed the precious letter and handed it to Gericke 'Read that,' he said crisply.
When Gericke looked up, his face was suddenly bleak. 'That important? No wonder Prager was so disturbed.'
'Exactly.'
'All right, how long have. I got?'
'Approximately four weeks.'
'I'll need Bohmler, my observer, to fly with me. He's the best bloody navigator. I've ever come across.'
'Anything you need. Just ask. Top secret, the whole thing, of course. I can get you a week's leave if you like. After that, you stay here, at the farm under strict security.'
'Can I test flight?'
'If you must, but only at night and preferably only once. I'll have a team of the finest aircraft mechanics the Luftwaffe can supply. Anything you need. You'll be in charge of that side I don't want engines failing for some absurd mechanical reason when you're four hundred feet above a Norfolk marsh. We'll go back to Amsterdam now.'
He opened the car door and Gericke said, 'One thing - security doesn't seem up to much here.'
Radl frowned 'I don't agree. In this sort of country, it is impossible to hide. Too flat You'd be seen coming for miles.' He nodded towards the military policeman, whose Alsatian was straining towards them, a noise like distant thunder deep down in its throat. There are twenty more like him patrolling the wire and those dogs can kill a man in three seconds, remember.'
'So they tell me.' Gericke walked towards the policeman and the Alsatian. The policeman cried out in alarm the dog reared up on the chain with a snarl Gericke snapped his fingers, whistling softly a strange, lonely sound that for some reason set Radl's teeth on edge. The Alsatian stood very still, staring up at him, then subsided. Gericke crouched down and fondled its ears whispering softly to it.
The policeman seemed considerably put out and Radl said, 'I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.'
'I was raised in the Harz Mountains.' Gericke said 'On my grandfather's estate. Lots of dogs I first found I could do that when I was six years old. Very strange.'
He got into the Mercedes and Radl climbed behind the wheel 'Something of an understatement.' he said as he pressed the starter 'In the Middle Ages they'd have burned you.'
'It certainly proves one thing,' Gericke said as they slowed for the main gate to open.
'What's that?'
Gericke nodded out at the sentry and his formidable-looking Alsatian 'That you can't depend on anything in this life.'
He leaned back in the seat, tipped the peak of his cap over his eyes and went to sleep and Radl drove on through the flat, dreary landscape, his face sober.
.
It was just before nine-thirty on the following night when Radl flew into Laville airfield outside Brest in a Ju 52 transport on a normal passenger run. He was tired - very tired and exasperated by a series of unlooked for delays that had hampered his progress all the way from Amsterdam. An hour late leaving Le Bourget and even now, ground control made them fly circuits while a Dormer 215 bomber took off, one of the famous Flying Pencils, so nicknamed because of its slim fuselage.
Devlin was due off at ten which wasn't going to give them much time and Radl waited, fuming, as the Junkers landed and rolled to a halt. When the door was opened he was first down the steps and was immediately greeted by a Luftwaffe major in a sidecap and black leather coat 'Colonel Radl?' Major Hans Rudel Gruppenkommandant here at Laville.'
'What about my Irishman?' Radl demanded 'How is he?'
'Gone, Herr Oberst, not five minutes ago.'
'In the Dormer which just took off?' Radl cried. But that isn't possible Flight time was ten o'clock.
'We had a very bad met report earlier,' Rudel explained 'A cold front on its way in from the Atlantic Rain and some fog later I thought they'd better get off while they could.'
Radl nodded 'Yes, I see that. Would it be possible for me to get a message to him?'
'Of course, Herr Oberst, if you would be so kind as to follow me.' Rudel led the way quickly toward the control tower.
Five minutes later Liam Devlin - who was lying on his back on the floor of the Dormer in flying suit and helmet, eyes closed hands folded around the bottle of Bushmills Steiner had given him - felt a touch on his shoulder. He opened his eyes and found the wireless operator bending over him, a piece of paper in one hand
'A message for you,' he cried over the noise of the engines 'All right,' Devlin shouted back 'Read it to me.'
'It just says: Sorry I was late. Missed you by a whisker.' The wireless operator hesitated I don't understand the last bit 'Read it anyway. 'Good luck and up the Republic. Does that make any sense?'
'All the sense in the whole wide world, son,' Liam Devlin told him and closed his eyes again, smiling.
.
At precisely two forty-five on the following morning, Seumas O'Broin, a sheep farmer of Conroy in County Monaghan was endeavouring to find his way home across a stretch of open moorland. And making a bad job of it.
Which was understandable enough for when one is seventy-six, friends have a tendency to disappear with monotonous regularity and Seumas O'Broin was on his way home from a funeral wake for one who had just departed - a wake which had lasted for seventeen hours.
He had not onl
y, as the Irish so delightfully put it, drink taken. He had consumed quantities so vast that he was not certain whether he was in this world or the next, so that when what he took to be a large, white bird sailed out of the darkness over his head without a sound and plunged into the field beyond the next wall he felt no fear at all, only a mild curiosity.
Devlin made an excellent landing, the supply bag dangling twenty feet below from a line clipped to his belt, hitting the ground first, warning him to be ready He followed a split second later rolling in springy Irish turf, scrambling to his feet instantly and unfastening his harness.
The clouds parted at that moment, exposing a quarter-moon which gave him exactly the right amount of light to do what had to be done. He opened the supply bag took out a small trenching shovel, his dark raincoat, a tweed cap a pair of shoes and a large leather Gladstone bag.
There was a thorn hedge nearby, a ditch beside it and he quickly scraped a hole in the bottom with the shovel. Then he unzipped his flying overalls. Underneath he was wearing a tweed suit and he transferred the Walther which he had carried in his belt to his right-hand pocket. He pulled on his shoes and then put the overalls, the parachute and the flying boots into the bag and dropped it into the hole, raking the soil back into place quickly. He scraped a mass of dry leaves and twigs over everything, just to finish things off and tossed the spade into a nearby copse.
He pulled on his raincoat, picked up the Gladstone bag and turned to find Seumas O'Broin leaning on the wall watching him. Devlin moved fast, his hand on the butt of the Walther. But then the aroma of good Irish whiskey, the slurred speech told him all he needed to know.
'What are ye, man or divil?' the old fanner demanded, each word slow and distinct. 'Of this world or the next?'
'God save us, old man, but from the smell of you. if one of us lit a match right now we'd be in hell together soon enough. As for your question, I'm a little of both. A simple Irish boy, trying a new way of coming home after years in foreign parts.'
'Is that a fact?' O'Broin said.
'Aren't I telling you?'
The old man laughed delightedly. 'Cead mile failte sa bhaile romhat,' he said in Irish. 'A hundred thousand welcomes home to you.'
Devlin grinned. 'Go ralbh maith agat.' he said. 'Thanks.' He picked up the Gladstone bag, vaulted over the wall and set off across the meadow briskly, whistling softly between his teeth. It was good to be home, however brief the visit.
The Ulster border, then, as now, was wide open to anyone who knew the area. Two and a half hours of brisk walking by country lanes and field paths and he was in the county of Armagh and standing on British soil. A lift in a milk truck had him in Armagh itself by six o'clock. Half-an-hour later, he was climbing into a third-class compartment on the early morning train to Belfast.
7
On Wednesday it rained all day and in the afternoon mist drifted in off the North Sea across the marshes at Cley and Hobs End and Blakeney.
In spite of the weather, Joanna Grey went into the garden after lunch. She was working in the vegetable patch beside the orchard, lifting potatoes, when the garden gate creaked. Patch gave a sudden whine and was off like a flash. When she turned, a smallish, pale-faced man with good shoulders, wearing a black, belted trenchcoat and tweed cap was standing at the end of the path. He carried a Gladstone bag in his left hand and had the most startling blue eyes she had ever seen.
'Mrs. Grey?' he enquired in a soft. Irish voice. 'Mrs. Joanna Grey?'
'That's right.' Her stomach knotted with excitement. For a brief moment she could hardly breathe.
He smiled. 'I shall light a candle of understanding in the heart which shall not be put out.'
'Magna est veritas etpraevalet.'
'Great is Truth and mighty above all things,' Liam Devlin smiled. 'I could do with a cup of tea, Mrs. Grey. It's been one hell of a trip."
.
Devlin had been unable to secure a ticket for the night crossing from Belfast to Heysham on Monday and the situation was no better on the Glasgow route. But the advice of a friendly booking clerk had sent him up to Larne where he'd had better luck, obtaining a passage on the Tuesday morning boat on the short run to Stranraer in Scotland.
The exigencies of wartime travel by train had left him with a seemingly interminable journey from Stranraer to Carlisle, changing for Leeds. And in that city, a lengthy wait into the small hours of Wednesday morning before making a suitable connection for Peterborough where he had made the final change to a local train for Kings Lynn.
Much of this passed through his mind again when Joanna Grey turned from the stove where she was making tea and said, 'Well, how was it?'
'Not too bad,' he said. 'Surprising in some ways.'
'How do you mean?'
'Oh, the people, the general state of things. It wasn't quite as I expected.'
He thought particularly of the station restaurant at Leeds, crowded all night with travellers of every description, all hopefully waiting for a train to somewhere, the poster on the wall which had said with particular irony in his case: It is more than ever vital to ask yourself: Is my journey really necessary? He remembered the rough good humour, the general high spirits and contrasted it less than favourably with his last visit to the central railway station in Berlin.
'They seem to be pretty sure they're going to win the war,' he said as she brought the tea tray to the table.
'A fool's paradise,' she told him calmly. 'They never learn. They've never had the organization, you see, the discipline that the Fuhrer has given to Germany.'
Remembering the bomb-scarred Chancellery as he had last seen it, the considerable portions of Berlin that were simply heaps of rubble after the Allied bombing offensive, Devlin felt almost constrained to point out that things had changed rather a lot since the good old days. On the other hand, he got the distinct impression that such a remark would not be well received.
So, he drank his tea and watched her as she walked to a corner cupboard, opened it and took down a bottle of Scotch, marvelling that this pleasant-faced, white-haired woman in the neat, tweed skirt and Wellington boots could be what she was.
She poured a generous measure into two glasses and raised one in a kind of salute. 'To the English Enterprise,' she said, her eyes shining.
Devlin could have told her that the Spanish Armada had been so described, but remembering what had happened to that ill-fated venture decided, once again, to keep his mouth shut.
'To the English Enterprise,' he said solemnly.
'Good.' She put down her glass. 'Now let me see all your papers. I must make sure you have everything.'
He produced his passport, army discharge papers, a testimonial purporting to be from his old commanding officer, a similar letter from his parish priest and various documents relating to his medical condition.
'Excellent,' she said. 'These are really very good. What happens now is this. I've fixed you up with a job working for the local squire, Sir Henry Willoughby. He wants to see you as soon as you arrive so we'll get that over with today. Tomorrow morning I'll run you into Fakenham, that's a market town about ten miles from here.'
'And what do I do there?'
'Report to the local police station. They'll give you an alien's registration form which all Irish citizens have to fill in and you'll also have to provide a passport photo, but we can get that with no trouble. Then you'll need insurance cards, an identity card, ration book, clothing coupons.'
She numbered them off on the fingers of one hand and Devlin grinned. 'Heh, hold on now. It sounds like one hell of a lot of trouble to me. Three weeks on Saturday, that's all, and I'll be away from here so fast they'll think I've never been.'
'All these things are essential,' she said. 'Everyone has them, so you must. It only needs one petty clerk in Fakenham or Kings Lynn to notice that you haven't applied for something and put an enquiry in hand and then where would you be?'
Devlin said cheerfully. 'All right, you're the boss. Now what about this job
?'
'Warden of the marshes at Hobs End. It couldn't be more isolated. There's a cottage to go with it. Not much, but it will do.'
'And what will be expected of me?'
'Gamekeeping duties in the main and there's a system of dyke gates that needs regular checking. They haven't had a warden for two years since the last one went off to the war. And you'll be expected to keep the vermin in check. The foxes play havoc with the wild-fowl.'
'What do I do? Throw stones at them?'
Jack Higgins - Eagle Has Landed Page 16