African Sky

by Tony Park

  ‘Germans, sir. A spy, and maybe his accomplice, have got Smythe’s Harvard and I’m fairly sure they’re going to use it to attack the parade today.’

  Rogers frowned. ‘Calm down, Paul. We’re a long way from the nearest Germans. And as for them bombing us, I really don’t see what damage they can do with a Harvard. Now, take a seat.’

  ‘Sir, I’m not mad. I believe the Ossewa Brandwag agent we were informed about, Reitz, has managed to capture an aircraft and will use it to attack the base, and probably Prime Ministers Huggins and Smuts as well. Exactly how he’ll do that, I’m not sure, but we have to cancel the parade. You’ll have three hundred qualified fighter and bomber pilots out in the open, plus aircraft and dignitaries. They’ll be sitting ducks.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m sure you’re right to be so concerned about us all, and our new pilots but, again, I think there’s little one man in an unarmed Harvard trainer can do.’

  ‘Belts . . .’ Bryant said. ‘She needed belts and . . .’ It was not coming out right. His head throbbed and he felt nauseous again. His wounds were catching up with him.

  ‘Belts? What do . . . ?’ the wing commander said, but he was cut short by the tramp of boots on stairs and the crash of the door opening again. Henderson stood in the doorway, pistol drawn. Behind him, three African askaris armed with .303s were bumping into each other, and their flight sergeant, in their rush to get into the building.

  ‘Drop it!’ Henderson barked.

  Bryant turned and saw the look of a man itching to fire his first shot in anger. He glanced at the Wingco and noted the condescending look of disbelief on his face. They thought he was mad. Bugger it. They were probably right.

  Bryant pulled the pistol’s trigger. It was hanging by his side, so the round punched harmlessly through the wooden floorboards and into the dirt below, but the sound of the gunshot in the confines of the building made everyone else jump a foot. He caught a glimpse of Henderson cowering on the floor, and the wing commander staring at him with an almost comical look of bemusement. Bryant jumped up onto the NCO clerk’s desk and, arms crossed protectively in front of his face, leaped through the closed window. Glass exploded around him, and he was vaguely aware of yet more cuts on his body as he landed, feet together, in the grass behind the wing commander’s office. As he ran, he heard confused shouting behind him.

  He sprinted down the laneways behind the administrative buildings until he reached the hangars. Susannah Beattie and her parachute packers, all dressed up in their best air force khaki tunics and skirts, looked up from cups of tea outside their building and stared open-mouthed at the bloodied running figure. He ignored them and wheeled past the maintenance hangar. At last he was on the concrete airstrip. An area in front of the hangars had been roped off and rows of chairs sat under an open-sided marquee. In front of the seat was a raised dais, where Huggins and Smuts would take the salute as the graduating airmen marched past them. Between two hangars, scores of newly qualified pilots milled about, having a cigarette or chatting while they waited to be formed up to march on for a final rehearsal of the parade. No official guests had arrived yet, but Bryant knew they would soon, so as to be in place when the prime ministers appeared. Huggins would be entertained in the officers’ mess before Rogers escorted him out to the dais. Bryant should have been in his best uniform, overseeing the event. Instead he was running from his own men like a fugitive.

  The Oxford he’d seen coming in had landed and was taxiing past him. Stretching out in front of him was a line of about twenty aircraft, representative of all the types used in the Empire Air Training Scheme. The Oxford trundled down the line to take its place. Somewhere out of sight, bagpipers tuned their instruments. The wailing notes only heightened his anxiety.

  He looked behind and saw Henderson leading a growing posse of armed men. The flight sergeant was calling his name now, and several of the about-to-graduate pilots looked from the askaris and back to him. It would only be moments before he was overwhelmed by eager volunteers. Bryant took a deep breath and started running again, this time down the line of parked aircraft.

  The Oxford had pulled up at the end of the line of aircraft, next to a Harvard, whose propeller was still turning as the pilot was allowing the engine to cool, before shutting it down. Bryant stuffed the pistol into the waistband of his trousers, out of sight in the small of his back, and climbed up onto the wing of the Harvard. The blast of hot exhaust snatched at the tattered remnants of his shirt.

  The pilot noticed the movement beside him and looked over. He pulled off his flying helmet, revealing a mass of thick black curls. ‘What’s happening?’ he yelled above the noise.

  Bryant recognised the man. Costas, a Greek instructor seconded to the air training group from the Royal Hellenic Air Force. ‘Get out,’ Bryant ordered.

  ‘Paul, you look like hell! You survived the crash, I see. What went wrong?’

  ‘No time to explain, Spiro. Are your guns loaded?’

  Costas looked confused. ‘Why, yes. I just dropped off my trainee. We were called back from gunnery practice to join this show for the politicians.’

  ‘Get out, I need this kite,’ Bryant said.

  ‘You’re injured, I don’t think you should be flying,’ the Greek yelled above the noise of the idling engine.

  Bryant looked over his shoulder and saw Henderson and company charging down the airstrip, past the VIP seating. He leaned over the pilot, saw that he had already unbuckled his parachute harness. Bryant grabbed a fist full of dark hair. Costas struggled, swore in Greek and lashed out.

  Bryant unhanded him and drew the pistol from behind his back. He pointed it at the pilot. ‘I’m serious, Spiro. Get out. Someone’s going to try to sabotage the parade, and I have to stop them. People’s lives are at stake.’

  Costas nodded and said: ‘Watch the temperature gauge, Paul. She’s running a little hot.’ He stepped down off the wing and walked towards the group of men who were pursuing Bryant. He turned and waved as the Harvard taxied out of the queue, out onto the runway.

  ‘Your friend Bryant,’ said Hayes, pausing as he coughed and spat clotted blood out of the police car’s window, ‘is a flaming madman. He needs shooting.’

  Pip ignored Hayes’ ranting and directed her questioning to young Roger Pembroke, who seemed a lot more lucid.

  She had gone with the car to collect the three stranded officers, where a passing vicar had noticed them from his car, handcuffed to a telegraph pole. They had quickly been freed, and all had started babbling about Bryant’s escape. ‘Charge him with assault, I will,’ Hayes had blurted, blood drooling onto his blue shirt as he spoke.

  Pip was seated in the front of the police car, next to a male constable who was driving. Hayes, Pembroke and their driver were squeezed into the back seat. ‘Roger, tell me again what Paul Bryant told you to pass on to me,’ she said

  Pembroke closed his eyes in concentration. ‘He wanted you to meet him at Kumalo. He didn’t understand why we wanted to arrest him, so I told him that we had proof he had set up Innocent Nkomo. That seemed to register with him, and then he said something about it being the set-up of the century.’

  Pip pondered the words. ‘What else did he say, Roger? What’s got him so excited? He must have known that even if we took him in, he’d be able to explain his side of the story.’

  ‘He told Sergeant Hayes that there was going to be an attack on Kumalo.’

  Pip looked at the blood-smeared sergeant. ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Hayes sulkily. ‘He attacked me before I could get more information out of him.’

  Pip noticed the way Roger Pembroke rolled his eyes at this comment. She’d wager that it was Hayes rather than Paul who had initiated the fisticuffs. Bryant, unless he had gone completely off his rocker, must have come across more information. She was prepared to reconsider him as a murder suspect, in the light of her latest investigations, but she’d come across nothing that suggested an attack on the base.


  ‘There was something else. Rather odd,’ Pembroke said.

  ‘Don’t hold back, Roger. What was it?’

  ‘He said to tell you that he’d found his missing aeroplane.’

  Odd indeed, Pip thought. Paul had flown to the saltpans to have another look at the area where the dead pilot had been found. Had he discovered another piece of this increasingly complicated puzzle out in that godforsaken wilderness?

  They arrived at the entrance to Kumalo to find two askaris dismantling the remains of the broken boom gate and a third hurriedly sweeping red and white splinters off the roadway. ‘Go straight through, madam,’ one of the Africans said to Pip. ‘Flight Sergeant Henderson is expecting you.’

  ‘Is Mr Bryant here, on base?’

  ‘Yes, madam. The last I heard, on the telephone, was that he was trying to steal an aeroplane.’

  ‘Flight line, Tom,’ she said to the driver. ‘Straight up the road, then between those big hangars. Hurry!’

  The police car raced through the air force base and swung onto the Tarmac. ‘There,’ said Tom, pointing through the windscreen.

  Bryant had been delayed because of air traffic congestion. It would have been funny, he thought, except for the circumstances.

  Henderson and his ragtag posse of would-be captors had piled into a tender truck and trundled down the runway after him like the Keystone Kops as he’d taxied the Harvard to the far end. Every now and then the flight sergeant would raise his revolver and point it at the plane. In answer, Bryant would hold his hand out of the cockpit to show he still carried his own weapon. Henderson did not have the guts to open fire on him, he thought. It would only be a matter of time, though, before they realised that the best way to stop him was to block the runway with a tanker or a line of smaller vehicles.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ Bryant said as the Oxford touched down at the opposite end of the concrete strip and raced towards him. He knew the twin-engine machine would stop and turn off well before it reached him. The air-traffic controller, a WAAF sergeant, had probably saved his life when she had bellowed at him through the wireless to hold his position. At first he’d thought it was a trick to keep him on the ground so that Henderson could overwhelm him, but then he’d seen the two Oxfords circling.

  ‘Tower, this is Bryant,’ he said. Off to his right, the truck carrying Henderson and his men was edging closer. ‘Tell that other Oxford to hold. I’m taking off now, whether you give the green light or not.’

  ‘Sir,’ the woman’s Rhodesian-accented voice was almost pleading, ‘you know I can’t give you clearance to take off.’

  ‘People’ll die if you don’t, Sarah.’

  ‘Look down the runway, sir. Near the hangars. Police have arrived.’

  ‘Too late,’ he said. He opened the throttle and released the brakes. The Harvard shot forward. Henderson turned back off the runway and followed the aircraft’s progress down the side road.

  Bryant looked ahead. The runway was clear. He saw the police car stop, and four figures climb out. One was in a skirt.

  Pip took off her hat and waved it in the air, signalling to him.

  His speed was nearly thirty-five knots already and he felt the tail wheel start to rise from the concrete. He could be airborne in seconds. The question was, did he trust the policewoman enough to stop now? If she arrested him on the spot and they took him away, the day might end in tragedy. No, he would go it alone.

  He could see Pip mouthing something, still waving furiously. Suddenly she dropped her hat and charged out into the middle of the runway.

  ‘Shit!’ Bryant said. The bloody woman was going to kill herself. He wrenched back the throttle and stamped on the brakes. He felt the tail wheel drop with a thud. The Harvard slowed, reluctantly, like a confused horse after a false start. He swerved, and the violent manoeuvre felt for an instant like it might tear off one of the landing gear struts. Pip was getting closer and closer. At last, he stopped, only a few yards from her. The engine still growled. He tore off his flying helmet and yelled, ‘Jesus Christ, you very nearly got yourself killed!’

  ‘Get out, Paul! Let’s talk about this,’ she called back, cupping her hands around her mouth.

  He shook his head. ‘No way. You sold me out. Why have you turned on me?’

  ‘There’s too much to explain. Shut down and get out. You won’t be arrested, Paul. We have to talk, though.’

  ‘No dice. You can come with me if you want, but I’m going. This is serious, Pip.’

  ‘That’s a bloody understatement,’ she said. She looked back. Hayes and other policemen were standing with the air force men, hanging back.

  ‘Last chance, Pip. Either you trust me on this or you don’t.’

  Could she trust him? She’d slept with him on Sunday and been willing to see him charged and hanged for murder yesterday. She’d gone looking for evidence with which to nail that conviction, but all she had turned up was doubt. She looked into his eyes and remembered the tenderness in them as they’d made love. Paul Bryant was a troubled man. Even though he had hidden the truth from her about his relationship with Felicity and Catherine, he had never lied to her about his own feelings, his own weaknesses.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she swore again as she hitched up her skirt enough for her to get one foot on the Harvard’s port wing. She clambered up until she was next to him. He jerked a thumb rearwards, indicating she should climb into the seat behind him. He smiled and winked at her as she nodded her understanding. It was crazy, but she smiled back. She put a foot on the stubby step beneath the rear cockpit, grabbed the rim of the fuselage and heaved herself up and in.

  She sat on something uncomfortable and found that the last person in the aircraft had left his flying helmet, which was connected by a lead to the aircraft’s radio and intercom, on the rear seat. Pip also noticed that she wasn’t sitting on a cushion, but rather a packed parachute. Bryant was pointing to his head and ears with his free hand. She picked up the leather helmet and pulled it on.

  ‘Hear me?’ His voice, tinny and slightly scratchy, filled her ears.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, unaware that he couldn’t hear her.

  He turned back and showed her how he was holding the dangling oxygen mask over his face. He removed it from his face and mouthed, ‘Talk into this.’

  She placed the rubber mask over her face. It smelled of sweat and something worse. She tried not to think about germs – the least of her problems at the moment. ‘OK. Can you hear me now?’

  ‘No worries,’ he said. His voice, his Australian accent, was as laid-back as if he were talking about the weather. ‘Hold tight, Pip. As I taxi, grab those straps behind your shoulders and pull them in front of you. They connect to a belt across your lap. Buckle up. I’m not wasting any more time.’

  Before she was able to grab the dangling mask again and say anything, she found herself pushed back into the uncomfortable seat as he accelerated down the airstrip. Bryant slewed the plane around in a turn so tight that she was thrown against the metal wall of the fuselage. Something sharp dug into her ribs. She was still struggling with the restraint buckle when she felt the rear of the Harvard rise and, suddenly, for the first time in her life, she was flying. ‘Oh, my Lord!’

  ‘Nice feeling, isn’t it?’ he said, turning and smiling at her over his shoulder. Below them, Henderson’s vehicle was slowing to a halt in the middle of the runway. Bryant gave the people on the ground a little wave.

  ‘So, what happens next?’ Pip asked. She tried to sound calm and in control, but all of her senses were overloaded with the excitement and danger of the last few minutes.

  ‘Next we stop a lot of people, including the leaders of Rhodesia and South Africa, from getting killed, I hope. If I’m wrong about all this you can arrest me when we get back on the ground. If I’m not, and we get out of this alive, I’m taking you out to dinner tonight.’

  ‘You are?’ she said, but forgot to hold the mask to her face. She still wasn’t sure that she could trust him comple
tely or that he wasn’t still involved with Catherine De Beers somehow. As much as she wanted him to be innocent, he had a lot of explaining to do first. If she had made the wrong decision, climbing aboard the aircraft, she might never return to Bulawayo alive. She gulped air as the Harvard bounced through some turbulence. Her palms were wet and her heart was racing, and it wasn’t because of a fear of flying. She remembered to hold up the oxygen mask this time and said, more businesslike now, ‘Do you want to start talking first, or shall I?’

  ‘Ladies first,’ he said into the intercom. He pushed the throttle forward, nudged the stick and pointed the aircraft north by north-west towards Isilwane Ranch.

  19

  The Harvard rolled to a stop outside the hangar beside Isilwane Ranch’s airstrip. Catherine De Beers killed the engine. She took off her flying helmet, shook her dark curls free and revelled in the feel of the slight breeze. She climbed out of the aircraft and then jumped off the wing onto the grass.

  She looked around her. No one. ‘Hello?’ she called. No answer. She felt her pulse start to quicken. She savoured the feeling of fear. She liked it.

  The hangar door slid open with an ear-jarring screech. It was dark and cool inside. She sniffed the air. The place smelled of oil and fuel, and something else.

  There was movement behind her, in the shadows, but she was too slow to turn. A hand was clamped over her mouth and she felt the cold steel point of a knife prick the soft skin of her neck. The other odours she’d caught were from the man who held her – horse, leather and sweat.

  ‘I thought you’d never come,’ Reitz said, dropping his knife hand.

  ‘Didn’t you miss me, Hennie? Don’t you want me now? We’ve got time.’

  ‘There will be time for that later, God willing. You cut it rather fine,’ he said.

  She curled her lower lip playfully. ‘You had plenty of time for me on your last trip to Rhodesia, and in Windhoek.’

  It had been two years earlier, though the memory was as fresh as if it had happened the night before.