The Long Flight Home

by Alan Hlad

  Susan took the stack.

  “I overheard a colleague talking about a pigeon article in the newspaper,” Clover said. “I’ve been too busy to read the papers, I’m afraid. Otherwise, I would’ve cut it out for you.”

  Susan adjusted her weight, then grimaced when she felt a twinge in her leg.

  “Knees?” Clover asked.

  “They’re fine,” she said, recalling how Clover, for the better part of two years, insistently brought up that she should have knee-replacement surgery. And she wasn’t about to admit that the long walks down the lane for the mail wreaked havoc on her dodgy joints. “Perhaps you could come and stay next weekend with Evie and Hugh,” Susan said, trying to change the subject.

  “You could come to London,” Clover said.

  Susan nodded toward the loft. “Pigeons.”

  “Bring the pigeons!” Hugh called from the back seat.

  Clover looked in the rearview mirror. “No, Grandmother can’t bring the pigeons.”

  “We should build a loft,” Evie added.

  Clover sighed and placed her hands on the steering wheel. “I’ll check my schedule,” she said to Susan. “In the meantime, see if you can find someone to care for the pigeons.”

  Susan nodded, then watched her drive away with Evie and Hugh waving their hands. She loved Clover. And she knew that her daughter cared for her. But they were, quite simply, different people. As she made her way back to the cottage, she thought of Hugh’s and Evie’s designer tennis shoes, likely purchased by their mother at Harrods or Selfridges, specked with pigeon droppings. Susan grinned.

  Inside, she made a cup of chamomile tea and turned on the television, trying to avoid the loneliness that always accompanied the departure of the grandchildren. Reluctantly, she began sorting through the pile of junk mail—solicitations for credit cards and mounds of coupons—which she tossed in the trash. Then she settled into her living room chair with the stack of newspapers. With her legs propped on a cushioned ottoman, she put on her readers and flipped through the oldest edition, searching for the article that Clover had mentioned. After several pages, she noticed an unusual headline and stopped.

  REMAINS OF WWII HOMING PIGEON FOUND

  IN ROCHFORD CHIMNEY

  He endured a treacherous flight over the Channel, flying many miles from Nazi-occupied Europe. The weary war pigeon, carrying a secret message inside a capsule attached to his leg, must have fluttered to a chimney in Rochford, perhaps to rest or to warm himself from a fire. Likely overwhelmed by fumes, the pigeon plummeted from his resting place and perished. His skeletal remains have gone unnoticed for over fifty years, until Niles Googins purchased the property and began renovations.

  Susan sat up straight and adjusted her reading glasses.

  “I was cleaning out the fireplace; the damper was clogged with rubbish,” he said on Monday. “I was pulling out debris and noticed small bones. At first, I thought it was the remains of a crow, until I noticed a red capsule attached to his leg.”

  Mr. Googins, a retired mathematics professor, opened the capsule and discovered a coded message on a bit of paper. The message has been dispatched to curators at Bletchley Park, where efforts to break the Nazi Enigma code turned the tide of the war. The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham is also diligently working to decode the message.

  “Poor soul,” she whispered to herself. Briefly, she wondered if it could have been Duchess or one of her other pigeons, either from Bertie’s farm or Northampton. But considering the military had used over 250,000 homing pigeons during the war, the chances were unlikely. She tossed the newspaper to the floor and quickly scanned the more recent editions, hoping to find an update on the story. She found what she was looking for in yesterday’s paper.

  BLETCHLEY PARK AND GCHQ DUMBFOUNDED

  BY SECRET MESSAGE!

  Experts at Bletchley Park and GCHQ are baffled by the coded message of a World War II spy pigeon found earlier this week in a Rochford chimney. They believe the red capsule Mr. Googins, a retired professor, found while renovating his house, is a type used during early intelligence operations. But to date, the code is undecipherable.

  Susan exhaled. Her heartbeat accelerated.

  “The communication this pigeon was carrying must have been of the highest secrecy,” said Alton Ross, an intelligence specialist at GCHQ. “Thousands of pigeons were used during the war, but the messages in historical records are in ordinary handwriting, not cipher. The red capsule indicates that it’s an Allied pigeon, likely from 1940. The encrypted message has us perplexed. But I’m confident we’ll decipher the code in short order.”

  Susan stood, noticing that the ache in her knees had spread to her belly. She took in several deep breaths, which did little to allay her apprehension. She dreaded reopening memories of the war, but she had to know. Slowly, she stepped to the phone, then dialed for the operator. “Can you connect me to a Niles Googins in Rochford?”

  A moment later, an elderly man’s voice answered.

  “Mr. Googins?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Susan Shepherd,” she said. “I read about the remains of a pigeon you discovered.”

  “I’ve spoken to enough reporters,” Googins said. “There’s nothing more to tell.”

  “I’m not a reporter,” Susan said, surprised that Googins couldn’t sense the age in her voice. “I once trained pigeons for the National Pigeon Service during the war.”

  “Oh,” Googins said. “The calls have been nonstop since the release of the first newspaper article. Reporters. Journalists. History enthusiasts. War veterans. They’ve all called. Even a self-proclaimed clairvoyant from Cambridge who claimed that she could decipher the pigeon’s message, for a nominal fee of course.”

  “It sounds as if you’ve had quite a response from your find,” Susan said.

  “Indeed.”

  “May I ask you a few questions, Mr. Googins?” She heard the man sigh. “I promise to be brief.”

  “Very well,” he said.

  “The article referred to the pigeon as he. How did you know it was a male?”

  “Aren’t all war birds male?”

  Pigeons, Susan wanted to correct but held her thought. “No, we used both male and female. Did anyone try to verify the gender?”

  “No, I don’t believe so,” he said, sounding a little embarrassed.

  “Did you happen to notice the shape of the pigeon’s head? A male’s head is rather round, but a hen’s skull will typically have a flat area on top.”

  “Hold on,” Googins said.

  Susan heard a clunk as the receiver dropped. She grimaced at the thought of a war pigeon being stored, in all likelihood, inside a shoe box or a piece of Tupperware.

  “It’s a she,” Googins said, picking up the phone. “You’re the first person to ask about this. All the others have only been interested in the message.”

  Susan paused. “Speaking of the message, did it contain a series of five-letter words? No numbers.”

  “Yes,” Googins said. “Have you seen it? Bletchley Park and GCHQ weren’t supposed to release the message to the papers until after the code was broken.”

  “No,” Susan said. “Did you happen to make a copy?”

  “I did better than that,” Googins said. “I have the original.”

  CHAPTER 56

  ROCHFORD, ENGLAND

  The following morning, Susan drove to Rochford, a little over an hour from Epping. In the passenger seat was a tarnished tea tin that she’d kept for over half a century. It would have done no good, she believed, to have revealed to her husband or daughter that she once had had affection for another man. So she’d kept it hidden in a keepsake box. It was, and would always be, her secret, encased inside that tea tin. And in a small, but impenetrable, compartment within her heart.

  She’d barely slept. Fear of what she might find, or not find, broiled in her brain, resurrecting vile memories of the war. Sirens. Explosions. The sickening odor
of expelled gunpowder. Bertie’s lifeless limbs protruding from rubble. In an attempt to rid herself of the visions, she resorted to placing a record, “The Lark Ascending,” by Vaughan Williams, on her vintage console stereo. She’d listened to it over and over. A penny taped to the stylus kept the needle from skipping. But the angelic music had done little to soothe the wounds of the past. Nor did it dispel the anxiety of what tomorrow might bring.

  Following the directions Mr. Googins had given her, she arrived at a sand-colored brick row house with small windows and a crooked television antenna protruding from the roof. She parked the car on the street and got out. Carrying the tin, she proceeded to the front door. The pain in her legs soon reminded her that she’d forgotten her cane at home. Her joints cracked as she climbed the porch steps. She knocked. Her heartbeat quickened. A lock clicked, and the door opened.

  “Susan?” A gray-haired man wearing khaki pants and a tartan shirt extended his arm. “Niles Googins.”

  Susan shook the man’s hand.

  Niles turned to a woman beside him wearing large round glasses and a blue sweater; her wrinkled, pink-hued cheeks were powdered with makeup. “My wife, Lydia.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Lydia said.

  Susan stepped into the home, noticing stacks of crown molding on the floor. The smell of fresh paint lingered in the air.

  “Don’t mind the mess,” Mr. Googins said. “We’re remodeling.” He led Susan to the living room, then pointed to a fireplace. “I found it in there.”

  Susan looked at an old coal-burning fireplace but noticed the items on a coffee table. A small clear-plastic display case. Inside, resting on a thin pad of foam, the remains of a pigeon. A skull. Bits of wing. And two leg bones, one with an attached red canister. With quivering hands, she stepped closer. Beside the case, a small message. Although the piece of paper had turned brown from age, she immediately recognized the code and the distinctive penmanship. Her eyes watered.

  “Oh dear,” Lydia said. She left and returned with a tissue.

  “Thank you,” Susan said, accepting the tissue. She wiped her eyes and stared at the remains inside the plastic case. “Duchess.”

  “Who?” Mr. Googins asked.

  “My pigeon. A pet, really.”

  “Pet?” His forehead wrinkled with confusion. “See the capsule? It’s a war pigeon.”

  Susan shook her head. “She was mistakenly loaded onto a plane in the autumn of 1940. It was one of the first missions to drop homing pigeons into Nazi-occupied France to gain intelligence. The plane was shot down with an American onboard.” She glanced at the coded piece of paper and thought of Ollie. Somehow, he must have managed to avoid capture long enough to relay another message. She took a deep breath, trying to contain the swells of sorrow building inside her chest. “The message is from him.”

  “This seems rather unusual,” Mr. Googins said, crossing his arms. “The United States wasn’t a participant in the war in 1940.”

  “Ollie was,” she said.

  “Ollie?” he asked.

  Susan nodded. Oliver from Maine. She dabbed away tears.

  He took a deep breath and sighed. “How do we know this is Duchess and a message from Ollie?”

  “Niles,” Lydia said sternly.

  “I’m merely asking a question, Lydia,” he said, lowering his head.

  Susan lifted her tin. She popped off the lid and spread its contents—coded and deciphered messages—over the coffee table.

  Lydia took one of Susan’s coded messages and compared it to the one found in their chimney. Her eyes glanced back and forth between the papers. “It’s the same code, Niles. And the same handwriting.”

  Niles examined the messages, taking more time than his wife, then nodded.

  Susan noticed Lydia staring at the deciphered messages. She sensed that Lydia understood that the communication was far more than a matter of intelligence. This was confirmed when the woman touched her arm and said, “Was Ollie your husband?”

  “No,” Susan said. Her chest ached, as if her torso were being compressed in a vice. “He didn’t make it out of France.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Lydia said.

  After a long pause, Niles turned to Susan and said, “Can you interpret the message?”

  “I don’t know,” Susan said. “I used to have the codebook, but it was destroyed during the Blitz.” She took a deep breath, then exhaled. “I suppose I could try decoding it by using the other messages.”

  “We’ll need to inform GCHQ,” Niles said.

  “We’ll do no such thing.” Lydia glanced at the pigeon remains on the coffee table, then carefully began placing the messages back into Susan’s tin, including the one found in the fireplace.

  Niles’s eyes widened. “Lydia.”

  She looked at her husband. “Are you convinced that this is Susan’s pigeon and that this message was intended for her?”

  Niles hesitated, then said, “Yes, but . . .”

  “These belong with you, dear,” Lydia said, cutting off her husband. She handed Susan the tin and plastic case.

  Susan looked at Lydia. “Thank you.”

  “But, Lydia,” Niles said.

  Lydia turned to her husband. “Do you remember the letters you wrote me when you were in service?”

  Niles squirmed.

  “How would you like those letters posted for the world to see?”

  His face flushed. Red blotches covered his neck.

  Lydia patted her husband’s leg. “And if you say a word about this to anyone, I’ll make sure a copy of those lovely letters you sent me as a young chap end up in the hands of your golf club.”

  CHAPTER 57

  EPPING, ENGLAND

  Susan stopped twice on the drive home to clear her watery eyes. Parked on the side of the road, she stared at the bones in the passenger seat. Inside the tin, a message from Ollie. Her head and heart reeled as the past collided with the present.

  She arrived home with the intent to give Duchess a proper burial. But as she carried the remains and a garden trowel to the forest, she couldn’t bring herself to break the ground. The least she could do before placing her pigeon into the earth was to decipher the message. And finish what Duchess had given her life for. So she returned to the cottage and went to work.

  For a month, Susan worked relentlessly on decoding the message. She spent her days and evenings scouring over the codes. Desperate to translate Ollie’s note, she took little time to eat and sleep. Exhausted, she began falling asleep at the kitchen table. And she resorted to setting an egg timer to force herself to take breaks. But either her mind was failing from age, she believed, or the words that Ollie had selected were quite different. After weeks of racking her brain over the codes, she had managed to decipher only one word, Susan, which was consistent with the other messages. She feared that she’d never be able to decipher Ollie’s words and that Duchess would remain in purgatory, sealed in a plastic sarcophagus at the bottom of her dresser.

  As she deliberated over the message, a long dormant ache began to grow. Her broken heart, pieced together by time, had once again begun to crack. And accompanying the pang in her chest, a strange sense of indiscretion. Her thoughts were on Ollie, not Duncan.

  She’d met Duncan five years after the war, shortly after completing her studies and accepting a position as a professor of ornithology at the university. Duncan, an engineering professor, had courted her, despite her overt lack of interest in him. But he was persistent, well-mannered, and, according to her colleagues, a good suitor. After a year of declining his offers to join him for dinner, she finally accepted. Ollie’s gone, she told herself as Duncan sat across from her, eating his roast chicken and peas.

  She liked Duncan, despite his banal appearance and predictable nature. And who was she to be critiquing courters? After all, she was sometimes referred to as the “peculiar pigeon lady” by some of her students, when they learned she’d trained pigeons for the war. After a year of rather one-sided courtship,
Duncan proposed. She accepted. Perhaps she didn’t want to live her life as a hermit. Or maybe the passing of time had enabled her to give in to the rules of social expectations—get married, have children, and make one’s mark in the world. But deep down, she’d simply come to accept that there was only one true love in a person’s life. And her Ollie was gone.

  She’d had a good life, she supposed. Also, she had Clover and her grandchildren, Evie and Hugh, reassuring her that she’d made the right decision. Over the years, Susan had grown quite fond of Duncan. He was kind, gentle, fatherly, and always bringing her fresh fruit. “Helps with your potassium,” he’d routinely say, as he’d give her a bunch of bananas. By all accounts, Duncan was a good and decent man. But she never again experienced those beautiful butterflies in her tummy, the ones that had migrated away in the autumn of 1940. And never returned.

  By September, Susan had succumbed to the fact that she’d never read Ollie’s message. Without the codebook, it was impossible to decipher. Besides, Bletchley Park and GCHQ had likely already interpreted the message weeks ago but were too embarrassed to report the findings. But she was proven wrong when another article appeared in the newspaper. The article was similar to the previous ones, simply requoting Googins’s finding in his chimney; however, this one revealed that both Bletchley and GCHQ were baffled. And pasted below the article, a copy of Ollie’s coded message:

  “Good Lord!” Susan exclaimed over her buttered toast.

  She read the article twice, unable to fathom that her message was posted for the world to see. Not only were Bletchley and GCHQ still working on deciphering the code, amateur code breakers and history buffs would likely be racing to be the first to claim that they had solved the mystery.

  Susan folded the newspaper, went to the phone, and called Clover. “Could you come to Epping this evening?” She paused, struggling to find her words. “There’s something rather important I need to tell you.”