*
She found it quietly thrilling to see Mick again; he’d lost none of his so very straight-forward charm. If anything he’d grown thinner, yet this only made his face seem more handsome. The ground crew attending to her now parked aircraft didn’t exactly snap to attention as he’d appeared, but they did get to work very smartly.
‘It’s good to see you again, Bess,’ he said just above a whisper.
‘And you,’ she smiled. ‘Congratulations on that,’ she said, pointing to the diagonal purple-on-white DFC patch on the chest of his battledress.
‘It’s just for show,’ he shrugged.
He was flying Mosquitos now, in Bess’s experience an aircraft infinitely less ‘replaced’ than the Lanc. ‘Lucky devil,’ she said.
‘Well,’ he replied, ‘I’ve been sold on ’em ever since my first ride. Such a wonderful pilot,’ he winked.
He introduced her to two of his squadron-mates, both fellow Australians, one by the name of Matthews – something wicked about him, always on the edge of a smile – and to the navigator of his own aircraft: Flying Officer Fraser had the air of a lovely, simple young man, underneath it, an air of astounding capability. And though everything about him was understated, you could feel his high regard for Mick.
Bess checked her wristwatch. Then looked back up at Mick. His eyes still held their hint of emerald, yet only a rare sparkle now. Now there was a coldness about them.
And it was time for her to go. Deliver the replacement Lanc.
*
Behind his desk, Werner Gruber considered the situation for Germany.
If the war was lost in North Africa, Sicily just invaded by the Allies and all manner of things disasterous in Russia, in Holland, at least, the war was being won…
From all across the Reich, from every theatre of operations, reports had been coming in for some time now of German forces – though tactically superior, better disciplined, more professional than the Allies – nevertheless being vexed by the Allies at every turn. As if the Allies knew the German Army, Air Force and Navy’s every move in advance and were racking up their highly unlikely victories as a result. Rommel had lost in North Africa and Rommel was unbeatable: The man was, in practical terms, a genius. As a commander, the superior of any British or American opposite number. Indeed, radically unlike the American commander, Patton, Rommel’s troops loved and respected him. Yet he had lost due to lack of supplies; sent to the bottom of the Mediterranean by Allied submarines and air power off Malta for just too long – and with a predictability that suggested the Allies knew precisely when and where to strike. So the prevailing theory of the German codes having long since been broken by the Allies was only logical.
Yet the theory was being proven wrong by Holland.
In Holland, for the past year at least, the British had been feeding their agents, via parachute, to the lions. It was a situation into which Werner had been lucky enough to have stepped. Indeed, fortune was now favouring Werner. At long last. Now he was one of the lions.
As far as Werner could determine, this local situation had been seeded with a British agent in Holland being captured and turned by the Gestapo the previous year. Since then an identical fate awaited every single British agent parachuted in by either MI6 or the Brits’ ‘Special Operations Executive’ – Nobody in the Gestapo much cared which any longer, only that each very expensively trained, highly motivated and immaculately equipped British agent was captured the moment they hit the ground, in due course tortured for everything he or she knew, the poor souls who survived then being dispatched to concentration camps. But the key pay-off of the whole deception was that German Intelligence in Holland was at this very moment transmitting back to London as if every one of these poor souls was ticketyboo, as the English put it, German radio operators expertly impersonating them in Morse Code, currently, via no less than fourteen of their captured transmitter sets.
Indeed, if the forces of the Reich were winning the war nowhere else, Werner Gruber was winning it in Holland. He must be; he had just been promoted.
From Kriminalinspektor to Kriminalkommissar. Gestapo. Eindhoven office.
Where Werner was the lion being fed.
Though the more he thought of it, less a lion…
Than a reaper.
*
On approach to the dining hall for breakfast with Jack Fraser, Mick saw Dave Matthews studying the noticeboard by the hall’s entrance.
‘Morning, boys,’ he hailed. ‘’Ave a squiz at this.’
They stopped, Mick peering to see which of the pinned bulletins he might be referring to.
‘Remember that Kennett bloke?’ put Matthews.
‘Can’t say it rings a bell,’ murmured Mick as he scanned the board.
‘Bloke who pinned our gongs on.’
‘Not Ronald Kennett?’ angled Fraser. ‘As in the Air Commodore…’
‘That’s the one,’ nodded Matthews.
‘He leads the Pathfinder Force,’ said Fraser.
Mick had heard of the Pathfinders; everybody had; for the past year they’d led the entire bomber force wherever it went, giving Bomber Command the single thing it had lacked since the beginning of the war. Accuracy. He now read aloud: ‘…105 Squadron forthwith under the auspices of 8 Group, PFF…’ He squinted. ‘…What’s an “auspice”?’
‘Control,’ said Matthews, one eyebrow raised, and a slightly wild look in his eyes. ‘They’re makin’ us Pathfinders, boys…’
*
Though 105 Squadron remained at Marham, its trusted Mosquito Mark B.IVs were fired up by ATA girls and flown away, others flying in a new sort of Mossie. No sign of Bess, in any case Mick found his attention drawn by how striking these new Mossies were on approach and in booming fly-over: No half-half grey lower, camouflaged upper; these Mosquitos were black, camouflage solely on wing upsides and uppermost along the fuselage and nose. With more powerful Merlin engines too, Mick had been assured, these were the new Mosquito Mark B.IX.
Examining a just-parked one, Mick saw the standard RAF red-white-and-blue roundels remained, though the squadron’s serial letters along the black of the fuselage were firey red. And there was a major difference to this Mossie…
No longer was its nose a clear perspex dome but a solid black one.
‘How are y’going to aim y’bombs at high altitude?’ Mick put to Jack Fraser as they stood by the aircraft together.
‘No visual bomb-sight on this one,’ fielded Fraser.
‘What?’
‘Remember how I said Radar was the way of the future?’
‘That I do.’
‘This Mossie aims and drops its bombs by radar.’
Mick looked up the aircraft. At this black Mosquito. Nodding slightly as he surveyed it: ‘…Way of the future.’
*
Dom Hundleby had just been head-hunted. His imminent posting: Intel Officer, 140 Wing, RAF Sculthorpe, just a way north up the Swaffham Road. Hence he now put his desk in order at Marham.
140 Wing was newish, comprising three squadrons: 21 Squadron, RAF, 487 Squadron of the Royal New Zealand Air Force and 464 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. All three had recently converted to Mosquitos, to their eminent relief one could but assume, the file through which Hundleby now pored indicating that 487 Squadron, flying Venturas over Amsterdam back in May, had lost 10 out of 11 aircraft in a single op. Indeed, everyone wanted a posting to Mosquitos now, and no wonder given the rumour that went through the RAF like wild-fire recently – the one about the new Mosquito force as a whole having lost a mere 11 craft in their first 1000 sorties. Yet that had to be a mistake, surely – Hundleby assumed it from cloud-cookoo-land the moment he heard it… A 99 per cent survival rate? No. Some duffer up the line had muffed the stats…
In any event he was still with 105 for the next few nights and, going by the veritably jaw-dropping incoming shipments of bombs and aviation fuel, they would be ‘maximum effort’ nights, as usual the night’s target being handed down fro
m the head of Bomber Command to his Group Commanders thence to squadron level mere hours before take-off: the name of the condemned city. All the way down from Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Roland Bartlett – known by the press as ‘Bomber Bartlett’, by his crews as ‘Butch’. Some said ‘Butcher’.
And Hundleby was sure of it: As far as he could deduce from another file, something bloody-well titanic was on the cards; over and above the expected ‘target indicator’ flare bombs being delivered to Marham – for target marking with 105 now on Pathfinder duties – the really striking thing about the wider Bomber Command picture was the enormous quantity of incendiary bombs being shipped about. Good Lord. They were being ordered in from everywhere to everywhere. But to hit what? Hundleby considered a separate page, a list of Rhur and related targets, but narrowed it down in his own mind to the two most likely…
Essen… Another Rhur city.
And Hamburg… Ancient sea port.
Whichever it might be, it looked very much indeed like Butcher Bartlett was intending to set the place on fire.
*
In his early-thirties, Air Commodore Ronald Kennett was about ten years older than most in the bar of the Marham Officers’ Mess. Australian, he’d been in the pre-war RAAF then RAF, then a pilot for the British Imperial Airways. A long-range pilot and navigator without known equal, he had most recently been awarded the Distinguished Service Order by the Brits, though Dave Matthews vouched for him as a fellow-Queenslander. Just on the quiet, Matthews also maintained that, being indeed young for a Royal Air Force Bomber Group Commander as well as a ‘colonial’, Kennett’s rise had made him some powerful enemies within the RAF. But if there was one thing anyone needed to know about him, said Matthews, it was that he didn’t suffer fools.
Assembled before the man, the pilots and navigators of 105 Squadron now wore their newly-issued ‘Pathfinder Wings’ – a gold-metal eagle pinned directly below their original wings patches, most of the lads holding beer tankards, for Jack Fraser a powdered-orange squash. Though they’d snapped to attention as one on their leader’s entry to the room, he’d long since ordered them to relax. Mick could sense he was about to address them just as Kennett stepped up onto a low table, and the room went silent. Though a Queenslander, he was no Rugby League player, more like Mick’s idea of a surgeon, his voice rich and clipped.
‘Most blokes get hand-picked for this. You have been picked as a squadron, 105, because most of you are good enough to be in it. Most of you… As for the rest of you, you fly Mosquitos so everyone quite wrongly assumes you’re supermen.’
He waited until their laughter subsided.
‘Mosquitos, gentlemen…’ – then until complete silence once again – ‘…in which you are going to win this war. Most probably even survive it. And if anyone knows these are no empty words, it’s you.’ His eyes were darkly arresting as they darted to every face in the room. ‘The Pathfinders are about one thing. They’re about turning a sledge-hammer into an axe. A heavy and very sharp axe. To cut the head off this useless bloody war. You, gentlemen, are now Pathfinders.’
*
Bournemouth
Crispin Jessop sat at his usual table. In his usual tea rooms. At the usual time of his every working day. A career Royal Air Force officer. A Squadron Leader no less. Equivalent to an Army Major. And a passed-over one at that. Since the war had come, he had been doing his bit. He had.
Well it was no longer good enough.
Not by a long shot.
From here on in, he was no longer going to ‘do his bit’; he was going to play his part.
Crispin sipped his tea, saucered the cup. Shakespeare had put it like that, hadn’t he… About what life was… The more Crispin thought about it, the more it seemed to him the chap had been onto something: What was the point of life if not to give one’s self the chance of some decent role within it before one fell off the stage?
Crispin had made up his mind. He was going to give himself that chance. So at least he wouldn’t die regretting he hadn’t had a go.
He was a pen-pusher. In the RAF parlance, a ‘desk-flyer’. Dammit, he was a bloody good one. And that was the truth. But the Commonwealth Aircrew Reception and Dispatch Centre Bournemouth was nowhere. When Crispin needed to be somewhere. And if anyone could rig the system to put Crisin Jessop somewhere it was himself; he was the system.
Yet ‘somewhere’ where?
For the answer to that poser, Crispin mused, he could do worse than follow his inspiration. Well then – he drained his tea – back to the Centre and to his files so as to research and discover his inspiration’s current whereabouts…
He motioned for the bill, the waitress on approach.
‘You’re in a good mood today, suh,’ she breezed.
He smiled up at the aproned girl. ‘I’m always in a good mood these days, Lil. What time d’you get off?’
‘Chee-keh,’ she retorted.
‘Ah, but life’s too short,’ he released, still smiling.
‘Six o’clock sharp then.’
*
Jacqueline Orval was going to starve.
No one to pick the harvest. No money coming in since she had buried Papa.
No way of working in Saint-Saëns; she would be recognised and talked about within minutes, the French police onto her within hours, then the Gestapo. And that would be the end.
So she was leaving. Leaving her home. No choice but to get to Paris with the little money she had, there, to remain untraceable yet eat with money from work that did not require identity papers.
Paris.
She was supposed to have been a student there. A promising student of Literature.
Now she would be a whore there. A 17-year-old whore there. Lose her virginity to a German soldier. Her skin crawled.
The Résistance man had said it would be safe for her now, yes, even to work in Saint-Saëns: that if they had not come for her by now they never would. Of this, he gruffed, she could rest assured. To Jacqueline his assurance did not make sense. It did not; if her name was marked ‘wanted’ – as the surviving daughter of one suspected of sheltering Allied terror-fliers – there would be a file on her. This would lead the Gestapo directly to her in time; it stood to reason; the Boches operated ‘by the book’. She was leaving.
The days were warm now, that was at least something: En route to Paris she could sleep on benches without freezing to death. And there would be many like her: the homeless. The orphaned. The displaced. She would hide herself amongst them. Until she could come back without fear once again. When the war was won.
With what she could carry packed and ready, she took the dagger from its hiding place in the barn. She would drop it down the well; for the Gestapo to find a British Commando dagger on a French girl did not bear imagining. Crossing the yard now to the stone lip of the well, she lowered her belongings, and unsheathed the dagger. Held it. Looked at it in the last light of day…
Her finding of the Australian was the reason for all of this. Yet so readily had he proven himself worthy of her and Papa’s protection: Seeing the German soldiers in fact a firing squad before Papa, instantly had Mick moved to give himself up, to offer his own life in place of Papa’s. The sole reason Mick was over France at all was to free it, and risk his own life trying. Jacqueline wondered where he was at this moment; such a lovely young man he had been. And so very far from his home. She wondered if he had heard her last words to him: that she hoped he would come back, just as Papa had wanted. Then, somehow, maybe all of this would make sense. Some sort of sense with which to go forward. Yet most likely he had not heard her, the noise all around them too great, just as she had not heard his last words to her. So she had kissed him. So he would know. Without hearing.
With the prospect of a final walk out through the rotting orchard, Jacqueline took in the little world around her one last time. The house where she was born. The yard where she had played. Where Papa had worked. Where Jean-Noël had mad
e her laugh and made her cry. Staring across the yard at the old stump, she knew this moment was the last of the life she had known. Her only sanity, she knew, would be to accept it. And she determined to try.
When the anger rose up inside her. An anger that boiled to her ears. The thin, flat blade of the dagger between the fingers of her right hand, without thinking she gripped it tight, drew it back and hurled it with all her strength.
To hear it hit the stump not with a bling or a clung but a fat thunk.
She blinked. Crossed the yard towards it. And, drawing up to it, saw it stuck straight in to the hard wood, and with the slightest quiver still. She had, in fact, to lever it a few times to pull it out.
Crossing back across the yard to the well, she re-sheathed it, placed it inside her coat, and picked up her bags.
*
At age 25, Group Captain Peter Rickard DSO, DFC and Two Bars had been in the game a long time.
Battle of Britain. The Channel sweeps after it all through ’41. Instructing, promotion from Squadron Leader to Wingco, back on ops – another full tour since Dieppe, more gongs and then the newsreels they roped him into… London leave had become a joke; his last a circus of autograph requests and I-say-old-chap-aren’t-yous.
Being back in command felt like a rest. The fact that it did reminded him of something he’d heard uttered by more than one ‘old man’ like himself: something about being on ops thinking of nothing but being off them, then being off and thinking of nothing but being back on ops. Anyway, he was back on. And in command of three squadrons of Mosquitos: Number 140 Wing. Brits. Kiwis. And Australians.
Rickard was new to Mosquitos. Yet was glad and relieved to have been handed ‘the bomber that flew like a fighter’, and no less than the fighter-bomber version of the Mossie, the awesome FB.VI. With a 2000-pound bomb-load plus four machine-guns and four 20mm cannon in the nose – not to mention one of Rickard’s beloved Merlins on each wing – he knew this was next year’s weapon: The year that all now knew would see the Allied Invasion of the Continent. D-Day. Then a fighting campaign across France, Germany, take Berlin and end the war. Direct firepower support of the Allied armies the whole way there was to be provided by the newly-formed ‘2nd Tactical Air Force’. Of which 140 Wing was part. And, it looked to Rickard, one of the most lethal parts.
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