“It’s a Flying Fortress,” Ruffy said, making out the heavily damaged B-17. “Bandits! Two Focke-Wulfs! They’re on the Fort.”
“Got ’em,” Zack said. He pushed the nose over into a steep dive and slashed down on the two Focke-Wulf 190s, still hiding in the sun. The airspeed climbed to 460 mph. “Too fast,” he grunted and pulled the throttles back. Now he was stabilized at 450 as the trailing Focke-Wulf filled his gunsight ring. His right thumb pressed the gun camera button and then moved over to the button that fired the machine gun. He hesitated before mashing it. The four Browning .303 machine guns mounted in the nose cut loose and he walked the stream of bullets across the 190’s cockpit. The German fighter pitched over in a steep dive and crashed into the sea. He pulled off straight ahead and zoomed, trading off his airspeed for altitude, clawing for every bit of height he could gain before turning back into the engagement.
“Jerry’s running for it,” Ruffy told him. The other Focke-Wulf had seen his wingman crash and, not being able to find the cause, had turned tail and run. It was exactly what Zack would have done. They pulled alongside the stricken Flying Fortress and looked it over. The pilot gave them a wave and pointed to his mouth and ears before making a slashing motion. “They must have lost their radios,” Ruffy said.
“I think they’re going to ditch,” Zack said. The B-17 was slowly descending toward the sea. “Call Manston and tell them what’s going on,” Zack said. Ruffy checked his list for Manston’s call sign and made the radio call.
Manston, the emergency recovery base located on the eastern coast of Kent near Ramsgate, acknowledged the call. They would notify Air-Sea Ops for a pickup. “Coastal Command,” Manston warned them, “reports an E-boat operating in the area.”
“We’ll fly cover as long as we can,” Zack told Manston. They watched as the B-17 settled into the water and, for one sickening moment, Zack was certain that its nose was going to dig in and it would pitch-pole onto its back. A huge cascade of spray hid the B-17 and then collapsed over it like a falling curtain. In the mist, they could see the B-17 at rest in the water, still right side up. “Lucky bastards,” Zack muttered, remembering when he and Ruffy had ditched in the North Sea. Three dinghies popped out and they counted four men as they scrambled out of the aircraft. Then two wounded were passed out, followed by four more men. “They all got out,” he said.
They loitered over the dinghies until Ruffy said, “Fuel.” They had to go. Zack flew one last turn over the men and wagged his wings. Then he saw it. A lone gray silhouette in the water was moving toward the men in the dinghies. “Oh, Jesus,” he moaned as they flew closer. “It’s an E-boat.”
“Fuel” was all Ruffy said.
“One pass,” he promised. “We’ve got to discourage that bastard.” He headed for the E-boat, turned the gun camera on, and walked a string of twenty-millimeter cannon shells across the boat. He pulled up and headed for England.
Zack and Ruffy were walking into the anteroom of the mess the next afternoon when they were told to report to their squadron commander at station headquarters. “He’s probably read our combat report by now,” Zack said. Ruffy gave him a worried look.
The squadron leader who commanded 25 Squadron was a no-nonsense, thirty-two-year-old from Yorkshire and he came right to the point. “The bomber chaps reported that not much was going on over Holland last night, probably due to the dents you made at Soesterberg.” It was the closest thing to a compliment they had ever heard him utter. “Impressive,” he continued. “Two kills. I hope the film from your gun camera bears that out.” Now they were hearing absolute praise. Zack was certain the film would catch up with him in a few days and support his claim. After attacking the E-boat, they had run dangerously low on fuel and had made an emergency diversion into Manston. They had de-briefed Intelligence while the ground crews refueled their aircraft and developed the film. But they had been ordered back to Church Fenton before the film was processed.
“But”—the squadron leader glared at them, not about to let them off the hook—“if you ever land on one engine again because you’ve run out of petrol and then have to be pushed off the runway because there is absolutely nothing left in the tanks, I’ll have your guts for garters.”
Both men relaxed. This was more like it. “Manston didn’t seem to mind refueling us,” Zack said. “And it was only a short delay.”
“Fortunate for you there was no damage to Five-twenty-nine,” he grudgingly admitted. Zack buried his smile. His squadron commander had been as worried about Romanita as he had for the crew. “There’s an Intelligence type up from London…flew in twenty minutes ago…who wants to talk to you about your mission. They must have discovered something important in your report or on the film.” He tried to fix them with his sternest look, but his pride in what they had done wouldn’t allow it. “Dismissed,” he muttered. Then he added, “And well done, lads.”
Ruffy led the way out of the door and stopped dead in his tracks. “Smashing,” he mumbled, “absolutely smashing.” Wilhelmina Crafton was waiting for them wearing her WAAF uniform, holding a slim black leather portfolio.
“Mr. Pontowski,” she said, “so good to see you again.”
Zack stumbled over his words, searching for the right thing to say. After a few “ahs” and “ums,” he said, “This is my nav—”
“Yes,” she said, cutting him off short. “We do need to talk in private.”
The arrogant, in-charge attitude he had experienced before was back in her voice. He didn’t like it. “Yeah, sure,” he muttered.
“I’ll see if I can find something,” Ruffy said.
“Alone, please, Mr. Ruffum.” It came as a surprise that she knew Ruffy’s name. Ruffy shrugged his shoulders and went in search of a vacant office.
Zack liked her patronizing way of speaking even less than before. “What is this all about?”
“I’ll explain in private.”
“What the hell,” he said, gesturing at the busy office, “these people are on our side and they read every combat report. They know what goes on.”
“Really?” she said, condescension dripping from the word.
Ruffy returned and motioned them down the hall. “Where did you meet her?” he asked. Zack could hear a Norfolk inflection in Ruffy’s question. Where had that come from? Why was this the first time he had heard it? “In here, miss,” Ruffy said, holding the door open. They entered and he started to leave.
“You too, Ruffy,” Zack said, waving him to join them.
“We do need to speak privately,” Willi said, bestowing a gracious smile on Ruffy, dismissing him.
Zack walked out the door. “Nice seeing you again, Miss Crafton. Have a nice trip back to London.”
“Must I have your squadron commander order you…”
“To do what?” Zack was tired of her lordly manner and the way she automatically expected everyone to jump to her slightest wish or whim. “To talk to you ‘in private’? I don’t think you have the slightest idea what we do. For your information, we kill people, some who deserve it and others who are quite innocent.”
“Mr. Pontowski…” she protested, not hearing the pain in his voice, not aware of the emotional turmoil that bound him with images of the JU-88 crashing into the middle of Amersfoort.
He cut her off with an angry gesture. “And we do it as a team. So if you want to talk to us, you’ll talk to us as a team.”
“I take it that you know each other,” Ruffy said.
Willi ignored Ruffy. “You will talk to me or I’ll see you up on a charge.”
“Really?” Zack said, his tone matching her use of the word. They exchanged cold stares.
Ruffy took charge. “I hope this is not a silly lovers spat.” Willi flinched at the thought and turned away. She would not dignify that remark with an answer. “Why don’t you ask us whatever concerns ops,” he offered, “after which, I’ll leave. Then you can discuss whatever else is on your mind.”
“Yes, why don’t we?” W
illi replied.
“That’s agreeable,” Zack muttered, sinking into a chair. How in the hell did we reach this state? he wondered. The sparks had flown from the first word and he felt like a hopeless teenager.
She turned to them and pulled a set of photos out of her portfolio, now all business. “These are for your Intelligence officer, but here, you can see them now.” She handed them a set of glossy, black-and-white photos. “These were enlarged from your gun camera film developed at Manston,” she told them. “Here”—she pointed to the photos from the bomb run—“are at least six, possibly eight, German night fighters hidden in the trees. Some of our people are wondering how you found them.”
“Squashed bugs,” Zack said.
Willi assumed he was wisecracking like so many of the Americans she had met. “Yes, of course. I can see that.”
“I doubt that you do,” Zack shot at her. “Since it’s summer, dust and bugs are a problem when flying fast at low level. I could hardly see out of the windscreen by the time we arrived over Soesterberg. I was constantly looking out the side window. By pure luck I saw these,” he pointed to the three aircraft snouts barely visible underneath the trees. “I was in a position to switch targets and did so.”
She nodded and showed them the next photo. It was the JU-88 he had shot out of the sky when he came off target. The photograph captured the doomed aircraft as the right wing folded up, broken apart by twenty-millimeter cannon fire. “It crashed in the center of Amersfoort,” Ruffy told her.
“Oh, I didn’t know.” Silence. “These are from the engagement over the North Sea,” she continued, not so sure of herself now. “The markings of the Focke-Wulf you destroyed indicate it was from the Jagdgeschwader at Abbeville.”
“One of the ‘Abbeville boys,’” Ruffy said.
“And the photos of the Schnellboote you strafed are most interesting,” she said, showing them the last photo. “We believe this figure”—she circled the blurred image of a man standing in the open cockpit—“is Ernst Hofmann. At least, it is his boat.”
“Young Ernst,” Ruffy said, studying the photos.
“Yes,” she continued, “he is a problem. He has made the English Channel his private hunting preserve and comes and goes at will. He’s playing the devil with our operations and has torpedoed at least eight freighters.”
“He probably machine-gunned those poor bastards in the dinghies,” Zack said.
“No, he did not,” Willi said. “He doesn’t work that way. We have reports that he has been in trouble with his superiors for not doing exactly that. The B-seventeen crew reported that he threw them an inflatable when he couldn’t stop to pick them up. Some of our chaps in Beaufighters showed up after you strafed him and chased him back to Dunkirk.”
“Not your normal Hun,” Ruffy allowed.
Zack sensed the woman was more than she appeared and was deeply involved in Intelligence. “I find it hard to believe that these photos are the reason they, whoever they are, sent you here. It would have been almost as fast by regular courier.”
Willi stared at him for a moment. “Mr. Ruffum, would you be kind enough to leave us a few moments?” Ruffy nodded and made a quick departure. “You are quite right, of course. There is another reason.” She collected the photos and arranged them in a neat stack. “I must give these to your Intelligence section. I brought them since I happened to be coming this way.” She seemed relieved as she turned to the real purpose of her visit. “Do you know a Frenchwoman named Chantal Dubois?”
A hard silence came down. The part of his being that Chantal had claimed, and that he had written off as another casualty of war, came surging out of its hiding place. He had never expected to see her again and had consoled himself with vague promises that he would go looking for her after the war. For the second time that day, he couldn’t find the right words. “Chantal…. Where?” Coherent thought was slow to return.
“Then you do know her,” Willi said, not satisfied that she had been successful in finding the only person who could identify the woman. The look on Zack’s face made her strangely uncomfortable. Then it came to her—this was a man deeply in love. She had received more than her share of attention but most of the looks directed at her were either lust, envy, or jealousy. Not this.
“Where is she?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t say any more at the moment. But we would like for you to come to London.”
“When?”
“Now,” she replied. “I’ll arrange it with your commander.”
“He may be reluctant to let me go. We’re shorthanded.”
Willi allowed a tight smile to cross her lips. “I assure you, he won’t cause any problems. Why don’t you gather your kit while I arrange it.” She sounded extremely sure of herself.
Zack ambled back to the room he shared with Ruffy and started to pack. Ruffy meandered in and leaned against the door jamb. “Hope she’s not in the family way,” he deadpanned.
“Not hardly,” Zack snapped.
“She is a bit offputting.”
“A real bitch,” Zack added. “I wonder why she’s like that.”
“Who knows. She doesn’t need a reason.” Ruffy shook his head at Zack’s lack of understanding. “She’s some lord and lady’s daughter. One of our so-called betters.” Zack could hear sarcasm in his voice. “Class distinction,” Ruffy explained, “is the true vice of the English. One of the many things we need to change when we’re finished with Herr Hitler.”
“How will you do that?” Zack asked.
“Politics. We need to change the government.”
Zack was astounded. One of the forbidden subjects in an RAF mess was politics. He had no idea that his best friend was so fiercely opinionated. “Does that mean you’ll vote against Churchill after the war?”
“Right. He’s one of them, one of our so-called betters.”
It was all very confusing to him and, like most Americans, he thought the English were one hundred percent behind their prime minister. “But you and everyone else seems to be for him now.”
“Because there simply isn’t any-bloody-one else who can do the job.”
He zipped his bag closed and stood up. “Ruffy,” he said, changing the subject, “I could have sworn I heard a Norfolk accent when you were talking to her.”
His navigator blushed brightly. “It comes out when I get around them. It’s part of my upbringing. My family is what they call one of the lower orders.” Zack could hear a deep anger behind Ruffy’s words. Or was it hurt? Andrew Ruffum had never told him that he had been a “scholarship boy” at one of the English public schools that were anything but public. They were reserved almost exclusively for the British upper class. By hard work and brilliant academic achievement, he had broken out of the class mold his parents had been caught in and one of the first things he had discarded was his Norfolk accent. The war had ended his college studies, and like many of his contemporaries, he had joined the RAF.
“I’ve got to go,” Zack told him. “I should be back in a few days.”
Ruffy walked with him back to station headquarters and waited while he picked up his pass. Back outside, he said, “Have a good time. I’d stay clear of our Miss Crafton if I were you.” Ruffy doubted that his friend would understand the warning. Wilhelmina Crafton was a product of her social class and would not tolerate any man who tried to rise above his position. She was clearly miffed because she didn’t know what Zack’s place was. For that matter, neither did Zack.
Ruffy smiled to himself at the thought.
SEVEN
The Golden Triangle, Burma
Chiang’s majordomo hovered on the other side of Heather’s desk, ready to be of instant service. Normally, the portly and white-haired old Chinese gentleman was the perfect English butler, but he was anything but reserved and calm now. “James,” she said, “please sit down. You’re flapping.” He looked at her reproachfully, as if she should understand the gravity of what they were doing. He forced himself to sit down.
Heather immediately stood up and paced the priceless Persian carpet that Chiang had given her for her office that adjoined his. “James,” she ventured, “is that your real name?” Heather wanted to make him part of her growing entourage. She liked giving orders.
“No ma’am, it is not,” he answered in his impeccable British accent. Then he did something totally out of character—he became less stiff. “It is the name General Chiang wishes to call me.”
She bestowed a smile on him, sensing the break in his rigid austerity. “Well, it does match your accent—which is perfect. Where did you learn to speak English?”
“I was born and educated in Hong Kong,” he told her, as if that fact alone accounted for his fluency. “I later became an air traffic controller for the British.”
“How did you become a butler then?” she asked. Hong Kong and air traffic control was a long way from Burma and being Chiang’s majordomo.
“General Chiang heard me speak over the radio when he was flying his private jet to Hong Kong and sought me out.” A knock at the ornately carved doors that connected the two offices slashed across his words, cutting them off. He sprang to his feet and opened the doors, bowing as he pulled them back.
“Ah, yes,” Chiang said as he entered, ignoring the man. “I was wondering how the arrangements for the conference were progressing.”
Heather stepped over to the antique writing table she used for a desk and picked up a leather-bound folder. “I think we’ve thought of everything,” she told him. “James has been most helpful and I’ve learned so much.” She tried to be all business, but excitement caught at her voice as she outlined the details of the meeting between Chiang and the leaders of two other drug cartels. From the moment Chiang had told her about his idea for a merger that would unite them into a “consortium” that would control a large percentage of the world’s drug traffic, she had wanted to be part of it. She had coaxed him into letting her help and had seen yet another side to Chiang; he would have been the chief executive officer of any large and successful international corporation as he modernized his production base, secured his distribution net, and exploited his markets.
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