After Midnight

by Robert Ryan

  The groups of young long-haired Commies here were pussy cats compared to some of the Turin strikers, and all meekly stepped aside for a battered old man like me trawling through the bars and cafés. I eventually tracked Ragno to a counter where he was arguing politics with a small cluster of the Reds and asked him a favour, which he readily agreed to, using the good graces of Moto Guzzi. Unfortunately, he sealed the deal with a hug.

  I also located Lindy Carr, tear-stained but relieved that her public speaking was over, at the centre of a group of well-wishers, and I arranged to meet her at the Cannero the next morning to go over our arrangements. When I got back to the hotel, I couldn’t even face a drink, so I went to bed and dreamed of dark mountain ridges looming up out of the night at me.

  I was up at seven, hardly rested, so I showered and re-read some of the documents from the crew of EH-148. It didn’t help lift my mood much. Lindy turned up at ten, and Maria gave us the use of the small salon off the main dining room, where I spread out the large-scale maps of the area, hoping to give Lindy some idea of what to expect. I also went over what I had extracted from the squadron reports.

  ‘It was a warm front,’ I explained, ‘which came over the mountains much quicker than expected. With it came high cirrus clouds, which blanked out the stars, and the winds were gusting fifty knots instead of the expected five. That was before the electrical storms. All the Liberators had GEE fitted. You know what that is?’

  ‘I do,’ she said. ‘Electronic navigation.’

  ‘Yes, using beams. But up here, in the mountains, with a storm brewing, it was useless. So they needed to fly by dead reckoning. For which—’

  ‘They needed the stars.’

  ‘And a reliable met forecast. Now, every one of those ten planes was affected,’ I said, ‘but your father’s was the northernmost drop. He had the highest mountains to contend with, the worst shears and vortices. You have to understand that the air around the sides of the Alps gets bloody rough.’

  Clear air turbulence, on which I was something of an expert. ‘It clings to the sides like a whirlpool. Hit that unexpectedly and …’ I rammed a fist into my palm.

  I noticed her eyes were moist. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.’

  ‘No, it’s OK.’ But she didn’t look it.

  ‘Shall I get some coffee?’ I offered.

  ‘Yes, please. Can I smoke in here, do you think?’

  I nodded and she put a cigarette to her lips with shaking hands.

  ‘You were very brave yesterday,’ I told her.

  She lit the cigarette and sucked hard, the tip glowing bright red, then let out a long stream of smoke. ‘I just remembered how brave my father must have been, and it was easy.’ She sighed and looked down at the map, then pointed a finger at its western extremity. ‘You know, one of the planes almost made it to France. He missed clearing the Alps by twenty feet. Two of the engines made it over the border, but not the rest of the Liberator.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about this. Your father would have known they were in trouble. He would have had a choice—try for Switzerland or France, and get interned, or keep going, try and get out of the muck and get home.’

  She thought for a while, contemplating the motivations of a man she had never met. ‘He’d have tried to get home.’

  ‘I think so too,’ I said. I had nothing but that letter and some personal history to go on, but I felt it very strongly: Bill Carr would have wanted to get his crew back, to carry on the war for as long as necessary. ‘He’d be trying to turn south for Foggia, running down over to the east of Genoa. All he’d need was a rip in the sky for his man DeWitt, the Rhodesian, to get his bearings. He was a good navigator, apparently, who had graduated top in his intake. He had already refused an offer to be an instructor. And he was still only in his early twenties.’

  ‘You’ve been doing your homework.’

  I nodded. I’d been trying to imagine myself in that plane for weeks now, switching my mental image of warfare from the sleek handsome Mosquito and the exhilarating roar of its twin Merlins, replacing it with the bulbous bruiser and its quartet of dull thudding Pratt & Whitneys. To feel the weight of being responsible for seven other men, hearing the cacophony of combat when they engaged, a babble of voices in the ear, a plane filling with cordite from the relentless hammering of the .50 calibres, wallowing through the sky, trying to dodge the lights and the flak, a sitting duck for any German nightfighter worth its salt. Not on the partisan drops, but Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland, they all would have been like running gauntlets of firestorms. Some nights I awoke bathed in sweat, grateful my war hadn’t been like that.

  ‘One other thing,’ I said. ‘I think your father came round twice. I think the clouds obscured the drop zone, but instead of aborting and getting out before the worst of the weather hit, the mad bastard looped around and flew back down the valley.’ Lindy looked puzzled. ‘How can you know that?’

  I licked my lips and took a deep breath. ‘Because I heard it. Because I was on the ground that night. I was one of the reception committee. I lit the flares he never saw.’

  It was a T for that particular drop. The Germans and anti-partisan Italian units had got wise to Xs; they often covered dozens of square miles with them, to confuse the aircrews. So we changed the signals regularly, according to instructions from Bern. I was at the very base of the T with my three flares. Fausto, Rosario and Pavel were in different hollows, a good mile away, to form the rest of the letter. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there.

  I still recall looking up at the sky, ears straining for the sound of those engines, waiting for the moment to light my flares.

  ‘You were there?’ Lindy asked.

  ‘Lang didn’t tell you?’ He had said he hadn’t, but I would always double-check anything that man said.

  She shook her head. ‘No. I … that’s strange. A strange coincidence.’

  She lit another cigarette and the coffee arrived and we passed some time in silence.

  ‘Did you hear it crash?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You must have.’

  ‘We each had three flares. The rule was you only lit two. The third was if one of the others didn’t function.’

  ‘But you lit three,’ she guessed. ‘And you stayed on longer than you should have?’

  It made me sound noble, which was far from the truth. ‘Yes. You are out there with a big light blazing away, which gives you a good chance of getting spotted. As the third flare burned, we came under fire from an Alpini night patrol. We had to run, with gunfire chasing us down the hill. The Americans could have tested their nuclear bomb up there that night and I’d have missed it. Being under fire does that. I’m sorry.’

  After a while she said: ‘It’s not your fault. Whether you were on the ground or not, you couldn’t control the weather.’

  No, I almost said, but I could have controlled myself.

  Eighteen

  Italy, 1944

  ‘YOU CAN’T COME.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kirby shouted at Fausto across the kitchen of the safe house.

  ‘Someone has to stay here.’

  ‘Leave Ragno.’

  ‘He’s only a boy.’

  ‘It’s my replacement. I should be part of the reception committee.’

  Fausto slung his gun onto his shoulder. ‘They shouldn’t replace you.’

  ‘I’ll tell him that. Look, I’ll have a better chance of convincing him than you will. I should start as soon as he lands.’

  The message had come from Bern that Kirby was to be relieved of his post as a priority. Someone ‘properly trained and briefed’ would be parachuted in to take over. This person would also decide ‘appropriate long-term strategy for the partisan groups operating around Domodossola’. The instruction was signed by a Major Lang.

  Rosario tapped his watch. ‘We have to go. It’ll start getting dark soon. The planes could even have taken off by now.’

&n
bsp; ‘Please, Fausto? You know I should be there.’

  Fausto shook his head but threw Kirby a haversack anyway. ‘Three flares. You only use two. Francesca will show you where and how. You wait till you hear the engines, eh?’

  He walked over and nuzzled Francesca’s ear affectionately before walking out.

  Francesca shrugged. ‘I’ll get the bikes.’

  They cycled uphill, slowly, for three miles from the house, and then struck out on foot to the east, through a stand of ash trees. Using gauze-shrouded flashlights, Francesca led Kirby over old shepherd’s trails, and across icy rivers, still climbing until the trees thinned and the earth flattened out. They were between the rolling hills and pine forests of Val Vigezzo and the Val Grande, reputed to be the wildest part of Italy, home to bears, boar and, it was rumoured, the occasional wolf.

  Still visible in the fading light were the sharp-faced mountains which fringed the whole region and which made flying through the valley so tricky.

  Eventually, the terrain became rougher, and Kirby and Francesca had to scramble over fields of scree. After an hour, the ground became flatter and softer underfoot once more and Francesca slumped down, pointing to a shallow depression in the earth, lined with moss and ferns. ‘This is it.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘We wait.’ She shrugged off her backpack and produced a lump of coarse bread and some cheese. ‘And we eat.’

  Kirby sat on the ferns, flattening them out around him into a soft cushion. They were still warm from the day’s sun. He suppressed a desire to roll over and sleep. They told tales of witches and spells in these mountains, and as the last of the daylight went from the sky and the world was reduced to inky shadows, he could see why. He began to whistle to himself.

  ‘Ssshh!’ Francesca hissed. ‘Keep quiet.’

  Kirby took some of the food and munched as quietly as he could, looking up at the silent heavens now and then.

  ‘Why are the British so opposed to us liberating Domodossola?’ she whispered.

  Kirby shook his head. He had sent reports via couriers to Special Forces HQ Number 2 in Bern, requesting full support for the liberation and holding of the town. Fausto was convinced it was an important blow against the occupiers, and the kind of morale boost which could cause all of Northern Italy to rise up as one, finishing the war this year rather than next.

  The message came back: Stop all but essential sabotage. Do not attempt to liberate any areas of the north. Followed by the news that Kirby was to be replaced as soon as possible. In Bern, they didn’t like what he was saying.

  Gruppo Fausto had raided the SS Italienische Number 1 for weapons and Bern blamed Kirby for this breach of standing orders. As a matter of urgency, he was about to be relieved of his role as BLO by the man in the Liberator winging its way up the coast of Italy, a man who, Bern no doubt believed, would stop such privateer actions. Bern, however, didn’t take into account Fausto’s intractable nature.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Kirby, not wanting to be drawn.

  ‘Fausto says it’s because they are frightened of Italians controlling their own destiny again. They want to impose their rule.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Do you agree with them?’

  Kirby shook his head. ‘No, but you can see their point.’

  ‘Ah, Mr Reasonable.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘I think so.’

  He watched a hawk circling, hunting the first of the nocturnal animals. After a minute, it collapsed its wings and dived headlong, disappearing into the long grass. ‘What were you going to do?’ he asked her. ‘Before all this happened?’

  Francesca shrugged. ‘I wanted to go to business school. I know, shocking for a woman.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘See? How reasonable. Here, it is shocking. Everyone says “Get married, have kids, learn to cook”.’

  ‘You can cook.’

  She giggled. ‘Rosario is right: his risotto is better than mine. But if you tell him so, I will cut your throat while you sleep.’

  He cocked his head, thinking he had heard something.

  ‘Owl,’ she said. ‘Don’t be jumpy. You’ll hear the bombers all right when they come.’

  ‘Why business school?’

  ‘To run the family estates. To sell our wine and olive oil elsewhere. There are lots of Italians in America. Big market. But … we’ll see. Fausto says we shall see once all this is over.’

  ‘You’ll do what he says.’

  She chewed on the bread for a while before she answered. ‘In some things, yes. In war, definitely. He has been doing this longer than any of us. In peace, I don’t know.’

  ‘You should do whatever you want to do with your life.’

  ‘Like now? You think I want to be sitting out here with you?’ Francesca laughed. ‘I didn’t mean that. I like sitting here with you. Under other circumstances, it would be very pleasant. But not waiting for guns and men to fall from the sky, for a patrol to find us.’

  ‘I like being here too. Despite the risk. Maybe because of it.’ Kirby felt himself blush as her dark eyes turned to him.

  ‘Do you like Fausto?’ she asked.

  He tore off a large fern and began to shred it, still alert for noises from the sky. ‘I admire him,’ he said truthfully. ‘The way he can pull men together. He has a strength. I wish I had that.’

  ‘Are you jealous?’

  ‘Of the way he can command men? I think I probably am.’

  Francesca moved across towards him, rustling the ferns. ‘That’s not what I meant. You will have that one day. He is almost thirty. An old man.’

  ‘Do you love him?’ Kirby asked.

  ‘Many men love him. Don’t you?’

  Kirby gave an embarrassed laugh, feeling very English. ‘Well, no, but as I said, I respect him.’ He threw a large frond into the night and repeated his question: ‘Do you love him?’

  He was surprised to see her hesitate before she nodded. ‘But sometimes, I feel …’ He let her search for the word. ‘Suffocated. He is a forceful man, with a strong personality and sometimes, sometimes I want to break away.’

  The first chill of night caught them and she moved closer.

  ‘How do you break away?’ he asked.

  He felt her mouth on his, and she pushed him back into the grass. There were voices protesting in his head, but he ignored them. As he fumbled with the buttons of her blouse, over her shoulder he noticed the stars going out one by one, but by then she was working at his belt, and the only sound in his ears was the pounding of his heart.

  Nineteen

  ‘I DIDN’T HEAR THE Liberator crash,’ was what I said to Lindy, but I could feel the sweat of shame prickling on my forehead. ‘We were attacked by fascists. Alpini—mountain troops—the only ones who’d be up there. They must have seen our flare …’ I let it fade, unable to elaborate, and I switched tack, back to business. ‘So, if we conclude that Bill Carr didn’t cut and run for the Swiss border, we still have …’ I waved my hand over the map to indicate the expanse.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Lindy, digging in her bag. ‘I have this. These are the searches that were made after the war, by the South African War Graves people and by members of the SAAF Service Society.’

  She spread out a map with several hundred square miles of Italy and Switzerland cross-hatched in red. ‘Where did you get this?’ I asked.

  ‘From my father’s squadron. You see, they didn’t just abandon them. They made an effort in forty-six and again in forty-seven.’

  I pointed to the thick black line marking the border, with crimson shading on either side. ‘They searched the Swiss Alps too?’

  ‘No, but these sections here and here are well climbed and skied. Zermatt. Cervinia. Mont Blanc. Any plane that went down there would have been found by now.’

  I studied the map for a long time, subtracting the populated areas and those now being overrun by tourists, such as the Aosta Valley, and those that would have
displayed any wreckage to an overflying plane. EH-148 must have been well hidden to keep itself secret for twenty years.

  ‘If we assume he crashed near here, and didn’t try to get into Switzerland, it leaves us with this.’ I pointed at the Val Grande, an oval-shaped space guarded by the peaks of Mount Zeda, Togano, Rossola. Averaging around 2,000 metres, they weren’t the big boys of the area—there were mountains that soared to twice that, especially the gloomy Mount Rosa just to the west—but they still commanded respect. ‘It’s the most likely area. Plenty of tree cover and fast-growing vegetation in some parts to swallow even a Liberator. Remote and wild enough for it to be missed in others. There is talk of turning it into a national park, but as far as I know there have been no complete surveys.’

  I followed the Liberator’s probable flight path with my finger, hugging the rail lines to Barese, then turning to port as the Swiss border loomed, over the lake at Luino on the eastern side, then a dog-leg up the valley, towards Santa Maria Maggiore, losing height all the time for maximum drop accuracy of the human and canister cargo he was carrying. Then another correction to head for the dropping zone just to the south of the Val Vigezzo. Once they got hit by weather, Carr and his navigator would realise if they went straight on they would have to tangle with the Alps, and even if they cleared them in atrocious weather, the war was over for them, assuming they did manage to land in one piece.

  Carr needed a course heading to the east of Turin, but away from the big flak towers that protected the railyards and factories there. If he got a bearing, he could well have turned towards the Val Grande, pulling on all the power to gain the height back. Even so, one of those great granite mountains might have got him. It was certainly feasible.