Air Bridge

by Hammond Innes

  “I hope you’re right,” was all he said.

  “What else could it mean?” I demanded.

  “You remember I said I’d cable a friend of mine at Lübeck? I phoned it through that morning. This morning I got his reply. I’ll read it to you.” He pulled a second teleprint out of his pocket and read it out to me. “Regret no trace of Carter or Fraser stop All aircraft ordered from dawn third to keep sharp lookout Hollmind area stop Routes staggered to cover limits of Corridor stop Visibility perfect stop Two parachutes reported near frontier belonging Westrop Field stop No wreckage, parachute or signal reported target area stop Sorry signed Manning.” He pushed it into my hand. “Read it yourself.”

  “It doesn’t prove anything,” I said. “He may have been hurt.”

  “If he were he would have made some signal—smoke or something.” He turned back to his breakfast.

  “He may not have been able to. He may have been unconscious.”

  “Then his parachute would have been seen.”

  “Not necessarily. Hollmind airfield is surrounded by a belt of pine woods. His parachute could easily have been invisible from the air if he’d come down in the woods.”

  “If he’d landed in the woods his parachute would have been caught in the trees. It would be clearly visible.”

  “Then maybe he was seen coming down and picked up by a Russian patrol or some Germans.” I felt suddenly desperate. Tubby had to be alive. My mind clung desperately to the slender hope of this report of a parachute near Hollmind.

  Saeton looked up at me again then. “What time did Tubby drop?”

  “I don’t know. It must have been just near eleven-thirty.”

  “On the evening of the second?”

  I nodded.

  “Within a few hours all pilots had been ordered to keep a sharp lookout. That means that from dawn onwards there was a constant stream of aircrews overhead searching the area. Do you seriously suggest that in the intervening seven hours of darkness Tubby would have been picked up?”

  “There was a moon,” I said desperately.

  “All right—five hours of moonlight. If Tubby pulled his parachute release, then he would still have been there on the ground at dawn. If he were hurt, then he wouldn’t have been able to do anything about his parachute and it would have been clearly visible from above. And if he wasn’t injured, then he’d have been able to signal.” He hesitated. “On the other hand, if he never regained consciousness——”

  “My God!” I said. “I believe you want him dead.”

  He didn’t say anything, ignoring me as I stood over him with my hands clenched. “I’ve got to know what happened,” I cried. I caught hold of his shoulder. “Can’t you understand? I can’t go through life thinking myself a murderer. I’ve got to go out there and find him.”

  “Find him?” He looked at me as though I were crazy.

  “Yes, find him,” I cried. “I believe he’s alive. I’ve got to believe that. If I didn’t believe that——” I moved my hand uncertainly. Couldn’t the man see how I felt about it? “If he’s dead, then I killed him. That’s murder, isn’t it? I’m a murderer then. He’s got to be alive,” I added desperately. “He’s got to be.”

  “Better get on with your breakfast.” The gentleness was back in his voice. Damn him! I didn’t want kindness. I wanted something to fight. I wanted action. “When will the plane be ready?” I demanded thickly.

  “Sometime to-morrow,” he answered. “Why?”

  “That’s too late,” I said. “It’s got to be to-night.”

  “Impossible,” he answered. “We’ll barely have got the second motor installed by this evening. Then there’s the tests, refuelling, loading the remains of the old Tudor, fixing the——”

  “The remains of the old Tudor?” I stared at him. “You mean you’re going through with the plan? You’ll leave Tubby out there another whole day just because——”

  “Tubby’s dead,” he said, getting to his feet. “The sooner you realise that, the better. He’s dead and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “That’s what you want to believe, isn’t it?” I sneered. “You want him dead because if he isn’t dead, he’d give the whole game away.”

  “I told you how I feel about Tubby.” His face was white and his tone dangerously quiet. “Now shut up and get on with your breakfast.”

  “If Tubby’s dead,” I said, “I’ll do exactly what he would have done if he’d been alive. I’ll go straight to the authorities——”

  “Just what is it you want me to do, Fraser?”

  “Fly over there,” I said. “It’s no good a bunch of bored aircrews peering down at those woods from a height of three thousand or more. I want to fly over the area at nought feet. And if that doesn’t produce any result, then I want to land at Hollmind airfield and search those woods on foot.”

  He stood looking at me for a moment. “All right,” he said.

  “When?” I asked.

  “When?” He hesitated. “It’s Tuesday to-day. We’ll have the second engine installed this evening. To-morrow I’ll fly down for the C of A. Could be Friday night.”

  “Friday night!” I stared at him aghast. “But good God!” I exclaimed. “You’re not going to leave Tubby out there whilst you get a certificate of airworthiness? You can’t do that. We must go to-night, as soon as we’ve——”

  “We’ll go as soon as I’ve got the C of A.” His tone was final.

  “But——”

  “Don’t be a fool, Neil.” He leaned towards me across the table. “I’m not leaving without a C of A. When I leave it’s going to be for good. I’ll be flying direct to Wunstorf. We’ll call at Hollmind on the way. You must remember, I don’t share your optimism. And now get some breakfast inside you. We’ve got a lot to do.”

  “But I must get there to-night,” I insisted. “You don’t understand. I feel——”

  “I know very well how you feel,” he said sharply. “Anybody would feel the same if he’d caused the death of a good man like Tubby. But I’m not leaving without a C of A and that’s final.”

  “But the C of A might take a week,” I said. “Often it takes longer—two weeks.”

  “We’ll have to chance that. Aylmer of B.E.A. has said the Civil Aviation inspectors will rush it through. All right. I’m banking on it taking two days. If it takes longer, that’s just too bad. Now get some breakfast inside you. The sooner we get to work, the sooner you’ll be at Hollmind.”

  There was nothing I could do. I got up slowly and fetched my bacon.

  “Another thing,” he said as I sat down again. “I’m not landing at Hollmind except in moonlight. If it’s a pitch black night, you’ll have to jump.”

  I felt my stomach go cold at the thought of another jump. “Why not go over in daylight?”

  “Because it’s Russian territory.”

  “You mean because those engines are more important——”

  “For God’s sake stop it, Neil.” His voice was suddenly violent. “I’ve made a bargain with you. To land there at night will be dangerous enough. But I’m willing to do it—for the sake of your peace of mind.”

  “But not for Tubby?”

  He didn’t answer. I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that if I’d described the scene accurately Tubby couldn’t be alive. But at least he had agreed to look for him now and I held on to that.

  The urge to find him drove me to work as I’d never worked the whole time I’d been at Membury. I worked with a concentrated frenzy that narrowed my world down to bolts and petrol unions and the complicated details of electrical wiring. Yet I was conscious at the same time of Saeton’s divergent interest. The clack of his typewriter as he cleared up the company’s business, the phone calls instructing the men he’d picked as a crew to report to R.A.F. Transport Command for priority flights to Buckeburg for Wunstorf—all reminded me that, whatever had happened, his driving purpose was still to get his engines on to the Berlin airlift. And I hated
him for his callousness.

  It was past midnight when the second engine was in and everything connected up. Saeton left at dawn the next morning. The pipes were all frozen and we got water by breaking the ice on the rainwater butt. Membury was a frozen white world and the sun was hazed in mist so that it was a dull red ball as it came up over the downs. The mist swallowed the Tudor almost immediately. I turned back to the quarters, feeling shut in and wretched.

  The next two days were the longest I ever remember. To keep me occupied Saeton had asked me to proceed with the cutting up of the old aircraft into smaller fragments. It occupied my hands. Nothing more. It was an automatic type of work that left my mind free to think. I couldn’t leave the airfield. I couldn’t go anywhere or see anybody. Saeton had been very insistent on that. If I showed my face anywhere and was recognised then he wouldn’t go near Hollmind. It meant I couldn’t even visit the Ellwoods. I was utterly alone and by Friday morning I was peering out of the hangar every few minutes searching the sky, listening for the drone of the returning Tudor.

  It was Saturday afternoon that Saeton got in. He had got his C of A. His crew were on their way to Wunstorf. “If it’s clear we’ll go over to-night,” he said. And we got straight on with the work of preparing for our final departure. We tanked up and he insisted on filling the fuselage of the plane with pieces of the old Tudor. He was still intent on going through with his plan. He kept on talking about the airworthiness tests. “The inspectors were pretty puzzled by the engines,” he said. “But I managed to avoid any check on petrol consumption. They know they’re a new design. But they don’t know their value—not yet.” The bastard could think of nothing else.

  Dusk was falling as we finished loading. The interior of the hangar was still littered with debris, but Saeton made no attempt to dispose of it. We went back to the quarters. Night had fallen and I had seen the last of Membury. When the moon rose I should be in Germany. I lay in my blankets, barely conscious of the gripping cold, my thoughts clinging almost desperately to my memory of the place.

  Saeton called me at ten-thirty. He had made tea and cooked some bacon. As soon as he had finished his meal he went out to the hangar. I lingered over a cigarette, unwilling to leave the warmth of the oil stove, thinking of what lay ahead of me. At length Saeton returned. He was wearing his heavy, fleece-lined flying jacket. “Ready?”

  “Yes, I’m ready,” I said and got slowly to my feet.

  Outside it was freezing hard, the night crystal clear and filled with stars. Saeton carried the oil stove with him. At the edge of the woods he paused for a moment, staring at the dark bulk of the hangar with the ghostly shape of the plane waiting for us on the apron. “A pity,” he said gruffly. “I’ve got fond of this place.” When we reached the plane he ordered me to get the engines warmed up and went on to the hangar. He was gone about five minutes. When he climbed into the cockpit he was breathing heavily as though he had been running. His clothes smelt faintly of petrol. “Okay. Let’s get going.” He slid into the pilot’s seat and his hand reached for the throttle levers. But instead of taxi-ing out to the runway, he slewed the plane round so that we faced the hangar. The wicket door was still open and a dull light glowed inside. We sat there, the screws turning, the air frame juddering. “What are we waiting for?” I asked.

  “Just burning my boats behind me,” he said.

  The rectangular opening of the hangar door flared red and I knew then what he had wanted the oil stove for. There was a muffled explosion and flames shot out of the gap. The whole interior of the hangar was ablaze, a roaring inferno which almost drowned the sound of our engines.

  “Well, that’s that,” Saeton said. He was grinning like a child who has set fire to something for fun, but his eyes as he looked at me reflected a more desperate mood. Another explosion shook the hangar and flames licked out of the shattered windows at the side. Saeton reached up to the throttle levers, the engines roared and we swung away to the runway end.

  A moment later we turned our backs on the hangar and took off into the frosted night. At about a thousand feet Saeton banked slightly for one last glimpse of the field. It. was a great dark circle splashed with an orange flare at the far end. As I peered forward across Saeton’s body the hangar seemed to disintegrate into a flaming skeleton of steel. At that distance it looked no bigger than a Guy Fawkes bonfire.

  We turned east then, setting course for Germany. I stared at Saeton, seeing the hard inflexible set of the jaw in the light of the instrument panel. There was nothing behind him now. The past to him was forgotten, actively erased by fire. There would be nothing at Membury but molten scraps of metal and the congealed lumps of the engines. As though he knew what I was thinking he said, “Whilst you were sleeping this evening I went over this machine erasing old numbers and stamping in our own.” There was a tight-lipped smile on his face as he said this. He was warning me that there would be no proof, that I would not be believed if I tried to accuse him of flying Harcourt’s plane.

  The moon rose as we crossed the Dutch coast, a flattened orange in the east. The Scheldt glimmered below us and then the snaking line of water gave place to frosted earth. “We’re in Germany now,” Saeton shouted, and there was a note of triumph in his voice. In Germany! This was the future for him—the bright, brilliant future to replace the dead past. But for me … I felt cold and alone. There was nothing here for me but the memory of Tubby’s unconscious body slumping through the floor of this very machine—and farther back, tucked away in the dark corners of my mind, the feel of branches tearing at my arm, the sight of the barbed wire and the sense of being hunted.

  My brain seemed numbed. I couldn’t think and I flew across the British Zone of Germany in a kind of mental vacuum. Then the lights of the airlift planes were below us and we were in the corridor, flying at five thousand feet. Saeton put the nose of the machine down, swinging east to clear the traffic stream and then south-west at less than a thousand with all the ground laid bare in brilliant moonlight, a white world of unending, hedgeless fields and black, impenetrable woods.

  We found Hollmind, turned north and in an instant we were over the airfield. Saeton pressed the mouthpiece of his helmet to his lips. “Get aft and open the fuselage door.” His voice crackled in my ears. “You can start shovelling the bits out just as soon as you like. I’ll stooge around to the north of the airfield.” I hesitated and he looked across at me. “You want me to land down there, don’t you?” he said. “Well, this machine’s heavily overloaded. And that runway hasn’t been used for four years. It’s probably badly broken up by frost and I’m not landing till the weight’s out of the fuselage. Now get aft and kick the load out of her.”

  There was no point in arguing with him. I turned and went through the door to the fuselage. The dark bulk of the fuel tanks loomed in front of me. I climbed round them and then I was squeezing my way through the litter of the old Tudor that was piled to the roof. Jagged pieces of metal caught at my flying suit. The fuselage was like an old junk shop and it rattled tinnily. I found the fuselage door, flung it back and a rush of cold air filled the plane. We were flying at about two thousand now, the countryside, sliding below us, clearly mapped in the white moonlight. The wings dipped and quivered as Saeton began to bank the plane. Above me the lights of a plane showed driving south-east towards Berlin with its load of freight; below, the snaking line of a river gleamed for an instant, a road running straight to the north, the black welt of a wood, and then the white weave of ploughed earth.

  The engines throttled back and I felt the plane check as Saeton applied the air brakes. I caught hold of the nearest piece of metal, dragged it to the wind-filled gap and pushed it out. It went sailing into the void, a gleam of tin twisting and falling through the slip-stream. Soon a whole string of metal was falling away behind us like pieces of silver paper. It was like the phosphorescent gleam of the log line of a ship marking the curve of our flight as we banked.

  By the time I’d pitched the last fragment out and
the floor of the fuselage was clear, I was sweating hard. I leaned for a moment against the side of the fuselage, panting with the effort. The sweat on me went cold and clammy and I began to shiver. I pulled the door to and went for’ard. “It’s all out now,” I told Saeton.

  He nodded. “Good! I’m going down now. I’ll take the perimeter of Hollmind airfield as my mark and fly in widening circles from that. Okay?” He thrust the nose down and the airfield rose to meet us through the windshield. The concrete runways gleamed white, a huge cross. Then we were skimming the field, the starboard wing-tip down as we banked in a right turn. He was taking it clockwise so that I had a clear, easy view of the ground through my side window. “Keep your eyes skinned,” he shouted. “I’ll look after the navigation.”

  Round and round we circled, the airfield sliding away till it was lost behind the trees. There was nothing but woods visible through my window, an unending stream of moon-white Christmas trees sliding away below me. My eyes grew dizzy with staring at them, watching their spiky tops and the dark shadows rushing by. The leading edge of the wing seemed to be cutting through them we were so low. Here and there they thinned out, vanishing into patches of plough or the gleam of water. The pattern repeated itself like flaws in a wheel as we droned steadily on that widening circle.

  At last the woods had all receded and there was nothing below us but plough. Saeton straightened the plane out then and climbed away to the north. “Well?” he shouted.

  But I’d seen nothing—not the glimmer of a light, no fire, no sign of the torn remains of parachute silk—nothing but the fir trees and the open plough. I felt numb and dead inside. Somewhere amongst those woods Tubby had fallen—somewhere deep in the dark shadows his body lay crumpled and broken. I put the mouthpiece of my helmet to my lips. “I’ll have to search those woods on foot,” I said.

  “All right,” Saeton’s voice crackled back. “I’ll take you down now. Hold tight. It’s going to be a bumpy touchdown.”

  We banked again and the airfield reappeared, showing as a flat clearing in the woods straight ahead of us. Flaps and undercarriage came down as we dropped steeply over the firs. The concrete came to meet us, cracked and covered with the dead stalks of weeds. Then our wheels touched down and the machine was jolting crazily over the uneven surface. We came to rest within a stone’s throw of the woods, the nose of the machine facing west. Saeton followed me out on to the concrete. No light showed in all the huge, flat expanse of the field. Nobody came to challenge us. The place was as derelict and lonely as Membury. Saeton thrust a paper package into my hand. “Bread and cheese,” he said. “And here’s a flask. You may need it.”