by Ted Bell
“What about Nazis?” Kate said, looking carefully at her brother.
“What about them?”
“They could be hiding in those woods. Just waiting for someone like us to come along. Mother says she thinks she saw a parachute floating down near there last week, even though it was near dark and she wasn’t sure. And remember Father and the Birdwatchers found that overturned raft washed up on Sandy Cove last week. It was off a German U-boat, Papa said.”
“Kate, listen to me. When and if the Nazis do come, we’ll know about it, believe me. They’re not likely to be hiding in the woods, looking for children on a picnic. Now, come along, let’s catch up with Jip.”
“If you say so,” Kate said quietly, reaching up and taking her brother’s hand.
Its strength was reassuring. And besides, what was she afraid of? Nazis? She’d dealt with them before.
And won.
4
THE CAMEL IN THE BARN
Kate was slipping and sliding, clinging to vines and low-hanging branches trying to make her way up the great sodden slab of slick, moss-covered granite. Nicky was already at the top, waiting for her. They’d been in the dark, deep woods for at least half an hour with no sign of Jip no matter how loudly they cried out to him.
Where could that dog have got to? Nick wondered.
“I don’t like it here. There used to be a path through this wood, Nicky,” his sister said with a pout as she heaved herself up to the top of the rock. She’d fallen three or four times; both her knees were skinned, She was frightfully hot, and she was not happy. “Where is it?”
“Path’s grown over, I’m afraid, most of it, anyway. Looks like nobody comes through the wood this way much anymore,” Nick said as they leaped down to the ground.
“Really? I wonder why, do you think?” she said, giving him a look.
“Now, Kate, be patient. I’m sure we’ll find what we’re looking for soon. There’s a pretty little stream not far from here. Used to be full of fish. The woods are much less dense on the far side. You’ll see. We should find it easily enough.”
“Find what easily enough?”
“What we’re looking for, of course. What else?”
Katie sighed deeply and looked at her brother in frustration. A sunny picnic on Storm Island had been postponed for this? Mucking about in a spooky, pitch-black forest, scratches on her arms, legs, and cheeks from the briar? No. This was not the Saturday she’d had in mind at all.
“Nick. Listen. How can I even begin to look for something if my brother won’t even tell me what it is?” She plopped herself down on a fallen tree trunk and crossed her arms in front of her.
Nick sat down next to Katie, put his arm around her, and said, “Well, fair enough. I can tell you Part One of the secret now that we’re here in the heart of the woods.”
“About time, too.”
“It’s a barn.”
“A barn?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“You don’t mean just a big old wooden building-type barn, I hope?”
“Right-oh.”
“So, your big secret is a barn? I’m going home.”
“Wait! Sit down. Not exactly a barn. There’s a bit more to it than that.”
“Like what?”
“You’ll find out. See, nobody’s used this particular barn for decades. I’m sure that creeper vines and ivy and such have completely covered it over. But, don’t worry, we’ll find it.”
“It’s a barn, Nicky, not a needle in a haystack! Of course we’ll find it.”
Nick stood up and held out his hand to Kate. She took it and slid forward off the big tree trunk, landing nimbly on her feet. Then she followed her brother, sticking close behind him now.
“So, a secret barn. Does it fly?”
“No, not really.”
“But you said this secret was about flying! That’s the only reason I came.”
“It is about flying. I promise. Now come along. Listen. Hear that stream rushing just beyond those trees? We’re getting very close now.”
The children removed their shoes and socks and waded across the shallow stream, Nick holding Kate’s hand because the rocks beneath their bare feet were very slippery. Reaching the far side, they sat down on the grassy bank and were just putting their shoes back on when suddenly they heard Jip, barking in the distance.
“Jipper!” Nick cried, pulling Kate to her feet. “Come on, let’s go!”
The woods were not nearly so thick on this far side of the stream, and Nick and Kate were able to run reasonably quickly toward the sound of Jip’s barking.
“See that sunny clearing beyond the trees, Katie? That’s where Jipper is. Probably got a hedgehog cornered up a tree from all the commotion he’s making. I’ll run up ahead and see. You slow down, I don’t want you tripping over tree roots again.”
Nick sprinted forward and reached the clearing a good five minutes before Katie.
Across the clearing, in a small meadow filled with gently waving poppies, he saw Jip circling at the base of a large elm. He was barking at a man hanging from one of the lower branches of the ancient tree, and Nick sprinted toward him.
“Jip, down boy! Leave him alone!” Nick shouted as he ran.
He reached his dog, dropping to his knees beside him, holding him to his chest. Then he looked up at the man in the tree. It was a young German soldier. He was hanging from the harness of his parachute. Maybe fifteen feet from the ground. The chute had become entangled in the branches above. The white silk canopy of his parachute was fluttering in the breeze high above in the uppermost branches. The soldier was dead. And it looked as if he’d been dead for quite some time. Animals had gotten to him. Red squirrels and black rats. Birds, too, had taken his eyes, pecked them right out.
“Nicky!” Kate cried, halfway across the meadow, running as fast as she could. “What is it? What did Jip find?”
“Katie, stop! Stop right there! Don’t come any closer. I mean it. Not one step.”
She stopped, staring at her brother, who was now getting to his feet and running toward her. “What is it, Nicky?” she asked, as he put his arms around her.
“A soldier. His parachute got caught in a tree.”
“A German soldier?”
“Yes.”
“Is he all right? Can we get him down?”
“No. He’s not all right. He’s dead.”
Kate’s mouth dropped open.
“He’s dead? Can I see?”
“No. You cannot see.”
“Why not?”
“Because there are some things little girls should not see. And he is one of them. You will have nightmares for months if you go over there. All right?”
“But you saw him.”
“And I wish I hadn’t.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Nothing right now. We’re going to leave him in peace and go find that barn. I’ll tell Father about him when we get home. He’ll know what to do. Call the constabulary. The Home Guard. They’ll handle it.”
“Is he the one Mother saw last week?”
“He very well might be. Now, come on, let’s get out of here and find that barn, all right?”
“Oh, Nicky,” she said, a solitary tear running down her cheek, “it’s so sad. So awfully sad.”
“Yes, it is. Jipper, come boy, come now.”
Half an hour later, they found the barn.
It was, as Nick had predicted, completely enveloped with growth from the forest—weeds, vines, creepers, ivy—it had turned it into a kind of topiary of a barn. It was standing just inside the wood, not a hundred yards from the landing strip at Hawke Field.
As Nick began to slash away at the greenery covering the wide barn doors, Kate went over to the shade of a spreading oak tree and sat beneath it, Jip cradled in her arms. She stroked his head gently and whispered to him, saying things that were meant for her dog’s ears alone. Occasionally, she’d swipe the back of her hand across her eyes and wet cheeks,
wiping away tears for the boy hanging in the woods.
Nick cut the last vestiges of the overgrowth away and saw that at least one of the weather-beaten doors could be opened now. He inserted his fingers into the crack and pulled. The door opened easily, creaking loudly, and the smell of decades of old wet hay and dead mice and who-knew-what-else filled his nostrils.
“Kate, it’s open. You and Jip come here and we’ll have a look inside.”
Kate jumped to her feet, seeming much recovered, and she and Jip joined him at the barn door as Nick pulled it wide open. Light flooded in, but it was still dark in the farther reaches and the smell of the place caused Kate to pinch her nose.
“Stinky,” she said.
“The air in here is over twenty years old, Kate.”
“The secret is in here?” she asked, her pinched nose making her voice sound like honking.
“I certainly hope so, after all these years. Let’s go inside, shall we?”
“It’s dark in there, Nicky. I don’t want to go in.”
“Lucky for you I brought this along,” her brother said, pulling a flashlight from the side pocket of his canvas jacket. The beam stabbed into the blackness, searching everywhere.
“What is it, Nicky? What are we looking for?”
Nick held the beam steady on a large object in the far corner, covered by a moldy tarpaulin. “I think that just might be what we’re looking for, Kate.”
“That? That’s your big secret? An old tent?”
“Yes. That’s it. Come help me pull the cover off, will you?”
The two children tugged at the tarp; it was much heavier than it looked. It was coming away but very slowly.
“Right, then,” Nick said, “on three! One . . . two . . . three!” They both yanked with all their might, and the great grey tarpaulin came away in their hands revealing . . . a skeleton. At least, that’s what it looked like to Katie. The wooden skeleton of a very large bird with paper-covered wings that were torn and faded.
“That’s it?” she said, unimpressed. “That’s your big secret?”
“Yes. Isn’t it beautiful?”
“No, it isn’t. I don’t even know what it is.”
“It’s a Camel, Katie.”
“A camel? Doesn’t look like any camel I’ve ever seen. Where’s the hump? And, anyway, what’s this camel got to do with flying?”
“Everything,” Nick said, walking toward the front of the thing. Taking in every inch of the old biplane’s tattered remains. He walked to the nose and used his flashlight to inspect what he could see of the engine inside the aluminum cowling. This was the big 150 horse power Bentley BR.1 Rotary, he knew. He reached up and rubbed cobwebs and dust off the beautiful wooden propeller and saw the wood’s shiny varnished finish in the beam of his torchlight.
Behind the propeller were the twin Vickers .303 machine guns, equipped with a synchronizer gear that allowed them to fire right through the propeller. Why, Gunner could have those guns back in firing order in jig time.
“It flies?”
“Oh, yes, Katie, it flies all right.”
“A flying camel.”
“A flying Sopwith Camel. It was nicknamed the Camel because of that hump in front of the cockpit. This was Dad’s plane. The real one he flew in the war. These little planes shot down more German fighters than any other Allied plane, you know. Including von Richtofen, the famous Red Baron himself!”
“What’s it doing here, then?”
“When the war was over, Father flew it home. He told me about it when I was a kid, even younger than you. He said he’d hidden it in a barn somewhere deep in the woods. Far as I know, he hasn’t come near it since.”
“Was he supposed to do that? Fly his plane home?”
“I don’t think so. The war was over, he was badly hurt. He was dreadfully sick, dying maybe, and he wanted to get home to Mother in a great big hurry, I think.”
“He stole it?”
“Borrowed it. When he’d recovered, could walk about, and was himself again, he wrote a letter to the adjutant, telling what he’d done, apologizing, and offering to return the Camel.”
“What happened?”
“He got a letter back from Fighter Command saying that after his heroic service to his country, they would be happy for him to keep it as a souvenir.”
“So, what’s the secret, Nicky? I mean, just an old aeroplane?”
“No. The secret is, I’m going to make it fly again.”
“That pile of junk will never fly again, Nicky.”
“Oh, yes, it will.”
“Does Father know?”
“No, of course he doesn’t. And that’s the biggest part of the secret. You can never say a word about this to anyone. It’s meant to be a surprise for him, you see. The biggest surprise he’s ever had.”
“I suppose if you fix it up a little, he’ll like it well enough.”
“Like it? Katie, this old aeroplane was the one thing Dad loved most of all in the world. Besides Mother, I mean. He was an ace, don’t you see? A real national hero. And I’m going to make all those happy memories brand-new again.”
“Can we tell Gunner at least? He’s very good at keeping secrets.”
Nick nodded.
Gunner, the proprietor at the Greybeard Inn, was Nick’s best friend in the world. He knew he would definitely need Gunner’s help to pull this off properly. Gunner had been a naval gunnery officer aboard a battleship in the 1917 war and knew more about all manner of mechanical things than almost anyone.
“Gunner is the only one we can tell. Because, you’re quite right, I’m going to need his help to rebuild this old bird. He’s an expert mechanic, you know.”
“You really think you and Gunner can make this pile of sticks fly again?”
“I know we can, Katie. We can and we will. By the time we’re done, why, it will look brand spanking new.”
“It’s a good secret, Nicky, I have to admit. Having a real aeroplane to fly around in.”
“Besides our golden orb, it’s the very best secret ever, Kate, believe me. Besides, I’ve got plans for this old aeroplane. Big plans.”
5
THE SPY IN THE SKY
What’s this all about, Nick?” Angus McIver asked his son. It was late afternoon, and they were retracing the path Nick and Kate had taken through the woods earlier that morning. It was much easier going now, since Nick had found passable sections of the old path and knew how to avoid the really dense and tangled parts of the forest.
His father, a Royal Flying Corps pilot whose leg had been badly wounded in the Great War, always walked with a stick and was having a difficult time of it. But Nick knew this was something his dad had to see.
“You’ll see soon, Dad. We’re almost there.”
“What were you and Kate doing in the woods today, son? I thought you two were sailing Petrel out to Storm Island for a picnic.”
“Well, we were actually going to do that. But, see, I’d seen this beautiful meadow of poppies last week, and I thought Kate might enjoy that more.”
“Really? That’s surprising because she told me at breakfast this morning how terribly excited she was about going sailing aboard the Stormy Petrel.”
“Well, y—yes. But there was a freshening breeze brewing out to the west, and I was a little worried that it might get a bit too exciting out there for her. Besides, these poppies won’t last forever, you know.”
Poppies? His father looked back at his son with a disbelieving look, but at that point they’d reached the edge of the meadow. It was mostly in purple shadow now, as the hazy orange sun had dropped below the treeline.
“This way, Dad,” Nick said, “all the way on the other side of the field.”
“Nick, if you’ve dragged me all the way through these woods for nothing, you’re going to be one very sorry young man.”
“It’s not nothing, Dad. It’s something important. That I can promise you.”
They pushed on through the broad field of
swaying poppies. Nick felt his heart beating a little faster now, wondering how his father would react to the horrible sight. Suddenly, Angus came to an abrupt stop.
He saw the dead man swinging from the branch of the old elm tree.
“Merciful heavens,” his father said softly. “Dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Poor fellow. Tough way to go.”
“It’s bad, Father. Animals have gotten to him. Birds, too, I guess. He’s got not much face left at all.”
Nick’s father paid that no mind. Nick knew he’d likely seen much worse during the war. He walked over to where the corpse hung and stared up at it for a few moments in silence.
“German spy on reconnaissance duty,” his father said, and turned to look at Nick. “Who have you told about this?”
“No one. And I made Kate swear to do the same.”
“Good. Make sure you keep it that way. Even a hint of something like this could spread more panic across the island. We’ve got quite enough of that already.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you got your knife?”
“Always.”
“Think you can climb up there and out onto that limb without killing yourself?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, do it. Let’s cut the poor chap down.”
Nick nodded and headed for the base of the elm. By jumping up, he got hold of the lowest branch and then did a pull-up, managing to raise himself high enough to throw one leg over, straddling the branch, steady himself, and sit upright. He reached up and caught hold of the next highest branch and got to his feet very carefully.
“Easy, Nick. This isn’t a race. Just go slowly.”
Nick repeated the process, branch by branch until he was straddling the one where the parachute harness had become entangled. He slid out toward the first canvas strap.
“Cut this one, Dad?”
“Yes, cut all the suspension lines except the risers.”
“Which are the risers?”
“The stronger straps attached through those rings to his harness. We’re going to try to lower him gently. I’ll tell you when I’m ready for you to toss a line down to me. I’ll get him down. You understand?”