by Ted Bell
“Yes, sir.”
When Nick had finished cutting all the lines, his father said, “Good lad. Now throw me that line nearest your right leg. I’ll lower him with that.”
Nick threw the line down. His father caught it and began slowly lowering the corpse. Nick, meanwhile, began his own careful descent to the ground below. By the time he reached his father, the German lay face-up in the soft grass surrounding the tree.
“What now, Father?”
“Find out if he was simply a pilot who bailed out or someone intentionally landing on Greybeard Island.”
“You mean, like a . . . spy?”
“Exactly.”
“Couldn’t he have just been blown off course in a strong blow? Ended up here by mistake?” Nick was staring at his father. He couldn’t bear to look at the dead man’s wretched face any longer.
“Anything’s possible. Help me roll him over and let’s see what he’s got in that backpack.”
The man was tall but not too heavy, and Nick easily rolled him over. His father was sitting in the grass beside the body, his bad leg stretched out in front of him.
“Open it up and hand me the items inside one at a time,” Angus McIver told his son.
First was a thick envelope, wrapped with a rubber band. His father ripped it open and peered inside. “Came here on purpose, Nick. Have a look.”
Nick looked. It was at least a thousand pounds, English notes, well used, wrapped in individual packages.
“Next?” his father said.
“A shirt, a jumper, and a pair of grey trousers,” Nick said, handing each item to his dad. His father opened the shirt and looked at the label.
“Marks & Spencer, Old Bond Street, London,” he said. “This chap was certainly well prepared. Probably spoke perfect English. I’ll bet you ten to one he’s got a pair of binoculars, a camera, and the field guide Birds of the Channel Islands in there as well. Some ruse or other, in case he ran into any curious strangers.”
“Well, he certainly was prepared to shoot our birds at any rate, Dad,” Nick said, handing a sleek black pistol to his father.
“Luger, the P.08. Nine-millimeter. Standard German sidearm. They used this same pistol in my war.”
“What’s this?” Angus asked, unfolding a waxed paper chart.
“It’s a map of our island, Dad. And, look, here’s a British passport with his picture on it.”
“This is the beginning of the end, Nick, I’m sorry to say. The Germans are definitely coming, and soon. God help us all.”
“I’d say they were already here, Dad,” Nick replied, glancing at the corpse, feeling a chill run up the length of his spine.
“I’m afraid you’re right. Has he a collapsible spade in there?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Standard procedure. He planned to bury his parachute and his uniform, then march off with his bird book, looking for Arctic terns or Kentish plovers, I’d imagine. A hale fellow, well met, a cheery birder delighted to have a look round your lovely island, and all that. On holiday, don’t you know, ta-ta for now!”
“What are we going to do with him, Father?”
“Bury him beneath the very tree that did him in, I suppose. A fitting end, don’t you think, for our unknown soldier?”
“Shouldn’t we alert someone about this?”
“Oh, yes. As soon as we’re back at the lighthouse, I’ll ring up the constabulary, Constable Carswell, and ask him to come out to the Old Light for a private chat. We don’t want a single word of this to get around the island. That might start a panic, and we certainly don’t need that. And then I’ll inform Lord Hawke, and we’ll get the information over to Churchill as quickly as possible.”
“What will you tell him?”
“That it appears the Nazis are definitely planning an invasion of the Channel Islands, Nick. We have irrefutable proof lying right here in front of us. See if you can remove his backpack, will you? We’ll need that for the constable.”
“But what can we do about the Germans, Father?” Nick said, struggling with straps of the knapsack. “What can I do?”
“Start with digging that one’s grave,” his father said, using his stick to get to his feet. “When you get tired, just hand me the shovel.”
“Poor fellow,” Nick said plunging the spade into the earth.
“One less Jerry to worry about, Nick. Think of it that way.”
6
CONTACT!
In the weeks following the burial of the German soldier, Nick spent most of his days and nights inside the hidden barn with his friend Gunner. The fall term at the Island school would be starting soon enough, and he was most anxious to complete all the repair work that needed to be done before summer ended and classes began.
The interior of the barn had changed considerably since the day Nick and Kate had first peered inside it. For one thing, it didn’t smell like dead mice anymore. It smelled of glue and grease and castor oil.
Ever since he’d first laid eyes on the old Sopwith Camel, Gunner had been like a man possessed. Nick told him what he had in mind for the aeroplane, and he had never seen his old friend so excited or so happy. Clearly, for someone as mechanically minded as Gunner, this project would be a labor of love.
First, Gunner had lugged his toolbox up from his workshop at the inn. Then he had hung kerosene lanterns on all four walls, so the gloom had completely evaporated. And Gunner could work long into the night. On the second day after commencing their restoration, Gunner had shown up with a powerful searchlight he’d once removed from the deck of a sinking U-boat in the First World War. He’d mounted the light on top of a barn post and connected it to a gas generator.
“Now I can see what I’m about, lad.” He’d laughed, swiveling the light so that it was aimed directly at the aircraft’s massive black engine. It was completely exposed now, since they’d already removed the aluminum cowling from the nose of the plane. Today, they’d find out if they had a working engine or not. And Nick would do a series of drawings of the plane with colored pencils so they could accurately re-create the paint scheme once all the restoration was complete.
Most of the early work had been spent on the wooden framework of the fuselage. They’d ripped away all the faded and crumbling fabric covering the aeroplane. Most of it was rotten and shredding anyway. Dampness had gotten to the wood beneath the fabric, of course, and rotted out the uprights and many of the major and minor struts of the frame. It had taken two days just to replace all the trouble spots with brand-new ash, each wooden piece hand-sawn and fitted expertly by Gunner.
“Hand over that spool of piano wire, will you, Nick?”
Nick picked up the heavy spool and gave it to his friend. “Piano wire?”
“Yep. All these interior wires holding the frame together are rusted out. Piano wire, that’s what they built ’em with in 1916, and that’s what we’ll use to replace ’em with.”
“Now what?” Nick had asked, after Gunner had spent most of the afternoon replacing all the rusted wire. “What kind of fabric do we cover these bare bones with?”
“Ah, there’s the trick, ain’t it, lad? Only one thing good enough for our lovely Camel, Nick, and that’s good old Irish linen. Expensive, I’ll grant you, but worth every ha-penny. There’s a right pretty little seamstress in town who’s a particularly good . . . friend . . . of mine. My little Marjorie will sell me what we need at a bargain price, I’ll wager.”
So the days went by, and every day, bit by bit, the old aircraft was gradually restored to its former glory. When Gunner installed the new wicker chair for the pilot in the cockpit, Nick asked, “Where is the safety harness? Wouldn’t the pilot fall out in a barrel roll or a loop?”
“Didn’t have ’em in the Great War,” Gunner replied. “The pilot tied himself in with a bit of rope over his thighs. Worked fine. Things was simpler in those days, boy. You made do, that’s all.”
New rubber for the wheels and the suspension bands came next. The
aluminum fuel tank was removed and the whitish powder of oxidation thoroughly cleaned out. The pump was disassembled, de-gunked with alcohol, cleaned, and reinstalled. New hoses everywhere. New, brightly varnished struts between the upper and lower wings were added, and all of the interior control cables to the rudder, ailerons, and surface controls were inspected and replaced.
The plywood sides of the cockpit were completely rotted out and replaced with new plywood. It looked awful, but Nick knew it would eventually be painted bright red. And now that Gunner had covered the entire frame with Irish linen, the Camel was starting to look like a real aeroplane again.
“The fabric looks kind of wrinkly, don’t you think, Gunner?” Nick said carefully, not wanting to hurt Gunner’s feelings.
“Aye. That’s why we paint the whole thing with this stuff,” he said, opening the first of many cans of a clear, foul-smelling liquid.
“What’s that?”
“It’s called nitrate dope. Or just dope. As it dries, it will shrink the linen till its tight as a drum. Then we’ll add colors to the dope to paint the whole plane. She’ll be a beauty, lad, just you wait!”
This morning, Gunner had the U-boat searchlight focused on the engine. This was the part Nick had been most worried about. All the spit and polish on earth didn’t matter a hoot if they couldn’t get that old Bentley engine Gunner had overhauled to fire.
“Now, here’s the thing, Nick—hand me that spanner, will you please—as I say, here’s the thing. There’s a lot to be done before we even try to get her to turn over.”
Gunner was up on a wooden ladder leaning against the fuse-lage. One by one, he removed the spark plugs from the engine and handed them to Nick. They were corroded, but Gunner had Nick drop them into a pail of alcohol and said they’d be as good as new after a good soaking. Once he was finished preparing the twenty-year-old engine to start, he’d re-install them.
“Be so kind as to hand up that oil can, will you, Nick?”
Gunner took the can and carefully squirted oil into the holes where the plugs had been. It was a painfully slow process for a boy as impatient as Nick McIver.
“Smells just like the stuff Mother makes me take every day. Castor oil.”
“That’s because it is castor oil. Only thing these engines will burn. And they burn a lot of it.”
“What are you doing now, Gunner?”
“Lubricating the cylinders, which are dry as bone after all these years. Pistons would freeze up if we didn’t do this right. Rings might be rusty, too, y’know—can’t be too careful.”
“Right,” Nick said, trying to understand everything he could about how this flying machine worked. He never knew when he might need that information when Gunner wasn’t around to help him.
“Right, that oughta do it,” Gunner said, climbing down from the ladder, wiping his hands on his trousers.
“Gunner, for an old navy man, you seem to know an awful lot about aeroplanes.”
“Well . . .” Gunner said, his brow furrowing as he searched for words, “I was interested in these things for a while, y’know, but my heart was always out at sea.”
Nick laughed. “I know that feeling! So. We’re going to fire her up now?”
“Lord, no, boy, we’ve got to lubricate her first!”
“How do we do that?”
“Well, first of all, we make sure the magnetos are disconnected. If they weren’t, and she happened to catch, we’d be chopped to pieces.”
Gunner climbed halfway up the ladder and pulled out the two twin knobs that were the magneto switches, mounted on the fuselage just outside the cockpit.
“Ready to go, lad. All you have to do is take hold of the propeller and turn it very slowly. A few times in one direction, a few times in the other, and then repeat the whole thing three or four times. Got it?”
“Aye. But what does that do?” Nick asked, grimacing. Turning the prop was surprisingly difficult. Nick supposed that was because the whole engine spun with the propeller.
“Don’t you worry, boy, it gets easier.”
“How?”
“Castor oil gets spread around inside. Gets the pistons moving up and down inside the cylinders. Spreads all that oil around in there. Once she’s fully lubricated, we’ll put some petrol in that tank and give it a shot.”
“Today?” Nick asked, his heart pounding.
“Give that prop a few more spins, and we’ll see how she feels.”
Gunner took two jerricans of petrol and poured them into the Camel’s fuel tank.
“Now you’re talking, Gunner,” Nick said, a flash of excitement in his bright blue eyes. He spun the prop three more times in a clockwise direction and three more times counterclockwise.
“Getting a little easier?” Gunner asked.
“A lot easier,” Nick said, relieved. It was tiring work.
“All right, then,” Gunner said, mounting the ladder and climbing into the cockpit, “let’s say our prayers and light her up!”
Gunner settled down inside the new wicker chair. The nose-up angle at which the aircraft sat on the ground meant he could see nothing in front of him except the blue sky through the barn doors. He had to lean out over the side to see Nick.
“Give me a minute, boy,” he said, putting his feet on the rudder pedals and his right hand on the control stick. He moved the stick from side to side and saw the ailerons move up and down at his command. With his left hand, he touched the throttle control and the trim lever. He tried something called the blip switch, which instantly killed the motor, and everything seemed in good working order.
“Ready, Nick? Stand to the left side where I can see you.”
“Aye-aye, sir!” Nick said, repositioning himself.
“You remember the starting drill we rehearsed.”
“Remember it? I can say it in my sleep.”
And then a dialogue began, with Nick asking questions and Gunner answering.
“Ready to start, sir?” Nick shouted.
“Ready to start.”
“Fuel on, switches off, throttle closed?”
“Fuel is on, switches are off, throttle is closed.”
“Sucking in, sir,” Nick said. He reached up and pulled the propeller blade down, repeating the action three times. This drew fuel into the cylinders.
“Throttle set?” Nick cried out. His excitement was building so fast he could barely contain himself.
Gunner moved the throttle lever forward half an inch and said, “Throttle set.”
“Contact!” Nick cried.
Gunner reached out and flicked the two magneto switches.
“Contact!”
Once again, Nick swung the propeller, pulling down with all his might but this time jumping back with alacrity immediately afterward.
The engine fired and the propeller began turning. There was an explosive sound from the big Bentley engine, a roar and a snort, and the propeller quickly gained speed until it was a blur. The sputtering, barking, roaring engine filled the barn with various noises, all of them deafening. The smell of burning castor oil was sweet perfume.
Nick, who’d tripped over a rake jumping backward, had landed on his bum on the hay-strewn dirt floor. He looked up to see Gunner leaning out over the cockpit and smiling down at him, giving him the thumbs up. Laughing, Nick jumped up and ran to the ladder. He climbed up and put his arms round his old friend and hugged him tightly.
“You’re a genius, is what you are, sir! An absolute, bona fide genius! Nobody else could have done what you’ve done in the last two weeks, Gunner, nobody!”
“We’ll let her warm up a bit. You’ll need to do that every time.”
The engine note rose and fell as Gunner eased the throttle forward a few times, causing masses of smoke to pour forth from the exhaust ports, and then he reached forward and turned the magneto switches off and on again in turn as a safety check. Then, a few minutes later, he hit the kill switch.
The sudden silence was startling.
“It
’s late, Nick, and your mum will be wondering where you are. I’d get along back to the lighthouse, I was you.”
Nick looked at his watch. He was very, very late.
“I’ll go. How about you? It’s been a long day.”
“I want to finish her up tonight. Get her painted so when you bring your dad, she’ll look just like the last time he saw her.”
“The sketches I drew are on top of that barrel. Have you got paint?”
“Don’t use paint. I just add different pigments to the clear dope and brush it on the same way. Sides of the fuselage are olive drab, underbody is buff-colored, and the cockpit sides will be fire-engine red. Sound good?”
“Sounds beautiful.”
“It’ll take a couple of days for the dope and paint to dry out. What would be a good time to bring your father round?”
“Sunday morning, right after church? We always take the mule and cart, and I’ll just tell him there’s something I want him to see up here.”
“She’ll be ready, Nick. Like she just rolled off the production line. Go get yerself some sleep. We’ve been hard at her for over two weeks now.”
“I don’t think I’ll sleep much tonight,” Nick said, dropping down to the ground. “I’ll keep hearing that roar when the motor turns over.”
“That you will, lad.”
“Gunner? I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. But I was thinking . . . before Dad takes her up, do you think it might be a good idea to have Commander Hobbes go over her? Make sure she’s airworthy?”
“Already spoken to him, Nick. He’s coming round as soon as the paint’s dry. Plans to do a complete inspection. And take her up for a shakedown flight. No worries about your dad.”
Nick sighed with relief. His friend Hobbes was an aeronautical engineer and England’s top weapons designer. If he said the Camel was airworthy, she was airworthy.
The boy paused a moment, brought his right hand up in a proper naval salute to his old friend. “Thank you, Gunner. Thank you for all you’ve done, for everything!”
“A joy and a pleasure, Cap,” Gunner said, returning the salute.