I dressed silently; neither of us said goodbye. The place was in darkness still, and every direction I turned seemed to echo with the snores of contented sleepers. As I got to the street dawn was just beginning to show, so I slipped into the shadows, and tried to find my way back.
Alas, with Grace, things were rarely that easy. After I had been moving for twenty minutes, I became aware that I was being followed. I don’t know how that happens: I didn’t see or hear anything, I just knew. The streets seemed even darker than at night, because no windows shed light onto the roads. When I judged I was about three blocks from home I checked at a corner, and looked back to the one I’d rounded a minute before.
Grace should have been more careful. She stopped, but had already taken a step too many, and was out in the open. There was nowhere to hide.
She pulled an automatic pistol from her waistband, and fired it at me. Just like that. I hope that it was an instinctive reaction – something she didn’t think about. In the split second before the first bullet hit me my brain was saying Grace can’t be doing this. The bullet struck the wall a couple of feet off the ground, and ricocheted into my inside right knee. The leg was immediately numbed: it kept me upright, but I couldn’t feel anything, not even the ground beneath my foot.
I must have thrown up my right arm in front of my face when she fired again. Stupid – how can you ward off bullets with an arm? It was a better shot this time, kissed my raised forearm in the fleshy part below my elbow, and spun me half round. Her pistol made heavy, deep booms as it fired: one of those horrible Russian things I think. As the bullet turned me, I suppose I reacted instinctively myself. I drew my small pistol with my left hand, aimed it and fired. Grace sort of twitched, lowered her pistol and nipped back out of sight. Maybe she staggered. How long had this taken? Five seconds? Ten? No more. How many ways did that American guy say there were to leave your lover?
I leaned back against the wall to keep myself upright, dropped my chin on my chest and breathed deeply. My sleeve was cut and wet. Grace didn’t reappear. A light went on in a house across the road and, when I looked towards it, I saw a little girl of about six staring curiously at me. She waved. I gave her a weak smile, and pocketed my gun. Another light went on further down the road, and I heard a voice calling. Time to go, Charlie.
I got back to the English House after about ten more minutes of hobbling, using my good leg, and the walls of houses as a crutch . . . and taking several breathers. I pounded on Weir’s door, and when he answered it, grumbling, fell into his arms.
‘Tell Hudd we gotta get out of here,’ I told him.
It wasn’t yet light when I passed out, and it was dark again when I awoke twelve hours later.
‘Keep your voice down,’ Hudd said. ‘We don’t have to wait long.’
‘What for?’
‘Getting out of here, o’ course. How d’ye feel?’
‘Groggy, and my knee hurts.’
‘It’s got a bullet in it, that’s why. But it’s only just beneath the skin so it may not have done too much damage. Alan gave you a hefty jab, and knocked you out.’
‘Where are we?’
‘In a warehouse owned by your friendly smuggler. You gave me his name and address. How come you know people in this town that I don’t?’
‘Long story. Are we safe?’
‘For the time being, I think. He won’t take any money for helping us. He says he’s doing it for a friend of yours . . . and that I owe him a favour. I’ve got a feeling I might regret this one day.’ There was a smile in his voice. Hudd seemed to have kept things together in my absence, but I would have expected nothing less. I wondered when he would begin to mourn his man Freddy, or whether he was simply too professional for that. The place smelt of old fish, tar and ropes – that smell of tarred string I’ll always associate with my childhood. Dad used to make me a bow with arrows every year: the tarred string lasted all summer.
‘Have I been asleep all day?’
‘Most of it. I had to gag you when you began to talk – it was a load of garbage by the way: something to do with the smell of fish being silver . . . what did that mean?’
‘Don’t worry about it – it was just an idea I’m trying out.’ I moved my head from side to side, and could see, even in the gloom, that I was lying on the flatbed of a handcart with two big wheels. ‘Can I sit up now? I’m thirsty.’
‘Do it slowly, an’ don’t tip this thing over. Goat’s milk or water?’
‘I’d kill for a cold beer.’
‘You may have to, buddy.’
It seemed to me that our whispers filled the vast shed with ghosts. I could almost see some of my old crew standing in the shadows. Toff, our mid-upper gunner, grinned at me and pointed at his right knee. He knew I was hurting. What was he doing there? He wasn’t supposed to be dead yet. When I shook my head to clear my vision they faded back into the shadows.
Later I asked Hudd,
‘What’s that Israeli bunch doing?’
‘Running about like blue-arsed flies. Apparently they’ve lost someone, and they’re turning the town upside-down looking for her. You can tell me about that on the boat . . . it would probably scare me too much in here.’ I couldn’t actually imagine Hudd being scared of anything. ‘They’ve already upset the local rozzers and the town council, which should slow them down quite a bit, but I’d still like to get out of here before they come looking for us.’
‘I’m not good on boats, Hudd: I get seasick.’
‘That could be the least of your worries.’
Just before midnight, Hudd and a great moustachioed Turk wheeled me down to a small harbour of fishing boats. Every jolt over every stone sent fire shooting from my knee to my brain. I bit my lip until I could taste blood in my mouth. My arm didn’t feel that bad – just tight, so I knew they’d bandaged me. I felt helpless lying on my back on that bloody fish cart. Weir trundled behind us with another cart bearing the three boxes.
‘What’s the opposition doing?’ I ground the words out from behind clenched teeth.
Weir consulted the Turk in rapid-fire Turkish. Then he told me, ‘They shot someone, stole his lorry and have driven off to Tatvan in it because an inventive liar told them you’d be heading in that direction. That road is absolutely terrible. If they get back here before morning, all they’ll get is a shoot-out with the local militia. Happy days.’
I thought that the inventive liar had better keep his head down for a few weeks, and next asked, ‘What happened to the woman they lost?’
His exchange with the Turk took longer this time. In fact it was almost a conversation. Then Weir told me, ‘Nobody knows. It’s a mystery.’ They’d taken a bloody long time to arrive at five words.
I smelt salt in the air, and heard the gentle tidal bumping of wooden vessels against a quay. I already felt queasy, but good old Hudd: he was getting us away by water – a man of many talents. We stopped. The last chill of the year was still there in the air. I looked at Hudd, Weir and the Turk and suddenly felt so grateful I wanted to weep. Their breaths steamed. Above them was the northern Middle East sky with its dancing stars. The cold air ringed each one with rainbow colours. Despite the pain I managed to log a memory of them – I had never seen anything as beautiful.
There is an island on Lake Van, not far off the shore from which we’d started. It is wooded, and cold, and it supports the ruins of a Coptic church or monastery. I know that because I’ve been there; you probably haven’t. After twenty minutes we began to run in towards the island and my anxiety level climbed. Twenty minutes wasn’t far enough away from the homicidal maniacs who wanted to kill me. I asked the time-honoured, ‘Where are we?’
‘Akhtamar Island. We’ll be picked up from here.’ That was Hudd.
Weir and David Yassine’s Turk helped us ashore. I hopped on my good leg, leaning on Weir’s shoulder. We lay up alongside the ruined church; its crumbling walls and the low scrubby trees around them hid us from the breezes off the lake, which lowered
the seasonal temperature even more. After an hour or so I began to shiver. Weir and the Turk had already left; the chug-chug from the boat’s engine couldn’t be heard further than a few yards – a good smuggling vessel, I guessed, but what would you want to smuggle across an inland saltwater lake?
‘Now’s as good a time as any,’ Hudd decided. ‘You can tell me where you got to last night, and exactly who shot you. It will help keep you alive.’
I don’t know how it happened – partly it was my determination to stay awake, because I felt so desperately tired – but I found myself telling him Grace’s entire story. About her ATA days, and coming to Germany with us in Tuesday’s Child, riding the Lancaster’s rear turret. About chasing her through western Europe and Italy at the end of the war, and her turning up in London in 1947 before escaping to Israel in a rusty tub of a tramp ship skippered by a Dutch pirate. About bringing up her son as mine. About Cyprus, and finally meeting her the night before. Did I tell him how irresistible she was? I don’t know; I think so.
‘But she tried to kill you?’
‘I don’t know, Hudd. I thought she would have been a better shot than that.’
‘. . . and you hit her with your shot?’
‘Again, I don’t know. She didn’t fall, if that’s what you mean. She certainly twitched. Maybe I just startled her.’
‘Maybe she wanted you to finish it. You said she’d suggested you kill her earlier.’
‘She knew I couldn’t do that.’
‘Maybe you have.’
How can you bloody well respond to that? ‘. . . and maybe that’s the last bloody thing in the world I wanted someone to say, Hudd.’
We’d reached a natural break. I was propped up against the church wall watching the stars. After a while Hudd watched them too. At some point he said, ‘Sorry, buddy.’
I didn’t reply immediately. Eventually I asked him, ‘When do we get out of here?’
‘First light.’
‘What are you going to do with the sovereigns?’
‘Give ’em back. I’ll keep a handful for pocket money, but I wouldn’t know what to do with the rest . . . and you don’t need them, do you?’
‘How do you work that out?’
‘You got the look, Charlie. You’re never going starve, are you? You know it and I know it.’
‘I won’t have time to starve, at this rate; some cow will probably shoot me again.’
‘You don’t think all women are cows, either. Do you?’
‘No. You’ll think I’m stupid, but I think that none of them are. The women in my life have been the best people who happened to me.’
‘Which is how it should be. Freddy called them comfort blankets. I wonder if he’s comfortable where he is now.’
‘When I get to Heaven, Hudd, I know it’s going to be a pub or a bar. Freddy will be there, and all my mates as well. You can come too if you like.’
‘That would be fine, Charlie . . . as long as we can put it off for a few years. Why don’t you shut your eyes for a couple of hours?’
I told him the truth. ‘I don’t feel well, Hudd. I’m scared I won’t wake up again.’
‘I’ll wake you: trust me.’
He didn’t need to. I dreamed about the black bomber. In my dream it was flying around inside that bowl of parched mountains, its four tired old radial engines screaming as it clawed for height. But there was no way out for her. She would fly until she dropped. Grace and the black bomber were all mixed up in my mind. The dream was so vivid that I could still hear those radials when I opened my eyes. And they didn’t stop even then. There was an aircraft somewhere above the lake.
First light.
I could make out the shape of Hudd standing on a spit of shingle, with his arm outstretched, like someone hailing a bus at a request stop. Then his hand burst into flame and colour, lighting him up like a shabby angel. Flare, my mind said. When it died Hudd crunched back across the stones.
‘Rise and shine, old son.’
‘What is it?’
‘A ruddy great Sunderland flying boat, come to take us home. It’s on its finals now. Whatever you do, pretend you’re pleased to see them. You never know when we’ll want them again.’ It was what my dad used to say about girls. I thought of Grace, and I began to cry.
I had always wanted to travel in a flying boat, and experience the drag of the water as you lifted off, but this wasn’t to be my time. They tied me to a bunk, and wouldn’t let me watch the take-off. Two blokes worked on me; one may have been the old man from the medical section at Port Said. He peeled my jacket off, and tut-tutted at the state of the bandage on my arm. It can’t have been up to NATO standard. The other opened my pants from ankle to crotch with a pair of scissors, and observed, ‘This knee’s a bit of a mess.’
There was a prick in my upper arm – the good one – but I didn’t mind that. Soon I was flying above the water beside the aircraft. The black bomber was somewhere out to port and a bit behind us, flying a nice parallel: we were taking her home, but only in my head of course.
Sleep. Perfect sleep.
Hudd came to see me in the small hospital at El Kirsh. It was almost a goodbye.
He asked, ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘Apart from being shot? I’ve woken up twice in a hospital on one trip. That’s good going, even for me.’
‘This place is full of nurses. I can’t see what you’re complaining about.’
‘I’m bored.’
He flung my small pack onto the bed. I winced when it banged up against my leg. He didn’t seem to notice.
‘Your pipe’s in there. I bunged in some fresh tobacco too, and a couple of books. OK?’
‘Thank you. Don’t mind me – I’ll be laughing as soon as I’m on my feet again.’
‘Mr Watson’s sending the rest of your kit on . . . and your mail. Apparently a big envelope addressed to you burst open in the post office, and it was full of dirty pictures: the Provost’s people might want to talk to you. How’s the knee: permanent damage?’
‘It’ll hurt in wet weather, the Doc says. Apart from that I’d be playing football again in a few weeks, if ever I played the damned silly game in the first place.’
‘Don’t you like soccer?’
‘No: it’s an idiotic way to spend an afternoon.’
Hudd and I were never going to be a marriage made in heaven.
He said, ‘I’ve got to ask you this . . . and this is for me, not for anyone else: it won’t go any further, OK?’
‘What?’
‘Do you know where the rest of the money is?’
If, before you answer a question, you ask yourself Can I trust this person? then you can’t. I thought that about Hudd, and then told him anyway. I reckoned I owed it to him.
‘Maybe . . . can we say I have a good idea where it is, and leave it at that?’
‘Thank God for that, I’d hate to think of Freddy going for nothing.’
‘Don’t you want to know where?’
‘No, Charlie, an’ you don’t want to tell me.’
I filled and lit a pipe. I’ve told you that Grace had bought it for me years ago, so it reproached me as soon as I touched it. Someone had told me about a good pipe shop in a bazaar in Port Said, and I resolved to buy a new one there as soon as I was on my feet again.
Hudd said, ‘I’m gonna come back with a coupla pals tomorrow, an’ have a bit of a party, OK? The Doc says it’s OK.’
‘Then you’re leaving?’
‘Yeah. Few weeks’ leave in Darwin. Blow my pay, an’ get arrested breakin’ up another bar.’
‘After that?’
‘We got some people up in Indonesia. I don’t know fer certain – it was just a hint.’
‘What’s it like out there?’
‘The women are hot, but their men are head-hunters. You pays your money and takes your choice.’ Someone else I knew used to say that, but I couldn’t remember who.
‘I can’t imagine you losing your hea
d, Hudd.’ You could take that two ways, couldn’t you?
Daisy sat on the edge of my bed. I asked her, ‘Why hasn’t Watson come to see me? After all, he got me into this bloody mess.’
‘He saw you last time, and once is enough for David: he doesn’t like hospitals. He’s actually very squeamish.’
‘I’m going home after this, aren’t I?’
‘Of course you are. The rest of us’ll be out here another few months and then so will we.’
She’d brought me two halves of Red Hackle in her shoulder bag. As she tucked them under my pillow she said, ‘He wants to know if you know where the rest of the money is.’ She said it lightly, but there was a catch in her voice. That was interesting. It was the first time I wondered who was really running the show. I’d had a few days to make up my mind what I was going to say.
‘No, I think it was robbed out years ago, and split up into bits and pieces. That’s the only thing I can think of. So now it’s scattered – in small amounts probably – halfway around the world by now.’
‘He wants to know if there’s anything left undone; any t’s left to cross.’
‘That bloody aircraft is going to cause grief for as long as it’s sitting out there. Why doesn’t he get a Canberra in transit to pop a few thousand pounders into her by accident, and apologize to the Turks afterwards? Blow the blasted thing to Kingdom Come.’
‘Is that what you want me to tell him?’
‘Yes, I do, Daisy. Now, give me a nice peck on the cheek, and tell me what pictures you’ve seen recently.’
Haye with an e came to see me for half an hour each time she went off duty. The other guys in the ward were jealous. One night I asked her to marry me.
She replied, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why ever should I want to do that?’
‘Because I love you.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it. All men fall in love with their nurses. You go to bed with Florence Nightingale, but wake up with someone like me. It never lasts.’
‘Didn’t a film star say something like that?’
‘Rita Hayworth. I suspect she knew what she was talking about.’
She was sitting on the edge of my bed where Daisy had sat. There was probably a regulation against that.
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