by Bill Walker
Thorley glanced at his watch. One hour till sunrise.
A moment later a Mercedes staff car rounded the building and headed for them. The Portuguese soldiers parted to let the Mercedes through, then closed ranks. The car came to a halt in front of Thorley, the rear door opened and out stepped a wiry little man in a charcoal pin-stripe suit carrying an attaché case. His eyes blinked rapidly behind gold-rimmed pince-nez, and his hair was so saturated with pomade that it looked as if it were lacquered. The man smiled and stepped toward Thorley, his hand motions reptile quick.
“Ah, Major Thorley!” he said, his English almost impenetrable. “Did you have a pleasant flight, Senhor?”
Thorley couldn’t believe the man. Either he was supremely myopic, or unctuous in the extreme. All the little fool had to do was look at the plane.
“Senhor Velasquez, I presume?”
Velasquez positively beamed, convincing Thorley that the man simply did not wish to acknowledge the gore-spattered Wellington, the mark of a true diplomat.
Velasquez bowed from the waist. “At your service, Senhor Major. Please, come with me.”
Thorley hesitated, staring back at the plane and its crew. “What about them?”
“They will be taken care of, Senhor. Everything is arranged.”
“No doubt,” Thorley said, shooting him a cold look.
“Major, please, we must go.”
Thorley moved toward the Mercedes. “Let’s get on with it, then.”
Once they were ensconced inside the car, it sped off toward the other end of the airport. Thorley took a last look at the Wellington, hoping Velasquez was as good as his word. The little man seemed to have put the matter behind him, as he began speaking volubly about everything from fine wines to expensive cigars. Finally, his monologue returned to more serious matters. “...I do hope you realize that this is all highly irregular. Entertaining members of belligerent nations on neutral soil.... Very, very awkward. I have taken considerable risks to facilitate this....”
“It’s a little late to renegotiate your fee, Velasquez.”
The little man threw up his hands in a placating gesture. “No, no, Senhor! You misunderstand. I am happy to oblige, but I do not wish our neutrality to be challenged.”
“You have nothing to fear from us....”
The rest of Thorley’s retort died on his lips as he spotted the plane up ahead parked inconspicuously between two corrugated steel hangars. It was a Heinkel He 111, the pride of Göring’s Luftwaffe. Powered by two 1350 horsepower Jumo engines, with a wingspan over seventy-four feet, it was capable of bombing London from deep inside France with over 4400 pounds of explosives—a devastating payload whose destructive force Thorley had experienced far too many times.
His throat went dry when he spotted a Luftwaffe Major inspecting the aircraft with the plane’s pilot. As the staff car halted a few yards from the right wingtip, the Major looked up, appraising them with a cool and calculating eye.
Inside the staff car, Thorley reached for the door handle. “It’s been a pleasure, Senhor Velasquez. Just make sure that I never have cause to regret that statement.”
Velasquez blanched, but said nothing. Thorley walked quickly toward the Luftwaffe Major, who pulled a cigarette out from an expensive-looking silver case, lighted it with a wooden match, and blew the smoke out the side of his mouth, all the while keeping his eyes riveted on Thorley.
Square-shouldered and a little under six feet, he wore the standard issue blue-gray tunic and jodhpur breeches, along with black leather riding boots polished to a mirror gloss. His peaked cap sat at a jaunty angle, and a Knight’s Cross—with Oakleaves and Swords—dangled at his throat. A host of other important ribbons and badges decorated the left side of his tunic like a metallic smorgasbord.
The German blew out another cloud of smoke, and as Thorley drew closer, he saw dark circles under world-weary eyes set into a face sporting a day’s growth of beard and a jagged scar on one chiseled cheek.
The pilot held out his silver cigarette case. It had a diamond-encrusted Luftwaffe eagle affixed to the lid.
“Have one, they’re American,” he said in German. His tone was affable, though his eyes remained wary.
Thorley studied the man a moment before he spoke. “No, thank you,” he replied. “They give me a headache.”
The Major smiled, revealing a gold crown covering one of his molars. “That’s a shame, Herr Major. They’re quite good; and as rare as a trustworthy man these days, ja?” The man’s accent was clearly Bavarian. Though the major had done well for himself, enough to win Germany’s highest award, he was not a Heidelberg man, not one of the vanishing Junkers that still ruled the German Officer class. This major was of a new, more pragmatic breed.
Thorley heard Velasquez drive off and the Major took this as his cue. “Warm up the plane, Herr Leutnant.”
“Jawohl, Herr Major!” He climbed into the plane through the belly hatch, while the Major turned his attention back to Thorley. Behind him the Heinkel’s two Jumos fired up, idling with a deep throaty grumble.
“The letter, please.”
Thorley reached into his tunic and pulled out a single sheet of vellum, folded once, and handed it to the Major.
The contents were a simple paragraph beginning and ending with a prearranged coded phrase. The rest of it identified the bearer as one Michael Thorley. MacIlvey had penned the letter himself.
The Luftwaffe Major scanned the document, and for a fleeting moment Thorley feared he would pronounce it a forgery, ending his mission there and then. But the Major merely nodded and handed it back.
“All is in order,” he said, a sardonic grin creasing his face. “Come, time is short.”
Thorley followed the Major into the aircraft and was directed toward an empty seat. There lay the field gray uniform of a German Army officer, with the white piping and epaulettes of an Infantry Major. Back at 54 Broadway, when MacIlvey and the others had outlined the mission, Thorley had wondered about the uniform switch. Why not wear the German uniform from the beginning? The answer, when it came, made him feel like the neophyte he was. The British uniform was necessary, they said, because if for some reason the Wellington was brought down in occupied territory, he would end up in a POW camp, rather than in front of a firing squad.
Thorley had barely pulled on the boots and buttoned the tunic when the plane began its takeoff run. The Heinkel was a faster, sleeker plane than the Wellington, reaching flying speed in nearly half the time. By the time he’d seated himself and strapped in, they were at two thousand feet and climbing. Minutes later, they leveled off and the long flight to Finland commenced.
For a time, he amused himself with comparing the similarities and differences between the Wellington and the Heinkel, but that quickly proved boring—the planes were more similar than not. He tried to go over the details of his mission one last time. In minutes, his eyelids drooped and he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Thorley awoke three hours later as the Heinkel began making a descent, the pressure in his inner ear building, tugging him toward consciousness like a vicious little terrier. He opened his eyes just as they hit a downdraft. It threw him against the bulkhead, slamming his shoulder into one of the stanchions. Christ, it hurt. Gritting his teeth, he rubbed it, making sure he could still move it.
He glanced out the small observation window and saw the earth moving up to meet them. A few seconds later, the wheels met the runway with a screech. Something wasn’t right, he thought, something about the light. Frowning, Thorley glanced at his watch, and realized that the position of the sun differed from the time on his watch. Could they be in Finland already?
The cockpit door opened, and the Major came through it looking fresh, as if somehow he’d managed a shower and a shave. “Did you sleep well, Herr Major?” he asked. “Would you like to stretch your legs? We have a few minutes.”
Thorley shook the last vestiges of sleep from his mind, then rubbed his own face, feeling the sharp
rasp of the stubbles against his palm. “Where are we?”
“Just outside The Hague. A refueling stop. We’re halfway there.”
The Netherlands, known to some as the Low Countries.
An early casualty to Hitler’s armored Blitzkrieg, the Dutch homeland had fallen, along with Belgium and France, the year before, and was now a part of the “Greater German Reich. Lebensraum for the Master Race.” Rubbish.
Thorley swallowed his anger and followed the Major out of the plane onto the runway. The land was flat and featureless, stretching for miles in all directions. He thought he could see a farmhouse in the distance, a lone windmill its one distinguishing feature. From what he remembered from his school days, most of this land was reclaimed from the sea by the complex system of dykes and sea walls used to hold it at bay. If ever the fight came here, Thorley thought, all the Germans would need to do to halt an advancing army would be to blow up the dykes. It was a thought that chilled him as much as the cool breeze that blew in from the sea, where a bank of ugly gray clouds sat hovering over the water like some giant carrion eater.
Because of the threat of bad weather, it appeared that they had the airport to themselves. The only other people, aside from the Major and the flight crew now doing stretching exercises a few yards away, were the two Dutch ground crewmen hooking up the hose from the fuel truck to the nozzle on the wing. Two Luftwaffe guards attached to the airfield stood nearby, rifles pointed at the ground, their eyes dull with boredom. Thorley watched the two Dutchmen for a moment, noting their furtive glances, glances that barely masked the hostility they felt. It made his skin crawl.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Major move up beside him, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. The Major stared at the ground crew, watching them with a bemused expression, and then he spoke, his voice thick with irony. “How does it feel, Herr Thorley?”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you know.”
They were silent again for a moment.
“I think perhaps I’ll have one of those cigarettes, after all,” Thorley said.
The Major smiled and motioned for him to move away from the plane. At a safe distance, the Major extended the cigarette case, Thorley took one, placed it between his lips and bent toward the flaming match the Major offered. The German then lit his own, and they spent a moment of silence watching the ground crew work. Thorley coughed. The cigarette tasted dry, acrid, as if it had lain in a box for years. Still, it was a welcome respite from the thoughts and feelings that ran through his mind. “What’s your name?” he asked, breaking the silence once again.
“It is better you do not know,” the Major said, picking a piece of tobacco from his teeth. “Let us say that my being here is because I choose to aid a cause that needs my help. Honor demands it.” He faced Thorley, his ice-blue eyes narrowing. “My country was founded on the concept of honor, Herr Major, the concept that a man was as good as his word. Now, certain factions are doing their very best to destroy what honor we have left. And I can’t stand by anymore.... Do you understand?”
Thorley nodded. “I believe I do. What I can’t understand is how your people allowed all this to happen in the first place.”
The Major coughed, then spat out another piece of tobacco. “That is something historians will debate for generations,” he said, smiling bitterly. “The truth is that we Germans are a race that worships power and those who wield it. This time, I’m afraid, we’ve gone too far.”
Before Thorley could reply, the ground crew signaled the refueling was finished. The Major threw down his cigarette, squashed it out with a twist of his highly polished riding boot, and walked back to the Heinkel without another word. Thorley followed him into the plane. Five minutes later, they were airborne, and Thorley’s thoughts and emotions became a jumble. Now, more than ever, he was afraid of what he would find at his destination.
Chapter Eight
They crossed over into Finnish airspace just after 1 p.m. local time. The Heinkel hugged the landscape, giving Thorley a dramatic view of the untamed forests of thick evergreens, of snow-capped mountains and deep valleys dotted with lakes and the remnants of ancient glaciers. It was a land that few had mastered.
Half an hour passed, then the Heinkel banked left and dropped lower. The pilot throttled back the engines and the aircraft shuddered as the landing gear caught the airstream.
Thorley’s anticipation rose, fighting for supremacy with another feeling that was all-too-familiar…fear. He was flying directly into the maw of the beast, and protection or not, once he landed, once he placed himself in their hands, all bets were off. The thought of it chilled him.
The plane swooped down into a shallow valley, making a rough landing on an airstrip hewn directly out of the virgin forest: an earth-brown gash in a field of verdant green. Off to the side, he saw mountains of tree stumps waiting for burning, mute evidence of a grueling effort to wrest the airstrip from the grip of nature.
The pilot taxied the Heinkel to the end of the airstrip and turned about, parking the aircraft next to a makeshift fuel dump. While the plane rolled across the craggy ground, Thorley used the time to collect his gear and position himself near the exit hatch. As soon as the aircraft came to a stop, the engines powered down, plunging the cabin into an eerie silence broken only by the soughing wind. The Major emerged from the cockpit, his face drawn with concern.
“We’re getting reports of a weather front moving in by six p.m. tomorrow. We will wait until four. If you’re not back by then, we take off without you.”
“That’s not what was agreed.”
The Major waved his hand impatiently. “That does not matter. I will not jeopardize this plane and my crew—”
“For a verdamt Englander?” Thorley said, voice tight with anger. “Where’s your honor now, Major?”
“That’s not fair—”
“And war is? You will wait for me, weather permitting or not, or I shall see to it that those responsible for my being here will know of your cowardice.”
The Major’s lips compressed, and Thorley could see the man was deeply offended; but there was something else behind his eyes: the knowledge that Thorley spoke the unblemished truth. Either he was the man of honor he claimed to be, or he was a worthless hypocrite who didn’t deserve even the slightest regard.
The Major stared back at Thorley, his left eye quivering with anger and, for one long unbearably tense moment, it seemed to Thorley that he might lose his only means of leaving this godforsaken place.
And then it was gone.
The Major shook his head, his expression one of a man who has had to make too many hard choices. “You are right, of course,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. “It’s this fucking war; it makes people say and do such appalling things— things they never would have dreamed possible before. But that’s just an excuse, like all the others.... I will wait. But if we have not taken off by the time this weather moves in, then we shall all be stuck in this shithole together.”
Thorley smiled and twisted open the hatch. It clanged against the hull then swung lazily back and forth several times before coming to a stop. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Major,” he said. He dropped through and began walking away from the plane toward the woods.
When he came to the edge of the runway, the desolate nature of the landscape was even more apparent. Aside from the thick forest of tall pines that hemmed-in the strip on three sides, a mountain range lay to the north at a distance he judged to be at least fifty miles. It was from that direction that he caught sight of a dust cloud moving toward him. Several moments later it became recognizable as a Kübelwagen staff car.
Painted with camouflaging paint in a random pattern of green, brown and gray to simulate foliage, its odd sloping bonnet, corrugated siding, and jutting wheel wells made it look ungainly, even clumsy, yet the sturdy little vehicle seemed well-suited to the rough, rocky terrain. It bounded onto the dirt runwa
y and raced toward him with alarming speed, sliding to a stop and throwing up a cloud of dirt that stung his eyes and made him want to gag. He forced himself to ignore it, concentrating, instead, on the two men occupying the vehicle.
The driver, a sergeant, had skin like leather and a sinewy face whose every line appeared chiseled from granite. He kept his gaze averted, his attention on the area immediately surrounding them, and appeared nervous, watchful, as if he expected someone might attack them at any moment.
The other occupant was a Wehrmacht Captain in his mid-twenties. Tall, blonde, and youthful in a fresh, innocent way, he radiated an undeniable charisma—the exact opposite of the brooding Luftwaffe Major. The young Captain smiled with genuine warmth, bounding from the Kübelwagen, his hand extended in greeting.
“Guten Tag, Herr Major,” he said, his brown eyes twinkling. “I am Hauptmann Friedrich Rainer, and I am pleased you could come. You cannot know how much your visit will mean. What should I call you?”
Thorley thought for a second, then remembered something from his briefing at MI6. “Major Weiss will do,” he replied, giving Rainer a final appraisal.
The young Captain grinned. “Ah, yes, Der Weisse Adler. Quite apropos.” He paused then, his mood turning serious. “We had best be on our way. It’s a long drive.”
He started to climb back into the Kübelwagen and Thorley grabbed his arm. “Wait,” he said, his tone urgent.
Rainer turned back to face him.
“What can you tell me?”
“I’d rather you saw it all for yourself,” Rainer said, his expression troubled. “Words will only trivialize it. Come, we only have a few hours of daylight left.”
They drove for an hour before hitting the mountain road that led to their destination. All through the ride, Thorley kept his own counsel, preferring to watch the passing scenery. It was a study in contrasts. The land grew rockier as they rose in altitude, the pine trees thinning out and giving way to low-lying scrub. Wildflowers grew everywhere, splashing the land in striking hues from the brightest yellow to the deepest violet. It was breathtaking, yet there was blight on the land; it took the form of endless columns of German soldiers, Panzers, supply trucks, and horse drawn artillery. Because the road was so narrow, they were forced to fall into the column until they reached the other side, where it widened enough to allow them to race ahead.