“I knew there wasn’t a way,” Ellenor said, reading his thoughts.
“Bugger that. There’s always a way.”
“Is that a military motto?”
“It’s my motto, goddammit.” He screwed the cap onto the canteen and got to his feet. The sun melted into the horizon; stars opened their eyes. “Tomorrow morning we’ll climb into Hildegard here. You’ll wrap yourself in your new blanket. We’ll get to Metz and find Sarah. Then the three of us, together, we’ll figure this out.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then we’ll leave the city, wait for the bombs to fall, and then reassess the situation. Perhaps Sarah will know of some safe place to go. Perhaps she has friends who can help. I don’t know. I haven’t received a letter from her in…in a long time.” That was the worst part, not knowing if his twin and best friend was getting along all right when all the rest of the world was crumbling. “But we’ll figure it out.”
That seemed to satisfy her. Then again, she was an accomplished actress, as evidenced by her performance for Rickert and Magnild, so odds were that she was hiding a whole horse cart full of fear, anger, and regret. Alec was not the first man to be vexed by a woman’s unspoken thoughts.
“We leave at dawn?” she asked after a while.
“At first light, yes. Thanks to our new friends, we’ll have a fine breakfast.”
“Where are we sleeping tonight?”
“Mother Earth, I suppose.” He’d make a pillow of his flight jacket. He wondered about finding petrol to refuel in Metz. “It’s a warm night. Sleeping under a sky free of artillery bursts will be a welcome change.”
“The last time I slept outside was in New Mexico.”
“Where’s that?”
“Just around the corner.”
“I thought as much. Nice place?”
“If you like deserts and no government telling you what to do.”
“Sounds splendid. I’ll holiday there the first chance I get.”
“Alec?”
He could barely see her in the dark. “Hmmm?”
“Would you sit beside me?”
He hung there for a moment, then two, unsure of himself in a way he hadn’t been since spiraling downward in the Avro, anticipating the impact. Her request was simple. He had asked her to tug down on a propeller, and now—twelve hours later—she was asking him to take a seat next to her.
Silently he went to her in the dark and sat down, cross-legged. Ellenor’s knees were near her chest, her arms wrapped around them. Alec could chat endlessly in a mess hall full of men, and he could sing with natural musical ability whenever he was asked to accompany the piano player in a pub on Rue Whatever-The-Hell while carousing in Paris. But now he searched around for words, perhaps something to make her laugh again, and he found only a vacancy where all the proper apologies and proverbs should have been.
They shared that space without speaking, the plane with its guns and bombs only a few feet behind them, biding its time. If Alec expected Ellenor to criticize his lack of a plan or to quietly question what tomorrow would bring, she surprised him by letting the sky darken and the starlight form patterns overhead. The answers might be up there somewhere, so together they stared upward, searching.
Chapter Fifteen
The dog licked Gustov across the mouth. He awoke instantly, grimacing as he rolled away from the sour mutt and sat up. He wiped his lips on his nightshirt, scowling in the dark. Dawn had not yet arrived. What time was it? It felt like the middle of the night, but his instincts told him that sunrise wasn’t far away.
The dog nuzzled his leg.
“All right, you savage, come here.” He found the dog’s head in the gloom and scratched him vigorously, then yawned through a much-needed stretch. This room they’d given him was charming, but the mattress had seen its better day. As for the dog, it had ridden here in Schmit’s Fokker, curled up on the man’s lap, the squadron mascot who went by the somewhat irreverent name of Pope Benedict.
“That’s enough, Pope.” Gustov eased him away and stood up, enjoying the sensation of every muscle as it came back to life. His borrowed room was on the second floor of the manse. He threw open the shutters and filled his lungs with the air of a new morning.
Yesterday they’d spotted the Englander’s downed plane from the air.
Duty had intervened, however, before they could examine the debris. In response to the United States’ entry into the fray a few months ago, the Air Service had mandated an immediate increase in plane production and manpower. While overburdened factories churned out additional engines and untested recruits were pressed into combat duty, new squadrons were formed to ensure air supremacy. The Air Service referred to this heightened output as the Amerikaprogram, and it meant that Gustov had little time for personal quests. He and his men had spent yesterday on patrol, flying a defensive line that ran parallel to the Front. Their efforts amounted to nothing more than wasted fuel, as they met only a pair of British DH.4s that immediately turned tail and vanished into a snarl of rain clouds. The only good thing to come of it was that all his boys returned safely to their new airfield and spent the evening getting sauced. Gustov recorded as much in his daily logs.
Today, then, he would personally visit the remains of the wrecked craft.
The house cook, a ruddy-faced woman named Dagmar, prepared a breakfast of cold meat slices, soft-boiled eggs, and warm sourdough bread smeared with honey that Gustov assumed was made possible by Ellenor Jantz. He’d never met a beekeeper, male or female. He wondered if all beekeepers were part of some secret cabal of wartime mischief-makers. They supplied spread for your toast and sold stolen airplane parts to underworld dealers.
Gustov smiled at himself, thanked Dagmar for the meal, and went outside just in time to see a ribbon of pink unfurl itself on the eastern horizon. Pope trotted by, already in pursuit of the scent of rabbits that had come to nibble the grass. Gustov located a motorbike in the barn where supplies they’d brought with them were stored.
The vehicle was little more than a bicycle with an engine attached. Gustov’s squadron had been given a pair of NSU 1913 models, named after the city in which they were manufactured, Neckarsulm. All things being equal, Gustov would have preferred a horse. But the stable master, Josef, was evidently still in bed, and Gustov wouldn’t have dreamed of waking him up for such a petty request.
He mounted the bike and pulled his aviator goggles over his eyes.
The ride up the hill proved invigorating. The sun rose higher. The air smelled sweet. He slowed as he made his way along the ragged track, careful not to put the bike’s front tire into one of the cracks in the hardened mud. If he broke his neck on the back of this shuddering thing, his men would never let him hear the end of it. The finest pilot next to Richthofen, crunched by his own wheel spokes.
Had the squadron not spotted the wreckage from the air, Gustov never would have located it. The wood and canvas were hidden well off the path, flattened in vines of yellow flowers. He killed the NSU’s engine and dismounted, removing his goggles and trudging toward a tail fin barely visible above the weeds.
He came upon the burned bus, put his hands on his hips, and observed.
Both wing decks had sheared away upon striking the earth; the lower one was folded back and forth upon itself like a musician’s concertina, while the upper was snapped in half and lying ten meters away. One aileron was missing. The green canvas had been shredded when momentum dragged the two-seater across the ground. The barrel of the Lewis gun mounted at the observer’s seat was bent like a crooked finger.
Gustov crouched. No explosives were clamped to the plane’s undercarriage.
He stood back up. Interesting. The craft had not been on a bombing run, then, so its mission must have been observation—yet the Englander was alone when he arrived wounded at the barn, with no second crewman who operated a camera. Had the observer been killed?
Gustov stepped through the ruined struts and peered into the gunner’s seat. T
here was no sign of blood. Bullet holes dotted the fuselage and had ruptured the fuel tank, igniting a small fire, but there was no evidence that any rounds had struck the two seats.
“The Englander had no payload and no observer.” He said this out loud, hoping it would make more sense when he heard himself utter it.
No detonations had been reported on the ground that day—Gustov has confirmed as much with telegraphed reports from local posts—which meant two things, neither of which made sense: This plane left France carrying no bombs and no observation capabilities. The only other reason to be in the sky was to shoot down enemy combatants, but you certainly didn’t choose a lumbering craft like this when you went hunting single-seat fighters as maneuverable as mosquitoes.
And somewhere in the middle of this puzzle was Ellenor Jantz.
Gustov had always favored action over contemplation. So he discarded his questions and continued his search. He pulled himself toward the pilot’s seat, which sat at an odd angle, as the entire machine leaned awkwardly on its side.
He saw the map immediately.
Clipped to a wire near the magneto was a waxed map with something written across the bottom. Gustov pulled it free, stepped away from the plane’s shadow, and observed the document in the fresh morning light.
The map depicted much of the Imperial Territory known as Alsace-Lorraine, the multicultural borderland that Germany had annexed after swatting the French in 1871. Gustov stood in Lorraine at this very moment; the land around him was being torn apart by lions on both sides, its citizens half German, half French, a dysfunctional mix of loyalties, architectures, religions, and business pursuits.
Along the map’s lower edge, someone had printed two words: AVENUE FOCH.
The word avenue wasn’t German, but it was used often enough in towns across Europe that Gustov knew he was looking at a street name. But a street in which city? At least two dozen appeared on the map. Gustov wasn’t particularly familiar with any of them. But he was certain of this: one of the places on this map was the destination of Ellenor and the Englander she’d aided. In fact, they’d probably already arrived.
But what were they doing there? And how could he stop them before they were gone?
He turned and—map in hand—ran back to the motorbike.
****
The time had come again to fly.
Ellenor tried to work the cramp from her neck. She’d slept atop Magnild’s quilt, and her rest had been surprisingly complete. The nighttime sounds had woken her once or twice, but both times she’d stared up at the endless sky for only a few minutes before being hypnotized back into sleep. For want of an adequate pillow, though, she’d developed a kink.
“Refreshed and ready to go?” she heard Alec say.
“Neither.”
“How about bread and jam, then?”
“And hot tea?”
“Would you settle for canteen water?”
Ellenor spread her arms wide, like wings of her own, aware that the air on summer mornings was somehow both warm and cool. And then she realized something far more important: she was going to have to use the toilet where there was no toilet.
She looked around. It wouldn’t be her first time squatting in the wilderness, but you could get away with such things when you were a girl tromping through the sagebrush behind your childhood home. “Thank you for breakfast. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
“Right-o.” He seemed to understand her unspoken explanation without being told, and he won points for not saying What are you talking about? and embarrassing her. She watched him work for a moment, humming as he assembled their meal, and then she walked off until she found a semi-private spot.
When she returned, she discovered that he’d conscripted her quilt into service as a picnic cloth. Arrayed before her was the food supplied by Rickert and Magnild, most of which they had produced themselves, with the exception of the crackers purchased with ration coupons. Ellenor took a seat and concentrated on appreciating the taste of the wild blueberry jam instead of letting herself think about all the ways the coming day could go wrong. But there was no helping it. “Today we go to Metz?” she asked, knowing the answer.
“If I can find it.”
“Are we lost?”
“I have the map mostly committed to memory, though my planned route didn’t include an interlude in your bee shed and a flight of several hours in the dark. But if I can make out a landmark or two once we reach altitude, we’ll be fine. Actually, I’m rather inept when it comes to most things in life, but I can sing and navigate and handle a plane with the best of them. That’s about it.”
“You sing?”
“I am renowned in French pubs for just such an ability.”
“So…you sing drinking songs.”
“Let’s call it an occupational hazard.”
“You’re confident you can find the city just by…looking around?”
“As easily as I can find a Parisian cabaret.”
“You’re awfully glib for someone doing what you’re doing, stealing a plane and trying to outrace a bombing raid.”
“Some days, it’s either be glib or go mad. Other men favor gallows humor, but that’s always seemed too cynical for me.” He chewed, swallowed, licked his lips. “You say anything to distract yourself, really, from the thought of what could happen to you on any given afternoon. I’d rather be flippant than fatalistic any day.”
“Such is the life of a Tommy, I suppose. That’s what they call you, isn’t it? A British soldier is a Tommy?”
“The poor bloody infantry are the Tommies. They’re the sassy lads facing poison gas and trench foot on a daily basis. They’re the ones who will win or lose this vile scrap for us. Me…” He shrugged. “I’m just an acrobat with flimsy wooden wings strapped to his back. We flyers are fighting a type of dream war. I don’t think it really counts.”
“It counts for your mother back home. It counts for those who care about you and want to see you survive.”
“I assume so. I used to write letters to my mum every week. But it started to feel as if I were writing about someone else’s life. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do you write home?”
“Not as often as I should.”
“What would you tell them about what you’re doing now?”
She had no real answer for that. What she was doing now was inventing herself anew with every decision she made. She was already a plane thief and a quilt trader. What would she become today? “How big is your sister?”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Could Sarah and I both fit into that second seat?”
Alec glanced up at the plane he called Hildegard. “I suppose if we unbolted the seat itself, two people could cram themselves in there, but it would be dreadfully uncomfortable, and you couldn’t maintain it for very long.”
“For long enough?”
He made a doubting face.
“If we had no other choice?” she asked.
“I simply don’t know. Either way, we’d need to remove some of the munitions in the egg basket to account for the added weight.” He stood up. “Now, the French squadron arrives in the skies over Metz in two days. So as much as I honestly enjoy sitting here with you, and I really do, I’m afraid it’s time to shove off.”
She was enjoying it, as well, in a way that surprised her. Take away the war, and you had the perfect morning—minus the part about relieving herself in the weeds—and she hated to put away their meager things and move on. She liked the way he grinned when making a joke.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m not about to tell you.”
“You don’t trust me? I don’t see why not. It’s not like I’ve ruined your life or anything.”
She almost smiled, but instead only nodded and gathered up the blanket. A few minutes later, she was back at her post in front of the propeller—or airscrew, as Alec sometimes called it—waiting for the word
: Contact.
Alec settled in behind the control wheel, though he’d told her that most planes used a joystick—the least subtle bit of innuendo that Ellenor had ever heard. He pulled on his cap and donned his goggles and the beekeeping gloves she’d given him.
He gave the word.
The engine fired on the second attempt. Ellenor raced around the wing and scrambled up the fuselage. She lowered herself into position, then cocooned herself in the quilt.
The plane rolled forward.
Ellenor waited for the rush of wind and nerves, and the rush came. It made her bones heavy at first as her back was pressed against the seat and her tailbone was shaken by the bumps in the field. But then it changed from heavy to light as the wheels left the earth, and then light became no weight at all.
She peeked from her shell and watched the green world fall away. It was beautiful and frightening and serene.
She couldn’t help it: she laughed aloud.
Chapter Sixteen
Protected by his Iron Crosses, Alec Corbin-Dawes of Derbyshire flew deeper into Deutschland. His disguise permitted him to soar as low as five thousand feet, offering a vivid view of the landscape below. At this elevation on a summer day, the air was as warm as English beer.
Referring to Hildegard’s compass, he kept a northeasterly bearing. Metz was conveniently placed at the confluence of the Seille River and the Moselle, so as soon as he spotted either one of them, he could locate the city. With his bloodstained blue scarf protecting his neck from chafing against his collar, he turned his head frequently left and right, doing double duty as both pilot and observer. Vineyards lay below, little terraced rectangles of wine country. Ruined stonework forts from a previous age had been converted into barns.
Whenever he twisted in his seat to check on Ellenor, he found her staring this way and that, excited by everything she saw below. He’d been the same on his first few flights, eyes agape, heart somewhere in the back of his throat. Mankind was not meant to fly, so doing it was an act of defiance. It felt that way.
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