The sleek black Humber staff car shot northward on the A113, its eight-cylinder engine thrumming with unchecked power. At this late hour, the road was all but deserted, a narrow winding black ribbon pelted by a driving rain. The tires swished through puddles and the wipers marked cadence in time with the dull throbbing in Thorley’s temple.
Slouched on the butter-soft maroon leather seat directly behind the uniformed driver, Thorley listened as Peter MacIlvey continued briefing him on his mission. The older man’s voice was a heated whisper, as he hammered home the facts over and over again. For a brief moment all the sounds he heard blended into a soft roar and his vision blurred.
It was hard to believe that scant hours before, he’d been sitting comfortably in his little rabbit hole listening to the radio. Now, he sat in an overheated staff car headed north toward an airfield outside Chipping Ongar, where a plane waited expressly for him. Thorley found it odd they were heading away from the coast and asked MacIlvey why he wasn’t flying out of Croydon or Lympne. He was told that his mission was so secret, they couldn’t risk even the slightest attention by civilian or other military personnel.
Watching as the dense, crowded city turned to soot-stained suburbia, Thorley found he couldn’t keep Lillian from intruding into his thoughts. It was now just after 10:00 p.m. and he knew she would be frantic with worry, wondering if something had happened to him. Sir Basil had promised him he would personally inform her as to Thorley’s circumstances, all within the limitations of the Official Secrets Act, of course. But that promise was little comfort.
Feeling dizzy, Thorley cracked open the window next to him, letting the frigid night air and the cool rain blow into his face. It felt wonderful.
“Thorley, be a good man and close the window,” MacIlvey said, his lips pursed with disapproval. “It’s bloody freezing.”
He shot the older man what he hoped was a hateful glare, and cranked up the window, instantly raising the temperature in the car back to its former oven like state.
“How much further is it?” Thorley asked.
MacIlvey squinted into the dark, as if trying to spy a familiar landmark by the two tiny pinpoints of light emanating from the Humber’s masked headlights. “About five miles. Are you clear on everything? Do you want to go over it again?”
“No thank you. I think if I have to hear it all one more time, I’ll go mad. How could something like this have happened?”
MacIlvey’s eyes narrowed and he focused his attentions somewhere out in the dark. “I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you that it’s the fortunes of war, and all that rot.” He paused, letting that thought sink in. “Let us just say that sometimes politics and expediency are more important than people.”
“If that’s true, then we really don’t deserve to beat that bloody corporal.”
MacIlvey’s laugh sounded dry and humorless. “You have a lot to learn, my boy, a lot to learn.”
Thorley was about to rejoin with something pithy, when the Humber turned off the narrow two-lane road onto a dirt track hemmed on either side by tall fir trees. The heavy boughs scraped the roof of the car as they bumped and jounced their way along the deeply rutted road. A moment later the car broke out of the trees and Thorley spotted the airfield.
Little more than a large pasture pounded flat by steamrollers, it consisted of a single concrete runway with several aircraft parking areas branching off it along its length and a Nissen hut. A windsock hung limply from a pole standing several yards from the control tower: a two-story concrete blockhouse with its control nest and observation deck atop the roof. The windows on the ground floor glowed with a golden light, and Thorley saw a shadow cross in front of one them. Someone awaited them.
The Humber made for the blockhouse, and a moment later the car screeched to a halt and the driver scurried to open the door. MacIlvey climbed out and marched into the blockhouse. Thorley followed, feeling queasy. The throbbing in his temple had worsened.
Inside, Thorley saw a sea of empty wooden desks, their scarred surfaces littered with papers and other debris left over from a day’s work. The walls were covered with various maps stuck with pins, and a Teletype clattered lazily somewhere off to his right. But straight ahead, inside one of the enclosed offices, Thorley spotted MacIlvey arguing with an RAF officer.
“...I don’t give two bloody shits about priorities, mate. I want that plane here within the hour, fully fueled and ready to go with the crew I ordered. Is that clear?”
As Thorley approached, the conversation died. The officer stalked past him, muttering, his face flushed and his gaze focused on the floor.
“Close the door, Thorley,” MacIlvey ordered. He then pointed to a document on the otherwise immaculate desk. “These are your commission papers, please sign and date all three copies. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that you are still bound by the Official Secrets Act, or the penalties for divulging any particulars of your mission....”
Thorley sat down in the wooden swivel chair and took up the fountain pen lying next to the commission papers. He stared at them a moment, the official-looking language swimming before his eyes like a cloud of black flies.
He almost put the pen down then, almost told MacIlvey where to shove his bloody papers and his tawdry secrets. But then, as if in a dream, he found himself signing the papers, first one copy, then the next, and finally the last—everything in triplicate.
“Welcome to His Majesty’s Armed Forces,” MacIlvey said without a trace of irony.
Thorley looked up at the man and thought he saw something in those steel-colored eyes, something akin to envy; and he realized that, given the choice, MacIlvey would take his place in a heartbeat, had probably been a topnotch operative before age and infirmity had taken its inevitable toll. For the briefest of moments, Thorley and MacIlvey connected.
“You’ll find your uniform in the cabinet behind you,” MacIlvey said, breaking the mood. “I’ll wait outside while you change.”
And then he was gone, leaving Thorley alone with his thoughts again. Standing, he turned and opened the gun-metal gray cabinet. He found the uniform arrayed on the middle shelf: Cap, socks, underwear, tunic, and trousers, all neatly folded and arranged pyramidally. Next to the pile sat a pair of brown brogans polished to a mirror shine.
The uniform draped his body as if it had been tailored for him, and that made him uneasy. To have known all his measurements so thoroughly meant that they knew him far better than he would have liked. The inside of the metal cabinet held a full-length mirror, and Thorley gazed at his reflection. To everyone but himself he would appear to be the essence of a Major in the Royal Guards, replete with the proper medal ribbons for a man of his age and rank, decorations he did not deserve.
Suddenly depressed, he shut the cabinet and left the room. He found MacIlvey waiting just outside the blockhouse staring up at the night sky. He turned and gave Thorley an appraising glance, then returned his attention to the stars. The sight was awe-inspiring. Unlike the skies over London, where one was lucky to see the odd star through the smog, here the air was cool, clear as crystal, and smelled of pine tar and wildflowers, laced with a hint of cow manure.
MacIlvey broke the silence. “My father gave me a telescope when I was twelve. Since that time, I’ve never gotten tired of looking up. When you understand what’s out there, and the obscene distances involved, you realize how small and insignificant man is.”
“Heavy stuff for—”
“—an old coot?”
Thorley nodded, embarrassed.
MacIlvey chuckled. “Well, I wasn’t always so philosophical, or so old, for that matter. What I said about politics being more important than people.... It’s the way the world is, Thorley. I wish to Christ it wasn’t, but there it is. I learned long ago that I had to play the game their way or I’d be out of it.”
“And that was important to you, to be in ‘the game’?”
“Bloody right on that one. I wanted in because I thought I could change it from the inside. Instead—”
“—It changed you.”
MacIlvey nodded. “Someone once said, I forget who it was, that all cynics are disillusioned romantics. That’s me, to a tee.”
Thorley was about to offer a comeback when the sound of engines floated in on the wind. MacIlvey gave a curt nod. “Well done, Gormley, well done.”
Thorley looked toward the source of the sound and saw, off to the west, the landing lights of a lone plane flying toward the field. When it drew closer, he saw that it was a Vickers-Wellington, a dual-engine medium bomber. It was painted a drab brown, and had the RAF bull’s-eye painted on both wings and the rear fuselage, along with a series of numbers in a pale yellow. Wagging its wings, the Wellington made a sweeping pass around the field, then landed, coming to a stop about fifty yards away from where Thorley and MacIlvey stood. From off to their left the fuel truck drove up and two ground crewmen uncoiled a hose, connected it to a spot on the wing and the refueling process began.
“Let’s go,” MacIlvey said, motioning for Thorley to follow him. He found he had to trot to keep up with the older man, who marched across the runway with long impatient strides, barking orders at the ground crew to hurry it up. When they closed in on the plane, Thorley noticed more details about the aircraft: the drab brown was really an intricate camouflage pattern. Conversely, the underbelly was painted a light sky blue, an odd-looking combination until one realized that, from the ground, the plane would be less easy to spot by trigger-happy German anti-aircraft gunners. The other thing he noticed about the Wellington made him uneasy. It bristled with .303 calibre machine guns.
Thorley caught up with MacIlvey as a hatch under the plane’s belly, just to the rear of the cockpit, swung open and the pilot dropped out onto the runway. Exuding the natural confidence of men who daily risked their lives, the pilot strode toward them, the buckles and zippers of his flight gear clacking together. He was tall, recruiting-poster handsome, with a pencil mustache, and cleft chin. The pilot stopped in front of MacIlvey and nodded. “Right. This the package?”
Thorley felt a hot flash of anger at the man’s impersonal reference, but forced himself to calm down. He was past the personal at this point. Only the mission and its successful outcome mattered now.
“Quite,” MacIlvey replied. “You have the flight plan?”
The pilot looked off into the distance, as if gauging some unseen menace. “Bloody Göring’s got twice as many 110’s up tonight. From the reports we’ve heard over the radio, it’ll be the deuce getting over the Bay of Biscay.”
MacIlvey stared at the man, a vein in his temple throbbing. “Sounds like you’ll be earning your pay, then.”
The pilot sighed, a world-weary expression passing over his face. “No rest for the wicked, eh what?”
“Just make sure you get him there in one piece.”
“We always do.”
MacIlvey turned to Thorley and thrust out his meaty hand. Thorley took it, feeling the small bones of his hand grind against each other. “You’re in good hands with Flight Lieutenant Mullins,” MacIlvey said, nodding toward the pilot. “Just make sure you bring back the truth. I don’t trust the bloody Hun, not since the last war.”
“I’ll do my best, sir,” Thorley said, feeling silly, as if he were being packed off to boarding school. But the look in the older man’s eyes snapped him back to reality.
“Whatever the truth is, I’ll find it.”
MacIlvey smiled. “Good show.”
The copilot leaned out the side window. “We’ve got to leave now, Flight, there’s a front moving in.”
The pilot nodded, then twirled his hand. The copilot disappeared back inside the cockpit and a moment later the plane’s two Bristol-Hercules engines fired up with a gut-shaking rumble. Prop wash buffeted them, making it difficult for Thorley to stand. MacIlvey mouthed something that was lost in the clamor, then tried repeating it. He gave up with a shrug, saluted, and walked back to the Humber, which had discreetly moved from its spot by the blockhouse. A moment later, it accelerated away, retracing its route back toward the trees and the city.
Thorley suddenly felt very alone, as if he’d been abandoned by his last friend. He spotted the pilot standing by the open hatch, beckoning him with an impatient wave.
There was no turning back now, nowhere else to go.
Holding his cap to his head, Thorley ran to the hatchway and stopped. The pilot thrust his face next to Thorley’s ear and shouted. “You’ve got to pull yourself inside, sir!”
Thorley nodded, reached up and grabbed the rim of the hatch with both hands, then jumped to give himself the necessary momentum to carry him up into the plane. He made it halfway, and instantly two pairs of hands grabbed him under the arms and hauled him inside.
The two men belonging to those hands, both pilot officers, dressed in flight gear and wearing parachutes, smiled at him. “Welcome aboard, sir,” they said, saluting.
Thorley returned the salute, feeling foolish.
The pilot followed him in, closed and battened the hatch, then turned to the two other officers. “Gibby, you take the tail tonight, and bloody well keep your eyes peeled. We’re carrying enough extra fuel to roast us to cinders.”
Gibby nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, turning and running off down the narrow catwalk, the rubber soles of his sheepskin-lined boots silent on the latticed steel. He disappeared behind the bomb bay, now occupied by a special long-range fuel tank instead of the usual complement of five-hundred-pound explosives. The pilot faced the other pilot officer, a fresh-faced boy with tousled blond hair and mischievous grin. “Once we’re aloft, Hildy, you’re to lay in a course for Lisbon, and keep us over water this time.” He then turned and climbed into the cockpit, which was separated from the rest of the cabin by steel meshing. The copilot nodded to Thorley, then turned his attention back to his gauges.
Hildy pointed to a spot next to the navigator/radioman’s chair, where a spare parachute lay. “I’m sorry we don’t have a seat for you, sir,” he said. “But the lady here wasn’t designed for comfort.”
“Quite all right....”
“Sims, Major, Pilot Officer Hildy Sims.”
“Carry on, Sims.”
Thorley sat on the parachute, deciding that if he really needed it he’d put it on at the appropriate time. Chances were good, however, that the pilot was correct. With all the extra fuel in that large tank in the bomb bay, they’d never have the chance to get out. Pushing that unpleasant thought from his mind, he leaned his back against the bulkhead, feeling the vibration of the engines. Hildy sat down in the fold-down jump seat, turned on the radio and put on his headset, then pulled out his charts and began plotting the course that would take them out over the Atlantic and then south over the Bay of Biscay to neutral Portugal.
A moment later, the engines throttled up and the rumbling idle became a full-throated roar. He felt the brakes ease off and the Wellington move forward, rapidly picking up speed. As they approached take-off speed, wind howled through the open gun ports adding to the cacophony and further jangling his nerves. He felt the wheels jounce once as the plane lifted off the earth. He was thirty-five years old, heading off into God only knew what, and this was his first time in the air. Turning his eyes heavenward, he beseeched whatever deity might be listening that he sincerely hoped it wouldn’t be his last.
The plane banked sharply, turned south first, then due west. A few downdrafts jolted the plane, making Thorley’s stomach twist and his knuckles turn white. His hands ached as he gripped a piece of the plane’s superstructure. Looking toward the cockpit, he saw the copilot pointing at one of the Perspex windows. “Our escort has arrived,” he said.
It was too dark to see from where he was sitting, but Thorley knew the copilot referred to a fighter escort, no doubt two of the highly maneuverable Spitfires. Instead of making him feel better, this only increased his anxiety.
“Good show,” the pilot replied, his eyes on the altimeter. “Leveling off at fifteen thousand feet.” He put his hands to his throat mike. “This is Red Leader…do you copy Little Friends? Over.”
A crackling of static.
“We copy loud and clear, Red Leader. What are your orders? Over.”
“Stay with us until the far beacon. We should be all right after that, over.”
“Roger, Red Leader, we’re with you all the way to Tipperary. Over and out.”
The pilot smiled at the fighter escort’s joke, and was about to offer a comment to the copilot when the plane dropped two hundred feet and began to vibrate as if shaken in a giant paint mixer. Alarmed and thinking the worst, Thorley grabbed onto a stanchion and grit his teeth. And then, as quickly as it all began, the shaking ceased and the plane flew on, steady as a watchmaker’s hand. Thorley uncoiled himself from the stanchion and sank back against the bulkhead. The pilots grinned at each other.
“Your first time up, Major?” the copilot asked, a devilish gleam in his eye.
Thorley ignored the man.
“Don’t worry, sir,” the pilot offered, “we’ve never lost one to turbulence yet. It’s only Göring’s goons you have to worry about.”
Thorley stared back at the man, his gaze level and calm. “How long is the flight, Flight Lieutenant?”
“About six hours, sir.”
“Good, then keep it buttoned until then.”
The pilot’s eyebrows shot up. He gave the copilot a nervous shrug, then returned his attention to the plane.
Nothing happened until they passed near the French coast. Out of nowhere, two Messerschmitt Bf 110s dove from the clouds, their 20mm cannons and 7.92mm machine guns blazing. One moment it was quiet, the next it was pandemonium with tracer bullet accompaniment.
The pilot wrenched the yoke and the Wellington dove to the left. The radio blared: “Red Leader, Red Leader, Messerschmitt on your tail! Bank right!”
Immediately, the Wellington rolled over to the right. Thorley heard the chatter of the Wellington’s nose guns and saw the red streaks of tracers arcing out into the night.
The radio blared again: “Red Leader, Dive, dive, dive!”
But before the pilot could react, a fusillade of bullets ripped through the side of the plane, tearing up the instrument panel and nailing the copilot in the head. It exploded like a ripe melon, spattering blood against Thorley’s face. As horrified as he was, what really scared him was that the nose guns had fallen silent.
Next to him, Hildy threw off his headset and grabbed Thorley by the arm. “Do you know how to operate a three-o-three?”
“N—no.”
Hildy pulled him to his feet. “No time like the present. Come on.”
Thorley tried to stay on his feet while the Wellington maneuvered to avoid the Messerschmitt’s relentless cannon fire, which thwacked against the fuselage with sickening regularity. Passing the bomb bay, they came upon two flexible .303 calibre belt-fed machine guns on swivels mounted to the deck, each aiming out one side of the plane. Farther aft, Thorley heard the rear-gunner’s .303 clattering in staccato bursts, punctuated by Gibby’s gleeful cursing.
“You hear that?” Hildy shouted, pointing to the tail. “Fire it only when you’ve got them in your sights. You’ve only got five thousand rounds, and these babies will chew them up faster than you can imagine.”
A Spitfire streaked by the open port chasing one of the Messerschmitts, dark blurs against a darker sky. The Wellington rolled, forcing Thorley and Hildy to brace themselves until it leveled out. “How the hell can I see them, much less get them in my bleeding sights?”
“Watch the tracers. Then aim a little farther back from the source of the fire. That’s your target.”
Hildy pushed him toward the .303 on the starboard side and Thorley grabbed the handles and pushed the trigger.
Nothing.
The bolt, you idiot, pull the bloody bolt back.
Hildy’s gun began firing behind him, the horrendous chattering adding to the already deafening clamor. Thorley searched frantically for the bolt, his fingers fumbling over unfamiliar territory. He found it to the side, grabbed it and yanked it back, feeling it slide smoothly along its oiled track. Focusing on the sky outside the plane, he squinted, trying to distinguish one of the Messerschmitts from out of the gloom. A dark shape whooshed by, making him jump, which was just as well as the bullets that slammed through the skin of the Wellington missed him by fractions.
“Shoot the bloody bastards, damn you!” Hildy screamed.
And that was all it took. He grabbed for the handles, his untrained fingers accidentally pressing the trigger. The gun spat out five bullets in the blink of an eye, and he watched them fly away from the Wellington, the phosphorus in their tails burning bright red arcs into the sky. Suddenly, tracers of a different color, a blazing yellow streamed back toward him, as if out of nowhere. A Messerschmitt.
Resisting the urge to duck his head, he placed the source of the tracers right in the crosshairs of the sight and fired. Empty shell casings clattered about his feet as the .303 spat tracers at the German plane. Thorley tried to follow it as it flew by but the swivel had a very short arc.
A split second later, the Messerschmitt streaked back around for another pass. This time, Thorley remembered what Hildy said and aimed the .303 slightly aft of the source of the fire, then pressed the trigger. The gun rattled and he saw some of his tracers hit home, sending up a shower of debris from the German plane.
And then the Messerschmitt exploded in a ball of orange flame that lit up the inside of the Wellington. He watched the fiery wreckage spiral down in lazy circles until it was lost from sight.
“Bloody good show!” Hildy screamed over his shoulder, still firing.
But Thorley saw very little good in it. In spite of the fact that the pilot of the Messerschmitt had been shooting at him—had tried to kill him—he was just doing his duty, like Thorley. No, there was no good in that; just a dirty job that left one feeling turned inside out. And that was nothing to celebrate. Except for the fact that he was still alive.
Returning his attention to the night sky, Thorley saw the remaining Messerschmitt make one last pass, its tracers missing the Wellington by a wide margin. Then, as if sensing that its moment had passed, it turned tail and headed back toward the French coast, its nose bloodied.
Drained, Thorley let go of the .303 and collapsed against the bulkhead, his head throbbing and his ears ringing.
“You all right, mate—sir?” Hildy asked.
“I suppose, but I never thought it could be....”
His voice trailed off when he saw the blood on Hildy’s arm.
“Christ, you’re hit!” he said, scrambling to his feet.
“It’s nothing, passed right though. Just a nick, really.”
“To hell with that. Let me look.”
“It’ll wait. We’ve got to check on Gibby.”
Thorley nodded and the two of them headed to the tail. Hildy crouched down and banged on the door leading into the tiny cramped quarters of the rear gunner.
“You all right, Gibby?” Hildy said.
The door swung open and young man’s cherubic face smiled out at them. “We damn well gave it to Jerry! Was that bloody wizard, or what?”
Hildy smiled, but his eyes held a weary expression. “Wizard, all right. Need anything?”
“A pint and a bit of slap and tickle will put me as right as rain. Everybody all right?”
“Farley bought it,” Hildy said, his face clouding.
“Oh, Christ.” Gibby shifted his gaze to Thorley. “This mission had better be bloody damned important. Farley was a good man.”
“It’s more important than you can imagine,” Thorley replied, knowing that it offered nothing in the way of solace.
“Ease up, Gibby,” Hildy said. “Farley knew what it was all about. So do you.”
Gibby nodded, his anger dissipating. “Sorry, Major.”
“It’s okay,” he said, feeling awkward.
He wanted to say something else, anything to make it all right. But, of course, there was nothing he could say that would change a blessed thing. Farley would still be dead.
Hildy tugged on his sleeve. “Come on. I’ve got to get back and plot us a new course.”
Hildy pulled out his sextant, aimed it at Polaris, and made a few calculations on his flight computer, a small round plastic device similar to a slide rule. After double-checking his figures and taking into account the depletion of fuel during the dogfight, he gave the Flight Lieutenant their new heading. Amazingly, after all their evasive maneuvers, they were only off their original course by five degrees.
Then came the grim work. Both the nose gunner, a man whose name Thorley never knew, and Farley had been killed. Flight Lieutenant Mullins had them wrap the bodies in tarpaulins and place them next to the bomb bay. It took considerable effort for Thorley not to throw up, especially when he caught a glimpse of the ruin that had been Farley’s head.
With the bodies stowed and the spent shell casings swept up, Thorley curled up on his parachute and tried to nap. But sleep refused to come. Adrenaline from the dogfight still pumped through his body, making his heart pound, his hands tremble, and his mind reel. He couldn’t rid his thoughts of Gibby’s accusations, especially the unspoken ones that blazed from a young flier’s eyes grown old before their time.
For the remainder of the flight Thorley sat in silence staring at the wrapped bundles that had once been living men, praying that he would never have to join them.