Chapter Twenty-Three

As they drove across the city for petrol to refill Hildegard’s tank, Alec said to Roby, “Let me tell you a joke.”

“Please do.”

The lorry in which they rode was a Marienfelde model with a cramped cab barely big enough for the two of them; their elbows almost touched whenever Roby shifted gears. The vehicle’s bed was long and narrow and holding three empty steel drums and the cables that secured them. Alec was six feet tall, and his head nearly bumped the cab’s ceiling whenever the wheels struck one of Metz’s many holes.

“Here’s the story, and I swear it’s true,” Alec said, bracing himself on the door frame. “The infamous Hun general, Hindenburg, finally catches an Allied slug and dies.”

“I like this story already,” Roby said.

“I thought you might. Hindenburg unfortunately doesn’t go to Hell where he belongs but instead arrives at Heaven and knocks on the gate. However, St. Peter tells him, ‘A great military man such as yourself ought to come with a horse.’ So Hindenburg goes back to Berlin and reports details of this experience to the Kaiser, who grows angry at how his best man has been treated in the afterlife. ‘Saint or no saint,’ Kaiser Wilhelm says, ‘that Peter should know better than to impose such conditions on a man as mighty as you. Come, I shall speak to him myself.’ The two of them fly up to Heaven, but when Peter sees them, he waves his hands madly and shouts, ‘Hindenburg, you fool, I told you to come with a horse, not with an ass!’”

Roby wasn’t the laughing type, but he managed a coarse chuckle and a satisfied nod.

“That’s the best I have today,” Alec said. “Too nervous for anything better.”

“Nervous about flying tonight?”

“God, no. Flying is the only thing that makes sense. I get up there above everything and watch the toy soldiers plinking at one another…I’d rather be aloft than anywhere else.”

“You’re not sure about instructing Ellenor in the range-finder?”

“She’ll be fine. She’s a quick study.”

“So what is it, then?”

Alec found it difficult to say aloud. Fate had given him the chance to play the hero, the valiant protagonist in the cockpit of a warbird that would save the lives of French flyers and bring about the ruin of a Hun factory. For what more could a man ever ask?

“You don’t have to say anything,” Roby told him, guiding the lumbering vehicle around a corner. “A man’s business is his own, more so now than ever.”

“No, privacy has nothing to do with it. The fact of the matter is that, for the first time in my life, I’m unable to predict what will happen tomorrow.”

“No one can see the future but old Romanian crones with cards.”

“That’s not what I mean. One always has a general idea of what the next day holds. Of course we’re surprised by life all the time, but we basically know the workplace we’ll visit or the school we’ll attend or the home waiting for us when we’re done.” He stared from the window at the limestone homes tucked up tightly against one another, obvious cracks threatening their foundations. “But when Ellenor and I drop that last bomb and fly away before the German response arrives, I haven’t a notion if we’ll end up in Switzerland or Italy or Spain.”

“You could stay.”

“If I land Hildegard and sneak back into the city, the Germans will eventually find her. That can’t happen.”

“It’s not your plane.”

“She is now.” Alec knew that even if he avoided jail, the RFC would never let him fly again. His life had boiled down to a small handful of goals, one of which was to keep flying.

“You don’t have much time to choose a destination.”

“Which way is the wind blowing?”

“From the northwest.”

“So it will blow us to the Alps, then. Sadly, we won’t have the petrol to make it that far.”

No sooner had he mentioned fuel than they arrived at a field of rusty tanks, surrounded by a fence topped with razor wire. Though the depot was a civilian facility, it remained under heavy guard. Men bearing mismatched weapons stalked the perimeter. Yellow metal signs posted at every corner read FORBIDDEN in three languages.

Roby conducted business. The transaction was quick and discreet. A moment later, the lorry was rolling through the gate toward the storage tanks, Alec jostling in his seat. That was another fine thing about being in the air: no bloody potholes.

They filled their barrels with few words between them. Alec felt an increasing sense of urgency. He deflected serious topics as part of his nature, but now he couldn’t find room for levity. From this point forward, with smelly petrol gurgling into the steel drums as he waited impatiently, he would need to maintain the kind of focus that kept him alive when enemy hornets were swarming him between the clouds. No more jokes about the Kaiser.

He caught a look at himself in a rainbow-colored pool of oily water. His cheeks were smooth but more haggard than he remembered them. What had become of the boy on the rope swing?

“All aboard,” Roby said.

Alec climbed into the Marienfelde, doubting himself for the first time since he donned his uniform. They could not reach the Alps. Could they at least fly far enough to slip beyond the reach of this war and the men who maintained it?

He and Roby rode in silence to the city’s edge and then into the countryside, where the road turned to dirt and rock. Crops were being grown everywhere a farmer could force a plow, in hopes of staving off food shortages come wintertime. Two men with leathery faces repaired a windmill in a field of malnourished cows.

And then they saw it.

The gargantuan anti-aircraft weapon stood on four steel wheels that were three times the diameter of the Marienfelde’s tires. Those wheels were secured to the earth by brackets that had been hammered into the ground. Sandbags encircled racks of shells bigger than Alec’s arm. The gun itself, mounted on what was essentially a flat deck connected to a pair of axles, featured a gunner’s seat and a series of gears to dial in the proper elevation. The barrel was a broad pipe painted Prussian blue and aimed at the sky.

“Jesus,” Alec whispered.

Men crawled over the gun like primates in uniform, inspecting the huge machine while they smoked and laughed. The spotter crew positioned nearby used a stereoscopic lens that looked like a pair of connected periscopes to take occasional glances to the west, where there was nothing to see.

“A real brute, isn’t it?” Roby said.

“I’ve never seen one this close before.”

“There’s more.”

Alec followed Roby’s nod to see two small but vicious thirty-seven-millimeter machine guns fixed to improvised platforms that looked to be fashioned of welded automobile fenders. Each of these flaming onions sported five barrels. A two-man team could rip a plane in half from five thousand feet away.

Roby asked, “One bomb can take these three out?”

“If Ellenor times it correctly when we fly over, yes.”

“And she can do that?”

“To tell you the truth, old boy, we’ve not yet even practiced.”

Roby snorted and made the sign of the cross.

Alec did not share the man’s misgivings. He did not doubt Ellenor. Why his belief in her was so resolute was a question that eluded him. The history they shared was brief, so that could not account for his trust in her. Instead, it was the opposite. The future they would share after tonight somehow retroactively cemented his faith. And that made not a bit of sense, least of all to Alec himself.

Twenty minutes later, they rumbled behind the trees where Hildegard waited.

Her disguise had held up. This far from the road leading to Metz, the strip of land between the trees was rarely visited. A thick line of oaks and flowering shrubs wrapped around the stretch of uninteresting ground where the Rumpler was concealed behind a blind of deadfall and piled leaves.

Alec and Roby got out of the truck and took their time sharing a cigarette while they waited to see if anyone had followed them. Minutes passed. No one appeared from the underbrush. Other than the birds, the world was quiet. Satisfied they were alone, they worked swiftly to fill the aircraft’s primary tank as well as the auxiliary tank that was positioned in the gap behind the pilot’s seat. Alec needed to give the bird a final inspection before they lifted off tonight, but it would have to wait. He still needed to train Ellenor in the function of the range finder and the lever that released the bombs.

He smoked the last of his cigarettes during the return drive to the city, with two hours to go before dusk.

****

At that same moment, not so very far away, a woman in soiled overalls and rolled-up shirtsleeves entered Café Lindsey. Gustov gazed at her with little interest until her eyes settled on him and her face hardened. She was here for him. He removed his boots from the table near the hearth and allowed the front legs of his chair to return to the floor. He’d been reading a state-issued pamphlet about the dangers of spilling secrets to prostitutes; it warned about pillow talk being used against good Germans by those dastardly Frogs. Gustov was pitying the poor writers tasked with producing this drivel when the woman approached him, grimy cap in her hands.

“Are you him?” she asked in lieu of an introduction.

Gustov had spent the last forty-five minutes dealing with angry policemen and signing various forms regarding the shooting. He sighed. “Am I whom?”

“Was told you had money for information.”

“I might or might not. Several enterprising individuals have come forward this afternoon with similar hopes, but not one has produced any worthwhile intelligence. As I must soon depart, I am beginning to think that my efforts have been for naught. Is that the case with you?”

“I saw him.”

“Of course you did.” He set the pamphlet aside. On the cover was a lurid illustration of a woman whispering to a caricature of a French soldier. “Explain yourself, please.”

“I work with scrap metal. Drive around. Collect what I can. Sell it to the government.”

Gustov wasn’t surprised. By necessity, women had taken on all manner of vocations traditionally held by men. Women were digging ditches and hand-pressing rifle cartridges from reclaimed brass. “A noble job that is a boon to us all,” he said. “What else?”

“On my route I saw men buying fuel. They weren’t military.”

“So?”

“They were buying a lot of it, like the army does. I’ve never known civilians to get that much at once. Seen one of them around before, but the other I didn’t recognize.”

“Where did this transaction take place?”

She described a fuel yard used by the railroad and gave him the address.

“There was no woman with them?”

She shook her head.

Gustov pondered it. An anomalous fuel purchase didn’t automatically implicate the Englander. But something about it—or perhaps in the way this rumpled messenger comported herself—told him it was worth investigating. Besides, it wasn’t as if he had any other leads.

“Very well.” He reached into his jacket and retrieved a packet of carefully folded Deutsche Marks. “I hope this is enough to make a difference.” He tossed the money to the table and was on his feet and moving toward the door even before the woman had snatched it up.

With no vehicle at his disposal, he paid a chimney sweep with a motorized cart to ferry him halfway across the city, knowing that he either needed to leave within the hour or telegraph Mier to let him know he’d be late in returning. His investigation had been inefficient, which nettled him. Even worse, he’d earned the ire of the local law-enforcement authorities. They’d made it clear during their interview that a few of them wanted to arrest him for excessive use of force, even if they were ultimately overruled by their commanding officer. Gustov was working this town on borrowed time.

He spoke to the guard at the fuel facility’s gate, but he was met with shrugs and vacant responses. By now he understood the currency of this beleaguered town and paid the sentry twice what he’d given the woman who’d sent him here. And that was the key that unlocked the guard’s loyalties, such as they were. He’d seen the two men and described them both in detail. The blond hair and leather coat matched the description given by Father’s stablemaster, Josef, when he’d told Gustov of the Englander with the bandaged hand.

Gustov felt like exhaling a great sound of relief, but he kept himself in check. His father had taught him, just as he’d been taught himself, to hold his emotions like he held his cards at the table. Nevertheless, excitement replaced frustration, and the fever of the hunt returned.

He’d been asking the same question all day, but now he selected a very different question, one to which he already knew the answer: “These men, did they purchase approximately two hundred and twenty liters?”

The guard frowned. “How do you know that?”

“Because that, my friend, is the amount of fuel required to fill a Rumpler C.IV.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Gustov swatted him cheerfully on the arm, spun around on his boot heel, and summoned his ride. His prey was nearby and apparently planning another flight. Gustov needed to return to the Fokker and get into the sky. Once there, he would simply circle and wait.

The Englander’s next flight would be his last.