Air Bridge

CHAPTER NINE

To have no friends, no sense of security, in a city occupied by one’s own people is not pleasant. There was no one I could turn to. I thought of Diana’s brother — Harry Culyer. Maybe he was still in Berlin. But would he believe me when my own people didn’t? And to contact any of the Allied headquarters and clubs would only be putting me back into the situation from which I had just been at such pains to escape.

I don’t know what made me think of it. Maybe it was the prostitute who murmured in English, ‘Hallo, darling,’ from the shadowy gloom of the sidewalk. The soft.warmth of her voice came like the nuzzling of a friendly bitch. And when I didn’t turn away the dim shadow of her slunk to my side. ‘You are American?’ she asked. The power of the dollar was strong on the Kurfurstendamm.

‘No. English,’ I answered.

I saw her eyes, soft and hungry in the darkness, looking me over and noting my clothes. Probably she thought I was a deserter. Deserters would be bound to make for the Kurfurstendamm. But she asked no questions. All she said was, ‘You come with me, honey? I have a room only two blocks away and it is comfortable.’

I didn’t answer because her German accent had started a train of thought in my mind.

‘Please come.’ Her voice was suddenly desperate. ‘I have been here all evening and I am hungry. You take me to a cafe. I know somewhere is cheap, very cheap.’ Her hand reached out and slid along my arm. ‘Please, honey. I sing for you, too, perhaps. I was in opera once. I only do this when my baby and I are hungry and nobody will pay to hear me sing. My name is Helga. You like me? I give you love and music — you forget everything. Come on, honey.’ She dragged at my arm. ‘Please, honey.’

‘Where is the Fassenenstrasse?’ I asked.

‘It is just near here. You wish to go? I take you if you wish.’ The voice was harder now, desperately urgent. ‘Please. It is cold standing here. Please, honey.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Take me there.’

‘Okay.’

We moved off together up the wide cleft of the Kurfurstendamm, her hand clutching my arm. She was tall and her hip was level with mine, pressing against it. She hummed a little aria, something from Verdi. ‘Where is this place you wish to go, honey?’ she said, stopping at a corner. ‘Here is the Fassenenstrasse. It runs right across the Kurfurstendamm. Which part do you wish?’

‘I want Number 52,’ I said. ‘It’s near the Savoy Hotel.’

‘Ach. So! Das Savoy. It is this way.’

She took me down a tram-lined street and underneath the iron girders of a railway bridge, and then we passed the Hotel Savoy and were at Number 52. She stared at the blank face of the closed door. ‘Why you bring me here?’ she asked. ‘This is not a club. We cannot eat here. Why you bring me, eh?’

‘I have a friend here,’ I said and tugged at the old-fashioned bell-pull. Then I pulled out my Deutschmark and gave her twenty. She stared at them. ‘Go and get something to eat,’ I said. ‘And thank you for showing me the way.’

Her eyes looked up into my face unbelievingly. ‘You do not want me?’ She evidently saw that I didn’t for she made no protest. Instead she reached up and kissed me. ‘Danke schon.’ She turned away quickly and as the sound of her high heels faded away into the darkness I wondered whether perhaps she really was an opera singer with a baby and no job.

There was the rattle of a chain from the other side of the heavy door and then it opened, just a crack, and a woman’s voice, old and hoarse and rather frightened, asked me what I wanted.

‘I am a friend of Fraulein Langen,’ I answered in German. ‘I wish to see her please.’

‘I do not know any Fraulein Langen.’

The door was closing and I put my foot against it.

‘Fraulein Meyer, then.’ And I added quickly, ‘I have come all the way from England to see her.’

‘Aus England?’ There was a moment’s pause. ‘You are English?’ The old woman spoke the words slowly as though she had learned the language at school.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am an English flier. Neil Fraser, tell her.’

The door opened to the full extent of the securing chain. Beady eyes stared at me through the crack. ‘You do not look to be very English,’ she said suspiciously. ‘Where in England do you meet Fraulein Meyer?’

‘At Membury,’ I answered. ‘I have had an accident. That’s why I’m dressed like this.’

‘Membury! So! It is very late, but come in. Kommen Sie herein.’ The door opened. She closed it hastily behind me and in the darkness I heard the rattle of bolts and chain. ‘We must be very careful. The Russians, you know. It is terrible. They come and take people away.’ An electric torch gleamed faintly. ‘Poor Fraulein Meyer. So pretty, so clever! And all this trouble over her.papers.’ I followed the old woman’s shapeless figure up the stairs. The sound of our footsteps on the bare boards was very loud in the stillness of the house. ‘I do not like to think what the Russians do to her if the English send her to the East Sector police. The Russians are brutes — Schweinehunde. They rape everyone.’ A door opened as the torch finally gave out. A match spurted and rose in a steady flame as a candle was lit.

‘Was ist los, Anna?’ It was Else. Though I couldn’t see her I recognised her voice.

‘Ein Mann aus England. Herr Fraser. Er sagt er kennt Sie von Membury her.’

‘Herr Fraser?’ Else’s tone was suspicious. The flame of the candle was lifted to my face. Through it I saw that she was peering at me with wide, frightened eyes, her dressing-gown clutched tightly round her. ‘Neil! It is you?’ She began to laugh then. I think it was relief at finding it really was me. ‘You look so funny. Why are you in Berlin? And why do you dress yourself up in the uniform of the Wehrmacht?’

‘It’s a long story,’ I said.

She smiled. ‘Another long story? That is what you say before. Remember?’

‘May I come in? I want to talk to you.’

‘Yes, of course. I have only a bedroom now, but-’ She glanced uncertainly at the old woman. ‘So many peoples in Berlin have no homes,’ she murmured. Then she glanced up at my face again and saw the bandages. ‘You have hurt yourself again also.’

‘I had an accident,’ I said.

‘Come in then,’ she said and pushed open the door of her room. ‘Anna. Have we any of that coffee left?’

‘Ja, but for two cups only,’ the old woman answered.

‘It is so difficult now in Berlin. This blockade — it is worse than-’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Let us have the coffee, Anna. When it is finish, it is finish.’

‘Schon.’ The old woman tapped her torch on the banisters and it flickered into doubtful life. As she hobbled off down the stairs Else led me into her room and shut the door. It was a big room, furnished as part bedroom and part sitting room, with a couch under the window, a dressing-table covered with photographs and a big double bed in the corner. It had the fierce, penetrating cold of a room that has had no heat in it for a long time. ‘Is your head all right?’ she asked. ‘Can I do anything for it?’

‘No, it’s all right,’ I said. ‘They fixed it for me at Gatow.’

‘Gatow! When do you arrive at Gatow?’

‘This morning.’

‘So! It is you I see standing outside the Malcolm Club.’

I stared at her, remembering the girl checker with her face covered in coal dust. ‘Are you working with the German Labour Organisation?’ I asked.

‘Ja.’ She laughed. ‘It is what you peoples call a very small world, eh?’

‘But why?’ I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I must work. Also I wish to be at Gatow to see if Mr Saeton get on to the airlift. It is most important that I find this thing out.’

‘Well, he is. I’ve seen him today.’

She nodded. ‘He make the first flight two days ago. And he has my father’s engines. I know them by the sound. Tell me something, please. How does he manage to fly again so quickly? His own plane is crashed. It was finished. This cannot be the same airplane.’

‘It isn’t,’ I said.

‘But how does he get another? He have no money. You tell me so yourself. Did you get it for him?’

‘Yes,’ I said. She stared at me angrily and I added, ‘Do you know what the word blackmail means?’

She nodded.

‘Well, he blackmailed me into getting him another plane. I stole it off the airlift for him.’

‘You stole it? I do not understand.’

I told her briefly what had happened then and when I had finished she stood there staring down at the flame of the candle. ‘He is mad, that one,’ she breathed. She turned to look at me and the corners of her mouth turned up momentarily in a smile. ‘I think perhaps you are a little mad also.’

‘Perhaps I was,’ I said. ‘You’ve no idea how glad I was to find that Tubby was alive.’

She nodded slowly.

‘The trouble is Saeton won’t do anything to get him out. He can’t think of anything but the engines.’

She swung round on me. ‘He is crazy. He is crazy, I tell you. It is as though — as though when he steal my father’s work he start somethings and now he cannot stop.’

Her words were an echo of my own thoughts. My mind was on Tubby and I was wondering what Saeton would do when he discovered I had made a written report. He would brazen it out, say that I was suffering from delusions as a result of the crash, but all the time he would be thinking of Tubby out there in that farmhouse, the one man who by his mere existence threatened the whole future of what he was striving for. And as I thought about this, Saeton loomed in my mind as a sort of monster — a man who, as Else said, had started something that he could not stop. ‘I must get Tubby out,’ I said.

‘Is that why you come to see me?’

I nodded, dimly aware that she wanted some other explanation of my visit. But I was too tired to pretend. Everything I had done since waking up in Gatow sick bay had been done because of Tubby. I was responsible for what had happened. I had to get him out. ‘You’ve got to help me,’ I said.

‘Why should I?’ Her voice was harder now. ‘His wife work at the Malcolm Club. Let her help him.’

‘But she thinks he’s dead. I told you that.’

‘If his wife think he is dead, why should not I?’

I stepped forward and caught her by the shoulders. ‘You’ve got to help me, Else.’

‘Why?’ She was staring up at me, her eyes wide, almost calculating.

Why? I dropped my hands to my side and turned away. Why should this German girl I had met two or three times help me? ‘I don’t know why,’ I said.

There was a knock at the door and the old woman came in with the coffee on a tray and a small oil lamp. ‘Hier ist Ihr Kaffe, Fraulein Else.’ ‘Do you keep some for yourself, Anna?’ Else asked.

The old woman moved her head from side to side awkwardly. ‘Just a little. Just for one cup.’ Her beady eyes fastened on me. ‘Soil ich aufbleiben um den Herrn hinauszulassen?’ Else spoke quickly to her in German and the old woman laughed. ‘So!’ She stared at me as though I were some strange animal. ‘I do not meet one like that.’ And still laughing to herself she sidled out and closed the door.

‘What was all that about?’ I asked.

Else looked across at me. ‘She is worried for me, that is all. I tell her you are quite safe, but-’ She turned away to hide her smile.

Her smile made me angry. ‘Why didn’t you tell her what happened when you took me to listen to the frogs?’ I demanded.

‘If I tell her that,’ she said over her shoulder as she poured out the coffee, ‘then she will want to see you go. And you must sleep. You look tired. I also am tired. I have to be up at six to catch the lorry to Gatow.’

I brushed my hand across my face. I was tired. ‘Can you really put me up for the night?’

‘Of course. If you do not mind the couch there. It is hard, but it is all right. I have to sleep there myself several times. Now, drink this please while it is hot.’

‘But-’ I stared at her. ‘You mean sleep here — in this room?’

She looked up at me quickly. ‘Have you some place in Berlin you can go then?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I’ve no place I can go now.’

‘Very well then. It is settled. You sleep on the couch and I go back to my bed.’ She went over to the bed and ripped off two of the blankets. ‘There. We share the bedclothes. All right?’ She put them on the couch. ‘I am sorry I am not able to give you a room for yourself. Once we have the whole floor — seven rooms with bathroom, kitchen, everything. But part of the house is destroyed and there are many families homeless. So now, all I have is this one room.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It is all right. But I do not like to share my kitchen with other peoples. Please, you will excuse me, but I am cold.’ She slipped into the bed and reached for her coffee cup. ‘Do you have a cigarette?’

I felt in my pocket. The nurse had given me a packet. ‘Yes, here we are.’ She took one and I lit it for her. Her eyes watched me over the flame and then she blew out a long streamer of smoke. ‘Oh, it is so good to have a cigarette. I do not have one since I leave England.’

‘Don’t you get any at Gatow?’ I asked.

‘No. They do not give us any. I do not think there are very many for your own people.’

‘Is the work hard?’

‘No. Just checking the manifest of the cargo, so that nothing is missing. But it is a long time I am there and it is very cold on the airfield.’

I had sat down on the edge of the bed to drink my coffee. Perhaps it was the closeness — maybe it was just the strangeness of the circumstances, the two of us sharing that one room. At any rate that was the end of our small talk. There seemed nothing really to say and I sat there staring at her and absorbing the warmth of the coffee. Tired though I was I found the blood hammering in my veins. I suddenly found I wanted her. I wanted her more than I’d wanted anything in my life before. For the moment it seemed as though her competence and self-sufficiency were swept aside. She was just a rather pathetic, very attractive girl, sitting up in a double bed — and I wished to God she was sitting there waiting for me. But somehow I could do nothing about it. I didn’t want to do anything to break the mood of that moment. If I had touched her I think she would have responded. But if that had happened then something would have gone that I desperately wanted. Instead of touching her, I said, ‘Else, you’ve got to help me.’

She frowned and pulled her dressing-gown closer round her. ‘To find your friend Carter?’ she asked with a queer lift of the eyebrows that gave her a puzzled look.

I nodded. ‘I’ve got to get him out of the Russian Zone.’

‘It means so much to you?’ The softness disappeared from her face. ‘What happens if we do not get your friend out?’

‘He may die,’ I said.

‘And if he die, what happens then?’

‘There’ll be no evidence to support my report of what happened.’

‘And Saeton will go on flying my father’s engines?’

‘Yes. He’ll get away with the whole thing.’

She nodded as though that were the answer she had expected. ‘All right. I will do what I can.’

I started to thank her, but she cut me short. ‘I do not do this thing for you, Neil. I do it because I wish to destroy Saeton.’ Her hands were fastened tightly on the bedclothes, the cigarette burning unheeded in the saucer as she stared past me to the lamp. ‘He has taken everything that is left of my father — the work we do together. I hate him. I hate him, I tell you.’ She spat the words out through clenched teeth in the intensity of her feeling. ‘He has no soul. He is a monster. That night you come to Membury, I offer him — I offer him myself. I know he want me. I do not love him. But I think I will barter my body for the recognition I want of my father’s work. Do you know what he do? He laugh in my face.’ She relaxed slowly and picked up her cigarette. ‘Then you come into the hangar. After that I telephone to Reinbaum to go ahead and smash his company.’ She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘But you save it for him. Then he crash and I think that is the end of him. But you save him again.’ She gave me a wry little smile. ‘And now you wish me to help you. That is very funny.’ She sat for a moment, quite still. Then with a quick movement of her fingers she stubbed out the cigarette. ‘Okay, Neil. I do what I can. Now we must get some sleep. If I find somebody to take us into the Russian Zone it will be at night because it will be for the black market — perhaps tomorrow night.’

‘You think you can find somebody?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘Ja. I think so. I have many friends among the drivers at Gatow. I will find someone who goes near Hollmind. There are many trucks going from the Western sectors into the Russian Zone. The Russians do not mind because they get things they want that way. I shall find someone.’

‘I can’t thank you enough,’ I began, but she stopped me. ‘You do not have to thank me. I do not do this for you. Goodnight.’

She snuggled down into the bedclothes. I had got to my feet and for a moment I stood there, hesitating, staring down at her. It seemed to me there were two Elses — the girl who excited me and was sweet and gentle, and the German who was revengeful and who would stop at nothing to do what she thought was right for her country and her father. ‘Goodnight.’ I turned heavily away and blew the lamp out.

In the heavy curtained darkness of the room I undressed to my underclothes and curled myself up on the couch under the blankets. It was bitterly cold in that room. It ate right into my bones. But then I thought of Tubby alone out there in that German farmhouse, desperately hurt, and the cold didn’t seem so bad. I prayed that Else would find some means of getting me there so that I could bring him back, so that I could prove that what I had said was true.

Neither the cold nor the constant racket of the airlift overhead kept me awake for long. I slept and in a moment it seemed the lamp was lit again and the old woman was in the room, talking to Else. I turned over and opened my eyes. Else was already up, brushing her hair. The old woman was standing by the door, a spluttering candle in her hand. ‘I hope you are not too cold, Herr Fraser?’ she said in German. It may have been my fancy but I thought her gnarled features had an expression of contempt as she said something very rapidly to Else.

‘What did she say?’ I asked as the bundle of old clothes disappeared through the door.

Else was giggling to herself. ‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘She made some crack,’ I said.

‘You really wish to know?’ She was smiling. ‘She say you are not much like our boys, that if you are typical English then she do not understand how you win the war. Did you sleep well?’

‘I slept all right,’ I said curtly, wondering why the hell I hadn’t shared Else’s bed since that was apparently what had been expected of me.

‘You were not cold?’

‘It didn’t stop me sleeping.’

‘Now you are sulking. You do not want to pay any attention to Anna. She is old-fashioned, that is all. Now, please will you turn the other way. I have to wash.’

I turned over and faced the heavy curtains that covered the window. ‘What time is it?’ I asked.

‘A quarter past five.’

‘Good God!’ I lay there feeling the cold numbing my body, thinking how tough Else must be. The room was icy and I could hear her splashing about with the water. ‘Is that hot water?’ I asked, thinking I would feel a lot better if I could have a shave.

‘Of course not. We cannot heat water. Our fuel is for cooking only. If you stay here long you will get used to it.’

‘Stay here long?’ The problem of the future suddenly faced me. I was a fugitive in Berlin. I could not go back to my own people, not until Tubby was out of the Russian Zone. ‘You must find some transport going to Hollmind tonight,’ I said urgently. ‘If I don’t get him out soon he may-’ Without thinking I had turned towards her and then the future and Tubby were driven out of my mind by the sight of Else leaning over the basin washing herself. She was naked to the waist, and her firm breasts looked big and warm in the soft lamplight.

She turned her head, conscious of my stillness, and for a moment her hands were still, holding the flannel, as she met my gaze. Water ran from her neck down her breasts and poured from her nipples into the basin. ‘I thought I told you to turn the other way?’ She laughed. It was an unselfconscious laugh. ‘Do not stare at me as though you were hungry. Have you never seen a girl washing herself before?’ She dipped the flannel into the water and began washing the soap from her face. It might have been the most natural thing in the world for her to have a man in her room watching her as she washed.

‘Has this happened before?’ I asked thickly.

‘What?’ Her words were half-obscured by the flannel.

‘I didn’t mean that,’ I said quickly and turned to face the curtains again, the sight of her still a vivid picture on the retina of my brain.

She came and stood over me. I didn’t hear her come across the room, for her feet were bare. I just sensed her standing there, looking down at me. Her fingers touched my hair.

‘Sometimes I think you are very young, Neil. You do not know much about life. Or perhaps it is because we live among the ruins and when you do that you have not many conventions left. Life is very primitive in Berlin — like when we are in a yacht or up in the mountains.’ She turned away with a little sigh. ‘You would have liked it here in Germany before the war.’

She was dressed by the time the old woman brought breakfast up. ‘It is not much,’ Else said, as she handed me a plate of dark bread with a small piece of butter. ‘But you will become accustomed to that if you stay here long.’

I hardly recognised her as the same person. She wore no make-up and she was padded out underneath a dirty raincoat so that she had no shape. Only her hair looked the same, golden silk fa the soft glow of the lamp.

At ten to six she pulled on an old brown beret. ‘Now I must go to catch the truck in the Kurfurstendamm. I think it is best if you do not go out. You have no papers and your shoes do not go with your Wehrmacht coat. Our police are very suspicious.’ I held the door open for her, huddled against the cold in my borrowed greatcoat. ‘Do not worry. I will find some way to get your friend out.’

I touched her hand. It was very cold. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very kind and understanding.’

‘I am not being kind,’ she said almost sharply. ‘I am doing this for myself. I would like to say differently, but-’ She stared at me, her eyes very wide and troubled-looking. ‘But it is the truth.’ Her hand tightened on mine. ‘One thing I wish you to know, however, I am glad it is something you want also. I am glad we both want this.’ She said it quite fiercely as though she were angry with herself for what had gone before. Then she reached up and kissed me, pressing her lips to mine as though this alliance were something she had wanted badly. ‘Do not worry. I fix something.’

‘For tonight?’ I asked.

‘I hope so.’

She smiled and slipped out through the door. ‘Do not go out — please.’ Her footsteps sounded, quick and light on the stairs, disappearing into the dark vault of the house. I heard the front door open and close. Then there was silence and I shut the door and went back into the lamplit room that was so full of the girl who had just left me.

For some time I wandered round it, conscious of the alien heaviness of the furniture, of the photographs and particularly of her things that lay strewn about — clothes, books, sewing, an empty silver cigarette box, hair brushes, washing things, old papers, the tumbled bedclothes, her nightdress and the slippers she’d worn, all the litter of things that were Else when she herself was not there.

It was the photographs that I returned to. They were mostly of a big man with a short pointed beard and a high, domed forehead curving back to a mane of white hair. It was her father and the quiet, serious features with the slight droop at the corners of the mouth, the rather blunt nose and the lines of thought that furrowed the broad forehead reminded me of Else when she was puzzled by something. There was the suggestion of a twinkle in the lines at the corners of the eyes. But the face had none of Else’s fierceness and passion. That she had got from her mother. Professor Meyer was a deeper, more thoughtful person than his daughter. This was particularly noticeable in the photographs of the two of them together. These were holiday snaps taken whilst climbing or on skis. But though the photographs showed her faults more clearly, I was glad of the opportunity to study her father. It explained so much of her that had puzzled me and I could understand more clearly her passionate loyalty to the work that she and this old man who was now dead had done together.

Very conscious of Else’s presence in that room I returned to the couch and for a long time lay huddled under the blankets thinking about her and the peculiar relationship that was developing between the two of us. I tried to analyse my feelings, but I couldn’t and in the end I went to sleep.

I didn’t get up until past midday. The sky was overcast, the battered buildings opposite black in the bitter cold. Overhead the airlift planes droned steadily, but I could not see them. The old woman brought me some food — bread and some soup that was chiefly potatoes. She didn’t attempt to talk to me. There was a barrier between us that was something more than a question of race. I found the answer in an old photograph album tucked away in a bookshelf, a picture of a little girl and an attractive, middle-aged nurse; underneath was written in an awkward, childish hand — Ich und Anna. By five o’clock the light was fading and I could no longer decipher the unaccustomed German print of the book I was reading. I began to pace the room, wondering whether Else would have found transport to take me into the Russian Zone. My mood was a queer mixture of impatience and fear. It was bitterly cold.

Just after six I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. I checked in my pacing and listened. This wasn’t the clumsy sound of wooden clogs on bare boards. It was a man’s tread and he wore shoes. He didn’t belong to the building.

The footsteps stopped on the landing outside and the old woman’s clogs shuffled to the bedroom door. ‘I do not know why she is not back already,’ she said in German. ‘But you can wait for her in her room.’

‘Will she be long?’ the man asked. His German was too lazy, too soft. In a panic I looked round for some place to conceal myself. But I was still standing in the middle of the room when the door opened.

‘She always return at five. I do not know what has happened.’ There was a knock at the door and the old woman opened it without waiting for permission. ‘The gentleman here speaks your language. Perhaps you can talk to him while you are waiting for Fraulein Meyer.’

I had backed away towards the window. The old woman stood aside and Else’s visitor came in. I saw his brown boots and the olive khaki of his trousers — an American. And then I looked at his face. ‘Good God!’ I exclaimed. It was Harry Culyer — Diana’s brother. ‘How did you know where I was?’

He stopped, staring at me. ‘What makes you think I did, Fraser?’

‘Didn’t Diana send you?’ I asked.

‘Diana? No, of course not.’

‘Why are you here then?’

‘I might ask you the same question.’ His gaze travelled quickly over the room, missing nothing and finally coming to rest on the Wehrmacht greatcoat I was wearing. ‘So this is where you’re hiding up. They told me at Gatow you’d disappeared from the sick bay.’

‘You’ve been to the airport — today?’

He nodded. ‘I’ve just come from there.’

‘Did you see Diana?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘She knows the truth now, doesn’t she?’ There was a puzzled frown on his face and I added quickly, ‘She knows Tubby is alive now. She knows that, doesn’t she?’ My hands were sweating and I was almost trembling as I put the question.

‘Alive? You know as well as I do he’s dead.’ He was leaning slightly forward, and his grey eyes were no longer friendly. ‘So it’s true what they told me about you.’

‘What did they tell you?’

‘Oh, just that you were a sick man. That’s all.’ He had thrown his hat on to the couch and he lowered his long body down beside it. ‘When will the Meyer girl be back? I guess I must just have missed her at the airport.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Did you see Pierce or the 1.0.?’

‘Yes, I saw them both.’ He eyed me watchfully as though I was a strange dog that he was not quite sure of.

‘I sent Pierce a report — a written report. Did he mention it?’

‘No, he said nothing about a report.’

‘Did he mention me at all?’

He lifted his eyes to my face. ‘Suppose you stop asking questions, Fraser?’ His tone was abrupt, almost angry.

‘But I must know,’ I said. ‘I must know what he said about me.’

‘All right — if you want to know — he said you were — ill.’ He was watching me closely as he said this, like a doctor examining a patient for reaction.

I slumped down on to the farther end of the couch. ‘So he doesn’t believe it even when he sees it in writing.’ I felt suddenly very weary. It would be so much easier just to say no more, give myself up and go back to England to stand trial. ‘I must get Tubby out,’ I murmured. ‘I must get him out.’ I was speaking to bolster my determination, but of course he stared at me as though I was mad. ‘You’re waiting to see Else, are you?’ I asked, and when he gave an abrupt nod, I added, ‘Well, since you’ve nothing to do whilst you wait you may as well hear what happened that night in the corridor. I’d like to know whether you believe me.’

‘Why don’t you rest?’ he suggested impatiently. ‘You look just about all in.’

‘Can I have a cigarette? I’ve finished all mine.’

He tossed me a packet. ‘You can keep those.’

‘Thanks.’ I lit one. ‘Just because you’ve been told I’m ill, it doesn’t mean I can’t remember what happened. The chief thing for you to know is this: Tubby is alive. And but for that bastard Saeton he’d be here in Berlin now. It’s a pity your sister can’t recognise the truth when she hears it.’

I had his interest then and I went straight on to tell him the whole thing.

I was just finishing when footsteps sounded on the stairs outside — Else’s footsteps. She looked damnably tired as she pushed open the door. ‘I’ve done it, Neil. We-’ She stopped as she saw Culyer. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Culyer. Have you been waiting long?’

‘It hasn’t been long,’ Culyer answered, rising to his feet. ‘I’ve been talking to Fraser here — or rather, he’s been talking to me.’

Else glanced quickly from one to the other of us. ‘You know each other?’

‘We met the other day — out at Gatow,’ Culyer answered. ‘I tried to catch you at the airport, Miss Meyer, but I guess you’d just gone.’ He glanced awkwardly at me. ‘Can we go somewhere and talk?’ he asked hen Else spread her hands in a quick gesture of despair. ‘I am afraid this is the only room I have. You will not mind, Neil, if we talk about our own business for a moment, will you?’

She turned to Culyer. ‘Have the British agreed? Shall I be permitted to go to Frankfurt?’

Culyer glanced hesitantly at me. Then he said, ‘Yes, everything’s fixed, Miss Meyer. As soon as your papers come through we’ll fly you down to Frankfurt and then you can join Professor Hinkmann of the Rauch Motoren and get to work right away. Of course,’ he added, ‘you must realise Saeton is a jump or two ahead of us. His engines are flying right now.’

‘Of course,’ Else said. ‘What about patents?’

‘That is still undecided,’ Culyer answered. ‘We’re pressing hard for refusal of patent on the grounds that it’s largely your father’s work. Mind you, Saeton’s developed them to the flying stage, but I think our case may be strong enough for the whole thing to be left to sort itself out in open competition. Anyway, what I wanted to tell you was that the British have agreed for you to come to Frankfurt. I thought you’d want to know that right away.’

‘Thank you — yes.’ She hesitated and then asked, ‘No questions about the papers I had in England?’

‘No questions. They’ll forget about that.’

Else turned and pulled off her beret. She stood for a moment staring at the large photograph of her father that stood above the huge oak tallboy. ‘He would have been glad about this.’ She suddenly swung round to Culyer again. ‘It was Saeton who informed the British security officials about my papers, wasn’t it?’

Culyer shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t think we need concern ourselves with that, Miss Meyer.’

‘No, perhaps it is not important.’ She turned to me. ‘Saeton has requested the permission of the station commander to fly a plane to Hollmind.’

‘To Hollmind?’ I stared at her, hardly able to believe my ears. ‘When?’

Tonight.’

‘Are you certain?’ I asked urgently. ‘How do you know?’

She smiled. ‘I have friends at Gatow — a young officer of the R.A.S.C. tell me. Saeton is flying there tonight, just to make certain.’

For a second I was filled with relief. Saeton had realised he had been inhuman. He was going to get Tubby out. And then Else’s choice of words thrust themselves into my mind. Just to make certain. In an instant the monster I had built of Saeton was there again in my mind. ‘Just to make certain,’ I heard myself say aloud. ‘My God! It can’t be that. It can’t be.’

‘What’s that you say?’ Culyer asked uneasily.

But I was looking at Else, wondering whether she knew what was in my mind. ‘It must be tonight,’ I said.

‘What must be tonight?’ Culyer asked.

‘Nothing,’ Else said quickly. ‘Please, Mr Culyer. I am very tired and I have some things to do.’

He looked uncertainly from one to the other of us and then picked up his hat. ‘Okay, Miss Meyer. I’ll be getting along then. As soon as the formalities are through I’ll contact you.’

‘Thank you.’ She held the door open for him.

He hesitated on the threshold and his gaze swung back to me. He was obviously puzzled.

Else touched his arm. ‘You will not say anything — about Mr Eraser. Please.’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I guess it’s none of my business anyway.’

But it was his business. He was Diana’s brother. ‘Will you be seeing your sister again?’ I asked him.

He nodded. ‘I’m going out to Gatow right now.’

‘Will you give her a message? Will you tell her Tubby will be all right — that it’s true what I said in that report, every word of it?’

He glanced across at Else. ‘Do you know about this?’

Else nodded.

‘And do you believe him? Do you believe Carter is still alive, the way he says he is?’

‘Of course,’ Else said.

Culyer shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t know what to think. But I’ll give her your message, Fraser. Maybe if Saeton’s flying out there-’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Goodnight, Miss Meyer. I hope we’ll have this thing all tied up very shortly now. This project has great possibilities and my headquarters …’

He was still talking as Else lighted him to the stairs, but I wasn’t listening. I was thinking of Tubby out there in that farmhouse. Saeton was flying to Hollmind. That was the thing that was still in my mind. I turned to the window. I had to get out there right away. I had to get there somehow. The door of the room closed and I swung round. Else was standing there, staring at me. ‘Are you all right, Neil?’ she asked.

‘Yes, of course I’m all right,’ I answered irritably. ‘When you came in tonight — you started to say something?’

‘Oh, yes. I have found a truck that is going into the Russian Zone. It is all fixed.’

‘When for?’ I asked. ‘It must be tonight. I must get there tonight.’

She nodded. ‘Yes. It is tonight.’

‘Thank God!’ I crossed the room and caught hold of her arms. ‘How did you manage it?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I find out about it from one of the drivers at Gatow. We have to be at the corner of Fassenenstrasse and the Kantstrasse at ten-thirty.’

‘Not before?’ I thought of the short time it would take to fly. ‘What time is Saeton leaving, do you know?’

She shook her head. ‘That is something I cannot find out. But he will not dare to go till it is very late if he have to leave the plane on Hollmind airfield.’

That was true. ‘How long will it take in this truck of yours?’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘We do not go the direct way. There are things to be delivered, you understand. Two or three hours perhaps.’

Two or three hours! I turned away. ‘Couldn’t the driver be persuaded to go there first?’

‘I do not think so,’ she replied. ‘But I will talk to him. Perhaps if you have money-’

‘You know I’ve no money,’ I cut in. ‘A few marks-’

‘Then we will see.’

I stopped in my pacing and turned to her. ‘We?’ I asked. ‘You don’t mean you’re coming into the Russian Zone?’

‘But of course.’

I started to dissuade her. But she was quite determined. ‘If I do not come the driver of the truck will not take you. It is a big risk for him. If we are stopped by the Red Army then there has to be some story that they can understand. It is better if you have a German girl with you.’ She turned to the bed. ‘Now please, I must rest. You also. I do not think you are too well.’

Not too well! That phrase kept recurring to me as I lay sleepless on the couch.

Else was asleep the instant she had climbed into her bed. But I had been resting all day. There was no sleep left in me and all the time I lay there, feeling the cold even through my clothes and listening to the sound of the airlift planes overhead, I kept on turning her words over in my mind. Was she herself uncertain of my story? Was that why she was coming — to see whether it was the truth or only the hallucinations of a sick man? I remembered how Culyer had reacted.

I must have fallen asleep in the end, for I woke in a sweat of fear that Tubby was dead and that the authorities at Gatow had been right in believing the Russian report.

And then I saw that Else was dressing and everything seemed suddenly normal and reasonable. We were going out of Berlin in a black market truck and in a few hours we should be coming back with Tubby. I was glad then that she was coming. If Tubby were dead, or if he didn’t survive the journey back, then she would be witness to the fact that he had been at the farmhouse at Hollmind, that he had been alive.

We had some food and by ten-thirty we were at the corner of the Fassenenstrasse and the Kantstrasse. The truck was late and it was very cold. By eleven o’clock I was becoming desperate, convinced that something had gone wrong with her arrangements and that it would not come. Else, however, seemed quite resigned to waiting. ‘It will come,’ she kept saying. ‘You see. It will come.’

Three-quarters of an hour late it ground to a stop beside us, one of those ugly, long-nosed German vehicles driven by a youth who was introduced to me as Kurt and whose jaw bore the purple markings of a bad burn. An older man was with him in the cab. We bundled into the back, climbing over packing cases piled to the roof to a cramped and awkward space that had been left for us. The gear cogs fought for a hold on each other, oil fumes seeped up from the floor, the packing cases jolted around us as we crawled out of Berlin.

We were nearly three hours in the back of that truck. We were cold and we both suffered from waves of nausea owing to the fumes. Periodically the truck stopped, packing cases were off-loaded and their place was taken by carcases of meat or sacks of flour. I cursed these delays, and at each stop it seemed more and more urgent that I should reach the farmhouse before Saeton.

At last all the packing cases had been off-loaded. We made one more stop, for poultry — there must have been hundreds of dead birds — and then at last through a rent in the canvas cover I saw that we had turned south. Shortly afterwards the truck stopped and I was told to get out and sit with the driver to direct him. We were then on the outskirts of Hollmind.

It was difficult to get my bearings after being cooped up in the body of the truck so long. However, I knew I had to get to the north of Hollmind and after taking several wrong turnings I at last found myself on a stretch of road that I remembered. By then the driver was getting impatient and he drove down it so fast that I nearly missed the track up to the farm and we had to back. The track was narrow and rutted and when he saw it the driver refused to take the truck up it. Else got down and did her best to persuade him, but he resolutely shook his head. ‘If I go there,’ he told her, ‘I may get stuck. Also I do not know these people at the farm. The Red Army may be billeted there. Anything is possible. No. I wait for you here on the road. But hurry. I do not like to remain parked at the side of the road too long — it is very conspicuous.’

So Else and I went up the track alone, the ice crackling under our feet, the mud of the ruts black and hard like iron. ‘How far?’ she asked.

‘About half a mile,’ I said. My teeth were chattering and there was an icy feeling down my spine.

The lane branched and I hesitated, trying to remember which track I had come down that night that seemed so long ago.

‘You have been here before, haven’t you, Neil?’ Else asked and there was a note of uncertainty in her voice.

‘Of course,’ I said and started up the left-hand fork. But it only led to a barn and we had to turn back and take the other fork. ‘We must hurry,’ Else whispered urgently. ‘Kurt is a nervous boy. I do not wish for him to drive away and leave us.’

‘Nor do I,’ I said, thinking of the nightmare journey I had had into Berlin.

We were right this time and soon the shape of the farm buildings was looming up ahead of us against the stars. ‘It’s all right,’ I said as the silhouette of the outbuildings resolved itself into familiar lines. ‘This is the place.’

‘So! The farm does exist. Your friend is alive.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I told you-’

‘I am sorry, Neil.’ Her hand touched my arm.

‘You mean you weren’t sure?’

‘You were hurt and you look so ill. I do not know what to think. All I know is that it is urgent for you to come and that I must come with you.’

I could see the faint shape of her head. Her eyes looked very big in the darkness. I took hold of her hand. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘I hope to God-’ I stopped then, for we had turned the corner of a barn and I saw there was a lamp on in the kitchen of the farmhouse. It was nearly two, yet the Kleffmanns hadn’t gone to bed. The shadow of a man crossed the drawn curtains. I hurried across the yard and tapped on the window.

It was Kleffmann himself who answered my tap. He came to the back door and peered nervously out into the night. ‘Herr Kleffmann!’ I called softly. ‘It’s me — Fraser. Can we come in?’

‘Ja. Kommen Sie herein. Hurry please.’ As he stood back to let us through the door he turned his face towards the lamplight that came through from the kitchen. He looked startled, almost scared.

‘Is he all right?’ I asked.

‘Your friend? Yes, he is all right. A little better, I think.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘We’ve got a truck waiting down on the road,’ I said. ‘This is Fraulein Meyer.’

He shook hands with Else. ‘Come in. Come in, both of you.’ He shut the door quickly and led us through into the kitchen. ”Mutter. Here is Herr Fraser back again.’

Frau Kleffmann greeted me with a soft, eager smile, but her eyes strayed nervously to the stairs that led up from the kitchen. ‘I do not understand,’ she murmured uneasily in German. Then she turned to her husband and said, ‘Why do they both come?’

I started to explain Else’s presence and then I stopped. That wasn’t what she had meant. Lying across the back of a chair was a heavy, fleece-lined flying jacket. Else had seen it, too. I turned to the Kleffmanns. They were standing quite still, staring towards the dark line of the stairs. From above us out of the silence of the house, came- the sound of footsteps. They were coming down the stairs.

Else gripped my arm. ‘What is it?’ she whispered.

I couldn’t answer her. My gaze was riveted to the stairs and all the muscles of my body seemed frozen in dread of the thing that was in my mind. The footsteps were heavy now on the bare boards of the landing. Then they were coming down the last flight. I saw the boots first and then the flying suit and followed the line of the zip to his face? ‘Saeton!’ The name came from my lips in a whisper. God! I’ll never forget the sight of his face. It was grey like putty and his eyes burned in their sockets. He stopped at the sight of us and stood staring at me. Eyes and face were devoid of expression. He was like a man walking in his sleep.

‘How’s Tubby?’ My voice was hoarse and grating.

‘He’s all right,’ he answered, coming on down into the kitchen. ‘Why did you have to come here?’ His voice was flat and lifeless and it carried with it a terrible note of sadness.

‘I came to get him out,’ I said.

He shook his head slowly. ‘It’s no use now.’

‘What do you mean?’ I cried. ‘You said he was all right. What have you done to him?’

‘Nothing. Nothing that wasn’t necessary.’

I started towards the stairs then, but he stopped me. ‘Don’t go up,’ he said. And then slowly he added, ‘He’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ The shock of the word drove me to action. I thrust past him, but he caught me by the arm as I started up the stairs. ‘It’s no good, Neil. He’s dead, I tell you.’

‘But that is impossible!’ Frau Kleffmann had retreated towards her chair by the fire. ‘Only this morning the doctor is here and he say he will be well again. Now you say he is dead.’

Saeton pushed his hand across his eyes. ‘It — it must have been a stroke — heart or something,’ he muttered uncertainly.

‘But only this evening he is laughing and joking with me,’ Frau Kleffmann insisted. ‘Is not that so, Frederick?’ she asked her husband. ‘Just before you come. I take him his food and he is laughing and saying I make him so fat he live up to his name.’

‘Where is he?’ Else whispered to me.

‘Up at the top of the house. An attic. I’ll go up and see what’s happened.’

I started up the stairs again, but Saeton blocked my way.

‘He’s dead, I tell you. Dead. Going and looking at him won’t help.’

I stared at him. The blackness of the eyes, the smallness of the pupils — the man seemed curled up inside himself and through the windows of those eyes I looked in on fear and the bitter, driven urge of something that had stepped out of the world’s bounds. In sudden panic I flung him aside and leaped up the stairs. There was a small lamp on the landing and I picked it up as I turned to climb to the attic.

The door of Tubby’s room was ajar and as I went in the lamplight picked out the photographs of Hans lining the walls. My eyes swung to the bed in the corner and then I stopped. From the tumbled bedclothes Tubby stared at me with fixed and bloodshot eyes. His face had a bluish tinge even in the softness of the lamplight. There was a froth of blood on his puffed lips and his tongue had swollen so that it had forced itself between his teeth. He had struggled a great deal before he had died, for in the wreck of the bed his body lay in a twisted and unnatural attitude.

Avoiding the fixed gaze of his eyes, I crossed the room and touched the hand that had reached clear of the bed and was hanging to the floor. The flesh was still warm.

Else came into the room then and stopped. ‘So! It is true.’ She looked across at me with a shudder. ‘How does it happen?’

‘Perhaps it was a stroke. Perhaps-’ My voice trailed away as I saw her eyes fasten on something that lay beside the bed.

‘Look!’ She shivered slightly, pointing to the pillow.

I bent and picked it up. It was damp and torn and bloody at the centre where Tubby had fought for air. The truth of how he had died was there in my hands.

‘He did it,’ she whispered. ‘He killed him.’

I nodded slowly. I think I had known it all along. Tubby’s wasn’t the face of a man who had died a natural death. Poor devil! Alive he had threatened the future of Saeton’s engines. Because of that Saeton had come all the way from Berlin to kill him, to smother him as he lay helpless on the bed. The force that had been driving Saeton all along had taken him to the final and irrevocable step. He had killed the man without whom the engines could never have been made, the one man whom he’d thought of as a friend. If one man stood between me and success, I’d brush him aside. I could remember how he had stood in the centre of the mess room at Membury and said that — and now he had done it. He had brushed Tubby aside. I dropped the pillow back on to the floor with a feeling of revulsion.

‘I think he is mad.’ Else’s horrified whisper voiced my own thoughts. And at that moment I heard slow, heavy footsteps on the stairs. Saeton was coming back up to the attic. I wasn’t prepared to face him yet. I reached for the door, closing it, my action unreasoned, automatic. I slid the bolt home and stood there, listening to the footsteps getting nearer.

‘Come away from the door,’ Else whispered urgently.

I stepped back and as I looked at her I saw she was scared.

The footsteps stopped outside the door and the handle turned. Then the thin deal boards bulged to the pressure of the man whose breathing I could hear. The room was very still as we waited. I think Else thought he would break the door down. I didn’t know what I expected, all I knew was that I didn’t want to talk to him. The silence in the room was heavy with suspense. Then his footsteps sounded on the stairs again as he went slowly down.

I opened the door and listened. There was the murmur of voices and then the side door closed with a bang. From the window I saw Saeton, looking big and squat in his flying jacket, cross the farmyard and go out through the gate by the barn. I felt relieved that he had left. It wasn’t only that I didn’t want to talk to him. I was scared of him. Perhaps Else’s fear was infectious, but I think it would have come, anyway. The abnormal in its most violent form is a thing all sane men are afraid of. The initiative lies with the insane. It’s that which is frightening., I turned back to the door. ‘I’ll get Kleffmann,’ I said. ‘We must get his body down to the truck and take it back to Berlin.’ Tubby’s sightless eyes watched me in a fixed stare. I turned quickly and went down the stairs, conscious of Else’s footsteps hurrying after me.

The kitchen looked just the same as when we had entered it. Frau Kleffmann sat huddled in her thick dressing-gown by the fire. Her husband paced nervously up and down. There was nothing in the warmth and friendliness of that room to indicate what had happened upstairs in the attic — only the tenseness. Frau Kleffmann looked up quickly as I entered. ‘Is it true?’ she asked. ‘Is he dead?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He’s dead.’

‘It is unbelievable,’ she murmured. ‘And he was such a nice, friendly man.’

‘Why did that other man — Herr Saeton — leave so quickly?’ Kleffmann demanded.

I could see that he was suspicious, but there seemed no point in telling him what had happened. ‘He was worried about his plane,’ I said. ‘Will you help me get Carter’s body down? We are taking it back to Berlin.’

‘Ja.’ He nodded. ‘Ja, I think that is best.’

‘Would you please find something for us to carry him on?’ I asked Frau Kleffmann.

She nodded, rising slowly to her feet, a little dazed by what had happened.

‘You stay here, Else,’ I said and followed Kleffmann up the stairs to the attic again. We covered Tubby with a blanket and got his body down the steep, narrow stairs. Back in the kitchen Else and Frau Kleffmann had fixed a blanket over two broom handles. The improvised stretcher lay on the table and we put Tubby’s body on it. Frau Kleffmann began weeping gently at the sight of his shrouded figure. I think she was remembering her son out there in a Soviet labour camp.

Else stood quite still, staring down at the shape huddled under the blanket.

‘Will you help us to carry him down to the truck?’ I asked Kleffmann.

‘Ja. It is better that you take him away from here.’ His voice trembled slightly and the sweat shone on his forehead. He had known as soon as he’d seen Tubby that the poor devil hadn’t died naturally and he wanted to get the body out of his house, to be shot of the whole business. He hadn’t said anything, but he knew who had done it and he was scared.

We picked the stretcher up, he at one end, I at the other. ‘Come on, Else,’ I said.

She didn’t move and as I lifted the latch of the door she said, ‘Wait!’ Her voice was pitched high on a hysterical note. ‘Do you think Saeton will let you go back to Berlin with — with that?’ She came across the room, seizing hold of my arm and shaking it in the extremity of her fear. ‘He cannot let either of us go back.’

I stood still, staring at her, the truth of what she was saying gradually sinking in.

‘He is waiting for us — out there.’ She jerked her arm towards the window.

I could see in her eyes that she was still remembering the sight of Tubby’s face as he lay propped up in that bed. I lifted the stretcher back to the table and went towards the window. My hand was on the curtains to pull them back when Else seized my arm. ‘Keep away from the window. Please, Neil.’ I could feel the trembling of her body.

I turned irresolutely back into the room. Was he really waiting for us out there? The palms of my hands were damp with sweat. Saeton had never turned back from anything he had started. He wouldn’t turn back now. Else and I were as fatal to him as a hangman’s rope. A desperate feeling of weariness took hold of me so that my limbs felt heavy and my movements were slow. ‘What do we do then?’

Nobody answered my question. They were all staring at me, waiting for me to make the first move. ‘Have you got a gun here?’ I asked Kleffmann.

He nodded slowly, ‘Ja. I have a shotgun.’

‘That will do,’ I said. ‘Can I have it, please?’

He went out of the room and returned a moment later with the gun. It looked about the equivalent of an English 16 bore. He gave it to me together with a handful of cartridges. ‘I’ll go out by a window on the other side of the house,’ I said. ‘When I’ve gone, keep the doors bolted:’ I turned to Else. ‘I’ll circle the house and then go down to the road and persuade Kurt to bring the truck up here.’

She nodded, her lips compressed into a tight line.

‘If I find it’s all clear, I’ll whistle a bit of the Meistersingers. Don’t open up until you hear that.’ I turned to Kleffmann. ‘Have you got another gun?’

He nodded. ‘I have one I use for the rooks.’

‘Good. Keep it by you.’ I broke the gun I held in my hands and slipped a cartridge into each of the barrels. I felt like a man going out to finish off an animal that has run amok.

As I snapped the breech Else caught hold of my hand. ‘Be careful, Neil. Please. I–I do not know what I shall do if I lose you now.’

I stared at her, surprised at the intensity of feeling in her voice. ‘I’ll be all right,’ I said. And then I turned to Kleffmann and asked him to show me to the other side of the house.