A Thousand Suns

Chapter 53 Mission Time: 21 Hours, 20 Minutes Elapsed

He awoke with a start.

‘Max, wake up, we’re nearly there,’ said Hans, jabbing his arm insistently.

Max felt the world quickly invade the warmth and comfort of his dream. It faded all too quickly. He hazily recalled images of a long dining table, Lucian beside him, his eyes as wide as saucers staring at the feast arrayed before him. It was a Christmas dinner, and Lucian must have been only seven, nearly eight; it had to have been Christmas 1933, perhaps ’34. He had been eighteen that year, and back from his first term at university. Max smiled; what a wonderful time that was, enjoying the novelty of his new life away from home. But he had been surprised at how much he’d missed Lucian during his first term. He had spent some of the money he had saved for several raucous nights down the local beer cellar to mark the end of term on a present that he knew would make that little porcelain face light up with ecstasy… a small army of painted soldier figurines. All through that meal he’d teased his brother about what surprise lay within his parcel beneath the Christmas tree.

‘Pieter said I should wake you up,’ Hans said apologetically.

He would have given anything for another five minutes back there, back then. ‘That’s all right, Hans,’ he said, stifling a yawn, ‘I need to prepare the bomb.’

He turned to look at Stef to see the boy was still unconscious. He lifted the blanket to check his leg wound and found several small patches of wet blood soaking through.

‘He’s still losing blood.’

It looked like a slow trickle of blood, but it was still leaking out of him. If they could find him some medical attention as soon as this was all over, he would pull through. The lad had lost a fair bit, but he guessed he still had a chance. It was more likely he was simply sleeping from exhaustion than passed out from lack of blood.

Good, let him sleep. If he’s moving around less, the tourniquet will do a better job.

‘Hans, what’s our position?’

The gunner shook his head like a horse trying to shake off a bridle. ‘I don’t know, Pieter just told me it was time to wake you up.’

Max pulled the blanket off and stood up stiffly. He plugged into the interphone beside the port waist-gun and lifted his mask. ‘Pieter, what’s our position?’

‘Ahhh, good afternoon Max,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘We’re about forty minutes off the coast.’

‘You kept to two-fifty-five degrees?’

‘Yeah, and cruising at two hundred and fifty.’

That was fifty miles per hour faster than the minimum cruise speed; the burn from that extra speed had been unnecessary. Fuel, not time, was the important variable. Max wondered anxiously what their reserves were. There couldn’t be much left. ‘What’s the fuel look like?’

‘Don’t worry, Max; we’ve probably got an hour, maybe two, of fuel left. Looks like we’ll make it with some to spare.’

Max checked his watch: if they hadn’t drifted too far north or south they might actually make it to New York after all. He smiled. Not only did it look like, against the odds, they would actually make it, but it looked like they were going to arrive more or less on time. As the hour of midnight struck in Germany, they would be dropping the bomb over New York.

Pieter had done well, flying a little faster than they’d needed to bring them in on time. Max trusted his co-pilot would have calculated the fuel burn before making that kind of decision, and he had calculated well, so it seemed. Drift and head or tail wind would, of course, affect any dead reckoning Pieter could make, but at 5000 feet altitude that wasn’t going to throw his reckoning off by too much.

‘Well done, Pieter.’

Hans was looking longingly at the thick grey blanket wrapped around Stef.

‘Jump in under the blanket,’ he said to the gunner, ‘it’s quite warm under there.’

Hans nodded eagerly and slid along the wooden-panel floor to sit beside Stef. He pulled the thick grey blanket up over himself, up to the chin.

‘Keep an eye on that wound, though.’

‘Yeah.’

Max climbed through the bulkhead into the navigation compartment, and then through the second bulkhead into the bomb bay. The bomb hung at the bottom of the rack before him, cradled in its metal frame. He sat down on the floor and dangled his legs over the narrow walkway into the darkened bay below. When the bomb bay doors were open, that area would be a dazzling bright abyss. Max was surprised at how little protection there was either side of the narrow walkway, perhaps only eighteen inches wide, and the open space above the bomb bay doors. It would be perilously easy to misplace a foot and fall through. But then he reminded himself that the space above the doors normally would be packed full with 600lb bombs, stacked one above the other in the racks, allowing no room for a clumsy crew member to slip through and fall to his death. He also recalled reading in the manual that while the bay doors were open, the bomb bay was off limits to the crew.

He felt inside his tunic pocket for the envelope and pulled it out. Major Rall had used a normal, unmarked envelope, no insignia. Against his better judgement, Max felt himself injecting this moment with portentous significance. He was about to open the most important envelope in the world. Curiously, it seemed poetically right that such an envelope would be so unremarkable — plain, white, small. He pulled off a leather glove and put a finger under the flap, sliding it along and opening it up.

So, here we are.

He reached in and felt a single sheet of paper and pulled it out. He unfolded it and scanned the words on the paper. It was letter-headed stationery from the Ministry of Armaments, from Albert Speer’s office no less. Halfway down the page was a short paragraph and a diagram indicating how the altimeter detonator should be set up. Max glanced down at it. The detonator could only be reached by lining up the correct six-digit code on a thick locking bar that ran over the top. The digits could be set by rotating a series of cylinders with numbers on the side. It reminded him vaguely of the code wheels on an Enigma machine. He looked back at the piece of paper and found the code number at the end of the paragraph.

One… five… zero… eight… two… seven.

He reached down to the locking bar and carefully rotated each of the number wheels to arrange the six numbers in a line. With the last digit set, the locking bar clicked, and Max lifted it away from the altimeter display.

He glanced back at the paper. The bomb was to detonate 1000 feet above the ground. He wondered why it would be set to explode at such a height. Perhaps the scientists who’d put this weapon together had become paranoid that it might land with a thud on the rooftop of some Manhattan skyscraper and remain there, unexploded indefinitely, undiscovered amongst the rooftop detritus of pipes and boilers.

The altimeter had a similar display of five number wheels. He read the instructions one more time before turning the wheels carefully until they displayed: 01000.

One thousand feet.

The last act now was to press a button to the right of the five number wheels, a single blue button. Pressing this would engage the air pressure sensor in the altimeter. Once this was engaged, if the air pressure around the bomb increased to an amount equivalent to that found 1000 feet above sea level, the bomb would detonate. Max would press the blue button, only at the last moment before the bomb was to be released. There would be all manner of localised fluctuations of pressure around the bomb when the bay doors were opened; so they would be opened first, and only then could the bomb be activated safely.

He pulled back from the small device slung within its metal cradle, relieved that the process of preparing it had been simple and straightforward. He folded the paper up, pulled the envelope from his pocket. It was as he was about to place the code back in the envelope, that he noticed another folded sheet of paper nestling inside.

A note from Rall wishing good luck, perhaps? A note even from the Führer, maybe?

Perhaps…

He reached in with his ungloved hand, pulled it out and unfolded it. It was the kind of paper you would see in an exercise book or on a writing pad, not the sort of stationery you would expect the Führer to write on. He unfolded it to find a paragraph of handwriting, oblique, spidery strokes. It was the writing of a man in a hurry.

Max stared in silence at the note, his mind momentarily locked in confusion. His first fleeting instinct was to suspect the note to be a poor attempt to sabotage the mission. Some disgruntled technician, perhaps even an anti-Nazi? God knows, there were very few Germans left who would proudly announce allegiance to the swastika. It was a person who had hoped that the note might bring an end to this endeavour. Misinformation like this at a crucial moment in time could just be enough to throw someone off their guard long enough that it might make a difference. That was most probably what this was. There had been plots before against Hitler, many in fact, and Max, not a Nazi, never a supporter of the National Socialists, might so easily have been one of those unfortunate men who had been sucked into any one of those conspiracies, if he had been approached.

It was possible, Max deliberated, that this might even be the handiwork of one of those in the highest echelons of power… Himmler, Göring, Goebbels? Perhaps an act of sabotage to buy themselves clemency from the enemy after this war was over.

He looked down at the note once more.

But we’re dropping this bomb for Germany, not Hitler.

That was why Max had agreed to carry out the mission. Not for that insane bastard who had brought this insanity down on all of them.

I volunteered for those of us poor wretches who are left, not the bastard who put us here.

It was their last chance to fight for a truce, that’s why he had volunteered, and for no other reason; not for glory, not for vanity. Whatever the motive behind the note, whoever had managed to ensure it had made its way to the last man to lay hands on this weapon, Max decided, the attempt had been in vain. The mission had to go on. He and his men had managed to fight their way across France and the Atlantic, he owed it to his men, to Schröder and his pilots, to the millions of civilians across their homeland who would die if the war didn’t come to an end right now.

He began to ball the note up in his hands.

And stopped.

What exactly is the risk of using this weapon?

He recalled those few words; words he had not been meant to hear. The door had closed on the answer, but the question, Major Rall’s question, he had heard.

What is the risk of using this weapon?

The civilian, Hauser, had answered quietly, the murmur of his reply for the Major’s ears only. Rall had heard the answer to that question only a short time before they had assembled outside the hangar ready to take off.

And how odd the Major had been.

Max recalled those few awkward moments, standing in front of the bomber, watching Schröder and his men climbing into their fighters and preparing to take off… and the Major’s unusual, uncharacteristic behaviour. And then Max recalled the Major had tried to say something, urgently, insistently, quietly.

He was trying to warn me.

Major Rall had attempted to warn Max of something. He had thought the Major was warning him to be careful handling the bomb; that Hauser had imparted to him at this late stage some element of risk that the Major felt in all fairness should have been relayed directly to Max. That particular rationalisation of the Major’s odd, hurried last exchange had made sense to Max as he had replayed it in his mind in the few moments he’d had since taking off to reflect upon the matter. The Major, he thought, had been trying to convey one last cautionary piece of advice, but in the haste, the moment, the noise, it had been lost and cast aside as Max had focused on the mission itself.

But this note… and those overheard words, and the Major’s hurried, desperate last-ditch attempt to warn him, interrupted, he now recalled, all too hastily by Hauser… all of those things gave Max a reason to pause, to unscrew the paper in his hand. He looked once more at the note, rereading the scribbled lines.

The Major must have been informed by the civilian, Hauser, of the bomb’s true nature. The discussion he had overheard a mere snippet of was just that: Rall’s discovery of the real danger, for the first time. And now, Max replayed those final moments on the airstrip — the haunted look on the Major’s face, his distracted demeanour and the final desperate look of anxiety on his face as he had tried to warn Max with a carefully phrased sentence.

And then there was that civilian, Hauser, his speech… perhaps, as he revelled in the moment, he had let slip more than he had intended.

We will turn all of New York into Stalingrad…

Max looked down at the crumpled paper in his hands. ‘Not just New York,’ he muttered.

His mind cruelly began to replay visions of devastation, the horror that he had seen with his own eyes in recent months. The ashes of a city, stretching as far as could be seen, a world of blackened wood, grey rubble and white dust. The bloated, twisted bodies poking from the ground, contorted by heat as they half-cooked from the flames of destruction, yet still raw inside, raw enough to rot, decompose and swell the dark leathery skin to the point of bursting with noxious gases.

Max had briefly struggled with the notion it would be he alone that would be responsible for arming and releasing a weapon that would turn an untouched city, a magnificent city by all that he’d seen of it from newsreels and the occasional movie, into that — that vision of hell upon earth. But now, if this letter was to be believed, if the Major was to be believed, then he might well be the one who would turn the whole world into — and that civilian, Hauser, had put it perfectly — Stalingrad.

Hans took a look at Stef sleeping fitfully beside him. He remembered when Stef had first joined them back in the early months of 1944. He had been a hastily trained recruit, drawn straight out of school to replace Jürgen Dancht, who had died in a field hospital after catching influenza. Stef had been a pain in the arse, too fucking young and stupid to deserve to make it through the war in one piece. But he had, and annoying though the lad could be, it would be a shame to have made it so far and die within sight of the end. Mind you, he thought, if the boy had been drafted into the infantry he wouldn’t have lasted long. Stef was too clumsy, too gawky, the kind of poor sod who stands out, whose head always seems to be the one found slap bang in the middle of a sniper’s cross-hair. Stef was the kind of poor fool who always died first.

He checked the boy’s wound; there was some more fresh blood soaking through, blending with the dark brown patches.

You idiot, stop bloody bleeding.

He cuffed Stef’s head lightly, a tress of ginger hair flopped over the boy’s pale, ghost-white face. He’d get a doctor soon. Pieter had said they were just over forty minutes away from America, in an hour it would be all done and they’d be finding a safe place to put down. Just another hour or so and they’d get him some help.

Hans wondered whether he would be able to spot the first signs of land. With a surge of curiosity he climbed out from beneath the blanket and leaned towards the starboard porthole. He pulled himself against the roaring, freezing rush of wind to look forward, over the plane’s giant wings, for a first glimpse of the continent.

The sky was clear around them and below, the Atlantic ocean was a deep blue. His eyes were drawn to a pale line carved across its glittering surface.

A ship?

New York had a port. They had to be on target, on the right course.

He plugged into the comm. ‘Pieter, I can see a ship below us!’

‘Yeah? Which way is it headed?’

Hans leaned back out and looked down. It was hard to tell which end of the pale line was the front, and even harder to detect it moving. He squinted tightly as the wind made his eyes water. After a few seconds he picked out the paler line of the ship’s wake.

‘The ship’s heading south-west, I think.’

‘Then if that’s heading into New York, we’ve drifted a little north,’ replied Pieter. ‘Max? Are you plugged in?’

There was no answer. Pieter called him again, but he still failed to answer.

‘I think he’s readying the bomb,’ said Hans.

‘Well, go tell him I think we need to turn south a little… no, just go get him to come forward, okay?’

‘Yeah.’

Hans took another look at Stef. ‘Hang on. We’re nearly there,’ he muttered. He stooped as he climbed through the bulkhead and again as he entered the bomb bay.

‘Pieter needs you up—’ He saw Max sitting on the walkway beside the bomb, studying a scrap of paper. ‘Hey, Max, is everything all right?’

He looked up at Hans, a look of anguish was stretched across his face.

‘Max?’

He held out the piece of paper towards Hans; he said nothing as he did so.

‘What is it?’

Max stood up and took a step towards him, the piece of paper still held in front of him. ‘Look at this.’

Hans reached for the paper and began to read the handwritten words.

To the one responsible for arming this weapon…

It took the young man only seconds to dismiss it. He looked up at Max. ‘What the fuck is this?’

‘Read it. Read it all.’

Hans obediently looked back down at it, and Max waited patiently for Hans to finish. Finally, the young man looked up. ‘So?’

‘We can’t go ahead with this.’

Hans looked up at him, confused. ‘What’re you saying, Max?’

‘We can’t complete this mission. It’s insane to go on, knowing this—’

‘Max?’

‘Can’t you see that? It’s insane to do this if there’s even the slightest chance.’

‘We have orders, not just from some fucking general, but from Hitler himself!’ Hans waved the sheet of notepaper in front of him. ‘This… this shit means nothing. Any fool could have written this.’

‘Hans, listen to me. I don’t know who wrote this, someone who worked on the bomb maybe, but the Major, just before we took off, I think he was trying to tell me that we shouldn’t complete this mission.’

‘What?’ Hans’s face was contorted with uncertainty and panic. ‘This is his plan! No, not the Major. He… he… why would he want to sabotage it? No, you’re wrong, Max, he wouldn’t—’

‘He was trying to tell me, Hans. He had only a few seconds to—’

‘No! No, that’s just fucking crazy.’

Max realised he was making a mistake trying to argue with Hans, justifying his thinking. The young man would respond to an order, he always had, and would do so now. The habit was ingrained into his thick skull.

Max straightened his back and pointed towards the bulkhead. ‘Get back to your post. We’re aborting the mission, Hans, that’s all there is to it.’

Hans remained silent, his body frozen with indecision, yet his eyes darting from Max to the note to the bomb, his mind now working hard to make sense of things.

‘No… I don’t underst—’

‘Back to the waist-guns. That’s an order!’

Hans recoiled slightly, and his mouth clamped shut; it was an automatic response to Max’s barked command. He turned to go, beginning to step aft through the bulkhead, and then he stopped.

‘No,’ he said after a moment, with a quiet and unfamiliar certainty.

Max deliberately ignored the young man’s whispered insubordination and began to turn round to climb forward through the bulkhead and into the cockpit.

Hans leaped forward suddenly, moving with a speed and agility that Max would never have imagined him to possess. He tugged Max’s Walther from its holster. He held it in both hands and aimed it uncertainly and shakily at Max’s head.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Give me the gun!’ shouted Max.

Hans shook his head.

‘Give me the gun, Hans, I’m ordering you.’

‘I… I can’t do that.’

‘Listen… we can’t detonate this bomb, Hans. It’s not going to happen—’

‘SHUT UP!’ Hans shouted, jerking the gun at Max’s face. He called out to Pieter at the top of his voice, but there was no answer. ‘PIETER!’ His voice sounded like a child’s plea, breaking with panic.

‘What? You think Pieter’s going to agree with you, Hans?’ said Max.

Hans remained motionless, the gun shaking in his hand, his eyes darting to the bulkhead leading forward, waiting for Pieter to arrive.

Max decided to try a different way to get through to the lad. ‘Look, give me the damned gun now, Hans, and I’ll forget about this. I know you, you’re a good lad and this—’

They heard Pieter calling back through from the cockpit several times, and a few moments later, realising that Hans must not be plugged into the comm. system, Pieter appeared at the bulkhead.

‘What’s the matter?’ He saw Hans pointing the gun at Max. ‘Jesus Christ, what the bloody hell are you doing, Hans?’

‘He was going to abort the mission, Pieter. He doesn’t want to finish it!’

Pieter looked incredulously at Hans. He didn’t look like he was buying that for one moment. ‘Max, what’s up with this fucking idiot?’

Max turned to him and calmly spoke. ‘He’s right. We’ve got to abort.’

Pieter frowned, confused. ‘Why? What’s up? We’re there, we’ve done it.’

‘Give him the note, Hans. Let Pieter make up his own mind.’

For one moment Max thought Hans was going to rip the note to shreds. But the young man remained still, reluctant to pass it on, holding the crumpled sheet of paper tightly in his hands.

‘Give it to me, you idiot! We haven’t got all day,’ said Pieter irritably.

Hans passed the note to Max, keeping the Walther trained on him all the time. Max handed it to Pieter then watched as his co-pilot silently read it.

A minute later Pieter looked up at them with no clear indication on his face as to what he was thinking.

‘Pieter?’ Hans spoke; there was a note of growing doubt and desperation in his deep voice. He needed Pieter to reassure him that his solo act of mutiny had been the right thing to do, that he wasn’t alone in this action.

Pieter passed the note back to Max. ‘We should continue, Max. This could be a trick, an attempt to sabotage the mission,’ he said evenly.

‘I know, I know. I thought the same at first, Pieter. But there’s more—’

Pieter shook his head. ‘We’re nearly there, Max, we’ve done it. This is just a trick.’

‘Listen to me. The Major tried to tell me about the bomb, Pieter, on the ground just before we took off.’

‘Major Rall? You think he would want to abort?’

‘Yes. I think he did. And I think he was trying to tell me that.’

Pieter frowned, then laughed, unsure how to respond to such an absurd notion. ‘It’s his fucking mission, he planned it, why would he want to abort it?’

‘He knows, Pieter! He knows this bomb could kill us all! And he was trying to tell me.’

Pieter was silent for a moment, his face clouded as he recalled those final moments on the airstrip. ‘He did act strange. I heard him too.’

Hans looked indecisively between the two older men. It looked to him as if Pieter now might be having doubts. Hans began to lower the gun to the ground, doubting his decision, his resolve beginning to waver.

Max spotted the weapon drop and decided the time had come to try and wrestle subordination back from Hans. ‘Hans, give me the gun, and go and see to Stefan.’

Hans hesitated for only a second before nodding mutely and reaching out to pass Max the weapon.

‘Even if this is true, Max,’ Pieter suddenly announced, ‘we have to go on.’

Max spun to look back at Pieter. ‘What? Are you crazy?’

‘So… there’s a risk. What do we lose anyway? The Russians will kill us all if we do nothing. We have to go on.’

Hans looked to Pieter once more, backing away from Max’s waiting hand, pulling the gun back and aiming it once more at his commanding officer.

‘Give me the bloody gun, Hans,’ Max said again, his command sharper.

Hans looked to Pieter, ‘Piet? What do I do?’

‘Lower the fucking gun, you fool,’ Pieter barked at Hans, angered that the young gunner should so readily turn on Max, their friend, their leader. He turned to Max. ‘Max, we’ve got to finish this,’ he pleaded.

Max turned to look at him. ‘If we go ahead and drop this bomb,’ he continued, ‘and it does, as this notes says, destroy the world, then it’s all gone, everything, everyone, just ashes. What kind of a victory is that?’

‘And if we drop it, and it just destroys New York, we win. The war ends on our terms, Germany survives, we go on.’

‘We go on… and what? Another war against the Russians? You think our wonderful Führer is going to think twice about using weapons like this again and again on them?’ he said, pointing at the bomb nestled comfortably on the rack, a silent witness to its own fate. ‘And every time we use one, we’ll be gambling again, until one of these things suddenly goes wrong, and that’s it.’

Pieter studied his old friend in silence. He had witnessed Max question orders only once before, and on that occasion Pieter would have stood by him if it had come to court martial. That was a long time ago, when the war had been running their way, when there had been room for an act of high-handed mercy like that amidst the carnage. But the two years since had been a long time. All that was left for them now was the visceral fight for survival, at any cost. The truth was a stark choice, and it was almost certain they would die at the hands of the Russians.

‘If we don’t complete the mission, then everything we’ve fought for, you and me, not just today, but the last five bloody years… all of that has been for nothing, Come on Max,’ Pieter said. ‘Take us to New York. Lead us one last time.’

‘You’d risk the whole world for that?’

‘Yes,’ Pieter answered instantly, with certainty. ‘I would.’

The three men stood in silence as the seconds stretched out.

‘You’ve always been there for us, Max,’ said Hans with a voice shaking and hesitant. He dropped his aim and extended one hand towards him, open, ready to shake, a final gesture of appeasement, reconciliation. Max knew Hans desperately sought the approval of his commanding officer to make things right once more. To have Pieter on his side had certainly helped to firm his resolve, but to have Max with them once more would settle the matter. ‘We need you now, more than we’ve ever done. Lead us one last time,’ pleaded Hans, echoing Pieter’s words.

Max shook his head. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this.’

He watched Hans, as the young gunner’s eyes narrowed and he re-evaluated him, systematically erasing his feelings of loyalty and respect and overwriting them with contempt. Max felt something irreversible had changed in the young man’s mind.

For Hans, now, a decision had been made. His commanding officer had become the enemy. ‘Then you’re a fucking traitor,’ he growled.

Max turned back to Pieter, he felt his last chance to swing this around rested with his co-pilot. They had the strongest bond within the four-man crew. Although Max knew their background differed in many ways, they shared a mutual bond of trust. Four years flying side by side had built that trust up into a concrete foundation that surely couldn’t possibly be undermined merely by the words they had spoken to each other in the last few minutes.

‘Pieter, come on, this is madness.’

Max decided Hans might still succumb if Pieter were to change his mind and agree with him now. The young man would hand the gun over to him and shamefully concede that he had become confused by events if he were the only one, if Pieter deserted his corner now. Max knew Hans was an insecure young man, still a boy in truth. He had little faith in his view of the world, his opinions, if he held them alone. He needed the corroboration of another; even more, he needed the approval of someone with rank.

It was down to Pieter.

‘I’m sorry, Max, but we’re going ahead with this, with or without your help.’

Hans looked reassured; pleased that such an important issue had been settled by someone else. ‘What do we do now? Do I…?’

Kill him.

All three of them knew those words were what was meant, if not spoken.

Pieter shook his head. ‘No, Hans.’ He turned to address Max. ‘But if you interfere, I will do it myself.’

Max heard the pain in Pieter’s voice, it had faltered momentarily. He knew it hadn’t been an easy thing for him to say.

Pieter shrugged slightly, and a wan smile spread across his weary face. ‘Just don’t make me do that, eh?’ he muttered to Max, patting his shoulder, the last gesture of friendship. ‘Hans, take him back to the waist section and keep your gun on him, I need to get back and fly this plane.’

‘How much longer?’

‘If we’re on course, half an hour, maybe less.’

‘Good.’ Hans jerked the gun to indicate that Max should lead the way back to the waist section.

Max tried one last time. ‘Pieter, do you—’

‘SHUT UP!’ Pieter shouted in reply. ‘Hans, don’t let him talk to you, if he talks, then shoot him, okay?’

Max cast one last glance at his co-pilot as he ducked through the bulkhead. His lips were drawn tightly, his eyes narrowed, the burden of the mission weighing heavily on his shoulders now. Pieter’s face was devoid of emotion, the last residue of warmth he had displayed towards Max had gone. His mind was on the mission, and that was all.