Riptide

§ 9

It took days to reach England. A hop across Vichy France in a Swiss plane to Lisbon, and a two day lay-up at the Avis Hotel while they waited for the irregular American Clipper service to Poole, on the south coast of England. It was a mark of how much things had changed since the war, how much they’d changed since the fall of Holland and the loss of the KLM planes. It had been a daily service, the flying boats had connected fairly neatly with the steamers-some of them even bounced on via the Azores to touch down in Bowery Bay NY, within sight and sound of Manhattan-and you got your mail on time. Now there were queues of passengers, often more than a hundred, waiting day after day to cross the Atlantic or to skim the waves to England. Ruthven-Greene argued their priority over anyone short of a general and bumped them up the list and on to the next available plane.

Cal liked Lisbon. Its steep hills and streetcars put him in mind of San Francisco, its sidewalk cafes of Paris. It was the antithesis of Zurich. Zurich was polite and businesslike in its teutonic fashion. The factions made appointments to see one another and observed a diplomatic regularity. Lisbon was nothing if not irregular. Lisbon in May, Lisbon at peace, even if everyone else was at war, was warm and sunny and a little careless. The warring sides passed each other in the street, rubbed shoulders in the bars and cafes, murdered one another in the alleys. It was new to Cal, and visibly old hat to Ruthven-Greene. On the second afternoon he had rummaged in his pockets for a light, ignored the book of matches on the cafe’s kerbside table and nipped across the street to bum a light from a man smoking outside the cafe opposite. Reggie had chatted to the man for several minutes before he came back, scarcely suppressing a grin.

‘Someone you know?’ Cal asked.

‘Yes. Old Dietrich from the German embassy. Usually pays to have a bit of a chat with the old sod. His boastfulness always gets the better of his discretion. One day soon they’ll find his body floating in the harbour, and it won’t be because of anything our lot have done. He came out with an absolute corker. Asked me about this bunker Churchill’s having built under Glands castle in Scotland-courtesy of the Queen’s people, who own it-so he can hold the Jerries at Hadrian’s Wall after they’ve conquered England. I don’t know where he gets such twaddle, but I rather wish I’d made it up myself.’

Cal loved flying. He felt safe in the fat body of the little Boeing Clipper. He didn’t get sick and there was something deeply reassuring about the throb of four robust-sounding piston-engined propellers close to the ear.

He watched the Spanish coast fall away as they flew on to the Bay of Biscay, swinging westward to avoid the German-occupied French Atlantic ports-U-boat bases for the wolf packs that harassed shipping.

An unsafe thought crossed his mind. An unsafe question passed his lips.

‘Supposing they fired on us?’

‘Eh?’ said Ruthven-Greene.

‘By mistake, I mean.’

‘Be the biggest mistake of the war so far. A diplomatic incident, old boy. It’d be like the last war-remember the sinking of the Lusitania? You and I would go down to the Jerry guns in the noble cause of bringing Uncle Sam into the war lickety-split.’