Читать книгу Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse - Len Deighton - Страница 20

Like all such depressions, this one had been born when moist air from the Azores met the cold dry air of the Arctic. The resulting muddled air mass moved eastwards over Britain until it reached the sea area to the west of Denmark which was called Heligoland. Here the centre of the depression paused. Hinged upon this depression, the cloud-marked cold front, like a thousand-mile-wide door, swung across Europe at twenty miles an hour. The front curved because its southern edge couldn’t keep up the pace. That southern end had only reached Bilbao in Spain when the centre was darkening the skies of Lyon and the northern sector was deluging the streets of Esbjerg with torrential rain.

In the high-pressure region that followed the front the heavy air subsided, warming by compression as it dropped. There was no more than the lightest of breezes, the clouds shrank even as you watched them, and the sun shone.

England had had its thunderstorms during the night and a morning of sunshine, but already a little cumulus had appeared over Wales and parts of the West Country. At Kroonsdijk, however, where the cold front had only recently passed, the skies were blue and the sun warmed the wet grass.

Unteroffizier Himmel eased himself into the pilot’s seat of his Ju88 parked at the end of the dispersal. The sun had been upon the metal fuselage for several hours and now the seat and controls were hot to touch and the smell of warmed fuel was as powerful as Glühwein. It was a luxury to be alone for a moment and apart from the sounds of the ground crewmen doing their pre-flight inspection it was as peaceful as a country graveyard. Himmel looked at the wet grass where an oil-patch made a rainbow pattern of red, yellow and mauve. A sandpiper landed and bobbed around the brightly coloured grass looking for worms until a mechanic closed the dinghy stowage hatch forcibly enough to frighten it back into the air.

The old piece of fuselage that the fire section had set alight sent a quill of white smoke into the still air. At its nib, Leutnant Beer in overalls was wielding a fire extinguisher under the command of Horst Knoll, the senior NCO of the fire section. Horst was a bad-tempered fellow who hated officers and did his best to make their lives as uncomfortable as his legitimate duties permitted.

‘On to the base of the flame,’ he was shouting to Beer, who was reluctantly closing in upon the foul-smelling wreckage and cursing. Horst Knoll, knowing exactly what the moving lips were saying, smiled and urged him forward all the more. ‘Don’t be afraid of the smoke, Herr Leutnant, get much closer and put the jet on to the base of the flame. Much closer, Herr Leutnant, much, much closer.’

At the far end of the line of matt-black aircraft Major Redenbacher’s aeroplane poked its snout from the dark hangar. Most of the spare mechanics were working on it. Suddenly the peace was shattered by the sound of engines. A Junkers with Leutnant Kokke at the controls was also preparing for an air test. Its chocks were pulled aside. Kokke gave a blip of throttle to start it moving around the perimeter. It moved away beyond the Alert Hut where the aircrew spent so much time. Outside it a dozen aircrew – air tests completed – sat sunning themselves. Most of them were younger than Himmel and few had been in the Luftwaffe as long as he had, but they’d come from all manner of units as their clothing showed. They’d seen service on war fronts from Finland to Egypt: British Army bush shirts, Czech flying boots, old Hitler Jugend shorts and Swedish leather jackets. Some sat shirtless, eyes closed in the deck-chairs, two played chess and some sprawled full-length on the wet grass arguing about engines and firepower and girls and promotion and medals.

No matter how much Löwenherz disapproved of their unsoldierly appearance it was a standing order of Major Redenbacher that at their Alert Huts the aircrews could ‘dress informally, always providing that the regulations concerning the wearing of identity tags around the neck are not disobeyed’.

Three flyers were standing in the hut doorway. Himmel looked at his watch and guessed that they were listening to the BBC, for this was the time that they broadcast the flyers’ programme. The carefully written technical talks always ended with a list of Luftwaffe personnel newly captured and newly dead.

Suddenly there was a loud thunder of cannon-fire and they all swung round to the firing butts. Above it a thin veil of blue smoke showed where Löwenherz’s plane was having its guns harmonized by the armourers. Someone made a joke, and then Himmel saw them all laugh and relax. It was the long wait for nightfall that built up the tension. That’s why Himmel always left his air test as late as possible.

One of Himmel’s ground crew removed the rudder lock and then walked round the aeroplane to check the ailerons and control surfaces. Himmel slipped his toes under the rudder-bar loops and fastened his seat straps. He ran his hand down his oxygen-lead connection to check it and then moved the control column forward and back and twisted the antlers to be sure that the controls were free of obstruction. Old Krugelheim, the chief mechanic, was getting a little impatient. Under his black overalls he was shirtless and without trousers, but still he sweated as he paced about under the nose of Himmel’s machine. He kept looking across to the hangar and Major Redenbacher’s aircraft. The cowling had been removed from its port motor and its most intimate parts bared to the oily inquiring hands of the fitters. The black-garbed men stood on a platform, arrayed around the disembowelled motor like witch-doctors at a Black Mass. One of them, chanting a line from a textbook, bent low into its entrails and flashed a torch deep inside. His open hand appeared and worldlessly a spanner was put into it.

Krugelheim looked up to where Himmel sat in the cockpit high above him. ‘The fuel pump,’ explained Krugelheim.

Himmel hoped sincerely that the black men would work their healing magic soon, for it was 15.20 hours already and if his own plane was not in service by nightfall, when the killing began, the Major had a habit of taking the nearest one. Himmel’s plane – Katze Four – was the nearest.

He slid the cockpit fully open and called down to the chief mechanic, ‘Have you seen Unteroffizier Pohl?’

‘No,’ said old Krugelheim. ‘He’s probably still talking to the Signals Officer.’

‘These aerials are a trial to us,’ said Christian Himmel. The old man walked under the nose to look closely at the ‘toasting fork’.

‘It’s the rain,’ he said. ‘If they stay dry for a few days they work perfectly. Here comes Pohl now.’

Someone in flying overalls, yellow lifejacket and parachute harness emerged from the hut, but it wasn’t Himmel’s radar operator. For a few paces he was obscured by the tail of another Junkers 88, but as he came round it they recognized Löwenherz. On this warm day none of the other flyers were wearing flying overalls. Like Himmel most wore lightweight helmets, shirts, shorts and lifejackets. It was just like Löwenherz to be in full flying gear.

‘What does the bloody Staffelkapitän want?’ said old Krugelheim. As if having a faulty fuel-line on Major Redenbacher’s machine wasn’t enough trouble for one day.

‘Cheer up, Kugel,’ said Himmel. ‘We’ll soon find out.’ To call the grumpy old Oberfeldwebel ‘Kugel’ was a privilege earned by only the most seasoned of Kroonsdijk’s NCOs. Although it meant ‘bullet’, the pot-bellied old chief mechanic was short enough in stature to realize that it also meant ‘globe’. Kugel came close under the cockpit.

‘You were in his Staffel during the Kanalkampf, weren’t you, young Himmel?’

‘He was in mine. I took him on his first operational sortie as my wingman. He was a lively fellow in those days.’

‘Then the war has sobered him,’ said the old man.

‘It’s sobered a lot of us,’ agreed Himmel.

‘Huh,’ exclaimed the mechanic bitterly.

Himmel smiled at the old Oberfeldwebel. His misanthropy was what kept these aeroplanes in such good order. The old man too had been a lively youngster once, but there are more casualties of war than the doctor ever sees. Kugel clicked his heels as Löwenherz walked past him without a word and proceeded to inspect and waggle each control surface to be sure they were unlocked and free of obstruction.

Himmel looked down to the hatch as Löwenherz climbed up the metal ladder. The soft inner hatch opened and his head appeared level with the floor of the cockpit behind Himmel’s feet. ‘I’m flying with you instead of Pohl,’ he said. One of the ground staff passed Löwenherz’s briefcase up through the hatch.

Himmel nodded and turned to exchange a pained glance with the chief mechanic below while Löwenherz strapped himself into the radar operator’s seat behind him. The backs of their heads almost touched, but between their seats there was a slab of steel armour. The Staffelkapitän carefully made sure that his intercom cable went down his back and was clipped to his overall. It was an inconvenience, but Löwenherz had read of several cases of aircrew being strangled by their own radio leads and it was a pet subject for his memos. Himmel hoped that he wouldn’t notice that his leads were not correctly positioned.

‘All set, Christian?’ fussed Kugel. ‘It’s warm today, radiator gills full out while you’re taxiing, then fully closed for take-off. Watch the cooling indicator.’ Himmel nodded. ‘Frei!’ yelled Kugel.

‘Frei!’ replied Himmel and pushed the button. The starter motor whined, jerking the blades. A bright blue flame escaped from the exhaust, in spite of the dampers. Then there was an ear-splitting roar. The panel vibrated and the instruments blurred. Himmel throttled back. He started the other motor and waited while the fuel- and oil-pressure needles came alive. The whole plane was rocking on its tyres now. He slid the side window closed in spite of the heat, for it was one of Löwenherz’s well-known instructions. The instrument panel and the windscreen chattered with the pulse of the motors. He pushed the throttles wide open and saw the rev counters flick around to 2,800. Even through his flying helmet the sound was piercing. The ground crew had hands clamped against their ears and their black overalls rippled in the wind. Two of them tugged the chocks away from the wheels.

Himmel took an extra look round the cockpit: flaps up, mags off, undercarriage locked, fuel full, straps fastened, oxygen ready, brakes on. The instruments were colour-coded: yellow for fuel, brown for oil and blue for air. Each of them read correctly and yet still Himmel worried. All pilots did, this was the moment of worry, once they were airborne the tenseness would ease a little.

Himmel hooked his oxygen mask into the forehead of his helmet and pushed closed the studs of his throat mike. Löwenherz, taller than little Pohl, struggled to notch the seat back. Himmel was about to help but decided that Löwenherz was not the sort of man who liked being helped.

‘Pilot to radar operator,’ said Himmel self-consciously. ‘All correct?’

‘All correct,’ said Löwenherz.

In his rear-view mirror Himmel saw Löwenherz fingering the radar controls.

‘Katze Four to Control, request permission to take off.’ The Controller told them to move off. Himmel released the brakes and the aeroplane rolled forward. Old Kugel waved him away like a swarm of flies.

Control told him to taxi to the far side of the airfield, wait until Katze Two was airborne and then move on to the end of the runway. He moved slowly along the perimeter track and past a wrecked Junkers 34. It had been there ever since Himmel could remember and had become a landmark for the aerodrome. Three months before, a salvage gang had removed the motor, only to find that it was an ancient Bristol Jupiter instead of the German power unit they had expected. A typical Luftwaffe balls-up, thought Himmel. So now the disembowelled plane had its rusting motor displayed alongside like a museum exhibit.

Parallel with the fence was the water-filled ditch, bright green now that summer sun had covered the surface with tiny cress plants. The dijk itself was two and a half metres higher than the aerodrome and upon it was the road to Utrecht. Its edges were neatly marked in white paint and its surface cobbled with the large stones that the Dutch call ‘children’s heads’. Military convoys buzzed upon it like angry bees and the wooden wheels of local cyclists crawled along with a bone-shaking clatter. Along the dijk road came a company of metalshod infantry. Himmel noticed the tired sweaty soldiers look his way with envy as they trudged past under the weight of full packs, blankets and rifles. They were singing, ‘In der Heimat, in der Heimat, da gibt’s ein Wiedersehen’. In the homeland we’ll meet again.

Himmel and Löwenherz watched Kokke’s plane as he ran its engines to maximum revs and then roared along the runway climbing steadily towards the east. Then Himmel followed.

It wasn’t one of his best take-offs, but to have Löwenherz sitting calmly behind you waiting to do the routine radar-interception test that was really the duty of meek little Unteroffizier Pohl was downright disconcerting.

The land flashed past beneath them. The sun shone down upon Kroonsdijk so that half of each street went black with shadow. Children pointed at them, a dog fled, a horse needed comforting. Gulls went into the air like a handful of white confetti, caught the breeze and in unison swooped back towards earth. The undercarriage thumped into the nacelle. A line of laundry wriggled, cyclists stopped. A silk patch of blue lake was tacked to green countryside by the taut fishing-lines of a hundred anglers, hoping to supplement their meagre rations. The flat heathland was like purplish-brown sandpaper scratched with irregular pale footpaths. The fields and lakes grew smaller as they fell away. An empty road grew busy, reached a fishing village and ended. Boats crammed tight to crowded quays, then there was just the empty blue water of the IJsselmeer. Over it there was a haze of summer heat like smoking fat on a frying-pan.

Control called him. ‘Katze Four steer 090 for practice air interceptions. Rendezvous at two thousand metres, grid reference: Heinz Marie nine.’

Himmel pulled a map from his flying boot. ‘Deelen,’ supplied Löwenherz before he could unfold it. Himmel spread the map and glanced down at the ninth square of the H and M reference. Of course Löwenherz was right. Himmel smiled; the big plane was flying perfectly. In the mirror he saw Löwenherz look over his shoulder.

‘Is this gun loaded?’ asked Löwenherz.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll test it while we are over water,’ announced Löwenherz.

Behind him he heard a burst of firing as he tested the gun. What a good thing the ground crew had loaded it. They often didn’t bother, for in the night fighter’s war these little machine guns, swivelled round by the radar man, weren’t much use. Himmel could smell the sour cordite fumes and tightened the oxygen mask against his face. They were circling Deelen when their airfield control called them to say that Kokke’s Junkers had returned to Kroonsdijk with a technical fault. Leeuwarden airfield would supply an aircraft for them to test the airborne radar. They must go to Ameland, an island off the northern coast of the Netherlands.

It was Löwenherz who first saw the plane below them. It was only when you saw another aircraft in the sky that you realized how fast you were moving. It was a white biplane, an Arado 66 with a red warning streamer flying from its wingtip. It seemed a long time since Löwenherz had flown his first solo.

‘See that, Himmel?’ said Löwenherz. ‘Below to port?’ The little trainer crawled across fields of ripening rye and dark fir woods.

‘He’s going well, sir, steadier than I was.’

‘And steadier than I was too,’ agreed Löwenherz. ‘Come round behind him; perhaps I can pick him up on the radar.’

‘He’s very low. I think we’ll get ground echoes,’ said Himmel, but he put the plane’s nose down and came round to creep up behind the pretty machine that was popping along merrily like a toy.

‘I’ll put the Kurier dead ahead,’ said Himmel, using the code word for enemy aircraft. The little white biplane had become an enemy bomber, for in what magical rites and rituals do we not manufacture an enemy from clay or wax. Or even from wood and fabric. The doll that looks like your enemy is called by his name. Stick pins into it and set it alight and believe that those same misfortunes will befall the ones you hate. Pretending it was dark, the two men acted out their game, stalking after the white quarry with all the skill that their years of war had taught them.

Himmel’s head twisted and turned like an anxious sparrow’s. Veteran fighter pilots survived by scrutinizing every sector of the sky regularly and Himmel never rested his eyes on one thing for more than a moment. Victor Löwenherz, on the other hand, with some effort of willpower concentrated solely upon working the radar. As far as he was concerned the plane was under Himmel’s control. His father had always boasted that he could ride better, shoot better and even groom the horses and polish the equipment better than any man under his command. Similarly Oberleutnant Löwenherz was proud of his skill on the radar sets. Of course it was all very simple when your pilot was steering at the machine ahead for a test. In the black of night when the pilot relied solely upon his radar man’s guidance it was very different. He adjusted the controls again but the elevation tube was a mess and the range tube was almost as bad. It was closing far too fast. Himmel throttled back and even used some flap, but the old biplane was so slow that Himmel had to break away to port and come round behind him again.

In his mirror Himmel saw Löwenherz crouching close to the three radar screens. He said, ‘You’re right, Himmel, the ground echo at this height just wipes out the elevation blip. We’re probably scaring the fellow half to death.’

And scaring me too, thought Himmel. Here we are, perhaps the two most responsible and experienced pilots on the Staffel, compiling a blueprint for an air disaster: low altitude, speed close to stalling and formating on a strange aircraft. An accident investigation board would pillory both of us should anything happen.

Himmel rolled the little control wheel to close the flaps. He pushed the yellow throttle-knobs and the engine note modulated from baritone to tenor. It was a relief to open up the motors. The Richards were powerful machines but the heavy radar equipment and clumsy aerial array on the nose made them only too easy to stall. He made a wide arc round the little white biplane so that it wouldn’t be thrown around by the propwash. Himmel smiled as they passed, for the pilot had been so closely concerned with holding his horizon steady that he noticed the Junkers now for the first time. He stared in amazement at the huge black machine and its secret radar aerials. Then the white biplane dipped as the pupil began looking for his airfield.

The Junkers climbed steeply and continued north, skirting Leeuwarden to the west and continuing out to sea. To starboard lay Terschelling, one of the largest islands in the Frisian chain. The weather was excellent except on the far northeastern horizon where ice crystals of cunimbus clouds reached miles into the air and wore the dark skirt of falling rain. They continued over the Frisian Islands and out into the North Sea. Flecks of cloud made shadows on the water below them and sometimes there were shreds of white stratocumulus large enough to swallow the plane for a moment.

A few miles out they saw a coastal convoy. Keeping well clear of the wrecks that litter this coast, but inside the minefields that protected it, the convoy was making good progress through the calm sea. The Junkers was low enough to see the seamen moving on the decks and some of the old coal burners were making columns of smoke tall enough to reach them. They were a battered collection: half-painted funnels, rusty winches, dribbling scuppers and misplaced hatch-covers. Some of the deck cargoes were only half covered and a deck party was working feverishly on the tarpaulins. Himmel wondered why they bothered. The grimy condition of the coasters was belied by the fresh rain that had glossed their decks and given their hulls the polish of old jackboots. Two freighters had deck cargoes of honey-coloured fresh timber looking good enough to eat. There were Danes and Dutchmen; ancient coastal tankers low in the water, and at the front two French cargo liners making down the coast with machinery and chemicals. They were sailing the routes they had always sailed, some since before the first war. Strange that now they should have German naval destroyers, frigates and UJ boats fussing around their formations and German aircraft protecting them from the determined attacks of RAF planes. Stranger still when some of those RAF planes were manned by Frenchmen, Dutchmen and Danes. Two UJ boats – converted trawlers of about four hundred tons – detached themselves from the convoy and hurried to the rear. Now the convoy began changing course, but kept convoy discipline and good formation. Each wake was scratched crisp and white upon the azure ocean. It was a beautiful sight, enhanced by the red-and-yellow lights that climbed higher than the masts. The light cruiser was covered in winking lights as though every seaman aboard was sending a message to the plane, as indeed he was. Suddenly there was an explosion.

‘They’re firing at us,’ yelled Löwenherz, but his voice was drowned by the fierce bangs of the shells bursting around them. Now Himmel knew what was under the tarpaulins: guns. A near-miss rocked the aeroplane and wrenched the port wing upwards. He didn’t correct. He let the aeroplane skid down in a violent sideslip. Each exploding shell hung a new black smudge in the sky but the old smoke did not disappear, it slowly turned brown and the air around them was blotched with smelly smoke like a three-dimensional disease. The plane dropped through the bursting shells until the extra lift of the down-pointing wing, and the Junkers’ lateral stability, flattened it into straight and level flight just a hundred feet over the wave-tops.

Now they were within range of the flak ship’s 3.7 cm guns and even the multiple 2-cms. The pom-poms added a new descant to the bass rhythms of the heavies. Himmel let down even lower until they were only ten feet above the water. The sea was a different colour close to: a cold steely grey flecked with dirty spumé. Broken timber and refuse pockmarked its heaving surface, and so did the splashes of flak shells.

Himmel moved the throttles forward and, with touches of rudder, danced across the wave-tops low enough for spray to mottle the windscreen. The ship’s gunners were aiming off skilfully. Their yellow lights spanned the water to make a fairy bridge between aeroplane and convoy. Soon they were far enough away for the bridge to fall into the water behind them. Himmel reset the trim wheel and pulled the nose up into a gentle climb.

Ahead was Holland. Marking its coastline high in the air there was another ‘land’ of cumulus conjured up by the sea breeze from a cloudless sky. Himmel kept the Junkers’ nose up. By the time they reached the coast they would be above those clouds. How beautiful they were: dark grey undersides, golden rims and fluffy white tops with occasional gaps revealing intense blue sky above.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ asked Himmel.

‘I’m fine. Is the aircraft functioning?’

‘It took a couple of knocks but the controls are working.’

‘That was damned remarkable flak, Himmel.’

‘They get a lot of practice.’

‘They get trigger-happy too,’ said Löwenherz.

They both laughed too much and the tension was relieved.

‘Do you remember that fellow they called Porky?’ asked Löwenherz.

‘Ostend in May 1941. When Karl Reinhold phoned him at the Alert Hut and told him he’d been awarded the Knight’s Cross …’

‘… for low-level attacks against friendly shipping,’ hooted Löwenherz. ‘Then he phoned me, but luckily you’d warned me that they would play pranks upon the new boys.’

‘They always did.’

‘You saved me being made a fool of, Christian.’

‘You were a good wingman.’

‘And now I’m your Staffelkapitän. It’s funny how things work out.’

‘You should be the Kommodore,’ said Christian Himmel.

‘For God’s sake, Christian, why did you take those documents?’

‘Is that why the Herr Oberleutnant came along?’ Himmel had moved into the respectful third person.

‘Of course it is, Christian.’

‘It was a matter of honour, Herr Oberleutnant.’

‘Honour?’

‘Those documents shame us all.’

‘What are you saying? What sort of documents were they?’

‘They didn’t tell you, eh? Well, perhaps they were ashamed. Even shame is progress.’ Himmel reached into his flying overalls and pulled out a bulky document with brown-paper covers. He passed it over his shoulder to Löwenherz. ‘Read it first, Herr Oberleutnant. Then you’ll see why I have to go through with this.’

It was not an impressive-looking dossier. There was a metal clip holding it together and a Luftwaffe eagle rubber-stamped on to the cover. Along the top it said ‘Luftwaffe High Command: Medical Corps: Secret’. It wasn’t a printed document. It was a duplicated typescript and in places the words were scarcely legible.

‘Go through with what?’

‘Please read it, sir.’

At first Löwenherz was inclined to return it to Himmel unopened. He feared he was being drawn into a tacit conspiracy. For some time he stared out from the cramped little pulpit and watched the green sea creep past. By the time they crossed the coastline the cumulus fractus was below them, but only by an arm’s reach. It stretched before them like a blinding white wasteland of ice and snow. The motors held a bass note like an organ pipe and the plane trembled with its power. Oberleutnant Löwenherz made his decision: he undid the metal clip and began reading the stolen medical report.

The convoy resumed the proper course after its evasive zigzagging. The destroyers and other armed ships hurried up and down, chivvying the merchantmen into line with loud-hailers and signal lamps. At the rear the light cruiser Held maintained a dignified straight course like a mother hen. The Held had been the 3,500-ton light cruiser Jan Koppelstok of the Royal Netherlands Navy until 1940 when she was seized by the Germans and refitted as an anti-aircraft ship. In the forecastle battery, hidden by the steel door, a gunner named Franz Pawlak was smoking a cheroot. His loader cleaned the breech of the 10.5-cm Model 37 with care and affection. They were both wearing the hooded fur-lined winter clothing that had been designed for the Russian Front. It gave them some protection against the piercing North Sea winds that even in the middle of summer chilled professional sailors to the bone.

The gun crews suffered even more, for many of them were ex-Luftwaffe personnel, most of whom found it hard to adapt to the rigours of a seaman’s life. Obergefreite Franz Pawlak did. He had joined the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain, when cinema newsreels showed pilots relaxing in deckchairs between jousting amid puffy white clouds, yelling ‘Spitfire’ and smiling in the sunlight as high-ranking leaders shook their hands firmly and garlanded them with medals. Franz had been washed out of pilot school after a very bumpy solo landing. His marks in navigation theory had precluded his transfer to observer school and by the time he arrived as an officer candidate for the flak service he was confused and demoralized. He flunked, and was now an Obergefreite on a flak ship with precious little chance of becoming anything better. Franz loathed all aeroplanes with a terrible and sustained hatred. The previous month he and his gun crew had been credited with an RAF Blenheim bomber shot down. The gun barrel wore a white ring to celebrate it. Franz wanted to add another ring only a little less than he wanted to become a civilian again. His K3, a plump butcher’s delivery boy from Königsberg, was flushed with the exertion of loading 15-kg shells on to the awkward, steeply inclined loading-tray. He was arguing with Franz. ‘You can’t paint a white ring on the barrel until the destruction of the plane is confirmed. That’s the captain’s orders.’

‘You saw it come down,’ said Franz. ‘Now am I the best gunner in the whole damn convoy?’

‘It may have dived to sea level to avoid the gunfire, Admiral.’ Both his friends and his enemies called Franz Pawlak ‘Admiral’.

‘Get the white paint. We shot it down, I tell you.’

‘I still say it might have been one of ours.’

‘What are you talking about, Klaus, every gun in the convoy was firing,’ said Franz.

‘They didn’t start until you did,’ said Klaus.

‘Exactly. When I started, old glass-nose gave the order.’

‘I’m still frightened it might have been one of ours. It looked very like a Junkers 88 and it flew south to escape.’

‘Beaufighter. A Bristol Beaufighter. Anyway, it was an aeroplane,’ said Franz. ‘Aeroplanes drop bombs and any aeroplane that comes within range of this contraption gets shot at. Now will you get the white paint?’

‘Whatever you say, Admiral. We’ll be the only gun on the Held with two victory rings, providing the old man doesn’t make us paint it out again.’

‘I tell you something, Dikke,’ said Franz, prodding his friend in the belly. ‘We’re averaging eight and a half knots and if that damned Danish bucket doesn’t have any more steering-gear trouble we’ll be sailing past the Hook of Holland by midnight. That’s the place for aeroplanes; the RAF are over there nearly every night lately.’ He stroked the barrel of the big gun. ‘By tomorrow morning, Heini, we might have three rings on our Würstchen. Now wouldn’t that be something to write to your cousin Sylvia about?’

Klaus Munte looked at his friend and smiled, but if there was anything he hated more than to be called ‘fatty’ it was to be called Heini. ‘By tonight the war might be over,’ said Munte.

‘It won’t be over for me,’ said Pawlak.

In this, as in so much of his plausible patter, he was wrong.

What Löwenherz had before him was one of the most bizarre, macabre and horrifying documents produced by a civilized society.

‘Freezing Experiments with Human Beings’ was a thirty-two-page report drawn up by Dr Sigmund Rascher of the Luftwaffe Medical Corps, helped by a professor of medicine at the University of Kiel. The experiments took place at Dachau concentration camp and consisted of putting naked prisoners into ice-water or leaving them out in the snow until they froze to death. Their temperatures were taken from time to time and recorded by the doctors. After death there was an autopsy.

Dr Sigmund Rascher had moved the Luftwaffe’s decompression chamber from Munich to Dachau concentration camp a few kilometres down the road. Two hundred prisoners were put into this chamber and each was depressurized until his body exploded. The report on this series of experiments was sent to the Medical Inspector of the Luftwaffe in the summer of 1942.

The third and final part of the stolen file was a report of Dr Rascher’s ‘warming experiments’. These were even more perverted. Male prisoners were frozen almost to death in ice-water and then placed in a bed between two naked women. (The women were prisoners from Ravensbrück concentration camp.) Dr Rascher noted in great detail the sexual reactions of the half-dead men and to what extent these improved their chance of survival. He reported in a paper dated February 1943 and marked Secret.

It stabbed Löwenherz to the heart of his belief. Of course he had misgivings; few men didn’t. Baron Löwenherz, his father, had not disbelieved the rumours; he called them symptoms of unrest. The Nazi Party was a bridge to sanity, a stage between the 1918 breakdown on the home front and the return to a natural state of things where a strong German officer corps held Germany’s honour in trust. For the time being the nation was in the hands of these Bavarians and among them there were some villainous rascals, but better this sort of revolutionary than the Bolshevik variety, who was prepared to butcher families because their hands were clean or their names patrician. Inventive, creative men are inclined to be ruthless, the baron had told him. We must work with these Nazi condottieri, just as Leonardo had to work with Machiavelli, with Cesare Borgia and with his Count Sforza; just as three centuries later the Industrial Revolution pushed aside philosophers and humanitarians so that single-minded despots ruled Europe. They put children up chimneys and women down mines, they bullied, cheated, bribed and literally worked their employees to death. They caused misery and strife but, as we now know, the Industrial Revolution put Europe a century ahead of the rest of the world.

Now the Nazis are transforming Germany with a similar single-minded ruthlessness. Of course we can’t approve of the sort of things that occur, these camps that people speak of in whispers, the witch-hunts for Jews and Communists, the ‘gunboat diplomacy’ that Hitler used to annex Austria and then Czechoslovakia. These things are bad things, but they are all things that Britain did, or would have done if necessary, to achieve its position as a world power. If Hitler cheats he cheats for Germany, if he steals he steals for Germany, if he kills then this he does for Germany too. If he needs our help then the officer corps must give it, generously and unstintingly.

All these things that his father had told him Löwenherz explained to Christian Himmel, but Christian remained unconvinced.

‘But what would you achieve if you gave these unpleasant documents to the British? Would you like their propaganda people to reveal such things to the world?’

‘I? Give them to the British?’ said Himmel. ‘Is that what they told you?’

‘Then what do you want with the papers?’

‘It’s very simple,’ said Himmel. ‘These things are being done in our name, Herr Oberleutnant. Oh, it sounds very grand when you say it’s for Germany, but these things are being done on behalf of us aviators. The research will be used to help us survive should we force-land in the ocean or the Arctic. But, Herr Oberleutnant, do you know a flyer who wouldn’t sooner die than have these disgusting experiments done to prisoners?’

‘None,’ agreed Löwenherz. ‘But that’s because we should ask them the question while they are warm and dry and on the ground, perhaps sitting back in the Mess with a cognac in their hand. Ask a flyer that question a few moments after he has crashed in the cold sea and perhaps he’ll decide differently.’

‘I won’t.’

‘No. Because you are an idealist, Christian. I remember the time when you spoke of the Nazis as though they were saviours of our land.’ Exactly, in fact, as the old baron had spoken of them. ‘Now you’re disillusioned,’ continued Löwenherz. ‘You’re bitter and resentful of your own ingenuous feelings. You’re angry because the Nazis have never delivered something they didn’t promise.’

‘Of course I am,’ said Himmel, ‘but that doesn’t mean I was right then, nor that I am wrong now.’

‘It means that you should consider matters at greater length and not rush headlong into danger.’

‘No, with respect, Herr Oberleutnant, no. We have all delayed too long. While the victories arrived on schedule we all put our conscience in pawn to success. It’s only now, when the future looks less rosy, that we are beginning to wonder if the “new order” has been built upon sand.’

‘But the documents, Himmel. What do you want with them?’

‘I made twenty-three photographic copies of the documents. Each copy was sent by normal mail to a Luftwaffe officer. I considered the list for a long time, Herr Oberleutnant. You are number twenty-three; that is your copy. The original has been posted to the Medical Inspectorate of the Luftwaffe in Berlin.’

There was silence. A tuft of cloud was decapitated by the black wing. Other larger tufts raced after it. Then Löwenherz said, ‘It doesn’t make it legal because you sent it only to Luftwaffe officers. It was a highly secret document.’

‘It’s hardly less secret now that twenty-three Luftwaffe officers have a copy. But from now on they can’t pretend they don’t know of these things. They must protest. They must raise their voices. From now on they can never say they have not heard of concentration camps …’

‘What do you know of concentration camps, Christian?’

‘I know, sir, that at least three airmen at Kroonsdijk have spent time in such places for small political offences. Even if we have three times the average, that still leaves one man on every Luftwaffe airfield who has been in such a place. How much longer can the whole nation pretend that they don’t know what we are doing in Europe, from Bordeaux to Leningrad: prisoners tortured, civilians killed, hostages executed? Now this is something that puts the honour of the Luftwaffe in jeopardy. Reichsmarschall Göring will have received one of these copies. He will understand what must be done.’ A large cloud-fragment swallowed the aeroplane and disgorged it.

‘They will arrest you, Christian,’ said Löwenherz. ‘Perhaps as soon as tomorrow.’

‘Yes,’ said Himmel. ‘Tomorrow I shall be arrested. But tomorrow I shall not be agonizing with my conscience, nor shall I be making excuses for the Nazis, nor shall I be fighting so that even more foreign prisoners can be experimented upon in concentration camps by insane doctors wearing the same uniform that I am wearing.’

‘Stop talking, Himmel. I must have time to think.’ The cloud-top was higher inland and suddenly the Junkers was totally enveloped in it. Now that it was pressing against the window it was no longer soft, dry, white, sun-tipped and inviting. It was grey, wet, cold and threatening. They could see nothing. The cloud gave a curious unnatural constant light to the cabin, and the two men sat very still, brightly lit and shadowless, like specimens on a microscope slide.