A Good Clean Fight (44 page)

“Trip-wires are good for twenty-four hours, maximum.
Then they break. See that man?” Schramm pointed to an elderly Arab in a distant field. “He's looking for a lost camel. At any given moment half the Arab population of Libya is out looking for lost camels. The camels break our trip-wires. If not camels, then goats, donkeys, sheep.”

“Have you ever thought of planting decoy aircraft? Or dummies? You could booby-trap them.”

“I'd certainly like to try. Can't get the resources. Wood, canvas, paint, skilled men—all are scarce. I thought of towing in some wrecked 109s and cannibalizing them, but the salvage people got there first.”

“Plenty of wrecked Hurricanes in the desert.”

“I've tried, Benno. No transporters, no lifting gear, no spare fuel.”

They walked in silence toward the admin block. A pair of 109s drifted in over their heads, and growled and sighed toward the point of touchdown as smoothly as if they were sliding down a pair of banisters. The spindly sets of undercarriage seemed to brace themselves for the shock, and then the airplanes were taxiing, blowing back the inevitable dust-clouds.

“Why have trip-wires?” Hoffmann asked suddenly. “I mean, what's the point?”

“To defend the airfield.”

“You don't care about the airfield. You care about the
aircraft.
Why not put trip-wires around the aircraft? And place a guard in each cockpit all night.”

At once, Schramm saw the simple good sense of the idea. “Yes,” he said. “We could rig the trip-wire to a warning signal in the cockpit.”

“Twelve planes, twelve men. That's all you need.”

“I should have thought of that,” Schramm said. “Come on. You've earned yourself a large drink.”

It turned out to be a very quick drink. The mess telephone rang: Hoffmann was needed in his office. But the medical officer, Max, was nursing a beer, so Schramm
joined him. “Fallen in love with your consultant yet?” Max asked.

The question disturbed Schramm so much that he covered his feelings with a cough that sounded, even to his ears, dishonest. “Should I?” he said.

“Everyone does, sooner or later.”

“Including you?”

Max smirked. “She and I are colleagues, so that comes under the heading of confidential information. Still, she's a darling, isn't she?”

Schramm nodded. It was the wrong word, far too happy and delightful, but the very sound of it jolted his senses. If he could utter that word to her . . . Absurd. Impossible. “And remarkably well qualified,” he said soberly. “For a woman.”

“Not bad. First-class qualifications in surgery, pathology and psychiatry, that I know of. Probably more that I don't.”

Schramm scratched his leg and thought of his piddling desert sores. “We're damn lucky to have her.” And then he remembered what she had said to him:
Ask Max.
“So what the devil's she doing, stuck in Benghazi?”

“Exiled, Paul, exiled. Maria's been here since long before war broke out. You can't stop a woman like her from using her mind. Trouble is, she speaks her mind too.”

“I noticed.”

“So did II Duce's government. Dr. Grandinetti pointed out very clearly what she considered to be the failings of Fascism, and they said shut up, and she went on, so they arrested her. Next day she was on a boat. This would be in '36 or '37. They dumped her in a two-room clinic somewhere up in the hills, surrounded by Italian colonists who came here because they were too stupid to make a living back home.”

“I'd heard rumors,” Schramm said, “but this is the first case of exile I've actually met.”

“Oh, they're all over the place,” Max declared. “If you ever need a really tricky operation, very cheap, get yourself up into the poorest, filthiest mountain village in Italy. You'll find an exiled brain surgeon lancing the boil on a farmer's backside.”

“Is that what Maria did?”

“Yes. Boils, childbirth, tonsils, ringworm, fractures, burns, amputations, dentistry: you name it. Then Mussolini decided to overthrow the British Empire and she was summoned to Benghazi to help repair the flower of Italian youth, which was beginning to arrive with alarmingly large holes in it.”

“Extraordinary.”

“Not at all. Quite routine.” Max finished his beer. “Don't let her break your heart, Paul. She's not worth it. No woman is.”

“Thanks. Have you got a degree in psychiatry too?”

Max stared at nothing, as if thinking hard, and produced a short, soft belch. “You agree it's a form of madness, then,” he said. “Love, I mean. What I believe the army calls a self-inflicted wound.” He left before Schramm could find an answer.

Maybe there was no answer, he thought. Maybe Max was right. While they had been talking, this war had killed several hundred men in various parts of the world. Women, too. Convoys were being torpedoed, factories bombed, whole cities fought over, and yet Paul Schramm, who couldn't even stand up straight, awoke every morning thinking of Maria Grandinetti. It was bizarre. She probably treated him as an amusing example of some middle-aged folly, the kind of thing psychiatrists talked about during the coffee-break at conferences. Bloody foot! It was all the fault of his bloody foot. He kicked it and made it hurt. Serve it right.

Hoffmann's return saved it from further pain.

“I can't make any sense of this,” he said. He handed
Schramm some large photo-reconnaissance prints, still tacky with developing fluid. Some small areas had been circled in crayon. Inside the circles were clusters of tiny dots, tinier than pinheads.

Schramm peered at them. “The plane was high enough, wasn't it?”

“I told the pilot to stay high. If Jakowski's about to make a kill, I don't want the enemy scared off by an inquisitive aircraft. Anyway, these pictures were taken early in the morning, so the shadows are good and crisp. The experts with the magnifying glasses tell me those dots are Jakowski's force. Trouble is, twenty trucks are missing.”

Schramm made the prints overlap to form a bigger picture. “Trucks don't get lost in the desert,” he said. “Even if they got burned or shot-up, we'd still see the wreckage . . . They might be in Jalo, I suppose. Under the palm trees.”

“Why Jalo?”

“Why indeed? Jakowski won't find the SAS
there.”

“I don't like it,” Hoffmann said. “I smell . . . I don't know what I smell, but it stinks.”

“Send him a signal. Ask him to confirm that all is well.”

“Maybe I will.” But Hoffmann didn't move.

“Is that the Sand Sea?” Schramm put his finger on a thick bank of ripples, strongly contrasted in black and white, running to the edge of the print.

“He wouldn't send twenty trucks into the Sand Sea, Paul. What's the point? There's nothing to find in there.”

“True. Nothing but shadows.” Schramm shuffled the prints together, made them square, and ruffled the edges with his thumb. “Twenty trucks is a lot of trucks to fall off the map.”

“I'll leave it until tomorrow,” Hoffmann decided. “I can't believe . . .” He shrugged.

“Look: here's a suggestion. Why don't I go and pick
Captain di Marco's brains? He knows the Sahara inside out.” Schramm spread his hands. “You never know.”

“Take the prints,” Hoffmann said.

*   *   *

Next morning, early, Skull told the CO what Hooper had done. Barton was amused. “Bless my soul!” he said. “Fancy that nice Mr. Hooper being so beastly to the Hun! And to think he only came here to learn the tricks of the trade.”

“If we shoot up their ambulances—”

“They'll shoot up ours. I know. Who gives a toss? Do you care how many pongoes get the chop? Neither do I. Sod 'em. Our bloody ack-ack does its best to kill us, doesn't it?”

Skull was silenced. He was also hungover. His brain throbbed and his eyes ached. Fanny, by contrast, was bright and brisk. He must have a head like a brass bucket.

“Coming to briefing?” Fanny said. “You can tell them about the ambulances.”

“You don't need a briefing. You've only got four pilots left. Just stand in the middle of the field and shout.”

“That's a good idea.” Fanny put his arm around Skull's shoulder as they strolled away. “You're good at words. Tell me what to shout.”

Skull squinted at Fanny's hand. “What's this in aid of? Last night I pointed out a certain blatant cognitive dissonance within your claims, and you got blotto and tried to kill me.”

“I can't shout all that, Skull. Especially the blatant bit, whatever it was. They wouldn't understand. I didn't. They're just decent, friendly, hardworking fighter pilots who want to be loved. Give 'em a bucket of blood for breakfast and they'll kick an orphan to death if you promise them a kiss afterward.”

Skull attended the briefing. All five aircraft would patrol at twenty thousand feet. Nothing was said about strafing or about ambulances and the pilots seemed quite cheerful.

After they took off, Skull went to the mess tent and found the adjutant chatting with Hauptmann Winkler. “Feeling better?” Skull said.

“Better than what?” Kellaway said.

“Nothing. Slip of the tongue.” If Kellaway couldn't remember anything, there was no point in reminding him. Geraldo strutted in, took a long cold look at Skull, and avoided him. “This is Geraldo,” Skull said. “Some say he speaks Greek, but I have tried him on Socrates in the original and his response was discouraging. Forthright, colorful and pungent, but discouraging.”

“Did you know that our guest has read all of Sherlock Holmes?” Kellaway said. “Damn good show, I'd say.”

Winkler cleared his throat. “I wish to speak of my sadness at the death of the young officer who . . . with whom . . . He was . . .” He shook his head, unable to find the words.

“Butcher Bailey,” Kellaway said. “He was an awfully good type.” There was a long, uncomfortable pause. “Tell you what,” Kellaway said. “You can come to his funeral, if you like.”

Oh double-buggeration
, Skull thought. “We've done it, Uncle,” he said gently. “Did it yesterday afternoon. Had to. Couldn't wait.”

Kellaway's eyes flickered, but yesterday remained a blank. “We've been pretty busy lately,” he told Winkler.

That was when the doctor came in, holding a printed form. “How d'you spell ‘doolally'?” he asked.

“I should know,” Kellaway said, and rattled it off. “We had an awful lot of it in India, especially during the hot season. Some chaps can't take the sun. Go haywire. You see it in their eyes. You look all right,” he told the doctor. “Not so sure about old Skull here. Give him some
California syrup of figs, that's what he needs, a good purge to sort him out . . . Oh well. Time I got back to the office and did some bumf-shuffling. I keep asking Group for replacements, but the buggers never come.” He took his mug of tea and went.

“Did you have to do that?” Skull asked.

“Yeah!” The doctor made himself look reckless. “Teasing the lunatics is the only fun I get in my job.”

*   *   *

The sky was an icy blue at twenty thousand feet. The pilots were breathing oxygen, and the Tomahawks wallowed in the thin air like yachts on a mooring. Their Allison engines were toiling manfully and getting precious little reward. If someone made a hash of a turn, he soon lost half a mile and took five grim minutes to catch up.

Barton constantly looked down, searching for standing patrols of Me 109s. The others looked up and around, heads always turning. Twenty thousand feet was nothing to the enemy. He might be two miles above them, a tiny metal splinter hiding in the sun. Pip Patterson did not spare his neck muscles. Once, long ago in France, he had been part of a squadron that had landed minus two, and nobody had noticed their absence until then. Chilling to think that while you were cruising along, your tail-end Charlies were getting picked off. Too much sky. Too many blind spots.

The patrol churned and turned, swapped their glimpse of the remote Mediterranean from right to left and back again. Elsewhere, the Sahara rolled to all the horizons like an old carpet worn right through to its biscuity backing.

After thirty minutes Barton grew impatient and took them down to twelve thousand, then eight, then five. The enemy refused to be provoked. The sun climbed higher. Hot air tumbled up and spoiled the formation-keeping. “Sneezy,” Barton said. “This is as good as anywhere.”

The Pole shoved his canopy back and peeled off. Holding the stick with his knees, he tossed out the golf clubs that had belonged to Tiny Lush and Mick O'Hare. “Take that, bloody Nazi bastard shits,” he said. He rejoined the others. “What I hit?” he asked.

“Two Blenheims and a Liberator,” Patterson said.

“No cigar,” Hooper said.

They flew home. A Bristol Bombay transport was parked in a corner of the field, not far from the Brute. The Bombay had spatted wheels, twin engines on high wings and a blocky fuselage that looked as if it had been assembled from surplus packing crates. It was obsolete, slow and highly reliable.

Barton taxied to his desert-wagon and drove to his trailer. He could see Air Commodore Bletchley sitting on the steps, talking to the adjutant. Barton kept swallowing to suppress a sickness that attacked his throat. If they'd sent a bloody great Bombay, that meant he'd got the sack. It meant Takoradi had got the pilots and Hornet Squadron was dead. At first he'd thought maybe some replacements had arrived, but the Bombay was far too big for that. Anyway, they could have come in the Brute. It was all over. He got out and saluted: not a good salute, but his arm was weary. Bletchley stood and gave his old familiar half-smile: up one side and down the other. “I'll push off, sir,” the adjutant said. “See you at lunch, I hope.”

They went into the trailer. Barton dumped his stuff on his bunk: scarf, sweater, gloves, helmet, goggles, map. Half of it fell on the floor.