Ghost Flight (7 page)

It was on their third Brazilian training mission that events had taken an unexpected turn. In theory, Jaeger and his men were there purely to train the Brazilian special forces – the Brigada de Operacoes Especiais; the Brazilian Special Operations Brigade (B-SOB). But over time, bonds had been forged, and they’d come to revile the drugs traffickers – the narco gangs – almost as much as the B-SOB boys did.

When one of Captain Evandro’s B-SOB teams had gone missing, Jaeger and his men had taken matters into their own hands. It had become the longest foot patrol in Brazilian special-forces history. Jaeger had led it, with an equal number of B-SOB operators accompanying. They’d located the narco gang’s deep jungle hideout, studied it for several days, then launched a blistering assault.

In the ensuing bloodbath, the bad guys had been wiped out. Eight of Captain Evandro’s twelve men had been rescued alive – which in the circumstances was a result. But in the process, Jaeger himself had come close to losing his life, and it was Andy Smith’s bravery and selfless actions that had saved him.

And like Captain Evandro, Jaeger was not one to forget.

He eased the Explorer down the exit road signposted to Fonthill Bishop. He hit the outskirts of the picture-postcard village of Tisbury and flicked his eyes right, towards a house set a little back from the road. Its windows were lit up a faint yellow – mournful eyes blinking on to a fearful outside world.

The Millside: Jaeger had recognised the address the moment Raff had handed it to him.

Thatched, mossy, cottagey, creepers climbing hither and thither, with its own stream and a decent half-acre of land – Smithy had always had his eye on the place, ever since he’d moved into the area to be closer to his former commander and best friend, Will Jaeger. Evidently he’d finally got the house of his dreams – only Jaeger would have been a good two years into his disappearing act by then.

He pushed onwards out of the village, taking the winding, switchback lane leading towards Tuckingmill and East Hatch. He eased the bike beneath the railway bridge that carried the main line to London – the one he often used to take, when the weather was too cold and wet to countenance the long motorbike ride.

Momentarily his headlight caught the sign for New Wardour Castle. He turned right, pulled up a short length of lane and in through the modest stone gateposts.

His tyres hit the grand sweep of the gravel drive, the ranks of chestnut trees to either side like ghostly sentinels. An imposing country house, Wardour had been purchased as a near wreck by a school friend. Nick Tattershall had made a fortune in the City, using the money to restore New Wardour Castle to its former glory.

He’d split it into several apartments, keeping the largest for himself. But just as the work was nearing completion, Britain had hit one of her cyclical recessions and the property market had tanked. Tattershall had risked losing everything.

Jaeger had stepped in and purchased the first – still to be completed – apartment, his vote of confidence luring other buyers in. He’d got it at a knock-down price, so acquiring a piece of real estate the likes of which he could never normally have afforded.

In time, it had proven the perfect family home.

Set in the heart of a beautiful, sweeping expanse of parkland, it was utterly private and peaceful – yet only a couple of hours’ ride or train journey from London. Jaeger had managed to split work between here, the Thames barge and the
Global Endeavour
, never spending long away from the family.

He parked the bike in front of the imposing limestone facade. He slipped his key into the communal lock, stepped across the cool, marbled entranceway and made for the staircase. But even as he took the first of the stone steps, his legs felt weighed down with bittersweet memories.

So many good times had been had here.

So much happiness.

How could it all have gone so wrong?

He paused at the door to his apartment. He knew what awaited. He steeled himself, turned the key in the lock and stepped inside.

He flicked on the lights. Most of the furniture had been covered with dust sheets, but once a week his faithful cleaner, Mrs Sampson, came to dust and to hoover, and the place was scrupulously clean.

Jaeger paused for an instant. Right before him on the wall was a massive painting – a striking orange-fronted bird: the rufous-bellied thrush, one of the national symbols of Brazil. Painted by a well-known Brazilian artist, it had been a gift from Captain Evandro – his way of saying a very special thank you.

Jaeger loved the painting. It was why he’d placed it on the wall opposite the entrance, so it was the first thing you saw as you walked in.

When he’d left for Bioko, he’d asked Mrs Sampson not to sheet it over. He didn’t quite know why. Maybe he’d expected to be back sooner, and he’d wanted to know that the bird would be there, as always, waiting to greet him.

He turned left and stepped into the wide expanse of the living room. No point in throwing open the massive wooden shutters; it had long been dark outside. He flicked on the lights, and his eyes came to rest upon the indistinct form of the writing desk pushed against one wall.

He stepped towards it and very gently pulled the dust sheet aside.

He reached out with one hand, his fingers touching the face of the beautiful woman in the photo frame. His fingertips lingered, momentarily frozen to the glass. He sank to his haunches, until his eyes were level with the desk.

‘I’m back, Ruth,’ he whispered. ‘Three long years, but I’m back.’

He let his fingers drift down the glass, coming to rest upon the features of a young boy, standing somehow protectively at his mother’s side. Both were dressed in ‘Save the Rhino’ T-shirts; they’d purchased them on a family holiday to East Africa’s Amboseli National Park. Jaeger would never forget the midnight walking safari the three of them had taken, along with their Masai guides. They’d trekked across the moonlit savannah amongst herds of giraffe, wildebeest and, best of all, rhinos, the family’s favourite animal.

‘Luke – Daddy’s back . . .’ Jaeger murmured. ‘And God only knows how much I’ve missed you guys.’

He paused, a heavy silence echoing off the walls. ‘But, you know – there’s never been the slightest hint; not the vaguest proof of life. If you could just have sent me something; the barest sense of a sign. Anything. Smithy kept watch. He was eyes-on. Always. He promised to let me know.’

He picked up the photo and cradled it. ‘I went to the ends of the earth to try to find you. I’d have gone to the ends of the universe, even. Nowhere would have been too far. But for three long years there’s been nothing.’

He ran a hand across his face, as if brushing away the pain of those long missing years. When it came away, his eyes were damp with tears.

‘And I guess if we’re honest – if we’re truthful with each other – maybe it’s time. Time to say a proper goodbye . . . time to accept that you really are . . . gone.’

Jaeger bowed his head. His lips brushed the photograph. He kissed the woman’s face. Kissed that of his son. Then he placed the picture back on the desk, laying it gently on the dust sheet.

Face up, so he could see both of them, and remember.

10

Jaeger padded across the living room to the far side, where double doors opened on to what they’d dubbed the music room. One wall was shelved high with racks of CDs. He chose one – Mozart’s Requiem. He slipped it into the CD deck, flicked the power switch and it started to play.

The lilting melodies brought everything flooding back; all the family memories. For the second time in as many minutes, Jaeger found himself having to fight back the tears. He couldn’t allow himself to break down; to properly grieve. Not yet.

There was something else – something deeply, deeply troubling – that he had come here for.

He dragged the battered steel trunk out from its place beneath the music stand. For a moment his eyes lingered on the initials stencilled on the lid: W. E. J. – William Edward ‘Ted’ Jaeger. His grandfather’s war chest, which he’d gifted to Jaeger shortly before he died.

As the Requiem swelled to a first crashing crescendo, Jaeger thought back over the times Grandpa Ted had sneaked him into his study, allowing Jaeger to share a pull on his tobacco pipe, and enjoy a few precious moments – grandfather with grandchild – rifling through this very trunk.

Grandpa Ted’s pipe, eternally clamped between his teeth. The smell: Player’s Navy Cut and whisky-steeped tobacco. Jaeger could almost see the scene now – the occasional smoke ring blown by his grandfather dancing soft and ethereal in the light of his desk lamp.

Jaeger flicked open the clasps and hinged back the trunk’s heavy lid. On top lay one of his favourite mementoes: a leather-bound file, stamped in faded red lettering:
TOP SECRET
. And below that:
Officer Commanding No. 206 Liaison Unit.

It had always struck Jaeger as odd that the contents of the file had never quite lived up to the promise of the cover.

Inside were booklets of Second World War radio frequencies and codes, diagrams of main battle tanks, blueprints of turbines, compasses and engines. It had proven utterly fascinating to a child; but as an adult, Jaeger had realised that there was nothing in there with much relevance to the file’s cover, or warranting such excessive secrecy.

It was almost as if his grandpa had put together the file’s contents to fascinate and entertain an adolescent boy, but to give nothing of any sensitivity – of any real value – away.

After his grandpa’s death, Jaeger had tried to research the No. 206 Liaison Unit, to better trace its history. But there was nothing. The National Archives; the Imperial War Museum; the Admiralty: every archive that should have contained some form of record – if only a war diary – was devoid of any mention.

It was almost as if the No. 206 Liaison Unit had never existed; as if it were a ghost squadron.

And then he’d found something.

Or rather, Luke had.

His eight-year-old son had proven equally fascinated by the contents of the trunk – his great-grandpa’s heavy commando knife; his much-lived-in beret; his battered iron compass. And one day Jaeger’s son’s hands had dug deep, to the very bottom of the trunk, and found what had been for so long hidden.

Working feverishly, Jaeger did similarly now, emptying the contents on to the floor. There was so much Nazi memorabilia in there: an SS Death’s Head badge, skull fixed in an enigmatic smile; a Hitler Youth dagger, its hilt displaying a picture of the Führer; a necktie of the Werewolves – the diehard Nazi resistance set up to fight on after the war proper had been lost.

Occasionally Jaeger had wondered if his grandfather had grown too close to the Nazi regime, so much of its memorabilia had he seemingly hoarded. Whatever he had done during the war, had it somehow brought him perilously close to the evil and the darkness? Had it seeped into him, making him its own?

Jaeger didn’t believe so, but he’d never been able to have those kind of conversations before his grandfather had unexpectedly passed away.

He paused at a distinctive-looking book, one that he’d almost forgotten was in the trunk. It was a rare copy of the Voynich manuscript, a richly illustrated medieval text written entirely in a mystery language. Strangely, that book had permanently graced the desk in his grandfather’s study, and it had come to Jaeger along with the trunk’s contents.

It was another of the things that he had never got to raise with his grandfather: why this fascination with an obscure and unintelligible medieval manuscript?

Jaeger removed the heavy book, revealing the false wooden bottom built into the trunk. He’d never worked out if his grandfather had left the document in there by accident, or if he had done so deliberately, hoping that his grandson would one day find the concealed compartment.

Either way, it had been there, hidden amongst a bunch of war mementoes, waiting three decades or more to be discovered.

Jaeger’s fingers delved below the wooden boards, found the latch to the compartment and flicked it open. He felt around and pulled out the fat, yellowing envelope, holding it before him with hands that were visibly shaking. A part of him absolutely did not want to look inside, but a greater part knew that he had to.

He pulled out the document.

Typeset, stapled along one side, it was just as he had remembered it. Across the top of the cover in the thick gothic script synonymous with Hitler’s Nazi regime was one word, in capitals:
KRIEGSENTSCHEIDEND

Jaeger’s German was practically non-existent, but via a German–English dictionary he’d managed to translate the few words on the document’s cover.
Kriegsentscheidend
was the highest security classification ever awarded by the Nazis. The nearest British equivalent would be ‘Beyond Top Secret – Ultra’.

Below that was typed:
Aktion Werwolf
– ‘Operation Werewolf’.

Below that again, a date, which needed no translation: 12 February 1945.

And finally,
Nur fur Augen
Sicherheitsdienst
Standortwechsel Kommando
– ‘For Sicherheitsdienst Standortwechsel Kommando eyes only’.

The Sicherheitsdienst was the security service of the SS and the Nazi party – the apex of evil. Standortwechsel Kommando
translated as ‘the Relocation Commando’
,
which meant practically nothing to Jaeger. He’d googled both mystery references, ‘Operation Werewolf’
and ‘Relocation Commando’, in English and in German.

They had turned up nothing.

Not one single reference out there anywhere in the ether.

That was about as far as his investigatory efforts had got, for the darkness – and his flight to Bioko – had descended shortly thereafter. But it was clearly a document that had been of extremely high sensitivity at the time of the war, one that had somehow fallen into his grandfather’s hands.

Yet it was the page that followed which had triggered Jaeger’s memories, drawing him from London to Wiltshire, back to his – largely abandoned – family home.