The Looking Glass War (2 page)

Lansen will never make it in this, never.

His heart stood still. Softly at first, then rising swiftly to a wail, he heard the klaxons, all four together, moaning out over that godforsaken airfield like the howl of starving animals. Fire … the plane must be on fire. He’s on fire and he’s going to try and land … he turned frantically, looking for someone who could tell him.

The barman was standing beside him, polishing a glass, looking through the window.

‘What’s going on?’ Taylor shouted. ‘Why are the sirens going?’

‘They always make the sirens in bad weather,’ he replied. ‘It is the law.’

‘Why are they letting him land?’ Taylor insisted. ‘Why don’t they route him farther south? It’s too small, this place; why don’t they send him somewhere bigger?’

The barman shook his head indifferently. ‘It’s not so bad,’ he said indicating the airfield. ‘Besides, he is very late. Maybe he has no petrol.’

They saw the plane low over the airfield, her lights alternating above the flares; her spotlights scanned the runway. She was down, safely down, and they heard the roar of her throttle as she began the long taxi to the reception point.

The bar had emptied. He was alone. Taylor ordered a drink. He knew his drill: stay put in the bar, Leclerc had said, Lansen will meet you in the bar. He’ll take a bit of time; got to cope with his flight documents, clear his cameras. Taylor heard the children singing downstairs, and a woman leading them. Why the hell did he have to be surrounded by kids and women? He was doing a man’s job, wasn’t he, with five thousand dollars in his pocket and a phoney passport?

‘There are no more flights today,’ the barman said. ‘They have forbidden all flying now.’

Taylor nodded. ‘I know. It’s bloody shocking out there, shocking.’

The barman was putting away bottles. ‘There was no danger,’ he added soothingly. ‘Captain Lansen is a very good pilot.’ He hesitated, not knowing whether to put away the Steinhäger.

‘Of course there wasn’t any danger,’ Taylor snapped. ‘Who said anything about danger?’

‘Another drink?’ the barman said.

‘No, but you have one. Go on, have one yourself.’

The barman reluctantly gave himself a drink, locked the bottle away.

‘All the same, how do they do it?’ Taylor asked. His voice was conciliatory, putting it right with the barman. ‘They can’t see a thing in weather like this, not a damn thing.’ He smiled knowingly. ‘You sit there in the nose and you might just as well have your eyes shut for all the good they do. I’ve seen it,’ Taylor added, his hands loosely cupped in front of him as though he were at the controls. ‘I know what I’m talking about … and they’re the first to catch it, those boys, if something
does
go wrong.’ He shook his head. ‘They can keep it,’ he declared. ‘They’re entitled to every penny they earn. Specially in a kite that size. They’re held together with string, those things; string.’

The barman nodded distantly, finished his drink, washed up the empty glass, dried it and put it on the shelf under the counter. He unbuttoned his white jacket.

Taylor made no move.

‘Well,’ said the barman with a mirthless smile, ‘we have to go home now.’

‘What do you mean
we
?’ Taylor asked, opening his eyes wide and tilting back his head. ‘What do you mean?’ He’d take on anyone now; Lansen had landed.

‘I have to close the bar.’

‘Go home indeed. Give us another drink, come on. You can go home if you like. I happen to live in London.’ His tone was challenging, half playful, half resentful, gathering volume. ‘And since your aircraft companies are unable to
get
me to London, or any other damn place until tomorrow morning, it’s a bit silly of you to tell me to go there, isn’t it, old boy?’ He was still smiling, but it was the short, angry smile of a nervous man losing his temper. ‘And next time you accept a drink from me, chum, I’ll trouble you to have the courtesy …’

The door opened and Lansen came in.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen; this wasn’t the way they’d described it at all. Stay in the bar, Leclerc had said, sit at the corner table, have a drink, put your hat and coat on the other chair as if you’re waiting for someone. Lansen always has a beer when he clocks in. He likes the public lounge, it’s Lansen’s style. There’ll be people milling about, Leclerc said. It’s a small place but there’s always something going on at these airports. He’ll look around for somewhere to sit – quite open and above board – then he’ll come over and ask you if anyone’s using the chair. You’ll say you kept it free for a friend but the friend hadn’t turned up: Lansen will ask if he can sit there. He’ll order a beer, then say, ‘Boy friend or girl friend?’ You’ll tell him not to be indelicate, and you’ll both laugh a bit and get talking. Ask the two questions: height and airspeed. Research Section must know the height and airspeed. Leave the money in your overcoat pocket. He’ll pick up your coat, hang his own beside it and help himself quietly, without any fuss, taking the envelope and dropping the film into your coat pocket. You finish your drinks, shake hands, and Bob’s your uncle. In the morning you fly home. Leclerc had made it sound so simple.

Lansen strode across the empty room towards them, a tall, strong figure in a blue mackintosh and cap. He looked briefly at Taylor and spoke past him to the barman: ‘Jens, give me a beer.’ Turning to Taylor he said, ‘What’s yours?’

Taylor smiled thinly. ‘Some of your local stuff.’

‘Give him whatever he wants. A double.’

The barman briskly buttoned up his jacket, unlocked the cupboard and poured out a large Steinhäger. He gave Lansen a beer from the cooler.

‘Are you from Leclerc?’ Lansen inquired shortly. Anyone could have heard.

‘Yes.’ He added tamely, far too late, ‘Leclerc and Company, London.’

Lansen picked up his beer and took it to the nearest table. His hand was shaking. They sat down.

‘Then you tell me,’ he said fiercely, ‘which damn fool gave me those instructions?’

‘I don’t know.’ Taylor was taken aback. ‘I don’t even know what your instructions were. It’s not my fault. I was sent to collect the film, that’s all. It’s not even my job, this kind of thing. I’m on the overt side – courier.’

Lansen leant forward, his hand on Taylor’s arm. Taylor could feel him trembling. ‘I was on the overt side too. Until today. There were kids on that plane. Twenty-five German schoolchildren on Winter holidays. A whole load of kids.’

‘Yes.’ Taylor forced a smile. ‘Yes, we had the reception committee in the waiting-room.’

Lansen burst out, ‘What were we
looking
for, that’s what I don’t understand. What’s so exciting about Rostock?’

‘I tell you I’m nothing to do with it.’ He added inconsistently: ‘Leclerc said it wasn’t Rostock but the area south.’

‘The triangle south: Kalkstadt, Langdorn, Wolken. You don’t have to tell me the area.’

Taylor looked anxiously towards the barman.

‘I don’t think we should talk so loud,’ he said. ‘That fellow’s a bit anti.’ He drank some Steinhäger.

Lansen made a gesture with his hand as if he were brushing something from in front of his face. ‘It’s finished,’ he said. ‘I don’t want any more. It’s finished. It was OK when we just stayed on course photographing whatever there was; but this is too damn much, see? Just too damn, damn much altogether.’ His accent was thick and clumsy, like an impediment.

‘Did you get any pictures?’ Taylor asked. He must get the film and go.

Lansen shrugged, put his hand in his raincoat pocket and, to Taylor’s horror, extracted a zinc container for thirty-five-millimetre film, handing it to him across the table.

‘What was it?’ Lansen asked again. ‘What were they after in such a place? I went under the cloud, circled the whole area. I didn’t see any atom bombs.’

‘Something important, that’s all they told me. Something big. It’s got to be done, don’t you see? You can’t make illegal flights over an area like that.’ Taylor was repeating what someone had said. ‘It has to be an airline, a registered airline, or nothing. There’s no other way.’

‘Listen. They picked us up as soon as we got into the place. Two MIGs. Where did they come from, that’s what I want to know? As soon as I saw them I turned into cloud; they followed me. I put out a signal, asking for bearings. When we came out of the cloud, there they were again. I thought they’d force me down, order me to land. I tried to jettison the camera but it was stuck. The kids were all crowding the windows, waving at the MIGs. They flew alongside for a time, then peeled off. They came close, very close. It was bloody dangerous for the kids.’ He hadn’t touched his beer. ‘What the hell did they want?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t they order me down?’

‘I told you: it’s not my fault. This isn’t my kind of work. But whatever London are looking for, they know what they’re doing.’ He seemed to be convincing himself; he needed to believe in London. ‘They don’t waste their time. Or yours, old boy. They know what they’re up to.’ He frowned, to indicate conviction, but Lansen might not have heard.

‘They don’t believe in unnecessary risks either,’ Taylor said. ‘You’ve done a good job, Lansen. We all have to do our bit … take risks. We all do. I did in the war, you know. You’re too young to remember the war. This is the same job; we’re fighting for the same thing.’ He suddenly remembered the two questions. ‘What height were you doing when you took the pictures?’

‘It varied. We were down to six thousand feet over Kalkstadt.’

‘It was Kalkstadt they wanted most,’ Taylor said with appreciation. ‘That’s first-class, Lansen, first-class. What was your airspeed?’

‘Two hundred … two forty. Something like this. There was nothing there, I’m telling you, nothing.’ He lit a cigarette.

‘It’s the end now,’ Lansen repeated. ‘However big the target is.’ He stood up. Taylor got up too; he put his right hand in his overcoat pocket. Suddenly his throat went dry: the money, where was the money?

‘Try the other pocket,’ Lansen suggested.

Taylor handed him the envelope. ‘Will there be trouble about this? About the MIGs, I mean?’

Lansen shrugged. ‘I doubt it, it hasn’t happened to me before. They’ll believe me once; they’ll believe it was the weather. I went off course about halfway. There could have been a fault in the ground control. In the hand-over.’

‘What about the navigator? What about the rest of the crew? What do they think?’

‘That’s my business,’ said Lansen sourly. ‘You can tell London it’s the end.’

Taylor looked at him anxiously. ‘You’re just upset,’ he said, ‘after the tension.’

‘Go to hell,’ said Lansen softly. ‘Go to bloody hell.’ He turned away, put a coin on the counter and strode out of the bar, stuffing carelessly into his raincoat pocket the long buff envelope which contained the money.

After a moment Taylor followed him. The barman watched him push his way through the door and disappear down the stairs. A very distasteful man, he reflected; but then he never had liked the English.

Taylor thought at first that he would not take a taxi to the hotel. He could walk it in ten minutes and save a bit on subsistence. The airline girl nodded to him as he passed her on his way to the main entrance. The reception hall was done in teak; blasts of warm air rose from the floor. Taylor stepped outside. Like the thrust of a sword the cold cut through his clothes; like the numbness of an encroaching poison it spread swiftly over his naked face, feeling its way into his neck and shoulders. Changing his mind, he looked round hastily for a taxi. He was drunk. He suddenly realised: the fresh air had made him drunk. The rank was empty. An old Citroën was parked fifty yards up the road, its engine running. He’s got the heater on, lucky devil, thought Taylor and hurried back through the swing doors.

‘I want a cab,’ he said to the girl. ‘Where can I get one, d’you know?’ He hoped to God he looked all right. He was mad to have drunk so much. He shouldn’t have accepted that drink from Lansen.

She shook her head. ‘They have taken the children,’ she said. ‘Six in each car. That was the last flight today. We don’t have many taxis in Winter.’ She smiled. ‘It’s a very
little
airport.’

‘What’s that up the road, that old car? Not a cab, is it?’ His voice was indistinct.

She went to the doorway and looked out. She had a careful balancing walk, artless and provocative.

‘I don’t see any car,’ she said.

Taylor looked past her. ‘There was an old Citroën. Lights on. Must have gone. I just wondered.’ Christ, it went past and he’d never heard it.

‘The taxis are all Volvos,’ the girl remarked. ‘Perhaps one will come back after he has dropped the children. Why don’t you go and have a drink?’

‘Bar’s closed,’ Taylor snapped. ‘Barman’s gone home.’

‘Are you staying at the airport hotel?’

‘The Regina, yes. I’m in a hurry, as a matter of fact.’ It was easier now. ‘I’m expecting a phone call from London.’

She looked doubtfully at his coat; it was of rainproof material in a pebble weave. ‘You could walk,’ she suggested. ‘It is ten minutes, straight down the road. They can send your luggage later.’

Taylor looked at his watch, the same wide gesture. ‘Luggage is already at the hotel. I arrived this morning.’

He had that kind of crumpled, worried face which is only a hair’s breadth from the music halls and yet is infinitely sad; a face in which the eyes are paler than their environment, and the contours converge upon the nostrils. Aware of this, perhaps, Taylor had grown a trivial moustache, like a scrawl on a photograph, which made a muddle of his face without concealing its shortcomings. The effect was to inspire disbelief, not because he was a rogue but because he had no talent for deception. Similarly he had tricks of movement crudely copied from some lost original, such as an irritating habit which soldiers have of arching his back suddenly, as if he had discovered himself in an unseemly posture, or he would affect an agitation about the knees and elbows which feebly caricatured an association with horses. Yet the whole was dignified by pain, as if he were holding his little body stiff against a cruel wind.

‘If you walk quickly,’ she said, ‘it takes less than ten minutes.’