Piece of Cake (63 page)

Rex hauled the stick back and opened the throttle to climb and attack again, tracer still hounding him, and he wondered where everyone was. Then a pair of 109's appeared above. For a second they hung like trapeze artists at the height of their swing. They turned and dropped, and he climbed into their fire. Cannonshells ripped through his tank and the fuel gushed over his legs. Rex never saw that, never even heard the walloping impact. Before the stench of fuel could reach his nostrils, a bullet smashed into his oxygen bottle. It exploded. The Hurricane blew up like a bomb. Pure oxygen mixed with high-octane fuel made a furnace-heat that incinerated Rex, literally in a flash. His clothing turned to ash in a second, and his body was boiled in its own fluids. The cockpit melted around him. The fighter separated into a hundred parts which blew away like a handful of dust. Looking down, Pip Patterson saw only the flash of white, as stark as lightning. And then nothing.

For a moment what remained of the squadron cruised on. They were so bunched-up that Patterson and Gordon and Fitzgerald could see Moran and Barton gesturing furiously, shouting silently. The unknown pilot's transmission switch was still open, swamping all the earphones with his cockpit roar. Then CH3 went past them, waggling his wings. He put his nose up and fired a warning burst toward the pack of 109's, now tumbling out of the sky. At once the switch was closed. The formation relaxed and spread itself. Barton found himself in front, leading. “Trouble at ten o'clock,” he announced. “We'll go up and meet it.” The Hurricanes turned and climbed.

It was a quick scrap. Not even a proper fight: just a sudden firestorm. Cattermole, watching the 109's get bigger, told himself:
I've got a ton of engine to protect me.
The enemy arrived in a rush. Both sides blasted away. Cattermole's head wobbled to the pounding of his guns. The enemy vanished. Cattermole still lived.

The 109's outnumbered them four to one but they did not return for another attack. A more attractive target lay below. Battle
bombers, a dozen of them, came flying along the Meuse valley, their pattern heavily outlined by German flak. A couple of 109's, dribbling smoke, had broken off and were heading for home, but the rest went hunting the Battles. Barton's instinct was to dive and fight. “I'm hit in the engine, dammit,” someone complained. “Who's that?” he asked.

It was Pip Patterson. His engine was coughing and missing and shaking the plane so hard that it frightened him. Then Moran called up: he was losing glycol. “Any more?” Barton asked. Cox reported that his guns had jammed. Barton looked about him and saw Flash Gordon gesture thumbs-down and tap his earphones. Radio dead. God knows what else damaged. “Let's try and get back to Amifontaine,” Barton said. As they banked to head north he saw the 109's go slamming into the Battles. Before he had leveled out, two Battles were on fire and falling.

Moran had to switch off his engine when he lost all his coolant. They circled while he forced-landed in a field, and saw him get out. Patterson's engine shook itself to death soon afterward. He could see nothing but woodland beneath. He baled out. Six machines reached Amifontaine. Half of Flash Gordon's undercarriage collapsed on landing and the Hurricane made hectic circles across the grass, destroying its left wing.

Béziers, Narbonne, Carcassonne: the express raced smoothly across the south of France. Mary read a little, dozed, strolled up and down the corridor, read some more, watched the scenery stream by. At tea-time she went to the dining-car and got into conversation with a French naval officer returning to his ship in Bordeaux. He was able to recommend a good hotel not far from the station. They sat and talked for a long time: about the war, Fitz, education, gardening. They shared an enthusiasm for gardening. It was the only drawback to being in the Navy, he said. But he kept several gardening books in his cabin, so it wasn't so bad.

Nicole was having mixed luck. She walked to Épernay, searching always for the little old man on her bicycle, and half-afraid of finding him because what would she do then? Fight him for it? He might not have it with him, he might have hidden it. Take him to the police? He might refuse to go, might have large friends to protect him. Yet she couldn't discard the fact that he had stolen
her property, and in broad daylight. It was scandalous, intolerable. If you started letting people get away with that sort of thing, where would it all end?

She needn't have worried; she never saw him. At Épernay she pawned her watch for three hundred francs and ate some stew in a workmen's cafe. It was a good watch, a gift from Flash, and she hated losing it, but better to be with Flash than to know what time it was.

There was a bus service to Rheims and to her great surprise it was still running. She bought a cheap map and studied it as the bus wandered north by twisting country roads. Three roads went from Rheims toward Belgium. The one on the left, via St. Quentin, looked best. The one up the middle was more direct but it wiggled a lot. The one on the right went through the Ardennes, so the hell with
that.

The bus gave up on the outskirts of Rheims: refugees had arrived and the streets were choked with them. Nicole spent an exhausting, infuriating hour trying to find the railway station, and when she found it she couldn't even get inside. Furious at this shouting, squalid, sweating mob, she turned her back on them and determined to walk out of town, if possible pinching a bicycle on-the way. But there were no unguarded bicycles and she couldn't find the right road. A combination of German bombs and French military police had brought Rheims to a state of confusion.

The problem was that many bombs had failed to explode. Maybe they were duds. Maybe not. Whole streets were cordoned off. The detours were long and complicated, and at the end of them Nicole could not be sure she was going the right way because the military police had removed all road signs. Or, if not the military police, then fifth columnists posing as military police. Or Communist anarchists seeking to put the blame on fifth columnists. Rumors abounded. Certainly there were plenty of military policemen, shouting and blowing whistles as they struggled to get endless columns of trucks, guns and tanks through Rheims. The police had no time for Nicole; told her to get out without even looking at her. Eventually, by keeping the sun on her left, she found a road that pointed more or less toward Belgium and she reached the countryside. It was a fine road, good for walking, and she was well on her way before she discovered that it led to the Ardennes.

Debriefing took place in the corner of a hangar. It lasted only a minute. Fanny Barton answered for everybody.

Lots of enemy aircraft over the target. Short sharp scrap. Rex killed, Moran forced down. Patterson baled out. Two 109's damaged. Gordon's Hurricane a write-off.

“I see,” Skull said. It made a very concise report. They all seemed unusually silent. It wasn't the silence of fatigue: they were alert enough. He felt the need to contribute, and he said: “I suppose there's absolutely no doubt about Rex?”

“None.”

“I could easily organize a search, if you think …”

“No. Forget it.”

“Oh.” Skull felt excluded. “Very well.” He shut his notebook. “In that case I might as well get on the phone and report the sad news.”

They watched him leave. The hangar had been damaged by blast and part of the roof was split open. Sheets of metal banged in the wind with a kind of idiot insistence, like small children trying to infuriate the grown-ups.

“All right,” Barton said. “Let's get it over with. I'm prepared to believe you didn't mean to kill him.” He looked at each of them in turn, and they looked back, calmly and candidly. He waited for an answer. After a moment Cattermole said: “Oh, yes?” It wasn't a reply; it was an encouraging noise:
How interesting
, it seemed to say;
tell us more.

“Presumably you knew what you were doing,” Barton said. “Or at least you thought you did. What the hell
did
you think you were doing?”

Again, they simply let his stare bounce back at him. “Come on, for Christ's sake,” he said.

“Give up,” Fitz said. “What did we think we were doing, Fanny?”

“Whose idea was it, anyway? Who started it? Who said ‘Close ranks'? Who?”

“Rex,” Cox said confidently. “Rex said ‘Close ranks.' It was his idea.”

“Not over Sedan, it wasn't. Rex said dive and somebody else—”

“No he didn't, Fanny,” Fitz said. “I never heard Rex give the order to dive. Nor did the rest of us.”

“We heard the order to close ranks,” Cattermole said. “So that's what we did.”

“You mean you bastards boxed me in.”

“On the contrary, Fanny,” Fitz said. “You and Flip began crowding the rest of us. You were really getting in our way. Not very nice, that.”

“Reckless driving,” Cattermole said.

“No consideration for others,” Cox added.

“You callous, murdering sons of bitches,” Barton said.

“Fanny's upset about something,” Fitz remarked.

“Perhaps Rex owed him some money,” Cox said.

Barton turned on CH3. “You saw it happen,” he said. “Haven't you got anything to say?”

“My brother-in-law used to work for the telephone company,” CH3 told him.

“God damn you all to hell,” Barton said.

“He said it was a very interesting job,” CH3 said. “If you liked telephones.”

A prolonged gust of wind kept smashing the loose sheets of metal until several of them blew down. They hit the concrete floor with a splendid crash. Barton used it as an excuse to get out. “Go to the mess,” he ordered. “Stay there. Don't talk to anyone.”

He found Baggy Bletchley in the station commander's office, standing on the fringe of a high-powered but irritable meeting. As well as the station commander, who was a group captain, there were two wing commanders, an air commodore and a brigadier. When Barton went in they were all listening to an air vice-marshal who seemed especially annoyed with the brigadier. “Of course I can ask for more squadrons,” he was saying, “any bloody fool can do that, but where in God's name are they going to operate from? Brittany? The Dordogne? The Cote de bloody Azur? Because any aerodrome nearer than that is liable to get the daylights bombed out of it, wouldn't you agree?”

“You can't expect my ack-ack to hit every German bomber they see. If the fighters don't take out a good percentage—”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying you expect my fighters to protect their own airfields?”

“They've got to do their share.”

“And then land in the bomb-craters, I suppose?”

“Listen, my chaps have taken casualties too. It's no fun—”

“So you want my fighters to keep the Hun off your gunners. I see. That's charming, I must say.”

“Look, this isn't getting us anywhere,” the air commodore said. “Whether or not we get more squadrons, the French want an answer fast.”

“Frankly, sir, I don't understand this French plan.” One of the wing commanders picked up a sheet of paper. “It contradicts itself.”

“Good,” said the air vice-marshal. “Since the frogs were daft enough to send it by radio, Jerry quite certainly intercepted it, and if we can't make head or tail of it, he must be thoroughly baffled.”

“At last: an Allied triumph,” murmured the station commander.

“Well, it's radio or nothing,” said the air commodore. “All the land lines are cut. What about using a code?”

“Who's our liaison officer with the French?” the brigadier asked. “Meredith-Jones, isn't it? Why not communicate in Welsh?”

“Are we sure he speaks Welsh?” the air commodore asked.

“I only heard him once, but it certainly sounded like Welsh,” the brigadier said.

“Do
you
speak Welsh?” asked the air vice-marshal.

“No, but surely we can find someone who does.”

“Bloody good code, if it works,” said one of the wing commanders.

“Absolute shambles if it doesn't,” said the other.

Barton touched Bletchley's arm. “Excuse me, sir,” he whispered. They went into the corridor. “I need your help, sir,” he said. “I'm in a bit of a spot.”

“I heard about Rex. Damn bad luck.”

“Not really.”

Barton described what had happened over Sedan. He did not repeat what had been said in the hangar. “They had it all worked out to get rid of him,” he said. “It was murder, plain and simple. The question is, what should I do?”

Bletchley blew his nose, made a good clean job of his nostrils, and briefly examined the contents of his handkerchief. “He's quite dead, is he? You're absolutely convinced of that?”

“Blown to bits, sir.”

Bletchley nodded. “As long as there's no risk that he might wander in here seeking vengeance … That makes you acting CO, I take it.”

“Yes.”

Bletchley nodded again, more firmly. “Well, my boy, whatever it was that Rex did wrong, you be sure and learn from it.” Barton had sensed what was coming but he was still taken aback. “And don't look so damned virtuous,” Bletchley said. “Use your head. D'you think we're going to courtmartial half-a-dozen fighter pilots
now
, of all times? Because their CO bought it? D'you know how many Battles and Blenheims went off to raid the Sedan bridgehead this afternoon? Seventy-one. And how many came back? Thirty-one. That's forty crews blown to bits. We've just lost the best part of our whole Air Striking Force in an hour and a bit. You want my advice? Forget Rex. I have.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Meanwhile, be sure and keep your chaps away from that bloody woman Bellamy. If she gets wind of it, I'll have
you
courtmartialled.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In fact the best thing you can do is get everyone back to Mailly-le-Camp lickety-split. Leave Rex to me. I'll get him a posthumous gong and he'll be forgotten in a month.” Bletchley saw Barton's expression and grinned. “Nasty business, war, isn't it? But damn good for promotion.” He went back into the station commander's office. The ill-tempered argument briefly boomed into the corridor before the door shut it off.