Hornet Flight (34 page)

Tilde got to her feet and left quietly.

“If you don't talk to us, you'll be turned over to the Gestapo,” Peter went on angrily. “
They
won't give you tea and ask polite questions. They'll pull out your fingernails, and light matches under the soles of your feet. They'll fasten electrodes to your lips, and throw cold water over you to make the shocks more excruciating. They'll strip you naked and beat you with hammers. They'll smash the bones of your ankles and kneecaps so that you can never walk again, and then they'll carry on beating you, keeping you alive and conscious and screaming. You'll beg and plead with them to let you die, but they won't—not until you talk. And you will talk. Get that into your head. In the end,
everyone talks.
”

White-faced, Arne said quietly, “I know.”

Peter was taken aback by the poise and resignation behind the fear. What did it mean?

The door opened and General Braun came in. It was now six o'clock, and Peter had been expecting him: his appearance was part of the scenario.
Braun was the picture of cold efficiency in his crisp uniform with his holstered pistol. As always, his damaged lungs made his voice a gentle near-whisper. “Is this the man to be sent to Germany?”

Arne moved fast, despite his injury.

Peter was looking the other way, toward Braun, and he saw only a blur as Arne reached for the tea tray. The heavy earthenware teapot flew through the air and struck the side of Peter's head, splashing tea over his face. When he had dashed the liquid from his eyes he saw Arne charge into Braun. Arne moved clumsily on his wounded leg, but he knocked the general over. Peter sprang to his feet, but he was too slow. In the second for which Braun lay still on the floor, gasping, Arne unbuttoned the general's holster and snatched out the pistol.

He swung the gun toward Peter, holding it two-handed.

Peter froze. The gun was a 9mm Luger. It held eight rounds of ammunition in the grip magazine—but was it loaded? Or did Braun wear it just for show?

Arne remained in a sitting position but pushed himself backward until he was up against the wall.

The door was still open. Tilde stepped inside, saying, “What—?”

“Stay still!” Arne barked.

Peter asked himself urgently how familiar Arne was with weapons. He was a military officer, but in the air force he might not have had much practice.

As if to answer the unspoken question, Arne switched off the safety catch on the left side of the pistol with a deliberate movement that everyone could see.

Behind Tilde, Peter could see the two uniformed policemen who had escorted Arne from his cell.

None of the four policemen was carrying a gun. They did not bring weapons into the cell area. It was a strict regulation imposed to prevent prisoners from doing exactly what Arne had just done. But Braun did not consider himself subject to the regulations, and no one had had the nerve to ask him to hand in his weapon.

Now Arne had them all at his mercy.

Peter said, “You can't get away, you know. This is the largest police station in Denmark. You've got the drop on us, but there are dozens of armed police outside. You can't get past them all.”

“I know,” Arne said.

There was that ominous note of resignation again.

Tilde said, “And would you want to kill so many innocent Danish policemen?”

“No, I wouldn't.”

It all began to make sense. Peter remembered Arne's words when Peter had shot him:
You stupid pig, you should have killed me.
That fitted with the fatalistic attitude Arne had displayed since his arrest. He feared he was going to betray his friends—perhaps even his brother.

Suddenly Peter knew what was going to happen next. Arne had figured out that the only way to be completely safe was to be dead. But Peter wanted Arne to be tortured by the Gestapo and to reveal his secrets. He could not let Arne die.

Despite the gun pointed straight at him, Peter dashed at Arne.

Arne did not shoot him. Instead, he jerked back the gun and pressed its nose into the soft skin under his chin.

Peter flung himself on Arne.

The gun barked once.

Peter struck it from Arne's hand, but he was too late. A gush of blood and brain sprayed from the top of Arne's head, making a fan-shaped stain on the pale wall behind him. Peter fell on Arne, and some of the mess splashed on Peter's face. He rolled away from Arne and scrambled to his feet.

Arne's face was strangely unchanged. The damage was all behind, and he still had the ironic smile he had worn as he put the gun to his throat. After a moment, he fell sideways, the smashed back of his skull leaving a red smear on the wall. His body hit the floor with a lifeless thud. He lay still.

Peter wiped his face with his sleeve.

General Braun got to his feet, struggling for breath.

Tilde bent down and picked up the pistol.

They all looked at the body.

“Brave man,” said General Braun.

When Harald woke up, he knew that something wonderful had happened, but for a moment he could not recall what it was. He lay on the ledge in the apse of the church, with Karen's blanket around him and Pinetop the cat curled up against his chest, and waited for his memory to work. It seemed to him that the wonderful event was interwoven with something worrying, but he was so excited that he did not care about the danger.

It all came back in a rush: Karen had agreed to fly him to England in the Hornet Moth.

He sat upright suddenly, displacing Pinetop, who leaped to the floor with an indignant yowl.

The danger was that they might both be caught, arrested, and killed. What made him happy, despite that, was that he would be spending hours alone with Karen. Not that he thought anything romantic would happen. He realized she was out of his league. But he could not help how he felt about her. Even if he was never going to kiss her, he was thrilled at the thought of how long they would be together. It was not just the journey,
though that would be the climax. Before they could take off they would have to spend days working on the aircraft.

But the whole plan depended on whether he could repair the Hornet Moth. Last night, with only a flashlight for illumination, he had not been able to inspect it thoroughly. Now, with the rising sun shining through the high windows over the apse, he could assess the magnitude of the task.

He washed at the cold tap in the corner, pulled on his clothes, and began his examination.

The first thing he noticed was a long piece of stout rope tied to the undercarriage. What was that for? He thought for a minute, then realized it was for moving the aircraft when the engine was off. With the wings folded, it might be difficult to find a point at which to push the machine, but the rope would enable someone to pull it around like a cart.

Just then, Karen arrived.

She was casually dressed in shorts and sandals, showing off her long, strong legs. Her curly hair was freshly washed and stood out around her head in a coppery cloud. Harald thought angels must look like that. What a tragedy it would be if she died in the adventure that was ahead of them.

It was too early to talk of dying, he told himself. He had not even begun to repair the aircraft. And, in the clear light of morning, it looked a more daunting task.

Like Harald, Karen was pessimistic this morning. Yesterday she had been excited by the prospect of adventure. Today she took a more gloomy view. “I've been thinking about mending this thing,” she said. “I'm not sure it can be done, especially in ten days—nine, now.”

Harald felt the onset of the stubborn mood that always came over him when someone told him he could not do something. “We'll see,” he said.

“You've got that look,” she observed.

“What?”

“The look that says you don't want to hear what's being said.”

“I haven't got a look,” he said tetchily.

She laughed. “Your teeth are clenched, your mouth is turned down at the corners, and you're frowning.”

He was forced to smile, and in truth he was pleased that she noticed his expression.

“That's better,” she said.

He began to study the Hornet Moth with an engineer's eye. When he first saw it, he had thought its wings were broken, but Arne had explained that they were folded back for easy storage. Harald looked at the hinges by which they were attached to the fuselage. “I think I could refit the wings,” he said.

“That's easy. Our instructor, Thomas, did it every time he put the aircraft away. It only takes a few minutes.” She touched the nearer wing. “The fabric is in a bad state, though.”

The wings and the fuselage were made of wood covered with a fabric that had been treated with some kind of paint. On the upper surface, Harald could see the stitches where the fabric was attached to the ribs with thick thread. The paint was cracked and crazed, and the fabric was torn in places. “It's only superficial damage,” Harald said. “Does it matter?”

“Yes. The rips in the fabric might interfere with the airflow over the wings.”

“So we need to patch them. I'm more worried about the undercarriage.”

The aircraft had been in some kind of accident, probably an awkward landing such as Arne had described. Harald knelt down to look more closely at the landing gear. The solid steel stub axle appeared to have two prongs that fitted into a V-shaped strut. The V-strut was made of oval steel tube, and both arms of the V had creased and buckled at their weakest point, presumably just beyond the ends of the stub axle. They looked as if they would easily break. A third strut, that looked to Harald like a shock absorber, appeared undamaged. Nevertheless, the undercarriage was clearly too weak for a landing.

“I did that,” Karen said.

“You crashed?”

“I landed in a crosswind and swerved sideways. The wingtip hit the ground.”

It sounded terrifying. “Were you scared?”

“No, I just felt such a fool, but Tom said it's not uncommon in a Hornet Moth. In fact he confessed he had done it himself once.”

Harald nodded. That fitted with what Arne had said. But there was something in the way she spoke about Thomas the instructor that made him feel jealous. “Why was it never repaired?”

“We don't have the facilities here.” She waved at the workbench and the tool rack. “Tom could do minor repairs, and he was good with the engine, but this isn't a metalwork shop, and we have no welding gear. Then Daddy had a minor heart attack. He's fine, but it meant he would never get a pilot's licence, and he lost interest in learning to fly. So the work never got done.”

That was discouraging, Harald thought. How was he going to do metalwork? He walked to the tail and examined the wing that had hit the ground. “It doesn't seem to be fractured,” he said. “I can easily repair the tip.”

“You can't tell,” she said gloomily. “One of the wooden spars inside might have been overloaded. There's no way to be sure just by looking at the outside. And if a wing is weakened, the plane will crash.”

Harald studied the tailplane. Its rear half was hinged, and moved up and down: this was the elevator, he recalled. The upright rudder moved right and left. Looking more closely, he saw that they were controlled by wire cables that emerged from the fuselage. But the cables had been cut and removed. “What happened to the wire?” he said.

“I remember it being taken to repair some other machine.”

“That's going to be a problem.”

“Only the last ten feet of each cable is missing—as far forward as the turnbuckle behind the access panel under the fuselage. The rest was too difficult to get at.”

“All the same, that's forty feet, and you can't buy cables—no one can get spare parts for anything. No doubt that's why they were cannibalized in the first place.” Harald was beginning to feel overwhelmed by misgivings, but he deliberately spoke cheerfully. “Well, let's see what else is wrong.” He moved to the nose. He found two catches on the right side of the fuselage, turned them, and opened the cowling, which was made of a thin metal that felt like tin but was probably aluminum. He studied the engine.

“It's a four-cylinder in-line layout,” Karen said.

“Yes, but it seems to be upside-down.”

“By comparison with a car engine, yes. The crankshaft is at the top. That's to raise the level of the propeller for ground clearance.”

Harald was surprised by her expertise. He had never met a girl who knew what a crankshaft was. “What was this Tom like?” he said, trying hard to keep the note of suspicion out of his voice.

“He was a great teacher, patient but encouraging.”

“Did you have a love affair with him?”

“Please! I was fourteen!”

“I bet you had a crush on him.”

She was miffed. “I suppose you think that's the only reason a girl would learn about engines.”

Harald did think that, but he said, “No, no, I just noticed that you talked about him in a fond way. None of my business. The engine is air-cooled, I see.” There was no radiator, but the cylinders had cooling fins.

“I think all air-engines are, to save weight.”

He moved to the other side and opened the right cowling. All the fuel and oil hoses seemed to be firmly attached, and there were no outward signs of damage. He unscrewed the oil cap and checked the dipstick. There was still a little oil in the tank. “It looks okay,” he said. “Let's see if it starts.”

“It's easier with two people. You can sit inside while I swing the propeller.”

“Won't the battery be flat after all these years?”

“There's no battery. The electricity comes from two magnetos, which are driven by the engine itself. Let's get into the cabin and I'll show you what to do.”

Karen opened the door then let out a squeal and fell back—into Harald's arms. It was the first time he had touched her body, and an electric thrill went through him. She seemed hardly to notice that they were hugging, and he felt guilty for enjoying a fortuitous embrace. He hastily set her upright and detached himself. “Are you all right?” he said. “What happened?”

“Mice.”

He opened the door again. Two mice jumped through the gap and ran down his trousers to the floor. Karen made a disgusted noise.

There were holes in the cloth upholstery of one seat, and Harald guessed they had nested in the stuffing. “That problem is quickly solved,”
he said. He made a kissing sound with his lips, and Pinetop appeared, hoping for food. Harald picked the cat up and handed him into the cabin.

Pinetop suddenly became energized. He darted from one side of the little cockpit to the other, and Harald thought he saw a mouse tail disappear into a hole under the left-hand seat through which a copper pipe ran. Pinetop leaped onto the seat, then onto the luggage shelf behind, without catching a mouse. Then he investigated the holes in the upholstery. There he found a baby mouse, and began to eat it with great delicacy.

On the luggage shelf, Harald noticed two small books. He reached into the cabin and picked them up. They were manuals, one for the Hornet Moth and one for the Gipsy Major engine that powered it. He was delighted. He showed them to Karen.

“But what about the mice?” she said. “I hate them.”

“Pinetop chased them off. In the future, I'll leave the cabin doors open, so he can get in and out. He'll keep them away.” Harald opened the Hornet Moth manual.

“What's he doing now?”

“Pinetop? Oh, he's eating the babies. Look at these diagrams, this is great!”

“Harald!” she yelled. “That's disgusting! Go and stop him!”

He was taken aback. “What's the matter?”

“It's revolting!”

“It's natural.”

“I don't care if it is.”

“What's the alternative?” Harald said impatiently. “We have to get rid of the nest. I could dig the babies out with my hands, and throw them into the bushes, but Pinetop would still eat them, unless the birds got them first.”

“It's so cruel.”

“They're
mice,
for God's sake!”

“How can you not understand? Can't you see that I hate it!”

“I do understand, I just think it's silly—”

“Oh, you're just a stupid engineer who thinks about how things work and never about how people feel.”

Now he was wounded. “That's not true.”

“It is,” she said, and she stomped off.

Harald was astonished. “What the hell was that all about?” he said aloud. Did she really believe he was a stupid engineer who never thought about how people felt? It was very unfair.

He stood on a box to look out of one of the high windows. He saw Karen marching off up the drive toward the castle. She seemed to change her mind, and veered off into the woods. Harald thought of following her, then decided not to.

On the first day of their great collaboration, they had had a row. What chance was there that they could fly to England?