Saving the Queen (34 page)

A loose card hung over the radio control knobs. It was arranged, again as usual, that the pilots could talk to each other, and the tower could talk to them. But they could not talk to the tower, nor could the tower monitor the pilot-to-pilot conversation. The objective was to use a closed-communication system for combat mission secrecy, and incidentally to minimize the need for dial manipulation—indeed there was none of it to do. When the tower needed to speak, it would only be to give the countdown to the beginning of each succeeding exercise. Otherwise the only necessary talk was between the two pilots. It was not as if they were flying with two men aboard, when an extra set of hands would be available for radio controls.

The announcer could be heard through the closed cockpits.

“Having drawn lots, Viscount Kirk's Hunter will be the first craft to be airborne.”

The tower gave the clearance, and Kirk roared down the runway and, halfway down it, appeared to rise vertically like a rocket.

The tower motioned Blackford on, and he did the same thing—the differences between the airplanes were not yet discernible.

Kirk spoke. “All right, old chap, let's get on with the review. We'll meet as planned at Point Shelter, I'll come from the north, you from the south, make contact at 2:08, and we'll go through our paces to Point Escape.”

“Roger.”

It was perfectly executed. They came like mating birds flopping about until they espied each other and then proceeded with umbilical closeness, zooming over the rooftops, down over the field, fifteen feet above the ground, one hundred from the reviewing stand, disappearing to the east to the roar of unheard applause.

Exercise Two called for each plane to fly down to the field, and then proceed as vertically as possible while aileron rolling at least thirty times in one minute, and to do this for two minutes. The higher the plane reached at the end of the second minute, and the nearest to the point vertical from the field, the better.

“This one is mine,” Kirk spoke. “I better warn you, I did almost 8,000 feet at an angle of fifteen degrees yesterday. Here I go.”

Down he went, and then up in a steady roll. The radars flashed the information to the announcer, who said excitedly, “8,159 feet, angle fourteen degrees!”

Blackford said, “Nice going.”

And went down to do it himself. The announcer boomed, not without satisfaction: “And for the Sabre, 8,025 feet at fourteen and a half degrees.” The partisan crowd cheered.

“Too bad, old chap,” Kirk said, watching his competitor as if in a sailplane—the off-duty aircraft, to conserve fuel, lazed out of the way, at 150 mph.

“Rendezvous Point Shelter at 15,000 feet,” Kirk said, “at … 2:21.” From there, they went in tandem into a screeching forty-five-degree dive toward the reviewing stand, lifting up just short of it at an angle of ten degrees. The crowd went wild with terror and delight.

And the moment had come. They were back up to ten thousand feet.

Black's heart was beating like a drum roll. “Listen, Kirk, we have to talk, so let's make a continuing, Lufbery circle, keeping at opposite sides of a diameter approximately a mile wide. The delay shouldn't be long, and the spectators won't fidget, not for a few minutes.”

“What's the matter, Oakes?” Perry spoke perfunctorily, with just a touch of impatience. “Something wrong with your aircraft?”

“No. But listen carefully, Kirk. Hear me. I am an agent of a very exclusive two-man team composed of the head of MI-6 and the director of the CIA. We are aware of your activities. A technician was able, through the curtain, to pick up and record your conversation with Boris Bolgin at the confessional at St. James's on Friday. In other words, you're through.

“Now my orders are to see to it that you do not return to earth alive, and there are two ways of doing this.”

The planes, describing a perfect circle like contented seagulls, were objects of admiration by the crowd below.

“One way is, during Exercise Six, for you to fail to come out of your dive in time. There would be great national mourning, and the case would be closed.

“The other way is for me to shoot you down during the next exercise. I have two live cannon with me, and you know I wouldn't miss.”

“They're bonded and sealed, Oakes.”

“Right. And the seals on this one are rigged to peel off like Band-Aids. I'd fire them during the dogfight, and put the blame on the engineer who failed to apply the seal on the bands and on my reaching accidentally for the traditional trigger. But that would of course mean an investigation and would be a great deal messier and not in any way that would help you personally, or the Soviet Union. What it might do is hurt the Queen. Now if you give me your word that on your dive down you will not pull out, which is after all only an alternative to the gallows a few months from now and after public disgrace—the machinery is prepared for your arrest and indictment within seconds of your landing anywhere in England, and you don't have the fuel to get away—if you give me your word, I will give you mine that I won't use the ammunition on you during the dogfight. And—my word of honor, in behalf of MI-6 and CIA—that no one—ever—will know of your use of Queen Caroline.”

Kirk's voice was ghostly clear.

“Now
you
listen, Oakes.
I
also have a tape recording—of the Queen giving me information about atomic installations. Unless I pick up that package, at the end of the month, it will be forwarded automatically to a prominent publicist. Unless I get away—safe descent, twenty-four hours to get out of England, handy excuse why I left—the
whole world
will know, on February 1, what the Queen did.”

Blackford felt the coils of death fastening about him, as concretely as though they were an executioner's electrodes. If he could talk Kirk into the suicidal dive, he, Blackford, would be spared. If he had to shoot him down, his own airplane—Rufus had been altogether honest on the point, and Rufus could not be doubted—was synchronized to explode with the firing of the cannon, so that the destruction of the Hunter would appear to have been an'accidental result of the explosion of the Sabre, instantly deflecting any suspicion of foul play. Blackford wondered if—knowing now that Kirk had proof that the Queen's conversations would survive him—he could in good conscience take matters into his own hands—abort the entire operation, let them both land safely, tell Rufus that under the altered circumstances he did not feel he was authorized to proceed with the original plan.…

Before knowing how, finally, he would answer the question, he started to talk: “Kirk, I can believe you want communism to triumph. I can't believe you want Caroline destroyed. You are certainly in a position to hurt her. But doing so won't advance communism by a single step—and I can give you only thirty seconds to reflect on a fact so obvious that only cowardice would prevent you from acknowledging it. Cowardice and a total indifference to Queen Caroline's feelings, and future. In thirty seconds I'll take the initiative in the dogfight, as scheduled. And unless you give me your assurance by then I'll blast you out of the sky.”

With this, Blackford arced his plane back, to assume an attack position, and watched the seconds go by on the dashboard time. Five seconds were left when Kirk's voice, metallic, now hollow, came in:

“You have my word.”

Blackford thereupon dove, resuming the scheduled exercise, pressed the radar triggers and zoomed in, scoring a hit; whereupon Kirk, in one of the flashiest maneuvers ever seen by the witnesses below, contorted his plane, doing an Immelmann, arriving almost miraculously at a position perfectly situated to blast the Sabre out of the sky. Blackford, even from that altitude, thought he could almost hear the crowd cheering this feat of virtuosity: and found himself saying into the intercom, “Nicely done, Kirk.” Blackford then all but stalled his plane in order to edge it fitfully down for a retaliatory shot, which he squeezed out of his radar beam into the barely visible helmet of Kirk, who made no acknowledgment, the tower having pronounced the time up; and decreed that they should proceed to fifteen thousand feet for the next exercise, the final dive.…

It was the Hunter's turn. Black's strategy was not to wait the prescribed one minute, but instead to trail Kirk down fifteen seconds after he started his dive. If he changed his mind, it would then become necessary, after all, for Black to fire his cannon. But as Kirk slowed, in preparation for the dive, his voice came over:

“Okay. You chaps won this one, and you're right, you Yankee cocksucker, there isn't any point in doing her in for the hell of it. So check Box 1305 in Chelsea Station. Do you have that?”

“Got it, Peregrine.”

The dive began which, that night, would be repeated endlessly over television in Britain; and, indeed, all over the world, as soon as the films could be flown out. The Queen for the first recorded time lost her composure and fell, and was carried quickly to her car, and to the palace, and three hours after the accident was reported still in shock. The press surrounded the young American, but he would only shake his head. A friend pulled him into a limousine—someone from the engineering faculty at Yale, the
Daily Express
reported. He was pale and, as one radio commentator said, “looked as if he might be sick.” Zooming down the highway, he told Singer to stop the car. The driver was given instructions through the glass. Blackford opened the door, and was utterly, writhingly sick. Back inside, the color slowly returning, he leaned his head back, eyes closed, and said to Singer:

‘Gee, that was fun. What's my next assignment?”

Sixteen

The next morning Caroline woke early and, on spotting her, immediately dismissed the nurse who had been discreetly insinuated into the royal bedchamber after the Queen was given sedation by her physician. She was entirely restored, she said to Lady Mabel, for whom she had rung even as she called for breakfast. It remained only to make appropriate arrangements for the funeral of her old friend who, really—she explained to Mabs—had died a hero's death in trying to advance the cause of British aviation. She did not, Caroline said, distinguish in her mind between Peregrine's death, under the circumstances, and death in the field of battle.

Sipping her tea as though it were a doctor's prescription, she instructed Mabel to get the Earl of Holly on the telephone. The call having been placed, she told Mabel to ascertain, by inquiry in her name to the Prime Minister, what was the highest posthumous honor that might be paid to a Britisher dying under such circumstances as Viscount Kirk's; and to get word back to her before noon, “even if I have to listen to some Duke giving me a half hour's heraldic lore.” The telephone rang. Mabs took it, and handed it to the Queen.

“The Earl of Holly, ma'am.”

“Uncle Archibald, let us agree not to discuss the obvious things that are on your mind, and on mine. I would like your approval of a memorial service for Peregrine at St. George's Chapel at Windsor.”

The Queen, chewing at her sausage, permitted the sputtering at the other end of the line for a reasonable period of time. “There, there, Uncle Archibald, you needn't express gratitude—except to Peregrine. That we shall all do. The service will be at eleven
A
.
M
. on Thursday. Kindly telephone to Lady Lunford of my office, or to one of her assistants, a list, not to exceed a hundred fifty persons, of those you would like invited. Telegrams will go out to them this afternoon. I shall personally direct the memorial services. Any suggestions you have, please make to Lady Mabel.” In a rather forceful disengagement, the Queen nevertheless diplomatically terminated the conversation.

“Now,” she said, “get me Blackford Oakes.”

The palace switchboard rang Blackford's flat. Blackford and Singer were having coffee, silently. Singer, having insisted on spending the night, wore pants and a T-shirt, Blackford, a dressing gown. The maid had gone out for the morning papers which, Singer said, he wished to study meticulously before “slipping out of Blackford's life.” Blackford, looking across now at someone no less, by now, than an old friend, muttered something about the pertinacity of the press. Singer reflected that, even now, Rufus was going over the papers and that his directives would prevail.

Singer, assuming that the call was yet another inquiry from the press, answered the telephone. When the operator said, in answer to his question, that it was Buckingham Palace calling, Singer, wise to the artifice of deadline journalism, asked, “Who in Buckingham Palace?”

“The call is from the royal apartments,” the operator said, that being the closest an operator is permitted to go in such circumstances to announcing the august identity of the caller.

Though still slightly skeptical, Singer turned to Blackford and said, “You better take this. If it's on the level, it's the Queen.”

“Hello?”

“Is this Mr. Blackford Oakes?”

“Yes.”

“Hold on, sir, for Her Majesty.”

“Blackford? I want you to know that I do not think you are in the least responsible for the tragedy of yesterday. There is no reason why you, or anyone else, should entertain even the thought of it, but some people are given to irrational self-reproach, and though I don't think you're that type, I wanted to say that much to you.”

“I am most grateful, ma'am.”

“But I do think that a gesture of sorts would be appropriate, and I'm going to suggest it to you.”

“Anything you say, ma'am.”

“I am sponsoring a memorial service for Peregrine at St. George's Chapel on Thursday morning at eleven. There will be the usual liturgical business and a short eulogy. I wish you to deliver the eulogy.”

Blackford, receiver in hand, rose to his feet, his face flushed. He looked across at Singer in desperation, and said, “But—but, your Majesty, I hardly
knew
Peregrine!”