Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ few miles out they saw a coastal convoy. Keeping well clear of the wrecks that litter this coast, but inside the minefields that protected it, the convoy was making good progress through the calm sea. The Junkers was low enough to see the seamen moving on the decks and some of the old coal burners were making columns of smoke tall enough to reach them. They were a battered collection: half-painted funnels, rusty winches, dribbling scuppers and misplaced hatch-covers. Some of the deck cargoes were only half covered and a deck party was working feverishly on the tarpaulins. Himmel wondered why they bothered. The grimy condition of the coasters was belied by the fresh rain that had glossed their decks and given their hulls the polish of old jackboots. Two freighters had deck cargoes of honey-coloured fresh timber looking good enough to eat. There were Danes and Dutchmen; ancient coastal tankers low in the water, and at the front two French cargo liners making down the coast with machinery and chemicals. They were sailing the routes they had always sailed, some since before the first war. Strange that now they should have German naval destroyers, frigates and UJ boats fussing around their formations and German aircraft protecting them from the determined attacks of RAF planes. Stranger still when some of those RAF planes were manned by Frenchmen, Dutchmen and Danes. Two UJ boats – converted trawlers of about four hundred tons – detached themselves from the convoy and hurried to the rear. Now the convoy began changing course, but kept convoy discipline and good formation. Each wake was scratched crisp and white upon the azure ocean. It was a beautiful sight, enhanced by the red-and-yellow lights that climbed higher than the masts. The light cruiser was covered in winking lights as though every seaman aboard was sending a message to the plane, as indeed he was. Suddenly there was an explosion.

      ‘They’re firing at us,’ yelled Löwenherz, but his voice was drowned by the fierce bangs of the shells bursting around them. Now Himmel knew what was under the tarpaulins: guns. A near-miss rocked the aeroplane and wrenched the port wing upwards. He didn’t correct. He let the aeroplane skid down in a violent sideslip. Each exploding shell hung a new black smudge in the sky but the old smoke did not disappear, it slowly turned brown and the air around them was blotched with smelly smoke like a three-dimensional disease. The plane dropped through the bursting shells until the extra lift of the down-pointing wing, and the Junkers’ lateral stability, flattened it into straight and level flight just a hundred feet over the wave-tops.

      Now they were within range of the flak ship’s 3.7 cm guns and even the multiple 2-cms. The pom-poms added a new descant to the bass rhythms of the heavies. Himmel let down even lower until they were only ten feet above the water. The sea was a different colour close to: a cold steely grey flecked with dirty spumé. Broken timber and refuse pockmarked its heaving surface, and so did the splashes of flak shells.

      Himmel moved the throttles forward and, with touches of rudder, danced across the wave-tops low enough for spray to mottle the windscreen. The ship’s gunners were aiming off skilfully. Their yellow lights spanned the water to make a fairy bridge between aeroplane and convoy. Soon they were far enough away for the bridge to fall into the water behind them. Himmel reset the trim wheel and pulled the nose up into a gentle climb.

      Ahead was Holland. Marking its coastline high in the air there was another ‘land’ of cumulus conjured up by the sea breeze from a cloudless sky. Himmel kept the Junkers’ nose up. By the time they reached the coast they would be above those clouds. How beautiful they were: dark grey undersides, golden rims and fluffy white tops with occasional gaps revealing intense blue sky above.

      ‘Are you all right, sir?’ asked Himmel.

      ‘I’m fine. Is the aircraft functioning?’

      ‘It took a couple of knocks but the controls are working.’

      ‘That was damned remarkable flak, Himmel.’

      ‘They get a lot of practice.’

      ‘They get trigger-happy too,’ said Löwenherz.

      They both laughed too much and the tension was relieved.

      ‘Do you remember that fellow they called Porky?’ asked Löwenherz.

      ‘Ostend in May 1941. When Karl Reinhold phoned him at the Alert Hut and told him he’d been awarded the Knight’s Cross …’

      ‘… for low-level attacks against friendly shipping,’ hooted Löwenherz. ‘Then he phoned me, but luckily you’d warned me that they would play pranks upon the new boys.’

      ‘They always did.’

      ‘You saved me being made a fool of, Christian.’

      ‘You were a good wingman.’

      ‘And now I’m your Staffelkapitän. It’s funny how things work out.’

      ‘You should be the Kommodore,’ said Christian Himmel.

      ‘For God’s sake, Christian, why did you take those documents?’

      ‘Is that why the Herr Oberleutnant came along?’ Himmel had moved into the respectful third person.

      ‘Of course it is, Christian.’

      ‘It was a matter of honour, Herr Oberleutnant.’

      ‘Honour?’

      ‘Those documents shame us all.’

      ‘What are you saying? What sort of documents were they?’

      ‘They didn’t tell you, eh? Well, perhaps they were ashamed. Even shame is progress.’ Himmel reached into his flying overalls and pulled out a bulky document with brown-paper covers. He passed it over his shoulder to Löwenherz. ‘Read it first, Herr Oberleutnant. Then you’ll see why I have to go through with this.’

      It was not an impressive-looking dossier. There was a metal clip holding it together and a Luftwaffe eagle rubber-stamped on to the cover. Along the top it said ‘Luftwaffe High Command: Medical Corps: Secret’. It wasn’t a printed document. It was a duplicated typescript and in places the words were scarcely legible.

      ‘Go through with what?’

      ‘Please read it, sir.’

      At first Löwenherz was inclined to return it to Himmel unopened. He feared he was being drawn into a tacit conspiracy. For some time he stared out from the cramped little pulpit and watched the green sea creep past. By the time they crossed the coastline the cumulus fractus was below them, but only by an arm’s reach. It stretched before them like a blinding white wasteland of ice and snow. The motors held a bass note like an organ pipe and the plane trembled with its power. Oberleutnant Löwenherz made his decision: he undid the metal clip and began reading the stolen medical report.

      The convoy resumed the proper course after its evasive zigzagging. The destroyers and other armed ships hurried up and down, chivvying the merchantmen into line with loud-hailers and signal lamps. At the rear the light cruiser Held maintained a dignified straight course like a mother hen. The Held had been the 3,500-ton light cruiser Jan Koppelstok of the Royal Netherlands Navy until 1940 when she was seized by the Germans and refitted as an anti-aircraft ship. In the forecastle battery, hidden by the steel door, a gunner named Franz Pawlak was smoking a cheroot. His loader cleaned the breech of the 10.5-cm Model 37 with care and affection. They were both wearing the hooded fur-lined winter clothing that had been designed for the Russian Front. It gave them some protection against the piercing North Sea winds that even in the middle of summer chilled professional sailors to the bone.

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