“I couldn’t catch the train. I was wading in blood.” He gave Hoffmann a sorry smile. “What a feeble cliché: wading in blood. I ought to do better than that, at my age.” Then he remembered how young he had been, and he got the shakes again. His face seemed to cringe; the skin felt as if it were being touched by fine cobwebs.
Hoffmann put a blanket round his shoulders. “You look like a wreck,” he said. “Feel free to cry, if it helps.”
“I haven’t got the strength to cry. I might manage a drink.”
They each had a stiff Scotch. The RAF had left quite a lot behind when they made their hurried exit from Barce, but Hoffmann was running low and he saved it for special occasions.
“What a total madhouse,” Schramm said.
“You’re not the first, you know. I’ve been on bases where the pilots’ quarters sounded like an audition for the Berlin Opera. Get into bed before you spill that.”
Schramm slept late. He awoke with a slight headache and a keen appetite, a very unusual combination for him. He showered and shaved. When he walked to the mess his muscles ached pleasantly, as if he had climbed a small, simple mountain. The dream was sharp in his mind. Its memory retained a tinge of panic and fury.
He was making steady headway through his paperwork, letters to be answered, forms to be completed, telephone calls returned, when a corporal tapped on his door. Station commander’s compliments, and could Major Schramm spare him a few minutes?
This was all very formal. Usually Benno just picked up the phone, or strolled down the corridor. A sudden dread took Schramm by the throat. Enemy bombers raided Benghazi harbor every night. Maybe last night they missed and hit somewhere else. He buttoned his tunic.
It wasn’t the bombing, thank God. It was Colonel von Mansdorf, sipping Hoffmann’s coffee and looking more than ever as if he had shrunk a little in the wash and then been immaculately starched and pressed.
“I’m here to apologize, major,” he said. “On behalf of General Schaefer, but also for myself. You were right and we were wrong. I’m sorry.”
Schramm nodded. He wanted to smile with relief, but he made himself look somber.
“Goodbye, Jakowski,” Hoffmann said.
“A couple of his men turned up at Jalo,” von Mansdorf said. “They were the lucky ones: they’d been driving a truck and a water-tanker. The rest seem to have scattered all over the Sahara. We know about the problem with the compasses, but even so…” He shrugged. “Africa wins again, I’m afraid.”
“It wasn’t Africa that killed Lessing and his men,” Schramm said.
“No. They were overwhelmed by a superior force.”
“Major Schramm has been tracking an incoming SAS patrol,” Hoffmann said.
“I have agents in Cairo and Kufra,” Schramm said. “I know where that patrol was, and when. The timing is right for the attack on Lessing.”
“Of course there’s more than one British patrol skulking about,” von Mansdorf said. “A maximum of five or six, so I’m told. Some coming, some going, some just snooping.”
“We have a special interest in this one,” Hoffmann said. “It’s that same lot that hit Barce. Led by a man called Lombard.”
“Lampard,” Schramm said. “He’s back in the Jebel, I’m sure of it.”
“That’s like saying he’s in Belgium. The Jebel goes a long way.”
“He’ll come here. I know him, I met him, I made a fool of him. He’ll come here just to get even.”
“Perhaps you’d like to see our new airfield defense system, colonel,” Hoffmann said. He made a couple of quick phone calls, and they all went downstairs to his car. As they drove around the perimeter, he said, “We began with a trip-wire rigged up to sentries in the cockpits, but our Engineering Officer dreamed up an improvement.” He stopped near a line of 109s. “Here is a bomb.” He handed von Mansdorf a pocket German-Italian dictionary. “You are this British desperado, Lombard. It is black night. Do your worst.”
“Lampard,” Schramm said.
“Relax, Paul. They both look the same in the dark.”
Von Mansdorf walked toward the fighters. Hoffmann and Schramm followed, a short distance behind. “No sentries?” von Mansdorf asked. “No dogs?”
“Not needed,” Schramm said.
“Intriguing.” He was about twenty-five yards from the nearest 109 when a machine gun shattered the quiet with its explosive stutter. Red-and-yellow tracer flicked gracefully in a high arc that cleared the nearest 109 and fell to earth in a deserted part of the airfield. The racket startled von Mansdorf and he jumped back. The gun stopped. “Step forward again,” Hoffmann said. Von Mansdorf did so, cautiously, and the gun barked as if he had stood on its tail. He stepped back. It stopped. Now he could see it, tucked away behind sandbags. “Infrared beam,” he said. “That’s clever.”
“Pure black magic,” Hoffmann said. “It baffles me. Paul understands it, though.”
“We installed a series of beams so that they each made a box round the airplanes,” Schramm said. “Each beam is electrically linked to a machine gun whose line of fire is about a foot above the beam. Break the beam and it shoots you. Fall down and it stops.”
“For demonstration purposes,” Hoffmann said, “the line of fire has been slightly adjusted.”
“I’m grateful. And impressed.”
They strolled back to the car. “It can be switched off during the day,” Schramm said, “so it doesn’t interfere with operations. The trouble with the trip-wire was you had to rig it and de-rig it every dusk and dawn. And people kept snapping it.”
“One small point,” von Mansdorf said. “I take it you intend to allow the raiders to approach the aircraft.”
“An airfield is virtually impossible to seal off at night,” Hoffmann said. “It would take a regiment to guard the perimeter. Two regiments. We’ve never had enough barbed wire. Frankly, I’ve given up on wire. Since the enemy is going to get in anyway, and since we know his object is to plant bombs on the aircraft, this is a simple way of killing him in the act.”
“I congratulate you.”
They drove von Mansdorf back to Hoffmann’s office. While they were waiting for his car to arrive, he said: “By the way: I met a friend of yours last night. Dr. Grandinetti. We were guests at a dinner party.” Schramm said nothing. He flicked at a fly that was annoying him. “A brilliant surgeon, so I’m told,” von Mansdorf remarked.
“She gets results,” Schramm said. “She definitely gets results.”
They watched the car drive away. “Take some leave, Paul,” Hoffmann said. “It’s overdue, you’re falling apart, I can get you a place on a plane this afternoon, you’ll be skiing in Austria tomorrow. Get out of here.”
“Not now. Too much to do.”
“Says who? Come back in three weeks, nothing will have changed. Believe me.”
Schramm shook his head. “Too much to do,” he said.
Lampard had four hours’ sleep and got up at midnight. He left Dunn in charge’and set off with Sergeant Davis in one of the captured trucks. If they failed to return by noon, Dunn was to take command.
Corky Gibbon watched them go. “Let’s talk,” he said to Dunn. They went and sat in the station-wagon, with the doors shut. The leather seats were cool and comfortable, there was sand on the floor and the sweet memory of hot diesel in the air. It reminded Dunn of being driven home from the seaside when he was a boy. “Sandiman told me what was in that signal,” Gibbon said.
“Me too.”
“I asked Jack about it.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much. Tried to laugh it off. That bothers me, Mike. It shouldn’t be any of my business, so why didn’t he tell me to go and run up my thumb? And another thing. The adjutant—”