“Have you?”
“None of your business.”
“Same here.”
“Look…” He was shocked by what they had said. “I’m not really angry with you.”
“Of course you’re not.” She leaned across and used her fingers to smooth his brow. “Stop frowning. It makes you look like a walrus. Why are you so bad-tempered, Paul?”
Schramm gave up. He slumped in his seat. “God knows,” he said. “You’ve been playing God lately. You tell me.”
“All right, listen. You’re angry because you know you’re wrong. You keep denying this, but you’re too honest to get away with it. Last time we met you weren’t just angry, you were furious. You were in a rage with me. Why? Because I did what you had always wanted to do.”
“Kill helpless patients? Not me, doctor. Not me.”
“You wanted to be rid of Kurt Debratz. I saw it in your face. Kurt Debratz disgusted you. He was squalid, stinking, maimed, deteriorating, hopeless, useless, and full of pain, and he wasn’t dying fast enough for you. You wanted to kill him. Isn’t that the truth?”
“It wasn’t my job,” Schramm muttered. “He wasn’t my responsibility.”
“No, but he upset you, didn’t he? Believe it or not, I ended his life because I loved him. I did what you wanted to do, but you couldn’t admit that to yourself. In fact you hated yourself for wanting it, so you turned your anger on me instead. You couldn’t afford to hate yourself, so you hated me. Simple, isn’t it?”
Schramm felt pummeled. “We’ve been through all this before, haven’t we?” he said.
“We have.”
“Do I really want to kill people? Have I got such an appetite for death?”
“Don’t ask me. Ask yourself. That’s where the answer is. That’s where it’s always been. And consider yourself lucky there’s a war on so you can find the truth without getting hanged for murder.” She started the car. “That will be fifty thousand lire. You can buy me lunch and then we’ll go swimming.”
Malplacket found a shady spot in the wadi and sat down to write his will.
He had little to leave: a small house in London, slightly blitzed; a few paintings, now being looked after by a cousin in Anglesey and therefore almost certainly mildewed; an Aston-Martin on blocks in a garage in Devon, where it had run out of petrol. In any case, his wife would automatically inherit everything. Still, it gave him quiet pleasure to send a few kind words from beyond the grave. “To my wife,” he wrote, “without whose mind-numbing conversation I would never have been driven to travel so widely; without whose grudging access to her loins I might have exhausted myself in lust; and without whose few but stupefyingly tedious friends the rest of the world would have seemed to me only half as colorful, I leave everything, confident in the knowledge that my children will grow up to be inept, inane, ungrateful and greedy.” That wasn’t right. “Henry,” he called, “what’s a good two-dollar word that means ‘greedy’?”
“Covetous.”
“Perfect.” He made the alteration. “Many thanks.”
“What are you doing?”
“Making my will. Perhaps you would be so kind as to witness it.”
Lester came over and signed it. “Maybe I should change mine,” he said. “Ah, who cares? She’ll get everything, whatever I do. The hell with it.”
They were not allowed to attend the briefing at four-thirty p.m.
“Beda Fomm,” Lampard told his patrol. “It’s a big operational airfield. Not training, not transport, not repairs. Operational. Sergeant Davis and I saw at least one squadron of Me 109s and given the size of the place there could well be two. We discovered how to get in and, more important, how to get out afterward. There are only two approaches to Beda Fomm: one is overland, using tracks and trails. That’s hopeless at night. We’ll use the other way, the coastal road.” Gibbon had the map spread out. Lampard took them over the route. “Study it, memorize it. Any one of you might end up in command. Now the whole point of this raid is speed. I want to be in and out in twenty minutes. All your pencil-fuses will be long—sixty minutes. By the time the balloon goes up, we’ll have vanished, be back in the Jebel, I hope. We’ll take five vehicles. Three jeeps, the Mercedes and the Ford. Splash plenty of mud on it. There are lots of captured Fords on the roads back here. Clear so far? Good. That’s the broad outline. Now here’s the detail.”
Lampard talked for ten minutes. There were few questions. The patrol had rehearsed this kind of raid many times.
“Grub,” Lampard said. “Eat hearty. You never know when you’ll get another chance.”
Malplacket took his loaded mess tin and sat beside Lester.
“Are we absolutely convinced that we want to go ahead with this?” he asked. “I mean, are we quite certain of its merits?”
“I am. This is my big crack at the Pulitzer. ‘I Walked into Hitler’s Desert Fortress.’ Isn’t that a headline you’d kill for? Life magazine will beat me senseless with their checkbooks.” He batted the flies away and ate a chunk of Spam, fast, before they regrouped.
“On the other hand,” Malplacket said, “there’s no point in taking unnecessary risks, is there?” He pointed his fork at the German pistol tucked into Lester’s belt. “That’s purely decorative, I hope.”
“Don’t worry. Any shooting I do will be with a camera.” He ate some baked beans. “You never know, I might get a close-up of Rommel.”
“Blanchtower would be thrilled, I’m sure,” Malplacket said.
Corky Gibbon, Sandiman, the doctor and two fitters stayed at the camp. The rest—Lampard with twelve men in five vehicles—set off just before sunset. Malplacket and Lester went with them, driving their bit of booty. Lester was whistling “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby.” “Try not to do that in Benghazi, old chap,” Malplacket said.
Skull showed Barton a list of all the Luftwaffe airfields and landing-grounds within range of LG 250. There were fifty-four in all. The one he considered least unsuitable as a target was an advanced landing-ground called Gadd el Ahmar.
“Convince me,” Barton said. He took the list and began tearing it into small pieces.
Skull did a thorough, professional job on Gadd el Ahmar. It was relatively isolated, being forty miles behind the Gazala Line and forty-five miles south of the Mediterranean. The nearest Luftwaffe field, Mechili, was a long way to the west; Tmimi was far to the north. Gadd el Ahmar was relatively close to LG 250, so the Kittyhawks could carry a light load of fuel, thus improving their performance. It was a temporary field, so flak would be minimal and radar probably non-existent: the SAS had blown up a mobile radar at Gadd a month ago and there was no sign that it had been replaced.
Barton nodded and tore.
On the other hand, Skull said, Gadd was often quite busy. The Luftwaffe used it to refuel Ju88s on reconnaissance missions over Egypt. Recently a squadron of Stukas had trained around Gadd. Engine failure, or navigational error, or bad weather, forced German aircraft to land there. The pickings were promising. Above all, Allied territory was within easy reach if anything went wrong.
“All things considered, then, you reckon Gadd el Ahmar is the obvious target,” Barton said.