“Es war sehr schön. Ich danke Ihnen. Ich muss jetzt gehen,” Schramm said.
Lampard looked at Dunn. Dunn said: “I believe that was ‘Thank you for having me, I’ve got to go now.’”
The lookout’s tin rattled. “This must be my bus,” Schramm said. “Shut up!” Lampard snapped. Already the patrol was moving into the deeper shadow of the cliff, trailed by a long streamer of flies. Above their indignant buzz came a distant drone, like a small power-saw in the sky. “Just a Storch,” Dunn said. “Nothing to worry about.” The Storch was a small high-wing plane which the German army used for search or reconnaissance or taxiing generals about the battlefield. It could fly as slowly as an old crow and it could turn inside its own length, but usually it had no guns. Lampard and Dunn settled down on either side of their prisoner and got on with their meal.
“This is the second visit by an airplane in less than an hour,” Schramm said. “Perhaps you have been…” He searched for the word. “… rumbled.”
“I expect he’s seen our tracks,” Lampard said, “but not for the last quarter of a mile because we went back and wiped them out, so now he doesn’t know which wadi we might be in.”
“In any case,” Dunn said, “he daren’t come down really low to look for us in case he finds us. You saw what we’ve got: three lots of twin-mounted Vickers machine guns. Make a lovely mess of him, they would. Aren’t you going to finish your apricots?”
“Yes. But the guns aren’t manned.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Look,” Lampard said, “I’m in command here. Now shut up and eat your apricots, or I won’t take you to see General Cunningham in Cairo.”
“He is in Alexandria,” Schramm said. “And General Auchinleck now commands your Eighth Army.”
Lampard uttered a cry of exasperation and threw up his hands, losing a boiled potato from his fork. “For God’s sake stop showing off!” he cried.
“Sorry. I thought you would wish to know.”
“Now look what you made me do.” Lampard sucked his empty fork. “That spud came fifteen thousand miles, all down the Atlantic, round South Africa, up the Indian Ocean, through the Canal, across miles and miles of burning desert, scorched by day and frozen by night, just to give me strength to fight the horrible Hun, and you’ve gone and ruined it.”
“If you know so much,” Dunn said, “how come you didn’t know we were going to raid your place last night?”
Schramm ate his cheese. Lampard reached across him and gave Dunn a congratulatory slap on the leg. “Blindingly obvious,” he said. “Well done, Mike.”
Nobody spoke for a while. The note of the airplane engine hardened and softened as it turned, invisibly. Dunn flicked a couple of drowning flies from his tea, and drank fast before the mourners could arrive. Lampard yawned and stretched his arms until his ribcage creaked. “Sergeant Davis!” he called.
“Sir?”
“Has the lookout had his meal yet?”
“No, sir.”
“Send up a replacement. This shufti plane is being a bit of a bore. It’ll be dark in an hour and I want to move pronto.”
“Sir.”
Dunn scratched his beard vigorously and examined his fingernails. “What were you listening to, in the car?”
“Music. Mozart. Reception is better away from the buildings.”
“My sister plays the piano. She won a prize for playing the Moonlight Sonata. Mozart wrote that, didn’t he?”
“Beethoven.”
“Oh, well. Same difference.”
“The English are not a very musical race,” Schramm said.
“Dunno about that. We’ve written some damn good songs. ‘Yes We Have No Bananas.’ ‘Roll out the Barrel.’ All that stuff Vera Lynn sings, like ‘There’ll Be Blue Birds over the White Cliffs of Dover.’ And you should see our chaps listening when Lili Marlene gets sung on Radio Belgrade: dead silence, nobody moves. Anyway—”
“Shut up a minute,” Lampard said.
The lazy buzz of the Storch had strengthened and deepened. The sound came bouncing off the walls of the wadi, confusing the ear. Then suddenly the plane appeared, gray as a moth, strolling along, ludicrously slowly, trembling in the last of the waves of hot air. It was low, about three hundred feet, and it was exploring the valley where the patrol was hiding. Lampard was unworried. The trucks looked like scrub and the men looked like the rocks they sat among. The pilot was up in the glare of the setting sun, searching for detail in shadow as dark as a cellar. As long as nobody moved nobody would be seen. “Good heavens. That is a British plane,” Schramm said. As Lampard and Dunn shaded their eyes and tried to make out its markings, Schramm heaved himself up with both hands and began running.
Sergeant Davis got off the first shot. The act of drawing his revolver left him sprawling awkwardly and he missed. Harris fired next, but he had been staring at the plane and he couldn’t focus fast enough on the shadowy figure and he too missed. Dunn got closest. Dunn got a bullet between Schramm’s feet. By then Schramm was twenty yards from the foot of the cliff and dodging briskly, not to make himself a more difficult target but because the stony floor of the wadi hurt his bare right foot, and in any case his boot made him lopsided. He stumbled, almost fell, saved himself with both hands and kicked forward like a sprinter in his blocks. Ten strides took him out of the shadow and into the sunlight, both arms waving like a shipwrecked sailor at a passing sail. Lampard was bellowing: “Hold your fire! Stay where you are! Cease fire! Do not move! Let him go!” Schramm heard nothing. He was prancing along the valley floor, strenuously signaling his existence to the Storch, forcing his limbs into violent action despite the pain in his lungs and the fiery protests of his damaged bare foot. The Storch dipped. Schramm cheered and waved his handkerchief. The Storch lost a hundred feet and circled.
Davis called: “There’s a rifle in the jeep, sir. I can get him with that, easy.”
“No, sergeant. Now everyone listen to me. I don’t want that prisoner killed until the airplane has gone. I don’t want him touched.”
By now Schramm was a hundred yards away, heading for the mouth of the wadi.
“You know best, Jack,” Dunn said quietly. “Personally I’d put a bullet through the bastard p.d.q. That little shufti plane can’t land here, and it wouldn’t even if it could.”
“Think,” Lampard said. “The pilot sees a man. The man wants to be seen. He’s not an Arab. He could be this Luftwaffe major the pilot knows is missing, probably pinched by enemy raiders. And all of a sudden—bang!—somebody shoots the bloke. Now what does that tell the pilot?”
“See what you mean.”
“If you got a radio message from that Storch saying, ‘Here’s a funny thing: I’ve just found your missing major, but would you believe it, somebody down there’s just shot him,’ what would you do?”
“I’d say… um… ‘Give me the map reference and I’ll send a dozen Stukas to work it over.’”
“Right. Think how many airfields Jerry’s got within range of here. There’s time for him to make an attack before the light goes. Ever been Stuka-ed.?”
“Once. Bloody murder.” Dunn and Lampard watched Schramm trotting away down the wadi, while the Storch made wide circles above him. After a while Schramm turned a bend and was lost to sight. “The sensible thing for that Storch to do would be to go home and refuel,” Lampard said. But the Storch continued to circle for several minutes. “Buzz off, for heaven’s sake!” Lampard said. And this time it did, climbing to a thousand feet, leveling off and flying north.
“Harris!” Lampard called. Harris trotted over. “He’s crippled in one foot and by now he must be half-maimed in the other, so he can’t have got far. Go and kill him, fast. Get back in ten minutes and I’ll make it double egg and chips for a week.” Harris was already on his way. They watched him go. He ran leaning forward, as if into a stiff breeze.