Three patches of blood spread on the snow by his feet, like tiny cultures under a microscope.
The image cut him deeper than the subzero temperatures of the wintry morning. He tried to shut off the picture that began to form in his mind, but not before he caught a glimpse of the spreading stickiness on his sheets as the haemorrhaging began once more.
Fleming cursed himself for allowing his concentration to drift. The hospital bed was behind him now. He was flying again.
He pulled the fireproof gloves over his hands and set off towards the slim, darkened shadow of his aircraft on the other side of the field. The single fitter, slouched against the side of the fuselage, straightened as he marched towards him. Fleming caught the glow as one last drag was pulled from the precious cigarette, then a deft flick of the wrist, an athletic movement and the aircraftman was on the wing of the Spitfire, reaching out to him.
“Morning, sir.” Fleming caught the smell of sleep and tea on the man’s breath as he bent down to pull him onto the wing.
He brushed aside the helping hands, anxious that the fitter should not feel him tremble.
He lowered himself into the armoured bucket seat, his feet sliding effortlessly into the rests on the rudderbars, his hands clasping the spade-grip of the joystick. Nothing much had changed in the cockpit between the Mk XVI and his old Mk IX. As Fleming went through the checks, his eyes and fingers darted over the instruments even as the fitter struggled to strap him into the machine.
Concentrate on the aircraft, the job in hand, forget the past.
A voice, somewhere far away, tried to reach out to him, but his mind dismissed it, focusing on the task that now lay before him. The fitter’s hand shook him gently by the shoulder.
“Tight enough for you, sir?” Fleming nodded, embarrassed by his dulled reactions. The fitter pulled the clear bubble canopy forward until it rammed home against the forward frame of the cockpit. A hand, his own, moved silently up to the catch and brought it down with a click that told him he was now sealed into the body of the Spitfire.
He pushed the starter button, heard the wheeze of the engine as the propellers moved through, one… two arcs, then the cough as it caught. A whiff of oil-smoke from the exhaust permeated through to his cramped cell. The Merlin thrummed against the firewall by his feet, the rhythm slowly stabilizing until he knew it was time to go.
As soon as the shuffling mechanic retired with the wheel chocks, Fleming flexed his fingers on the throttle lever and pushed it tentatively forward. The Merlin responded, sending a burst of power through the transmission system to the blades, which blew a blast of icy air past the cockpit and sent the fitter scuttling back to the warmth of the groundcrew office in the hangar.
Fleming watched the outside world drift by as if it were no more than a dream, a sense that was compounded by the strangely distorted shapes of trees, buildings and other aircraft caused by the slight curvature of his perspex canopy. At the same time, the discipline forged by years of flying kept part of his mind on the mission. Elevators… free, rudders… fine, flaps… on half setting, engine oil-pressure… normal.
He swung the aircraft onto the threshold and pushed the throttle through the gate to its take-off setting, his left foot instinctively tapping down on the rudder bar to counteract the vicious torque from the Merlin.
As soon as the aircraft came unstuck Fleming felt a surge of relief that left him feeling drained and weak. The burst of elation disappeared the moment the crackle in his headset reminded him of the task ahead.
“Goshawk, this is Sunflower. Steer one-one-oh degrees and make Angels one-three.” The static could not muffle the impeccable, BBC tones of the WAAF controller.
“Roger, Sunflower. Am climbing to Angels one-three. Vector one-one-oh.” A slight tremble. “Is there any sign of the intruder, over?” The voice controlled, a little steadier this time.
“Not yet, Goshawk. We’ve lost him in the clag. Patience, my boy, we’ll tell you the moment he breaks cover.” A man’s voice. Staverton. What the devil was the old fox doing there? He should have been tucked away in his basement in Whitehall. Fleming felt the claustrophobic flying overall wrap itself more tightly round him. He was being watched by everyone from the lowliest WAAF controller to the head of the bloody EAEU. And they were all waiting for him to make a mistake.
On his new course setting, Fleming could see the clouds building up from the West. He cursed again. The weather conditions would help his opponent, not him.
A crackle on the ether.
“Goshawk, we have your bandit on radar now. He’s forty miles east of you, heading south-east. Vector two-seven-oh and climb to Angels three-oh, over.”
He fought the constriction in his throat.
“Roger, Sunflower. Am making Angels three-oh now. Course two-seven-oh.”
“Goshawk…” The WAAF again. There was trepidation in her voice; the WAAF controllers always sensed the frightened ones. “He’s somewhere between Salisbury and Warminster. Making a dash for the coast. Good luck.”
Fleming increased the back pressure on the stick and saw the tops of the looming clouds disappear beneath the long nose of the Spitfire. The glare was brighter than he had ever known, but at least the sun was behind him. Something was going his way.
The supercharger cut in as he levelled off at thirty thousand feet, giving the Spitfire an extra burst of power in the rarefied atmosphere. He glanced into the mirror above his head.
Contrail.
Shit. He’d stand out a mile with a streak of moisturized air pouring out behind him. Might as well sign your signature across the bloody sky. He pushed the stick forward, seeking the invisible boundary layer of moisture-free sky where the contrail from his hot engine exhaust would melt away.
Five hundred feet lower he found it and allowed himself a quavering smile. Perhaps luck was with him after all.
Below, the unmistakable landmark of Winchester, with its distinctive cathedral rising above the icy water meadows by the River Itchen, slid beneath a gap in the thick, rolling cumulus. He did a few calculations. About twenty miles to intercept. At 400 mph, he should spot the enemy in just over five minutes.
If his luck held.
Fleming pictured the control room, dark except for the green glow of the cathode ray tubes that hummed beneath the glass of the radar screen. And there would be Staverton’s face, ghoul-like in the pulsing aura, peering intently into the electronic picture as the two dots converged. Staverton, who could see their every move, yet was unable to shout him a warning lest it be heard by the intruder and the element of surprise, now on Fleming’s side, was lost. But deep down, Fleming knew that even if the other aircraft had no radio to eavesdrop on him Staverton would do nothing. It was part of the test they had set for him.
He felt like an exhibit at a circus side-show. His freakishness lay not in some hideous facial deformity, but within, forged by two minutes of hell as his Spitfire tumbled burning through the sky, while he wrestled to open the hood with a lump of German 20 mm cannon in his belly.
It seemed everyone at Farnborough knew what had happened to Robert Fleming over Italy in ‘44.
A flash of sunlight on metal. At ten o’clock. Higher than him. He screwed his eyes up against the glare, scanning the sector for another fix. Nothing. The trouble with the Luftwaffe’s high-altitude recce aircraft was that for the last few months the Germans had taken to painting them all-over blue. Bloody hard to spot unless you happened to know one was out there. At least he had that advantage.
Then he saw the contrail. It was no more than a few hundred yards, a short line made from millions of tiny water droplets as the hot gas from the German engine hit the layer of moisture that he had encountered minutes before. His adversary must have spotted his mistake in a second, correcting his flight-path down into the lower stratum of the atmosphere where no trail would form. But it was too late. The contrail pointed with all the conviction of an arrow to the scudding silhouette of the duck-egg coloured Junkers as it passed from right to left across his propeller arc. Two miles from him; that was all. Control was good.