“How long do you think it will take to get the 163 reassembled?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t we go and get some answers from the man who pulled this whole thing off? He should be around here somewhere.”
Kruze followed Mulvaney over to the nearer of the two Yorks and crawled into the forward access hatch after the station commander. Mulvaney peered through the darkness and the throng of people milling around the oily interior of the cargo hold. Outside, a tractor and trailer drove past, the engine noise deafening in the confines of the fuselage. Mulvaney spotted Fleming, but Kruze, that much further behind, could only see the silhouette of a lean man with a gaunt, yet good looking face, who was sitting on a crate and watching the comings and goings of the groundcrew. Mulvaney walked briskly over to him, his hand outstretched, his voice lost to Kruze in the din.
“Robert, my dear chap, congratulations. I could scarcely believe it when the Air Vice Marshal told me about the operation. It’s an outstanding success for you and, I might say, the EAEU as well.”
At that moment the headlights of the tractor lit the interior of the fuselage and Kruze saw it was Fleming.
Then the tractor motored on past and the cargo hold was plunged into darkness once more. Kruze had a few seconds to compose himself, but he could not stop the questions that tumbled through his mind. Fleming was finished, wasn’t he? Staverton knew he was washed up; the AVM had as good as said it the day of the airtest on the Junkers. It was then that Penny’s words came back to him. If Fleming had really cared, she’d said, he would have called her from the Bunker. Jesus Christ, he’d been behind enemy lines for the past two days.
Fleming seemed to be embarrassed at the brashness of Mulvaney’s approach. He rose and shook hands a little self-consciously.
“Thank you, Paddy. I had excellent back-up from our men, and the army. The paratroopers were the real heroes.”
“I look forward to hearing all about it, especially the way you handled that booby trap,” Mulvaney said, turning round to find Kruze. “Meanwhile, it’s been decided that Kruze, here, will be first to fly this thing.” He patted the top of the crate.
Fleming smiled, something Kruze couldn’t remember him doing in all the months that he’d known him.
“That’s one job I don’t envy you,” Fleming said. He held out his hand. “How are you, Piet?”
Kruze flinched, then took the hand and shook it.
“Fine, thanks. Congratulations.” The handshake was firm, Kruze noticed, and the smile was warm and friendly. This was not the Robert Fleming that Penny had described, the one he had always known, the bitter, introspective person who couldn’t come to terms with the world after his ordeal in the cockpit of a tumbling, burning Spitfire.
Fleming got to his feet and stretched.
“If you’ll both excuse me, I’m going to get some shut-eye. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”
Kruze watched him stroll easily across the hangar floor, his coat slung over his shoulder, and out through a door on the other side.
“There goes quite a chap,” Mulvaney said. “Cool as a bloody cucumber.” Mulvaney was rubbing his hands together again. “It’s hard to believe that six months ago he was in a hospital bed. An FW 190 got him over Italy, you know.”
“Yes, I heard about that,” Kruze said, trying to control his voice.
Staverton must have written Shaposhnikov’s name out a dozen times on his desk pad. Each entry had a question mark after it. He had circled the name in every case and drawn an arrow down to the bottom of the page. A dozen lines leading to a single word. Remove. Yes, the Soviet Chief of General Staff had to be removed along, if possible, with key members of his command. But how? He was tired, horribly tired. He dropped the pencil and rubbed his eyes.
At best, assassinating Shaposhnikov would put an end to Archangel. At worst, it would buy them time.
He had the germ of a plan, but his main doubts centred not on the scheme itself, but the reaction of the cabinet advisers to it. It was bold, certainly, but the rudiments were well established.
His mind drifted back to that other time of sleepless nights, thrashing out the details of the Berchtesgarten raid. Hitler’s hideaway in Bavaria was one of the most heavily fortified locations in the Reich, but Churchill wanted to show his allies, especially Stalin, that no target in Germany was beyond the reach of the RAF. Staverton was told to get to work on a plan that would strike the Führer where he felt least vulnerable, high in his protected lair in the Bavarian Alps. After examining a number of alternatives, Staverton concluded there was only one that might work without incurring huge losses to Bomber Command.
Operation Talon: to steal a Luftwaffe bomber from an airfield in the Reich, jink through the multi-layered defences around Berchtesgarten and put two 1000 lb bombs through the drawing room windows of the Eagle’s Nest.
Within the EAEU, he had the pilots with experience of Luftwaffe machines. He had, with the help of Special Operations Executive, the means to get a man into the Reich and then to an airfield in Bavaria which operated the Ju 188E-2, which in early 1944 was an almost unbeatable Luftwaffe medium bomber.
The plan foundered because the cabinet advisers, especially that pompous oaf Welland, questioned the very basis of his central argument for Talon: that Luftwaffe technology was in most respects superior to their own and was, therefore, right for the job.
Before the D-Day invasion, the EAEU was a shadow of its present strength, operating a few clapped-out fighters and bombers that had either fallen with little damage on to English soil, or had inadvertently been put down there by disorientated pilots. The EAEU of March 1944 was not the sort of fleet that would have prompted the cabinet advisers to change their minds. It was a different story now; or was it? Their prize, the Me 262 jet fighter, had exploded a few months before, following a catastrophic turbine failure in one of the engines. Kruze, through his tenacity and skill, had barely escaped with his life.
There were other impressive German aircraft still at Farnborough. Impressive to him and the rest of the EAEU, that was. To people like Rear Admiral Welland, they were just angular lumps of metal, no different to the RAF’s machines.
In the end, three hundred and sixty Lancasters went to Berchtesgarten. Only three hundred came back.
Just then the phone rang. It was Mulvaney.
“Back at Farnborough? What is, man?” Staverton barked into the receiver, with no idea what Mulvaney was crowing about.
The station commander seemed taken aback. He didn’t want to mention the 163G by name, even though they were supposed to be speaking on a secure line.
Staverton banged his fist on the desk the moment he remembered Fleming, the 163C and Rostock. He looked at his watch. Fleming and the cargo would have been back at Farnborough for over an hour by now. He hadn’t thought of them in a long time. For some months, Churchill had been pressuring him to let go of the EAEU and devote all of his time to his special duties as Cabinet adviser. So far, he had resisted all attempts to tear him away from his creation at Farnborough. Perhaps it was time to reconsider.
At least he’d have Fleming back in the Bunker to help him try and sort out this mess. The flight test programme of the 163C could go on without him. Archangel had priority over everything.
“Is the package safe and sound?” Staverton asked, more out of courtesy than interest.
“Yes, sir. We’re just unwrapping it now,” Mulvaney replied. “If you’re going to put Fleming up for a decoration, you know you can count on my endorsement.”