Fleming stopped his calculations. “What is it?”
“The 163’s crashed.” Staverton’s head lolled into his hands. “It’s all over.”
Fleming was on his feet. “What about Kruze?”
“He’s alive.”
“What the hell happened?”
Staverton’s voice was weak, almost inaudible. “The fuel tanks ruptured in midair and T-Stoff leaked into the cockpit, but Kruze stayed with the aircraft and brought it back in, the bloody fool. He was lucky.” He paused. “What the hell am I going to tell Welland?”
“First things first. Is Kruze all right?”
“He’s with the MO at Farnborough having the onceover. He’ll live. You know Kruze.” Staverton banged his fist on the table. “Why did this have to go and happen now?”
Fleming composed himself. “It was a rush operation, sir.” And a damned stupid one, he thought. “What state’s the 163 in?”
“Badly damaged. Mulvaney said something about a design fault.”
“Then at least that’s solved one of our problems,” Fleming said. “The Nazis can’t exactly defend the Alpine Redoubt with a fighter that doesn’t work.”
“The Alpine Redoubt could have bloody well waited,” Staverton snapped. “I don’t have to tell you that.”
Fleming paced the room for at least a minute before he spoke.
“The rocket fighter has served its purpose; it’s persuaded the other Cabinet advisers that an air-strike in a fast German fighter-bomber is the only way of getting through to Branodz.”
“Don’t waste your breath, laddie. The Komet had the speed, it had the range and it had the punch. Now it’s just a pile of useless junk, beyond repair. We’ve nothing else capable of doing the job.”
Fleming smiled. “We haven’t anything here at Farnborough, but the Germans have.”
“What are you getting at?” Staverton asked.
Fleming lit a cigarette and looked Staverton in the eye. “With all due respect, sir, using the Komet for a deep interdiction mission would never have worked.”
“Oh yes? And how would you have done it, Robert?” Staverton’s tone was challenging.
“I would have resurrected Operation Talon, sent a team into Germany to steal a fighter-bomber from a Luftwaffe base. If it worked at Rostock, it can work again. This time, though, the team would be small, hand-picked. We would need a pilot, a link-man and an able German speaker.”
Staverton remained silent.
“I could fly that aircraft,” Fleming added.
“No, Robert.”
“I’m all right now,” Fleming said simply.
Staverton shook his head. “It doesn’t matter how fit you are, laddie, we don’t have the resources to reactivate Operation Talon at such short notice. Apart from finding a pilot, we’ve got to lay our hands on a shepherd, someone who could guide our man to the airfield, get him safely through the Reich. They don’t come two a penny, you know, not even in SOE.”
“There must be something you can do. What about your friends in Intelligence? Surely they must have trained operatives ready to drop into Germany at a moment’s notice. We can’t give up now.”
When Fleming looked up at Staverton he noticed that he was sitting ramrod straight, his eyes gleaming.
“What is it?” Fleming asked.
“Something you said just now. Perhaps…”
Staverton got up and walked over to the solid grey filing cabinet in the corner of the room. He twiddled the combination lock on the side and pulled open the second drawer from the top. Thirty seconds later he held the Operation Talon file in his hand. Fleming watched him expectantly.
“Perhaps we could find ourselves a shepherd after all,” Staverton said. “What aircraft did you have in mind for this mission?”
“An Arado 234 from Oberammergau.” Fleming went over to the map, picked up Staverton’s compass and drew an arc whose point lay deep in the brown and purple topography of the Bavarian Alps. “That’s a 234’s approximate range — enough to get into western Czechoslovakia and out again, even at low level. The rest would be up to the pilot.”
“There definitely are 234s at Oberammergau?”
“Been deployed there for a few weeks now,” Fleming said. “My men have had them under high altitude surveillance since they got there. With our troops moving into Bavaria I wanted to see if Oberammergau was worth a diversion. I know that airfield like the back of my hand.”
“We’ve never laid our hands on an airworthy Arado, though. We’d need time to familiarize a pilot on the type, and time we don’t have.”
“I don’t think that’s a problem,” Fleming said. “From our calculations the 234 would not be that different from the Me 262 as far as its controls and flight characteristics go. Almost all the pilots at the EAEU flew the Messerschmitt at Farnborough before it was destroyed.”
Staverton wasn’t convinced. “I was too bloody clever for my own good believing that we could use the Komet for this mission. The PM will never buy a change in the plan now.”
Fleming could see the fatigue behind the old man’s eyes. “Not necessarily. Kruze is all right and the demo worked. If you hadn’t staged something that exotic Welland would still be racing off at half cock with notions about parachuting assassination squads into Czechoslovakia. As it is, they’ve recommended to the Prime Minister that the EAEU mounts a mission against the Russians. You’ve won their confidence. Now all you have to do is prove that a new scheme based on an extraction operation from Oberammergau is watertight. We have to persuade them that it’s just a matter of reactivating Talon.”
“Perhaps you’re right.” Staverton opened a drawer in his desk and produced a half-empty bottle of whisky. He poured himself a measure and offered some to Fleming. The younger man shook his head.
Staverton raised his glass. “It’s good to have you back. I missed you.” It was the first time he had seen a crack in the Old Man’s facade. Staverton took a sip of the whisky and rolled it on his tongue. “It’s got to be Kruze, Robert. He has the skill, a little of the language and the experience. It has to be Kruze.” He shook his head. “Otherwise it will be over to Welland and his SBS team, God help us.”
“Does that mean you’re going to put this to the Cabinet advisers?”
Staverton leant forward, his face so close to Fleming that he could smell the whisky on the AVM’s breath. “No, Robert.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am not going to tell the Cabinet advisers. They’re reactionaries. A change of plan now would throw them into disarray.”
“You’re just going to go ahead without their approval? You’ll never get away with it.”
“They’ll never know, until it’s all over and either Shaposhnikov is dead or we are.”
“You can’t keep that crash a secret. Not from the other Cabinet advisers at least,” Fleming said.
Staverton was already reaching for the phone. “Can’t I?”
A few seconds later and the AVM was connected with Mulvaney.
“Paddy? I want you to throw a cordon around the crash so tight that no news of it leaks out. Have all incoming calls screened, all outgoing calls stopped and all leave suspended. Nobody gets off the airfield. Have you got that? If anyone from Whitehall rings you for a progress report on the 163C tell them the flight was a success and the aircraft’s undergoing deep maintenance… anything except the truth. Is that understood?”
He put the phone down. Mulvaney would not question an order from Staverton.
“But we need to reactivate the network established for Talon. That’s going to take high level approval.”