Kruze bristled, but said nothing.
“We had codes of silence in the last show, too, you know, but it never did any good to some poor bastard who was too proud to admit that he had had enough. We operate a tight unit here, you know that. Robert has served it well, but if he’s gone over the edge, he can be replaced.”
“And we lose the best intelligence officer in the RAF.”
“There are others. Perhaps they will take time to train for our purposes, but it can be done.”
“Sir…” Kruze paused. “You know as well as I do that that’s impossible. Fleming’s work is indispensable to what we do down here. His presence may not always be welcome on the station, but it would take months to find the right man for his job, let alone train him.”
Staverton sensed he hadn’t finished.
“If there’s more, man, get it off your chest now. You know rank counts for little here.”
When it suits you, Kruze thought. “All right. Why the hell did you make him do that air-test if you suspected he was unfit to fly?”
“Because he requested it himself.”
“And you let him do it, just because you felt it might be good therapy? Well, the answer to your first question is, yes, I do think he’s had enough, but then perhaps we all have.”
Staverton seemed unconcerned by the outburst. “You know his wife—”
“I’ve met her.”
“How’s she coping?”
Kruze’s mind drifted back to the dinner at the cottage. It had been an awkward attempt by Fleming to get to know one of the Farnborough team a bit better. Just Fleming, his wife Penny, a recently widowed friend of hers and himself. Fleming had been much as usual; withdrawn, shy almost, seeming as ill at ease with Penny as he had been at the base.
She had saved the evening. Attractive and vivacious despite Fleming’s clumsiness with her and his guests, Penny never seemed to show any resentment. Once though, he had caught a look on her face, gently bathed in the candle light, as she watched her husband try to make polite conversation. At the time, Kruze thought it was pity; only on the way home did he realize that it was a look of immeasurable sadness.
“She’s fine, as far as I know. And so’s he.” As long as you leave him alone, he thought.
“All right, Piet, that’ll be all.”
Staverton rubbed his eyes. “Just get that report to me in London by midmorning tomorrow. I’ll not be staying here much longer today. Then take a few days of that leave that’s owing to you while you’re about it. It may be the last chance you get for quite a while.”
CHAPTER TWO
The officer was lying on his back in the tall grass, arms folded across his chest. The dawn sunlight was streaming down on him, but the peaked cap cast a thin shadow across his closed eyes.
He looks dead, Oberscharführer Dietz thought as he stood above him. The sergeant was seized by a desire to slip a shell into the chamber of his Mauser sniper’s rifle, put the barrel up against the officer’s head and blow his brains over the little grassy hillock on which they’d been holed up for the last two days. What’s the point? They’d all be dead before long anyway. Every man jack of the platoon, or what was left of it. Killing the pig of an officer would probably be doing him a favour.
The officer was awake and fully aware of Dietz’s presence. What did the fool want now? He had been thinking of home. It was almost seven years since he had been there, and it still haunted him. War hadn’t eased the contempt he felt for his father, and his so-called friends would be first in the queue to slit his throat if he ever did get back. But the place he could never forget. If only things had been different.
It was the same for the platoon, God help them. They were tired, dirty and sick and they wanted to go home, but all of them knew that even if they survived this mess, home was out of the question. For all except Dietz, that was. The Bavarian still had a place to go back to, but he was the only one who didn’t care. That was the irony. Dietz had probably been quite a pleasant young man before this campaign, but by the time they left Stalingrad, Dietz, too, was living on borrowed time.
They had been behind enemy lines now for five months, off and on. It had started when the big Soviet push came in November. His section had been cut off by the assault, but they’d managed to fight their way back to other German units a few weeks later. By that time the Germans had been pushed back into Eastern Czechoslovakia, but his commanding officer had been so impressed with the havoc that he had wrought behind the Russian lines that he was promoted and told to go back and do it all over again. “Don’t worry,” the General had told him, “you’re not the only ones who’ll be there. There will be enough SS units behind Ivan’s lines to cause real chaos. Supply lines will be cut and perhaps even their advance can be stemmed long enough to give our troops a chance to regroup and smash the Bolshevik army once and for all. Then the Third Reich will turn on the Americans and the British and then Germany will be great again.” That had been in November ‘44… five months ago, was it? It seemed like a lifetime to the officer. For every filthy Ivan he’d put down, another ten seemed to take his place.
“… then Germany will be great again.” My bloody arse, it will.
The officer watched through half-closed eyes as Dietz slipped his rifle strap over his shoulder, leant forward and prodded him.
The officer’s eyes flicked wide open, but he wasn’t startled. He knew they thought he was too cool by half. Whereas the rest of them stank and were covered in dirt, the officer always managed to look clean and shaven every morning, wherever he happened to be. His face had become gaunt in recent weeks though, the skin was stretched tight over his hooked nose and his cheeks were grey from the bout of dysentery that had gone round the platoon after their withdrawal from Boskovice.
The officer stared back at Dietz for several seconds. Sergeant Dietz served as a terrible reminder of the horror of the battle for that provincial town. The retreat from Boskovice had been a nightmare. The seven survivors of the once proud platoon of 22 had withdrawn across country by night, taken to these foothills and had remained here for two days without seeing any enemy activity.
Parts of Czechoslovakia were like that. The isolated valley in which they had taken refuge was off the main Soviet armoured convoy routes and they hadn’t seen a soul. Except Dietz, of course. He’d been surprised by some old peasant when he went down to that hamlet near Tryskov on a clandestine forage for food the previous night. The old man had spotted him coming out of a barn with two dead chickens under each arm and had rushed up to welcome his Russian liberator. Even though Dietz was wearing full forage gear — the camouflaged smock and over-trousers that they all used, with no insignia of any kind — the Slav couldn’t help but notice the shape of his helmet even in the half-light of dusk. The old man’s cry of alarm died in his throat the moment Dietz’s combat knife hit him full in the chest.
When Dietz told the story later he had bragged that the man had died before the chickens had even hit the ground. Everyone had laughed, but he was still damned good with that knife. It had got them out of a few tight spots before.
The officer realized that his sergeant was standing there waiting for orders. He snapped out of his reverie.
“What is it?” He stared up at the broad unshaven face and was about to speak again, when he heard the faint sound in the far distance and knew that it was beginning all over again.
“One jeep and an armoured personnel carrier, sir. They’re heading this way, but haven’t yet come out of the trees. I saw them enter the other side of the wood two minutes ago.”
The officer rolled onto his front and parted the grass so that he could get an unrestricted view of the flat expanse of land and the line of trees beyond. Dietz lay down beside him and studied the face once more, this time waiting for orders.