Fleming had told him bluntly at Stabitz that, if he did go down behind Russian lines, Peiper’s identification would be a perfect alias — perfect for their purposes, that was, not his. Peiper had been posted missing by the Luftwaffe following a reconnaissance mission over south-east England in October 1944. The Luftwaffe never found any trace of his aircraft, an early model Ar234B-1, nor did it receive word of his death or capture through the Red Cross. The fatal crash-landing in the Romney Marshes on that October morning provided the EAEU with its first look at the radical new Arado machine. The Luftwaffe believed that Peiper and his aircraft had sunk to the bottom of the English Channel.
Kruze tucked into his boots the pilot’s breeches he had worn under his\civilian trousers and reversed Krazianu’s coat to expose the plain grey which, he had been assured, would go unremarked amidst the proliferation of dress styles sported by the Luftwaffe. The coat hid the fact that he was not wearing the fliegerbluse used by German fliers — there had simply not been room under the civilian clothes. He wrapped the coat tightly round him and adjusted the Iron Cross so that it hung neatly over the top button of his shirt. He looked himself over. It was not perfect, but it would have to do.
With just under an hour before the Meteors came over, he knew he had to find a vantage point, somewhere which would allow him an unrestricted view of the flightline. There was nothing else for it but to head resolutely toward the noise of the turbojets.
As the sky grew lighter, the mist started to clear and Oberammergau seemed to come alive. He moved around the low buildings, heading for the hangars that lay beyond, their outlines just visible above the barrack rooftops.
Mechanics, distinguishable by their black cotton drill uniforms, began to emerge from the huts around him, rubbing eyes and yawning after too little sleep as they headed for the flightline. None of them paused to give him a second look. He tagged along behind a group of NCOs who trudged in the direction of the hangars, trying to look as if he knew the place intimately.
He had not seen any other flying crew, but then this was the hour of briefings that preceded the day’s operations.
Suddenly he was out of the maze, with the airfield stretched before him. He kept walking, conscious of the sudden lack of cover.
The runway ran from left to right, a strip of grey that glistened in the half-light, its edge seemingly disappearing into the foot of the Alps beyond. A few hundred yards from him were the two enormous hangars that he had seen from the barracks compound, their doors closed against the chill wind that had started to whip down off the mountains. The whine of the turbojets was louder now, but he still could not see the Arados, only a few Heinkel 111s and a Ju 52 transport parked haphazardly on the apron.
He walked faster, towards the hangars, pulled there by the sound of the engines. He had to see the aircraft that would take him into Czechoslovakia. Then he would worry about finding a place to hide.
He drew closer to the first hangar and stopped dead in his tracks. Across the other side of the runway there were three Arados, their silhouettes just visible against the mountains. As he focused on them, he detected the others through the haze on the periphery of his vision and when he switched his gaze to them, more black crosses leapt at him out of the corner of his eye, this time from further along the runway’s edge. He became aware of the small dark shapes of the groundcrew scurrying around the aircraft. He strained for a better look and thought he could make out the bulbous shape of bombs and jettisonable tanks hanging from the stores pylons beneath the wings, like fat, blood-filled ticks clinging to the soft under-feathers of a bird of prey.
The aircraft appeared so ready to go that they seemed to be pushing against their wheel chocks. Soon their pilots would launch them from their Alpine lair on the dawn forage for enemy ammunition dumps, bridges and other high-value targets. Kruze swore quietly. He was on the wrong side of the runway. Somehow he had to get across the clear expanse of ground between the hangars and the dispersal area on the other side. He had no choice. He scoured the area in the immediate vicinity of the Arados for a place to go to ground. There was only one, an immense graveyard of aircraft wrecks, filled with an assortment of twisted fuselages and broken wings. He knew that if he could make his way there and lie low until the Meteors arrived, he would only have to sprint a hundred yards to the nearest of the Arados.
There was still fifty minutes to go. He wondered if he could get into a plane without depending on the Meteors’ diversion. He turned round cautiously and looked back at the barracks and flight operations compounds. There were no pilots in sight yet, only a few mechanics, still making their way to and from the hangars, but he felt that the appearance of the flyers was imminent. It was time to make his move.
Kruze was level with the second hangar, striding towards the runway, when he heard a cavernous groan, a low metallic rumble that he felt even through the concrete beneath his feet. The forty-foot doors of the hangar parted, allowing a ray of light to spill across the ground, blinding him with the intensity of the arc-lights within. He stood in awe as the doors were winched back.
The nose of the Arado that sat in the centre of the hangar, facing him head on, seemed to be on fire as the arc-lights reflected off its Plexiglass canopy. He felt himself walking towards it, part of him mesmerized, part of him knowing that what he was doing was wrong. This was the aircraft that had filled his thoughts for the last two days.
He stepped into the hangar, nodding casually to the rigger who was operating the electric motors that hauled the doors open. The corporal’s wave turned to a salute when he spotted the prized Iron Cross at Kruze’s throat. The other mechanics were too busy with their last-minute checks to pay any attention to the major taking an interest in their work. The bastard probably did not know that they had been up all night repairing the flak damage that the aircraft had sustained during the previous day’s operations. They were all the same.
Kruze stood a little way from the mottled grey and green bomber. It was a late production model Ar 234B-2. The long, smooth tubular fuselage tapered away from the glazed nose, culminating in a tall, graceful fin. The wings were high and straight, attached to the shoulder of the fuselage to give plenty of clearance to the two turbojets they held underneath. He took in the bombs slung beneath the engine nacelles and the drop tanks that were attached to the wings between the turbojets and the rocket-assisted take-off bottles. He reminded himself that for an aircraft operating at such a heavy all-up weight from an airfield as high as Oberammergau, RATO assistance would be essential for getting off the ground.
He moved closer to the cockpit. The Arado was different from almost all aircraft he had come across in that there was no raised canopy. The pilot sat out in the pressurized nose, surrounded by a wrap-around sheet of stiffened Perspex which afforded him almost perfect visibility. He peered inside, casually, noting the ejection seat and wondered whether it actually worked. It was a startling concept. Despite attempts at Farnborough and the Martin-Baker company the British were hard pressed to come up with a device that could get a pilot clear of a stricken aircraft automatically.
His eye caught the periscope that jutted out from the canopy roof. At first he thought it had to be something to do with the Lotfe bomb-sight, but then he realized that the optics pointed backwards as well as forwards. Intrigued, the Rhodesian stepped back and ran his eye along the fuselage until he spotted what he was looking for. Just forward of the tail, in the belly of the aircraft, was a smoke-blackened port, pointing aft. The EAEU knew that the Germans had developed rearward firing cannon for some aircraft, but it was unaware that the device had been extended to the Arado. He hoped he would not need it to get him out of trouble; he was relying on the Arado’s speed to do that.