Stephen Hunter
Citadel
For
R. Sidney Bowen,
author of
Dave Dawson with the R.A.F.
and
Red Randall at Pearl Harbor
and so many others, for teaching me
the glory of the story sixty-odd years ago
Epigraph
A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along and the words — or, rather, the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols — spring to life.
Citadel
The Lysander took off in the pitch-dark of 0400 British Standard War Time, Pilot Officer Murphy using the prevailing south-southwest wind to gain atmospheric traction, even though the craft had a reputation for short takeoffs. He nudged it airborne, felt it surpass its amazingly low stall speed, held the stick gently back until he reached 150 meters, then commenced a wide left-hand bank to aim himself and his passenger toward Occupied France.
Murphy was a pro and had done many missions for his outfit, No. 138 (Special Duties Squadron), inserting and removing agents in coordination with the Resistance. But that didn’t mean he was blasé, or without fear. No matter how many times you flew into Nazi territory, it was a first time. There was no predicting what might happen, and he could just as easily end up in a POW camp or against the executioner’s wall as back in his quarters at RAF Newmarket.
The high-winged, single-engine plane hummed along just over the 150-meter notch on the altimeter to stay under both British and, twenty minutes on, German radar. It was a moonless night, as preferred, a bit chilly and damp, with ground temperature at about four degrees centigrade. It was early April 1943; the destination, still two hours ahead, was a meadow outside Sur-la-Gane, a village fortyeight kilometers east of Paris. There, God and the Luftwaffe willing, he would deviate from the track of a railroad, find four lights on the ground, and lay the plane down between them, knowing that they signified enough flatness and tree clearance for the airplane. He’d drop his passenger, the peasants of whichever Maquis group was receiving that night (he never knew) would turn the plane around, and in another forty seconds he’d be airborne, now headed west toward tea and jam. That was the ideal, at any rate.
He checked the compass at the apex of the Lysander’s primitive instrument panel and double-checked his heading (148° ENE), his fuel (full), and his airspeed (175 mph), and saw through the Perspex windscreen, as expected, nothing. Nothing was good. He knew it was a rare off-night in the war and that no fleets of Lancasters filled the air and radio waves to and from targets deep in Germany, which meant that the Luftwaffe’s night fighters, Me110s, wouldn’t be up and about. № 110 had ever shot down a Lysander because they operated at such different altitudes and speeds, but there had to be a first time for everything.
Hunched behind him was an agent named Basil St. Florian, a captain in the army by official designation, commissioned in 1932 into the Horse Guards — not that he’d been on horseback in over a decade. Actually Basil, a ruddy-faced, ginger-haired brute who’d once sported a giant moustache, didn’t know or care much about horses. Or the fabulous traditions of the Horse Guards, the cavalry, even the army. He’d only ended up there after a youth notorious for spectacular crack-ups, usually involving trysts with American actresses and fights with Argentine polo players. His father arranged the commission, as he had arranged so much else for Basil, who tended to leave debris wherever he went, but once in khaki Basil veered again toward glamorous self-extinction until a dour little chap from Intelligence invited him for a drink at Boodle’s. When Basil learned he could do unusual things and get both paid and praised for it, he signed up. That was 1934, and Basil had never looked back.
As it turned out, he had a gift for languages and spoke French, German, and Spanish without a trace of accent. He could pass for any European nationality except Irish, though the latter was more on principle, because he despised the Irish in general terms. They were so loud.
He liked danger and wasn’t particularly nonplussed by fear. He never panicked. He took pride in his considerable wit, and his bons mots were famous in his organization. He didn’t mind fighting, with fist or knife, but much preferred shooting, because he was a superb pistol and rifle shot. He’d been on safari at fifteen, again at twenty-two, and a third time at twenty-seven; he was quite used to seeing large mammals die by gunshot, so it didn’t particularly perturb him. He knew enough about trophy hunting to hope that he’d never end up on another man’s wall.
He’d been in the agent trade a long time and had the nightmares to show for it, plus a drawerful of ribbons that someone must organize sooner or later, plus three bullet holes, a raggedy zigzag of scar tissue from a knife (don’t ask, please, don’t ever ask), as well as piebald burn smears on back and hips from a long session with a torturer. He finally talked, and the lies he told the man were among his finest memories. His other favorite memory: watching his torturer’s eyes go eightball as Basil strangled him three days later. Jolly fun!
Basil was cold, shivering under an RAF sheepskin over an RAF aircrew jumpsuit over a black wool suit of shabby prewar French manufacture. He sat uncomfortably squashed on a parachute, which he hadn’t bothered to put on. The wind beat against him, because on some adventure or another the Lysander’s left window had been shot out and nobody had got around to replacing it. He felt vibrations as the unspectacular Bristol Mercury XII engine beat away against the cold air, its energy shuddering through all the spars, struts, and tightened canvas of the aircraft.
“Over Channel now, sir,” came the crackle of a voice from the earphones he wore, since there was entirely too much noise for pilot and passenger to communicate without it. “Ten minutes to France.”
“Got it, Murphy, thanks.”
Inclining toward the intact window to his starboard, Basil could see the black surface of the Channel at high chop, the water seething and shifting under the powerful blast of cold early-spring winds. It somehow caught enough illumination from the stars to gleam a bit, though without romance or beauty. It simply reminded him of unpleasant things and his aversion to large bodies of the stuff, which to him had but three effects: it made you wet, it made you cold, or it made you dead. All three were to be avoided.
In time a dark mass protruded upon the scene, sliding in from beyond to meet the sea.
“I say, Murphy, is that France?”
“It is indeed, sir.”
“You know, I didn’t have a chance to look at the flight plan. What part of France?”
“Normandy, sir. Jerry’s building forts there, to stop an invasion.”
“If I recall, there’s a peninsula to the west, and the city of Cherbourg at the tip?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me, if you veered toward the west, you’d cross the peninsula, correct? With no deviation then, you’d come across coastline?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And from that coastline, knowing you were to the western lee of the Cherbourg peninsula, you could easily return home on dead reckoning, that is, without a compass, am I right?”
“Indeed, sir. But I have a compass. So why would—”
Basil leaned forward, holding his Browning .380 automatic pistol. He fired once, the pistol jumping, the flash filling the cockpit with a flare of illumination, the spent casing flying away, the noise terrific.
“Good Christ!” yelped Murphy. “What the bloody hell! Are you mad?”