The official bowed. "I am mos' sorry, Madame; but 'ow can we let private matters interfere with the necessities of our country?"
"But this isn't a private matter," Freddie put in rashly. “I’m a Royal Air Force pilot and this is a British plane. If you’re not darned careful you'll have a diplomatic incident on 'our hands, and you'd be penny wise and pound foolish to start even a minor quarrel with the British Government at this juncture."
The Finn who was dressed in pilot's kit spoke in halting English. "We should have great regret, sir, to offend your Government in any way but this is an urgency. Our so few military planes are all needed; our civil planes are took also for many purposes. I introduce myself. Staff Captain Helijarvi. I have urgent orders that I must take with no delays to our forces at Petsamo. Please be reasonable. You see how great is our necessity."
In the face of such an appeal they all felt how impossible, it was to place what the Finns, not knowing that two of them were wanted for murder, could only regard as their temporary safety before such a vital matter as conveying Marshal Mannheim’s orders to his troops in the far north.
For a moment they all stood there in silence, then Gregory asked: "Do you intend to bring the plane back here and, if so, will it be free then, or will you require it for further service?"
"I shall make return in it," replied Captain Helijarvi "immediately I 'ave deliver my dispatches, but after who can say? I fear that all aeroplane in Finland will be required for the duties until more aeroplane come to our 'elp from neutral countries."
It had occurred to Gregory that if there was a chance of their regaining possession of the plane they might have found their way back to Loumkoski's and lain doggo there for twenty four hours until the plane was back and they could get away in it; but evidently this was the most slender thread upon which to pin their hopes. Clearly, too, even if they could persuade the Staff Captain to take them with him to Petsamo, as he meant to return at once he would not release the plane there so that they could fly on with it into neutral Norway. But another possibility suddenly occurred to Gregory, and he turned to Charlton.
"Look here; Freddie, Petsamo, as you probably know, is an ice free port in the Arctic. If we could get there we might have to wait a week or so but we should almost certainly be able to secure a passage in a British or neutral ship and go home that way. How about it?"
"That would suit Angela and myself," Freddie nodded; "but how about Erika?"
Erika shrugged. "Almost any ship sailing from Petsamo would call at one of the Norwegian ports before going on to England or America, so you could drop me off in Norway. The point is, though, would Captain Helijarvi be willing to take us?"
"Madame," said the Finn at once. "I only regrets that I 'ave to take your plane at all. In any other way please make your command to me. If it is 'elpful to you that I fly you to Petsamo it will be big pleasure for me to take you."
"This is mos' irregular," cut in the airport official. "These peoples have not pass the controls, Captain. They mus' 'ave known that we would not allow them to take their plane."
For a second their fate seemed to hang again in the balance., then Helijarvi laughed a rich, deep chuckle. "There is a war on, friend. 'Ow can you blame two gentlemen’s for not observing regulation when they wish to get their ladies to safe places? Let us 'ave no more delays."
Gregory felt that his star was once more in the ascendant as the thick set Finnish Staff Captain climbed into the plane and began to examine the controls. Freddie got in beside him and swiftly explained the more subtle idiosyncrasies of the plane which his own flight from Germany had shown him. It was a four seater but none of them were heavy weights; the two girls weighed only sixteen stone between them and their two dressing cases were the only luggage; so Helijarvi and Freddie agreed that the plane would not be overloaded. Gregory and the girls wedged themselves into the back while the two pilots sat in front. One of the airport men blew a whistle; a light flickered for a moment in the distance to give Helijarvi his direction; the engine roared and they were off.
Freddie had offered to fly the plane if Helijarvi would act as his navigator but the Finn had replied that he preferred to fly it himself and knew the route to Petsamo so well that he could manage without assistance; so for once the ace British pilot experienced the, to him, rather dubious joy of being a passenger. Apart from Angela none of the fugitives had had their full ration of sleep for the past two nights and, from nodding drowsily to the engine's monotonous hum, after about twenty minutes they all dropped off to sleep.
The first part of the journey lay over Central Finland, so there was little danger of encountering the Soviet war planes; which, if their pilots were not tired out after their long day of murder, would be operating against either the towns of the South or the fortifications on the frontier. Helijarvi's only anxiety was that they might run into a blizzard; but the weather had been good all day and the calm of the early night suggested a peace which no longer existed in the stricken land. The Soviet bombers had not confined their attention to Helsinki but had raided many towns and villages that day, so as the plane flew on its pilot picked up the glare of still burning homesteads from time to time and knew that in the dark forests below him a million homeless people were striving to keep the warmth of life in their shivering bodies.
At seven o'clock Freddie roused up, upon which Helijarvi told him that they had accomplished about two thirds of their journey and were now approaching a part of the country where the Russian frontier juts out like a big cape into Northern Finland. To remain on the direct route to Petsamo he would have had to fly over Soviet territory for about a hundred miles so he altered course slightly to keep inside the Finnish border, but they were near enough to the frontier to see here and there far below them some evidence of the fighting that was still in progress.
The main battle fronts were hundreds of miles away to the South, on the Karelian Isthmus and north of Lake ' Ladoga. Up here the fighting consisted only of encounters between small detached units who occasionally came up against one another in their endeavours either to penetrate or to defend the frontier. At one point a battery was shelling some unseen target but in all the hundred and fifty miles of their detour they saw only three other local engagements and in these the sporadic spurts A fire and individual flashes showed that nothing heavier than machine guns and rifles were in action.
Soon after they passed away from the frontier they ran into cloud and, coming down to a thousand feet, encountered snow. it was not a blizzard but the gentle, drifting snow that falls so frequently in the Arctic and which pilots must always anticipate there when flying below the lower cloud levels. Helijarvi said that Petsamo must now lie somewhere beneath them and switching on his navigation lights he began to send out radio signals in anticipation that the airport would give him a beam to guide him in. After several minutes' tapping they received no response; which looked as though the airport people were not operating their wireless, for fear of giving guidance to Soviet bombing planes which might quite possibly be in the area.
Without radio assistance it would prove difficult to find the landing ground but Helijarvi felt confident he could do so.
Circling round he slowly began to bring the plane much lower until after circling six times they picked up some flashes of light. A moment later they were flying over the lights and were able to see that there were two distinct groups of them, about a mile apart. The snow blanket seemed to be less solid down here and they suddenly realized that instead of a uniform greyness below them the cloud like landscape was rent into two jagged halves, one of which was much darker than the other. As Helijarvi circled again they saw that one group of flashes came from the edge of a prominence in the whiter part while the other was out in the darker, and the explanation flashed upon the two airmen simultaneously. The first group of flashes came from shore batteries on the harbour and the second from Soviet warships which were shelling them from the sea.