There was a moment late that night after they had returned to their hotel when, half conscious in the gauzy veils of moonlight shining through the window, Carter felt himself falling away into the darkness which, for the first time in his life, he did not fear.
Carter woke at 5 a.m.
He sat up in bed and looked down at Teresa, still fast asleep beside him, and in that moment, seeing her hair spilled out across the pillow, he realised that he had fallen in love. Until this moment, there had been a part of him that still believed that, when the time came, he could walk away and simply add her to his tally of regrets. But the possibility of that had slipped away from him. Perhaps it was when she handed him the photograph. Perhaps when they were walking the streets the night before. And perhaps it had always been that way, from the moment he first saw her, and it had taken this long for him to admit it to himself. You have either killed me or saved me, he thought as he looked down upon her, but I’m damned if I know which it is.
He slipped from the bed and got dressed, careful that his belt buckle did not clink as he fastened it. He took the map that Ritter had given him, picked up his shoes and stepped out of the room, closing the door soundlessly behind him. Still moving carefully, as if across a sheet of ice, he made his way along the carpeted corridor to the stairs. There, he sat down and put on his shoes.
There was no one at the front desk as he passed through the foyer of the hotel. He opened one of the great double doors at the entrance and stepped out into the dove grey light before the dawn. Mist hung in tatters in the mountains. He looked at the map, turning it this way and that until he found his bearings. Then he set off towards the old airfield, six kilometres outside town. The streets were empty and at first he only walked, so as not to draw attention from anyone who might be looking from a window, but as soon as he cleared the last of the houses, he began to move more quickly. Soon he was running, not flat out but at a steady pace. The first rays of sunlight showed through the trees, lying across the road like scattered bolts of brass.
The road narrowed as it climbed into the hills, and the old map showed a turn-off to the south, which led to the airfield. But when he came to the place where the turn-off should have been, he found the path so overgrown that he felt sure it must lie further up ahead. He kept on, sweating through his shirt, his shoes unfit for the punishment they were taking. He went for another kilometre and then realised he had gone too far. Doubling back, he returned to what seemed to be the path, but whole trees with trunks as thick as his leg had grown up in the ruts where vehicles had once passed through. He knew he must be close, but the thought that he could spend hours searching for the last section of the path that would get him to the airfield sent a flutter of panic through his chest.
He set off down the overgrown trail, sweeping aside undergrowth as if he were swimming to his destination. The sun was up now, and mosquitoes whined around his face. He heard birds singing off in the forest and the chuntering of squirrels in the branches above his head.
Just at the moment when he thought he might have to turn back, he saw a clearing in the woods ahead. A minute later, he emerged onto the old runway. It had been tarmacked years ago and, although the surface was cracked and wavy, exposing a bedrock of concrete below, he saw at a glance that it was a well-chosen location. He walked out into the middle of the runway, his feet brushing through the hazy globes of dandelions that had grown up through fissures in the ground. After the closeness of the forest, Carter felt uneasy to be out there in the open. He made his way to the other side of the runway and skirted the edge from then on.
Garlinsky had said that the plane went down south of the runway, and that it had been on its final approach when that happened. Carter knew that the wreckage couldn’t be too far, but the forest was so dense here that he might not see the aircraft until he was practically on top of it.
He forced himself to be calm, knowing that the work which lay ahead of him might take hours. He might not even find the plane in a day, in which case he would have to return and keep looking. He hoped it didn’t come to that. The longer he spent out here, the more likely it was that he would be noticed, and yet still in the back of his mind was the nagging fear that the wreckage might already have been spotted and was being watched, in which case he would be walking right into a trap.
Carter pushed forward through the first screen of trees, which grew more thickly than those that lay deeper in the forest. The ground was uneven, with stones banked up by some ancient force and fallen trees blocking his path. Soon his clothes were filthy, smeared with dirt and streaks of frog-back green from the moss that grew on the rotted trunks.
It was almost half an hour before he found his first clue that he might be heading in the right direction. A tall, spindly birch tree had been snapped off at a height of about twenty feet, leaving a pale gash of bark and branches.
A little further on, he came across two more broken trees and one of them bore traces of pale blue paint, which he realised must have come from the underside of the plane.
He moved more quickly now, oblivious to his torn shirt and the way his feet were sliding in the stretched-out leather of his shoes.
He almost ran right into the first piece of wreckage before he realised what it was. A large wheel, still attached to its strut, lay by itself, almost hidden among a tangle of young pine trees. A little further on, he glimpsed the forward section of the plane, the sloping shape of its nose reminding him of a whale he had once seen beached upon the Jersey shore when he was a child. The tail had broken off and lay to one side, exposing bare metal where it had torn away.
Carter stopped, panting. He had been so focused on finding the wreck that only now did it occur to him how difficult it might be to dispose of the cargo without drawing unwanted attention. His original idea had been to burn the money using fuel from the plane, if there was any, or the whisky itself to start the fire. But now he wondered if it might be better to bury the money instead, and avoid the risk of any smoke being spotted by somebody else in these hills.
Garlinsky’s contacts had been right. The aircraft had not burned. Its fuel supply must have been exhausted by the time it crashed. It may even have been the reason for the crash. The plane had nosed into the woods and come to an almost immediate halt against the tall maples and oaks that made up the surrounding forest. The front section had crumpled into the ground and several trees, snapped off nearly at ground level, had fallen over the cockpit. Carter could tell at a glance that if the pilot and co-pilot had been in their seats at the time of the crash, neither of them would have survived. Both wings had broken off. One port-side engine lay half buried in the ground and the starboard engine had torn loose, tumbling past the crash site until it had come to rest in the undergrowth. Now it was nothing more than a tangle of pipes, valves and an engine block already filmed with rust. Only the tail section had remained more or less intact. Most of the cargo had been thrown forward and lay crushed in a large pile where the broken-off section had slammed into the ground. Only a few of the crates had been disgorged from the severed mid-section. These had disintegrated into shards of wood and broken glass, some of which were now embedded in the nearby tree trunks. And now, almost buried amongst the carpet of dead leaves, ferns and moss-scabbed stones, he saw the mangled confetti of rouble notes. Here and there, stray bills, some of them torn to shreds, twitched in a breeze blowing through the tops of the trees.
Carter realised that very little of this crash could have been seen from the air. The camouflaged topside of the aircraft had been further concealed by a matting of leaves and branches torn loose from the surrounding trees. The plane had come in at such an angle, and must have been travelling so slowly when it crashed, that there was no scar of cleared vegetation that might otherwise have been visible if anyone had thought to look. Given how dense the forest was and the fact that he was far from any path, Carter thought it might be years before anyone stumbled across the plane, and even then they might ignore it as just another of the thousands of wrecked aircraft that lay scattered across Europe after the war. As Carter stepped around to the other side of the tail section, he came across a body spread-eagled and face down on the ground. He swore and stumbled backwards. He had tried to prepare himself for the sight of the dead crewmen, but it still caught him by surprise to find one of them lying here. A moment later, once the initial shock had passed, he realised that it wasn’t one of the crewmen, after all. This man was not wearing flight gear. In fact, he was dressed in a pair of thick corduroy breeches, long woollen socks and a pair of hobnailed boots. He also wore a turtleneck sweater. It was the same kind of walking gear he had seen worn by people back in town.