World War 2 Thriller Collection: Winter, The Eagle Has Flown, South by Java Head

In other circumstances Hildmann might have considered Peter’s reply insubordinate, but now he seemed not to notice the apparent disrespect.

‘We’re sinking still,’ said Hildmann, at last facing the reality of their danger. ‘They’d better work fast.’ The airship dropped lower and lower until the altimeter – an unreliable device worked by barometric pressure – warned them they were as low as they dared go in darkness. Then it became a battle to stay in the air. In other parts of the airship, crewmen, on their own initiative, began to throw overboard everything that could be spared. Desperately men dumped the reserve fuel, ammunition boxes, then ammunition; finally, as they crossed the coast near Yarmouth, the guns went, too.

‘Can you work the radio?’ asked Hildmann.

‘I can try, Herr Oberleutnant.’ The radio looked to be in bad shape, the glass dials shattered and a fresh bright-silver gash across its metal case. There was little or no chance that it would still be working. The clock over it had stopped, a mute record of the exact moment the shell burst struck.

‘We’ll probably come down in the sea. We need to know the position of the nearest ship.’

And find it, thought Peter. He had only the haziest idea of their present position, and finding such a dot in the North Sea would need a navigational skill far beyond his own crude vectors and sums. But for a moment he was spared such tests; there was no question of his leaving the helm until a relief could be summoned, and the telephone link was severed.

‘Better not look down,’ said Hildmann in a voice that was almost avuncular.

Had the old man just discovered that, thought Peter. The void beyond the gap in the car’s floor was the most terrifying sight he’d ever seen. After that first shock he’d kept his eyes away from the jagged hole.

‘Jawohl, Herr Oberleutnant!’

‘You’re a good, reliable officer, Winter.’

‘Thank you, Herr Oberleutnant,’ said Peter but he wished the observation officer hadn’t said it. It was too much like an epitaph. He had the feeling that Hildmann had said it only because their chances of survival were so slim. It would be just like him to be writing their final report in his head before going to meet his Maker.

‘Request the Oberleutnant’s permission to change course five degrees southwards.’

‘Why?’ asked Hildmann.

‘The compass must be wrong. Dawn is coming up.’

The observation officer stared at where the horizon would be if the night had not been so very dark. Then he saw what Peter had been looking at for five minutes: a dull-red cotton thread on the silky blackness of the night. Hildmann looked at his watch to see whether the sun was on schedule. ‘Yes, change course,’ he said, having decided that it was.

The dawn came quickly, changing the sky to orange and then a sulphurous yellow before lighting the grey sea beneath them. Crosslit, the choppy water was not a reassuring sight.

‘Is that the coast ahead?’

‘Yes, Herr Oberleutnant.’

‘Won’t need the radio now.’

‘No, Herr Oberleutnant.’

‘Just as well. I don’t think it’s working.’

‘I don’t think it is, Herr Oberleutnant.’

‘Do you think we’ll be able to get it down in the right place?’

‘I think we can, Herr Oberleutnant.’ Hildmann would have been outraged by any other response, but he smiled grimly and nodded. Peter wondered how old he was; rumours said he was a grandfather.

‘We lost the Dragon.’

‘Yes, Herr Oberleutnant.’ Trees appeared behind the desolate sandy coastline. They were very low. He stared down into the darkness.

‘Good men on the Dragon.’

‘Yes, Herr Oberleutnant.’

‘Oh my God!’

Everything happened so suddenly that there was no time to avert the crash. The elevator cables had been in shreds for hours. Hildmann didn’t realize that the movements of his wheel depended upon a single steel thread until the final thread snapped and the elevators slammed over to put the airship into a violent nose-down attitude. It all happened in only a few seconds.

First there was the sudden snapping of the control cables: bangs like explosions came as the released steel cables thrashed about, ripping through the gas bags and tearing into the soft aluminium. The lurch started Hildmann’s wheel spinning and sent Hildmann staggering across the car so that he stumbled and was thrown half out of the hole in the floor. Then came the big crash of the airship striking the tree tops.

Branches came into the car from every side, and a snowstorm of leaves and wood and sawdust filled the control room, until the weakened gondola was torn into pieces by the black trees. There was a scream as Hildmann disappeared into the darkness below, and then the airship met a tree that would not yield, and, with a crash and the shriek of tortured metal, the vast framework collapsed upon him and Peter lost consciousness.

‘My poor Harry’

In Vienna that same September morning it was bright and clear. The low-pressure region that had provided the zeppelins with cloud cover over England had broken. Southern Germany and Austria had blue skies and cold winds.

Martha Somló – or Frau Winter, as she had engraved on her visiting cards – was awake. She’d been an early riser ever since she was a child, when she’d got up at five every morning to prepare the work in her father’s back-room tailor shop.

Harald Winter was sound asleep. He snorted and turned over. ‘Wake up! Harry.’ She had a tray with coffee and warm fresh bread.

He grunted.

‘Wake up! You were snoring.’

He rubbed his face to bring himself awake. ‘Snoring?’

‘Yes. Loud enough to wake the street.’ She smiled sweetly and forgivingly.

He looked at her suspiciously. Veronica had never mentioned his snoring, nor had any of the other women he enjoyed on a more-or-less regular basis. ‘It’s an ugly habit, snoring,’ he said.

He opened his eyes to see her better. She was wearing the magnificent silk dressing gown he’d bought for her on one of his trips to Switzerland. It was black and gold, with huge Chinese tigers leaping across it. He’d thought at the time how like Martha the snarling tigers looked. ‘It doesn’t matter, darling. You can’t help it,’ she said.

The truth was that Harald Winter did not snore, but teasing him was one of the few retaliations she got for being neglected.

She set the tray down on the bed and slid back under the bedclothes. This was her very favourite time: just her and Harry at breakfast. He gave her a quick hug and kiss before taking a kaiser roll and waiting for her to pour his coffee and add exactly the amount of cream and sugar he liked. From the street below came the sound of horses’ hoofs and wheels upon the cobbles and the jingle of harness. It was a large contingent of field artillery moving off to the war. The noise continued for a long time, but neither Harry nor Martha went to the window to look. Soldiers had become too common a sight in the streets of Vienna for breakfast to be interrupted.

Prompted by the sounds of the horse artillery, Martha said, ‘The war’s going badly for us, isn’t it, Harry?’ She removed the tray to the side table and came back to bed.

‘It goes up and down: wars are always like that.’

‘And you don’t care, as long as you sell your airships and planes, and make lots of money.’

‘My God, but you are a little firebrand, aren’t you?’

He grabbed her wrist and clutched it tight. It hurt, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of complaining. In fact, his physical strength attracted her even when it was directed against her. In the same way, her strong-willed antagonism fascinated him. She was the only woman who openly defied him.

‘I heard there were wooden airships now,’ she said spitefully, ‘and smaller, collapsible ones better than Count Zeppelin makes.’