Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse

‘You’re joking, sir.’

‘I wish I were. Don’t know how, in fact. My trouble, I suppose. Anyway, Mr Sweet, forget Digby going to your crew even if he is the best bomb aimer in the Squadron. And even if your bomb aimer is by far the worst …’

Sweet smiled again. ‘Oh, it wasn’t for that reason, sir …’ Sweet touched Munro’s arm in a gesture of reassurance. Munro shrank away. He had a horror of men patting his shoulder or grasping his arm.

‘Whatever reason, Mr Sweet, forget it,’ he said coldly.

‘Take Cohen, forget Digby?’

‘Take Cohen, forget Digby, that’s the spirit.’

Ashamed of his reaction to Sweet’s gesture, Munro leaned a little closer to him. ‘Perhaps your idea is to pile all the B Flight duds into one crew in order to get them reassessed as unsuitable for pathfinders and transferred. But why, Sweet, why in the name of God, choose Lambert’s crew? Lambert’s one of the best pilots on the Squadron.’

Sweet smiled at Munro. He felt sure that he would be able to convincingly refute this unfair suggestion. ‘All I’m interested in, sir, is flying maximum ops with maximum bomb-loads and killing maximum Huns.’

‘Really?’ said Munro.

‘I just want to get the war over,’ said Sweet.

‘Quite a few of us feel like that,’ said Munro and before Sweet could reply added, ‘Another question, Sweet. Has Lambert had a portrait of Stalin painted on his aircraft?’

‘Stalin, sir?’

‘Stalin, that’s it.’

‘No sir, that’s Sergeant Carter’s aircraft: L Love.’

‘Umm, that’s what I thought. Group Captain came your way this PM to see the aircraft with the bomb-release malfunction. He saw the Comrade’s portrait on it … he’s fretting.’

‘I’ll have the riggers paint it out.’

‘And have one of your chaps write to the Daily Mirror about it? No, I wouldn’t advise that. As you know, it’s unserviceable tonight. Do nothing until the Group Captain mentions it to you directly. Then you will have a problem.’

‘I’ll think of a way to deal with it, sir.’ Sweet smiled.

‘I’m sure you will,’ said Munro coldly. Who could say that youth was rebellious. Why, chaps like Sweet would do anything to avoid a harsh word. Munro sighed. After the war, he felt, the world might be full of Sweets, selling their vacuum cleaners, parrying political questions and entertaining millions on television. Eventually everyone in the world would become expert at the modest words, kind smiles and bland assurance that gloved the iron hand of ambition.

Man, frightened that machines might dominate him and overawed by mechanical performance, was becoming mechanical in his emotions and reactions, thought Munro. His gestures, jokes and obedience were robot-like. Lambert’s foolish and provocative question, much as Munro deplored such behaviour, was at least human by the very nature of its error. That smiling little Flight Lieutenant Sweet would never do such a thing.

Sweet wasn’t the only person to be buttonholed. All over the room men were giving last-minute warnings, greetings, advice and information to friends and strangers.

The chaplain was a member of the Socialist Party and secretly regarded himself as a rather dangerous reformer. In his opinion this was why his bishop had been so keen to get rid of him into the Air Force. Compulsory church parades, some articulate atheists in the Officers’ Mess and an inherited stutter had made his task harder than he’d expected. Still, it was his duty to seek out the troubled and he found the man with the lined eyes who’d almost spoiled the whole briefing by disquieting his comrades.

‘Are you troubled, Flight Sergeant?’ he asked Lambert.

‘Why doesn’t the Church stop the war, Padre?’

The young chaplain had listened carefully to his archbishop, so, like the Intelligence Officer, he had the answer ready. ‘The war is due to the sin of mankind, including our own. And so we have got to do it and be penitent while we do it.’

‘So I’m the right hand of God, am I, Padre? I wonder if the Germans have padres telling them they are.’

For one moment the padre’s resentment and anxiety almost betrayed him into praying that he would not stutter. He did stutter: ‘I … I … I … hold the King’s commission, Sergeant, and I’ll ask you to treat me with the respect my u … u … u … uniform deserves.’

‘Come on, Skip,’ called Digby loudly. ‘We’ve got some killing to do.’ The padre glared at them both. Why should these men insult me, he thought; they know I can’t stop the war?

‘Pay no attention to them, Padre,’ said Longfellow. ‘They couldn’t care less about decent people’s feelings.’ He wondered whether it was either of those two who had laughed at him when he made that slip of the tongue at the start of the briefing. Once Longfellow had hero-worshipped the young aircrew, but that was long ago during the Battle of Britain. That was before he encountered the arrogance that constant danger granted the young. ‘Intrepid birdmen,’ he said scornfully after all the birdmen were out of earshot.

Chapter Fifteen (#ulink_bade61b0-2e13-50dc-be86-cd0ce02a84f5)

Walter Ryessman often recalled the day when his name had been put forward for the job of Burgomaster. It was a job for life, but he anticipated that two hours a day would be more than sufficient to supervise the civic activities of such a small town. That was before the war, of course, when the world went at a slower pace. Decisions about slum clearance and extensions to the gasworks were referred to subcommittees and the answers were seldom in dispute. Walter Ryessman had been made Burgomaster because of his long and faithful membership of the Party. Now that the nation was at war his primary job was to ensure that Altgarten played its part in winning it, and that took him eight hours a day of paperwork and meetings, with frequent visits to anywhere and everywhere to be sure that the air-raid precautions were provided as the law demanded. At first the hospital authorities and the TENO engineers’ commander had resented his sudden unannounced arrivals. Soon they realized that Ryessman had influence in the Party far greater than his post as Burgomaster of Altgarten would suggest. He also had an honorary rank in the SS. So they learned how to put on a show of welcome when the tall white-haired man appeared like a ghost in the middle of the night. It was part of the briefing of any new sentry, night-watchman or caretaker to be on the alert for the Burgomaster.

The Rathaus was a red-brick building that faced Altgarten railway station across the grassy, tree-lined Bismarckplatz. From his office the Burgomaster looked down upon the war memorial. The fountain splashed brightly in the afternoon sunlight. On the face of it were the names of forty Altgarten men who had died in the First World War. Already the side panels were almost full with Second World War casualties and the Burgomaster wondered whether the base of the fountain would be suitable for carving more names. He decided it would have to be.

The Burgomaster had seen many changes in the Rathaus since he had taken office. The basement which had once housed the birth, marriage and death records had been turned into an air-raid control room. There was a gas curtain at the door, emergency lighting with its own generator, a large-scale map of the town and a smaller-scale one to show its position in the district. Phones connected the room to the police, fire, gas, electricity and water officials in various parts of the town and there were special lines to the rescue and repair service and to the senior air-raid precautions officials in Dortmund. Official visitors to Altgarten were always taken to see the Control Room and Herr Ryessman was very proud of it, although some of the ruder clerks called it ‘the eagle’s burrow’.

His office had been moved up to the top floor along with the marriages, births and deaths registry and the housing department. Artfully they had put benches in the corridor outside the marriage registry so they had been able to convert the waiting room into the office of the Burgomaster’s clerk – Andi Niels, a solemn young man with a gastric ulcer which, together with a certain amount of string-pulling by the Burgomaster, had released him from Army service. Downstairs there were the tax, street-cleaning and ration-card offices, and the east wing of the building was given over to the police, although the Oberwachtmeister had his office on the same floor as the Burgomaster so that he was available for conference.

The Burgomaster went next door to his assistant’s office, noting with satisfaction that in the corridor sandbags and a rope, axe and stirrup pump had been placed according to his most recent order.

His clerk’s office was smaller than the Burgomaster’s and was crammed full with filing cabinets, but he envied his clerk the view he commanded. From this window he could see the tall spire of the Liebefrau rising from the medieval roofs of the town centre. Beyond, where the open country began, there was the Wald Hotel tucked into a patch of dark woodland, and to the north, catching the sun, were four long glasshouses that were a part of Ryessman’s own property.

He was still enjoying the view when his assistant came into the room. He was startled and to Ryessman’s surprise he flushed.

‘Herr Ryessman,’ said the clerk politely. ‘Is there something you require?’

‘No,’ said the Burgomaster, watching with amusement as the clerk hurriedly pushed the files he was holding into the nearest filing cabinet. By the time he turned back to the desk he was more collected.

‘Today is my birthday, as you well know since you have been sending the invitations. I wanted to ask you to join our party this evening at Frenzel’s.’

‘The Herr Bürgermeister is very kind,’ said Andi Niels. ‘I shall be honoured.’

‘It’s a small affair,’ said the Burgomaster. ‘This is no time for ostentatious display, but there will be smoked eel to start and Frenzel’s special roast duckling to follow.’

The Burgomaster was puzzled by the young man’s behaviour. Usually a relaxed and self-composed fellow, today he seemed anxious and neurotic. He straightened a picture on the wall, wiped dust from a shelf and moved around the room. Perhaps his ulcer was playing up, thought Ryessman.

‘If you will excuse me, Herr Bürgermeister,’ he said. ‘You have an appointment with your tailor and I have a meeting too.’

‘I was forgetting the time,’ said the Burgomaster. He nodded to Niels and left the room. Outside in the corridor there were five people. At first the dark clothes of the older people suggested that they had come to register a death. Probably, thought Ryessman, they have these same clothes for weddings, births and deaths. It was the young couple who showed that this was a wedding. There was no doubt about them. They were so clearly in love that they were oblivious of everyone and everything around them. The young man was dressed in a dark well-cut suit with a small spotted bow tie. He was a handsome boy with big eyes and a strong jaw. There were not so many young men like that still in civilian clothes, thought Ryessman. The girl was pretty. She did not have the wide pelvis, heavy bones and strong arms that were common to the local girls. She was petite with jet-black hair cut short and a heart-shaped face that was pale and doll-like. The parents shuffled uneasily as Ryessman walked down the corridor. Here in the country older people had never lost their fear of authority, thought Ryessman, and that perhaps was a good thing. Young people were less respectful and as he passed he heard someone whisper and the young man looked up and stared him straight in the face.

Perhaps if the Burgomaster had been busy that afternoon he would have never pursued the matter or come across it in the first place. But the afternoon was quiet and sunny as he sat at his desk idly turning over the carbons of letters passing between departments in the Rathaus.

Dear Sir,

The Burgomaster thanks you for your letter of the twelfth of May and confirms that MEYER, Hans-Willy, of Rheinprovinz Altgarten Florastrasse 36 is now officially down-classified to Jew of two-thirds Jewish blood.

Your department will ensure that his employer is informed and that any privileges that he had due to his former status as a Jew of one-third Jewish blood should now be withdrawn.

A. NIELS