Chapter 4

"they're here?" she said. "Arriving." to his. Again he held her with one Again she leaned her shoulder encircling arm. "Damn, the bastards just can't nliss," he said, "with those fires to guide them." "Berlin can catch fire, too." Pamela suddenly looked about as ugly as she could: a grim, nasty face with hate scored on it in the red paint of her mouth. New fires sprang up along the river, and spread and ran into the big fire. More blazes flared out of the darkness far from the Thames. Still, most of the vast city remained black and still. A tiny bomber came toppling down through the smoky sky, burning like a cancllewick, transfixed by two crossing searchlights. t more of them. Please." "Oh God, they got him. They got one. Ge And in short order two more bombers fell-one plunging straight down in a blaze like a meteor, the other circling and spiralling black smoke until it exploded in midair like a distant firecracker. In a moment they heard the sharp pop. "Ah, lovely. Lovely!" The telephone rang. "Well!" she laughed harshly. "Uxbridge, no doubt, screaming for their little fugitive from duty. Possibly inviting me to a court-martial." She returned after a moment with a puzzled face. "It seems to be for YOU." "Who?" "Wouldn't say. Sounded important and impatient." General Tillet said, "Ah, Henry. jolly good. Your friend Fearing suggested I try you here. Ah, you do recall, don't you, when you paid a little morning call a couple of weeks ago on a portly old gentleman, he mentioned that you might want to go along on a little expedition that was in the works? A trip to familiar foreign scenes?" A tingle ran down Victor Henry's spine. 'I remember." "Well, the trip seems to be on. I'm to meet you tonight when this nuisance stops, to give you the details, if you're interested.-I say, are you there, Henry?" 'Yes, General. Will you be going on the trip?" "Me? Good God, dear chap, no. I'm a timid old fellow, quitL4 unsuited for the rigors of travel. Besides, I haven't been asked." "When is the trip?" "I gather they'll be leaving tomorrow, some time."'Can I call you back?" 'I'm supposed to pass your answer along within the hour." 'I'll call you back very soon." 'Jolly good." "Tell me this. Do you think I should go?" 'Why, since you ask, I think you'd be insane. Damned hot where they're going. Worst time of year. You have to be very fond of that kind of scenery. Can't say I an-L" "Are you at the same number?" 'No." Tillet gave him another number. "I'm sitting here and waiting. As he came out on the balcony, she turned to well, her face alight. "They've got two more. Our night fighters must be up. At least we're getting some of our own back." Pug peered out at the fantastic show-the fires, the searchlight beams, the skybing pillars of red and yellow smoke over the lampless city. "I gave you some good advice in Washington. Or you thought it was good advice." "Yes, indeed." Her eyes searched his. "Mo telephoned you?" "Come inside. I'll take that drink now." They sat in two armchairs near the open french windows to the balcony. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, holding the glass in his cupped hands. "Pamela, the R.A.F will be bombing Berlin tomorrow night, and it seems I'm invited along as an observer." The girl's face in the shadowy light went taut. She took her lower lip in her teeth, and looked at him so. It was not an attractive expression. Her eyes were round as an owl's. "I see. Shall you go?" "That's what I'm wondering. I think it's a goddamned idiotic notion, and General Tillet agrees, but meantime he's reported the invitation. I've got to accept it or duck it." "Strange they'd ask you. You're not Air Force." "Your Prime Minister mentioned it in passing when I saw him. He apparently has a good memory." "Do you want my opinion?" "That's what I'm asking for." "Decline. Quickly, firmly, and finally." "All right, why?" "It's not your business. It's especially not the business of America's naval attache in Berlin." "True.""Your chances of returning are something like three out of five. It's miserably unfair to your wife." "That N,a' my'first thought." Pug paused, looking out of the balcony doors, In the night the A.A. snapped and thumped, and searchlights swayed blue fingers across the blackness. "Still, your Prime Minister thinks there'd be some purpose in my going." Pamela Tudsbury Hipped her hand in a quick irritated gesture. "Oh, rot. Winnie is a perpetual undergraduate about combat. He probably wishes he could go himself, and imagines everyone's like him. He got himself unnecessarily captured in South Africa long ago. Why, in May and June he flew over to France time after time, got in the hair of the generals, and skittered around the front making a frightful nuisance of himself. He's a great man, but that's one of his many weaknesses." Victor Henry lit a cigarette and took deep puffs, turning the match packet round and round in his fingers. "Well, I'm supposed to call General Tillet pretty damn quick. I'd better do that." He reached for the telephone. She said quickly, "Wait a minute. What are you going to say?" "I'm going to accept." Pamela drew a sharp noisy breath, and said, "Why did you ask my opinion, then?" "I thought you might voice a good objection that hadn't occurred to "You gave the best objection yourself. It's idiotic." "I'm not positive. My job is intelligence. This is an extraordinary opportunity. There's also a taunt in it, Pamela. The U.S. Navy's out of the war, and I'm here to see how you're taking it. Question, how will I take it? It's hard to duck that one." "You're reading too much into it. What would your President say to this? Did he send you here to risk getting killed?" "After the fact he'd congratulate me." 'If you returned to be congratulated." As he reached for the telephone again, Pamela Tudsbury said, 'I shall wind up with Fred Fearing. Or his equivalent" That. stopped the motion of Pug's arm. She said, 'I'm in dead earnest. I miss Ted horribly. I shall not be able to endure missing you. I'm much more attached to you than you are. And I'm not at all moral, you know. You have very wrong ideas about me." The seams in his face were sharp and deep as he peered at the angry girl. The thumping of his heart made speechdifficult. "It isn't very moral to hit below the belt, I'll say that." "You don't understand me. Not in the least. On the Bremen you took me for a schoolgirl, and you've never really changed. Your wife has somehow kept you remarkably innocent for twenty-five years." Victor Henry said, 'Pam, I bonesdy don't think I was born to be shot down over Berlin in a British bomber. I'll see you when I get back." He telephoned Tillet, while the girl stared at him with wide angry eyes. "Ass!" she said. "Ass?" YOUNGSTER in greasy coveralls poked his head through the open door. A "Sir, the briefing's begun in B flight crew room." "Coming," said Pug, struggling with unfamiliar tubes, clasps, and straps. The flying suit was too big. It had not been laundered or otherwise cleaned in a long time, and smelled of stale sweat, grease, and tobacco. Quickly Pug pulled on three pairs of socks and thrust his feet into fleccelined boots, also too big. "What do I do with these?" Pug gestured at the raincoat and tweed suit he had folded on a chair. "They'll be right there when you get back, sir." Their eyes met. In that glance was complete mutual recognition that, for no very good reason, Pug was going out to risk death. The young man looked sorry for him, and also wryly amused at the Yank officer's predicament. Pug said, "What's your name?" "Aircraftsman Horton, sir." "Well, Aircraftsman Horton, we seem to be about the same size. If I forget to pick up that suit or something, it's all yours." "Why, thank you, sir." The young man's grin became broad and sincere. "That's very fine tweed." Several dozen men in flying clothes slouched in the darkened room, their pallid faces attentive to the wing commander, who motioned the alking about the primary and secondary targets in Berlin, using a long pointer at a gray, grainy aerial picture of the German capital blown up on a large screen. Victor Henry had driven or walked past both targets often. One was a power plant, the other the main gasworks of Berlin. It made him feel decidedly odd to discern, in the Grunewald area, the lake beside which the Rosenthal house stood. "All right, let's have the opposition map."Another slide of Berlin flashed on the screen, marked with red and orange symbols, and the officer discussed anti-aircraft positions and search light belts. The tiers listened to the dull droning voice raptly. "Lights." Bare lamps in the ceiling blazed up. The bomber crews blinked and shifted in their chairs. Rolled up, the screen uncovered a green-and-brown map of Europe, and over it a sign in large red block letters: BETTER TO KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND LET PEOPLE THINK YOU'RE A FOOL, THAN TO OPEN IT AND REMOVE ALL DOUBT. "All right, that's about it. Berlin will be on the alert after all the stuff they've been dumping on London, so look alive." The wing commander leaned his pointer against the wall, put hands on hips, and changed to an offhand tone: "Remember to be careful of the moon. Don't fly directly into it, you'll look like a cat on a Christmas card. When you've done your stuff, get your photographs, shove the nose down, and pedal home downMI as fast as you can. Keep Very pistols loaded and have those photoflash bombs handy. Work fast, the flak will be heavy. Incidentally, our American observer will be flying in F for Freddie. He's Admiral Victor Henry, one of the least prudent officers in the United States Navy." Faces turned to Pug, who cleared his throat. 'Sir, maybe I'll be entitled to the field promotion when I get back, but I'm only Captain Henry." "The promotion stands for this mission," said the wing commander with a laugh. "You deserve it!" He went out. After a silence a boy's voice behind Pug piped, "Anybody who'd go on a ruddy mission like this when he ruddy well doesn't have to, should be in a ruddy loony bin." A short skinny flier with heavy, crinkling black hair and bloodshot little eyes approached him, holding out a paper box crudely tied with red ribbon. "Admiral, a little token of welcome from the squadron." Pug opened the box and took out a roll of toilet paper. He glanced around at the expectant white amused faces. "I'm touched. But I don't think I'll be needing this, inasmuch as I'm already scared shitless." He got a good laugh. The little flier offered his hand. "Come along with me, Admiral. I'm Peters, the sergeant navigator of F for Freddie." He took him to a row of lockers and gave the American his parachute, showing him how to clip it to his chest. He also handed him a paper sack with his ration. 'Now you don't wear your chute. That's a good chute. You just stow it where it'll be handy in a hurry. It's hard enough moving around inside the Wimpy, you'll find, without that thing on. Now you'll want to meet the pilots. They're Flight lieutenant Kirlian and Sergeant PilotJohnson. Tiny, we call the sergeant." He conducted Victor Henry to a small room where the two pilots were studying and marking up maps of Berlin. The lieutenant, who had the furrowed brow and neat little mustache of an assistant bank manager, was using a magnifying glass. Sergeant Tiny Johnson, booted feet on the desk, was holding the map up and glaring at it. "HuJ]o! Brassed off, I ain, Adii-ural," he said, ",ben Peters introduced Victor Henry. "Ruddy well brassed off." He was a large fellow with a ham face and thik lips. "Pack it up, Tiny," said the first pilot. "Brassed off, I say. A nine-hour sweat just for us. While those twerps i the Channel coast to hit in all the other sqlladrons go for a quick one on the invasion barges, and then home for tea, mother. I've been over Berlin. I don't like it." "You've Then,er stopped boasting about being over Berlin," said the skipper, drawing lines on the map. "Rottenest moment of my life," said the sergeant, with a rolling side glance at Victor Henry. "Ruddiest thickest flak you ever saw. Masses of searchlights turning the night into day." He got up yawning. "Brassed off, that's what I am, mates. Brassed off. You're a brave man, Admiral." He went out. "Tiny's a good pilot," said the first pilot in upper-class tones, tucking the map into a canvas pouch. "He does talk a lot." The six men of the F for Freddie crew gathered under a naked light in a hallway for a last word from Flight Lieutenant Killian, reading notes on a clipboard Aside from the theatrical-looking flying suits and life vests, they seemed like any half-dozen young men off any London street. The wireless operator was thin and somewhat ratty; the rear gunner was a fresh-faced boy-almost a child, Pug thought-on his first operational flight; the pimply front gunner vulgarly worked chewing gum in long jaws. Only their nervy, apprehensive, adventurous, and cheerful look was unusual. The night studded with summer stars: Vega, Deneb, Altair, Arcturus-the old navigation(warm) aidsreliabl(was) y twinklidg away. The senior pilot went aboard the plane. The crew lounged on the grai;s nearby.
"F for Freddie," said the sergeant pilot, giving the fuselage a loud affectionate slap. "Been through many a long sweat, Admiral." This was how Pug found out that a Wellington bomber had a skin of fabric. The slapped cloth sounded just like what it was. He was used to his Navy's metal aircraft. It had never occurred to him that the British could use fabric planes as attack bombers, and this piece of intelligence had not come his way, for he was not an aviator. Victor Henry could still have walked away from the flight, but he felt as compelled to enter this cloth plane and fly over Berlin as a murderer is to climb a gallows to be hanged. In the sweet-smelling quiet night, plaintive birdsongs rose here and there, richly warbling and rolling. "Ever heard nightingales before?" said Tiny Johnson. "No, I never have." "Well, Admiral, you're hearing nightingales." Far down the field, one plane after another coughed and began to roar, shooing out flames in the darkness. A truck rolled up to F for Freddie. A mechanic plugged a cable into its fuselage. The motors caught and turned over, spitting smoke and fire, as other planes trundled to a dimly lit runway and thundered up and away into gauzy blue moonlight. Soon only F for Freddie was left, its crew still lying on the grass, its spinning motors cherry red. A.U at once the engines shut off. Pug heard nightingales again. "Eh? What now?" said Tiny. "Don't tell me we've been scrubbed, due to some splendid, lovely engine trouble?" Mechanics came trotting out and worked rapidly on one engine, with many a vile cheerful curse, their tools clanking musically in the open air. Twenty minutes after the other planes left, F for Freddie tpok off and flew out over the North Sea. After what seemed a half hour of bumping through cold air in a dark shaking machine, Pug glanced at his watch. Only seven minutes had gone by. The crew did not talk. The intercom crackled and buzzed-the helmet, unlike the rest of his clothing, was too tight and hurt his ears-but once the plane left the coast on course, the pilots and navigator shut up. Victor Henry's perspiration from the heavy suit cooled and dried, chilling him. His watch crawled through twenty more minutes as he sat there. The lieutenant gestured to him to look through the plexiglass blister where the navigator had been taking star sights, and then to stretch out prone in the nose bubble, the bombardier position. Pug did these things, but there was nothing to see but black water, bright moon, and jewelled stars. "Keep that light down, navigator," the lieutenant croaked.
The sergeant who had given Pug the toilet paper was marking a chart on a tiny fold-down wooden slat, and trying to squelch the dim beam of an amber flashlight with his fingers. Crouching beside him, watching him struggle with star tables, star sight forms, dividers, ruler, and flashlight, Pug wondered what kind of navigational fix he could possibly come up with. The youngster gave him a harried grin. Pug took the flashlight from his hands and shielded the beam to strike just the chart. Peters gestured his gratitude and Pug squatted there, cramped in the space behind the two pilots, until the navigator had finished his work. The American had imagined that the long-range British bomber would be as big as an airliner, with a control cabin offering ample elbow room. In fact five men sat crowded within inches of each other-the two pilots, the front gunner, the navigator, and the wireless operator. Pug could just see the gunner in the forward bubble, in faint moonlight. The others were faces floating in the glow of dials. Stumbling, crouching, grasping at guy wires, Pug dragged his parachute down the black fuselage to the bubble where the rear gunner sat. The hatless boy, his bushy hair falling in his face, gave him a thumbs-up and a pathetic smile. This was a hell of a lonely, shaky, frigid place to be riding, Pug thought. The bomber's tail was whipping and bouncing badly. He tried to yell over the wind noise and motor roars, then made a hopeless gesture. The boy nodded, and proudly operated his power turret for him. Pug groped to a clear space in the fuselage, and squatted on his parachute, hugging his knees. There was nothing to do. It was getting colder and colder. He took something from his ration bag-when he put it in his mouth he tasted chocolate-and sucked it. He dozed. Garbled voices in his ear woke him. His nose was numb, his cheeks felt frostbitten, and he was shivering. A hand in the dark tugged him forward. He stumbled after the vague figure toward the cockpit glow. Suddenly it was bright as day in the plane. The plane slanted and dived, and Pug Henry fell, bruising his forehead on a metal box. Rearing up on his hands and knees, he saw the bright light go out, come on and go out again as though snapped off. The plane made sickening turns one way and another while he crawled forward. Tiny Johnson, gripping the controls, turned around, and Pug saw his lips move against the microphone. "Okay, Admiral?" The voice gargled in the intercom. "Just passing the coast searchlight belt." 'Okay," Henry said. The helmeted lieutenant threw a tight grim glance over his shoulder at Henry, then stared ahead into the night, Tiny waved a gloved hand ai a fixture labelled OXYGIEN. "Plug in, andcome and have a look." Sucking on rubber-tasting enriched air, Pug crawled into the bombardier position. Instead of sparkling sea he saw land grayed over by moonlight. The searchlight beams waved behind them. Straight below, tiny yellow lights winked. Red and orange bags came floating slowly and gently up from these lights, speeding and getting bigger as they rose. A few burst and showered red streaks and sparks. Several balls passed ahead of the plane and on either side of it, flashing upward in blurry streaks of color. The voice of Tiny said, "Coast flak was heavier last time." just as he said this something purple-white and painfully brilliant exploded in Victor Henry's face. Blackness ensued, then a dance of green circles. Pug Henry lay with his face pressed to cold plexiglass, sucking on the oxygen tube, stunned and blind. A hand grasped his. The voice of Peters, the navigator, rattled in his ear. "That was a magnesium flash shell. Ruddy close, Admiral. Are you all right?" "I can't see." "It'll take a while. Sit up, sir." The plane ground ahead, the blindness persisted and persisted, then the green circles jerked in a brightening red mist. A picture gradually faded in like a movie scene: faces lit by dials and the glimmering moonlight. Until his vision returned, Victor Henry spent nasty minutes wondering whether it would. Ahead he saw clouds, the first of this trip, billowing up under the moon. The navigator spoke. "Should be seeing beams and flak now." "Nothing," said Lieutenant Killian. "Black night." "I've got Berlin bearing dead ahead at thirty miles, sir." "Something's wrong. Probably your wind drift again." "D.F. bearings check out, sir." "Well, damn it, Peters, that doesn't put Berlin up ahead." The skipper sounded annoyed but unworried. "It looks like solid forest down there, clear across the horizon. Featureless and black." Tiny Johnson observed bitterly that on his last raid almost half of the planes had failed altogether to find Berlin, and that none of Bomber Command's official navigational procedures were worth a shit.
He added that he was brassed off. The piping voice of the rear gunner broke in to report searchlights far astern, off to the right. At almost the same moment, the pilots saw, and pointed out to Victor Henry, a large fire on the horizon ahead: a yellow blotch flickering on the moonlit plain. After some crisp talk on the intercom, Lieutenant Killian swung the plane around and headed for the searchlights; as for the fire, his guess was that another bomber had overshot the mark and then gone ahead and bombed the wrong target. "That's Berlin," he soon said, pointing a mittened hand at the lights, "All kinds of fireworks shooting off. Well done Reynolds. How goes it back there? The high strained voice of the rear gunner replied, "Oh, I'm fine, sir. This operational stuff's the real thing, isn't it?" As they neared Berlin, the nose gunner was silhouetted black by exploding balls and streaks of color, and fanning rays of blue light. Tiny's voice in the intercom rasped, "Those poor bastards who got there first are catching the heat blisters." The lieutenant's voice came, easy and slow: "It looks worse than it is, Admiral. The stuff spreads apart once you're in it. The sky's a roomy place, actually." F for Freddie went sailing into the beautiful, terrible display, and as the captain had said, it thinned out. The searchlight beams scattered and ran down to the l,it and right. The streaks and balls of flak left great holes of darkness through which the plane bored smoothly ahead. The captain and the navigator talked rapidly in fliers' jargon. it See that fire off there, Admiral? Some other chaps have pretty well obbered the primary target," said Killian. "Or at least dropped a lot of bombs in the vicinity," Tiny said. "I can't make out a damned thing for the smoke." The view below was half moonlit clouds, half black city flickering with anti-aircraft flashes. Pug Henry saw a peculiar high column of flickers -the Flakturm, that must be-and, in another direction, an irregular blob of fire and smoke enveloping buildings and smokestacks, near the river curling silver through Berlin. The black puffs and fiery streaks of the flak slid past F for Freddie, but the plane plowed ahead as though protected by a chartn. The captain said, "Well, I'm going for secondary. Course, navigator." Shortly thereafter the motor noise ceased. The nose of the plane dipped way down. The sudden quiet was a big surprise. "Gliding approach, Admiral," the captain's voice gargled. "They control their lights and flakwith listening devices. Navigator's got to take your place now." The plane whiffled earthward. Pug made his way to the rear gunner, who was looking down with saucer eyes in a pallid baby face at the moonlit German capital, and at the anti-aircraft winking like fireflies. A rush Of icy air and a roar followed the captain's order, "Open bomb bay." Into the plane a strong acrid smell poured, and Pug had a mental flash of gunnery exercises on a sunny blue sea near green islands. Off Manila or over Berlin, cordite smelled the same. The navigator kept talking in a drilled cheerful tone: "Left, left. too much... right... dead on -no, left, left... smack on. Smack on. Smack on. There!" The plane jumped. Pug saw the bombs raggedly f2ll away behind them, a string of black tumbling sticks. The airplane slanted up, the motors came bellowing on, and they climbed. Below, a string of small red explosions appeared alongside the buildings and the huge fat gas-storage tower. Pug thought the bonbs had missed. Then, in the blink of an eye, yellow-white flame with a green core came blasting and billowing up from the ground, almost to the height of the climbing plane, but well behind. In the gigantic flare, the city of Berlin was suddenly starkly visible, spread out below like a picture postcard printed with too much yellow ink-the Kurfiirstendamm, Unter den Linden, the Brandenburg Gate, the Tiergarten, the river, the bridges, the Flakturm, the chancellery, the Opera-clear, sharp, close, undamaged, peculiarly yellow. The cheers in the intercom hurt his ears. He seized his microphone and gave a rebel yell. As he did so, F for Freddie was transfixed by half a dozen searchlights that swung and stopped. In the gunner's bubble all was blue radiance. The boy looked horror-stricken at Pug and suddenly started to scream in fright, his eyes tight shut, his mouth wide open. There was so much noise that Pug could hardly hear him. It looked like a painted scream, and in the blue light the boy's tongue and gums were black. The plane seemed to have landed on a shining blue pyramid. The motors howled, the machine lurched, dived, sideslipped, but the pyramid stayed locked under it. Pug seized the gun mount with both arms to steady himself.The gunner fell against the mount, knocking the microphone away from his open mouth. His clamor ceased in the intercom, and Pug heard Lieutenant Kirlian and Tiny talking in brisk controlled voices. A mass of orange and red balls lazily left the ground and floated up directly at F for Freddie. They came faster. They burst all around, a shower of fire, a barrage of explosions. Pug felt a hard thump, heard the motor change sound, heard a fearful whistling. ky air blasted at him. Fragments rattled all over the plane, and F for Freddie heeled over in a curving dive. Victor Henry believed that he was going to die. The plane shrieked and horribly shuddered, diving steeply. Both pilots were shouting now, not in panic but to make themselves heard, and through the frail plexiglass bubble Henry stared at the fabric wings, waiting for them to break off, Butter away, and signal the end of his life.
All at once the screeching, whistling blue pyramid turned black. The dizzying swoops and slips stopped, the plane flew straight. Pug caught a whiff of vomit. The gunner had fainted, and the puke was dribbling from his mouth in the moonlight and rolling down his chest: chocolate, coffee, bits of orange. The boy had eaten his whole ration. Out of the left leg of his flying suit black blood welled. Pug tried the intercom, but the crackling in his ears had stopped. The system was dead. The stricken plane lurched on in a tumult of wind roars and bowls. He went forward, clutching the guy ropes, and ran headon into a figure who shouted that he was Peters. Pug screamed in his car that Reynolds was wounded, and moved on to the cockpit, passing a ragged flapping hole in the starboard fuselage through which he could see the stars. Mechanically he noted the form of the Dipper. They were heading west, back to England. their controls. Tiny In the cockpit the pilots sat as before, busy at shouted, "Ah, Admiral. We're going home to tea. To hell with ruddy pictures. You'll tell them you saw that gas plant go up, won't you?" "Damn right I will. How's the airplane?" "The port engine was hit, but it's still pulling. Heading back over land, in case we have to come down. Looks like we can make it, unless that engine completely packs up." "Your rear gunner's got a leg wound. Navigator's back there with him." The swinging searchlights of the outer belt loomed ahead, probing the clouds, but F for Freddie climbed into the overcast undetected. Tiny bellowed at Victor Henry, his big blue eyes rolling, both hands on the wheel, "Ruddy asinine way to make a living, isn't it, Admiral? Brassed off, I am. Should have joined the ruddy navy!" Pulling off his helmet, Lieutenant Kirlian turned over control to Tiny, and wiped his face with a big white handkerchief no whiter than his skin. He gave the American a tired smile, his forehead a mass of wrinkled lines. "It may close at that, Admiral. We're having a bit of trouble holding altitude. How's your French?" AMELAhad remained in London. She knew it was a night bombing mission and she knew the distances. It was not hard to calculate when Victor Henry would be getting back. At ten in the morning she went to his Hat-it had no other occupant for the moment-and persuaded the charwoman to let her in. She sat inthe untidy living room, trying to read a newspaper, but actually only counting the minutes and praying that he was still alive. Pug Henry had entered her life at a dark time. Her parents had been divorced before she was fourteen. Her mother had remarried, made a new life, and shut her out. Alistair Tudsbury had deposited her in schools vhile he travelled. She had grown up well-mannered, attractive, but almost wild, and had had several love affairs before she was out of her teens. In her early twenties she had met Philip Rule, a tall golden-haired newspaper correspondent, who had for a while shared Leslie Slote's flat in Paris. An ice-cold man with beguiling ways, a rich How of clever talk, and corrupt tastes, Rule had bit by bit destroyed her ambition, her selfconfidence, and almost her will to live. She had fought off suicidal depression by breaking off with him at last and going to work as her father's slave; and as such, she had encountered Victor and Rhoda Henry on the Bremen. She had never met a man quite like Commander Henry: remote, taciturn, apparently an old-fashioned narrow professional, yet incisive and engaging. She had found him attractive from the start, and had come to like him more and more. Aboard ship, such attractions take on an unreal intensity, but usually fade fast on dry land. For Pamela the feeling had only grown stronger on seeing him again in Berlin. There she had sensed that Pug was beginning to like her, too. But the start of the war had broken their contact, except for the momentary encounter in Washington. When Victor Henry arrived in London, Pamela had been quite ready to marry the fighter pilot; and this visit of the older man who had be-en something like a shipboard crush had not changed that. But since then Gallard had vanished, and she had had two weeks with Pug. In wartime, as on board ship, relationships deepen fast. Nothing had yet happened between them. He had awkwardly put an arm around her while watching the German bombers come in; that was all. But Pamela now thought that, whatever the views and scruples of this very married man, she could go to bed with him if she pleased, and when she pleased. Still, Pam had no intention of enticing Captain Henry into what he termed a "shack-up." Blinker Vance, in Henry's disapproving view, was snacked up with Lady Maude Northwood, though the shack was one of the most elegant flats in Mayfair and Lady Maude, if somewhat horsefaced, was a clever and charming woman. Pamela didn't in the least believe in Victor Henry's morality. She thought it was a crust of cramping nonsense that stopped her from giving the lonely man and herself pleasure. But that was how he was. She was detern-dned above all things not to upset or repel him; rather, to let matters take their course. Almost exactly at noon the key turned in the lock. As Pug let himself in, he could hear the noonday news broadcast echoing in the flat. He called, 'Hello, who's here?" Steps clicked in the living room. The girl struck him like a blue projectile. "Oh, my God, you came back.""What the devil?" Victor Henry managed to say between kisses. "What are you doing here?" 'I'm absent without leave. I shall be court-martialled and shot. I should have sat here for a week. Your charwoman let me in. Ahhh!" With growls Of Pleasure, she kissed him again and again. Disorganized enough before this surprise, Pug dazedly kissed her back, not quite believing what was happening. Pam said, "Good heavens, Captain Henry, you do reek of rum." "That's the debriefing. They give you a big breakfast and lots of rum and you talk." He had difficulty getting this out, because Pamela kept kissing him. Dead on his feet as he was, he nevertheless began on instinct to respond to this eager aroused girl clinging to him. He realized foggily, as he pulled her close and returned her kisses, that at this rate he was soon going to take her to bed. He was caught by surprise and had no impulse to stop, strange and drea-like as it all was. He was hours away from a brush with death, and still numb and stunned. "Well, how about this?" he said hoarsely. "The conquering hero's reward, hey?" She was covering his face with soft slow kisses. She leaned back in his arms, looking into his eyes. "Just so. Exactly." "Well, I didn't do a goddamned thing except take up space, burn up gasoline, and get in everybody's way. However, thank you, Pam. You're beautiful and sweet, and this welcome makes me feel great." His evident exhaustion, his clumsy moves, his comical indecisiveness about what to do next with this unfamiliar female body in his arms, caused a wave of deep tenderness to go through her. "You look absolutely drained," she said, stepping free. "Totally wrung out. Was it very bad?" "It was long." "Want a drink? Some food?" "A drink, I guess. I feel okay, but I'd better get some sleep." "So I figured." She led him to the darkened bedroom. The bed was turned down, his pajamas laid out. She took her time about mixing the drink, and when she came back to the bedroom he was asleep. On the floor, uncharacteristically dumped, lay the tweed suit that Aircraftsman Horton had missed out on. The hand on his shoulder was gently persistent. "Captain Henry! It's five o'clock. You've had a call from the embassy." He opened his eyes. "What? What embassy?" It took him a few seconds to recollect where he was, and why Pamela Tudsbury was standing over him in uniform, with a smile so intimate and bright. In his dream he had been back in F for Freddie, fumbling and fumbling for a cloth to wipe the vomit off the poor rear gunner; thehallucinatory stench was still in his nostrils. He sat up and sniffed. A delicious odor of broiling meat floated through the open door, erasing the dream smell. "What's that?" "I thought you'd be hungry by now." "But where'd you get food? There's nothing in that icebox but beer and club soda." 'Went out and bought it." He tried to shock himself awake with a cold shower, but still had a feeling, as he shaved and dressed, of stumbling through dreams within dreams. He could not get used to the wonder of being alive in normal circumstances. A dim recollection of Pamela's ardent welcome added to that wonder. "What the Sam Hill!" he said. "Where and how did you get all this?" The salads, the bowl of fruit, the long bread, and the bottle of red wine made an attractive clutter on the small table. She was humming in the kitchen. She said, entering with steaks on two plates, "Oh, I'm a London alley cat, I know where to forage. Sit down and get at this. The oven's really not very good, but I've done my best." He cut into the meat and took a hot mouthful. The bread broke soft AL and crusty; the heavy wine was delicious. Pug Henry fell to with the gusto of a boy borne from tobogganing. Pamela cut herself a piece of steak and ate it, not taking her eyes off Victor Henry as he wolfed the food. "Well," she said. "Rather hungry at that, weren't you?" 'A"Y, this is Marvelous. It's the best meat, the best wine, the best bread I've ever eaten." "You exaggerate, but I'm glad you're enjoying it. I'm trying to make up for the stupid way I acted before you left." 'Tam, I'm glad I went. That was the right decision." "Oh, now that you're back, there's no argument. My apologies." Victor Henry put down his knife and fork. All his senses were newedged. To his eyes, Pamela TudsbuWs face radiated remarkable beauty and sweetness. He experienced a pleasant quake in all his nerves, remembering vividly their stunning kisses at the door. "You're forgiven." "Good." She drank wine, looking at him over the edge of the glass. "Do you know that I fell for you on the Bremen? Did you have any inIding of it? In Berlin I was hard put to it not to try my luck with you. But I knew it was impossible. You're so devoted to your wife.""Yes indeed," Pug said. "Rock of Gibraltar. I guess I'm dumb, but I hadn't the slightest notion of that, Pamela." "Well, it's true. I'd been in rotten shape for a couple of years. It did me good to be,able to like a man so much. I proceeded to go mad over Ted shortly thereafter." A shadow of sadness flickered across her face. 'When you opened the door a few hours ago, I came close to believing in God. There's strawberry tart for dessert." "You're kidding." "I'm not kidding. I passed a pastrycook's and the tarts looked good." He reached out and took her slim wrist. Her skin felt as sweet to his blunt fingers as her lips had felt on his mouth. "Pam, I've developed a high regard for a London alley cat, myself." "I'm glad. I should be sorry to think that my great passion was totally unrequited, If you'll unhand me, I'll serve your strawberry tart and coffee-It's getting on for six. Captain Vance was most insistent that you be at the embassy by six-thirty." "What will you do? Go back to Uxbridge?" 'What will you do? That's what matters." "First I have to find out what Blinker wants." "Shall I wait for your call at my flat?" "Yes, Pam. Please do that." They parted on the sidewalk. He kept glancing back over his shoulder at the dwindling figure in blue, marching among the pedestrians NAtb that odd swing he had first noticed on the Bremen-just another perky little W.A.A.F among the thousands in London. He felt reborn. He smiled at people he passed on the street, and they smiled back. The young girls appeared seductive as starlets; the older women were full of grace. The men were all great good fellows, the slopeshouldered pale clerks with briefcases and bowler hats-no less than the passing soldiers, the withered gray men, and the purple-faced fat men in tweed. They all had the stuff that he had seen at the Biggin Hill dispersal hut and in F for Freddie. They were Englishmen, the happy breed. The sunlight dappling the leaves in Grosvenor Square was golden, the leaves were fresh green, and the sky was the blue of a W.A.A.F uniform. What a world! What an idiocy in these Europeans to dump tiro-and explosives on each other's habitations, built with such hard work! All things were washed clean, or at least he was seeing them with a child's clear inquisitive eye-a shiny automobile, a shop-window dummy, a box of red geraniums on a windowsill. He noticed that the sidewalk gave off tiny sparkles in the late sunlight.
The American flag fluttering from the second story of the embassy struck Pug with a pang of pride. Its red, white, and blue seemed so rich, its slow waving so of majesty, that a sixty-piece orchestra might have been playing "The star-spangled Banner'; but there was no orchestra in the square, only discordant loud traffic noise. He sat on a bench for a moment looking at the flag, suffused with zest for life and a burning wish to live a long time yet in this radiant world through which he had been walking blind as a bat. This grim stocky obscure American Navy captain sat bemused on a London park bench, undergoing an exaltation for which he finally found the name. At first he had thought his exhilarated mood was the snapback from the bombing mission, the plain joy of being alive after brushing death in a diving plane, in a whirl of blue cones and exploding colored balls. But it was something more. Nothing like this had happened to him in twenty-five years, and he had not expected it ever to happen again, so recognizing it had taken him this long. Nothing could be simpler. He had fallen in love. A black Cadillac pulled up at the embassy door and discharged an admiral whom Pug recognized, two Army generals, and Blinker Vance. Pug hastened across the street. "Hey, Pug!" Admiral Benton offered a fat hand. This holy terror, his old boss at War Plans, was a short rotund man with a shiny round face and a bald round head. Pug liked him, despite his short temper, because he was a smart and driving worker, wasted no words, admitted ignorance, too, and took blame when the blame was his. He was a gunnery expert the Navy's best. His weakness was opinionated political theorizing; he thought the New Deal was a Communist plot. Blinker Vance brought the four men to a quiet second-floor conference room panelled in cherry wood. He left. They sat themselves at one end of a long polished table lined with twenty chairs upholstered in blue leather. Admiral Benton took the head, with the two generals on either side of him and Pug below the younger-looking one. "Now goddamn it, Pug," Benton began, "the ambassador says if he'd known about this observer flight of yours, he'd have stopped you. He's dead right. We don't want to give the Army and its Air Corps"-he gestured at the other men-"the idea that the Navy trains goofy daredevils." Benton sounded very pleased with Pug. "These gentlemen and I have been waiting for you to get back from that blamed fool excursion. This is General Anderson, and General Fitzgerald here is Army Air Corps." Benton glanced at the others. "Well, shall we get at it?" General Fitzgerald, who sat beside Pug, danced long lean fingers together. He had wavy blond hair and a handsome thin face; he might have been an artist or an actor, except for the stone-hard look in his pale blue eyes. "Admiral, I'd like to hear about the captain's bomber ride myself." "So would I," said Anderson. Victor Henry now recognized him as Train Anderson, a West Point football star of around igio. Anderson was heavy and jowly, and his thin hair was smoothed tight on a pink scalp. Victor Henry narrated his bomber adventure in a matter-of-fact way.
"Great!" Benton burst out when Pug came to the explosion of the gasworks. The three senior officers listened tensely to the account of his return trip in a damaged aircraft; the jettisoning of all removable weight to maintain altitude; the final thirty miles flown at a few hundred feet. When Pug finished, Train Anderson lit a cigar and leaned back on a thick elbow. "Quite a yarn, Captain. It amounted to a token bombing though, didn't it? Berlin sounds untouched, compared to this place. You've been to the docks I presume?" 'Yes, sir." 'We toured them today. The Germans are making mincemeat of the are a. At this rate, in a week London will cease to be a port. Then NA,hat appens? Famine? Plague?" "That's a big dock area," Pug said. "Their repair and fire-fighting crews are good, General. Things look worse than they are." The Air Corps general laced his fingers daintily together. "Have you been in the public shelters, Henry? We visited one during a raid. Nothing but a shallow cement hole. A hit would have killed everybody. All stinking of unwashed bodies and urine, all jammed with nervous, jittery old folks and crying kids. Big crayon scrawl on the ceiling, This is a Jew War. We visited the underground, too, last night. A mob of people sleeping on the tracks and the platforms, a sanitation nightmare, a setup for an outbreak of typhus." 'Sickness and casualties are running far under their estimates, sir," Pug said. 'There are thousands of empty hospital beds." "So this man Vance told us," put in Anderson. "Well, they'll fill 'em. Now, Captain Henry, you've been an observer here, and you've been sending optimistic reports to the President recommending all-out assistance." "Not wholly optimistic, sir, but recommending full assistance, yes." "Possibly you're a bit out of touch with what's happening on the other side of the water. So let me read you something. It's from the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, a red-hot New Deal paper." He tookout his wallet, unfolded a neatly cut newspaper capping, and intoned through his nose: "Mr. Roosevelt today committed an act of war, turning over to a -warring power a goodly portion of the United States Navy. We get in exchange Imes an British possessions. What good will these es be if Hitler should acquire title to these islands by right of conquest? Of all sucker real estate deals in history, this is the worst. If Mr. Roosevelt gets away with this, we may as well say good-bye to our liberties and make up our minds that kenceforth we live under a dictatorship.