Сэм Истлэнд - The Elegant Lie

‘It’s a brilliant idea!’ Dasch told his daughter. ‘I know, because it’s mine. Now get in, Mr Carter’◦– he gestured at the cramped back seat of the car◦– ‘or we will be late for our appointment.’

With Ritter at the wheel, Dasch up in front and Carter wedged into the back, the Tatra skimmed along the main road that ran down the western bank of the Rhine, passing from the devastated suburbs of Cologne into the hilly countryside to the south. Ritter and Dasch were puffing away at cigars, filing the car with so much smoke that Carter finally wound down his window, sending a cloud of grey billowing out onto the road.

Carter told them about his meeting with Galton.

‘Perfect!’ boomed Dasch. ‘I will have the money ready.’

‘How do you know this man?’ asked Ritter. ‘Have you ever worked with him before? Is he known to the authorities?’ He seemed to be winding up for another barrage of questions.

Carter wasn’t sure that he could answer them this time, at least not to Ritter’s satisfaction, and he felt his throat tighten with fear.

This time it was Dasch who saved him. ‘What does it matter,’ he demanded, brandishing his cigar in Ritter’s face, ‘as long as he gets the job done? It’s my money, after all. Why must you always be so suspicious of everyone and everything? You’re worse than Teresa sometimes!’

Just outside Bonn, Ritter cut in from the highway, circling around the city towards the town of Bad Godesberg. At a village called Ippendorf, which was nothing more than a tiny cluster of houses clinging to a shred of pastureland, Ritter turned off the main road and they began to climb into a thickly wooded area which, according to the road signs, was called the Kottenforst.

The tarmac surface of the road quickly gave way to dirt, which gave way to mud, and eventually the car was just slipping along through potholes. They passed a sign with a skull and crossbones painted on it, as well as the word ‘Tollwut’◦– rabies.

Dasch turned and grinned at Carter. ‘That keeps away the spectators,’ he said.

Carter looked out at the forest. The branches of large trees growing on either side of the narrow road met in a tangled archway above their heads, cutting out most of the light.

He glimpsed a clearing up ahead and, a moment later, the car emerged into a large, open area, about three times as wide as a football field and maybe six times as long. Here, the trees had been cut back and the ground made level. Off to one side, about a third of the way down, he could just make out the arching metal roof of a large, camouflaged building with two huge sliding metal doors at the front, both of which were closed.

Ritter pulled over at the edge of the clearing, a short distance from the building.

The passengers climbed out.

‘What is this place?’ asked Carter.

‘It used to be the private airstrip of Franz Wendel, a military governor in southern Poland during the war, who had a holiday home around here. It was his idea to put up rabies warning signs.’

‘And now?’

Dasch held his arm out towards the building that was set back among the trees. ‘It is the haven of my pride and joy,’ he said.

As they entered through a side door, what Carter saw so stunned him that for a moment he found it impossible to breathe. A C-54 cargo plane, complete with what appeared to be Canadian markings on the sides and on the wings, filled up the giant hangar. Dozens of wooden boxes, each one the size of a milk crate, were being loaded into the plane’s storage bay by men who barely glanced at the newcomers as they went about their task.

Dasch slapped Carter on the back, as if to dislodge something that had got caught in his throat. ‘You seem a little pale!’ he laughed.

‘Where the hell did you get this?’ asked Carter.

‘That is an interesting story,’ said Dasch. Putting his hands in his pockets, he strolled around the aircraft, pausing now and then to examine the splintery wooden crates that were being loaded aboard.

Carter followed behind, forcing his mind through the cloud of confusion that had enveloped him since he walked into the hangar, and to concentrate on every detail he could see. Wilby will want to know everything, thought Carter, if he doesn’t drop dead from a heart attack when I tell him what Dasch has got his hands on.

‘In the spring of 1945,’ explained Dasch, ‘a Royal Canadian Air Force transport plane loaded with medical supplies set off from Kilmarnock airfield in Scotland, bound for an airfield just outside Oslo, Norway. Crossing the North Sea, it encountered an ice storm, which ran it off course. It overshot its destination and crossed into Sweden, where it made an emergency landing at Bulltofta airbase. By then, Bulltofta had become a parking lot of Allied as well as German planes, some of which had landed there in emergencies and others which had flown there deliberately to escape the war. Regardless of which country they belonged to, all of the planes were impounded and their crews sent to live in separate military barracks until the war was over. When the war did end, three months later, the aircrews were all sent home and most of the planes were destroyed. Due to a misunderstanding between the Canadians and the Swedish about its condition, this C-54 was initially slated for scrap. By the time the mistake had been cleared up, paperwork showed that the plane had already been junked. In fact, when the plane took off for the Arctic city of Kiruna, where it was to be stripped of usable parts and its aluminium frame recycled in a furnace, it travelled south instead, across the Baltic, landing on a frozen lake in northern Germany. The pilots were two deserters from the German air force, who had managed to avoid forced repatriation by the Swedes to an area now under Russian control. Once the plane had landed, its wings and engines were dismantled and the aircraft was put into hiding until a suitable buyer could be found. And that buyer turned out to be me. I had heard about this plane, but at first I didn’t believe the story. It took me two years to track down the men who had stolen it. They were working in a cement factory in Poland. They had all but given up hope that their great adventure would ever pay off, and you should have seen their faces when I offered not only to buy the plane but also to hire them as its pilots.’

‘And what are you going to do with it?’ asked Carter.

‘Tonight, we will be making our first delivery by air. I told you I would need that bigger map up on my wall!’

Just then, they were startled by a crash.

One of the loaders had been handing a crate through the side door of the plane. The man who stood in the doorway had taken the crate from him, but lost his grip and dropped it. The crate had fallen several feet to the concrete floor of the hangar and its glass contents had shattered.

‘Damn you!’ roared Dasch.

The man who had dropped the crate stared in terror at Dasch, his hands still clasping the air where the crate had been only a second before. ‘I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘It was an accident.’

Dasch walked towards him and then suddenly stopped.

Carter wondered for a moment if he was going to pull a gun.

But Dasch just stood there, rooted to the spot. ‘An accident may be the reason,’ he said, his voice low and threatening, ‘but it is not an excuse.’

‘There is always some loss,’ said Ritter, trying to calm his master. ‘Every businessman knows that. Garlinsky will understand.’

Dasch turned and stared at him. ‘You may be right about the loss,’ he said, ‘but as for Garlinsky understanding, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.’

By now, a puddle of liquid had formed around the crate, one corner of which had splintered with the impact of its fall. Carter could smell alcohol.