Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

Hostner climbed the earthy bank at the side of the road to get away from the trucks. He walked slowly towards his vehicle, imagining how he would break the news to Major Rall that he’d been unable to locate the men despite his orders not to return without them. Surely the Major realised it was going to be a long shot, trying to find four men amongst tens of thousands?

He hadn’t been wrong back there in the truck when he’d said he’d be in shit if he failed to find them.

A long convoy of open-topped trucks were passing by. Hostner looked at the men shivering in the back. Their faces said it all. Win or lose, we want this over.

Maybe they had the right idea.

In a few weeks’ time, maybe even days, it would all be finished. So why not join them? Why not just lose the uniform and join the men heading back to Germany? Many of these men were no doubt contemplating finding American and British units to surrender to, once they were near enough to them to make a dash for it.

It was tempting.

He knew the Allies would be sifting their German POWs for SS. But amidst the hundreds of thousands of men he could easily hide. And if the worst came to the worst and he was uncovered as ex-SS… Well, Hostner could not recall being directly associated to some of the more disturbing activities of his colleagues. He had only been an intelligence officer. That was all.

Very tempting.

An open truck with Luftwaffe personnel in the back passed him by.

Hostner instantly dismissed his nebulous thoughts of desertion and descended the earth bank at the double, landing with a messy splash in the ankle-deep muck once more. He raced after the truck, his smooth-soled boots slipping perilously a couple of times, and reached out for the tailboard, only just managing to get a hold of it. With a gasp of exertion he pulled himself up.

There were twenty to thirty men huddled on the back and exposed to the open air. Few of them had winter coats, most of them shivered in just their uniform tunics. Hostner addressed the group of Luftwaffe men.

‘Do you men know if there’s anybody in this column from KG-301?’

One of them looked up at him. ‘Yeah, there are a few of us here.’

‘You’re from 301?’

‘Yeah. There’s a few ground crew in the truck behind. I don’t know where the rest are.’

Hostner sighed with relief. He was getting somewhere.

‘I’m trying to find an Oberleutnant Max Kleinmann. According to my records he was commanding Staffel 109f. Do you know if he is here, in this column somewhere?’

The man looked at him with suspicion. ‘What do you want him for?’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘In that case I don’t recall seeing him. Now do the decent thing and piss off, Leutnant, before we throw you off.’

Hostner felt anger welling up inside him. He’d taken just about enough shit this morning. He instinctively reached down for his gun and pulled it out. ‘This is still a fucking army, and you are — ’

‘Put the gun away, unless you’ve got enough bullets in there for all of us,’ the man said quietly. Hostner looked around at the soldiers on the truck. They looked like they’d beat him to a pulp if he tried using it. Tense seconds passed by as he weighed up whether to risk continuing to assert his authority with the help of his handgun. The men in the truck weren’t even looking at it; they’d had their fill in recent weeks of agitated junior officers waving their guns menacingly and threatening death and damnation.

Hostner placed it back in his holster, and managed a conciliatory smile. ‘Look. I’m sorry… I — ’

‘There, wasn’t so hard, was it? Treating us with a little courtesy. You’re after Max Kleinmann?’

Hostner nodded.

‘Then you’ve found him. I’m Max Kleinmann.’

One of the other Luftwaffe men turned to face Max. ‘What the fuck — ’

‘Relax, Pieter, the bastards’ll track me down one way or the other.’

The SS officer looked at the other Luftwaffe men. ‘And these men are your crew?’

The second Luftwaffe man, Pieter, turned to two of the other men and shared a silent nod before turning back to Hostner. ‘We are his crew.’ He looked at Max. ‘We stay together, right, boss?’

Max nodded grimly. That was the deal. ‘Okay, Pieter.’ He turned to Hostner and nodded. ‘You heard him,’ he gestured to Pieter and two other Luftwaffe men huddled next to him. ‘These sorry-looking fools are my crew.’

Hostner smiled. ‘Thank God! I’ve been freezing my balls off here since first light. Gentlemen, will you come with me please?’

‘Why? What’s this about?’

‘I don’t know. I’m just following orders.’

Max sat up stiffly. ‘We’re not going anywhere until we know why.’

‘There is nothing to worry about, Oberleutnant. Listen, I have a truck parked nearby, with an oil heater inside… and a flask of soup. Huh?’

Pieter and Max looked at each other, and shared a glance with the other two.

‘That’ll do nicely,’ said Max.

Chris kneeled uncomfortably on the hard tiles of the bathroom floor, counting out a forty-five-second photographic exposure, his familiar crimson studio-world temporarily obliterated by a blast of white light from the enlarger’s small fluorescent tube. He wore red-eye goggles to preserve his dark-adjusted vision.

His mobile phone started to bleep the Simpsons’ theme tune.

‘Shit!’

It was in the bedroom. He let it ring out, desperately trying to keep track of his countdown as it ran through the irritating ring tone three more times.

‘Three… two… one.’ He snapped off the light and covered the exposed photo-paper before lurching out of the bathroom to catch the phone before it rang off. He knew it would be his agency. Chris had been expecting them to get in touch to confirm receipt of the advance from News Fortnite.

The mobile predictably went silent as he grabbed hold of it.

‘Bollocks.’

Chris checked the number of the caller. It had been withheld. That was almost as irritating as answerphone messages from people who identified themselves with ‘It’s me’ and expected him to know who to phone back. Only Chris’s mum could get away with that.

He loitered by the phone for half a minute before deciding that whoever it was had either dialled a wrong number or reckoned whatever it was could wait.

He was reaching out for the bathroom door when it rang again. He was quicker this time and interrupted the first bar of the tune.

‘Hello?’

‘Good evening.’ The voice of a man. No one he recognised.

‘Who’s this?’

‘Uh… my name is James Wallace.’

Chris quickly trawled through his mental list of business contacts; the name meant nothing to him.

‘Sorry, mate, I’m not — ’

‘I used to work for the Office of Strategic Services during the war.’

A pause. Chris vaguely recalled that organisation from some documentary he’d seen on cable; the OSS was the precursor to the CIA. Wartime intelligence.

‘And after the war ended, the United States Airforce Intelligence. I’m retired now, of course. I have friends there still, but now I spend too much time watching daytime TV.’

The old man paused, presumably anticipating a muted laugh.

‘Go on,’ said Chris.

‘I… this is a little awkward over the phone… I gather you enquired about a certain wartime plane with the USAF museum over at Dayton? A Flying Fortress that went missing over Hamburg?’

How the — ? Chris took a second to compose himself.

‘Yes, I was asking about a plane called — ’

‘Please… It’s best if we don’t mention the name. Let’s just refer to her as “the find” for now, okay?’