Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

Chris felt an adrenaline spike, and not for the first time in the last few days cursed the fact that he was on the cigarette-wagon. He reached out for a piece of chewing gum from the bedside table. If there had been a packet of cigarettes within reach, it would have been game over for this year’s attempt to quit.

‘How the hell would you know that? Hang on… how did you get my number?’

The elderly voice wheezed a small, knowing laugh. ‘Let’s just say I have a few old friends still in Airforce Intelligence, and those old dogs know a few clever tricks. I’d like to arrange a meeting with you, if that’s not any trouble.’

Not for the first time Chris felt his stomach stir uneasily. All of a sudden, his little scoop was beginning to attract a bit of attention. Was it the sort of attention he wanted, though?

‘Why? What do you want from me?’ he said, trying to keep the tension from his voice.

‘I know you are investigating a certain “find” discovered off the coast nearby. I thought maybe we could exchange some information about it. If it is the same plane, then I know a little about how she might have ended up there, and in return, I’d be curious to hear anything you might have discovered about her. A mutual quid pro quo. Does that sound of interest?’

Christ, what the hell am I getting myself into?

The missing father and son, true or not, was one thing. An old wartime intelligence spook emerging out of the gloom was very much another. Unsettling, but then Chris reminded himself he had exposed himself to far more worrying situations in the past, in the pursuit of the all-elusive cover-photo… Rwanda, Sarajevo, Iraq… This was, so far at least, nothing to get too jumpy about. Not yet anyway.

‘I suppose we can arrange a little show and tell,’ he answered.

‘Good. I’d prefer we had this little mutual show and tell in person rather than over a phone, if you understand me.’

‘Uh… I’m not sure I — ’

‘Relax. If my motives were sinister, I wouldn’t be asking your permission to talk with you, would I? You could just say no, and that would be that. But I suspect you’re just as curious about this plane as I am.’

True.

Chris wondered if he was being too cautious. Whatever tale lay behind this plane nestling on the seabed off America, it was sixty years old. The only men in dark suits who might come looking for him would be packing zimmer frames.

‘And anyway, I’m wary that ears are still listening out there, if you get my drift. Best to be safe than sorry.’

‘Okay, then,’ said Chris. ‘Where and when?’

‘Now that’s the thing. I’d like our meeting to be discreet. It’s probably best if I were to come over to you. I presume you’re on or near Rhode Island somewhere?’

‘Port Lawrence. It’s a small place, very quiet right now.’

Chris was cautious about telling this man where he was staying; he decided it might be best to arrange a public, but not too public, meeting place.

‘There’s a little bar and grill place called Lenny’s. We can meet there if you like. I’ve been there a couple of times. It’s quiet and empty. We can talk discreetly there.’

‘Good.’ The old man sounded relieved. ‘What’s your name by the way?’

A first name couldn’t do any harm; you’ve got nothing with just that. Chris decided to let him have that. ‘Chris. Listen… how did you get my number?’

He heard Wallace chuckle. ‘You didn’t withhold your number when you called the museum, did you?’

Chris could almost have smacked his forehead. But then, to be fair, he hadn’t anticipated the call to Dayton would be anything other than routine when he had started dialling.

‘Don’t worry,’ Wallace added, ‘it’s just me that has your number. Would tomorrow be okay with you?’

‘Tomorrow evening? Yeah, that’s fine. Seven p.m.?’

‘Nineteen hundred, that’s fine. How will I identify you?’

‘I look English, apparently.’

‘I… I’m sorry?’

‘Tall, slim, short light brown hair, pretty nondescript… look, sod that, I’ll carry a camera, okay?’

He heard Wallace sigh. ‘Please be discreet, Chris. Tell no one about this for now. Like I’ve said, old ears might still be listening. After all, I found you, and I’m hardly a professional now.’

Wallace’s words gave him pause for thought. Just how careful was he being? It seemed pretty much every bloody living soul in Port Lawrence knew what his business was.

‘You’re right, I’ll keep shtum. Look, forget the camera. Lenny’s is pretty quiet, you’ll find me easily enough, I’ll be the only bloke who doesn’t look like a fisherman. ’

He heard a gentle wheeze from the old voice on the end of the phone. Wallace was laughing this time. ‘Good. Tomorrow at seven, then,’ he added and the line went dead.

Chris sat down on the end of the bed and stared at his mobile phone, worried that it might ring again with some other shady spook from the past enquiring about his comings and goings.

God, I could really do with a smoke.

11 April 1945, twenty miles south of Stuttgart

Another truck, another journey.

At least this time he and his men had the truck to themselves, an oil heater to keep them warm and several flasks of potato soup to share between them.

Oberleutnant Max Kleinmann watched a tableau of misery pass by with a cold, impassive face. It was still a young face, but one prematurely aged by battlefield stress, fatigue and a poor diet. The eastern front hadn’t turned boys into men; it had turned them into old men. Those few that survived, that is.

It hadn’t taken him long to learn the single most valuable survival technique a soldier can learn.

To not care. To give up all hope and accept death as inevitable.

Not caring was what had saved him; because it seemed like those who desperately wanted to live, to get home to wives, sweethearts and newly born sons and daughters that they’d yet to meet, those were the ones who never made it. It was as if God, or some other omnipotent, all-seeing bastard, was hunting down, one by one, the few men left with a burning desire to struggle on and live a life beyond this squalid, barbaric hell. So Max decided he wouldn’t care one way or the other. Death could come for him at its convenience. Thus he had carried on surviving. The stupid, unkind logic of war.

He pulled on his cigarette; his gaunt unshaven cheeks drew in. Max was twenty-nine but sometimes, when he saw his face reflected, he saw beneath the pallid, grey skin a dead man trying to get out.

They had been going for fifteen hours. Progress had been painfully slow, as the truck had to pick its way through many rubble-strewn and cratered roads. He was horrified at the amount of devastation that had been wrought on Germany since he had last visited home. It had seemed that virtually every town or village they had passed through had taken some degree of bomb damage. Much of this destruction he guessed was accidental, Allied bombing runs that had drifted off target. But then he had heard that had been happening less in recent months. The carpet bombings had suddenly become very accurate. There was a rumour running around that the bombers were using multiple radio signals from England to pinpoint their positions. The ability to navigate from visual reference points was no longer a necessity. And so the waves of bombers were coming under the cover of night and dropping their bombs from altitudes well above the effective range of their flak.

If they’d had a system as accurate as that of the Allies back in the summer of 1940, the British airfields would have been pulverised into submission in a matter of weeks. Instead, navigating by sight only, they had simply pulverised many an empty field and marsh and suffered appalling losses at the hands of those lethal Spitfires for their troubles.