Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

Hauser stepped promptly forward to stand beside Rall and presented a sealed envelope to Max. Rall cursed under his breath, the time for whispering was gone.

‘Oberleutnant Kleinmann, in this envelope is the arming code for the bomb. It is for your eyes only,’ Hauser shouted, competing with the noise of a dozen engines.

Max nodded without a word and took the envelope. He turned back to Rall and saluted him.

‘Good luck, Kleinmann,’ added Hauser.

Max lingered a moment longer studying the Major’s face one final time, but Rall looked down at the ground. He looked beaten, defeated.

Max nodded politely towards Hauser, and then turned on his heels to face his crew.

‘Let’s go, lads.’

Hauser and Rall watched the four men scramble up through the belly hatch into the bomber and moments later he caught sight of Max through the plexiglas cockpit windows strapping himself into the pilot’s seat. The engines on the bomber spluttered and roared to life one after the other, like four sleeping lions roused from their slumber. Moments later, the chocks were removed, and the plane began to roll across the grass towards the strip just as the first of the 109s was taking to the air. In quick succession, the entire squadron took to the air in pairs, making use of the runway’s full width, and as each pair reached halfway down the strip, the next pair thundered down the runway after them.

They watched as the B-17 waited her turn for the runway to clear of the last of the fighters, then, finally, the way was clear. The pitch of her engines rose and the large plane began to roll down the tarmac picking up speed as she went.

As the bomber parted from the ground, and her undercarriage swung upwards into the wings, Hauser turned to Rall and shook his head.

‘That was very stupid, Major. Really very stupid.’

Rall knew there was no point denying what he had tried to do. The Doctor must have heard him, must even have anticipated some last moment of foolishness. As the sound of the planes receded into the early morning sky, Hauser turned away from Rall and headed towards the truck he had arrived on the previous day. Rall continued to face down the runway, in the direction the planes had departed, standing stiffly and ready for what he knew was coming.

He heard the sound of Hauser’s Leibstandarte guards scrambling aboard the truck, the cough and rattle of the vehicle’s diesel engine as it started up and a few moments later, the crunch of boots across the shattered and pitted concrete of the ground — coming towards him.

Rall took his cap off and tugged at his Luftwaffe tunic, tidying out the creases, pulling it taut across his chest. He stared resolutely out to the west, a final and futile gesture of defiance. He wasn’t going to offer that insane bastard a final anxious glance over his shoulder. If it was coming, then it was coming. The only fear he felt now was not for himself… but that he might have done too little to stop this madness from going any further.

Rall took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.

In the end all war is madness… Who once said that?

Rall’s mind never retrieved the answer.

From the comfort of the van he watched the photographer coming out of Lenny’s. The night lights down this street, which he presumed was the main street for this shitty little seaside town, were poorly maintained, and his driver had easily found a suitable place to park in a pool of dark where one light had failed.

He watched the man walk slowly down the main drag, and then checked his watch.

They should be done by now.

His men had called in to say that there was only a bunch of grainy photographs and the negatives to be found, and asked what should be done.

He had ordered them to take the prints, destroy any equipment and then trash the room. There was a chance this guy might be dumb enough to think he’d just been turned over by some junkie. It was always worth a shot. Not everyone automatically jumped to the conclusion they had been visited by some shady secret agency.

Actually, it was pretty obvious this guy hadn’t a clue what he was dealing with and was in well over his head; a rank amateur at best. His clumsy attempts thus far to investigate the story had been made without any caution whatsoever.

The man in the van laughed, not out loud, just a smile.

It was looking good. By first light his dive team should hopefully have been down on the wreck and pulled the thing up, the ‘device’. He had been careful to use that word, instead of ‘bomb’, when briefing them. Neither of the divers had any idea what exactly it was that they were handling, just that it needed to be pulled from the wreck and dropped a little further out to sea where the shallow shelf drops away.

He supposed in all fairness he should have told them they’d be handling degraded fissile material, but then the small amount of uranium that would have been in the bomb should have all but decayed by now. There might be some trace of radiation, but hell, they were being paid extremely well for one night’s work, and neither looked like the type to want to settle down any time soon and have a family.

He wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.

He let out a muted sigh of relief. Disposing of the ‘device’ had been the most important thing to take care of. He rubbed his temple once more. The tension was easing, his headache, this kittybitch of a headache, induced he knew by stress, was at last beginning to subside. The most important thing was being sorted out right now.

The other part of the problem was making sure this fool walking down the street hadn’t been talking to anybody he shouldn’t. It might be sixty years on, but there were one or two people still alive he really didn’t want this guy making any associations with. His making contact with the Grady woman, that wasn’t good, but it wasn’t going to lead anywhere either. The woman knew nothing, nothing at all about what was found on the beach. So that angle wasn’t going to help him in any meaningful way.

No, there were far worse people this guy could have spoken to, and if this guy already had… then he was going to need to think just how thoroughly this little mess needed to be squared away. There was still enough money in the budget to ensure that his silence could be bought. He settled back comfortably in the seat; his men should be done by now in his motel room and faded away into the night. By morning the hard evidence would be gone, the photographs gone… and just this rank amateur wandering around with an unsubstantiated tale spinning away in his head.

He smiled.

For now, at least tonight, it looked like things were in hand. He could relax, lie down and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow, when his men reported in, he could decide how to wrap it all up.

Chris looked around Devenster Street as he left the bar; it looked deserted. He was relieved to see there wasn’t any sign of those two men he had spotted down by the jetty. Wallace was hardly going to despatch them both with his Kung Fu moves if they had stumbled across each other.

He made his way down Devenster Street and cut through a dimly lit alleyway that led down towards the jetty and his motel. At the end of the alleyway, he peered out at the open gravel parking area in front of the jetty to see if those two men were still there. They were gone.

Feeling a little easier, he walked briskly across the open ground towards his motel. He made his way inside the motel, nodding at the lady who sat behind the reception counter, watching Ricki Lake on an ancient TV set with a picture that was sliding upwards. The old lady banged it once as she waved at him, and the hazy picture momentarily stopped its vertical drift.