Ian Hocking - Flashback

While his mind hesitated, his body continued: he put on the jacket.

‘Enjoying the flight?’ asked the first officer.

‘Yes,’ Cory replied carefully. There was something of the bully about Hilton Cook.

‘Well, that warms the cockles of my heart.’ He leaned towards Cory, as though about to reveal a confidence. Cory noticed that he was not buckled in. ‘You know, I was going to observe the irony. Not three years ago you’d have had us pushing up the daisies. Now we’re smuggling you across the border so you can continue the party with the other Nazis.’

‘Steady, Hilton,’ said Commander Cook. ‘Rumour has it the war’s over.’

‘So you know about my predicament,’ said Cory, addressing the first officer. ‘I apologise, but my life is in danger. And I am not a Nazi.’

‘Benno works in mysterious ways,’ said Hilton Cook. ‘When the only thing a man flies is a mahogany Spitfire, his judgement suffers. What do you say, Skipper?’

‘Don’t be tiresome, Hilton.’

Cory felt himself detach from the situation. The forces behind Hilton Cook’s eyes, though he took them to be private, were the public forces of physical law. The inevitable, violent meeting between Hilton Cook and solid earth was founded on principles hardly dissimilar from that governing the approach of two clockwork bell-strikers as they approached to mark the hour.

‘I apologise, Captain,’ said Cory. ‘I’m disturbing your crew.’

‘Not at all, Colonel,’ said the commander. ‘The only person you’re disturbing is Hilton, and I must congratulate you, considering how disturbed he already is.’

‘Skipper,’ interrupted Don Cheklin, ‘I’ve got the new ETA. We’ll reach Santiago at 17:45, give or take.’

‘Give or take what, navigator?’

‘Two minutes either way.’

‘Hello, Denis.’

‘Yes, Skip.’

‘Please notify Santiago tower that our revised ETA is 17:45.’

‘I say, Wittenbacher,’ said the first officer. His eyes were wide with feigned excitement. ‘Could it be that you’re the Wittenbacher, the German fighter ace?’

‘Yes. Would you like an autograph?’

The first officer laughed.

‘That was funny.’ He looked at his fellow crewmen. ‘The Kraut said something funny.’ Then he turned to Cory once more. ‘You like funny stories? Here’s one. I’ve this minute remembered where I first heard your name. It wasn’t during the war, but just after, when I was babysitting some Nazi brass. One worked in the Ministry of Propaganda. He used to make up what he called ‘ghosts’—fictional people, basically, to misinform the enemy. One was a flying ace called Wittenbacher the Wittvenmacher. The widow-maker. He was particularly proud of the rhyme. Inventing people—funny idea, isn’t it?’

Cory flushed. Each man in the crew studied his reaction, the commander included. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I flew with a couple of Yanks,’ said the first officer. ‘Got to know their lingo. Sometimes your accent slips, buddy. Where are you really from? The deep sahth ? What other jokes do they make down there-ah ?’

But , thought Cory, panicked, in-built mechanisms select my accent, mechanisms I cannot control .

He felt as though a crack had run through his psyche.

Mechanisms I cannot control.

Those winds that Hilton Cook would call his own—the laws of physics, bedrock of his being—were, true enough, public forces as indifferent to his will as Cory was indifferent to the fear of Harkes. But those laws governed Cory too. How could he step beyond their jurisdiction? He had been travelling in time for two months. Was that long enough to become a zombie like Hilton Cook?

The amber had set.

Take the parachute.

Run.

‘Well, Colonel?’ asked the commander.

Vertigo .

Cory dropped to the floor and clawed at the parachute. His hand had almost touched the strap when Don Checklin’s boot—carefully but firmly—came down on his neck and pressed him against the deck plate.

‘Well done, Don,’ said Hilton Cook. ‘Odds-on our friend here is a Yank. Special operations. And we’re the babysitters. See, Reg? What did I tell you?’

‘Don’t get excited. We need to tie him up and radio Santiago.’

As his skull rattled between the boot and the deck, Cory waited for the homunculus of his training to wake. How must Lisandro have strained against the brutish Englishman who pressed his lungs to tiny pockets, the better to butcher?

Hilton Cook appeared before him, crouching, and punched down on his ear. As he landed a second blow, Cory took his wrist and twisted it. The wrist broke. Hilton grunted. Cory put the first officer in a head lock and brought him down. Their eyes were inches apart. For the first time since his training, Cory let the fires of his ichor fully ignite.

‘Denis,’ said Commander Cook, ‘tell Santiago tower we’ve got trouble.’

Cory dashed Hilton’s head against a stanchion. He saw the navigator reach for a fire extinguisher. The man was encumbered by bulky clothing and the stiff leash of his oxygen tube, but he brought the canister down hard enough to sting Cory’s palms as he stopped it. Before the navigator could shift his grip for a second strike, Cory trapped his hand with his own and drove the canister against the radio operator’s bulkhead. The navigator shouted as his hand came away bloody. Cory worked the extinguisher from his grip and punted his cheek with the end. The navigator collapsed across his map table. Cory ripped away his own mask and stood up. He turned the valve on the extinguisher, spun, and doused the face of Denis Harmer before the man could grab him. Harmer collapsed with his hands to his face. Cory swung the extinguisher again. He struck away the hands and the mask beneath them. The wide, boyish expression stayed Cory’s fury. He tried to reconcile the real terror of the man with the counterfeit terror of a puppet. He could not. The radio operator squeezed his eyes shut the instant before Cory swung again.

He braced his neck against the buzzing canopy and used the radio operator’s bulkhead to launch at Commander Cook, who jerked away and pressed his shoulder into the yoke. Star Dust pitched earthwards. Shadows yawned. The sun, which had been obscured in the cloud-cloaked Buenos Aires, found his eyes. Before Cory could prevent it, the pilot hooked his neck and threw him against the empty starboard seat. The seat broke and Cory struck the cargo access panel. He struggled to right himself.

Cory gripped a fuselage handle. He reached for the hose that led to the pilot’s mask, but Cook was ready. His elbow split Cory’s lip. While he blinked to clear the dizziness, a second impact wrenched his neck. He lost his grip on the handle and fell across the unconscious body of the navigator, who had slid to the front of the aircraft.

‘God damn ,’ he shouted. His accent was Georgian, that of his father. He demanded his automata ramp the release of neurotransmitters, inhibit their re-uptake, and dampen monoamine oxidase activity.

A freshness blew through his mind.

Commander Cook was buckled to his chair. He could not move as Cory worked his body. He knew where to strike the man, and how. The Irvin jacket offered little protection. Cory landed his last blow with a shout that his old instructor had termed kiai , a Japanese word meaning ‘concentration of spirit’: an incongruous memory to recall in the cockpit of this doomed plane.

When it was over, each watched the other, panting. Cory saw Cook reach for his mask, but his fingers slid from the clasp. Cory helped unfasten it. The orbit of his right eye was broken.