Hammond Innes: Air Bridge

I turned quickly. The lamplight was glowing on the metal of the plane and as I slid along the fuselage towards the door I saw that it was a Tudor and its inboard engine was missing.

If I had gained the door unnoticed I should not now be setting down what must surely be the most extraordinary story of the Berlin Airlift. But my foot caught against some scrap metal and with the sudden clang of sheet tin I froze.

‘Who’s that?’ It was the man’s voice and it had the drive of a man accustomed to absolute authority. ‘So you’ve got friends here, have you?’ The beam of a torch swept the plane and then spotlighted me with its dazzling light. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

I just stood there, blinking in the glare, incapable of movement, panic lifting my heart into my mouth.

The torch moved suddenly. There was a click by the wall and the sound of an engine starting up outside. Then lights glowed and brightened.

The man was facing me across the tail of the plane now and he had a gun in his hand. He wasn’t tall, but he was immensely broad across the shoulders. He was thick through like a bull and he held his head slightly forward as though about to charge. I hardly noticed the girl.

‘Well, who are you?’ the man repeated and began to move in on me. He came slowly and inevitably like a man sure of his ability to handle a situation.

I broke and ran. I wasn’t going to be caught like this, trapped in a hangar, accused of attempting to steal an aircraft as well as a car. If once I could get to the shelter of the woods I’d still have a chance. I ducked under the wings with the sound of his feet pounding on the concrete behind me. As I wrenched open the door of the hangar he shouted at me in German: ‘Halt! Halt, Du Verruckter!’ That damned language with its memory of endless, unbearable days of prison and the nagging fear of the escape gave me a last burst of energy.

I shot through the door and in a moment I was out on the perimeter track racing for the dark line of the woods. I crossed the concrete of the runway-end, my breath a wild hammering in my throat. My mind had become confused so that I seemed to be running again from the tunnel mouth to the dark anonymity of the fir woods. At any moment I expected to hear the deep bay of the dogs and my skin crawled between my shoulder blades just as it had done that night in Germany so long ago, cringing in anticipation of the shattering impact of a bullet. The concrete was broken and matted with weeds. Then I was on plough with the clay clinging to my shoes and the sound of my flight deadened in the sticky earth.

I stumbled and clawed my way to the woods. I heard my pursuer crash into the undergrowth close behind me. Branches whipped across my face. I barely noticed them. I found a path and then lost it again in a tangle of briar that tore at my clothes. I fought my way through it to find that he’d skirted the brambles and was level with me. I started to double back, but the undergrowth was too thick. I turned and faced him then.

I didn’t stop to think. I went straight for him. God knows what I intended to do. I think I meant to kill him. He had shouted at me in German and my mind had slipped back to that earlier time when I had been nearly hunted down. His fist struck my arm with numbing force and I closed with him, my fingers searching for his windpipe. I felt the knobbly point of his Adam’s apple against the ball of my thumb, heard him choke as I squeezed. Then his knee came up and I screamed in agony. My hands lost their grip and as I doubled up I saw him draw his fist back. I knew what was coming and I was powerless to stop it. His fist seemed huge in a shaft of moonlight and then it shattered into a thousand fragments as it broke against my jaw.

What followed is very confused in my mind. I have a vague memory of being half-led, half-carried over ground that seemed to rise and fall in waves. Then I was lying on a camp bed in an office full of bright lights. I was being interrogated, first in German, then in English. There was only one person there the man who had hit me. I didn’t see any sign of the girl. He sat in a chair, leaning over me so that his big, solid head seemed hung in space, always on the verge of falling on me and crushing me. I tried to move, but my hands and feet were bound. The light was above me and to the left. It was very bright and hurt my eyes. My jaw ached and my head throbbed and the interrogation went on and on through periods of black-out. I remember coming round once with a cry of pain as the searing burn of disinfectant entered the wound on my forehead. After that I slept.

When I woke it was daylight. I lay staring at the ceiling and wondering why it was plain, untreated concrete. The walls were bare brick. In the opposite corner the mortar had crumbled away and there was a long, jagged crack stuffed with newspaper. Slowly the events of the night before came back to me — the airfield, the hangar, the struggle in the woods.

I sat up with a jerk that sent a stab of pain shooting through my head. My jaw was painful and slightly swollen, the cut on my forehead was covered with lint secured by adhesive tape. There was a patch of dried blood on the grey Army blanket that had been pulled over me. I swung my legs out of bed and then sat there for quite a while staring at the unfamiliar room and fingering my jaw.

It was quite a small room and had obviously been used as an office. There was a cheap desk with a portable typewriter in its case, an old swivel chair, a steel filing cabinet and an untidy litter of books and papers. The books, I saw at a glance, were all technical manuals — engineering, mechanics, aviation. They were thick with dust. The floor was of bare boards and a rusty stove stood against one wall, the chimney running out through a roughly-patched hole in the ceiling. The windows were barred and looked out on to a pile of rubble and a vista of broken brick foundations, half-covered with dead sorrel stalks. There was an air of disintegration about the place. My gaze focused and held on the bars of the windows. They were solid iron bars set in cement. I turned quickly to the door with a feeling of being trapped. It was locked. I tried to find my shoes, but they had been removed. Panic seized hold of me then and I stood quite still in the middle of the room in my stockinged feet and fought it down.

I got control of myself at last, but I was overcome with a feeling of sickness and lay down on the bed. After a time the sickness passed and my brain became active again. I was in a hell of a spot! Oh, I was being quite honest with myself then. I knew I’d tried to kill a man. I could remember the feel of his windpipe against my thumb. The question was, did he know that I’d meant to kill him?

I looked slowly round the room. The iron bars, the locked door, the removal of my shoes — he knew all right.

My hand groped automatically for my cigarette-case. My jacket hung over the back of a chair and as I felt for the case, my fingers touched the inside breast pocket. It was empty. My wallet was gone.

I found the case and lit a cigarette. And then I leaned back. That wallet had contained something more important than money — it had contained my pilot’s certificate and my false identity. Hell! He’d only to read the papers … I dragged at my cigarette, trying to think through the throbbing ache of my head. I had to get out of here. But how? How? My eyes roved desperately over the room. Then I glanced at my watch. It was eight-fifteen. Probably the papers had arrived already. In any case he would have phoned the police.

A door slammed somewhere beyond the brickwork of the walls. I sat up, listening for the sound of footsteps. All I could hear was the beating of my heart and the buzzing of a fly trapped in a web at the corner of the window. Nobody came. Time passed slowly. Occasionally I heard the sound of movement somewhere in the depths of the building. At eight thirty-five a car drew up at the back. There was the slam of a door and the sound of voices. Five minutes later the car drove off.