Hammond Innes - Air Bridge

‘Oh, I find out about it from one of the drivers at Gatow. We have to be at the corner of Fassenenstrasse and the Kantstrasse at ten-thirty.’

‘Not before?’ I thought of the short time it would take to fly. ‘What time is Saeton leaving, do you know?’

She shook her head. ‘That is something I cannot find out. But he will not dare to go till it is very late if he have to leave the plane on Hollmind airfield.’

That was true. ‘How long will it take in this truck of yours?’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘We do not go the direct way. There are things to be delivered, you understand. Two or three hours perhaps.’

Two or three hours! I turned away. ‘Couldn’t the driver be persuaded to go there first?’

‘I do not think so,’ she replied. ‘But I will talk to him. Perhaps if you have money-’

‘You know I’ve no money,’ I cut in. ‘A few marks-’

‘Then we will see.’

I stopped in my pacing and turned to her. ‘We?’ I asked. ‘You don’t mean you’re coming into the Russian Zone?’

‘But of course.’

I started to dissuade her. But she was quite determined. ‘If I do not come the driver of the truck will not take you. It is a big risk for him. If we are stopped by the Red Army then there has to be some story that they can understand. It is better if you have a German girl with you.’ She turned to the bed. ‘Now please, I must rest. You also. I do not think you are too well.’

Not too well! That phrase kept recurring to me as I lay sleepless on the couch.

Else was asleep the instant she had climbed into her bed. But I had been resting all day. There was no sleep left in me and all the time I lay there, feeling the cold even through my clothes and listening to the sound of the airlift planes overhead, I kept on turning her words over in my mind. Was she herself uncertain of my story? Was that why she was coming — to see whether it was the truth or only the hallucinations of a sick man? I remembered how Culyer had reacted.

I must have fallen asleep in the end, for I woke in a sweat of fear that Tubby was dead and that the authorities at Gatow had been right in believing the Russian report.

And then I saw that Else was dressing and everything seemed suddenly normal and reasonable. We were going out of Berlin in a black market truck and in a few hours we should be coming back with Tubby. I was glad then that she was coming. If Tubby were dead, or if he didn’t survive the journey back, then she would be witness to the fact that he had been at the farmhouse at Hollmind, that he had been alive.

We had some food and by ten-thirty we were at the corner of the Fassenenstrasse and the Kantstrasse. The truck was late and it was very cold. By eleven o’clock I was becoming desperate, convinced that something had gone wrong with her arrangements and that it would not come. Else, however, seemed quite resigned to waiting. ‘It will come,’ she kept saying. ‘You see. It will come.’

Three-quarters of an hour late it ground to a stop beside us, one of those ugly, long-nosed German vehicles driven by a youth who was introduced to me as Kurt and whose jaw bore the purple markings of a bad burn. An older man was with him in the cab. We bundled into the back, climbing over packing cases piled to the roof to a cramped and awkward space that had been left for us. The gear cogs fought for a hold on each other, oil fumes seeped up from the floor, the packing cases jolted around us as we crawled out of Berlin.

We were nearly three hours in the back of that truck. We were cold and we both suffered from waves of nausea owing to the fumes. Periodically the truck stopped, packing cases were off-loaded and their place was taken by carcases of meat or sacks of flour. I cursed these delays, and at each stop it seemed more and more urgent that I should reach the farmhouse before Saeton.

At last all the packing cases had been off-loaded. We made one more stop, for poultry — there must have been hundreds of dead birds — and then at last through a rent in the canvas cover I saw that we had turned south. Shortly afterwards the truck stopped and I was told to get out and sit with the driver to direct him. We were then on the outskirts of Hollmind.

It was difficult to get my bearings after being cooped up in the body of the truck so long. However, I knew I had to get to the north of Hollmind and after taking several wrong turnings I at last found myself on a stretch of road that I remembered. By then the driver was getting impatient and he drove down it so fast that I nearly missed the track up to the farm and we had to back. The track was narrow and rutted and when he saw it the driver refused to take the truck up it. Else got down and did her best to persuade him, but he resolutely shook his head. ‘If I go there,’ he told her, ‘I may get stuck. Also I do not know these people at the farm. The Red Army may be billeted there. Anything is possible. No. I wait for you here on the road. But hurry. I do not like to remain parked at the side of the road too long — it is very conspicuous.’

So Else and I went up the track alone, the ice crackling under our feet, the mud of the ruts black and hard like iron. ‘How far?’ she asked.

‘About half a mile,’ I said. My teeth were chattering and there was an icy feeling down my spine.

The lane branched and I hesitated, trying to remember which track I had come down that night that seemed so long ago.

‘You have been here before, haven’t you, Neil?’ Else asked and there was a note of uncertainty in her voice.

‘Of course,’ I said and started up the left-hand fork. But it only led to a barn and we had to turn back and take the other fork. ‘We must hurry,’ Else whispered urgently. ‘Kurt is a nervous boy. I do not wish for him to drive away and leave us.’

‘Nor do I,’ I said, thinking of the nightmare journey I had had into Berlin.

We were right this time and soon the shape of the farm buildings was looming up ahead of us against the stars. ‘It’s all right,’ I said as the silhouette of the outbuildings resolved itself into familiar lines. ‘This is the place.’

‘So! The farm does exist. Your friend is alive.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I told you-’

‘I am sorry, Neil.’ Her hand touched my arm.

‘You mean you weren’t sure?’

‘You were hurt and you look so ill. I do not know what to think. All I know is that it is urgent for you to come and that I must come with you.’

I could see the faint shape of her head. Her eyes looked very big in the darkness. I took hold of her hand. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘I hope to God-’ I stopped then, for we had turned the corner of a barn and I saw there was a lamp on in the kitchen of the farmhouse. It was nearly two, yet the Kleffmanns hadn’t gone to bed. The shadow of a man crossed the drawn curtains. I hurried across the yard and tapped on the window.

It was Kleffmann himself who answered my tap. He came to the back door and peered nervously out into the night. ‘Herr Kleffmann!’ I called softly. ‘It’s me — Fraser. Can we come in?’

‘Ja. Kommen Sie herein. Hurry please.’ As he stood back to let us through the door he turned his face towards the lamplight that came through from the kitchen. He looked startled, almost scared.

‘Is he all right?’ I asked.

‘Your friend? Yes, he is all right. A little better, I think.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘We’ve got a truck waiting down on the road,’ I said. ‘This is Fraulein Meyer.’

He shook hands with Else. ‘Come in. Come in, both of you.’ He shut the door quickly and led us through into the kitchen. ”Mutter. Here is Herr Fraser back again.’

Frau Kleffmann greeted me with a soft, eager smile, but her eyes strayed nervously to the stairs that led up from the kitchen. ‘I do not understand,’ she murmured uneasily in German. Then she turned to her husband and said, ‘Why do they both come?’