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Part One
Prologue
Aa hospital corridor
He was a short, vigorous type with an athletic build, thirty years old, dressed in a plain charcoal gray suit and black toe-capped shoes He walked briskly, but you could tell he was laularity in his step:
tap-tap, tap-tap His face was fixed in a gri some profound emotion
He reached the end of the corridor and stopped at the nurse's desk
"Flight Lieutenant Hoare?" he said
The nurse looked up froirl with black hair, and she spoke with the soft accent of County Cork "You'll be a relation, I'," she said with a friendly smile
Her charm had no effect "Brother," said the visitor "Which bed?"
"Last on the left"
He turned on his heel and strode along the aisle to the end of the ward
In a chair beside the bed, a figure in a brown dressing gown sat with his back to the roo
The visitor hesitated "Bart?"
The man in the chair stood up and turned around There was a bandage on his head and his left arer and taller than the visitor "Hello, Digby"
Digby put his arht you were dead," he said
Then he began to cry
"I was flying a Whitley," Bart said The Ar-tailed bo of 1941, Both of about seven hundred aircraft "A Messerschmitt fired on us and we took several hits," Bart continued "But heout of fuel, because he peeled off without finishing us I thought it was my lucky day Then we started to lose altitude The Messersch that wasn't bolted down, to reduce our weight, but it was no good, and I realized we'd have to ditch in the North Sea"
Digby sat on the edge of the hospital bed, dry-eyed noatching his brother's face, seeing the thousand-yard-stare as Bart remembered
"I told the crew to jettison the rear hatch then get into ditching position, braced against the bulkhead" The Whitley had a crew of five, Digby recalled "When we reached zero altitude I heaved back on the stick and opened the throttles, but the aircraft refused to level out, and we hit the water with a terrific smash I was knocked out"
They were step brothers, eight years apart Digby's mother had died when he was thirteen, and his father had by had looked after his little brother, protecting hi him with his schoolwork They had both been by lost his right leg in a , and went into aircraft design; but Bart lived the dream
"When I ca and the starboard as on fire The night was dark as the grave, but I could see by the light of the flahy pack I bunged it through the hatch and jumped Jesus, that water was cold"
His voice was low and cal the sht-pursed lips in a long jet "I earing a life jacket and I came to the surface like a cork There was quite a swell, and I was going up and down like a tart's knickers Luckily, the dinghy pack was in front ofand it inflated itself, but I couldn't get in I didn't have the strength to heave myself out of the water I couldn't understand it - didn't realize I had a dislocated shoulder and a broken wrist and three cracked ribs and all that So I just stayed there, holding on, freezing to death"
There had been a tiht Bart had been the lucky one
"Eventually Jones and Croft appeared They'd held on to the tail until it went down Neither could swied to scraarette "I never saw Pickering I don't knohat happened to him, but I assume he's at the bottom of the sea"
He fell silent There was one crew by realized After a pause, he said, "What about the fifth man?"
"John Rowley, the bomb-aimer, was alive We heard him call out I was in a bit of a daze, but Jones and Croft tried to roard the voice" He shook his head in a gesture of hopelessness "You can't iine how difficult it was The swelldown so we couldn't seelike a bloody banshee Jones yelled, and he's got a strong voice Roould shout back, then the dinghy would go up one side of a wave and down the other and spin around at the saain his voice seemed to come fro it went on Rowley kept shouting, but his voice becaot to him" Bart's face stiffened "He started to sound a bit pathetic, calling to God and his mother and that sort of rot Eventually he went quiet"
Digby found he was holding his breath, as if thewould be an intrusion on such a dreadful memory
"We were found soon after dawn, by a destroyer on U-boat patrol They dropped a cutter and hauled us in" Bart looked out of the , blind to the green Hertfordshire landscape, seeing a different scene, far away "Bloody lucky, really," he said
Hornet Flight
They sat in silence for a while, then Bart said, "Was the raid a success? No one will tell me how many came home"
"Disastrous," Digby said
"What about my squadron?"
"Sergeant Jenkins and his crew got back safely" Digby drew a slip of paper from his pocket "So did Pilot Officer Arasaratnam Where's he from?"
"Ceylon"
"And Sergeant Riley's aircraft took a hit but made it back"
"Luck of the Irish," said Bart "What about the rest?"
Digby just shook his head
"But there were six aircraft from my squadron on that raid!" Bart protested
"I know As well as you, two more were shot down No apparent survivors"
"So Creighton-Smith is dead And Billy Shaw AndOh, God" He turned away
"I'm sorry"
Bart's h to be sorry," he said "We're being sent out there to die!"
"I know"
"For Christ's sake, Digby, you're part of the bloody government"
"I work for the Pri people froby, a successful aircraft designer before the as one of his troubleshooters
"Then this is your fault asthe sick Get the hell out of here and do so about it"
"I aiven the task of finding out why this is happening We lost fifty percent of the aircraft on that raid"
"Bloody treachery at the top, I suspect Or so in his club about to notes behind the beer pumps"
"That's one possibility"
Bart sighed "I' a childhood nickna my top"
"Seriously, have you any idea why soshot down? You've flown more than a dozen missions What's your hunch?"
Bart looked thoughtful "I wasn't just sounding off about spies When we get to Ger"
"What makes you say that?"
"Their fighters are in the air, waiting for us You kno difficult it is for defensive forces to tihter squadron has to be scraate froht be, then they have to cli, and when they've done all that they have to find us in the ht The whole process takes so et clear before they catch us But it isn't happening that way"