Eagle in the Sky

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Also by WILBUR SMITH

  OUTSTANDING PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF WILBUR SMITH

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  While writing this story I had valuable help from a number of people. Major Dick Lord and Lieutenant Peter Cooke gave me advice on the technique and technicalities of modern fighter combat. Dr Robin Sandell and Dr David Davies provided me with the medical details. A brother angler, the Revd Bob Redrup, helped with the choice of the title. To them all I am sincerely grateful.

  While in Israel many of the citizens of that state gave help and hospitality in generous measure. It grieves me that I may not mention their names.

  As always my faithful research assistant gave comfort, encouragement and criticism when it was most needed. This book is dedicated to her son – my stepson – Dieter Schmidt.

  ‘Three things are too wonderful for me,

  four I do not understand,

  The way of an eagle in the sky,

  The way of a serpent on a rock,

  The way of a ship on the high seas,

  And the way of a man with a maiden.’

  Proverbs 30: 18 – 20

  There was snow on the mountains of the Hottentots’ Holland and the wind came off it, whimpering like a lost animal. The instructor stood in the doorway of his tiny office and hunched down into his flight jacket, thrusting his fists deeply into the fleece-lined pockets.

  He watched the black chauffeur-driven Cadillac coming down between the cavernous iron-clad hangars, and he frowned sourly. For the trappings of wealth Barney Venter had a deeply aching gut-envy.

  The Cadillac swung in and parked in a visitors’ slot against the hangar wall, and a boy sprang from the rear door with boyish enthusiasm, spoke briefly with the coloured chauffeur, then hurried towards Barney.

  He moved with a lightness that was strange for an adolescent. There was no stumbling over feet too big for his body, and he carried himself tall. Barney’s envy curdled as he watched the young princeling approach. He hated these pampered darlings, and it was his particular fate that he must spend so much of his working day in their company. Only the very rich could afford to instruct their children in the mysteries of flight.

  He was reduced to this by the gradual running down of his body, the natural attrition of time. Two years previously, at the age of forty-five, he had failed the strict medical on which his position of senior airline captain depended, and now he was going down the other side of the hill, probably to end as a typical fly-bum, steering tired and beaten-up heaps on unscheduled and shady routes for unlicensed and unprincipled charter companies.

  The knowledge made him growl at the child who stood before him. ‘Master Morgan, I presume?’

  ‘Yes, sir, but you may call me David.’ The boy offered his hand and instinctively Barney took it – immediately wishing he had not. The hand was slim and dry, but with a hard grip of bone and sinew.

  ‘Thank you, David.’ Barney was heavy on irony. ‘And you may continue to call me “sir”.’

  He knew the boy was fourteen years old, but he stood almost level with Barney’s five-foot-seven. David smiled at him and Barney was struck almost as by a physical force by the boy’s beauty. It seemed as though each detail of his features had been wrought with infinite care by a supreme artist. The total effect was almost unreal, theatrical. It seemed indecent that hair should curl and glow so darkly, that skin should be so satiny and delicately tinted, or that eyes possess such depth and fire.

  Barney became aware that he was staring at the boy, that he was falling under the spell that the child seemed so readily to weave – and he turned away abruptly.

  ‘Come on.’ He led the way through his office with its fly-blown nude calendars and handwritten notices carrying terse admonitions against asking for credit, or making right-hand circuits.

  ‘What do you know about flying?’ he asked the boy as they passed through the cool gloom of the hangar where gaudily coloured aircraft stood in long rows, and out again through the wide doors into the bright mild winter sunshine.

  ‘Nothing, sir.’ The admission was refreshing, and Barney felt his mood sweeten slightly.

  ‘But you want to learn?’

  ‘Oh, yes sir!’ The reply was emphatic and Barney glanced at him. The boy’s eyes were so dark as to be almost black, only in the sunlight did they turn deep indigo blue.

  ‘All right then – let’s begin.’ The aircraft was waiting on the concrete apron.

  ‘This is a Cessna 150 high-wing monoplane.’ Barney began the walk-around check with David following attentively, but when he started a brief explanation of the control surfaces and the principle of lift and wing-loading, he became aware that the boy knew more than he had owned up to. His replies to Barney’s rhetorical questions were precise and accurate.

  ‘You’ve been reading,’ Barney accused.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ David admitted, grinning. His teeth were of peculiar whiteness and symmetry and the smile was irresistible. Despite himself, Barney realized he was beginning to like the boy.

  ‘Right, jump in.’

  Strapped into the cramped cockpit shoulder to shoulder, Barney explained the controls and instruments, then led into the starting procedure.

  ‘Master switch on.’ He flipped the red button. ‘Right, turn that key – same as in a car.’

  David leaned forward and obeyed. The prop spun and the engine fired and kicked, surged, then settled into a satisfying healthy growl. They taxied down the apron with David quickly developing his touch on the rudders, and paused for the final checks and radio procedure before swinging wide on to the runway.

  ‘Right, pick an object at the end of the runway. Aim for it and open the throttle gently.’

  Around them the machine became urgent, and it buzzed busily towards the far-off fence markers.

  ‘Ease back on the wheel.’

  And they were airborne, climbing swiftly away from the earth.

  ‘Gently,’ said Barney. ‘Don’t freeze on to the controls. Treat her like—’ he broke off. He had been about to liken the aircraft to a woman, but realized the unsuitability of the simile. ‘Treat her like a horse. Ride her light.’

  Instantly he felt David’s death-grip on the wheel relax, the touch repeated through his own controls.

  ‘That’s it, David.’ He glanced sideways at the boy, and felt a flare of disappointment. He had felt deep down in his being that this one might be bird, one of the very tare ones like himself whose natural element was the blue. Yet here in the first few moments of flight the child was wearing an expression of frozen terror. His lips and nostrils were trimmed with marble white and there were shadows in the dark blue eyes like the shape of sharks moving beneath the surface of a summer sea.

  ‘Left wing up,’ he snapped, disappointed, trying to shock him out of it. The wing came up and held rock steady, with no trace of over-correction.

  ‘Level her out.’ His own hands were off the controls as the nose sank to find the horizon.

  ‘Throttle back.’ The boy’s right hand went unerringly to the throttle. Once more Barney glanced at him. His expression had not altered, and then with a sudden revelation Barney recognized it not as fear, but as ecstasy.

  ‘He is a bird.’ The thought gave him a vast satisfaction, and while they flew on through the basic instruction in trim and attitude, Barney’s mind went back thirty years to a battered old yellow Tiger Moth and another child
in his first raptures of flight.

  They skirted the harsh blue mountains, wearing their mantles of sun-blazing snow, and rode the tail of the wild winds that came down off them.

  ‘Wind is like the sea, David. It breaks and swirls around high ground. Watch for it.’ David nodded as he listened to his first fragments of flying lore, but his eyes were fixed ahead savouring each instant of the experience.

  They turned north over the bleak bare land, the earth naked pink and smoky brown, stripped by the harvest of its robes of golden wheat.

  ‘Wheel and rudder together, David,’ Barney told him. ‘Let’s try a steep turn now.’ Down went the wing and boldly the nose swept around holding its attitude to the horizon.

  Ahead of them the sea broke in long lines of cream on the white beaches. The Atlantic was cold green and ruffled by the wind, flecked with dancing white.

  South again, following the coastline where small figures on the white sand paused to look up at them from under shading hands, south towards the great flat mountain that marked the limit of the land, its shape unfamiliar from this approach. The shipping lay thick in the bay and the winter sunlight flashed from the windows of the white buildings huddling below the steep wooded sides of the mountain.

  Another turn, confident and sure, Barney sitting with his hands in his lap and his feet off the rudder bars, and they ran in over the Tygerberg towards the airfield.

  ‘Okay,’ said Barney. ‘I’ve got her.’ And he took them in for the touchdown and taxied back to the concrete apron beside the hangars. He pulled the mixture control fully lean and let the engine starve and die.

  They sat silent for a moment, neither of them moving or speaking, both of them unwinding but still aware that something important and significant had happened and that they had shared it.

  ‘Okay?’ Barney asked at last.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ David nodded, and they unstrapped and climbed down on to the concrete stiffly. Without speaking they walked side by side through the hangar and office. At the door they paused.

  ‘Next Wednesday?’ Barney asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ David left him and started towards the waiting Cadillac, but after a dozen steps he stopped, hesitated, then turned back.

  ‘That was the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me,’ he said shyly. ‘Thank you, sir.’ And he hurried away leaving Barney staring after him.

  The Cadillac pulled off, gathering speed, and disappeared round a bend amongst the trees beyond the last buildings. Barney chuckled, shook his head ruefully and turned back into his office. He dropped into the ancient swivel chair and crossed his ankles on the desk. He fished a crumpled cigarette from the pack, straightened and lit it.

  ‘Beautiful?’ he grunted, grinning. ‘Crap!’ He flicked the match at the waste bin and missed it.

  The telephone woke Mitzi Morgan and she crept out from under her pillows groping blindly for it.

  ‘’Lo.’

  ‘Mitzi?’

  ‘Hi, Dad, are you coming up?’ She came half-awake at her father’s voice, remembering that this was the day he would fly up to join the family at their holiday home.

  ‘Sorry, baby. Something has broken here. I won’t be up until next week.’

  ‘Oh, Dad!’ Mitzi expressed her disappointment.

  ‘Where’s Davey?’ her father went on quickly to forestall any recriminations.

  ‘You want him to call you back?’

  ‘No, I’ll hold on. Call him, please, baby.’

  Mitzi stumbled out of bed to the mirror, and with her fingers tried to comb some order into her hair. It was off-blonde and wiry, and fuzzed up tight at the first touch of sun or salt or wind. The freckles were even more humiliating, she decided, looking at herself disapprovingly.

  ‘You look like a Pekinese,’ she spoke aloud, ‘a fat little Pekinese – with freckles,’ and gave up the effort of trying to change it. David had seen her like this a zillion times.

  She pulled a silk gown over her nudity and went out into the passage, past the door to her parents’ suite where her mother slept alone, and into the living area of the house.

  The house was stacked in a series of open planes and galleries, glass and steel and white pine, climbing out of the dunes along the beach, part of sea and sky, only glass separating it from the elements, and now the dawn filled it with a strange glowing light and made a feature of the massive headland of the Robberg that thrust out into the sea across the bay.

  The playroom was scattered with the litter of last night’s party, twenty house guests and as many others from the big holiday homes along the dunes had left their mark – spilled beer, choked ashtrays and records thrown carelessly from their covers.

  Mitzi picked her way through the debris and climbed the circular staircase to the guest rooms. She checked David’s door, found it open, and went in. The bed was untouched, but his denims and sweat shirt were thrown across the chair and his shoes had been kicked off carelessly.

  Mitzi grinned, and went through on to the balcony. It hung high above the beach, level with the gulls which were already dawn-winging for the scraps that the sea had thrown up during the night.

  Quickly Mitzi hoisted the gown up around her waist, climbed up onto the rail of the balcony and stepped over the drop to the rail of the next balcony in line. She jumped down, drew the curtains aside and went into Marion’s bedroom.

  Marion was her best friend. Secretly she knew that this happy state of affairs existed chiefly because she, Mitzi, provided a foil for Marion’s petite little body and wide-eyed doll-like beauty – and was a source of never-ending gifts and parties, free holidays and other good things.

  She looked so pretty now in sleep, her hair golden and soft as it fanned out across David’s chest. Mitzi transferred all her attention to her cousin, and felt that sliding sensation in her breast and the funny warm liquid sensation at the base of her belly as she looked at him. He was seventeen years old now, but already he had the body of a grown man.

  He was her most favourite person in all the world, she thought. He’s so beautiful, so tall and straight, and his eyes can break your heart.

  The couple on the bed had thrown aside their covering in the warmth of the night, and there was hair on David’s chest now, thick and dark and curly, there was muscle in arm and leg, and breadth across the shoulders.

  ‘David,’ she called softly, and touched his shoulder. ‘Wake up.’

  His eyes opened, and he was awake instantly, his gaze focused and aware.

  ‘Mitz? What is it?’

  ‘Get your pants on, warrior. My papa’s on the line.’

  ‘God.’ David sat up, dropping Marion’s head on to the pillow. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Late,’ Mitzi told him. ‘You should set the alarm when you go visiting.’

  Marion mumbled a protest and groped for the sheets as David jumped from the bed.

  ‘Where’s the phone?’

  ‘In my room – but you can take it on the extension in yours.’

  She followed him across the balcony railing, and curled up on David’s bed while he picked up the receiver and with the extension cord trailing behind him began pacing the thick carpet restlessly.

  ‘Uncle Paul?’ David spoke. ‘How are you?’

  Mitzi groped in the pocket of her gown and found a Gauloise. She lit it with her gold Dunhill, but at the third puff David turned aside from his pacing, grinned at her, took the cigarette from between her lips and drew deeply upon it.

  Mitzi pulled a face at him to disguise the turmoil that his nakedness stirred within her, and selected another cigarette for herself.

  ‘He’d die if he knew what I was thinking,’ she told herself, and derived a little comfort from the thought.

  David finished his conversation and cradled the receiver before turning to her.

  ‘He’s not coming.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But he is sending Barney up in the Lear to fetch me. Big pow-wow.’

  ‘It fig
ures,’ Mitzi nodded, then began a convincing imitation of her father. ‘We have to start thinking about your future now, my boy. We have to train you to meet the responsibilities with which destiny has entrusted you.’

  David chuckled and rummaged for his running shorts in the drawer of his bureau.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to tell him now.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mitzi agreed. ‘You sure will have to do that.’

  David pulled up his shorts and turned for the door.

  ‘Pray for me, doll.’

  ‘You’ll need more than prayer, warrior,’ said Mitzi comfortably.

  The tide had swept the beach smooth and firm, and no other feet had marked it this early. David ran smoothly, long strides leaving damp footsteps in a chain behind him.

  The sun came up casting a soft pink sheen on the sea, and touching the Outeniqua mountains with flame – but David ran unseeing. His thoughts were on the impending interview with his guardian.

  It was a time of crisis in his life, high school completed and many roads open. He knew the one he had chosen would draw violent opposition, and he used these last few hours of solitude to gather and strengthen his resolve.

  A conclave of gulls, gathered about the body of a stranded fish, rose in a cloud as he ran towards them, their wings catching the low sun as they hovered then dropped again when he passed.

  He saw the Lear coming before he heard it. It was low against the dawn, rising and dropping over the towering bulk of the Robberg. Then swiftly, coming in on a muted shriek, it streaked low along the beach towards him.

  David stopped, breathing lightly even after the long run, and raised both arms above his head in salute. He saw Barney’s head through the Perspex canopy turned towards him, the flash of his teeth as he grinned and the hand raised, returning his salute as he went by.

  The Lear turned out to sea, one wingtip almost touching the wave crests, and it came back at him. David stood on the exposed beach and steeled himself as the long sleek nose dropped lower and lower, aimed like a javelin at him.

  Like some fearsome predatory bird it swooped at him and at the last possible instant David’s nerve broke and he flung himself on to the wet sand. The jet blast lashed him as the Lear rose and turned inland for the airfield.