The second time Victor Henry brought Pamela to the apartment, Fearing remarked, catching Pug alone for a moment in the hallway, “Aren’t you the sly one, Reverend Henry? She’s small, but saucy.”
“She’s the daughter of a guy I know.”
“Of course. Talky Tudsbury. Old pal of mine, too.”
“Yes. That’s who she is. Her fiancé’s an RAF pilot missing in action.”
Fearing’s big knobby face lit in an innocent smile. “Just so. She might enjoy a little consolation.”
Pug looked up at him. The correspondent was over six feet tall, and heavily built. “How would you enjoy getting knocked on your ass?”
Fearing’s smile went away. “You mean it, Pug?”
“I mean it.”
“Just asking. What do you hear from Rhoda?”
“She misses me, New York stinks, she’s bored, and the weather is unbearably hot.”
“Situation normal. Good old Rhoda.”
The other men who drifted in and out of the apartment, usually with a woman, usually more or less drunk—observers from the Army and the Air Corps, correspondents, film actors, businessmen—danced or bantered with Pamela, but otherwise let her alone, assuming she was Victor Henry’s doxy.
Once, early in September, when they were having a drink in her apartment and joking about this, Pug said, “‘Lechery, lechery—still wars and lechery—nothing else holds fashion.’”
She widened her eyes at him. “Why, bless me. He’s a Shakespeare scholar, too.”
“Aside from Western stories, Pamela, practically the only things I read for recreation are the Bible and Shakespeare,” Pug said, rather solemnly. “It’s always time well spent. You can get through a lot of Shakespeare in a Navy career.”
“Well, there’s precious little lechery around here,” said Pamela. “If people only knew.”
“Are you complaining, my girl?”
“Certainly not, you leathery old gentleman. I can’t imagine how your wife endures you.”
“Well, I’m good, patient, uncomplaining company.”
“God love you, you are that.”
At this point the air raid sirens started their eerie moaning and wailing—a heart-stopping noise no matter how often Pug heard it.
“My God!” said Pamela. “There they come! This is it. Where on earth is Fighter Command?” She stood with Victor Henry on the little balcony outside her living room, still holding her highball glass, staring at arrays of bombers in wide ragged V’s as they sailed through a bright blue sky, starkly visible in yellowing late sunlight. Anti-aircraft bursts all around and through the formations looked like white and black powder puffs, and seemed to be having no more effect.
“Tangling with the fighter escort further south, I’d guess.” Victor Henry’s voice shook. The number of bombers staggered him. The mass of machines was coming on like the invaders in a futuristic movie, filling the air with a throbbing angry hum as of a billion bees. The pop and thump of scattered anti-aircraft guns made a pitiful counterpoint. One V-wave passed; in the azure distance several more appeared, swelling to unbelievable width and numbers as they drew over the city. The bombers were not very high, and the A.A. seemed to be exploding dead inside the V’s, but on they thrummed. The muffled thunder of bomb hits boomed over the city, and pale flame and smoke began billowing up in the sunshine.
Pug said, “Looks like they’re starting on the docks.”
“Shall I get you another drink? I must, I must have one.” She took his glass and hurried inside.
More bombers kept appearing from the southeast. Pug wondered whether General Tillet could be right; was this a sign of weakening, a play of Göring’s last card? Some show of weakness! Yet a heavy toll of German fighter escorts must be paying for the incredibly serene overflight of these bomber waves. The British fighters could knock these big slow machines down like tin ducks. They had proved that long ago, yet on the bombers came, sailing unscathed across London’s sky from horizon to horizon, an awesome pageant of flying machinery.
She brought the drinks and peered at the sky. “Why, God help us, there’s more of them!”
She leaned against the rail, touching shoulders. He put his arm around her and she nestled against him. So they stood together, watching the Luftwaffe start its effort to bomb London to its knees. It was the seventh of September.
Along the river more and bigger fires shot skyward in great billows of dirty smoke. Elsewhere in the city random small blazes were flaring up from badly aimed bombs. After the first shock, there was not much terror in the sight. The noise was far off, the patches of fire meager and dispersed in the red and gray expanse of untouched buildings. London was a very, very large city. The Fat Boy’s big try was not making much of a dent after all. Only along the burning Thames embankment was there a look of damage. So it seemed, in the view from Pamela’s balcony of the first all-out Valhalla attack.
So it seemed too in Soho, where they went to dine after the all clear. The Londoners thronging the sidewalk looked excited, undismayed, even elated. Strangers talked to each other, laughed, and pointed thumbs up. The traffic flowed thick as ever. There was no trace of damage on the street. Distant clangs of fire engines and a heavy smokiness overhead remained the only traces, in this part of town, of Göring’s tremendous attempt. Queues even stood as usual outside the movie houses, and the stage box offices were briskly selling tickets too.
When they walked in twilight down toward the Thames, after an excellent Italian dinner, the picture began to change. The smell of smoke grew stronger; flickering red and yellow light gave the low clouds, thickened by ever-billowing smoke, a look of inferno. The crowds in the street grew denser. It became an effort to push through. The people here were more silent and grave. Henry and Pamela came to roped-off streets where amid noise and steam, shouting firemen dragged hoses toward blackened buildings and streamed water at tongues of fire licking out of the windows. Pamela skirted through alleys and side streets till they emerged on the riverbank into a mob of onlookers.
Here an oppressive stench of burning fouled the air, and the river breeze brought gusts of fiery heat in the warm summer night. A low moon shone dirty red through the rolling smoke. Reflections of the fires on the other bank flickered in the black water. The bridge was slowly disgorging a swarm of refugees, some with carts, baby carriages, and wheelchairs, a poor shabby lot for the most part, many workmen in caps, and a horde of ill-dressed children who alone kept their gaiety, running here and there as they came.
Victor Henry looked up at the sky. Above rifts in the smoke, the stars shimmered.
“It’s a very clear night, you know,” he said. “These fires are a beacon they can see for a hundred miles. They may come back.”
Pamela said coldly and abruptly, “I must return to Uxbridge. I’m beginning to feel rotten.” She looked down at her flimsy gray dress. “But I seem to be slightly out of uniform.”
The sirens began their hideous screaming just as Pug and Pamela found a taxicab, many blocks from the river. “Come along,” said the wizened little driver, touching his cap. “Business as usual, wot? And to ’ell with ’Itler!”
Victor Henry watched the start of the night raid from the balcony while she changed. His senses were sharpened by the destruction, the excitement, the peculiar beauty of the fire panorama and the swaying blue-white searchlight beams, the thick thrumming of the bomber motors, and the thump-thump of the anti-aircraft, which was just starting up. Pamela Tudsbury, coming out on the gloomy moonlit balcony in her WAAF uniform, appeared to him the most desirable young female on God’s earth. She looked shorter because of the low-heeled shoes, but the severe garb made her small figure all the sweeter. So he thought.
“They’re here?” she said.
“Arriving.”
Again she leaned her shoulder to his. Again he held her with one encircling arm. “Damn, the bastards just can’t miss,” he said, “with those fires to guide them.”
“Berlin can catch fi
re, too.” Pamela suddenly looked about as ugly as she could: a grim, nasty face with hate scored on it in the red paint of her mouth.
New fires sprang up along the river, and spread and ran into the big fire. More blazes flared out of the darkness far from the Thames. Still, most of the vast city remained black and still. A tiny bomber came toppling down through the smoky sky, burning like a candlewick, transfixed by two crossing searchlights.
“Oh God, they got him. They got one. Get more of them. Please.”
And in short order two more bombers fell—one plunging straight down in a blaze like a meteor, the other circling and spiralling black smoke until it exploded in midair like a distant firecracker. In a moment they heard the sharp pop.
“Ah, lovely. Lovely!”
The telephone rang.
“Well!” she laughed harshly. “Uxbridge, no doubt, screaming for their little fugitive from duty. Possibly inviting me to a court-martial.”
She returned after a moment with a puzzled face. “It seems to be for you.”
“Who?”
“Wouldn’t say. Sounded important and impatient.”
General Tillet said, “Ah, Henry. Jolly good. Your friend Fearing suggested I try you here. Ah, you do recall, don’t you, when you paid a little morning call a couple of weeks ago on a portly old gentleman, he mentioned that you might want to go along on a little expedition that was in the works? A trip to familiar foreign scenes?”
A tingle ran down Victor Henry’s spine. “I remember.”
“Well, the trip seems to be on. I’m to meet you tonight when this nuisance stops, to give you the details, if you’re interested.—I say, are you there, Henry?”
“Yes, General. Will you be going on the trip?”
“Me? Good God, dear chap, no. I’m a timid old fellow, quite unsuited for the rigors of travel. Besides, I haven’t been asked.”
“When is the trip?”
“I gather they’ll be leaving tomorrow, some time.”
“Can I call you back?”
“I’m supposed to pass your answer along within the hour.”
“I’ll call you back very soon.”
“Jolly good.”
“Tell me this. Do you think I should go?”
“Why, since you ask, I think you’d be insane. Damned hot where they’re going. Worst time of year. You have to be very fond of that kind of scenery. Can’t say I am.”
“Are you at the same number?”
“No.” Tillet gave him another number. “I’m sitting here and waiting.”
As he came out on the balcony, she turned to him, her face alight. “They’ve got two more. Our night fighters must be up. At least we’re getting some of our own back.”
Pug peered out at the fantastic show—the fires, the searchlight beams, the sky-climbing pillars of red and yellow smoke over the lampless city. “I gave you some good advice in Washington. Or you thought it was good advice.”
“Yes, indeed.” Her eyes searched his. “Who telephoned you?”
“Come inside. I’ll take that drink now.”
They sat in two armchairs near the open french windows to the balcony. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, holding the glass in his cupped hands. “Pamela, the RAF will be bombing Berlin tomorrow night, and it seems I’m invited along as an observer.”
The girl’s face in the shadowy light went taut. She took her lower lip in her teeth, and looked at him so. It was not an attractive expression. Her eyes were round as an owl’s. “I see. Shall you go?”
“That’s what I’m wondering. I think it’s a goddamned idiotic notion, and General Tillet agrees, but meantime he’s reported the invitation. I’ve got to accept it or duck it.”
“Strange they’d ask you. You’re not Air Force.”
“Your Prime Minister mentioned it in passing when I saw him. He apparently has a good memory.”
“Do you want my opinion?”
“That’s what I’m asking for.”
“Decline. Quickly, firmly, and finally.”
“All right, why?”
“It’s not your business. It’s especially not the business of America’s naval attaché in Berlin.”
“True.”
“Your chances of returning are something like three out of five. It’s miserably unfair to your wife.”
“That was my first thought.” Pug paused, looking out of the balcony doors. In the night the A.A. snapped and thumped, and searchlights swayed blue fingers across the blackness. “Still, your Prime Minister thinks there’d be some purpose in my going.”
Pamela Tudsbury flipped her hand in a quick irritated gesture. “Oh, rot. Winnie is a perpetual undergraduate about combat. He probably wishes he could go himself, and imagines everyone’s like him. He got himself unnecessarily captured in South Africa long ago. Why, in May and June he flew over to France time after time, got in the hair of the generals, and skittered around the front making a frightful nuisance of himself. He’s a great man, but that’s one of his many weaknesses.”
Victor Henry lit a cigarette and took deep puffs, turning the match packet round and round in his fingers. “Well, I’m supposed to call General Tillet pretty damn quick. I’d better do that.” He reached for the telephone.
She said quickly, “Wait a minute. What are you going to say?”
“I’m going to accept.”
Pamela drew a sharp noisy breath, and said, “Why did you ask my opinion, then?”
“I thought you might voice a good objection that hadn’t occurred to me.”
“You gave the best objection yourself. It’s idiotic.”
“I’m not positive. My job is intelligence. This is an extraordinary opportunity. There’s also a taunt in it, Pamela. The U.S. Navy’s out of the war, and I’m here to see how you’re taking it. Question, how will I take it? It’s hard to duck that one.”
“You’re reading too much into it. What would your President say to this? Did he send you here to risk getting killed?”
“After the fact he’d congratulate me.”
“If you returned to be congratulated.”
As he reached for the telephone again, Pamela Tudsbury said, “I shall wind up with Fred Fearing. Or his equivalent.” That stopped the motion of Pug’s arm. She said, “I’m in dead earnest. I miss Ted horribly. I shall not be able to endure missing you. I’m much more attached to you than you realize. And I’m not at all moral, you know. You have very wrong ideas about me.”
The seams in his face were sharp and deep as he peered at the angry girl. The thumping of his heart made speech difficult. “It isn’t very moral to hit below the belt, I’ll say that.”
“You don’t understand me. Not in the least. On the Bremen you took me for a schoolgirl, and you’ve never really changed. Your wife has somehow kept you remarkably innocent for twenty-five years.”
Victor Henry said, “Pam, I honestly don’t think I was born to be shot down over Berlin in a British bomber. I’ll see you when I get back.”
He telephoned Tillet, while the girl stared at him with wide angry eyes. “Ass!” she said. “Ass!”
33
AYOUNGSTER in greasy coveralls poked his head through the open door. “Sir, the briefing’s begun in B flight crew room.”
“Coming,” said Pug, struggling with unfamiliar tubes, clasps, and straps. The flying suit was too big. It had not been laundered or otherwise cleaned in a long time, and smelled of stale sweat, grease, and tobacco. Quickly Pug pulled on three pairs of socks and thrust his feet into fleece-lined boots, also too big.
“What do I do with these?” Pug gestured at the raincoat and tweed suit he had folded on a chair.
“They’ll be right there when you get back, sir.”
Their eyes met. In that glance was complete mutual recognition that, for no very good reason, Pug was going out to risk death. The young man looked sorry for him, and also wryly amused at the Yank officer’s predicament. Pug said, “What’s your name?”
“
Aircraftsman Horton, sir.”
“Well, Aircraftsman Horton, we seem to be about the same size. If I forget to pick up that suit or something, it’s all yours.”
“Why, thank you, sir.” The young man’s grin became broad and sincere. “That’s very fine tweed.”
Several dozen men in flying clothes slouched in the darkened room, their pallid faces attentive to the wing commander, who motioned the American to a chair. He was talking about the primary and secondary targets in Berlin, using a long pointer at a gray, grainy aerial picture of the German capital blown up on a large screen. Victor Henry had driven or walked past both targets often. One was a power plant, the other the main gasworks of Berlin. It made him feel decidedly odd to discern, in the Grunewald area, the lake beside which the Rosenthal house stood.
“All right, let’s have the opposition map.”
Another slide of Berlin flashed on the screen, marked with red and orange symbols, and the officer discussed anti-aircraft positions and searchlight belts. The fliers listened to the dull droning voice raptly.
“Lights.”
Bare lamps in the ceiling blazed up. The bomber crews blinked and shifted in their chairs. Rolled up, the screen uncovered a green-and-brown map of Europe, and over it a sign in large red block letters: IT IS BETTER TO KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND LET PEOPLE THINK YOU’RE A FOOL, THAN TO OPEN IT AND REMOVE ALL DOUBT.
“All right, that’s about it. Berlin will be on the alert after all the stuff they’ve been dumping on London, so look alive.” The wing commander leaned his pointer against the wall, put hands on hips, and changed to an offhand tone: “Remember to be careful of the moon. Don’t fly directly into it, you’ll look like a cat on a Christmas card. When you’ve done your stuff, get your photographs, shove the nose down, and pedal home downhill as fast as you can. Keep Very pistols loaded and have those photoflash bombs handy. Work fast, the flak will be heavy. Incidentally, our American observer will be flying in F for Freddie. He’s Admiral Victor Henry, one of the least prudent officers in the United States Navy.”