The Berlin Escape
By Warren Court
The Berlin Escape
Copyright © 2021 Warren Court
All rights reserved.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
For Tina and Katherine
1
September 1934
Rain pelted the fuselage of the RWD-9 in a steady beat. The Polish airplane bucked with the wind, its small wiper worked overtime to clear the deluge from the windscreen. Then, suddenly, the handsome four-seater plane was through the storm and the moon and stars were visible once more. The river shone like a silver ribbon below. Lights from farmhouses and quaint villages dotted its banks.
The plane turned away from the river and headed north, over farmland and vineyards, until the rise of two hills appeared in the distance, exactly where the pilot was told they would be. A dark, flat field surrounded by tall pine trees on all sides appeared in the distance. As the plane approached, signal lights laid out in the shape of an inverted L became visible.
The pilot eased the nose of the high-wing, strut-mounted plane down and reduced the throttle. Slowly the ground rose up to greet it. The signal lights, smudge pots of burning fuel, grew brighter and closer. The pilot squinted at the approaching grassy airstrip, hoping it was just grass, clear of potholes and rocks.
There was the bump of the forward fixed wheels as they hit the ground, a slight rise and then another bump. The pilot eased the throttle back further to bring the aircraft fully down. The plane rushed towards the wall of pine trees at the far end of the field. The pilot ran the length of the field, slowing before reaching the edge of the forest and then spinning the tail around for a takeoff.
Aubrey Endeavours removed her leather flying cap and shook her curly auburn hair loose. She looked longingly at the thermos of coffee and yawned. There wouldn’t even be time for a sip. She would have to wait until she was safely on the ground again in Belgium.
The plane’s motor throbbed in perfect pitch and she checked her fuel levels. Half a tank left; plenty to get her across the border. She was well chuffed with this little airplane. Unfamiliar with it when she’d taken off from Mokotowskie Airfield, Warsaw, twelve hours earlier, she was now very comfortable. She and the machine were becoming fast friends.
Aubrey was competing in the air-rally portion of the Challenge International de Tourisme. Since 1929, Poland, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia and other European countries started meeting to compete and to showcase planes capable of carrying two or more passengers, the intent being the advancement of commercial air travel. There were several phases to the competition: short runway takeoffs and landings, fuel consumption trials, and the final competition, a grand rally around Europe and North Africa.
This year’s host nation, Poland, was the start and finishing line for the rally that saw nineteen flyers touching down in Germany, Belgium, France and Spain, then going on to Casablanca and across the desert to Tunis. From there the racers headed north to Sicily and the Italian boot before weaving their way up the Balkans to arrive back in Poland. It was a ninety-five-hundred-mile endurance race that pushed men, and one woman, and their machines to the edge.
This was not Aubrey’s first air rally; she was a seasoned aviatrix from America. She’d flown her Sopwith Camel biplane in countless rallies and races and performed stunts from coast to coast.
But her flying career had been cut short when a sudden vortex of wind had forced her down into a farmer’s field in Ohio two years ago. Aubrey had spent six weeks in hospital with a fractured pelvis, a broken arm and concussion. Her beloved Sopwith had suffered even more; it was totalled and sold for scrap. And without the funds to purchase another plane, she was grounded.
Then this opportunity to participate in the European air rally had fallen into her lap. At last, a chance to get behind the stick again. She’d leapt at it.
But there were strings. A return to air racing and, potentially, a whiff of her former fame and winnings were not the real purpose. No, she was putting the borrowed Polish plane down in this field in western Germany for an entirely different reason.
Aubrey scanned the surrounding forest and then checked her watch. He had to be out there; who else would set the smudge pots ablaze? Their flickering flames were already dying down. Then she saw him break cover, dressed in a dark jacket and pants with a tan cap on his head. He came running at the airplane head on, straight at the propellor.
“No!” Aubrey screamed, as she saw what was about to happen. She’d seen propellor strikes before; they were horrific. Traumatizing to the witnesses, brutally fatal to the victims. The man pulled up short of the spinning propellor and ran around the tail end of the airplane. The RWD-9, a four-seater passenger plane, had two sets of doors. The man got into the rear passenger seat.
Aubrey didn’t look at him. She was concerned with several sets of moving lights that were rippling through the trees to one side of them: vehicles were descending on the area. Given the clandestine nature of the pickup, she could only surmise they were bad news. When she heard the rear passenger door slam shut, she pushed the throttle forward and the plane started bounding down the makeshift runway.
Amidst the blur of trees passing by, she could see silhouettes of men moving towards her. She saw flashes, presumably from guns, but heard no shots over the sound of the RWD’s engine. Then the glass on one of the side windows was punctured and a bullet whizzed through the cockpit, narrowly missing her. Aubrey didn’t have time to react. The band of forest in front of her was rapidly approaching. The plane reached takeoff speed and seemed to want
