flicked across the instrument panel. Altimeter, airspeed, compass,
fuel-the tanks! Without even looking down he jerked a lever next to his
seat. Two auxiliary fuel tanks tumbled down through the darkness. One
would be recovered from the Clyde estuary the next day by a British
drifter, empty.
The radio stayed silent. He checked it again. Still working.
His watch showed thirty-nine minutes gone. His throat went dry.
Sixty seconds to zero hour, Sixty seconds to suicide. Here you are, sir
one cyanide cocktailfor the glory of the Reich! For the last time the
pilot looked longingly down upon the dark mirror of the sea. His left
hand crept into his flying suit and touched the cyanide capsule taped
against his breast. Then, with frightening clarity, an image of his
wife and daughter came into his mind. 'It's not fair!' he shouted in
desolation. 'It's the fucking nobodies who do the dying!'
In one violent flash of terror and outrage, the pilot jerked the stick
to port and headed the roaring fighter back inland.
His tear-filled eyes pierced the Scottish mist, searching out the
landmarks he had studied so long in Denmark. With a shudder of hope, he
spied the first-railroad tracks shining like quicksilver in the night.
Maybe the signal will still come, he hoped desperately. But he knew it
wouldn't. His eyes scoured the earth for his second landmark-a small
lake to the south of Dungavel Castle. There ...
The Messerschmitt streaked across the water. Like a mirage the small
village of Eaglesham appeared ahead. The fighter thundered across the
rooftops, wheeling in a high, climbing circle over Dungavel Castle. He
had done it! Like an intravenous blast of morphine, the pilot.felt a
sudden rush of exhilaration, a wild joy cascading through him. Ignited
by the nearness of death, his survival instinct had thrown some switch
deep within his brain. He had but one thought nowsurvive!
At sixty-five hundred feet the nightmare began. With no one to fly the
plane while he jumped, the pilot decided to kill his engines as a safety
measure. Only one engine c<)operated. The other, its cylinders red-hot
from the long flight from Aalborg, continued to ignite the fuel mixture.
He throttled back hard until the engine died, losing precious seconds,
then he wrestled the canopy open.
He could not get out of the cockpit! Like an invisible iron hand the
wind pinned him to the back panel. Desperately he tried to loop the
plane, hoping to drop out as it turned over, but centrifugal force,
unforgiving, held him in his seat.
When enough blood had rushed out of his brain, he blacked out.
Unaware of anything around him, the pilot roared toward oblivion.
By the time he regained consciousness, the aircraft stood on its tail,
hanging motionless in space. In a millisecond it would fall like two
tons of scrap steel.
With one mighty flex of his knees, he jumped clear.
As he fell, his brain swirled with visions of the Reichminister's chute
billowing open in the dying light, floating peacefully toward a mission
that by now had failed.
His own chute snapped open with a jerk. In the distance he saw a shower
of sparks; the Messerschmitt had found the earth.
He broke his left ankle when he hit the ground, but surging adrenaline
shielded his mind against the pain. Shouts of alarm echoed from the
darkness. Struggling to free himself from the harness, he surveyed by
moonlight the small farm at the edge of the field in which he had
landed. Before he could see much of anything, a man appeared out of the
darkness. It was the head plowman of the farm, a man named David
McLean. The Scotsman approached cautiously and asked the pilot his
name. Struggling to clear his stunned brain, the pilot searched for his
cover name. When it came to him, he almost laughed aloud.
Confused, he gave the man his real name instead. What the hell?
he thought. I don't even exist anymore in Germany. Heydrich saw to
that.
'Are you German?' the Scotsman asked.
'Yes,' the pilot answered in English.
Somewhere among the dark hills the Messerschmitt finally exploded,
lighting the sky with a momentary flash.
'Are there any more with you?' the Scotsman asked nervously.
'From the plane?'
The pilot blinked, trying to take in the enormity of what he had
done-and what he had been ordered to do. The cyanide capsule still lay
like a viper against his chest. 'No,' he said firmly. 'I flew alone.'
The Scotsman seemed to accept this readily'I want to go to Dungavel
Castle,' the pilot said. Somehow, in his confusion, he could not-or
would not-abandon his original mission. 'I have an important message
for the Duke of Hamilton,' he added solemnly.
'Are you armed?' McLean's voice was tentative.
'No. I have no weapon.'
The farmer simply stared. A shrill voice from the darkness finally
broke the awkward silence. 'What's happened?
Who's out there?'
'A German's landed!' McLean answered. 'Go get some soldiers.'
Thus began a strange pageant of uncertain hospitality that would last
for nearly thirty hours. From the McLeans' humble living room-where the
pilot was offered tea on the family's best china-to the local Home Guard
hut at Busby, he continued to give the name he had offered the plowman
upon landing-his own. It was obvious that no one knew what to make of
him. Somehow, somewhere, something had gone wrong. The pilot had
expected to land inside a cordon of intelligence officers; instead he'd
been met by one confused farmer. Where were the stern-faced young
operatives of mI-5? Several times he repeated his request to be taken
to the Duke of Hamilton, but from the bare room at Busby he was taken by
army truck to Maryhill Barracks at Glasgow.
At Maryhill, the pain of his broken ankle finally burned through his
shock. When he.mentioned it to his captors, they transferred him to the
military hospital at Buchanan Castle, about twenty miles south of
Glasgow- It was there, nearly thirty hours after the unarmed
Messerschmitt first crossed the Scottish coast, that the Duke of
Hamilton finally arrived to confront the pilot.
Douglas Hamilton looked as young apd dashing as the photograph in his SS
