as if uncaring as to who heard them, all the time interrupting his recital of instructions from the ground with the minutiae of course adjustments that the pilot officer required of him.
'Another few seconds and we will be through the haze, then we will see the runway, then we will see if they mean to stop us, or whether as your friend says it is just a bluff.' Five years' flying she had had, three more before that at the training school, sufficient experience solo for her to be able to handle the Ilyushin on her own. Too senior really for her to be flying co-pilot, especially a creature like this, but the rosters were not logically drawn and did not always recognize her log book of flying hours. They taught you how to pilot an aircraft, and gave you lectures on emergencies -but those were concerning the technical problems that might be faced – fire in an engine, undercarriage that would not retract, fracture of pressurization, loss of flap control. They did not know how you would react if there was a submachine-gun at your ribs with a thirty-round magazine attached, and a class of school children that you must bring to safety. No way they could know that when they gave you command of an aircraft. Lectures and courses, but this…
There is the runway,' she snapped, peering high over the bottom lip of her windscreen at the dun-coloured strip of concrete thousands of feet beneath her. The city was laid out like a toy town further away. Neat gardens, high chimneys of the factories, rising office blocks. But closer
– and this held her attention – the shape of the airfield, runway placed straight ahead for her by the skill of the navigator.
There are trucks across it. See them? Petrol lorries, armoured cars, suicide, suicide if we go down there.' Without the order from David that had preceded her every previous move she had pulled on the instrument column, and was scrambling to complete the job she would have shared with her captain, to reset the mass of dials and switches that were necessary if the plane were to climb again. David had seen it all, seen it as she had. And he too recognized the impossibility of a successful landing. Every three hundred metres the variation between the yellow and white petrol tankers and the green and olive armoured cars, clear and silhouetted against the background of the tarmac.
'Do not answer any calls for us from the ground, and circle the airport, low enough so that they can see us.' David moved out of the cockpit, the first time that he had left it in more than two hours, stepping into the corridor, the passageway between the flight deck and the passenger cabin. He reached forward to pull the curtain across that the watchers might not observe him as he spoke to Isaac. He spoke in a quiet and sombre voice, and with a resignation about him that unnerved Isaac, and with his shoulders seemingly shrunken by the enormity of the problem.
'What do we do now? In God's name, Isaac, what do we do now?'
'We can tell them we are coming in to land, and see what..'
And if they do not move the trucks, and if we are committed to landing, and cannot climb again – then we are dead.'
'Perhaps it is because they know we have fuel.'
'And how many countries will follow the lead of the Germans?'
'If we crash the plane that is by our hand. They know the fuel that we have, they know when we can go no further. It will not be at our hand, David.' Isaac spoke feverishly and searching to build again the momentum that had taken them to the flight. 'When the fuel is expended what government will refuse us permission to land when they know we have children on our flight?
This is not the crisis, not yet. Time for 'Masada', the time for suicide is later. When we have landed, then it will be different' Again Isaac had his arm round him, the gesture of friendship and support. 'David, you are down, and that is how they would wish you. They want us to dispute with each other, they want your depression because that helps them. We always knew it would not be easy, that it would not be simple. There are other countries that we can reach, many others.
Not all are like the Germans. We too have friends, David.'
'Less than two hours now, that is the fuel position. After that it will be settled for us.'
As he went back into the cockpit David wondered at the new turn in their fortunes. He realized that he was bemused they should meet with opposition at this time, and after they had won so much. Like a betrayal, like a boy feels when he knows his father has told him a he. He had not known that Isaac possessed such inner reservoirs of stamina; they would come to lean on him, both of them, Rebecca as much as himself. He felt such a great tiredness now, just a longing to be shed of it, to walk again on the ground, to escape this box of confusions that he did not understand. The joy of walking again on grass, and of not running, and of not listening at night for the footsteps that might follow.
He repeated it over in his own mind. Lean on Isaac, lean on him till his own strength returned.
Could any of them understand the awful wearying, endless conflict in the cockpit? The pilot dead, the shape that would not respond, would not forgive. The fighters, modern, technological killing soldiers that he had stood his ground against and beaten. The cool proficiency of the girl pilot. He had stood against them, stood against them and seen them off. But it had sapped and weakened him and now he should rest on Isaac, let the boy carry the load till he was ready again.
And the boy was good, better than you expected, David, and there was comfort there. The only comfort he had.
'Give me a course for Holland,' David said. Again the Ilyushin banked and began to turn, roused by the new thrust of power, searching once more for the Kingfisher's landfall.
The airport at Hanover is categorized as 'international', but the trade that it handles is not considerable, and certainly minor in comparison with Frankfurt or Munich or Cologne,' Bonn. So the groups of delayed passengers and crew and idled airport staff were sparsely scattered on the concrete terminal roof. Clusters of multi-national businessmen, a party of British war veterans who had come again to relive the triumph and the misery of 1945, some Scandinavians in search of fresh hiking pastures, mingled amongst the Lufthansa men and girls.
All could see the Ilyushin, alone in the azure, late afternoon sky. They watched its flight around the far perimeter of the airfield, occasionally stealing their glance away to the rock – steady armoured cars and tracks that were the runway obstructions. A transistor radio chattered a report from a local broadcaster who described the scene and could tell of no more than their own eyes could take in. It was the only sound to compete with the low- pitched, incessant drone of the engines set far forward on the wings from which the Aeroflot flight's markings could be read by those with clear eyesight.
And the watchers realized that the plane would not come, that the confrontation was not sought They saw the new course set, and watched the diminishing silhouette and were left with a feeling of emptiness and inadequacy, because they were part of something that would not be completed. Only when the plane was telescoped to their vision, small and hard to see, and its engine noise was faint, did a new sound spring forward, powerful and dominating, as the armoured cars and tankers revved their engines and started to move clear of the tarmac.
There was a woman from Stockholm who cried, and said again and again, 'I don't know why.
I don't know why.' And her husband was embarrassed and gave her his handkerchief and tried to shield her from view as she dabbed her eyes.
The tolerance of the men with dark suits and attache cases and schedules to maintain was waning. There was much checking of watches and loud discussion on how long it would take to get things moving again, to fly them on to their homes or belated meetings.
The ground staff were first to leave the roof, beckoned by the work and organization that now awaited them, the businessmen hard on their heels, the hikers needing to make up lost time if they were to reach their chalets by nightfall.
The old army men stayed on. They'd no hurry; it was known where they were, and they were confident of being called when their flight was ready. Men in their sixties and seventies, at the fade of their lives, who for a week had recalled 'machine-gun platoon', and 'mortar platoon', and
'Monty', and 'knocking the Hun for six'. A great deal of wine and beer and sausage and reminiscence they'd been through in the last few days, and they did not seek to end it by returning more quickly than necessary to the polished cleanliness of the departure hall.
'Should have come on in, shouldn't they?' Cyril from mechanized infantry.
Then there'd have been the risk of pranging her.' Bertie, HQ Staff.
'If you're to win in that sort of game you have to take a few chances, like it was when we crossed…' Jim,
