Leo.”
Harald tried to smile. “I’m Harald, nice to meet you.”
“Would you like a cigarette?”
“Thank you, another time, I’m in a hurry.”
Harald walked around to the side of the church. He had found a log and rolled it under one of the windows. Now he stood on it and looked into the church. He passed the wishbone strut through the glassless window and dropped it onto the box that stood below the window on the inside. It bounced off the box and fell to the floor. Then he wriggled through.
A voice said, “Hello!”
His heart stopped, then he saw Karen. She was at the tail, partly concealed by the aircraft, working on the wing with the damaged tip. Harald picked up the axle strut and went to show it to her.
Then a voice said in German, “I thought this place was empty!”
Harald spun around. The young private, Leo, was looking in through the window. Harald stared at him aghast, cursing his luck. “It’s a storeroom,” he said.
Leo wriggled through the window and dropped to the floor. Harald shot a glance back to the tail of the aircraft. Karen had vanished. Leo looked around, seeming curious rather than suspicious.
The Hornet Moth was covered from propeller to cabin, and the wings were folded back, but the fuselage was visible, and the tail fin could be made out at the far side of the church. How observant was Leo?
Luckily, the soldier seemed more interested in the Rolls-Royce. “Nice car,” he said. “Is it yours?”
“Unfortunately not,” said Harald. “The motorcycle is mine.” He held up the axle strut from the Hornet Moth. “This is for my sidecar. I’m trying to fix it up.”
“Ah!” Leo showed no sign of skepticism. “I’d like to help you, but I don’t know anything about machinery. Horseflesh is my specialty.”
“Of course.” They were about the same age, and Harald felt sympathy for the lonely young man far from home. But he wished all the same that Leo would go before he saw too much.
A shrill whistle sounded. “Suppertime,” Leo said.
Thank God, Harald thought.
“It was a pleasure talking to you, Harald. I look forward to seeing you again.”
“Me, too.”
Leo stood on the box and pulled himself out through the window.
“Jesus,” Harald said aloud.
Karen emerged from behind the tail of the Hornet Moth, looking shaken. “That was a nasty moment.”
“He wasn’t suspicious, he just wanted to talk.”
“God preserve us from friendly Germans,” she said with a smile.
“Amen.” He loved it when she smiled. It was like the sun coming up. He looked at her face as long as he dared.
Then he turned to the wing she had been working on. She was repairing the rips, he saw. He went closer and stood next to her. She was dressed in old corduroy trousers that looked as if they had been worn for gardening, and a man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled. “I’m gluing patches of linen over the damaged areas,” she explained. “When the glue is dry, I’ll paint over the patches to make them airtight.”
“Where did you get the material, and the glue, and the paint?”
“From the theater. I fluttered my eyelashes at a set builder.”
“Good for you.” It was obviously easy for her to get men to do anything she wanted. He was jealous of the set builder. “What do you do at the theater all day, anyway?” he said.
“I’m understudying the lead in
“Will you get to dance it on stage?”
“No. There are two casts, so both the other dancers would have to fall ill.”
“Shame. I’d love to see you.”
“If the impossible happens, I’ll get you a ticket.” She returned her attention to the wing. “We have to make sure there are no internal fractures.”
“That means we have to examine the wooden spars under the fabric.”
“Yes.”
“Well, now that we’ve got the material to repair rips, I suppose we could cut an inspection panel in the fabric and just look inside.”
She looked dubious. “Okay. .”
He did not think a knife would easily cut the treated linen, but he found a sharp chisel on the tool shelf. “Where should we cut?”
“Near the struts.”
He pressed the chisel into the surface. Once the initial breach had been made, the chisel cut the fabric relatively easily. Harald made an L-shaped incision and folded back a flap, making a sizable opening.
Karen pointed a flashlight into the hole, then put her face down and peered inside. She took her time looking around, then withdrew her head and put her arm in. She grasped something and shook vigorously. “I think we’re in luck,” she said. “Nothing shifts.”
She stepped back and Harald took her place. He reached inside, grasped a strut, and pushed and pulled it. The entire wing moved, but he felt no weakness.
Karen was pleased. “We’re making progress,” she said. “If I can finish the work on the fabric tomorrow, and you can bolt the axle strut back on, the airframe will be complete, except for the missing cables. And we’ve still got eight days to go.”
“Not really,” Harald said. “We probably need to reach England at least twenty-four hours before the raid, for our information to have any effect. That brings it down to seven. To arrive on the seventh day, we need to leave the previous evening and fly overnight. So we really have six days at the most.”
“Then I’ll have to finish the fabric tonight.” She looked at her watch. “I’d better show up at the house for dinner, but I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
She put away the glue and washed her hands at the sink, using soap she had brought from the house for Harald. He watched her. He was always sorry when she left. He thought he would like to be with her all day, every day. He guessed that was the feeling that made people want to get married. Did he want to marry Karen? It seemed like a foolish question. Of course he did. He had no doubt. He sometimes tried to imagine the two of them after ten years, fed up with one another and bored, but it was impossible. Karen would never be boring.
She dried her hands on a scrap of towel. “What are you so thoughtful about?”
He felt himself blush. “Wondering what the future holds.”
She gave him a startlingly direct look, and for a moment he felt she could read his mind; then she looked away. “A long flight across the North Sea,” she said. “Six hundred miles without landfall. So we’d better be sure this old kite can make it.”
She went to the window and stood on the box. “Don’t look-this is an undignified maneuver for a lady.”
“I won’t, I swear,” he said with a laugh.
She pulled herself up. Breaking his promise cheerfully, he watched her rear as she wriggled through. Then she dropped out of sight.
He turned his attention back to the Hornet Moth. It should not take long to reattach the braced axle strut. He found the nuts and bolts where he had left them, on the workbench. He knelt by the wheel, fitted the strut in place, and began to attach the bolts that held it to the fuselage and the wheel mounting.
Just as he was finishing, Karen came back in, much sooner than expected.
He smiled, pleased at her early return, then saw that she looked distraught. “What’s happened?” he said.
“Your mother telephoned.”
Harald was angry. “Damn! I shouldn’t have told her where I was going. Who did she speak to?”
“My father. But he told her you definitely weren’t here, and she seems to have believed him.”
“Thank God.” He was glad he had decided not to tell Mother he was living in the disused church. “What did she want, anyway?”
“There’s bad news.”
