I smelt salt in the air, and heard the gentle tidal bumping of wooden vessels against a quay. I already felt queasy, but good old Hudd: he was getting us away by water – a man of many talents. We stopped. The last chill of the year was still there in the air. I looked at Hudd, Weir and the Turk and suddenly felt so grateful I wanted to weep. Their breaths steamed. Above them was the northern Middle East sky with its dancing stars. The cold air ringed each one with rainbow colours. Despite the pain I managed to log a memory of them – I had never seen anything as beautiful.
There is an island on Lake Van, not far off the shore from which we’d started. It is wooded, and cold, and it supports the ruins of a Coptic church or monastery. I know that because I’ve been there; you probably haven’t. After twenty minutes we began to run in towards the island and my anxiety level climbed. Twenty minutes wasn’t far enough away from the homicidal maniacs who wanted to kill me. I asked the time-honoured, ‘Where are we?’
‘Akhtamar Island. We’ll be picked up from here.’ That was Hudd.
Weir and David Yassine’s Turk helped us ashore. I hopped on my good leg, leaning on Weir’s shoulder. We lay up alongside the ruined church; its crumbling walls and the low scrubby trees around them hid us from the breezes off the lake, which lowered the seasonal temperature even more. After an hour or so I began to shiver. Weir and the Turk had already left; the chug-chug from the boat’s engine couldn’t be heard further than a few yards – a good smuggling vessel, I guessed, but what would you want to smuggle across an inland saltwater lake?
‘Now’s as good a time as any,’ Hudd decided. ‘You can tell me where you got to last night, and exactly who shot you. It will help keep you alive.’
I don’t know how it happened – partly it was my determination to stay awake, because I felt so desperately tired – but I found myself telling him Grace’s entire story. About her ATA days, and coming to Germany with us in Tuesday’s Child, riding the Lancaster’s rear turret. About chasing her through western Europe and Italy at the end of the war, and her turning up in London in 1947 before escaping to Israel in a rusty tub of a tramp ship skippered by a Dutch pirate. About bringing up her son as mine. About Cyprus, and finally meeting her the night before. Did I tell him how irresistible she was? I don’t know; I think so.
‘But she tried to kill you?’
‘I don’t know, Hudd. I thought she would have been a better shot than that.’
‘. . . and you hit her with your shot?’
‘Again, I don’t know. She didn’t fall, if that’s what you mean. She certainly twitched. Maybe I just startled her.’
‘Maybe she wanted you to finish it. You said she’d suggested you kill her earlier.’
‘She knew I couldn’t do that.’
‘Maybe you have.’
How can you bloody well respond to that? ‘. . . and maybe that’s the last bloody thing in the world I wanted someone to say, Hudd.’
We’d reached a natural break. I was propped up against the church wall watching the stars. After a while Hudd watched them too. At some point he said, ‘Sorry, buddy.’
I didn’t reply immediately. Eventually I asked him, ‘When do we get out of here?’
‘First light.’
‘What are you going to do with the sovereigns?’
‘Give ’em back. I’ll keep a handful for pocket money, but I wouldn’t know what to do with the rest . . . and you don’t need them, do you?’
‘How do you work that out?’
‘You got the look, Charlie. You’re never going starve, are you? You know it and I know it.’
‘I won’t have time to starve, at this rate; some cow will probably shoot me again.’
‘You don’t think all women are cows, either. Do you?’
‘No. You’ll think I’m stupid, but I think that none of them are. The women in my life have been the best people who happened to me.’
‘Which is how it should be. Freddy called them comfort blankets. I wonder if he’s comfortable where he is now.’
‘When I get to Heaven, Hudd, I know it’s going to be a pub or a bar. Freddy will be there, and all my mates as well. You can come too if you like.’
‘That would be fine, Charlie . . . as long as we can put it off for a few years. Why don’t you shut your eyes for a couple of hours?’
I told him the truth. ‘I don’t feel well, Hudd. I’m scared I won’t wake up again.’
‘I’ll wake you: trust me.’
He didn’t need to. I dreamed about the black bomber. In my dream it was flying around inside that bowl of parched mountains, its four tired old radial engines screaming as it clawed for height. But there was no way out for her. She would fly until she dropped. Grace and the black bomber were all mixed up in my mind. The dream was so vivid that I could still hear those radials when I opened my eyes. And they didn’t stop even then. There was an aircraft somewhere above the lake.
First light.
I could make out the shape of Hudd standing on a spit of shingle, with his arm outstretched, like someone hailing a bus at a request stop. Then his hand burst into flame and colour, lighting him up like a shabby angel. Flare, my mind said. When it died Hudd crunched back across the stones.
‘Rise and shine, old son.’
‘What is it?’
‘A ruddy great Sunderland flying boat, come to take us home. It’s on its finals now.
