said Kit. ‘Before the ground-crew get to work on her. Dadda brought her home on full boost; there’s hardly a cupful of petrol in her. She won’t blow up and kill anybody, not unless somebody tries to be a hero with the fire-extinguisher – and they can go and hold old Gehlen’s hand.’ His eyes still had that slightly mad shine, but I went with him. Except for Dadda, we all did, even Billy. Especially Billy.
There seemed not to be a soul about, as we walked to the dispersals across the wet, misty field. But I suppose there are always mechanics working inside the crates, and cosy, nosy buggers looking out of office windows. Which probably accounts for what happened later. You don’t normally get a complete aircrew walking out to a crate the morning after an op. S-Sugar loomed up suddenly, as if she were a ghost. From the outside, she looked just like any other Wimpey; that wedgy, faithful-doggy profile. For a moment my mind did a double-take about damaging His Majesty’s property. But Blackham’s Wimpey didn’t really belong to His Majesty any more, though of course His Majesty didn’t know it. Matt reached up and pulled down the hatch and ladder. For no particular reason, I climbed in first.
I’d never smelt a bomber the morning after a raid before. Normally, the ground-crew hose them out with disinfectant before we see them again. But this morning S-Sugar smelt as we had left her: petrol, cordite from the guns, a stronger kind of cordite from the German flak, the stench of vomit, the greater stench of the cold, black Elsan, the stink of sweaty socks and another smell that smells like the smell of blue funk. Only a burning Wimpey smells worse, when the crew’s still inside.
It was dark, too. Thick dark. Not much pale yellow light showed through the smeared windscreen.
The moment I began to move up the fuselage, I stopped. There was something alive in there. I always know when there’s something alive in a place. We have an old grey moggy which hangs round our barrack-room. She’s fond of lurking, invisible, among the grey blankets. I always know she’s there, somehow, but she always gives me a fright when she jumps out, purring. Now there was something in S-Sugar, and it wasn’t a moggy. Much bigger than a moggy. The hair rose on the back of my neck. I tingled all over.
There was a murmur from beyond the rear of the cockpit. The wind was blowing a bit, rocking the Wimpey on her wheels and keening through struts and aerials, but the murmuring was louder than the keening, though half lost in it. It seemed to be coming from somewhere near the RT; softly, rhythmically. I strained to hear it, and the hair on my neck rose afresh. God, this couldn’t be happening.
The murmuring was in German . . .
‘You have done well, Dieter. You have done very well. Nobody could have asked for more courage and loyalty than you have shown. Now you—’
‘What the hell . . . ?’ Kit, coming up the ladder, bumped into my back. One look at my face silenced him. And Matt and Paul and Billy, as they ascended one by one. We all listened, painfully holding our breath.
‘It is time to go now, Dieter. It was terrible, dying, but now you are free. You have done your duty. Go now where there is no more Führer, no more British terror-flyers . . .’
A ghost talking to itself. No, I just couldn’t believe it. My mind was giving way about once an hour these days; almost as regular as breathing.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, let’s get it over with,’ said Billy savagely from the back. Bravely, from the back, he began to push Paul and Matt and Kit and me up the fuselage. He mightn’t have been so keen, if he’d been in front. I tell you, I was fighting like hell to get back and out of there. Kit was giggling in my ear, wildly.
But in spite of my struggles, I was pushed nearer and nearer the wrecked RT set. There was a too-dark shadow behind the set. I couldn’t quite see what it was, because Kit’s navigator’s curtain was in the way, but I knew damned well that that shadow wasn’t shadow, that that shadow shouldn’t be there. It looked . . . leathery. Like a crouched airman in leathers.
Then, starting with a near-imperceptible motion, it rose and rose,