Flashback

Chapter Thirty-One

August, 1947, Buenos Aires

Cory walked to the airport at Morón. Once, an intellectual called Jurado had taken him through the difficulties of selecting the correct verb for travelling on foot through The Great Village, as he called Buenos Aires. Callejear must be rejected. That was clear. Pasear would not do. Never in life. One must plump for vagar, to wander. One wanders the labyrinth. One considers the changing street names as the retelling of Argentine history. These are golden threads to be plucked as strings to the past.

Cory, vagabundeo, arrived at the drab industrial estate just as the early afternoon sky was darkening. The offices of the British South American Airways Corporation was an unremarkable block with a striking emblem: an art deco star man. It reminded Cory of Hermes. Ancient Greek god of boundaries and those who cross them. Of the orator, the poet, and the shepherd. Of the core of thieves: their cunning.

He removed his hat and touched his forehead with a handkerchief. On the forecourt, a glorious, cream-coloured Packard was being washed by a chauffeur. Cory used his best Rioplatense Spanish to compliment the Packard. The two spoke for five minutes, during which Cory discovered that the Packard would be parked here until the early evening, and thus perfectly placed for hijack.

He raised his hat to the man and walked into the offices. He felt alive and happy. His grip was about to close on Harkes. The crushing sensation would be sweetness itself.

The waiting room outside the office of Air Vice-Marshal Bennett was empty. Cory sat in a low leather chair with his hat on his knee. He looked at the wall opposite. There was a painting of a tiny gaucho riding across a stylised representation of the South American continent. An aircraft-shaped shadow had fallen across him. He had turned his face upwards. The strapline read: ‘In South America To-Morrow!’

The window was north-facing and dull. To his right, in the office, two men were talking. Cory was looking at his knees, but he was listening to the men.

The younger man said, ‘About this weather, sir. We’re clear out to Mendoza, but it’ll be no fun over the bumps. The visibility is zero.’

The older man replied, ‘You’ve got the top seat. Tell me what you need.’

‘I should like to up the fuel load. Thirteen-hundred gallons would give us a cushion.’

‘Very well. What will that make your weight?’

‘A whisker off fifty-one thousand.’

‘Tell Pilkington I gave the word. Then tell him he can even put some fuel in the aircraft, instead of peeing it halfway across the hangar floor. But Reggo?’

‘Sir?’

‘This isn’t BOAC. Keep that juice for a rainy day.’

‘Sir.’

The door opened and the younger man emerged. He was no older than thirty and had a lightness in his movement. He wore a captain’s uniform and carried a clipboard. In an instant, Cory read all he could from the topmost sheet. The information was not useful. Just some figures and statistics associated with the flight plan. It was not, crucially, the passenger manifest.

The man smiled from the corner of his mouth and said, ‘How do you do?’

As Constantin Wittenbacher, Cory smiled back and said, ‘Very well, thank you.’

Then the young pilot was gone and Bennett called, ‘Mr Wittenbacher, is it? Do come in.’

The Air Vice-Marshal’s office was bright and spacious. The window overlooked the runway. An Avro Lancastrian was chocked up and gleaming in the sun. Men were standing on its wings. In groups of three, they were directing a fuel hose into the tanks.

Don Bennett was a short man who wore a suit with slightly baggy trousers, the English style. He was underweight, too, and Cory had no difficulty imagining him as an anxious and strict director. As Cory approached, Bennett switched from placing his knuckles on his desk to putting his hands on his hips until finally he reached out to shake hands. He was about forty, but his eyes were cynical and the constant motion of his body suggested a man bothered by time.

‘Constantin Wittenbacher,’ said Cory. ‘I am entirely at your service, Air Vice-Marshal.’

‘Please sit down.’

Cory tapped his cane against his shin. ‘I would prefer to stand.’

With an abrupt, interrogative tone, Bennett said, ‘German, are you?’

Cory knew that his worth was being weighed. There was an openness about Bennett’s expression that suggested this was nothing more than, say, an enquiry about Cory’s eligibility for a drinking club. Cory’s augmentations offered a numerical index of Bennett’s credulity by combining blink rate, vocal stress, and skin conductance, but he ignored these data. This came down to tradecraft. He had to win his support. He wove his words from the fictional threads of Wittenbacher, whose half-memories informed his own.

‘Air Vice-Marshal, my name is Colonel Constantin Martin Wittenbacher. I was formerly with fighter squadrons 26, 27 and 44.’

Bennett tipped his head back and opened his mouth as though this exactly confirmed his suspicion. He walked around the desk and stood next to Cory.

‘What did you fly?’

‘The Henschel H-123, Bf 109, and the Messerschmidt Me 262.’

Bennett leaned forward. ‘The 262? There’s a plane I’d like to fly.’

‘I flew it under Nowotny,’ said Cory. ‘It was a beautiful machine.’

‘How many successes, Colonel?’

‘Ninety-nine.’

‘One off a century.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Well,’ said Bennett. The interest in his eyes had begun to fade. He walked around his desk and collapsed in his reclining chair. ‘What brings you to Buenos Aires?’

‘Some friends connected me with Peron’s associates in Berlin. Apparently, the man wants to build an air force. I was invited here to act as a consultant.’

‘A bit ruddy late for Peron to start up,’ Bennett said. He checked himself, looked for Cory’s reaction, and continued in a more confidential manner. ‘For all the favours we’ve done Argentina over the years, they were too bone idle to help us out when we needed them. Peron is a tricky customer, though. I’ve met him. He needs to learn some manners. Our problem is that Peron is well aware of our island’s taste for Argentine beef.’

‘Indeed.’

Bennett stood. Cory let the haughty eyes of the AVM sweep him from brogues to oiled hair-parting. Bennett did not blink easily. Just as Cory began to fear his Plan B had not worked—perhaps, after all, he would have to fight his way to Harkes and damn the consequences—Bennett opened a drawer and took out a bottle of Glenkinchie and two shot glasses. He poured two fingers’ worth in each.

‘What shall we drink to?’ said Bennett.

‘How about the elephant in the room?’

‘I don’t know the expression.’

‘It means that I hope you will help me with something very important as-yet unsaid.’

‘Go on.’

Bennett looked over his tumbler as he tipped it back. Cory sank the whisky too and released a contented breath. He put the glass on the desk and turned it, absently, one quarter. He drew upon a notion of Harkes, his quarry. Empathy came with surprising ease.

‘A man has followed me from Lisbon. He wishes me dead.’ How fluently the lies ran. How closely they brushed the truth. ‘He is working for a woman, a widow, who believes I killed her husband during the war.’

‘Well?’ asked Bennett.

Cory looked up. Bennett’s eyes had resumed their interested twinkle.

‘We scrapped over Leiden. Both our aircraft were hit, and we made landings less than a mile apart. I found him first and shot him, but not before he had put a bullet in my leg.’ Cory tapped his shin with his cane once more.

‘British?’ asked Bennett.

‘A Pole.’

Bennett sipped his whisky. ‘Tell me more about your pursuer.’

‘The private detective? He is a… a schrecklich… a formidable man. He found my hotel this morning. I fled in the clothes I stand in. My one hope is to escape to Chile.’

‘Do you have your passport?’

‘I do not, sir.’

‘Money?’

‘Gold sovereigns inside my belt. I have enough for whatever I need.’

Bennett waved his hand. It was enough to dismiss the thought of a bribe. Clearly, he considered himself above this. He collected the glasses and returned them to the desk drawer.

‘Paperwork is the plumage of bureaucrats, Colonel, and I don’t intend to spend my life preening it for them. A phone call to our Chilean office will work the requisite wonders. Are you prepared to help me in return?’

‘If I can.’

Bennett opened his blotter. He placed a sheet of headed paper on it and began to write.

‘When you reach Santiago,’ he said, not looking up, ‘you will be met by a man called Jack Leche. He’ll take care of you. Nobody, officially, needs to know of your presence aboard CS-59.’

‘Jack Leche?’

‘Let me be quite clear,’ said Bennett. He stopped writing, looking up this time. ‘His Majesty’s government has an interest in Chile. If you were to work for the Chileans in an advisory capacity, perhaps within their military, I’m sure any information you might pass back to us would be viewed appreciatively. I’m aware that you could disappear over there, even buy your way to Brazil, but I judge you to be a man of honour who will consider himself much obliged.’

‘Do you think a man of honour would spy?’

‘That,’ said Bennett, returning to his blotter, ‘is an excellent question.’