Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(65)

‘Jesus Christ, Peter, calm down will you. I can’t see anything suspicious but we don’t have all day. Just tell him.’

Berlin thought that was a good idea too. He glanced at his watch. It was hours since he’d last eaten.

Chapman sat back down in his chair and Millikin refilled his glass. ‘Charlie,’ he said, ‘they sent me out here in a Vulcan to drop a bomb.’

‘Just the one?’ On area bombing raids, Berlin’s Lanc was loaded with fourteen 1000-pound, high-explosive bombs, though they could carry multiple 500-pounders and numerous incendiaries.

‘Ah Charlie, when it’s a bomb like this, you only need the one. Codename for our little beauty was Blue Danube.’

‘You mean like the waltz?’

‘That’s right, just like the waltz. I rather suppose the people who named it had an overdeveloped sense of irony. But as far as names go, it isn’t quite as blunt as Bomb, Atomic, Mark Number One.’

What kind of a sick mind would call something like that a Blue Danube? Berlin wondered. ‘This was a first test?’

‘Oh God, no. They set a couple off at Maralinga last year, but this was the first drop from a Vulcan. Very hush-hush. Vulcan squadrons are in the process of being activated back in the UK, so I suppose they wanted to see if it could actually do the job if push came to shove with the Russkies.’

‘So before you drop the damned thing on an enemy you drop one on a friend to see if it actually works?’

‘Joys of empire, I’m afraid, old chap. Or Commonwealth, I suppose. But your politicians agreed to it – the testing program, I mean.’

‘Bastards.’ It was Millikin from the kitchen doorway.

Chapman smiled at her. ‘I agree, my dear, bastards all, but it was ever thus.’

‘Is there a point to this story by any chance?’ Berlin asked.

‘Indeed there is, dear boy, indeed there is.’

Berlin hoped he was going to get to it sometime before sunrise.

‘We sat out on the runway for eight mornings in a row, bomb in the belly, waiting on the weather, waiting on the word from the boffins and the men in the control tower. Right amount of cloud cover, right amount of humidity, right amount of light for the cameras, all the usual stuff. Most importantly, they kept telling us, the wind had to be right, the wind had to be right.’

Berlin could almost see it. The massive delta-winged aircraft sitting and waiting in the heat haze and willy-willies, waiting on the tower. Waiting somewhere on a secret runway, a strip of non-existent concrete lost within the country’s empty heart.

Chapman was now lighting one cigarette after another. ‘We finally get the green light, the go signal from the tower, on day nine, and it’s tally-ho and chocks away and throttles to the gate.’

Berlin didn’t like the way Chapman made it sound like a game, a page out of Biggles, or the Boy’s Own Annual.

‘So we come in on the target at fifty thousand feet and everything is just perfect. She releases smooth as silk and the aircraft leaps about fifty feet upwards – you’d know that feeling – and I give them “Bomb Gone” on the RT and right back comes this frantic voice yelling, ‘’Abort, abort, abort. Wind shift.’”

Chapman’s eyes were distant, lost. Berlin guessed he was reliving the moment like Beryl Moffit had done when speaking about her old man.

Nobody spoke. Chapman studied the tip of his cigarette, watching the paper char and the smoke eddy as it burned slowly down towards his fingers.

‘Bit bloody late to do anything about it then, of course,’ he said finally. ‘Next thing the whole cockpit lights up with the flash and after that we get hit with the pressure waves, and when everything settles down again you can see the cloud forming. After about ten minutes it’s pretty obvious that it’s slowly drifting east.’

‘I suppose we’re lucky it was a small bomb.’

Chapman stared at him. ‘Why, Charlie, whoever have you been talking to?’

‘It’s not important, but I already know about this particular accident.’

Chapman leaned over to him. Berlin could see the red lines in his eyes and smell the tobacco and whisky on his breath.

‘Charlie, old son,’ Chapman said, ‘do you ever have nightmares about the things you’ve seen and done?’

The question was like a fist into Berlin’s stomach. He waited a moment before answering. ‘Sometimes.’

‘Well, I started having nightmares a few weeks after the … the accident … the flash … the pressure waves … the windsock … And then people started dying.’

Chapman kept talking. After five minutes Berlin wanted him to shut the hell up and after five more he asked Millikin for a whisky. One glass didn’t do it and Berlin knew that not even all the whisky left in the bottle would block out the horror, but he tried.

They finished the second bottle and Berlin went out looking for more. It was well after six now and the pubs were shut, but a tart on Fitzroy Street directed him to the right doorway. The man inside picked him for a copper right off but knew from Berlin’s face he was after oblivion rather than an arrest. He sold him a bottle of locally distilled Corio whisky and stiffed him on the change. A customer already three sheets to the wind wouldn’t mind the awful taste, and for any poor bastard seeking a rapid, mind-numbing descent into darkness, Corio was just the drop.