Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #2)(23)

The first thing they did was spread my passport and license and authorisation card across the steel desk, and then dump out my confiscated Camp LA groceries next to the ID. The translator made a sweeping gesture at the pile of Hershey bars. He said seriously, ‘You see, you are in a lot of trouble.’

I had to clamp a hand over my mouth. It was all I could do not to fall apart with hysteria – it was so funny! Terrible, but so funny. What were they accusing me of – chocolate smuggling?

I nodded mutely, because really I did agree with him – I knew I was in trouble. But I had to gulp back squeaks of hilarity. The way he pointed to that candy! He was about Daddy’s age – tired-looking, tall and thin, with a wide mouth and a nice smile. He looked like the Fire Chief in Conewago Grove. He sat across from me, peering earnestly into my face with his hands on his knees, as though he were cross-examining his own daughter over something that had disappointed him.

‘You are American?’

I could only nod. I didn’t trust myself to try to talk.

‘In a British plane?’

‘I am –’ I got the hysterics under control and sat on my hands to keep them away from my mouth.

‘Why is an American flying a British plane?’ the translator asked patiently.

‘I was – I was only delivering it,’ I squeaked.

‘You are a courier?’ the translator asked.

I nodded, because I thought he meant ‘delivery girl’ – then immediately panicked and shook my head violently to take it back. Aren’t couriers some kind of intelligence agents?

‘No – no! I’m a ferry pilot. Air Transport Auxiliary – I deliver planes for the Royal Air Force.’

‘What variety is your Spitfire?’

‘Mark 14.’

The translator looked over his shoulder at the others and told them what I’d said, and they all nodded and muttered to one another. Then the translator asked me, ‘The plane has a radio device?’

‘Yes –’

The stenographer looked up sharply. She stared at me with a face full of awe and suspicion, as though she wanted to see what kind of person would have the gall to fly a plane equipped with a ‘radio device’. I don’t know how much English she understood, but she must have understood everything the interrogator and the translator had just said to each other.

What were they after? Maybe they didn’t mean a radio. Maybe ‘radio device’ was an attempt to translate something else. I asked, ‘Do you mean radar?’ Radar would make it a surveillance aircraft – a spy plane. And suddenly I was more frightened than I’d been before.

‘I mean, no! There’s no radar on that plane –’

I stopped abruptly, shaking my head and sucking in a gasp of air. I didn’t know if there was a radar set on that plane. I didn’t think there was – I knew the real thing takes up a lot of space but I wasn’t sure. That Spitfire was new this year and was about to be modified for reconnaissance.

‘I don’t know!’

‘You were orbiting when you were intercepted – why? Taking pictures?’

‘No! There’s no radar and no cameras – I don’t think there are –’

I didn’t know that either. I didn’t know anything about what that plane might be carrying in its wings, other than fuel – cameras, cannon, spy equipment, plastic explosive – who knows? I don’t think there was anything like that on board, but who knows?

It just went downhill from there – everybody as polite as possible, and me not knowing the answer to anything they asked me. ‘But I was in France!’ I pointed out miserably. ‘I wasn’t even over your territory!’

‘It was ours last week,’ the translator said calmly.

None of this actually took very long. All the administration was done that day – the telephone calls after they finished questioning me, and the decision from some command centre in Berlin, and the paperwork – all magically completed in less than two hours. I don’t think the Luftwaffe pilots knew where I’d end up. They just did what they were told to do with me.

The translator was a transport pilot too. He was delivering a small communications aircraft to its new home base. It wasn’t far from a place where they held a lot of women who were political prisoners, and I was supposed to go along with him so he could drop me there.

The little plane looked like a flying lawnmower with awnings. ‘It is a Storch,’ the pilot told me. ‘Fieseler Fi-156. Stork, in English. Bird with long legs!’

I tried to smile at the lame joke.

‘Don’t be frightened. You will be safe where they send you. The papers we have given you state that you are a transport pilot and that you were intercepted without weapons – you will have to remain in custody here, but you will be fed and clothed and housed –’ He hesitated a little. ‘And given work to do. They will find work for you at a skilled level. Don’t lose the written statement our commander gave you – it explains how you came here, and it is important that you show the Luftwaffe stamp and signature, for you won’t always be able to find another English-speaker as fluent as I to give you assistance.’

We finished the outside aircraft checks and the pilot opened the door for me to climb into the rear seat.

‘I am Oberleutnant Karl Womelsdorff,’ he said.