Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #2)(76)

‘Why can’t you sit in the back?’ Ró?a wailed. ‘I want you to sit with me!’

‘Irina’s stronger than me. She has to start the plane. She’s got to swing the propeller.’

‘Start the plane! Who’s going to fly it?’

‘Well, I am, Ró?yczka,’ I said apologetically. And then, in self-defence, ‘I’ve flown this plane before.’

Irina climbed up to the wings to sweep off the snow and check the fuel tanks.

‘Hard to see,’ she called down. Then a second later, as she dipped her finger in, she exclaimed in astonishment, ‘Full! But why –’

‘It’s got an auxiliary fuel tank too, did you see that? That’s new.’

Irina checked. It was also full.

‘The pilot of this plane maybe knows something we do not,’ she suggested drily.

She was right, of course; the Allies crossed the Rhine the next day. I don’t know if the Neubrandenburg Stork was all set that night for an escape mission or a rescue mission or a spy mission, but it sure was loaded up and ready for someone to fly it. We were so lucky. Without the auxiliary tank, without full fuel, we’d have never made it over the front.

‘How will you go? Due west?’

‘Gosh, no, we’ll end up in Holland. It’s still under German control! South-west,’ I said firmly. The headings of that flight across Germany are imprinted on my brain forever. ‘Towards Paris.’

Irina gave a wild laugh at last. ‘To Paris!’ She jumped to the ground. ‘Are you tied in? If I start it, and you cannot hold the brakes, leave me.’

‘I’ll hold the brakes,’ I said. ‘There are straps on the pedals for your feet.’

It was so gloomy now, and the snow so fitful, that I couldn’t see Irina standing in front of the plane. I could hear her, though – the grunt of effort as she hung her not-very-substantial weight on the edge of the propeller, and the dull thunk as the engine turned over without firing.

I have always really hated swinging the prop, or waiting for someone else to do it. Daddy never let me do it myself until I was eighteen anyway – he finally showed me how just before I left for England, in case I had to do it when I got there. I don’t know how Irina did it – or how I held the brakes so she didn’t get chopped in half when the engine finally fired. It helped to have my feet strapped to the pedals so they had no chance of slipping.

Irina came bounding in and slammed the door.

‘Go, go!’

Where would we go? The Lido. To the beach on the beautiful Adriatic Sea.

It didn’t matter. I was going to get Ró?a out of here after all, anywhere. For Karolina and Lisette. For all of them. A living witness, living evidence. I opened the throttle and cranked down the awnings. Irina and I pulled back the control columns in front and back together – neither one of us would have been strong enough to get that tail up on our own. But the Stork leaped into the sky, straight off the apron. There was a faintly lit compass in the control panel, and I made a long, steady turn towards the south.

‘How is Ró?a?’ I asked. I could still hear her sobbing.

‘No help,’ Irina grunted. ‘Stay low. We will be harder to see from above.’

The dusting of snow highlighted the fields around the German airfield in the darkness.

‘Good,’ Irina yelled from the back. ‘Good visibility! The snow will help if it is not too heavy. Light clouds, high moon. Full too, or almost full!’ She was right – it was easier to see than I’d expected.

‘No chasers,’ she added briefly. Then the plane lurched as she leaned over my seat again to see out the front, and hauled the sobbing Ró?a up beside her. ‘Look – there! Look!’

Ravensbrück at 800 feet was like a beacon, a glaring, self-contained bonfire of harsh white light in the blacked-out landscape – the lights of the Lagerstrasse, the column of red sparks from the crematorium chimney, the blue-white beams of the anti-aircraft searchlights.

‘That’s it?’ Ró?a said. ‘That’s us? That’s what the American bombers see!’

She clambered forward, hanging perilously over my shoulder and staring.

‘It doesn’t look very big from up here!’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know. But –’

I couldn’t let myself cry. I was flying. I clenched my teeth and muttered in the back of my throat.

‘Are you doing the counting out rhyme?’

‘No.’

‘Is it you, or Millay?’

‘Millay.’

‘Say it so we can hear.’

I choked out the last lines of ‘Dirge without Music’.

‘Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.’





I turned. I didn’t want to fly into the searchlights. I told Irina the new heading.

It was a pilot’s pinpoint. That’s all.

I knew we didn’t have enough fuel to get to France, even with an extra tank. I knew this because of having to refuel last September, halfway to Neubrandenburg, when Womelsdorff brought me there. And when we were flying back, I didn’t have any accurate way of measuring time. Irina made Ró?a count, just to keep her occupied, but we were basically faking it. Ró?a fell asleep eventually anyway, which was a good thing because it meant Irina was able to do some of the flying. We took turns. It wasn’t hard work, once we were in the air, but I couldn’t have done it all myself. I really couldn’t.