Biggles (46 page)

‘What d'you think, Algy?' Biggles asked his friend.

‘Don't seem to have much choice, old scout, and that's a fact,' replied Algy realistically. ‘It's pretty sickening it has to end like this, but all the same...'

‘Good!' snapped the Russian. ‘Then we can prepare at once for take-off. If you are sensible, I'll do my best to see that your cooperation is mentioned at your trial in Moscow. We Russians are not as heartless as your Western statesmen paint us.'

‘I should save your breath, Leovitch, muttered Biggles.

The memory of that flight was one that haunted Biggles for the remainder of his life. It was bad enough to have to fly an aircraft with the cold muzzle of an automatic thrust against his neck, but worse was the sense of dreadful failure in his heart. Biggles was not a loser — and he was all too well aware of the dire consequences of his failure to bring back the Budnik to the West.

His course lay almost due north and he circled the take-off area to gain height before facing the first range of mountains. Heavily laden as she was, the Hercules climbed slowly in the thin mountain air, so that the highest peaks seemed perilously close as they thundered on above them.

Leovitch was sitting in the navigator's seat where he could check the course, and suddenly he gave a cry of horrified alarm.

‘Increase height,' he ordered. ‘We nearly hit that crag below us. Can't you see, you idiot?'

‘Did we?' said Biggles nonchalantly. ‘I didn't notice.'

Another peak loomed ahead.

‘Look out, for God's sake!' yelled the Russian.

Biggles screwed up his eyes, and pretended to peer around him in surprise. Only when it seemed as if the Hercules must surely crash head on against the granite face of rock, did he touch the throttle, flip the great aircraft's wings slightly to one side, and pass the mountain peak with feet to spare.

‘Maniac!' screamed the Russian. ‘Increase height, I order you!'

But Biggles shook his head and shrugged his shoulders sadly.

‘Impossible,' he said, and pointed through the cockpit window at one of the starboard engines. It had stopped. He held three fingers up towards the Russian to emphasise his point.

‘Only three engines left,' he whispered. ‘There's not much chance, but I'll do my best.'

Algy said later that the next half hour was the finest piece of virtuoso flying he had ever witnessed in his life. The Hercules was
crossing range upon range of mountains, but Biggles flew that underpowered transport plane like a stunt machine as he took it down the valleys and went zooming up between the mountain passes, dodging inevitable death by inches. Sometimes the aircraft seemed to stall and then recover in the nick of time. Once, its wing-tip brushed against a fir-tree on a jagged mountain-side. The horror seemed to mount and Biggles threw up his hands.

‘More height,' begged the Russian now ‘Can't you do anything? You'll kill us all.'

His voice was weak with fear, but once more Biggles shook his head.

‘I think we're getting trouble with another engine,' he said hopelessly. ‘We'll never make it to Batumi, will we Algy?'

‘Not a hope in hell,' his chum replied.

Another mountain range, higher than the last, was looming up ahead.

‘What can we do?' the Russian moaned. ‘Not much choice, old chap,' said Biggles sombrely. ‘Either we crash or we change course. From the map you'll see we're twenty miles or so from a place called Ezerum and there's an airport there. Which is it to be, Leovitch?'

There was a moment's pause in which the Russian's fear did battle with his sense of duty. It was his fear that won.

‘Change course,' he whispered finally and, just in time, Biggles pulled the huge machine round in a spectacular turn and headed west for Ezerum.

Even there it seemed that trouble wasn't over. It was a small airport, and as the Hercules came in to land, the out-of-action starboard engine suddenly revived.

‘Look out, old chap, we'll overshoot!' yelled Algy. ‘Take her up again.'

‘Too late, old boy,' Biggles shouted back, and there was a sickening thud as the undercarriage hit a drainage ditch on the perimeter of the field and shattered. A hideous racket followed as the aircraft slithered to a halt on its fuselage, and the wing-tip caught a marker beacon.

‘Well,' said Biggles with a look of quiet satisfaction on his face, ‘I certainly made a bish of that one. Sorry, Leovitch old chap, but at least we're all alive.'
It was several weeks before the diplomats and politicians sorted out the upset caused by the crash-landing of a British aircraft, with a British crew, a defecting Prussian and a dozen or so heavily armed Soviet troops aboard, at the Turkish town of Ezerum. Ambassadors were summoned, and protest notes exchanged before the affair blew over and the Turks released their unwelcome foreign visitors and sent them packing.

Not that any of this diplomatic shindig really mattered, and Biggles never did discover quite what bargaining went on behind the scenes to make sure that the Budnik found its way from Turkey back to London and then on to the United States — not to mention von Stalhein, who was safely returned to his new life in America.

All that he really knew for sure, was that when he and the chums returned to London several pounds lighter after their fortnight in a Turkish gaol, the Air Commodore insisted on dining them all in style at the Blazers' Club. Indeed, that cantankerous old gentleman had never seemed more grateful or more charming to them in his life.

‘When are you coming back to join us, Biggles?' he inquired as the evening ended.

‘Give me time to think, sir,' Biggles answered with a grin. ‘I've only just got out of prison.'

There is not a great deal to be added about the final years of Biggles' life. He never did rejoin the Special Air Police — despite Raymond's urgent invitations after the Budnik business — and never really made his peace with the old spy-master. Occasionally, they would dine together at the Blazers' Club and reminisce about the past, but Raymond no longer had much influence in the Secret Service world, and the sort of independent operations he and Biggles had delighted in were over. Besides, Raymond was a sick man by the late sixties, and no one was particularly surprised when he expired from a massive heart attack while playing golf at Hunterscombe.

‘Not a bad way to go,' said Biggles at the time, and he certainly didn't seem to be particularly upset at the departure of this key figure in his past. The break with Raymond and the Special Air Police also inevitably meant that Biggles saw less and less of his oldest friends. He continued working for Sir Robert Smyth until his retirement, when he came to live in Camberley — but Algy, Bertie and Ginger carried on in the Special Air Police until the whole outfit was disbanded shortly after Raymond's death. The chums still kept in touch, of course, and Biggles would often go to stay at Lewes, particularly after Algy succeeded to the Lacey title when his old father died in 1968. Like Biggles, Algy never married, and although he has determinedly kept up his interests in flying—he has spoken several times on air defence in the House
of Lords — he seems to have inherited his father's interest in botany, and, late in life, is now engaged in editing the old man's unpublished papers. The Lacey title will of course die with him. Since his retirement, Ginger Hebblethwaite has returned to Yorkshire — he has a little farm near Sheffield, and appears extraordinarily contented with his lot.

Lord Bertie Lissie was less fortunate. The disbanding of the Special Air Police seemed to deprive him of a purpose in life and aggravated the drink problem he had always suffered from. His death in a car crash on the Brighton Road a few months later was not completely unexpected by his friends, but it upset Biggles badly at the time.

One of the strangest friendships that developed during these final years of Biggles' life was with von Stalhein. Soon after the Budnik business, the Prussian was granted American citizenship and settled outside Washington, where he worked as an adviser to an international security firm. As such, he frequently came to London, and he and Biggles often met and corresponded.

There was an important bond between the two men now, in the person of von Stalhein's daughter, Irmgard. It was only after the Budnik business that Biggles learned of her existence. She was born out of wedlock in Berlin in 1940, with Marie Janis as her mother, and had been with von Stalhein's family near Lubeck when Marie was killed. She had remained with them after the German defeat and Russian occupation, and when von Stalhein finally defected to the West, she had been compelled to stay on in East Germany.

It was largely thanks to Biggles' efforts — and pressure from the British Foreign Office — that she was finally allowed to leave East Germany, and Biggles met her. He told me all about it later. She had flown into Heathrow and was due to go on that afternoon to Washington to be reunited with her father.

‘I thought I'd better see the girl, for old time's sake, and so I'd arranged to meet her at the airport and give her lunch. I'd no idea what she was like, or anything much about her. I was inquisitive as much as anything, but you know, I recognised her instantly. It was just as if her mother was walking through Immigration. And she knew me too. “Hullo,” she said, “you must be Biggles.” Just like that. Funny business, when you think who she was.'

Funny or not, this rediscovery of Marie Janis in her daughter became the most important fact in Biggles' life. From now on, his life possessed a real interest, for, as he admitted, he came to regard her almost as a daughter of his own. She was twenty-eight, recently divorced, and very pretty. She settled with her father for a while, then moved on to New York and worked in publishing, and all this time, she and Biggles corresponded. He saw her several times — in London and America — and the last journey that he made before he died was to Vermont to attend her wedding.

I remember his return quite vividly. He had been depressed, I thought, before he went. His back had been troubling him again, and he was probably worrying about the man Irmgard was marrying, (an older man in her publishing house with grown children. He was Jewish, and von Stalhein disapproved of him). But when he came back to Ferndene Cottage, Biggles was obviously delighted at how things had gone. He liked the bridgroom, and had managed to persuade von Stalhein to do the same. He and von Stalhein had spent several days together after the wedding, and Biggles had a lot of photographs — of von Stalhein's house, of Irmgard and her husband, and of von Stalhein too, looking like a well-fed, prosperous elderly American. Only a certain something about the mouth betrayed his origins.

But Biggles was clearly tired by the visit, and I was surprised to hear that he was going to the Battle of Britain anniversary celebrations, being held that year at Tangmere. He'd never gone before, but several of the former members of 666 were turning up, and he was invited as a guest of honour. As part of the celebrations, a rich American called Maberley had brought over a beautifully restored Mark VI Spitfire from Texas. It was a rarity, of course, a true collector's piece, and, judging from the photographs I saw, perfect in every detail.

Apparently, one of the young R.A.F. pilots had been scheduled to fly the Spitfire at the head of the fly-past of the latest British jets, and just before take-off, Biggles was standing next to Algy on the tarmac, examining the machines. No one will ever know what got into him — or how he managed it. Presumably the sheer temptation of that wonderful old aircraft standing there, ready for take-off, was too much for him. A
momentary old man's impulse, a brief resurgence of his youth — or had he somehow planned this all along? I wonder.

He took everybody by surprise, including Algy. The pilots were just about to board their planes, when he darted forward, shouting, ‘Scramble, chaps!' And before anyone could stop him, Biggles had swung himself with practised ease into the Spitfire's cockpit, slammed back the canopy, and started up the engine. It happened very quickly, and from that point there was nothing much anyone could do to stop him. The Controller did his best, of course (he was entirely exonerated at the subsequent inquiry), but Biggles totally ignored the poor man's frantic messages over the radio. All he replied was ‘O.K. 666. Prepare to intercept the enemy. Large formations of Heinkels and a pack of Messerschmitts coming in from northern France. Fourteen thousand feet. Do your best, chaps!'

Then the radio went dead, and the Spitfire slowly taxied past the crowds, none of whom realised what was going on. He made a perfect take-off, with the jets following him as planned. From the ground the fly-past seemed immaculate, with Biggles' solitary Spitfire in the lead. Then the crowd saw the Spitfire turn, sweep back across the airport, flipping its wings in a salute, then climb towards the sun, and the coast of France. And that was the last that anybody saw of Biggles.

It was a little hard on Mr. Maberley, of course, after coming all that way from Texas, though presumably his Spitfire was insured, and they gave him back the bits of wreckage which some fishermen at Dover brought ashore a few days later. Of Biggles there was mercifully no trace, and the verdict at his inquest was quite simple — accidental death. His will left everything to the daughter of his old love, Marie Janis.

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London
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Copyright © 1978 by John Pearson
First published by Sidgwick and Jackson Ltd
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ISBN: 9781448208005
eISBN: 9781448207763
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