Faked Passports (36 page)

At a muttered word from Gregory they made a slight detour in order to get round to the back of the hangars. He meant to approach them from the rear so that if there was a watchman about they could take him by surprise and overpower him before he had the chance to raise an alarm and bring the air-port police on the scene. Ten minutes later they had completed their slow, laborious trek and passing through a narrow corridor between two of the hangars came level with their fronts.

Gregory whispered to his companions to halt and peered out into the evil red twilight, first round one corner, then round the other. In normal times there would certainly have been a watchman on duty who would walk round the whole block of hangars at intervals, but they had seen nobody at the back of the row and there was nobody pacing up and down in front of it. There was quite enough light to see some way across the open, but the watchman might be crouching over some hidden brazier inside one of the hangars, and Gregory thought it best for them to wait where they were for a little, as if there was a watchman there he would almost certainly come out to have a look round from time to time.

It was very cold but with that crisp, dry cold which is exhilarating, and in their excitement at the prospect of getting safely away from Helsinki they did not particularly notice it; although they instinctively kept their faces buried deep in their big fur collars and stamped their feet every now and then.

After a quarter of an hour it seemed that they had been waiting there for an age and Gregory began to hope that, after all, there was no watchman on duty. The first day of war in Helsinki must have thrown all ordinary routine right out of gear. The watchman must have been wounded in an air-raid or called up for military service, and the people responsible for the safe-guarding of the hangars had quite possibly been so frantically busy on more urgent matters that they had had no time to replace him. At last Gregory decided to have a cautious look round and whispering to the others to remain where they were he slid out as noiselessly as a shadow along the front of the hangars.

Ten minutes later he returned to inform them cheerfully that he had examined every likely place and that quite definitely
there was no watchman on duty. They followed him out into the open and along to the third hangar from the left-hand end of the row. The doors were padlocked but Gregory produced the heavy spanner he had begged of Loumkoski and in two swift wrenches tore the padlock away from its hinge; after which the double-doors slid smoothly back upon their grooves.

While Gregory shone his shaded torch Freddie climbed into the cockpit of the plane and gave the instrument-board a quick look over. To his joy he found that his orders on landing two days before had been carried out. The plane had been refuelled to capacity, so there seemed nothing to prevent them from making a direct flight to Stockholm. Between them they pushed the plane out of the shed on to the hard, frozen snow and while the two girls and Gregory stood by, Freddie spent five minutes examining the controls to see that they were all in order; then they turned the plane so that it should face the wind.

They had only just finished when Erika gave a gasp of dismay and tugged at Gregory's shoulder. Swinging round he saw coming towards them, from the direction of the air-port buildings, a group of figures.

“Quick!” he shouted. “On board, all of you! Freddie, get her going!”

At the same instant one of the approaching group shouted something in Finnish and they all began to run.

Freddie was in the plane and Angela was scrambling up beside him but Erika and Gregory were still on the ground when the group of men came pounding up to them. One was in pilot's kit; there were five others, armed police and air-port officials. Gregory realised that there was nothing for it but to turn and face them.

“Hullo! What's the excitement?” he said in English.

“What do you do 'ere?” one of the air-port men replied in the same language.

“Getting out while the going's good,” replied Gregory calmly.

“But you 'ave not pass the controls and 'ave no permit.”

“I'm not going to allow a little thing like that to stand in my way in times like these,” said Gregory. “Our passports are all in order and we've come straight from the British Consulate.”

“Yes, yes; per'aps. But you cannot take this plane.”

“Why not? It's mine.”

The official shrugged. “All planes 'ave been commandeered under an emergency decree we make this morning.”

“You can't commandeer this one!” Gregory retorted swiftly. “This plane is the property of the British Government.”

“I can,” replied the official abruptly. “As I 'ave told you, we 'ave powers to commandeer all planes under an emergency decree.”

“But this is flagrant interference with the rights of neutrals.”

“That I cannot 'elp. Compensation will be pay to you for et but Finland makes war and every plane in Helsinki is needed.” The official glanced up at Freddie. “You, there—in the pilot's seat—please to come down!”

Gregory could hardly contain his cold, fierce wrath. In another five minutes they would have been on their way out of Finland to Stockholm and perhaps twenty-four hours later safely home in England. Now they were stuck again with no means of getting out of the country. Worse still, by now the names of Freddie and himself had probably been circulated as those of men wanted for murder and at any moment the airport police might demand to see their passports.

For a second he played with the idea of putting up a fight. Freddie was still in the plane and had only to press the self-starter. Gregory would have risked being shot by drawing his own gun and leaping up into the cockpit, but he had the two girls to consider. In a shooting affray they might easily be wounded or killed and Erika was still standing beside him. Before they could both get up into the plane they would be dragged back. There were six Finns against Freddie and himself so the odds were much too heavy and he dismissed the idea as soon as it came to him.

Grimly he nodded to Freddie, who had been waiting for some sign from him whether to obey the order to get out or not. The airman reluctantly climbed down and Angela jumped out after him.

“There's going to be trouble about this,” she announced sharply. “I'm Miss Fordyce, and my father is a special assistant to the British Consul here. He would have made other arrangements to get me to a place of safety if this gentleman had not offered to fly me home. If you detain me my father will make things jolly hot for you with your Government.”

The official bowed. “I am mos' sorry, Madame; but 'ow can we let private matters interfere with the necessities of our country?”

“But this isn't a private matter,” Freddie put in rashly. “I'm a Royal Air Force pilot and this is a British plane. If
you're not darned careful you'll have a diplomatic incident on your hands, and you'd be penny wise and pound foolish to start even a minor quarrel with the British Government at this juncture.”

The Finn who was dressed in pilot's kit spoke in halting English. “We should have great regret, sir, to offend your Government in any way but this is an urgency. Our so few military planes are all needed; our civil planes are took also for many purposes. I introduce myself. Staff-Captain Helijarvi. I have urgent orders that I must take with no delays to our forces at Petsamo. Please be reasonable. You see how great is our necessity.”

In the face of such an appeal they all felt how impossible it was to place what the Finns, not knowing that two of them were wanted for murder, could only regard as their temporary safety before such a vital matter as conveying Marshal Mannerheim's orders to his troops in the far north.

For a moment they all stood there in silence, then Gregory asked: “Do you intend to bring the plane back here and, if so, will it be free then, or will you require it for further service?”

“I shall make return in it,” replied Captain Helijarvi, “immediately I 'ave deliver my dispatches, but after—who can say? I fear that all aeroplane in Finland will be required for the duties until more aeroplane come to our 'elp from neutral countries.”

It had occurred to Gregory that if there was a chance of their regaining possession of the plane they might have found their way back to Loumkoski's and lain doggo there for twenty-four hours until the plane was back and they could get away in it; but evidently this was the most slender thread upon which to pin their hopes. Clearly, too, even if they could persuade the Staff-Captain to take them with him to Petsamo, as he meant to return at once he would not release the plane there so that they could fly on with it into neutral Norway. But another possibility suddenly occurred to Gregory, and he turned to Charlton.

“Look here, Freddie, Petsamo, as you probably know, is an ice-free port in the Arctic. If we could get there we might have to wait a week or so but we should almost certainly be able to secure a passage in a British or neutral ship and go home that way. How about it?”

“That would suit Angela and myself,” Freddie nodded; “but how about Erika?”

Erika shrugged. “Almost any ship sailing from Petsamo would call at one of the Norwegian ports before going on to England or America, so you could drop me off in Norway. The point is, though, would Captain Helijarvi be willing to take us?”

“Madame,” said the Finn at once. “I only regrets that I 'ave to take your plane at all. In any other way please make your command to me. If it is 'elpful to you that I fly you to Petsamo it will be big pleasure for me to take you.”

“This is mos' irregular,” cut in the air-port official. “These peoples have not pass the controls, Captain. They mus' 'ave known that we would not allow them to take their plane.”

For a second their fate seemed to hang again in the balance, then Helijarvi laughed—a rich, deep chuckle. “There is a war on, friend.' Ow can you blame two gentlemens for not observing regulation when they wish to get their ladies to safe places? Let us 'ave no more delays.”

Gregory felt that his star was once more in the ascendant as the thick-set Finnish Staff-Captain climbed into the plane and began to examine the controls. Freddie got in beside him and swiftly explained the more subtle idiosyncrasies of the plane which his own flight from Germany had shown him. It was a four-seater but none of them were heavy-weights; the two girls weighed only sixteen stone between them and their two dressing-cases were the only luggage; so Helijarvi and Freddie agreed that the plane would not be overloaded. Gregory and the girls wedged themselves into the back while the two pilots sat in front. One of the air-port men blew a whistle; a light flickered for a moment in the distance to give Helijarvi his direction; the engine roared and they were off.

Freddie had offered to fly the plane if Helijarvi would act as his navigator but the Finn had replied that he preferred to fly it himself and knew the route to Petsamo so well that he could manage without assistance; so for once the ace British pilot experienced the, to him, rather dubious joy of being a passenger. Apart from Angela none of the fugitives had had their full ration of sleep for the past two nights and, from nodding drowsily to the engine's monotonous hum, after about twenty minutes they all dropped off to sleep.

The first part of the journey lay over Central Finland, so there was little danger of encountering the Soviet war-planes; which, if their pilots were not tired out after their long day of murder, would be operating against either the towns of the
South or the fortifications on the frontier. Helijarvi's only anxiety was that they might run into a blizzard; but the weather had been good all day and the calm of the early night suggested a peace which no longer existed in the stricken land. The Soviet bombers had not confined their attention to Helsinki but had raided many towns and villages that day, so as the plane flew on its pilot picked up the glare of still burning homesteads from time to time and knew that in the dark forests below him a million homeless people were striving to keep the warmth of life in their shivering bodies.

At seven o'clock Freddie roused up, upon which Helijarvi told him that they had accomplished about two-thirds of their journey and were now approaching a part of the country where the Russian frontier juts out like a big cape into Northern Finland. To remain on the direct route to Petsamo he would have had to fly over Soviet territory for about a hundred miles; so he altered course slightly to keep inside the Finnish border, but they were near enough to the frontier to see here and there far below them some evidence of the fighting that was still in progress.

The main battle-fronts were hundreds of miles away to the South, on the Karelian Isthmus and north of Lake Ladoga. Up here the fighting consisted only of encounters between small detached units who occasionally came up against one another in their endeavours either to penetrate or to defend the frontier. At one point a battery was shelling some unseen target but in all the hundred and fifty miles of their detour they saw only three other local engagements and in these the sporadic spurts of fire and individual flashes showed that nothing heavier than machine-guns and rifles were in action.

Soon after they passed away from the frontier they ran into cloud and, coming down to a thousand feet, encountered snow. It was not a blizzard but the gentle, drifting snow that falls so frequently in the Arctic and which pilots must always anticipate there when flying below the lower cloud-levels. Helijarvi said that Petsamo must now lie somewhere beneath them and switching on his navigation lights he began to send out radio signals in anticipation that the air-port would give him a beam to guide him in. After several minutes' tapping they received no response; which looked as though the air-port people were not operating their wireless, for fear of giving guidance to Soviet bombing-planes which might quite possibly be in the area.
Without radio assistance it would prove difficult to find the landing-ground but Helijarvi felt confident he could do so.