Permissible Limits (69 page)

‘
You got it.’

I looked away from the mirror, sickened. This man was psychopathic. He’d turned killing into an art form, an elegant mix of surprise, technology and God knows how much experience. I thought of those poor bloody rabbits in Monica’s cage, of the waiting alligator in the hot darkness, and then of Adam, droning along in his borrowed Cessna, reaching out for the radio to change frequencies. All it would have taken was that split-second contact, his thumb on the transmit button, before the bomb triggered and the Cessna blew apart.
When I’m ready and you’re about to die.

I shuddered. Below me, our shadows raced across the top of St Boniface Down. I’d had enough. If Harald wanted to kill me, needed to kill me, so be it. But if I was going to be the rabbit, it was time to run again.

I smacked the stick forward and hard to port. The diving turn was so sudden and so vicious that I thought for a moment my head would explode with the pressure. My left hand, pure reflex, was pushing hard on the throttle. On maximum boost I wound the turn tighter and tighter, aware of houses revolving dizzily beneath me. I had the advantage of surprise. I’d never pulled g like this in my life. I must have lost him, must have. Not even Harald had reactions that fast.

‘
Unload, Ellie. Unload the stick.’

I was fighting the controls now. The Mustang was shuddering and bucking on the edge of the stall. Unless I eased the pressure, she’d flip over. Close to despair, I did what Harald had demanded, centring the control stick and feeding in a lot of opposite rudder. The Mustang came out of the turn, still nose down, but the crisis had passed. By 400 feet, I’d regained control. Harald was somewhere back there, waiting, watching. I didn’t dare check. His voice in my earphones was evidence enough.

‘
Nice, Ellie. Very nice.’

The Mustang was flat out again, low, racing back across the southeast corner of the island towards the teeming beaches of Sandown Bay. There were people down there, holidaymakers, mums, dads, kids, hundreds of upturned faces as I flashed past. Ahead, I could see the looming white wall of Culver Cliff. I banked hard to the left and for a moment I thought I’d left the turn too late. We were way below the top of the cliff and I had the briefest impression of the shadow of the Mustang, black against the chalk, before the windshield filled with the soft greens of Bembridge Down.

The land fell away again and for a split second I toyed with trying for landing at
Ellie B’s
home strip. I could see the tower and a row of parked aircraft directly ahead of me, but the moment I checked my airspeed I knew it was hopeless. Putting the flaps and gear down at 320 m.p.h. would tear the aircraft apart.

I thundered over the airstrip at 250 feet, still trailing coolant, hunting desperately for Harald. My mirror appeared to be empty. I looked over my right shoulder. Nothing. About to check my port quarter, I heard his voice again.

‘
Above you, Ellie. In your six o’clock.’

Above
me? I tried to twist round but the harness wouldn’t let me. I tried pushing my head back until I was looking almost directly up through the canopy but all I could see was sky. Harald probably knew more about the Mustang than any man alive. Inch-perfect, he was now riding in one of its few blind spots. It was like fighting God or gravity. I’d never win.

‘
Go right and pull up.’

Instinctively, I hauled back on the stick. The top of St Boniface Down flashed past below me. I had a glimpse of houses, roads and then a stubby little pier before we were over the sea again, racing due south. Ventnor, I thought. And now the Channel.

How far would we go? How long a rope was Harald prepared to let me have? I stole a glance at the fuel gauge. If the coolant held out, fifty gallons would take me to France. Did I want to be buried there? Or would it be more appropriate to end it all in mid-Channel? To call it quits and join my lovely husband?

I shook my head. I’d lost the plot. I simply didn’t know. All that mattered was urging the Mustang onwards, faster and faster, trying somehow to outrun the terrifying shadow above me. I began to climb, saying a prayer for this sturdy old engine, wondering whether I might bale out. There’s a quaint little tradition amongst fighter pilots that forbids shooting at parachutes but I wasn’t at all sure that Harald had much time for that kind of sentimentality. If he wanted to kill me, he would. The only puzzle was why he was taking so long to do it.

I checked the mirror again. To my surprise, Harald had reappeared, abandoning my blind spot. He was now some 600 metres behind me and for a moment I wondered whether he couldn’t keep up. It was a thought I clung to, my only hope. I glanced at the altimeter and as I did so I became aware of the first signs of a lumpiness in the engine. Instinctively, I throttled back and levelled out. To punish the engine now would be madness.

I risked another glance in the mirror. Harald was catching up fast. The 109 looked bigger, squatter, more menacing. I tensed, transfixed by the shape in the mirror. Any moment now, I’d see the cannons winking on the wings, see the tracers reaching out for me, feel those sleek, glossy shells thumping into my poor sweating horse. I steeled myself, knowing I couldn’t carry on like this, trapped dead-centre in Harald’s gunsight. I owed him, at the very least, a difficult kill.

I winged the Mustang over again, plunging down. From
5
,000 feet, the sea was a huge bowl of blue, splintered with sunshine. The airspeed was passing 400 m.p.h. The control stick was light beneath my fingertips and another glance in the mirror told me that I hadn’t lost Harald. He was still there, closer than ever, arrowing down through 4,000 feet,
3
,000 feet, 2,000 feet.

I tried hard to swallow to ease the pain in my ears. Was this the way it had been for Harald’s father? For Karel Brokenka? Locked together in a near-vertical dive? I couldn’t believe the needle on the airspeed indicator. I’d never been so fast in my life. The whole aircraft was shaking now and I fought to read the numbers dancing in front of me: 440 m.p.h.? 460? I didn’t know. All that mattered was the throb of the engine, and the pale disc of the propeller, and the onrushing blue of the sea.

Instinctively, I hauled back on the stick, bracing myself for the pressure, the iron hand that would push me down into the seat and squeeze the air from my lungs. My eyes dimmed and the sunshine faded to black and white and then a strange chill mistiness. I tried to breathe but couldn’t. Very slowly, I became aware of a horizon, a thin grey line out there beyond the windshield. We were climbing. I could almost breathe again. Colour flooded back into the cockpit. The sky was blue, faint at first then richer and richer as I sucked the air into
my
lungs. It tasted slightly aromatic, the taste of high-octane fuel, the sweetest taste in the world. Then, far away, I heard a cry, or perhaps a gasp, barely human. It seemed to register surprise. It came from the radio. It was Harald.

Very carefully, the way you nurse an invalid, I levelled out at
3
,000 feet, desperate to spare the engine further punishment. The mirror above the windshield was empty, and below me, when I looked down, I could see the ripples still spreading outwards, a perfect circle, the ocean gashed white where Harald had speared in.

I circled as long as I dared, looking for wreckage. Away to the west I could see a long feather of wake from an outbound tanker. At length, still dazed, it occurred to me to radio back. The VHR emergency frequency is
121
.
5
.
For a second or two my finger hovered over the transmit button. Then I shook my head. Harald wasn’t going to haunt me. I wouldn’t let him. Not now. Not ever.

I gave my call sign and reported what had happened. The rescue people have an amazing radar set-up. They can pinpoint your position within seconds.

‘
I need a heading for Sandown.’ My eyes were glued to the engine temperature. I need to get home.’

There was a brief silence. Then the voice returned.

‘
You’re plumb on the fifty-degree north line. Squawk 7700 and steer zero three zero. Forty-four miles to run.’

I made it back in one piece. Later, when Dave Jeffries took the engine apart, he reckoned I got the
Mustang
down with five minutes to spare. By then, it was academic. Harald, very definitely, was dead. While
Ellie
B,
with her rebuilt Merlin, would be airborne again within months.

Christmas at Mapledurcombe that year was magical. Andrea had made very big friends indeed with the young director who produced the documentary about Adam and Harald, and he stayed with us until the New Year. I’d done a lot of the flying for the aerial sequences, which in some respects was more terrifying than the real thing, but by Christmas we’d had a chance to see what the director called the rough cut, and we were relieved, as well as pleased. Andrea’s new beau had done a very fine job indeed.

The film was transmitted in February, on the anniversary of Adam’s death, and the first phone call after the closing sequence came from Jamie. He and Gitta were living up near Oxford and he told me how moving the closing sequence had been. I’d only agreed to let the film go ahead on the condition that it ended with some kind of montage of my favourite photos of Adam. The way the director handled it was incredibly sensitive, the slowly dissolving images scored to a piece of Ravel, and Jamie told me that he’d cried, too. I could tell from his voice that all was far from well between him and Gitta but I resisted the temptation to enquire further. When I asked about the baby, he said they’d finally decided to name it after his grandfather. Poor Ralph hadn’t survived the year. We buried him in October. I can’t believe how much I miss him.

Six months after the film was transmitted, a package arrived for me from Florida. Inside was a videotape and a letter from Monica. She’d seen the film on cable TV and hadn’t regretted her refusal to take part. It hadn’t done justice to either her husband or her son, and if I was really interested in the truth then perhaps I should take a look at the video. I did so. It contained eighteen seconds of black-and-white combat footage. The Messerschmitt 109 gets bigger and bigger. Bits of the tail and part of the wing fall off and a small black package, barely human, tumbles out of the cockpit. Then the plane disintegrates. We’d spent months trying to trace the footage for use in the film but an exhaustive search of the USAF archive failed to turn it up. Harald’s reach, it seemed, was infinite.

The day after I watched Monica’s video, I drove back to St Lawrence and walked up the narrow path to the old church where we’d said goodbye to Adam. It had been raining all morning and there was a blustery wind up the Channel stirring the stands of iris that lined the path from the churchyard gate.

I sat on a bench for a long time, thinking. Adam would have loved it here. He’d have loved the sigh of the wind in the big old trees, and the way that the church nestled so comfortably amongst the shadowed gravestones. He’d have loved the silence and the feeling of peace. Most of all, I like to think, he’d have loved being with me.

I got up from the bench and walked down to the corner of the graveyard, remembering his touch and the way that he grinned when he was really happy. Harald had been right about the Mustang. He’d never have sold it. Not for all the money in the world. I smiled to myself, thinking for a moment that I could hear him laughing, then I looked up, half-expecting the swans to reappear, but I all could see were the tumbling clouds and a single shaft of watery sunshine, far out to sea.

GRAHAM
HURLEY is
an
award-winning documentary
producer who
now
writes
full time.
Away
from
the typewriter,
he
pursues a
lifetime’s
ambition
to master
windsurfing, colloquial
Spanish
and
the
perfect
chicken
bhuna. He
lives,
blissfully,
with
his
wife,Lin,
in Portsmouth.