Mandrake's Mission

By Bernard G. Lord

In 1944, an American bomber, carrying dead navigator Paul Mandrake, crashes in the Swiss Alps. Twenty-one years later, his son, Peter, learns that Stephen Craddock, the family lawyer, should be guardian of his fathers diamond university graduation ring, worth half a million dollars. Craddock, a sinister character, denies this. Is the ring still with Paul in the lost bomber? Peter is determined to find out, aided by his girlfriend, her geology professor and an old member of his fathers Flying Fortress squadron. The search entails exciting climbing sequences and dangerous encounters with ruthless competitors for possession of the diamond ring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 8, 2002
• ISBN: 9781465316646

Bernard G. Lord

Bernard Lord was born and raised in England but for the last thirty-five years has resided in the USA. Although engineering has been his primary occupation, this is the second novel that he has written and he is presently busy with a third. He is married and lives with his wife in California. They have three children who are long grown and flown.

Book preview

MANDRAKE’S

MISSION

Bernard G. Lord

Copyright © 2001 by Bernard G. Lord.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-7-XLIBRIS

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

For Mark, Matthew, Kirstan, and Donna who climb their own

mountains with honesty, humility and humor.

CHAPTER ONE

The large, black crow climbed silently and lazily in the gentle thermal airstreams that rose up, unseen, from the English countryside in the county of Suffolk. It slowly circled in the warm updraft, rocking its wingspan occasionally to maintain stability as its head flicked, instinctively, to snap at insects that came within its range. Even the insects were lazy on this September afternoon, making no effort to avoid their enemy. Perhaps they knew their life was almost spent, as their first and only summer drifted towards sleep. The balminess of the English air soothed the earth, soothed the woods, soothed all living things. It infused a contented serenity into the bucolic landscape, while an expansive sky reflected an undemanding pale blue whose juncture with the horizon was a melding of soft, brown haze.

The crow looked down from its high kingdom towards the village of Coney Hinton which lay amidst the flat, well-wooded farmlands of the area known as Brecklands. It seemed to be assured that all was well below, intact and patterned as it had been for the last two hundred years.

A cricket match was in progress near the village school, conducted at a leisurely pace, for how else can cricket be conducted. A scattered group of spectators made use of shading elm trees, and made no pretense at animation, save that of a gentle heaving of chests as a minimum exertion necessary to maintain life. The players were very young, the non-players were very old.

The rest of the village, like the cricket spectators, appeared to be asleep except for a freckle-faced, ginger-haired boy skipping flat pebbles across a stagnant, green pond. He was intent on making the pebble bounce four times before it hit the far bank but at the same time avoiding a confused and ancient duck. As his arm swung back for the hundredth time, the boy’s concentration broke away from viewing the pond’s surface. Instead, his face turned slowly upwards to the sky and canted to one side, as though he wanted to strain an ear to hear a distant sound. So he stood, frozen, frowning. Suddenly puzzlement ceased and determination commenced. The youth ran like a hare over to a bright-red mailbox against which his bicycle lay. He mounted it on the run, and frantically pushed the pedals while jerking the handlebars from side to side to coax the utmost speed from his steel steed. He was very soon passed the village pond, passed the village pub, and on the road to Nettledown.

The crow stopped circling and headed east, issuing raucous, cawing tones and beating its wings to gain altitude. It was either being threatened or was, itself, about to threaten. The crow and the boy had suddenly disturbed the languid afternoon. Their flight and their anxiety were somehow connected.

The crow saw it first, about three miles away at 1000 feet; another bird with stiff wings, big stiff wings that seemed to have five heads, one of which was glowing yellow and orange and disgorging a trailing plume of black, oily smoke. The big bird must be sick, and yet it raised no compassion in the crow, only indifference, for the crow wheeled away from its frontal appraisal and gracefully side-slipped down to the safety of a small copse.

The big bird continued to penetrate the tranquil English summer afternoon, bringing its writhing, battered shape ever closer; a harbinger of a foul evil being played out on a foreign shore. This bird with the stiff wings was a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress. Her name was Seattle Susie. It was September 6, 1944, and Seattle Susie was returning from a bombing raid on Berlin. She had been aloft for seven hours; she was tired; she was hurt. That Seattle Susie continued to fly was a miracle.

A 210-millimetre German rocket fired by a Messerschmidt-109G fighter had blasted a hole four feet high and three feet wide in the fuselage section of the radio operator’s compartment just aft of the bomb bay. The radio operator’s body had been literally torn apart, and lay fragmented and twisted in with the aluminum and steel debris of the shattered fuselage and radio equipment. Dark, congealed blood and viscera coated the jumbled mass; a disgusting union of man and metal.

The tail section had been hit by flak, as evidenced by half the rudder being missing, and the tail gunner’s aft-most compartment being cleanly shorn off. The port and starboard outer engines, engines 1 and 4 respectively, were both stopped and propellers feathered. The starboard inner periodically belched smoke and flame. One engine kept the plane in flight. One 1200 horsepower, 9-cylinder, radial, air-cooled, Wright cyclone engine, model number R-1820-97.

Inside the cockpit the activity bordered on panic as the pilot worked feverishly to maintain control. It seemed that he had a thousand things to do at once. He had hoped that the fire in number 3 engine would quench itself, but now it had a determined hold. He would have to shut it down completely and do without the small but useful power it was providing. At the same time, he had to concentrate hard on his approach to Nettledown airfield, just three miles away. He was not going to enter the traffic pattern but come in for a power-off landing. He dared not execute any turns for fear of stressing the damaged tail section. If that fell off or the elevator controls jammed, it would mean certain death.

The pilot closed the fuel shut-off valve to number 3 engine and commenced the feathering procedure. Close throttle, press feathering button, mixture control in idle cut-off, turn ignition off, pray like hell. Set fire extinguisher selector and release CO2, pray again. But nothing worked. No CO2 release. No engine shutdown. No propeller feathering. The electrical system had partially failed, and the fuel shut-off valves were spring-loaded to stay open without solenoid activation, even though the toggle switch on the cockpit control pedestal was switched to closed.

The pilot cursed and frantically flicked or pushed the various activating switches and buttons time and time again. He averted his eyes momentarily from the starboard inner engine to look at his navigator who was occupying the copilot’s seat. The copilot had been dead for four hours; a clean kill over Berlin by a shell fragment entering the cockpit side and then the copilot’s brain. The dead airman had been put down in the bombardier’s compartment forward. Curled up in the fetal position, he no longer feared death; he was present but absent. The navigator’s eyes met the pilot’s. They were steady but cold eyes, eyes that had been disciplined by thirty-five missions, eyes that were almost expressionless. There was no need for conversation, no time for conversation. The series of orders and acknowledgments between them was directed solely towards keeping themselves and the rest of the crew alive. The pilot had broken communication with the remainder of the crew but they knew he would do his best in the last few minutes. If his best were not good enough, then death be quick. They were all veterans. They had been at war a long time and knew the odds on survival.

The pilot abandoned his attempt to shutdown number 3 engine and concentrated on his approach. He was two miles out at 800 feet, and knew that he should prepare to fire off a couple of red flares to alert the flight controller and Emergency Services that he had dead and wounded on board. But the pilot did not have time for that, and, anyway, if the flight controller could not see with his bare eyes the immense damage to Seattle Susie, then he should be shot for treason. The landing gear had already been lowered to avert damage to the right wheel and hydraulic lines by the fire in number 3 engine. Indicated airspeed 140 miles per hour. Lower the flaps one third, ordered the pilot, then he waited for the additional lift and applied a correction on the control column. He raised the nose a bit more to reduce speed further, and gingerly moved the rudder pedals to stay on course.

The pilot’s thoughts reached a frenzy. Will the rudder hold? Will it jam? Will the whole goddamn tail come off? Will I ground loop it? Is the starboard wing going to burst into flames? Shit!

The navigator read off the airspeed, 135, 130, 128, 125, 120.

Full flaps, said the pilot.

Hydraulic pressure only 200 p.s.i. now. Bye, bye brakes. 450 feet. Too high. Break the glide at 150 feet. Power off on the good number 2 engine and settle in. Keep her straight. Hold rudder. Hold rudder, goddamn it! Over the fence at 50 feet. Don’t stall her. Slipping a bit right. Christ, that fire! Where’s my wing going? Where’s my wing?

Oh, hell! yelled the pilot. Shit! Shit! And more shit!

Seattle Susie came over the runway, trying her best to float gracefully in, but then in the last five seconds she lost it. Her internal agonies broke loose. The starboard wing tip hit the ground at the same time as the whole tail section fell backwards. The wing crumpled, and, acting as a fulcrum, heaved the fuselage and port wing almost into the vertical plane in a slow, rolling motion. The starboard wing burst into flames, then the fuselage, then the port wing. The blazing plane continued crashing and grinding its way down the airfield and off the main runway; its port wing eventually settling down horizontally. With its momentum spent, the plane stopped and gave one more final eruption of flame and black, billowing smoke into the pale blue sky.

Three crows appeared and circled in the man-made thermal rising above the dying big bird with the broken stiff wings. The peace of the September afternoon had been shattered, had been, perhaps, merely a soporific illusion organized by the gods of war to make their entry more dramatic, more explosive.

The United States Army Air Force, USAAF, had built the Nettledown base in the spring and summer of 1943, bringing with them forty-one Boeing B-17Fs, proud and sturdy planes dressed in olive and blotched with green. Just over a year later only two of the originals were left, and of their young warrior crews, a mere hundred men could be classed as walking fit. Three hundred were either dead, wounded, or captured by the enemy. But the factories of the United States fashioned metal for replacement planes while American mothers offered sons to keep the cauldron of Europe full, bubbling and belching.

Lieutenant Paul Mandrake, navigator, aged twenty-four, was in one of the original crews. He should have been dead by now, for he had completed thirty-eight missions, and was well into his second tour. The chances of completing a tour of twenty-five missions was supposed to be almost nil. He was living on borrowed time, borrowed from the young men who died on their first raid into enemy territory. At least, that was the thesis. Mandrake explained his longevity by another reason. Thirty percent luck and seventy percent skill. Skill, accuracy, meticulous attention to detail and picking the right crew to fly with. The latter was very important. Mandrake was a good navigator, and he expected the pilot who flew him to be as good at flying as he was at navigating. His expectations of the copilot, the flight engineer, the bombardier, the radio operator and the gunners were equally as high. Perform and live or fail and die. His ground rules had paid off. He was with a good crew, a damn good crew, and he wanted to see that they all stayed together as they had done for the last twenty missions. Unfortunately, this was not quite possible for they had lost Charlie Smith, a waist gunner, two days ago over Regensburg. Mandrake had been particularly upset by Charlie’s death; in fact, it had made him morose and irritable.

Such was still his mood as he lay on his bed in room 14 of the only customized, wooden hut of the Officers’ Quarters. All other huts were of the Nissen type, a semi-circular, corrugated metal tube with a cement floor which was a dormitory-style home to sixteen officers. In his privileged accommodation, Mandrake gazed vacantly up at his raftered ceiling, and, unknowingly, allowed his eyes to track the staccato movements of two large, blue-green flies as they buzzed one another yet never collided. He lay jacketless and shoeless, one arm thrown sideways over the edge of the bed. His hand clutched the pages of the last letter received from his wife, Pamela.

Pamela was pregnant, the result of an over-amorous and under-protected week spent in a cottage on Orcas Island, Washington State, during Paul’s States-side furlough subsequent to completing his first tour of duty. This would be their second child, a brother or sister for Peter Mandrake, aged four.

Paul had married young, barely out of his teens, but he had not married recklessly. He had met Pamela at the University of Washington while he was studying business administration and she was studying chemistry. She was bright and attractive. Her father owned a prosperous lumberyard in Everett, some forty miles north of Seattle. Paul’s father also owned a timber business which was located in Issaquah, east of Seattle towards the Cascade Mountains. It was an old established business started by Paul’s grandfather, who, indeed, had seemed to start just about everything in Seattle except the Boeing Airplane Company. Grandfather’s businesses ranged from hotels to insurance agencies, from a fishmarket to a brothel, from a clothing store to a shipyard. Grandfather was rich; he was rich amongst the rich.

Paul and Pamela had very similar roots, first class educational backgrounds and a seemingly guaranteed prosperous future. They married early in 1940, in expectation of a long and happy life together, oblivious to the war tentacles likely to spread from Europe. But now, just four years later, Paul’s expectations had changed radically. As he lay on his simple Army Air Force bed, his mind contained the kinetic barbs of confusion, randomly attacking and puncturing his thoughts, his ideas, his plans for the future. He worried over Pamela’s unborn baby and its life to come. Would he ever see the child?

He shut his eyes to picture their first meeting but saw, instead, the crumpled body of waist gunner Charlie Smith, slouched over his 0.50 caliber machine gun, bleeding from a trail of bullet holes across his chest.

Poor Charlie! So if he died, I could die tomorrow. Don’t fool yourself, Paul Mandrake, you’re nothing special. If death wants you, he’ll come and get you. But if I should die, who would look after Pamela, after Peter, after the new one? Who would pay? Money, where would the money come from? Hold steady, Mandrake; we’re rich enough, aren’t we? Well, we will be when we inherit the timber businesses. We don’t have it now, but we will have it. What if the businesses go broke, though? Can happen, can happen easily. Not much ready cash available.

Mandrake swung his right arm back across his chest as the nerves in it were beginning to go numb. He brought his left hand over on top of his right which still clutched the letter from home. He lay motionless, white-faced, tension in the corners of his mouth, his hands heavy in a religious gesture. His left fingers sensed the large ring on the fourth finger of his right hand, and started to caress the centerpiece of the ring, a large stone, a very large, cool stone.

Suddenly Mandrake became aware of what he was doing. He pulled in his chin and looked down at the ring. He rotated the ringed finger backwards and forwards to see if he could catch any of the beams of the afternoon sunlight that shafted through the small holes in the thin drapes drawn across the room’s solitary window. He succeeded, for suddenly an incandescent sphere flashed into life on his finger, pulsing out showers of blue, gold and red streamers. For a while he played reflections, turning them off and on by a minuscule movement of his hand. This game relaxed him a little. He even allowed a small smile to break from the corners of his mouth. He could, indeed, afford to smile for the centerpiece in the ring was a top class diamond, what is known as a brilliant, tinged with a rare, rose-pink color.

He had owned the ring only since his last leave, when, surreptitiously, his grandfather had slipped it to him in a plain white envelope on the day he had returned to England. The ring had been fashioned as a University of Washington graduation ring. Rich grandfather had requested Paul to exchange it for the one he already wore, the one his wife had bought him for his actual graduation, some three years previously.

Grandfather’s intent was to keep the gift a secret, or else every other offspring would want one of equal brilliance and pedigree.

Paul was his favorite grandson, there was no doubt about that. But he insisted that the gift was not for adornment, not for the sparking of jealousy and envy in its admirers. It was not even given for its natural beauty and the superb craftsmanship that had gone into its cutting. Instead, grandfather saw the gift as a very handsome insurance policy. It insured Paul’s economic well-being if the years ahead became hard and luckless. The ring, after all, had been appraised at half a million dollars, a cozy amount by anyone’s reckoning.

Paul stared at the ring and remembered his grandfather’s words, Given for insurance, my boy, and you take damn good care of it, you hear me! Well, perhaps he was not taking care of it, living with it in an allied country, and flying with it over enemy territory. He must be stupid to do that. Yet, perhaps, somewhere in the back of his mind he thought that that act of defiance against fate would make him invincible, would pull him through the war unscathed. But now he was being more rational; he was thinking of his growing family responsibilities. He had made up his mind to send the ring for safe keeping back to the family lawyer, a man who could be trusted. In fact, he had already written to Mr Craddock informing him of the pending arrival of a certain package, and of his unequivocal instructions for the disposition of that package. The letter, written and mailed that very morning, was as follows:

Dear Mr Craddock,

Salutations from somewhere in England. Forgive the secrecy about my address but the enemy has big eyes and big ears, and we are asked to divulge as little as possible about our whereabouts and movements.

Sometime early in September, you will be visited by a Lieutenant McCann. He is a trusted friend of mine who flies with our squadron. He will be on leave in the Seattle area, and will be delivering to you a very valuable possession of mine. It will be inside a miniature jewel chest, securely closed by a small but strong padlock. I shall retain the padlock key. I would like you to safeguard the chest for me in case I do not return from flying operations. If I am killed, please follow these instructions.

My wife, Pamela, would be left to raise two children in an uncertain world, and, although both of us come from families that are by no means poor, Pamela is fiercely independent and hates family charity. She could fall on hard economic times. I mean really hard. Not just a condition whereby she has to take a full-time job to support herself and the children. I mean a condition where she cannot make ends meet, where she is suffering physically and mentally, and yet refuses to ask for help from the rest of our family. If this should happen, you are hereby instructed to give Pamela the jewel chest and the sealed envelope that I enclose with this letter. Alternatively, if she lives well enough or, heaven forbid, meets an untimely death herself, the jewel chest shall be given to my son, Peter Mandrake, on his twenty-fifth birthday. At that time, he shall also be given the second sealed envelope that I enclose. On no account should Pamela or Peter be told of these arrangements. Pamela would become very upset because she would construe my intentions as being morbid, that my mind had already accepted my death as inevitable, that I must really be depressed.

Lieutenant McCann does not know what is inside the chest, and I prefer not to tell you the precise nature of its contents in this particular letter. However, for your own insurance purposes during the safe keeping period, I shall be writing to you shortly giving exact details of the item in the chest, a copy of the appraisal and the amount of insurance to be taken out. Perhaps you can hide the insurance premium cost in the various legal fees you charge Top Timber, Inc. on a regular basis. I don’t want Pamela to know about this insurance policy for if she did she’d pester you to divulge what was going on; and she can be very tenacious as you know.

As you know already, there is no mention in my will of this asset or its bequeathment, and neither shall there be. I have, however, related to a third party who knows my family well, the exact details of my arrangements with you. Do not misunderstand this action. In no way am I casting doubt on your professional integrity or, indeed, your trustworthiness as a family friend. My sole reason is to ensure traceability of intention and ownership in case you, yourself, should suffer demise, either naturally or accidentally.

I have every confidence that you will not mind adding this task to the many that you already perform, most capably, for the Mandrake family.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to send them by letter via Lieutenant McCann who will return here early in October.

I hope that your own family is enduring these troubled times with courage and hope, and I thank you for your help and ever watchful legal services.

Yours sincerely, Paul S. Mandrake

Mandrake felt pleased with himself for being such a thoughtful provider. Pamela and the children were now assured of a lifeline. A lifeline? Half a million dollars? That was a fortune, a fabulous fortune, thought Mandrake. The letter to Craddock is on its way, and all I have to do now is write the other two notes, one about the ring insurance and the other to a third party detailing the arrangements. Who should be the third party? Who can I trust completely? I’ll write the notes tomorrow, or the day after; there’s no rush.

McCann was scheduled to leave for the States the following day, and he was to find the jewel chest in Mandrake’s footlocker in the event that Mandrake, himself, was off on a mission. All McCann had to do was to guard the valuable item with his life as he flew the Atlantic, as a passenger, in a B-17G that was being ferried to the Pacific war theatre.

Mandrake swung his legs off the bed, stood up and walked over to the corner where his footlocker lay. He opened it and reassured himself that the little jewel chest was inside, over on the right in a prominent position where McCann could easily see it. The padlock was on it and closed, and apart from his own key, he had slipped a duplicate into each of the sealed letters for Pamela and Peter, although Mr Craddock did not know this.

He held his diamond ring of many facets up to the light once more. He was sorry to be parting with it, but it was for the best. He intended placing the ring in the jewel chest later in the evening, if he heard that he was to fly tomorrow. If there were no mission, he would keep the ring on his person until he carefully locked it away in the chest just prior to seeing McCann tomorrow.

As he closed the footlocker, Mandrake heard the distinctive sound of a bomber, or perhaps several, over the airbase. He walked over to the drapes and hurriedly drew them back. He gazed out of the window but could see no sign of any aircraft. He lifted the window latch and opened the window to get a better view. He leaned out and craned his neck skywards. He immediately saw two Fortresses at about 2000 feet, idling on an upwind leg parallel to the runway. He glanced at his wristwatch. If that’s the 564th squadron back from Berlin, they’re a bit late, he thought. And where are the other eleven bombers and the other two squadrons? Diverted? Or just screwing around? Weather’s perfect.

He looked hard and low at the north eastern end of the runway and saw the head-on image of gently rocking silver wings and engines, silhouetted against a black, whirling trail of smoke. He knew someone was in trouble and that the other two planes had probably nursed their wounded comrade back home. He had seen this scene played out many times before but still the pit of his stomach churned with anxiety and his heartbeat quickened.

Come on, baby, come on! Don’t lose it now. You’ve struggled for so long. Over the hedgerow. Steady, keep her steady. Beautiful. Just beautiful. Oh no! Oh my God, she’s going in! The wing’s in! The goddamn wing’s in!

Mandrake witnessed the agonizing spectacle of Seattle Susie’s destructive and very final landing, the impact of her starboard wing with the ground, the rotation of her 48,000 pounds of structure and equipment as her wingspan of 104 feet went almost vertical. Then the fall back, and the slithering, grinding, exploding, fiery progression to a final resting place that quickly became a funeral pyre.

The anxiety was over. Now came the feeling of emptiness and cold, sardonic acceptance. There goes another bunch of bombing bastards. Next crew up! All the fun of the fair!

A year ago Mandrake would have rushed out of his room and joined the group of jeeps that headed to the burning wreckage, somehow hoping to save a crew member by performing an heroic deed. But that was a year ago. Now he was wiser, or, perhaps, he just did not care as much. If you burn, you burn. Your turn, his turn, my turn tomorrow.

Mandrake tuned in to roaring airplane engines coming from the south. He turned his head and saw the two Fortresses that had been slowly flying the circuit streak passed, in line-astern, about 50 feet above the ground, throttles pushed all the way to the firewall. They were headed for the rising plume above Seattle Susie at 250 miles per hour. Before they reached it, the first and then the second Fortress dipped its starboard wing; a final salute as the souls of the dead airmen slowly winged upwards to Valhalla, or another place of less repute.

Mandrake shook his head at this show of youthful reverence and recklessness. He thought of the cost of two planes, half a million dollars. He laughed. He could buy a nice diamond ring for that.

Mandrake slowly turned away from the window, and sat down on the edge of his bed. He rested his head in his hands, and gazed at the wooden floor. He felt tired, very tired, and he wanted to go back to Seattle, to Pamela, to Peter and the unborn child. He swung his legs up, lay back, and went to sleep, the cheapest form of escape.

An hour later, at 1800 hours, Mandrake was aroused by a heavy banging on his door, quickly followed by a group of seven bodies tumbling into the room, laughing and jostling one another.

Greetings most holy master of the Mercator. We come to you with glad tidings. Tomorrow’s mission is scrubbed. We live to fight another day. So speaketh your airplane commander and most trusty pilot. Come on Mandrake, off your nasty little pit. It’s dinkums time. Down to the pub, and ten tankards of ale. First round’s on me.

Mandrake opened his eyes, one after the other, and viewed the speaker, Captain Gerry Nichols. Nichols was lean and lanky, six feet one inch. He had jet-black hair, a small mustache that was immaculately trimmed and a wide mouth that showed uneven but pearly-white teeth. His boyish face belied his thirty years. He was the oldest pilot in the 396th Bomb Group, and he had been at war for almost five years. In 1940, he considered that the Royal Air Force needed a helping hand so he joined up as a fighter pilot. After all, his mother was English. After Pearl Harbor, it was politely suggested that he might want to change the color of his uniform to U.S. Army Air Force brown. He had an unsurpassed depth of experience in aerial warfare, and he was good at his job of piloting, leading, inspiring and nursemaiding the crew of a Flying Fortress.

Mandrake looked at the rest of the motley group who were most of the members of the crew he flew with. Copilot Ernie Muller, flight engineer Casey Jones, bombardier Dave Jakes, tail gunner Pete Jackson, waist gunner Fred Wilson, and radio operator Jason Mercouri were a group reprieved. They had had a stay of execution, a fool’s delusion. Unless the war ended tomorrow, the hangman might be summoned the following day.

O.K., O.K., children! Let’s go play. Down to The Duck for some elbow rotation. Second round’s on me, said Mandrake, warming to the prospect of drinking himself under the table and spending all tomorrow sleeping it off.

Mandrake hurriedly put his shoes and jacket on and looked around for the last piece of regulation dress, his battered, greasy hat. Suddenly it came whistling towards his stomach.

Here’s your piss-pot, sir, said Wilson. You’ll need it to keep your golden locks in place and your brains warm.

Mandrake put it on, and gave Wilson a friendly cuff on the shoulder that sent him staggering. Although Mandrake was only five feet eight inches, he was very broad-shouldered and as strong as an ox. When he swung his arms he somehow always assumed that he was wielding an axe at a fifty-foot Norwegian spruce; a habit he had gained from long hours of work in Washington forests during college vacations and weekends.

The group left the room as ungraciously as they had entered it, and, commandeering two jeeps that just happened to be sitting outside the hut, sped off the base towards Coney Hinton, whose sole justification for being on the map rested with its most hallowed hostelry, The Duck. Fifteen minutes later, after a journey that was part cross-country, part steeplechase and wholly unsanctioned by Saint Christopher, the jeeps arrived at the watering hole, and the thirsty passengers disgorged into the saloon bar.

Set ‘em up, Nora. Seven of the big ones, and I’ll have mine in the best pewter, said Nichols to the straw-blonde barmaid, whose face burst into a radiant smile on seeing her favorite customers. She knew she was in for an evening of fun and games, and automatically her right hand, briefly but deliberately, passed over her coiffure to ensure its proper placement. Even though Nora always made a good attempt to start looking well-groomed, somehow events invariably precluded her ending the evening as she had begun it. Nora tended to dishevelment in direct proportion to the number of Americans around her.

Once each airman had a pint of bitter in his hand and had taken his first two mouthfuls, followed by the reflexive exclamation