The Striker Portfolio Read online

  There was hope in his soft hooded eyes.

  ‘It’s some time since I was there.’ The Wall and its extensions had gone up in 1961.

  ‘Everything has changed now. Except my wife. My family.’ He took the shepherdess and fitted her into the case among the others. I watched his face in the mirror behind the bar. He wasn’t wearing a hat: it was on the table behind us with his gloves and this week’s Stern. He had been wearing a hat before, crossing from the lift in the Carlsberg with the other people three nights ago when the American had said his wife was sensitive about things like that. I wasn’t certain. Hats can make a critical difference. I would need to see him walk: people can turn their faces inside out but they never think to alter their walk.

  His face was sad. Perhaps about Dresden. Or Lovett.

  ‘How much is that one?’ the manager asked.

  ‘Do you want to buy it?’

  ‘No, I just want to know how much a thing like that costs.’

  ‘It would depend. I take them to a man in Kassel. Not a dealer. A private collector. He doesn’t buy all of them. I’ll be coming back this way, if you’re still interested.’

  ‘I’m not. I just wanted to know.’

  ‘I would make a price for you of course. You talk to a lot of people here. That would help my business.’

  The sound was dull, heavy and distant.

  I looked at my watch. Benedikt hadn’t heard, or didn’t think it meant anything. Perhaps he thought it was another sonic boom: they were a part of life in Linsdorf. The manager had heard and was looking at the windows. He had lived here long enough to tell the difference.

  I went outside and he followed me and we stood looking at the sky and listening. You can’t hear a sonic boom without hearing the plane afterwards. The sky was silent.

  ‘What was it?’ he asked me.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I got the N.S.U. and drove straight there.

  When I reached the main gates there was some traffic coming through: three or four official Luftwaffe cars and an ambulance and crash-party tender. They knew there’d be nothing for the ambulance to do but it had to be sent out for the look of the thing.

  People were at the windows of the admin, buildings and groups stood outside just talking quietly. There was nothing to see but they’d come out because this was where the noise had been, outside, and it was the noise they were talking about. It had been Like this in the streets of Westheim when I’d gone into the post office.

  The A.I.B. team was standing in a group in front of the wreckage-analysis hangar and I talked to Philpott. The rest kicked at pebbles, their arms folded, some of them looking at the sky. One of them said: ‘They’re gaining on us. We’ve not put this one together yet.’

  ‘Did your friend find you ?’ Philpott asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Ferris would have telephoned the A.I.B. chief and Philpott had probably passed him on to the barman at the Officers’ Mess. Good barmen knew everything and this one had seen me leaving with Nitri and he knew her address: she was an officer’s wife. Ferris had gone there to hang about and when he’d seen me go into her flat with her he’d decided to wait. The most comfortable place was the N.S.U. and any director can open a car without any keys: it’s in the Norfolk Instructions.

  Or it was one of several permutations. Ferris would have found me wherever I’d been; it was part of his job. I wondered if the noise had registered as far as Hanover: it was north of here and quite distant. There was nothing he could tell me to do about it that I wasn’t here doing.

  Some of the pilots were standing outside the crews’ quarters and I walked slowly into the pocket of atmosphere that Dr. Wagner had mentioned: I would have known there’d been a Striker down even if I hadn’t heard it go in. It was the kind of atmosphere you can almost feel on your skin.

  Franz Rohmhild was there with Artur Boldt and some others. Boldt was the Geschwaderkommodore and I’d talked to him last night: a lean slow-moving Rhinelander with no philosophy in his eyes. Most of the pilots accepted the situation: the Striker was a rogue aircraft and their orders were to fly it and as far as they were concerned it was a game of Russian roulette - I’d heard that phrase more than once at Linsdorf. But their Geschwaderkommodore had to lead them into the air and hope to bring them all back again and it affected his nerves differently: his natural fear was turned directly into anger against the top brass of the Luftwaffe who wouldn’t ground the Striker until someone had found out what was bringing it down.

  They weren’t talking much. They stood looking at the sky because it was where they lived and where one of them had just died. A young Oberleutnant was trying to laugh it off:

  ‘We’re all right for another hundred days - who’s complaining?’ The pattern-crash average was one in ten days and there were ten main Striker bases operational. It was the Russian roulette attitude again.

  An SK-6 straddled one of the dispersal bays not far off. In full daylight it looked as ugly as it had looked at dawn yesterday.

  I asked Rohmhild who it was.

  ‘Paul Dissen. You met him last night.’

  The one with the sea-horse. The one who’d been doing aerobatics with his hands at the bar.

  Dr. Wagner came up and the atmosphere changed in a subtle way that I only just caught. Under the surface it seemed he was their god. Not quite. Redeemer ? No: shepherd. Saviour. I had the impression that if Wagner were actually to fly with them on exercise they would believe they were totally safe.

  ‘It should be the last one.’ He addressed Boldt, perhaps because he was their Geschwaderkommodore. I’d wondered what exact line he’d take: he hadn’t come across to the flying-crew quarters to pass the time of day. Their nerves showed in their eyes and their bands and their silence, and his job was to do what he could about it. ‘This isn’t a technical problem, you understand. The answer is available and the authorities may be obstinate but they are not blind.’ His head was lifting and he looked at the others, sighting along his strong jutting nose. ‘The generals blame the Defence Ministry and the Ministry has its face to save because it was responsible for ordering an aircraft that has proved itself dangerous. But there are pressures even at political level: the Americans inside NATO are urging Bonn to abandon the Striker’s nuclear role and of course someone must eventually realize the absolute sense in that. Each time there’s an accident these pressures are increased dramatically - that much is obvious, do you understand ?’ His light eyes surveyed them: he needed their reaction so that he could turn his argument and lead their attention into whatever channel would console them. ‘So this could be the last one to happen before these planes are grounded. There has to be a last one and it will be soon.’

  Boldt said quietly: ‘It’s not the plane.’ He was looking across at the brutish shape on the tarmac. ‘It’s the pilot.’

  Franz gave one of his short bitten-off laughs and the sound of it, the coldness in it, didn’t help the others. He watched Boldt with his eyes flickering. Boldt said:

  ‘I’m not talking about pilot efficiency.’ His anger had been sparked off. ‘You know that, Franz. You know it perfectly well. I mean pilot condition.’

  Wagner was watching them both. He said to Boldt: ‘You have a theory, I know. You’ve mentioned it to me.’

  ‘Several.’

  A telephone was ringing somewhere. I happened to be looking at Franz and his shock was physical. The others turned their heads and turned away again.

  I knew that Wagner would have tried making Boldt open up about his theories in case they were dangerous to morale: Boldt was their leader and his opinions counted. But no one would be able to speak until someone inside the crew quarters answered that telephone.

  Even little Wagner couldn’t do anything. The silence was total, of the kind in which background noises made no difference: a traffic-control vehicle was droning round the perimeter road but they didn’t hear it. Vision was the only sense with any significance and so they looked at the ground, the sky, the humped
shape of the Widowmaker.

  The telephone had stopped ringing and after a minute a door was jerked open and someone called to us.

  Paul Dissen was sitting in a corner of the reading-room like a trapped animal. He watched us as we came in.

  Dr. Wagner had given me the picture on our way here.

  The M.O. wanted him hospitalized at first but there’s nothing wrong with him physically except for slight traumatic lesions in the face and cornea. I believe he would brood too much in a hospital bed because he is overburdened with guilt-feelings, and nursing attention - sympathy of any sort - would of course aggravate them. It is better he should be free to roam where he likes for today and talk to anyone who will listen. His psychological need is to be hurt a little and we should bear that in mind during the interrogation. Of course you know all this, Herr Martin, but I am just pointing out that his experience seen in the light of his personal background provides a typical case, which makes it easier for us - and for him.’

  Dissen got up as we reached him and Wagner motioned him down. His eyes were bloodshot and some of the cheek-area capillaries had burst, leaving red patches like those on a painted doll’s face. According to his report he had baled out at forty thousand feet, which would have exposed him to something like two hundred knots in free-fall before the chute slowed him to thirty through the upper layers.

  We drew up a couple of chairs and Wagner said cheerfully:

  ‘You’ve had-an expensive day, Paul my good friend. Six million dollars. Never mind, we’re delighted to see you back. I suppose you decided to panic, did you? Well, you’re not the first.’

  One had to get used to opposite-thinking. Dissen was a man in need but it wasn’t the need for comfort. I remembered the faces of the pilots outside the crew quarters this morning when the door was jerked open - ‘News of Paul! He’s all right, he baled out!’ There had been no spontaneous relief. One or two of them had looked deceived: the hundred days’ grace had been denied them and it could happen tomorrow, a real one, a pattern-crash.

  ‘No, Herr Doktor, I didn’t panic.’ He said it very deliberately. Wagner had triggered the reaction he was after: Dissen must be reminded that he had access to self-defence.

  ‘You know Herr Martin, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s interested in what happened.’

  Wagner had invited me to run the interrogation with himself sitting in. Dissen said to me:

  ‘She began breaking up, that’s all.’ It was said with hostility. ‘Do you know much about planes?’

  ‘By “breaking-up” do you mean structurally? Structural failure?’

  ‘That was what it sounded like.’

  ‘Vibration? Fluttering?’

  ‘Not quite. I’d call it resonance.’

  ‘Nothing visual.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Resonance. Has that happened before with the Striker?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not with your plane - I mean have you heard about it happening?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘So when it happened in your own plane did you remember having heard about it?’

  ‘I didn’t have time. I was too busy checking the display.’

  It wasn’t exactly a lie. He would have automatically checked his display as soon as the sound had come in. He would certainly have remembered hearing about resonance but fear would have driven the memory straight into his subconscious so that he could rationalize: she’s breaking up and I’m getting out.

  ‘Was the display in order?’

  ‘The booster looked a bit unsteady.’ He glanced with his suffused eyes from me to Wagner and back. ‘You don’t necessarily see anything wrong with the instruments when the whole plane’s breaking up, surely you know that?’

  Three pointers: ‘looked a bit’ didn’t mean ‘was’. And his glance to Wagner had been an appeal. And his defence had turned to attack: was I such a damned fool as not to ‘know that’?

  I didn’t like doing this but I had to because Wagner was here and I could blow my cover if I dodged it. That could go a long way: Wagner had official influence and would get me thrown out of Linsdorf and it was part of the mission to stay here and ferret out all I could.

  I tried him on limited channel capacity. ‘Have you ever felt overloaded in the Striker? Failure to assimilate?’

  ‘Sometimes. We all feel it sometimes.’

  That would be true. The input signals and output demands of a sophisticated aircraft put a strain on the pilot and they were working on the problem everywhere.

  We talked about environmental stress and he said he was happily married and ‘didn’t give a damn’ about money. He spoke faster as we went on because he wasn’t being made to talk about the plane. He hated the plane because it had exposed his weakness.

  Wagner cut in to say Dissen’s wife was ‘quite charming, quite charming’ and that she would be so relieved to ‘have more of his company’ from now on. Wagner had told me on our way here; ‘He’s finished, of course, as a pilot.’ , I tried him on isolation stress: ‘When the resonance began did you get any sudden feeling of loneliness ? Did you feel cut off, lost in the sky, out of touch with help?’

  ‘I had my radio. I reported what was happening.’ His tone was hostile again: we were talking about the plane.

  Wagner took over for ten minutes, keeping his approach cheerful, his hands moving energetically as he blamed the Striker, all the Strikers, going along with Dissen in his hate of them. Then I harked back to the technical aspect because it was meant to be my job and Wagner knew it.

  ‘You must have been certain that the resonance would turn to actual vibration - fluttering or juddering - before long.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I mean if it was loud enough to start you thinking of baling out it must have sounded progressive. Critical.’

  ‘You don’t know what it was like.’ He was standing up suddenly, his red eyes looking at neither of us, his hands jumping to his pockets and jumping out again to make defensive gestures. ‘All right - I panicked. You expect me to stay in a plane that’s breaking up under me?’

  Wagner pushed his chair back.

  ‘No. That’s why we give you an ejection seat. You are expected to use it. And you did.’

  I walked back with Wagner to his office.

  ‘He will be okay now.’ He had switched to American again. ‘But I don’t know about your “resonance”.’

  ‘All I can do is pass it on.’

  ‘Otherwise it was satisfactory. We induced him to admit he panicked so now it’s going to be easier for him. We had one of them shoot themselves, do you understand ? Up at Bederkesa. The son of an upright Prussian family - he did what they expected of him, of course. But Paul won’t do that. We didn’t save the machine but we can save the man. I ask for no more.’

  ‘They should all do that.’

  He supervised our table personally, perhaps hoping to bring down the price of the shepherdess.

  ‘You wouldn’t have any Luftwaffe left,’ I told him.

  ‘Who wants the Luftwaffe? There’s no war.’ He spread his big hands. ‘Let them take all the Strikers up nice and high and come down by parachute. Then they wouldn’t get killed anymore.’

  The noise this morning had upset him.

  Benedikt had been here when I came in from the airbase soon after dark and I asked him to eat with me because I wanted to know why he’d searched my room. He sat with his hands folded on the edge of the table, his soft hooded eyes sometimes looking at the other people. Neither of us faced the door from the parking area but we could both see it without turning round too far.

  He had dropped the Kasseler-Zeitung on to an empty chair. It was the evening edition. ‘They are toppling,’ he said, ‘in high places.’

  It had been decided that Feldmarschall Stockener must have got into a skid because there had been rain. His name was lower down the page, taking second-best to Hermann von Eckern, Minister of the Interior, last night
relieved of his post following an incident in a Hamburg night-club, details of which were not yet revealed.

  I wondered whether, these two items were anything to do with the ‘rather big show’ that Ferris had talked about or whether Stockener had just skidded and von Eckern had just taken a boy into the cloakroom.

  But Benedikt seemed to think they were connected so I said: ‘They’ll be pushing them out of windows next.’ I ordered liver and carrots because they both have something like four thousand international units of vitamin-A and I like seeing as much as possible in the dark.

  ‘That poor fellow,’ he said. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  He couldn’t know I wasn’t certain. It would be risky for him not to admit at once that he’d been at the Carlsberg.

  ‘A lot of guests were upset. I left the same night, myself.’

  I thought if he’d arranged to have Lovett pushed out of that window I would do something about it very soon. We don’t often have a reason for doing a bump; it’s usually just because the pressure’s on. I said:

  ‘Don’t you think he skidded? Stockener?’

  A man and a woman came in and we looked round idly. ‘I question why the chief of the Bundeswehr should be travelling alone in his car. Surely he would have a military driver.’ He was eating very little. He wasn’t a man for an appetite: sad-faced, withdrawn, cautious. Or perhaps he wasn’t always like that. Perhaps it was his nerves. He might have told them: he’s down here at Linsdorf and tonight would be a good opportunity. Because he wouldn’t do it himself: he hadn’t the build and it would have to be done quietly without too much fuss, which meant at least two operators.

  ‘What about von Eckern?’ I said.

  It might be his nerves, not letting’ him eat. Because of the waiting.

  ‘I also question why a Bundesminister should allow himself to become party to an “incident” of the kind that could lead to his dismissal..!! doesn’t seem very discreet.’

  ‘Is everything to your satisfaction?’ The manager was back, adjusting things on the table.

  ‘Entirely,’ Benedikt said, watching some people come in. The night was cold; they had pinched faces and rubbed their hands.