A Thousand Suns (35 page)

We will turn all of New York into Stalingrad . . .

Max looked down at the crumpled paper in his hands. ‘Not just New York,’ he muttered.

His mind cruelly began to replay visions of devastation, the horror that he had seen with his own eyes in recent months. The ashes of a city, stretching as far as could be seen, a world of blackened wood, grey rubble and white dust. The bloated, twisted bodies poking from the ground, contorted by heat as they half-cooked from the flames of destruction, yet still raw inside, raw enough to rot, decompose and swell the dark leathery skin to the point of bursting with noxious gases.

Max had briefly struggled with the notion it would be he alone that would be responsible for arming and releasing a weapon that would turn an untouched city, a magnificent city by all that he’d seen of it from newsreels and the occasional movie, into that - that vision of hell upon earth. But now, if this letter was to be believed, if the Major was to be believed, then he might well be the one who would turn the whole world into - and that civilian, Hauser, had put it perfectly - Stalingrad.

Hans took a look at Stef sleeping fitfully beside him. He remembered when Stef had first joined them back in the early months of 1944. He had been a hastily trained recruit, drawn straight out of school to replace Jürgen Dancht, who had died in a field hospital after catching influenza. Stef had been a pain in the arse, too fucking young and stupid to deserve to make it through the war in one piece. But he had, and annoying though the lad could be, it would be a shame to have made it so far and die within sight of the end. Mind you, he thought, if the boy had been drafted into the infantry he wouldn’t have lasted long. Stef was too clumsy, too gawky, the kind of poor sod who stands out, whose head always seems to be the one found slap bang in the middle of a sniper’s cross-hair. Stef was the kind of poor fool who always died first.

He checked the boy’s wound; there was some more fresh blood soaking through, blending with the dark brown patches.

You idiot, stop bloody bleeding.

He cuffed Stef’s head lightly, a tress of ginger hair flopped over the boy’s pale, ghost-white face. He’d get a doctor soon. Pieter had said they were just over forty minutes away from America, in an hour it would be all done and they’d be finding a safe place to put down. Just another hour or so and they’d get him some help.

Hans wondered whether he would be able to spot the first signs of land. With a surge of curiosity he climbed out from beneath the blanket and leaned towards the starboard porthole. He pulled himself against the roaring, freezing rush of wind to look forward, over the plane’s giant wings, for a first glimpse of the continent.

The sky was clear around them and below, the Atlantic ocean was a deep blue. His eyes were drawn to a pale line carved across its glittering surface.

A ship?

New York had a port. They had to be on target, on the right course.

He plugged into the comm. ‘Pieter, I can see a ship below us!’

‘Yeah? Which way is it headed?’

Hans leaned back out and looked down. It was hard to tell which end of the pale line was the front, and even harder to detect it moving. He squinted tightly as the wind made his eyes water. After a few seconds he picked out the paler line of the ship’s wake.

‘The ship’s heading south-west, I think.’

‘Then if that’s heading into New York, we’ve drifted a little north,’ replied Pieter. ‘Max? Are you plugged in?’

There was no answer. Pieter called him again, but he still failed to answer.

‘I think he’s readying the bomb,’ said Hans.

‘Well, go tell him I think we need to turn south a little . . . no, just go get him to come forward, okay?’

‘Yeah.’

Hans took another look at Stef. ‘Hang on. We’re nearly there,’ he muttered. He stooped as he climbed through the bulkhead and again as he entered the bomb bay.

‘Pieter needs you up -’ He saw Max sitting on the walkway beside the bomb, studying a scrap of paper. ‘Hey, Max, is everything all right?’

He looked up at Hans, a look of anguish was stretched across his face.

‘Max?’

He held out the piece of paper towards Hans; he said nothing as he did so.

‘What is it?’

Max stood up and took a step towards him, the piece of paper still held in front of him. ‘Look at this.’

Hans reached for the paper and began to read the handwritten words.

To the one responsible for arming this weapon . . .

It took the young man only seconds to dismiss it. He looked up at Max. ‘What the fuck is this?’

‘Read it. Read it all.’

Hans obediently looked back down at it, and Max waited patiently for Hans to finish. Finally, the young man looked up. ‘So?’

‘We can’t go ahead with this.’

Hans looked up at him, confused. ‘What’re you saying, Max?’

‘We can’t complete this mission. It’s insane to go on, knowing this -’

‘Max?’

‘Can’t you see that? It’s insane to do this if there’s even the slightest chance.’

‘We have orders, not just from some fucking general, but from Hitler himself!’ Hans waved the sheet of notepaper in front of him. ‘This . . . this shit means nothing. Any fool could have written this.’

‘Hans, listen to me. I don’t know who wrote this, someone who worked on the bomb maybe, but the Major, just before we took off, I think he was trying to tell me that we shouldn’t complete this mission.’

‘What?’ Hans’s face was contorted with uncertainty and panic. ‘This is
his
plan! No, not the Major. He . . . he . . . why would
he
want to sabotage it? No, you’re wrong, Max, he wouldn’t -’

‘He was trying to tell me, Hans. He had only a few seconds to -’

‘No! No, that’s just fucking crazy.’

Max realised he was making a mistake trying to argue with Hans, justifying his thinking. The young man would respond to an order, he always had, and would do so now. The habit was ingrained into his thick skull.

Max straightened his back and pointed towards the bulkhead. ‘Get back to your post. We’re aborting the mission, Hans, that’s all there is to it.’

Hans remained silent, his body frozen with indecision, yet his eyes darting from Max to the note to the bomb, his mind now working hard to make sense of things.

‘No . . . I don’t underst—’

‘Back to the waist-guns. That’s an order!’

Hans recoiled slightly, and his mouth clamped shut; it was an automatic response to Max’s barked command. He turned to go, beginning to step aft through the bulkhead, and then he stopped.

‘No,’ he said after a moment, with a quiet and unfamiliar certainty.

Max deliberately ignored the young man’s whispered insubordination and began to turn round to climb forward through the bulkhead and into the cockpit.

Hans leaped forward suddenly, moving with a speed and agility that Max would never have imagined him to possess. He tugged Max’s Walther from its holster. He held it in both hands and aimed it uncertainly and shakily at Max’s head.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Give me the gun!’ shouted Max.

Hans shook his head.

‘Give me the gun, Hans, I’m ordering you.’

‘I . . . I can’t do that.’

‘Listen . . . we can’t detonate this bomb, Hans. It’s not going to happen -’

‘SHUT UP!’ Hans shouted, jerking the gun at Max’s face. He called out to Pieter at the top of his voice, but there was no answer. ‘PIETER!’ His voice sounded like a child’s plea, breaking with panic.

‘What? You think Pieter’s going to agree with you, Hans?’ said Max.

Hans remained motionless, the gun shaking in his hand, his eyes darting to the bulkhead leading forward, waiting for Pieter to arrive.

Max decided to try a different way to get through to the lad. ‘Look, give me the damned gun now, Hans, and I’ll forget about this. I know you, you’re a good lad and this -’

They heard Pieter calling back through from the cockpit several times, and a few moments later, realising that Hans must not be plugged into the comm. system, Pieter appeared at the bulkhead.

‘What’s the matter?’ He saw Hans pointing the gun at Max. ‘Jesus Christ, what the bloody hell are you doing, Hans?’

‘He was going to abort the mission, Pieter. He doesn’t want to finish it!’

Pieter looked incredulously at Hans. He didn’t look like he was buying that for one moment. ‘Max, what’s up with this fucking idiot?’

Max turned to him and calmly spoke. ‘He’s right. We’ve got to abort.’

Pieter frowned, confused. ‘Why? What’s up? We’re there, we’ve done it.’

‘Give him the note, Hans. Let Pieter make up his own mind.’

For one moment Max thought Hans was going to rip the note to shreds. But the young man remained still, reluctant to pass it on, holding the crumpled sheet of paper tightly in his hands.

‘Give it to me, you idiot! We haven’t got all day,’ said Pieter irritably.

Hans passed the note to Max, keeping the Walther trained on him all the time. Max handed it to Pieter then watched as his co-pilot silently read it.

A minute later Pieter looked up at them with no clear indication on his face as to what he was thinking.

‘Pieter?’ Hans spoke; there was a note of growing doubt and desperation in his deep voice. He needed Pieter to reassure him that his solo act of mutiny had been the right thing to do, that he wasn’t alone in this action.

Pieter passed the note back to Max. ‘We should continue, Max. This could be a trick, an attempt to sabotage the mission,’ he said evenly.

‘I know, I know. I thought the same at first, Pieter. But there’s more -’

Pieter shook his head. ‘We’re nearly there, Max, we’ve done it. This is just a trick.’

‘Listen to me. The Major tried to tell me about the bomb, Pieter, on the ground just before we took off.’

‘Major Rall? You think
he
would want to abort?’

‘Yes. I think he did. And I think he was trying to tell me that.’

Pieter frowned, then laughed, unsure how to respond to such an absurd notion. ‘It’s
his
fucking mission, he planned it, why would he want to abort it?’

‘He knows, Pieter! He knows this bomb could kill us all! And he was trying to tell me.’

Pieter was silent for a moment, his face clouded as he recalled those final moments on the airstrip. ‘He did act strange. I heard him too.’

Hans looked indecisively between the two older men. It looked to him as if Pieter now might be having doubts. Hans began to lower the gun to the ground, doubting his decision, his resolve beginning to waver.

Max spotted the weapon drop and decided the time had come to try and wrestle subordination back from Hans. ‘Hans, give me the gun, and go and see to Stefan.’

Hans hesitated for only a second before nodding mutely and reaching out to pass Max the weapon.

‘Even if this is true, Max,’ Pieter suddenly announced, ‘we have to go on.’

Max spun to look back at Pieter. ‘What? Are you crazy?’

‘So . . . there’s a risk. What do we lose anyway? The Russians will kill us all if we do nothing. We have to go on.’

Hans looked to Pieter once more, backing away from Max’s waiting hand, pulling the gun back and aiming it once more at his commanding officer.

‘Give me the bloody gun, Hans,’ Max said again, his command sharper.

Hans looked to Pieter, ‘Piet? What do I do?’

‘Lower the fucking gun, you fool,’ Pieter barked at Hans, angered that the young gunner should so readily turn on Max, their friend, their leader. He turned to Max. ‘Max, we’ve got to finish this,’ he pleaded.

Max turned to look at him. ‘If we go ahead and drop this bomb,’ he continued, ‘and it
does
, as this notes says, destroy the world, then it’s all gone, everything, everyone, just ashes. What kind of a victory is that?’

‘And if we drop it, and it just destroys New York, we win. The war ends on our terms, Germany survives, we go on.’

‘We go on . . . and what? Another war against the Russians? You think our wonderful Führer is going to think twice about using weapons like this again and again on them?’ he said, pointing at the bomb nestled comfortably on the rack, a silent witness to its own fate. ‘And every time we use one, we’ll be gambling again, until one of these things suddenly goes wrong, and that’s it.’

Pieter studied his old friend in silence. He had witnessed Max question orders only once before, and on that occasion Pieter would have stood by him if it had come to court martial. That was a long time ago, when the war had been running their way, when there had been room for an act of high-handed mercy like that amidst the carnage. But the two years since had been a long time. All that was left for them now was the visceral fight for survival, at any cost. The truth was a stark choice, and it was almost certain they would die at the hands of the Russians.

‘If we don’t complete the mission, then everything we’ve fought for, you and me, not just today, but the last five bloody years . . . all of that has been for nothing, Come on Max,’ Pieter said. ‘Take us to New York. Lead us one last time.’

‘You’d risk the whole world for that?’

‘Yes,’ Pieter answered instantly, with certainty. ‘I would.’

The three men stood in silence as the seconds stretched out.

‘You’ve always been there for us, Max,’ said Hans with a voice shaking and hesitant. He dropped his aim and extended one hand towards him, open, ready to shake, a final gesture of appeasement, reconciliation. Max knew Hans desperately sought the approval of his commanding officer to make things
right
once more. To have Pieter on his side had certainly helped to firm his resolve, but to have Max
with them
once more would settle the matter. ‘We need you now, more than we’ve ever done. Lead us one last time,’ pleaded Hans, echoing Pieter’s words.

Max shook his head. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this.’

He watched Hans, as the young gunner’s eyes narrowed and he re-evaluated him, systematically erasing his feelings of loyalty and respect and overwriting them with contempt. Max felt something irreversible had changed in the young man’s mind.