Culliford nodded and pursed his lips, his expression pessimistic. ‘Place called Motyl, near the village of Zabrow. It’s an old landing field. The AK will provide the security.’
The Polish home army, the Armia Krajowa, operated under impossible circumstances, yet according to Simon-Benet’s assessment, they were the best in the business. The AK was a duplicate of the pre-war Polish army and perhaps the best organised of all resistance groups in Europe.
The two men walked outside. Culliford, noticing that they had glanced at the dawn sky together, chuckled. ‘Won’t do us any good to be looking around up here. We have six hundred miles to go and then some.’
Memling nodded, staring at the flaming Italian sky. Over the hills to the east, the sun was edging above the horizon in splendours of reds and blues, and the high cirrus glowed and danced in the growing light.
‘It’s your decision, Stan,’ he said after a moment. ‘You have to fly that thing.’ He gestured towards the waiting Douglas Dakota. In its coat of dead black paint, the aircraft was barely visible on the tarmac.
The New Zealander glanced again at the sky, then at the yellow flimsy in his hand, scratched his jaw, and nodded. ‘Let’s go. We probably won’t have a better chance for another couple of weeks and I sure as hell don’t want to hang around here any longer. You might lose that jacket and then I’d never get a chance to own it.’
They took off at 20.00 hours, with four officers and nineteen suitcases of equipment aboard. Three of the officers had flown in with Memling two weeks before but had remained segregated in separate quarters. He heard them speaking Polish among themselves and surmised that they were couriers or Special Operations Executive agents. The fourth, who had arrived the previous week from London, was a Captain Leslie Reynolds whom Memling knew vaguely from his work with R. V. Jones’s group the year before. The man had been a physics professor at Leeds University before the war and was an admirer of Viscount Cherwell’s.
The last few lights were disappearing below as they droned into the Adriatic. Memling climbed forward to the cockpit. The navigator gave him coffee from a Thermos, and Culliford pointed out a dark mass against the horizon.
‘Yugoslavia. I’ve flown across her several times. A few night fighters about but nothing serious as long as you keep below their radar. Our bombers work their coastal stations over quite regularly, and in case of serious trouble, the partisans will be glad to see us, or so ‘I’m told.’
‘By the way, we’ve lost our escort, ‘I’m not sorry to say. Bloody great lumbering beasts. Attract Jerries like flies to sugar.’
‘Lost them?’
‘One had engine trouble. Never left the runway. We’ve simply outflown the other. Not to worry, though. In case of trouble, we’ll just turn around. That second Liberator is about fifteen miles behind. Anyway, he’ll be leaving as soon as we cross the coast again, on a mission of his own.’
Brindisi had been chosen as the jump-off point for the flight into southern Poland. Memling gathered that SOE had been making good use of the Italian fields to insert agents all over occupied Europe. While it was nearly twelve hundred miles from Britain to southern Poland by the most direct route, the existence of Allied airfields in central and southern Italy enabled them to shorten the flight by half. The route took them up the Adriatic to cross the Yugoslav coast south-east of Split, then on across the Dinaric Alps to skirt the Hungarian-Rumanian border, across eastern Czechoslovakia and into southern Poland.
The Polish co-pilot, Kazimierz Szrajer, was saying something to Culliford which drew a laugh, but the noise of the engines prevented Memling from hearing. The flight settled into routine, and Memling left the cramped cockpit after a while. One of the Polish agents looked up from the Sten gun he was cleaning and smiled, happy to be on his way.
The Dakota had been stripped of all non-essential equipment to open up as much room as possible for the cargo they would be bringing back. The only seats, as a result, were unpadded benches bolted to the wall, and the curving side of the fuselage forced one to sit hunched forward. The accommodations, he remarked, were only slightly better than those of the Mosquito in which he had been flown into Germany the year before.
After much soul-searching Memling had visited the psychiatrist recommended by the brigadier.
‘He did telephone you were coming, and we discussed your case to some extent.’ The doctor smiled and offered a cigarette which Memling declined.
‘From what you have told me, I see nothing to suggest that his diagnosis was incorrect. If you will pardon my bluntness, your problems were created by ignorance. There is nothing to be ashamed of in that unless, of course, you persist in that ignorance. As to the treatment — unfortunately there are no magic cures: only patience and the determination to face up to the situation as it exists. Do you love your wife?’
