A thousand suns

‘All right then,’ he muttered through trembling blue lips amidst a cloud of vapour. There were two ways to exit, both of them were underwater now and he would have to dive down and feel his way out blindly. He could either go back down into the waist section and out through one of the gun portholes. There might be enough room to squeeze his way out, since the port side gun had been jettisoned. Or he could climb forward, down through the flooded bombardier’s compartment and out through the belly hatch.

He decided to head for the waist section.

He waded towards the bulkhead leading to the waist. There was now a gap of only inches at the top, the water was around his chest and rising fast.

It’s flooded beyond the bulkhead, no air until you’re outside again… you ready for that?

Max breathed deeply several times. Each time he exhaled the dwindling space in front of him between the water and the roof of the fuselage filled with his foggy breath. Water bubbled and spat as trapped air from the aft of the plane hissed out through the last inches of the bulkhead doorway above the waterline.

He watched the top of the bulkhead dip below the water and felt the rear of the plane beginning to swing downwards, the plane now held above the sea by the air trapped in the front half. His ears popped from the buildup of pressure.

There was a loud, deep metallic groan. It sounded like the mournful cry of a whale.

She’s sliding under… go now!

He filled his lungs quickly and ducked through the bulkhead. Under the icy water he could hear a whole new world of sounds, the sound of metal straining and contorting, the roar of expelled air and incoming water, the click and clatter of debris spinning in circles and eddies. He pulled himself deeper and forwards, down towards where both waist-guns had once spewed bullets in anger. He was encumbered by his uniform and the thick leather flying jacket. His progress was torturously slow, but there was no time to tread water while he struggled to unzip it and shrug it off. He worked desperately with his arms, grabbing hold of the internal ribs of the fuselage and pulling himself forward to the next. His hand scraped a jagged bullet hole, one of a row that had stitched a line diagonally above the starboard waist-gun. Frantically his hand felt along the metal, seeking the edge of the porthole, as he felt his body urgently commanding him to take another breath.

He found the top rim of the porthole and with one frantic exertion he pulled himself down deeper into the flooded waist section, down and through the porthole. His legs now kicked desperately as he struggled to rise to the surface, but his flying jacket was weighing him down, and he had precious little energy left to fight the drag.

Life-vest, you idiot! Life-vest.

He felt for the pull-cord, patting his chest to find it, all the while feeling himself sinking slowly. He heard the painful groan of metal under stress below him. The plane was going down. The noise began to diminish as it pulled away from him, sinking at a greater speed than he was. He saw the bomber’s tailfin pass by closely. As it descended and faded from view he felt a rush of bubbles rising swiftly past him and the tug of the backwash from the plane plummeting below.

He felt the tickle of string against the back of his hand — the cord — and frantically waved his hand to find it again. He made contact, grasped the cord in his hand and pulled.

The vest inflated violently with a roar of bubbles and Max felt himself pulled rapidly up through little more than twenty feet of water.

He broke the surface with a roar of expelled air and gasped for a fresh lungful.

The plane was gone, marked now only by a handful of floating items of debris. The sea was kind this evening, only small swells, but it was painfully cold. The sun shone weakly; a few hours more and it would be gone. Max turned towards it.

Rises in the east, sets in the west.

West was where he was headed. He started to swim, in his heart knowing the cold would get him before long.

Chapter 59

Burning the Bodies

5 a.m., 30 April, Berlin

It was easy to lose track of the time, down there, down in that dimly lit warren of concrete rooms. For some inexplicable reason he had thought it was five o’clock in the evening, not five o’clock in the morning.

He looked up at the early-morning sky. It was a pale grey, and, for once, it was silent in Berlin. The Russian artillery was sleeping. The featureless clouds above were letting go of a light drizzle of rain, and delicate drops, like cold pinpricks, touched his cheeks. He closed his eyes and felt the raindrops on his eyelids and tasted the still, cold, morning air. It felt good, to drift away from this messy end to things, if only for a few moments, to savour something as simple as the coolness of rain on his face.

He heard the sound of boots scraping on wet concrete. Someone coughed awkwardly, dispelling the quiet, and he was immediately back where he would rather not be.

Hauser opened his eyes.