Once More the Hawks

Part One

One

To Dicken Quinney, the junction of the Rhine and the Mosel at Koblenz had always seemed a point of separation in Germany. North of Koblenz it was harsh; the south belonged to the Black Forest and a softer climate. Staring down from the cockpit of the big American Lockheed 12a at the two rivers, one the jugular vein of Germany, the other heading straight for the heart of its traditional enemy, France, he reflected that of all the European countries, he knew Germany better than any. He had fought in France between 1914 and 1918 but as part of a huge army with only brief contacts with the French people. There had been a spell in Italy during 1918, a spell as attaché in Holland, and a spell in Greece as instructor, until one of the political upsets in that country had changed its policy and he had been withdrawn. But all these appointments had lasted only long enough for him to pick up some of the language and little else, while he had visited Germany many times, firstly as pilot to a newspaper proprietor flying regularly to Berlin, later in the insecure period of the Thirties as attaché at the embassy. Now, on the verge of retirement from the RAF, he was back again, this time working for a man called Sidney Cotton, who, like himself, had flown 1½-Strutters in France in 1916 and 1917. Tall, bespectacled, ebullient and a well-known figure in aviation, in recent years Cotton had become involved in colour photography and was now selling film in quantity to the Germans. He was selling it in other countries, too, but it was the Germans, with their increasing interest in it, who had long since begun to arouse suspicion among the more probing minds in the RAF.

The gloomy Gothic pile of a ruined castle passed slowly beneath the wing of the Lockheed. Round it, the Rhine turned and twisted like a moving snake. Down there, Dicken reflected, barges were carrying goods from the industrial Ruhr through Holland to the sea, and at the moment, in the heat of the late summer, the Rhine ferries were full of holidaymakers, the German drinking songs filling the night with tunes that sounded almost like military music.

‘Mannheim coming up,’ a voice behind him called out.

His navigator, Frank Babington, recently retired from the RAF as a flight-sergeant and recruited by Cotton for his skill with cameras, was watching the route carefully. As they passed over the double kink in the river at Mainz and Wiesbaden, Dicken could see the haze ahead that indicated the factories for the making of electrical equipment, chemicals and motor cars. He knew Wiesbaden well, with its Imperial palace, its state theatre and its wide gardens, and he found himself wondering how many more times he’d be looking down on it from the air, because his time as an active airman was almost finished and he couldn’t imagine himself having the money to possess an aircraft of his own when he left the service. Despite his record, he was still no more than a wing commander, thanks chiefly to the fact that barring his path to senior rank had always been the implacable form of Cecil Arthur Diplock.

Diplock had married Annys Toshack, the girl Dicken had been in love with in 1914, and joining the Royal Flying Corps late in 1916, had, despite his poor showing as an airman, contrived by the cultivation of the people who mattered, to pass him in rank and now finally sat across his route to promotion. A desk officer at RAF Headquarters, under the patronage of his old Wing Colonel, now Air Vice-Marshal George Macclesfield St Aubyn, a man of the same breed, he had influenced the whole of Dicken’s career. Dicken’s skill, his knowledge of flying, had meant that he could never hold him back completely, but he had managed to prevent any swift rise, so that now the only alternative seemed to be to retire and seek employment elsewhere.

At the thought, Dicken frowned. His retirement was due within days now and he didn’t look forward to leaving the RAF. The job with Cotton was only a temporary one, replacing one of Cotton’s men who was sick, and he had no one with whom to share his retirement. His wife, Zoë, sister to Diplock’s wife, had died in 1930, and he didn’t fancy growing old alone. But merely flying from one place to another without any purpose seemed an empty pastime. Which was why he was now flying for Cotton.

Because of the growing German threat, even at the time of the Munich agreement when Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, had been obliged to kowtow to the German dictator, since information about German fortifications, airfields and military establishments were necessary while there was still time, Cotton had been recruited by the British Government to acquire it by clandestine methods. As the private owner of aircraft and well-known throughout European aviation circles, he had already worked for the French Deuxième Bureau and had finally set up an independent unit of his own. A determined and ingenious man on intimate terms with the senior Nazis in Berlin, he had found a dozen ways of satisfying the requirements, though the official RAF attitude to him – largely conceived, Dicken knew, in the department of Air Vice-Marshal St Aubyn and Group Captain Cecil Arthur Diplock – had always remained one of ambiguity and jealousy.

‘Mannheim below.’ Babington’s voice came again.

Dicken lifted his hand in acknowledgement. He and Babington had flown together many times, in Iraq, India and England, and there was a rapport between them that made them easy companions despite their difference in rank.

‘New airfield down there, sir, by the look of it.’

‘Got it?’

‘Without question.’

Babington’s smile came, a cheerful, confident smile. He trusted Dicken in the way that Dicken trusted him. He had been working with the Cotton organisation for some time and it had been Babington who had involved Dicken in Cotton’s work.

‘It’s a good job, sir,’ he had pointed out. ‘And not without its measure of excitement.’

In that Babington was right because, known only to its crew, to Cotton, and a few others, the belly of the twin-tailed Lockheed contained secret RAF F24 Leica cameras of German manufacture. The sleek all-metal machine had been painted a pale duck-egg green because Cotton had discovered that colour tended to make it invisible from below when flying at height, and the cameras were smuggled aboard in ordinary suitcases covered with travel labels. Holes had been cut for them in the floor of the cabin and three of them, mounted one behind the other – the front one tilted to the right, the rear one to the left, the centre one pointing straight down – could produce overlapping pictures and at a height of 20,000 feet could cover a strip of country ten miles wide.

They were operated by a button under the pilot’s seat which activated a motor that opened secret sliding panels; and the aircraft, maintaining a straight course, aroused no concern in the minds of the suspicious Germans as they built up their installations for the conflict which everybody in Europe knew was on its way. Already the system had been used to photograph Italian installations in the Dodecanese and on the North African coast.

The present trip was officially to fly film to Berlin but Dicken knew that if the Germans found the cameras, they could be treated as spies, and since the film was being sent at a German company’s invitation, there was always the possibility that the Germans suspected what they were up to and they were flying into a trap. In any case, with hostilities likely within the next few weeks or even days, the hazard of being trapped by an outbreak of fighting on a German airfield was a real possibility and, as a precaution, it had been arranged that if things grew worse a telegram would be sent to Dicken in Berlin, saying his mother was ill and urging his return. Similar messages had been arranged for Cotton and others of his men in the danger zone.

As the machine lost height and touched down, Dicken taxied slowly to the parking area. To enable Babington to dismantle the cameras and hide them in their luggage, he pretended to check his engines. As Babington signalled that everything was done, he switched them off and turned. Babington was pointing.

‘Trouble,’ he said.

It seemed as if their fears of German suspicions were only too true because a squad of jackbooted, helmeted soldiers armed with rifles was doubling towards them. But, as they opened the door and began to climb out, the soldiers lined up in two ranks and the sergeant slammed to attention.

‘Heil Hitler!’

The barked command, part of the elaborate choreography of the dictatorship, came with clicking heels and raised arms.

Dicken responded briskly. Britain was not yet at war and it was of vital importance that he should be looked on as friendly. Then, as they started to walk between the lines, a familiar stocky figure appeared, its raised arm distinctly lacking in enthusiasm.