Biggles Looks Back Read online

  CONTENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  CHAPTER I: OUT OF THE PAST

  CHAPTER II: ACCUSATIONS AND EXPLANATIONS

  CHAPTER III: THE CLUE

  CHAPTER IV: FIRST NIGHT IN BOHEMIA

  CHAPTER V: VON STALHEIN EXPLAINS

  CHAPTER VI: A PARTY AND A RECONNAISSANCE

  CHAPTER VII: TROUBLE AT THE CAFE WAGNER

  CHAPTER VIII: HEAVY GOING

  CHAPTER IX: THE SECRET OF THE CASTLE

  CHAPTER X: THE PROBLEM

  CHAPTER XI: THE PLAN

  CHAPTER XII: A SHOCK AND A JOURNEY

  CHAPTER XIII: REINHARDT MAKES A CALL

  CHAPTER XIV: MORE PROBLEMS

  CHAPTER XV: A CHANGE OF PLAN

  CHAPTER XVI: THE RIVER CROSSING

  CHAPTER XVII: THE FINAL HOURS

  CHAPTER XVIII: HOW IT ALL ENDED

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The tragic incident (call it love affair if you like) of Biggles and Marie Janis was told as a short story in the first book of the series, published under the title of The Camels are Coming, the Sopwith Camel- aircraft being the type Biggles was flying at that time. To those who have not read the story (and perhaps those who have) the further details now revealed may throw a light on certain aspects of Biggles’s character, notably his indifference to the opposite sex.

  When the affair began he was young and carefree.

  Shock left him bitter and disillusioned. He never really got over it. He couldn’t forget it. Or perhaps he wouldn’t allow himself to forget it. Algy knew about it. So did Air Commodore Raymond, now his Chief. But it was never mentioned.

  W.E.J.

  CHAPTER I

  OUT OF THE PAST

  BIGGLES and Erich von Stalhein, one time of German Military Intelligence, lit their cigarettes as coffee was served after an excellent dinner in the little Thames side restaurant where, with the thawing of the Cold War, they met once in a while for a meal and to indulge in reminiscences; thus fulfilling a sarcastic prophesy, made years earlier by Ginger, before the hatchet had been buried, that they would end up by dining together.

  They were alone. For some minutes neither had spoken. Then, picking up his liqueur glass and gazing into the amber liquid it contained, Von Stalhein said quietly: “There’s a question I have long been tempted to ask you.”

  “This seems a good opportunity,” invited Biggles nonchalantly.

  “Did you ever wonder what became of Marie Janis?”

  Biggles, who had lifted his coffee cup, replaced it, slowly, in its saucer. His smile faded. His eyes met those of his old enemy. “I’ve been wondering all my life,” he said simply. “I’ve never stopped wondering. War threw us together. War tore us apart.”

  Von Stalhein shrugged. “That’s war!”

  “You’re going back a long way.”

  “But you haven’t forgotten.”

  “Am I ever likely to forget a woman who nearly got me shot as a traitor?”

  The German shook his head. “That isn’t the real reason why you remember her. A man doesn’t easily forget his first love — particularly when it is born within the sound of cannon fire.”

  There was a long pause. Then Biggles said: “There has never been another woman in my life.”

  “As far as I know there was never another man in hers.”

  Biggles frowned. “How much do you know about that miserable affair?”

  “As much as anyone knows, I suppose. I was a senior Intelligence officer at the time. You, fighting on the other side, were a junior captain. I knew Marie before I knew you. We did our training together at the Wilhelmstrasse School of Espionage. You fell in love with her. But you know that. What you don’t know is, I, too, was in love with her. Had she not met you I think she would have married me.” A ghost of a smile crossed Von Stalhein’s face. “But I never held that against you.”

  “Very generous of you,” answered Biggles with a gentle hint of sarcasm. “No, I never knew you had an interest, heart or in any other way, in Marie. To me, as I learned too late, she was a German spy.”

  “And a very efficient one. Don’t say the word spy as if it had a nasty taste. After all, the first time we came into collision, at Zabala, in the Middle East, what were you but a spy?”

  “So were you, operating under the name of El Shereef. My assignment was to trap you.”

  “Good. So we were all spies. Let us congratulate ourselves on being members of an honourable profession.”

  “Honourable? Who said it was honourable?”

  “Your own King, George V. He said: ‘In my opinion the spy is the greatest of soldiers. If he is detested it is because he is the most feared.’ And Napoleon once remarked that one spy in the right place was worth 20,000 men in the field. Armies can’t do without spies.”

  “I wasn’t a spy from choice. I was under orders.”

  “So was Marie. Unfortunately, as you should know by now, spies are human. They all have a weakness that can never entirely be eradicated. They have hearts. The perfect spy shouldn’t have a heart. Alas, Marie had one.”

  “She tricked me into doing something that could have put me in front of a firing squad.”

  “Why not? If she was your enemy you were hers. If she was able to trick you it was because you were young, inexperienced and irresponsible.”

  “All in the name of eternal love.”

  “In war love can be a useful weapon.”

  Biggles’s voice dropped to a soliloquy. “Those summer evenings. How close to heaven can mortal man get? I was nineteen and life was wonderful. Tearing up the sky all day, and then, when the searchlights were waving their silly arms — Marie. She’d be waiting in the orchard. Her face would light up when she saw me coming, still alive after the day’s dogfights. Or so, in my vanity, I imagined.”

  “This is a new Bigglesworth to me,” murmured Von Stalhein, dryly.

  “You said we all have hearts. Mine has been in cold store since the night a dream exploded in a cloud of lies. You’ve just opened the refrigerator door. Memories trickle out. Shut it. We’ve been talking of another world.”

  Von Stalhein fitted a cigarette into the long holder he used. “My dear Bigglesworth, don’t you realize it was the shock of that affair that made you what you became — a deadly combat pilot and a reliable espionage agent? The best spies have been known to slip up over a woman: after the lesson Marie gave you no woman would ever again fool you. You owe her something for that.”

  “Did she get back to Germany? That’s the canker that has been gnawing at me since the night my little world fell to pieces.”

  “Did you hope she’d get back? An enemy spy!”

  Biggles hesitated. “Yes, may God forgive me, I did. My love for her should have died; but it wouldn’t. I knew the entire counter-espionage corps, English and French, were after her, and I went through hell picturing her being caught and shot.”

  Von Stalhein held out his hands, palms upward. “You see what I mean about having a heart? You knew Marie was a German spy; she had betrayed you; yet you still hoped she’d get away.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes. She made her way across France to Spain where we picked her up and brought her home.”

  “Then what happened to her?”

  “She continued her work till the war ended and then took up nursing.”

  “Well, right or wrong I’m glad she came through,” declared Biggles. “Is she still alive?”

  “Oh yes.” Von Stalhein ordered more coffee and went on: “She would be happy to know you felt like that about her. It may seem strange to you but at the time we at German Intelligence Headquarters knew more about what was going on at 266 Squadron, your squadron, than you did. We knew, for instance, that a certain officer
, one Captain Bigglesworth, then known to us by name only, was under the close surveillance of British Intelligence.”

  “What the devil for? I had done nothing wrong.”

  “You were associating with an attractive young woman suspected of being a German spy. It was obvious you were under her influence.”

  “If Marie was suspect why didn’t they pick her up?”

  “They were all ready to do so but were anxious to know why she had been sent there. You provided the information.”

  “How?”

  “It was in the letter Marie gave you to drop at the Chateau Boreau, near Lille, where her supposed poor old father was said to live. The chateau was in fact our Intelligence Headquarters on that Front.”

  “How were you to know the letter I dropped was from her?”

  “She gave you her black and white silk scarf for a streamer. She knew we’d recognize it.”

  “So she even thought of that,” murmured Biggles sadly.

  “But for a most unfortunate accident our plan for wiping out your entire squadron would probably have succeeded, in which case your career would have ended that night.”

  “I’m still not altogether clear about it.”

  “Your squadron was doing us a lot of harm, wherefore as we couldn’t stop you in the air we decided to liquidate you on the ground. We wanted to catch all the pilots together at dinner in the officers’ mess; but being well camouflaged we didn’t know exactly where it was. To get that information we landed an agent behind your lines. Marie was chosen for the mission.”

  “How was she to get the information back to you?”

  “Nothing original. She took with her a homing pigeon. By one of those curious twists that can alter the course of a war she lost it. We had arranged for her to stay at a farm. The couple who lived there were in our pay. The first night Marie was there the pigeon was killed by a cat. That left her without any means of communicating with us. Had the bird lived you would never have come into the picture. As it was, like a gift from the gods you made a forced landing at the farm. Marie was a resourceful girl. She decided you should take her information to us. She turned on the charm and soon had you eating out of her hand. But now a snag had cropped up. She had carried the game a little too far and had fallen for you. She knew our plan: to kill all the officers of 266 Squadron in one devastating raid. She had to choose between love and duty.”

  “And she chose duty.”

  “As you or I would have done she put her country first. She gave you a letter to drop to an imaginary old father. Actually, her father was a general in the German Army. But you were being watched. That letter, which pinpointed your officers’ mess in invisible ink, was secretly removed from your pocket, after you had returned to the aerodrome, and another substituted. On the substitute the objective marked was the farm where Marie was staying.”

  “That was a damnable thing to do.”

  “Why? War is war, nothing barred. You delivered the letter, with the result that your mess escaped and the farm was blasted off the map.”

  “You needn’t tell me. I saw it happen. I shall never forget it.”

  “You thought she was in the middle of it.”

  “Naturally.”

  “But she wasn’t there. For some reason she had gone out.”

  “Do you know where, and why?”

  Von Stalhein looked surprised. “No. Do you?”

  “Yes. Now I can tell you something you don’t know because apparently she didn’t tell you. Knowing what was going to happen that night — or what she thought was going to happen — she went to the aerodrome and handed in a note for me asking me to meet her outside, the intention being to get me out of the mess before the blitz started. It so happened that I wasn’t there. I had busted a tyre landing on 287 Squadron aerodrome and was on my way home in a car. She waited for me.”

  “What time was this?”

  “About eight o’clock.”

  “She knew the raid was timed for eight. She waited by the aerodrome knowing that hell might break loose at any moment. My God! She must have been in love with you.”

  “I never saw her again. I was on my way home when I saw the farm go up in flames. I think I must have gone mad for a while. I can remember as a sort of nightmare fighting the Security Police and troops who stopped me trying to get to her. I was put under arrest. Later I knew she had escaped the holocaust because when I got back to my quarters I found a note from her. She had scribbled it on the road and given it to an airman to deliver. Of course, there was no question of my getting out. I was under close arrest with a Flight Commander named Mahoney as my escort. I was demented with shock, anyway.”

  “Have you still got that note?”

  “No. There was no need for me to keep it. Every word was burnt into my brain for life. I put a match to it so that it could never be used as evidence against her. By that time she knew I knew what she was — an enemy spy. All she said was: ‘Our destinies are not always in our own hands. Tonight I came to take you away or die with you, but you were not here. Remember always that if there is one thing true in this world of war and lies it is my love for you. That may help you as it helps me. My last thought will be of you.”

  “She expected to be caught and executed.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “What a woman! She went to your aerodrome to get you out at the very moment she knew it was due to be blasted out of existence by two squadrons of low-flying heavy bombers. I’m not surprised you’ve been faithful to her memory.”

  “That was why she wasn’t at the farm when the bombers struck. She was where she thought they were going to unload.”

  “What a situation!” breathed Von Stalhein. “Can you imagine anything more ironical? Hell let loose. Marie ready to die for an enemy soldier. You prepared to die for an enemy spy. Me at German Headquarters hoping she’d marry me. The gods of war played strange antics that night.”

  Biggles nodded sombrely. “For me the nightmare didn’t end that night. I could never find out what became of her. I had visions of her standing against a wall to be shot. For weeks I tore about the air like a madman, looking for trouble. I couldn’t eat. I tried to live on a diet of milk and brandy. My C.O. thought I was drunk. I wasn’t. I was cold sober. Just all burnt up with grief and rage. He said I was finished and posted me back to England. That was the last straw. I took off for one last show and, not surprisingly, was shot down over your side of the lines. Fate had one last trick to play. It happened to be the day the armistice was signed.”

  Von Stalhein smiled sympathetically. “Thus are men, if they survive, tempered in the furnace of bitter experience to become what you became — efficient, calculating, with a single-track mind. Had you married, your loyalties would have been divided between your wife and aviation; and a man can’t serve two mistresses honestly.”

  Biggles shrugged. “Why talk of something that didn’t happen?” A look came into his eyes as if a thought had struck him. “Has anything happened that you should raise this subject tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t tell me Marie is dead.”

  “Would it grieve you if—”

  “Yes, it most certainly would. If she died it would close a door which, foolishly perhaps, I have tried to keep open. She closed her last letter to me with the words, ‘We shall meet again, if not in this world then the next.’ I’ve clung to that hoping it was a prophesy that might come true, although in those days the odds against a combat pilot coming through the war were hundreds to one against.”

  “There is a remote chance it might still come true. I’ve always tried to keep in touch with her but it became increasingly difficult. Now I have news. A few days ago I had a letter.”

  Biggles’s eyes brightened. “From Marie?”

  “Yes.” Von Stalhein put a letter on the table. “You might care to read it.”

  “Is she in England?”

  “No, I’m sorry to say.”

  “But that’s an Eng
lish stamp on the envelope.”

  “Even if she knew my address, which seems most unlikely, she would hardly be so foolish as to write to me by name from where she lives.”

  “Ah! So she’s behind the Iron Curtain.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?

  “Czechoslovakia.”

  “What’s she doing there?”

  “Her people originally came from Bohemia, near the south-cast German border. You will no doubt remember the fuss when before the last war Hitler took over Sudetenland, as it was called, on the excuse there was a big German population there — as indeed there was. Nearly 4,000,000.”

  “Have you got her address?”

  “Unfortunately no. She doesn’t put one. She simply says I am writing from the old home, presumably under the impression I would know where she meant.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No. If she ever told me I’ve forgotten. I never went there. All I know is it is somewhere near Rodnitz, in Bohemia, now part of Czechoslovakia.”

  “I’ve never heard of the place. When she says her old home does that mean merely the region or the actual house?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “But you must have a clue. What sort of home had she? I mean, was it a big house, one that would be easy to find, or a cottage?”

  “I have an idea it was a big place. From what little she said about it I gathered her people were important landowners who had lived there for centuries. In fact, I believe her father was a baron. What conditions are like in Bohemia today I don’t know, because after the last war more than 3,000,000 Germans were evicted from the country.”

  “Yet Marie is still there.”

  “Apparently.”

  “How could that happen?”

  “I can only suppose she wished to return to the family home and was given permission to do so. I imagine it would be her property. Her father was killed in the war and I knew her mother died young.”

  “If her family was as well known as that she shouldn’t be too difficult to find.”

  “The name might not be so well known now, after all that has happened.”