‘The Dakota, you mean?’ Devlin said.
‘An RAF Dakota which had crash-landed in Holland and was put back into service. To all intents, a British plane flying home if anyone saw it and all it had to do to make the drop was fly in under eight hundred feet because many sections of the English coast have no low-ievel radar.’
‘Worked like a charm,’ Devlin said. ‘Except on the way back. Gericke, the pilot, was in the same hospital as me. He was shot down by a Luftwaffe night-fighter.’
‘Unfortunate, but an intriguing thought. A small plane, flying in under radar. A British plane. A suitable landing place. It could have you and Steiner out and safely in France in no time at all.’
‘And pigs might fly, General. Not only would you need a suitable plane. You’d need the landing place. May I also point out you’d need an exceptional pilot.’
‘Come now, Mr Devlin, anything is possible. We have what’s called the Enemy Aircraft Flight where the Luftwaffe tests captured British and American planes of every kind. They even have 3817. I’ve seen it.’ He turned to Use. ‘Get in touch with them at once. Also extend your research on Operation Sea Lion to cover any sites in the general area of London that we intended to use for covert operations, landings by night, that sort of thing.’
‘And a pilot,’ Devlin told her. ‘Like I said, something special.’
‘I’ll get right on to it.’
As she turned, there was a knock at the door and a young woman in SS auxiliary uniform came in carrying a large file. ‘St Mary’s Priory, Wapping. Was that what the General wanted?’
Use laughed triumphantly. ‘Good girl, Sigrid. Wait for me in the office. I’ve got something else for you.’ She turned and handed the file to Schellenberg. ‘I’ll get her started on the other thing.’
As she reached the door, Schellenberg said, ‘Another possibility, Use. Check the files on those British right-wing organizations that flourished before the war, the ones that sometimes had Members of Parliament on their books.’
She went out and Devlin asked, ‘And who in the hell would they be, General?’
‘Anti-Semitics, people with Fascist sympathies. Many members of the British aristocracy and upper classes rather admired the Fuhrer, certainly before the war.’
‘The kind who were disappointed not to see the panzers driving up to Buckingham Palace?’
‘Something like that.’ Schellenberg opened the bulky file, extracted the first plan and opened it. ‘So, Mr Devlin, there you have it in all its glory. St Mary’s Priory.’
Asa Vaughan was twenty-seven years of age. Born in Los Angeles, his father a film producer, he had been fascinated by flying from an early age, had taken his pilot’s licence even before going to West Point. Afterwards he had completed his training as a fighter pilot, performing so well that he was assigned to take an instructors’ course with the Navy at San Diego. And then came the night his whole world had collapsed, the night he’d got into a drunken brawl in a harbourside bar and punched a major in the mouth.
October 5, 1939. The date was engraved on his heart. No scandal, no court martial. No one wanted that. Just his resignation. One week at his parents* opulent home in Beverly Hills was all he could bear. He packed a bag and made for Europe.
The war having started in September, the RAF were accepting a few Americans but they didn’t like his record. And then on November 30 the Russians invaded Finland. The Finns needed pilots badly and volunteers from many nations flooded in to join the Finnish Air Force, Asa among them.
It was a hopeless war from the start, in spite of the gallantry of the Finnish Army, and most of the fighter planes available were outdated. Not that the Russians were much better, but they did have a few of the new German FWi9OS which Hitler had promised to Stalin as a goodwill gesture over the Poland deal.
Asa had flown bi-planes like the Italian Fiat Falco and the British Gloucester Gladiator, hopelessly outclassed by the opposition, only his superior skill as a pilot giving him an edge. His personal score stood at seven which made him an ace and then came that morning of ferocious winds and driving snow when he’d come in at four hundred feet, flying blind, lost his engine at the last moment and crash-landed.