I’m at the airfield at Fehring and I’ve got traffic for you. Cessna Conquest just left, destination Sabac. Here is his radio frequency.’
‘Is the pilot anyone we know?’
‘Name of Dillon – Sean Dillon. Irish, I believe. Small man, very fair hair, late thirties I’d say. Doesn’t look much. Nice smile, but the eyes tell a different story.’
‘I’ll have him checked out through Central Intelligence, but you’ve done well, Tomic. We’ll give him a warm welcome.’
The phone clicked and Tomic replaced the receiver. He took out a packet of the vile Macedonian cigarettes he affected and lit one. Pity about Dillon. He’d rather liked the Irishman, but that was life and he started to put his tools away methodically.
And Dillon was already in trouble, not only thick cloud and the constant driving rain, but even at a thousand feet a swirling mist that gave only an intermittent view of pine forest below.
‘And what in the hell are you doing here, old son?’ he asked softly. ‘What are you trying to prove?’
He got a cigarette out of his case, lit it and a voice spoke in his earphones in heavily accented English, ‘Good morning, Mr Dillon, welcome to Yugoslavia.’
The plane took station to starboard not too far away, the red stars on its fuselage clear enough, a Mig 21, the old Fishbed, probably the Soviet jet most widely distributed to its allies. Outdated now, but not as far as Dillon was concerned.
The Mig pilot spoke again. ‘Course 124, Mr Dillon. We’ll come to a rather picturesque castle at the edge of the forest, Kivo it’s called, Intelligence Headquarters for this area. There’s an airstrip there and they’re expecting you. They might even arrange a full English breakfast.’
‘Irish,’ Dillon said cheerfully. ‘A full Irish breakfast and who am I to refuse an offer like that? One-two-four it is.’
He turned on to the new course, climbing to two thousand feet as the weather cleared a little, whistling softly to himself. A Serbian prison did not commend itself, not if the stories reaching Western Europe were even partly true, but in the circumstances, he didn’t seem to have any choice and then, a couple of miles away on the edge of the forest beside a river he saw Kivo, a fairytale castle of towers and battlements surrounded by a moat, the airstrip clear beside it.
‘What do you think?’ the Mig pilot asked. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’
‘Straight out of a story by the Brothers Grimm,’ Dillon answered. ‘All we need is the ogre.’
‘Oh, we have that too, Mr Dillon. Now put down nice and easy and I’ll say goodbye.’
Dillon looked down into the interior of the castle, noticed soldiers moving towards the edge of the airstrip preceded by a Jeep and sighed. He said into his mike, ‘I’d like to say it’s been a good life, but then there are those difficult days, like this morning for instance. I mean, why did I even get out of bed?’
He heaved the control column right back and boosted power, climbing fast and the Mig pilot reacted angrily. ‘Dillon, do as you’re told or I’ll blast you out of the sky.’
Dillon ignored him, levelling out at five thousand, searching the sky for any sign and the Mig, already on his tail, came up behind and fired. The Conquest staggered as cannon shell tore through both wings.
‘Dillon – don’t be a fool!’ the pilot cried.
‘Ah, but then I always was.’
Dillon went down fast, levelling at two thousand feet over the edge of the forest, aware of vehicles moving from the direction of the castle. The Mig came in again firing his machine guns now and the Conquest’s windscreen disintegrated, wind and rain roaring in. Dillon sat there, hands firm on the control column, blood on his face from a glass splinter.
‘Now then,’ he said into his mike. ‘Let’s see how good you are.’
He dropped the nose and went straight down, the pine forest waiting for him below and the Mig went after him, firing again. The Conquest bucked, the port engine dying as Dillon levelled out at four hundred feet and behind him the Mig, no time to pull out at the speed it was doing, ploughed into the forest and fireballed.
Dillon, trimming as best he could for flying on one engine, lost power and dropped lower. There was a clearing up ahead and to his left. He tried to bank towards it, was already losing height as he clipped the tops of the pine trees. He cut power instantly and braced himself for the crash. In the end, it was the pine trees which saved him, retarding his progress so much that by the time he hit the clearing for a belly landing, he wasn’t actually going all that fast.
The Conquest bounced twice, and came to a shuddering halt. Dillon released his straps, scrambled out of his seat and had the door open in an instant. He was out head first, rolling over in the rain and on his feet and running, his right ankle twisting so that he fell on his face again. He scrambled up and limped away as fast as he could, but the Conquest didn’t burst into flame, it simply crouched there in the rain as if tired.
There was thick black smoke above the trees from the burning Mig and then soldiers appeared on the other side of the clearing. A Jeep moved out of the trees behind them, top down and Dillon could see an officer standing up in it wearing a winter campaign coat, Russian-style, with a fur collar. More soldiers appeared, some of them with Dobermanns, all barking loudly and straining against their leashes.
It was enough. Dillon turned to hobble into the trees and his leg gave out on him. A voice on a loudhailer called in English, ‘Oh, come now, Mr Dillon, be sensible, you don’t want me to set the dogs on you.’
Dillon paused, balanced on one foot, then he turned and hobbled to the nearest tree and leaned against it. He took a cigarette from his silver case, the last one, and lit it. The smoke tasted good as it bit at the back of his throat and he waited for them.
They stood in a semi-circle, soldiers in baggy tunics, guns covering him, the dogs howling against being restrained. The Jeep rolled to a halt and the officer, a major from his shoulder boards, stood up and looked down at him, a good-looking man of about thirty with a dark saturnine face.
‘So, Mr Dillon, you made it in one piece,’ he said in faultless public school English. ‘I congratulate you. My name, by the way, is Branko – John Branko. My mother was English, is, I should say. Lives in Hampstead.’
‘Is that a fact.’ Dillon smiled. ‘A desperate bunch of rascals you’ve got here, Major, but cead mile failte anyway.’
‘And what would that mean, Mr Dillon?’
‘Oh, that’s Irish for a hundred thousand welcomes.’
‘What a charming sentiment.’ Branko turned and spoke in Serbo-Croat to the large, brutal-looking sergeant who sat behind him clutching an AK assault rifle. The sergeant smiled, jumped to the ground and advanced on Dillon.
Major Branko said, ‘Allow me to introduce you to my Sergeant Zekan. I’ve just told him to offer you a hundred thousand welcomes to Yugoslavia or Serbia as we prefer to say now.’
Dillon knew what was coming, but there wasn’t a thing he could do. The butt of the AK caught him in the left side, driving the wind from him as he keeled over, the sergeant lifted a knee
