Goodbye Mickey Mouse - Len Deighton

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said the man. ‘And I suspect that Jamie is every bit as clever as his father when it comes to getting his own way. Don’t imagine he won’t find a way to get into the war.’

      ‘Has Jamie written to you?’ Bohnen was alert now and ready to be jealous of this man’s friendship with his son. ‘This is important to me. If the boy is being assigned to combat duty I have a right to know about it.’

      ‘I only know that he visited his mother on leave. He sold his car and cleared out his room. She was worried that he might have been sent overseas.’

      The old man watched Bohnen as he bit his lower lip and then moved his mouth in exactly the same way he’d seen young Jamie do when working out a sum or learning to take the controls of a tri-motor plane. Bohnen looked at his wristwatch while he calculated what he could do to check up on his son’s movements. ‘I’ll get on to that,’ he said, and pursed his lips in frustration.

      ‘You can’t keep him in cotton wool for the rest of his life, Alex. Jamie’s a grown man.’

      Bohnen got to his feet and sighed. ‘You don’t understand me, you only think you do. I don’t give myself any easy breaks, and if you were under my command I’d make sure no one ever accused me of going soft on old buddies. If Jamie’s looking to his old man for any kind of special treatment he can think again. Sure, I put in a word that helped assign him to Advanced Flying training. I know Jamie; he needed more time before flying combat. But that’s a while back, he’s ready now. If he comes here, he’ll take his chances along with any other young officer.’

      Bohnen’s visitor stood up and took his coat from the hook on the door. ‘It’s not a sin for a man to favour his son, Alex.’

      ‘But it is a court-martial offence,’ said Bohnen. ‘And I don’t quarrel with that.’

      ‘You’ve fallen in love with the military, Alex, the same way you’ve fallen in love with every project you’ve ever taken on.’

      ‘It’s the way I am,’ admitted Bohnen, helping the old man into his overcoat. ‘It’s why I’m able to get things rolling.’

      ‘But in wartime the Army has a million lovers; it becomes a whore. I don’t want to see you betrayed, Alex.’

      Bohnen smiled. ‘What was it Shelley said: “War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade.” Is that what you have in mind?’

      The visitor reached for his roll-brim hat. ‘I envy you your memory even more than your knowledge of the classics, Alex. But I was thinking of something Oscar Wilde said about the fascination of war being due to people thinking it wicked. He said war would only cease being popular when we realized how vulgar it was.’

      ‘Oscar Wilde?’ said Bohnen. ‘And when was he a reliable authority on the subject of war?’

      ‘I’ll tell you next week, Alex.’

      ‘The Savoy, lunch Friday. I’ll look forward to it.’

       2 Captain James A. Farebrother

      ‘You’re the luckiest guy in the world, I’ve always told you that, haven’t I?’

      ‘So what happened to the man who was going to be the richest airline pilot in America?’ replied Captain James Farebrother, made uncomfortable by the note of envy in his friend’s voice.

      Captain Charles Stigg pulled back the canvas flap to see out of the truck. London’s streets were dark and wet with rain, but even in the small hours there were people about. There were soldiers and sailors in fancy foreign uniforms. There was a jeep with British military police wearing red-topped caps, and some civil defence personnel wearing steel helmets. There must have been another air-raid warning.

      ‘Nearly there now,’ said Farebrother, more to himself than to his friend. Separation from Charlie would be a bad wrench. They’d been together since they were aviation cadets learning to fly on old Stearmans, and it was easy to understand why they’d become such good friends. Both were calm, confident young men with easy smiles and quiet voices. More than one member of a selection board had said they were not aggressive enough for the ritual slaughter now taking place daily in the thin blue skies above Germany.

      ‘Why didn’t I bring my long underwear?’ said Charlie Stigg, letting the flap close against the chilly air.

      ‘It’s nearly Christmas,’ said Farebrother.

      ‘I guess almost anything will be better than teaching Cadet Jenkins to land an AT-6.’

      ‘Almost anything will be safer,’ said Farebrother. ‘Even Norwich on a Saturday night.’

      ‘You know why I stopped going to the Saturday-night dances?’ said Charlie Stigg. ‘I couldn’t face another of those girls telling me I looked too young to be an instructor.’

      ‘They didn’t mean anything by that.’

      ‘They thought we were ducking out of the war—they figured we volunteered to be flying instructors.’

      ‘The kind of girl I met at the dances didn’t even know there was a war on,’ said Farebrother.

      ‘Norwich,’ said Stigg. ‘So that’s how you pronounce it; I guess I’ve been saying it wrong. Yeah, good. Come over there and see me, Jamie, it sure will cheer me up.’ The truck stopped and they heard the driver hammering on his door to signal that this was Stigg’s destination, the Red Cross Club.

      ‘Good luck, Charlie.’

      ‘Look after yourself, Jamie,’ said Charlie Stigg. He threw his bag out onto the ground and climbed down. ‘And a merry Christmas.’

      It wasn’t fair. Charlie Stigg had been hardworking and conscientious enough to master the complications of flying multi-engined aircraft, so when they finally let him go to war they turned down his application for fighters and sent him to a Bomb Group. Farebrother deliberately flunked his conversion to twins and got the assignment that Charlie so desperately wanted. It wasn’t fair, war isn’t fair, life isn’t fair.

      He suffered a pang of guilt as he watched Charlie staggering up the steps of the club under the weight of his pack, and then, with the heartlessness of youth, dismissed the feeling from his mind. Farebrother was going to be a fighter pilot; he was the luckiest guy in the world.

      ‘Is this the truck for Steeple Thaxted?’ a voice called from the darkness.

      ‘That’s the way I heard it,’ said Farebrother.

      An officer in a waterproof mac followed by half a dozen enlisted men climbed into the truck. Realizing that Farebrother was an outsider, they drew away from him as if he were the carrier of some contagious disease. The truck started and the officer lit a cigarette and then offered one to Farebrother, who declined and then asked, ‘What’s it like at Steeple Thaxted?’

      ‘Ever been in the Okefenokee Swamp when the heating was off?’

      ‘That bad?’

      ‘Picture an endless panorama of shit with tents stuck in it and you’ve got it. Whenever I meet a new dame at a dance, the first thing I ask her is if she’s got a bathroom with hot water.’ He drew on his cigarette, well aware of his audience of EMs. ‘Of course, this being England, she usually hasn’t got a bathroom.’ One of the men chuckled.

      ‘You’re living in tents in this weather?’ said Farebrother.

      The officer prodded Farebrother’s bag with the toe of his shoe and pushed at it until he revealed the stencilled lettering on the side. ‘A fly-boy, are you?’ He tilted his head to read the name.

      ‘I’m a pilot,’ said Farebrother.

      ‘Captain J. A. Farebrother,’ the officer

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