The Challenging Heights by Max Hennessy Read Free Book Online Page A

they lined up for a Latvian minister they’d never seen before to hand out medals and make a speech none of them understood, then, without speaking, they tossed the last of their baggage on to the lorries and began to scramble aboard themselves.
    When they took their last look back as the lorries turned on to the road, they saw an ancient cab appearing down the road from the city. As it came alongside, a head appeared.
    ‘Hey!’ A man in RAF uniform thrust his head out and started yelling. ‘What’s going on? I’ve been ordered to report to a Major Cuthbert Orr. Is he here?’
    Hatto grinned at Dicken. ‘It’s Parasol Percy.’
    Thrusting his head out, Dicken recognised at once the plump pale face and protruding ears of their old enemy, Diplock.
    ‘Just down there,’ Hatto yelled, pointing. ‘Just packing up the office!’
    Diplock had recognised them immediately and was frowning. ‘I’ve just been ordered out here,’ he snapped, his expression suspicious as if he already suspected who was behind his unexpected posting. ‘What’s going on? Where’s everybody going?’
    Hatto beamed. ‘Well,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I don’t know where you’re going, but we’re going home.’

 
     
Four
    ‘Berlin’s no place to visit,’ Dicken’s mother insisted. ‘It’s full of Germans and full of wickedness.’
    To Dicken, Berlin seemed more like the edge of a volcano. Nobody there seemed to be aware of the fact, however, and if they were it seemed doubtful that they would shed any tears, or even that their tears would extinguish the flames. Truncated, impoverished and with an economic crisis that had sat on their shoulders like a vulture ever since the Armistice, after the war the Germans wanted only to enjoy themselves and Berlin seemed like a city gone mad.
    Dicken’s mother was right, of course. Berlin was wicked and it was full of Germans. But there were others there, too. Because it had become what it had, it was also full of Frenchmen, Americans, Englishmen, anybody who had money to spend and needed something to spend it on. The fact that the Germans had been their enemies mattered not a jot. The men who had fought in the late war were always more in sympathy with their enemies, the German soldiers, sailors and airmen, than they ever had been with their own politicians who seemed nothing but sanctimonious spouters backed by financiers and businessmen who all seemed to have done remarkably well out of the fighting.
    In Germany, it had left a legacy of bitterness. The returning soldiers had inherited a sick economy, and Europe was shaken and weak and lacked stability. Three empires had collapsed, imposing burdens on other countries which were bearing them to the ground, and the cry of ‘Back to normal’, by which was implied that serene world of pre-1914, meant as little to the demobilised soldiers as Lloyd George’s promise of ‘a land fit for heroes to live in’.
    With high prices and the sudden drying up of jobs as the industrial backlog left by the short-lived post-war boom began to fade, unemployment increased and, with unscrupulous war profiteers unloading their new factories as fast as they could before they lost money, Europe was operating at a disadvantage and a depression was quite clearly just over the horizon.
    Suddenly the only thing that seemed to have a future was the brand new industry of civil aviation. The boost given to it by the war and the crossing of the Atlantic had proved beyond all doubt that there was a future in flying. From being regarded as something like high-wire walkers operating without a net, airmen were now being seen as men of the future. But there were ugly rumours about the RAF moving around London, because between them, the army, the navy and the Treasury seemed determined to destroy it, and its officers were wondering what was to happen to them. Even at this late date, no plan had yet appeared for the establishment of regular officers and Dicken wasn’t even