A Thousand Suns Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - The Assignment

  Chapter 2 - The Coast Road

  Chapter 3 - Heading Out

  Chapter 4 - The Wreck

  Chapter 5 - Missing in Action

  Chapter 6 - File n-27

  Chapter 7 - McGuire

  Chapter 8 - The Second Dive

  Chapter 9 - Sean Grady

  Chapter 10 - Contemplation

  Chapter 11 - Finding KG-301

  Chapter 12 - The Telephone Call

  Chapter 13 - Another Truck

  Chapter 14 - Major Rall

  Chapter 15 - Medusa

  Chapter 16 - Watched

  Chapter 17 - Decision

  Chapter 18 - One More Voyage

  Chapter 19 - Wallace

  Chapter 20 - The Bunker

  Chapter 21 - Test Flight

  Chapter 22 - Koch

  Chapter 23 - Schröder’s Men

  Chapter 24 - Lucian

  Chapter 25 - Schenkelmann

  Chapter 26 - Truman

  Chapter 27 - The Route

  Chapter 28 - On the Move

  Chapter 29 - Via Nantes

  Chapter 30 - Arrival

  Chapter 31 - Into the Water

  Chapter 32 - Zero Hour

  Chapter 33 - Observing

  Chapter 34 - Mission Time: 30 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 35 - Mission Time: 3 Hours, 10 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 36 - Mission Time: 3 Hours, 55 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 37 - Mission Time: 4 Hours Elapsed

  Chapter 38 - Mission Time: 4 Hours, 5 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 39 - Mission Time: 5 Hours, 25 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 40 - Leaving Town

  Chapter 41 - Mission Time: 5 Hours, 42 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 42 - Mission Time: 5 Hours, 50 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 43 - Mission Time: 6 Hours, 1 Minute elapsed

  Chapter 44 - Mission Time: 6 Hours, 9 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 45 - Mission Time: 6 Hours, 12 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 46 - Getting Wallace

  Chapter 47 - Mission Time: 6 Hours, 22 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 48 - Mission Time: 6 Hours, 24 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 49 - Mission Time: 6 Hours, 28 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 50 - Running

  Chapter 51 - Surrender: Mission Time: 10 Hours, 6 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 52 - Mission Time: 20 Hours, 10 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 53 - Mission Time: 21 Hours, 20 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 54 - Mission Time: 21 Hours, 52 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 55 - Mission Time: 22 Hours, 5 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 56 - Question

  Chapter 57 - Mission Time: 22 Hours, 12 Minutes Elapsed

  Chapter 58 - Ditched

  Chapter 59 - Burning the Bodies

  Chapter 60 - Decision

  Chapter 61 - Going Home

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Wallace nodded. ‘I was around when . . . well, when these events happened.’

  ‘Can you tell me what exactly happened?’

  ‘Well,’ Wallace said, lowering his voice. ‘What do you know so far?’

  ‘Not a lot. There’s a B-17 down there, it was flown by a German air crew. I think it fought its way over Europe to get to America. I also know that the body of one of the crew drifted ashore near the end of the war, and its discovery triggered a huge search off the coast nearby for a few days. I presume they were looking for the bomber. That’s what I know. What I can speculate is that there was something or someone aboard the plane that the US government really wanted. How’s that for starters?’

  Wallace nodded. ‘Very good - almost as much as I know. Tell me, have you been down to look at it yet?’

  ‘Yup. I’ve done two dives down there.’

  ‘How is she after all these years? How does the bomber look?’

  ‘Amazing. The whole plane is intact, very little corrosion, very little marine growth.’

  Alex Scarrow lives a nomadic existence with his wife Frances and his son Jacob, their current home being Norwich. He spent the first ten years out of college in the music business chasing record deals and the next twelve years in the computer games industry. Visit his website at www.scarrow.co.uk.

  By Alex Scarrow

  October Skies

  Last Light

  A Thousand Suns

  AN ORION EBOOK

  First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Orion

  This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books

  Copyright © Alex Scarrow 2006

  The moral right of Alex Scarrow to be identified as the author

  of this work has been asserted in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious,

  and any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  eISBN : 978 1 4091 0548 0

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  A Thousand Suns

  ALEX SCARROW

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  For you, Frances, this one is for you.

  The following is encrypted for your eyes only:

  MWTCDH YDK ENAEXGV FT TI

  MWTI IPKIR, AHCZ PZD.

  BIL QXTG IAT UTLI XXZWMTXC RTTGL.

  I am Vishnu, become death

  Destroyer of worlds,

  Shatterer of worlds,

  The Mighty One

  A thousand suns

  Bursting in the sky.

  On 29 April 1945 the Allies secretly surrendered unconditionally to Nazi Germany. Four hours later, the surrender was withdrawn.

  Herons Cove, Rhode Island

  30 April 1945

  At a distance it had looked like a tangled ball of fishing net and seaweed. It rolled in the breaking surf and settled a little further up the shingle as each succeeding wave surged up the beach and then drew back with the hiss of thousands of pebbles tumbling in the froth.

  The two young boys ambled down through the sand dunes crowned with tufts of coarse grass and descended onto the pebbled surface of the beach. The eldest boy studied the object for a long while before putting raw fingers to his numb lips. He attempted a whistle, which was all but lost between the crash and rumble of the waves and the gusting wind.

  A moment later a large German Shepherd appeared on top of a dune, panting noisily, its long pink tongue flapping like a pennant.

  ‘Over there, Prince!’ he said, pointing towards the dark object on the beach. Prince set off at a sprint, passed the boys, showering them with kicked-up sand and flecks of saliva.

  They watched the dog as it quickly crossed the beach, correcting course once it had sighted the object for itself.

  ‘Don’t let him roll in it,’ the smaller boy called out, ‘you know your dad hates him rollin’ in beached catch.’


  The dog splashed through the surf and reached the object as the boys clattered across the pebbles and onto the soft sand, slowly approaching the dog and the discovery.

  Twenty yards away from it, the older boy slowed down. ‘That ain’t a fishin’ net,’ he said uneasily.

  Prince pawed at the object and buried his nose in it, noisily snuffling and oblivious to the boys as they came to a halt a few feet away.

  ‘Oh boy,’ he muttered under his breath, taking an involuntary step back.

  A wave rolled the object over. Prince began to lick the exposed pale face of a young man, a blond fringe plastered to the brow with dried blood.

  ‘Is that man dead, Sean?’ the smaller boy whispered, looking up at his older friend for confirmation. ‘He’s dead, ain’t he?’

  Sean moved reluctantly towards it, aware that Danny was holding back and looking uncertainly to him to take the lead. He was only a year older than Danny - thirteen, to his twelve - but that was enough to confer an unambiguous seniority on him.

  He approached the body and leaned over it, studying the face intently, ‘Think so. He’s not moving a whole lot.’

  Danny gasped.

  He watched each wave lift and move the dead man’s arms up, and the retreating ebb pull them back down again. In a bizarre way it looked like he was trying to fly.

  ‘When a body dies it goes all stiff,’ he said matter-offactly. Danny had the stern face of an undertaker. ‘Do you think he’s one of the fishermen?’

  The dead man looked like he couldn’t have been over thirty years old. Sean knew most of the men who worked on the trawlers in Port Lawrence; they were all much older. Most of the young ones in Port Lawrence had long ago left these shores for the war in Europe.

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t recognise him. Anyway, those don’t look like oilskins.’

  He slowly reached out a finger and lightly prodded the corpse’s chest. ‘Yeah, reckon he’s dead all right,’ he announced with growing confidence. ‘Maybe he fell overboard from one of the cargo ships.’

  Danny nodded gravely. ‘He must’ve fallen,’ he added soberly.

  Sean, encouraged that the corpse wasn’t about to spring to life, grew bolder and started to pull away some ribbons of seaweed that had wrapped themselves around the body. Prince resumed licking the dead man’s face.

  ‘He ain’t going to wake up, Prince, he’s gone,’ said Sean. He had pulled away enough of the seaweed to reveal the clothes on the corpse’s body.

  No oilskins, no slicker.

  ‘That ain’t a fisherman,’ he said suddenly. ‘That’s a flying jacket. He’s an airman, one of our boys.’

  The pair of them stared with renewed awe at the dead man rolling with the rhythmic pattern of the waves.

  ‘Gee . . . reckon we should bury him?’ said Danny. ‘We could make him a nice cross from some driftwood. There’s plenty of it lying around.’

  Sean considered the idea, but he knew this kind of thing required the intervention of grown-ups, and someone official to ‘square the box and nail the lid’, as his mom used to say. ‘We should really go tell the deputy, or my dad, or someone. He’s one of our fly-boys, Danny - that makes him important. You go and get my dad and tell him, I’ll see if he’s got a name tag.’

  Danny nodded, relieved to have an excuse to step back away from the body. He turned around and ran back across the beach towards the sand dunes and the small village of Port Lawrence beyond, casting one last glance back at Sean as he kneeled down beside the body.

  Sean watched Danny go before turning back to the body. He wasn’t that keen to touch it any more than he had to, but he knew it was the right thing to do. The man had a name, and no doubt a mom and a dad, and a missus who needed to be told where he’d ended up.

  Sean knew the body would have something with a name on it . . . a dog tag, or a name-badge on the chest or something. He knew all the fly-boys had some way to identify them.

  With one hand only and a barely concealed look of distaste on his face he slowly peeled back the lapel of the leather flying jacket and prepared to slide his fingers under the wet tunic and hunt for some tags. Sean was fully aware that he might just make contact with the dead man’s cold flesh, and his bottom lip drew back with disgust at the thought.

  But he needed to probe no further.

  His eyes widened when he saw the object lying under the lapel of the flying jacket and upon the man’s still chest.

  ‘Oh boy,’ said Sean.

  Three Miles off the Coast of Rhode Island

  Present day

  The sea was as flat as a tabletop. The failing light of an overcast evening sky painted it a dull, featureless marble grey.

  Jeff sat on the aft deck smoking and looking back over the stern gunwale at the pale wake of suds trailing behind the trawler as she made a steady six knots south. Undisturbed by the calm sea, the wake extended off towards the horizon, where one drab grey merged seamlessly into another.

  When it was like this, so calm, so quiet, he found it hard to believe that they were on the open sea, and not in some sheltered lagoon or inland lake. The North Atlantic wasn’t often like this. He was used to the sea off Rhode Island and Connecticut being choppy along the Sound at the very least, and the salt spray from broken waves stinging his skin. But this evening it was subdued, unnaturally calm, like a scolded child sulking. If it wasn’t for the rhythmic thud and sputter of the trawler’s diesel engine, he knew it would be utterly silent, except for the lapping of water against the hull.

  No way for the Atlantic to be.

  It wasn’t right. It felt like the calm between two pressure fronts, the sort of calm that had you hauling in your nets and securing down every loose thing on deck. But there was nothing to get excited about, no major weather heading their way; just the ocean having an unsettlingly quiet day.

  The net lines stretched from thirty-foot outriggers either side of the trawler’s pilothouse into the water. He could tell by the limp way the lines hung and the reduced drag on the boat that there was precious little catch in the voluminous net beneath the surface, trailing several hundred yards behind them.

  It had been a poor day.

  All in all it had been a pretty shitty week. By a rough reckoning of the last five days’ haul he had maybe broken even on the diesel they had burned cruising up and down this stretch of the banks off the New England coastline. Then there was the cost of the food for the three lads he had aboard.

  Maybe he’d break even, if they could pull in something decent. Four tons of catch, be it mackerel, cod, herring, tuna, swordfish, whatever . . . was break-even point roughly. If it were mostly tuna, you could say three tons. It would be impossible to weigh the haul until they returned and offloaded it, but Jeff could guess the weight from the space taken in the ice lockers. They needed another ton before they could start thinking about turning a profit.

  One last run this evening and then I’m taking her home.

  He hoped this last roll of the dice would end his week-long run of bad luck. It would be a good way to draw a line under their profitless trip, to pull out a full net tonight and end on a good note. Even if all it did was cover his costs instead of leaving him hundreds down on the whole trip.

  It wasn’t exactly the easiest way to make a living.

  He took a final pull on his cigarette, watching it glow brightly in the gathering dark, and then tossed it out into their churning wake.

  It wasn’t the easiest way to make a living for his lads either, that much was for sure, but then it had to be better than wearing a stupid paper hat, a plastic name tag and serving fries.

  The boys on his boat were young. All three of them were under twenty. Jeff took them on instead of the more experienced crew because they were happy to work for a percentage only, instead of a retainer and a percentage. Young fellas, not one of them had properly finished school, leaving them all with few options to choose from. Round here it was either catching fish or stacking shelves. And catching fish paid be
tter.

  He remembered when he was twenty: no bills to pay, no family to provide for and little to lose. Percentage-only worked just fine. A good trip and his boys saw good money, far more than is decent for a kid without a high-school diploma. A good trip, three to five days away from home, could bring in up to 2000 dollars each after Jeff had subtracted overheads.

  A bad trip? . . . well that’s the way it works. Some good, some bad, you throw good dice then you get the super-big dollar prizes, you throw lame dice . . .

  Well, look at it this way; at least you’ve been out in the fresh air.

  Jeff smiled. That was something his old man used to say.

  That’s the only game going round here, and them’s the rules.

  That was another.

  All three of the boys still lived at home with their folks as far as he knew. All the money they made was pretty much fun money. Booze, bikes, smokes, whatever.

  Ritchie Bradden, a lad who used to crew for him last season, called it his ‘screw you’ money. He’d taken five days’ sick leave from his seven-dollars-an-hour job at Wallders, only to come back at the end of the week and walk off Jeff’s boat with nearly 3000 dollars in his back pocket. His first stop was Wallders to say ‘screw you’ to the store manager. Since then Ritchie had stuck with fishing.

  Percentage-only worked just fine.

  Jeff watched the line descending from the outrigger silhouetted against the last light on the horizon. It twitched and began to pull backwards with a creaking that could be heard above the chug of the engine.

  ‘Hey! We got a catch!’ one of the lads called out.

  Jeff watched as it tightened. A school of mackerel could do that. They were dense, tightly packed. You knew it when you scored them.