Free Agent of Death by John Drake Page A

lost over three hundred men that way, trying to help, to pick up the dead. Especially the little ones.’ He sighed. ‘So now we know better. Now we leave them where they fell.’ He wiped his eyes again.
    The Peshka flew on, widening the circles to cover all the city. Most of the city was now empty. There was no life at all. But wherever there were people they were dead. Ulitzky wept while I looked on in horror.
    ‘How many was it that died, altogether?’ I said.
    ‘We don’t know for sure. But at least fifty thousand.’
    ‘Were there no survivors?’
    ‘Oh yes, thank God,’ said Ulitzky, and, despite being an officer in the atheist Red Army he devoutly crossed himself with the Russian Orthodox thumb and two fingers that invoked the Holy Trinity. ‘Ulvid is a big city,’ he said. ‘Over two hundred thousand people lived here.’ He blinked. He looked awkward. ‘But they’re all gone now. Sent away. The NKVD took them on special trains, to the east, so they can’t talk about this.’ He looked at me. ‘Nor you, Moscow boy,’ he said, and he raised his voice in angry emphasis, ‘ Nobody talks about this ! Understand ?’
    ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘What about casualties? Any wounded?’
    ‘None. They lived or they died. One or the other.’
    Ulitzky slapped the pilot’s shoulder again. ‘Comrade pilot! Enough. Show him the Nazi plane. You know where it is.’
    ‘Yes, Comrade Colonel!’
    The plane banked, the engine note dropped, and the pilot took us in a long dive, thankfully gentle. He came down very low, out over the river that bent around the city. He throttled well back: just enough power to avoid a stall.
    ‘There,’ said Ulitzky, ‘See?’
    I saw a black line of fresh soil, torn through the green of a field. The line led to the wreckage of a German aircraft, partly burned out, and tumbled over onto its back. It was bigger than the Peshka and twin engined. But I felt a tickle of excitement. This aircraft wasn’t driven by piston engines and propellers. It was something else. It was the future. It was something only the Jerries had: a jet bomber.
    ‘It’s a jet, isn’t it?’ said Ulitzky.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘We know everything about Nazi jets,’ said Ulitzky, angrily. ‘We’ll soon make them ourselves. Better ones !’ Then he shrugged. ‘So what is it, Moscow boy, what do you know?’
    I thought of the briefing notes I’d read. There’d been pictures too. Bletchley and MI5 knew some of what had happened to Ulvid, and had done their research.
    ‘It’s an Arado,’ I said, looking down at the German plane, ‘Can you get any lower, comrade?’ I said to the pilot. The pilot nodded, the engines roared, my guts squirmed and the Peshka all but scraped the wreckage on its next pass.
    I turned to Ulitzky.
    ‘It’s an Arado 234. Single-seat, fast bomber. Very fast indeed. Supposed to be capable of five hundred miles per hour. That’s eight hundred kilometres per hour. So if it really can do that, it’s easily the fastest bomber in the world.’
    Ulitzky whistled, and the pilot spoke. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘That’s why we couldn’t catch it.’
    ‘Who?’ I said.
    ‘Our boys in the Yak 9s. They can only do about six hundred and seventy.’
    ‘Did you try to intercept it?’
    ‘Not me – the fighter boys, at our base.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘They chased it after it passed over the city, Ulvid. But then it put on speed and just ran away from them.’
    ‘Then what?’
    ‘It began a sharp turn, as if to go back over the city, and then one of its engines caught fire.’
    ‘Were your machines shooting at it? Or was it flak?’
    ‘Oh no. It caught fire all by itself. And it slowed right down, and our boys closed in, and then there was an explosion in the aircraft, and the Fritz pilot blew out of the cockpit in his chair, and came down by parachute.’
    ‘That would be an ejector seat,’ I said.
    ‘What’s that?’ said Ulitzky.
    ‘Something clever the Germans have invented. To get the