‘Yes, sir. A B-17, sir.’

‘We think it should be arriving any time soon. I want you to stay on the line with me, Captain, and let me know what you can see or hear. You got that?’

‘Y-yes, sir. I got that, sir.’

The conference room was utterly silent as all of them strained to listen to the confusion of noises coming from the small table-top speaker. Wallace wondered if New York was the target, whether they would actually be able to hear the distant drone of the flying fortress’s engines moments before this bomb was to be dropped.

Truman broke the silence. ‘So, is there anything in the skies, son? Anything you can see or hear?’

‘It’s very noisy, sir. A lot of noise up here. I’m just looking around. There’s patchy cloud cover, sir. Broken clouds, so anything approaching could be hidden from us until it’s quite close.’

‘Just keep looking, Captain, and stay with us,’ said Truman.

The President looked down at his watch. ‘By my timepiece, we have under a minute left, gentlemen. In case I’m not around to say so… thank you for attending these last two days.’ Almost as an afterthought, Truman added: ‘God bless America.’

Wallace smiled at the President’s words, and he found himself marvelling at Truman’s composure. The man must be as nervous as him, probably much more so, given that he had no understanding of the science that confidently assured Wallace that this day would not be their last. Only Wallace and Frewer could see the numbers that made this bomb a nonsense. Their eyes met across the conference room and Frewer shook his head in a relaxed manner and smiled to reassure Wallace.

Nothing’s going to happen, kid.

Even so, Wallace couldn’t help but feel the cold draught of fate rushing towards them all.

The second hand on the wall clock passed by the nine and now pulled upwards towards the twelve in a languid arc.

Chapter 55

Mission Time: 22 Hours, 5 Minutes Elapsed

5.10 p.m., EST, approaching New York

Pieter saw the continent ahead of them at first as a series of indistinct smudges, appearing fleetingly behind the thick bank of clouds on the horizon. It seemed like America was having a dull, wet day as well as Europe. The smudges eventually merged into a solid dark mass of land on the horizon as he brought the plane down to 3000 feet.

‘Hans, I can see America!’ he shouted excitedly into his mask.

There was a moment before Hans replied as he scrambled to look out of one of the portholes to confirm the sighting. ‘My God, we made it!’

The low cloud had shrouded the coastline, hiding it from them until the last moment, and now he could see it approaching swiftly. Below, he could see several ships heading out to sea, leaving behind them long wakes that pointed like pale fingers north-west towards New York.

‘We’ve come too far south. I’m going to bring us up to two-ninety,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘How’s Stef?’

‘Still out cold. He doesn’t look too good.’

Poor lad.

It would have been good to have his help finding their way to New York, but it was clear from the traffic on the sea they weren’t too far off. Pieter smiled to himself. He just had to follow the ships; that was all he’d need to guide them in now. He checked their fuel. It was low, uncomfortably so. He estimated there was enough left for maybe another twenty minutes’ flying time. That was enough. Fifteen minutes or so to find New York, and five minutes to get some distance from it after they had dropped the bomb. If they couldn’t find anywhere suitable to land, they could bail out. Stef might be a problem if they had to do that, especially if he couldn’t be roused. In that case they’d just have to push him out, pull the cord and hope for the best.

And what about Max?

He suspected Hans would be happy enough to leave him aboard to go down with the plane. His snarling decision that Max was a traitor had sounded final. His own feelings were a little less certain. Max was no traitor, that much was for sure, but that strange note had clearly shaken him. He suspected that there was more to his odd behaviour than just that. Pieter had seen officers break down before, men that could seemingly endure an infinite amount of battlefield stress, and yet who suddenly seemed to suffer total emotional collapse. Several squadron leaders from KG-301 had suffered that fate, but for some reason he’d thought Max would never crumble like that. He wasn’t a traitor, and nor did he deserve to die. If it came to bailing, he’d make sure they all got out. Once they’d dropped the bomb, one way or another, this rift between them would no longer have any relevance.

The note?

The bloody thing had to be an attempt at sabotage, or a last-minute change of heart by some paranoid technician working on the project. But he wondered, for a moment, if the damn thing was for real, would that change anything?

Of course not.