I tried some. It was ice-cold, sharp and fresh and instantly exhilarating. ‘You were on the Western Front?’
‘I sure was. Three years of it. Not many lasted that long, I can tell you.’
Which at least explained the Captain bit. I said, ‘But America didn’t come into the war till nineteen-seventeen.’
‘Oh, that.’ He leaned back out of the way as a waiter in a white shirt and cummerbund appeared with a tray to serve us. ‘I flew for the French with the Lafayette Escadrille. Nieuport Scouts then Spads.’ He leaned forward to refill my glass. ‘How old are you, Mallory?’
‘Twenty-three.’
He laughed. ‘I’d twenty-six kills to my credit when I was your age. Been shot down four times, once by von Richthofen himself.’
Strange, but at that stage of things I never doubted him for a second. Stated baldly, what he had said could easily sound like boasting and yet it was his manner which said most and he was casual in the extreme as if these things were really of no account.
We had fish soup, followed by a kind of casserole of chicken stewed in its own blood, which tasted a lot better than it sounds. This was backed up by eggs and olives fried, as usual, in olive oil. And there was a mountain of rice and tomatoes in vinegar.
Hannah never stopped talking and yet ate and drank enormously with little visible effect except to make him talk more loudly and more rapidly than ever.
‘It was a hard school out there, believe me. You had to be good to survive and the longer you lasted, the better your chances.’
‘That makes sense, I suppose,’ I said.
‘It sure does. You don’t need luck up there, kid. You need to know what you’re doing. Flying’s about the most unnatural thing a man can do.’
When the waiter came to clear the table, I thanked him. Hannah said, ‘That’s pretty good Portuguese you speak. Better than mine.’
‘I spent a year on the lower Amazon when I first came to South America,’ I told him. ‘Flying out of Belem for a mining company that had diamond concessions along the Xingu River.’
He seemed impressed. ‘I hear that’s rough country. Some of the worst Indians in Brazil.’
‘Which was why I switched to Peru. Mountain flying may be trickier, but it’s a lot more fun than what you’re doing.’
He said, ‘You were pretty good out there today. I’ve been flying for better than twenty years and I can’t think of more than half a dozen guys I’ve known who could have landed that Vega. Where did you learn to fly like that?’
‘I had an uncle who was in the R.F.C.,’ I said. ‘Died a couple of years back. He used to take me up in a Puss Moth when I was a kid. When I went to University, I joined the Air Squadron which led to a Pilot Officer’s commission in the Auxiliary Air Force. That got me plenty of weekend flying.’
‘Then what?’
‘Qualified for a commercial pilot’s licence in my spare time, then found pilots were ten-a-penny.’
‘Except in South America.’
‘Exactly.’ I was more than a little tight by then and yet the words seemed to spill out with no difficulty. ‘All I ever wanted to do was fly. Know what I mean? I was willing to go anywhere.’
‘You certainly were if you drew the Xingu. What are you going to do now? If you’re stuck for a job I might be able to help.’
‘Flying, you mean?’
He nodded. ‘I handle the mail and general freight route to Landro which is about two hundred miles up the Negro from here. I also cover the Rio das Mortes under government contract. Lot of diamond prospecting going on up there these days.’
‘The Rio das Mortes?’ I said. ‘The River of Death? You must be joking. That’s worse than the Xingu any day. I’ve been there. I took some government men to a Mission Station called Santa Helena maybe two years ago. That would be before your time. You know the place?’
‘I call there regularly.’
‘You used a phrase today,’ I said. ‘The Last Place God Made. Well, that’s the Rio das Mortes, Hannah. During the rainy season it never stops. At other times of the year it just rains all day. They’ve got flies up there that lay eggs in your eyeballs. Most parts of the Amazon would consider the pirhana bad enough because a shoal of them can reduce a man to a skeleton in three minutes flat, but on the Mortes, they have a microscopic item with spines that crawls up your backside given half a chance and it takes a knife to get him out again.’
‘You don’t need to tell me about the damn place,’ he said. ‘I’ve been there. Came in with three Hayleys and high hopes a year ago. All I’ve got left is the baby you arrived in today. Believe me, when my government contract’s up in three months you won’t see me for dust.’
‘What happened to the other two planes?’
‘Kaput. Lousy pilots.’
‘Then why do you need me?’
‘Because it takes two planes to keep my schedules going or to put it more exactly, I can’t quite do it with one. I managed to pick up an old biplane the other day from a planter down-river who’s selling up.’
‘What is it?’
‘A Bristol.’
He was in the act of filling my glass and I started so much that I spilled most of my wine across the table. ‘You mean a Brisfit? A Bristol fighter? Christ, they were flying those over twenty years ago on the Western Front.’
He nodded. ‘I should know. Oh, she’s old all right, but then she only has to hold together another three months. Do one or two of the easy river trips. If you’d wanted the job, you could have had it, but it doesn’t matter. There’s a guy in at the weekend who’s already been in touch with me. Some Portuguese who’s been flying for a mining company in Venezuela that went bust which means I’ll get him cheap.’
‘Well, that’s okay then,’ I said.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Go home – what else.’
‘What about money? Can you manage?’
‘Just about.’ I patted my wallet. ‘I won’t be taking home any pot of gold, but I’ll be back in one piece and that’s all that counts. There’s a hard time coming from what I read of events in Europe. They’re going to need men with my kind of flying experience, the way things are looking.’
‘The Nazis, you mean?’ he nodded. ‘You could be right. A bunch of bastards, from what I hear. You should meet my maintenance eingineer, Mannie Sterne. Now he’s a German. Was a professor of engineering at one of their universities or something. They arrested him because he was a Jew. Put him in some kind of hell-hole they call a concentration camp. He was lucky to get out with a whole skin. Came off a freighter right here in Manaus without a penny in his pocket.’
‘Which was when you met him?’
‘Best day’s work of my life. Where aero engines are concerned the guy’s the original genius.’ He re-filled my glass. ‘What kind of stuff were you flying with the R.A.F. then?’
‘Wapitis mainly. The Auxiliaries get the oldest aircraft.’
‘The stuff the regulars don’t want?’
‘That’s right. I’ve even flown Bristols. There were still one or two