Read Chapter 3: THE HANDWRITING

Perrin locked the maintenance card in a drawer.

"You say nothing to anyone."

"Vautrin should know."

"Vautrin is a pilot. Pilots are brave because they believe the machine beneath them has been made trustworthy by men like us. You tell him someone may be writing false maintenance entries, and every vibration becomes murder."

"Perhaps one of them already is."

"Perhaps. That is not proof."

Luc hated the word because Perrin was right.

The false signature could be a clerk's mistake. Another Moreau might exist in another section. The pencil marks could have been copied from an old card. Yet when Luc examined the carburettor, he found the mixture stop screw set one turn leaner than his own setting.

At altitude, that could become dangerous.

Not necessarily fatal. Not every malicious act required certainty. A small change placed inside a machine already subject to cold, vibration and combat could let chance finish the job.

Luc reset the screw and marked it with a tiny dot of red paint hidden beneath the linkage.

For two days nothing happened.

The front moved in noise and mud. French infantry attacked along the Chemin des Dames. Ambulances clogged the roads. Columns of men passed the aerodrome heading north, their blue-grey uniforms whitening beneath chalk dust. Some sang. Most did not.

The squadron flew escort and reconnaissance cover. The pilots returned exhausted, faces raw from cold.

On 17 April, Lemaire scored his first victory.

He landed badly from excitement, bounced twice, then jumped from his cockpit before the propeller had stopped.

"I saw him fall!" he shouted. "A two-seater. He went down in flames!"

Cazeneuve embraced him. Delorme shook his hand. Someone produced a bottle.

Luc watched from Number Six.

Lemaire had become a rival.

The thought came uninvited.

He disliked himself for having it.

That evening Vautrin found him cleaning spark plugs.

"You did something to the mixture."

Luc looked up.

"I corrected it."

"Corrected from what?"

"Too lean."

"Your card said you adjusted it."

"My card said someone adjusted it using my name."

Silence.

Luc had not intended to tell him. Yet the words were spoken.

Vautrin closed the hangar door behind him.

"Explain."

Luc showed him the copied signature and described Girard's contaminated filter. Vautrin listened without interruption.

"Besson?" he asked at last.

"His name appears on both inspections. That proves only that he signed cards."

"Have you spoken to him?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because if he is innocent, I accuse a man without evidence. If he is guilty, I warn him."

Vautrin walked around his aircraft. He touched the black swallow painted beneath the cockpit.

"Two months ago," he said, "Lieutenant Fabre died when his elevator cable broke in a dive."

Luc looked at him.

"The inquiry blamed wear."

"Was Besson his mechanic?"

"No."

That complicated things.

"Who was?"

"A man named Chardin. Transferred after Fabre's death."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

Vautrin reached into his tunic and produced a cigarette but did not light it.

"Fabre and Delorme were competing for command of a new groupe de chasse. Everyone knew it. Fabre had more political support. Delorme had more victories. Then Fabre's cable broke."

"You think the captain killed him?"

"I think nothing. That is the privilege of officers. We make implications and call them judgment."

Luc ignored the bitterness. "Who benefited from Girard's crash?"

"Lemaire."

"And from Lemaire's first victory?"

"Lemaire."

"Then if he has an accident, who takes his patrol position?"

Vautrin answered immediately. "Cazeneuve's cousin arrives next week. Sous-lieutenant Adrien Cazeneuve."

The two men looked at each other.

Outside, a flare rose somewhere beyond the field.

Vautrin struck a match. "From now on, nobody touches Number Six after you finish inspection."

"Impossible. Armourers need access. Fuel crew—"

"Then we know exactly who touches it."

"Lieutenant, if someone is doing this, watching only your machine may protect you and teach us nothing."

"You have another suggestion?"

Luc did.

It was the sort of suggestion his father would have called stupid because it depended on another man being more stupid.

"We give them something to tamper with."

Vautrin smiled without amusement. "Now you sound like a pilot."

They chose a Nieuport awaiting an engine change, technically flight-ready but scheduled to remain on the ground. Luc prepared its inspection card as if it were to be assigned to Lemaire the following morning. He left a harmless but visible chalk mark on the fuel cap, then placed a thread inside the engine panel latch.

At midnight he and Vautrin hid behind fuel drums thirty metres from the line.

The cold deepened.

Two mechanics crossed the field. Neither approached the Nieuport.

A driver relieved himself beside the hangar.

An hour passed.

Then a figure emerged from the darkness near headquarters.

He wore a mechanic's coat.

He walked directly to the Nieuport.

Luc held his breath.

The man opened the engine panel.

Vautrin rose.

Before he could call out, artillery thundered from the east. At the same instant the aerodrome siren began to wail.

"Bombers!" someone shouted.

Searchlights snapped alive.

The figure at the Nieuport vanished between the aircraft.

Luc ran after him as the first German bombs began falling.