Read Chapter 7: A MARKET IN THE SKY

On the road back to Reims, Luc tried to imagine how a victory could be sold.

A wrecked German aircraft had no price. A dead pilot paid no invoice. Yet reputations had value. Decorations had value. Newspaper columns had value. A celebrated ace could become an instructor, a commander, a manufacturer’s spokesman, a national symbol.

And behind every official victory stood paperwork.

Adjudant Roche managed that paperwork.

Luc returned to find the aerodrome brighter with spring and darker with casualties. Two pilots from a neighbouring squadron had been killed. Lemaire remained in hospital. Girard had been sent to convalesce near Tours.

Adrien Cazeneuve had already claimed his first victory.

"No wreckage observed," Vautrin said. "Valette saw the German dive into cloud but not crash. Delorme confirmed it anyway."

"Can he do that?"

"Commanding officers have influence."

They examined the victory ledger again, this time focusing on witness statements.

A strange pattern appeared. Claims by Armand Cazeneuve and, more recently, Adrien received rapid confirmation even when evidence was weak. Claims by Valette and Roussel had been rejected under similar circumstances.

Delorme's own claims were impeccable on paper.

Too impeccable.

Every one had witnesses.

"Who writes the witness statements?" Luc asked.

"Pilots dictate. Roche prepares the forms."

"And who submits them?"

"Roche."

Luc spent the next two days pretending not to watch him.

Roche rarely approached aircraft. He worked in the farmhouse, delivered orders, carried sealed envelopes to staff cars. In the evenings he played cards with officers and almost always lost small amounts.

On Thursday, a civilian automobile arrived.

That was unusual near the front.

It was a dark Panhard with Paris plates, driven by a chauffeur. A heavy man in a good coat entered headquarters and remained for an hour with Delorme and Cazeneuve.

Luc recognized him.

Not personally. From a magazine left in the mess.

Émile Savarin, director of Aéro-Moteurs du Nord, a company competing for military contracts.

"What is an engine manufacturer doing here?" Luc asked Perrin.

"Manufacturers visit squadrons. They want reports."

"In a civilian car during an offensive?"

Perrin frowned.

Savarin left before dinner. Roche carried his leather case to the car.

That night Luc followed the clerk.

Roche walked beyond the officers' quarters toward a storage barn near the western road. Luc kept fifty paces behind, using hedges for cover.

Inside the barn, voices murmured.

Luc crept close to a broken plank.

He saw Roche, Cazeneuve and another man in civilian clothes. Money lay on an upturned crate.

"Two confirmations before June," the civilian said. "That was the arrangement."

Cazeneuve replied, "Weather and the Germans are not under my command."

"The newspapers do not care about weather. Savarin needs a face. The ministry remembers faces."

Roche counted banknotes.

Luc understood.

An ace associated publicly with a manufacturer could influence procurement. A pilot's victories could be inflated, rivals suppressed, machines favoured. The war had created not only heroes but advertisements.

Then the civilian said, "Vautrin is becoming inconvenient."

Luc stopped breathing.

Cazeneuve's answer was too quiet to hear.

Roche spoke clearly.

"His mechanic is the larger problem."

Luc backed away.

A twig broke beneath his boot.

Inside the barn, conversation stopped.

The door opened.

Luc ran.

He crossed the field in darkness, hearing footsteps behind him. A pistol shot cracked. The bullet struck something metal near his shoulder.

He dived between fuel drums, crawled beneath a truck, then came out beside the hangar.

Vautrin was there, returning from the mess.

"What—"

"Inside."

They entered the hangar and barred the door.

Luc told him what he had heard.

Vautrin's face hardened at his own name.

"Then we go to group headquarters now."

"With what? I saw money. I heard a conversation. Roche will say I invented it. Cazeneuve will say he was discussing squadron funds."

"They shot at you."

"In darkness. We cannot prove who."

Vautrin slammed his fist against the bench.

"Proof. Always proof. Meanwhile they get to kill people because war makes murder ordinary."

Luc looked at Number Six.

"Then we make their next attempt impossible to hide."

"How?"

"We let them believe it succeeds."