The ever-present thrum of
Chita’s engines had the power to either lull someone to sleep, or to fill one with a sense of exhilaration. To Ari, tonight, they did neither. He was comforted by their presence, but he was on duty and he could not allow himself to succumb to the relaxing vibration working on his muscles and eardrums.
Next to him, though, Paulo deSousa dozed, his body turned slightly within its harness, and his neck awkwardly taking some comfort from a non-regulation pillow he had brought for the trip.
Everyone else on board, Ari suspected, was also asleep. This far abroad, distant from any known airbases, in the middle of the night, on an unexpected journey across uncharted lands, it would be by the oddest of chances that anybody might have the ability to reach up and harm them. Even so, there was so little chance of an attack being seen before…
He would wake them near dawn.
Peering out from his windscreen, Ari could see two hemispheres – the heavens above, all dark but for the half moon and a million pinpoints of distant bright, and the dark circle of the earth below, its rolling jungle canopy perceptible only by its almost uniform texture, revealed by the faint illumination of moonlight, along with….
There. A flash, as if from a strobe. For just a moment. And then again. He could see the mirrorlike reflection of the Upper Congo River peeking through the carpet of trees, stark against the background not due to the intensity of moonlight, but because of the improved quality of its reflection. So long as the general trend of that river’s direction pointed south or southeast, he was on course by dead reckoning. Once the river began to bend back west, it would be time for Aaran to “shoot the stars” from his observation dome so he could determine their location, and thereby define their course, with his sextant.
There was an enormous amount of trust placed in an airplane’s navigational officer, Ari reflected, especially in wartime. If they misread their sextant, or their chronometer, or their almanac, or their map, or if any one of those instruments was damaged, they could find themselves searching at random for one of the world’s precious few aerodromes. There were perhaps three or four, that Ari knew of, within 1,000 kilometres of their location. Without precise navigation, each would as well be 10,000 kilometres away.
As for that 1,000 kilometres, that would place them at their destination within fuel range, but not with a lot of leeway. From Inhambane, Mozambique, they would stretch their legs for a journey through Italian or neutral territory, across the Indian Ocean to Kuching, Borneo, where Portuguese soldiers were locked in a desperate battle for their very lives.
After some time, Paulo stirred. Coming alert suddenly, seeming to not know if they were in combat or not, he sat bolt upright, and looked out the window. It took him a moment of sleep-addled confusion to realize he couldn’t see anything because it was night. He groaned, and wiped his face with his hand.
“Good morning,” Ari said, dryly.
“Yeah. Sorry – nerves.” Paulo shook his head, as if to dispel his bewilderment. They had reason to have “nerves.” For the last several days they had been engaged in heavy combat – ground attack missions against the British in the jungles of the British Gold Coast colony. They tried to avoid flying low enough to be vulnerable to “ground fire,” but sometimes if they were bombing trucks or tents in the forest, they had to get in close just to see them. Marques, their crew chief, had put his men to work patching up the two or five holes they came back with after several missions.
Twice, they’d had a scare. Once, Pascoal, in the back, had screamed and shouted and cried the Holy Mother’s name all the way back to base, where it was found out the projectile had passed through his entire foot without breaking more than one bone. Now, he kept the little plug of rubber that had traveled from the sole of his boot, through his foot, and somehow been found among his shell casings as they were cleaning up. It was a good luck charm – a now-cherished memory of his baptism by fire. The other time…
“Hey,” Paulo said. “I’d meant to talk to you about that problem we had.”
“Oh?” Ari looked askance at his friend, defensively.
“I mean, what happened was entirely understandable. But we’ve got to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Ari relaxed with relief, understanding Paulo’s sincerity. They had been in the thick of flying bullets and trying to find targets on a field of tall grass and scrubby trees when Paulo had shouted, “Ari, to the left!” in order to bring the pilot’s attention to a small-caliber anti-aircraft gun which was beginning to fire tracers at them from the side. Ari had flown on, oblivious, and the gun had stitched their wing and fuselage, leaving one engine smoking and fuel leaking from their wing.
“Maybe you could just call me Skipper, or Captain, instead of Ari,” he suggested.
“Well, I’d prefer we stop using Ari and Aaran, altogether. We’ll call Aaran just Carvalho. Otherwise, the chance for confusion is still there, as you’ll still hear something that sounds like your name.” When Paulo had shouted his warning, Ari had been concentrating. His mind, focused elsewhere, figured Paulo was calling for Aaran, not Ari.
“Yeah…” Ari considered this for a time. This early in the morning, his thoughts wandered in a lazy arc. Carvalho. Oak. Why… “What kind of name is Carvalho, anyway?” he asked. “Why call yourself an oak?” Most Portuguese names had deep histories – not deep roots, he mused, with a touch of over-tired giddiness.
Paulo regarded him seriously. “You honestly don’t know?”
“Eh?”
“It’s Jewish.” He took in Ari’s shocked look – he really hadn’t known. Paulo straightened in preparation, as “the professor” in him took over. “Many of them took the names of trees, because it allowed them to keep some common ethnic identity.”
“Keeping their roots?” There! He had voiced it. Only he grinned, though. Paulo was on too intellectual a tack to find humor.
“Marranos,” came a weak, muzzy voice from behind them. “We are called Marranos, or Conversos” Aaran said.
Both men looked over their shoulders, embarrassed to be caught out discussing him in the third person.
“That’s silly,” Ari said, without fully thinking. “Why change your name, just because you’re Jewish?”
Ach! Paulo exclaimed, shaking his head. “Where did you go to school, again?”
Caught off guard, Ari simply said, “Well… France and Switzerland, actually. My father was in the foreign service.”
“When my family converted to Christianity during the Inquisition, they got rid of their Jewish names so they would fit in.”
“So you’re Christian, then. You’re not a Jew!” There was a hint of derision, there, which Ari didn’t intend, but which the others picked up. Something he’d been raised with, which remained ingrained, but unvoiced, from his childhood. “Are you?”
Ignoring the slight, Aaran explained, “For about 500 years, my family has been Christian. But people still give us trouble, because they still know the name is of Jewish origin.”
“Who?” Incredibly, this was becoming a learning experience for Ari, who had remained aloof from these sort of attitudes in his formative years. “Who would ‘give your trouble’ over that?”
“Most people don’t,” he said, tentatively. “But… For instance, my aunt was harassed at the passport office a few weeks ago. There was this German guy there, who singled her out and made trouble for her application.”
Ari’s brows furrowed, and Paulo fixed Aaran in his gaze. “Why was there a German there?” he asked.
“She said she thought he was there to instruct our people in security measures or something.”
As Paulo grumbled under his breath, Ari asked, “So what happened?”
“The Portuguese clerk said he wouldn’t give it to her, then led her out of the office, then quietly told her to see a man down the hall, who issued the passport.” Aaran grinned.
“Heh.” Paulo puffed a laugh. “That’s clever. That’s about what I’d expect… But Germans?!”
“I think, sometimes,” Ari shook his head, slowly, “that we’ve found ourselves some strange bedfellows. No one I know likes the Germans – their government, at least – and yet that’s who we’re chained to, eh?”
Paulo seemed lost in thought and concern. “We’re the junior partner. I can’t say that we have much choice, but to ‘be happy’ about it. We just need to make sure we don’t forget who we are, and be proud enough not to become lackeys.”
Deciding to insert an element of levity, Ari suggested, “Well, we’ll just have to change your name again, to keep this from happening. What do you want, now? Birds? Food? We could…”
Aaran threw his pillow at his captain, who chuckled.
Paulo patted him on the shoulder, shoving him slightly. “You, sir, are slaphappy! You need to go to sleep, so we’re no longer tempted to ask you to step outside…”