Assegai

Over the weeks that followed, Leon delegated to Max and He

Once the bodywork had been assembled, the aircraft were ready to receive their engines. There were four 250 horsepower seven-cylinder fourteen-valve rotary Meerbach engines for each. After Gustav had bolted them in turn on to test beds made of teak railway sleepers, he started them. Their roar could be heard miles away in the Muthaiga Country Club, and soon every layabout in Nairobi had arrived to swarm around the hangar, like flies around a dead dog. They seriously impeded the work, and Leon had He

Once Gustav had tuned the engines, he declared he was ready to fit them to the wings of the two aircraft. One by one they were hoisted by block and tackle on gantries built over the wings. Then he and his mechanics manoeuvred them into position and fixed them into their mountings, two engines on each bank of wings.

Three weeks after the commencement of the work, the assembly of the machines was completed. Gustav told Leon, ‘Now it is necessary to test them.’

‘Are you going to fly them?’ Leon had difficulty containing his excitement, but he was immediately disappointed when Gustav shook his head vehemently.

‘Nein! I am not a crazy man. Only Graf Otto flies these contraptions.’ He saw Leon’s expression and tried to console him a little. ‘I am only going to ground-taxi them, but you shall ride with me.’

Early the following morning Leon mounted the boarding ladder to the commodious cockpit of the Butterfly. Gustav, in a long black leather coat and matching leather helmet with a pair of goggles pushed up on to his forehead, followed him and seated himself on the pilot’s bench at the rear of the cockpit. First, he showed Leon how to strap himself in. From there Leon watched Gustav’s every move as he waggled the elevators and ailerons with the joystick, then did the same with the rudder bars. When he was satisfied that the controls were free he gave the signal to his assistants on the ground below, and they began the complicated starting routine. Finally all four engines were ru

With Gustav playing the throttles as though they were the stops of a cathedral organ, the Butterfly rolled majestically out of the hangar and into the brilliant African sunshine. A cheer went up from the several hundred spectators who lined the barbed-wire boundary fence. Gustav’s men ran beside the wing-tips to help steer the machine as, bumping and rocking, the Butterfly made four ponderous circuits of the polo ground.

Gustav saw Leon’s yearning and, once again, took pity on him. ‘Come, take the controls!’ he shouted, above the din of the engines. ‘Let’s see if you can drive her.’

Joyfully Leon took his place on the pilot’s bench and Gustav nodded his approval as Leon swiftly gained the feel of joystick and rudder bars, refining his touch on the quadruple throttle levers. ‘Ja, my engines can feel that you respect and cherish them. You will soon learn to get the very best out of them.’

At last they returned to the hangar, and when Leon had climbed back down the ladder to the ground, he reached up on tiptoe to pat the Butterfly’s scarlet and black chequered nose. ‘One day I’m going to fly you, my big beauty,’ he whispered, to the towering machine. ‘Damn me if I don’t!’

Gustav came down behind him, and Leon took the opportunity to question him on something that had puzzled him for a while. He pointed out the racks of hooks and braces under the wings on each side of the fuselage. ‘What are these for, Gustav?’

‘They are for the bombs,’ Gustav replied guilelessly.

Leon blinked but kept his ma

‘Many!’ Gustav answered proudly. ‘She is very powerful. Let me give you the English numbers, which maybe you will understand better. She can lift two thousand pounds of bombs, plus a crew of five and her full tanks of fuel. She can fly at a hundred and ten miles per hour at an altitude of nine thousand feet for a distance of five hundred miles and after that return to her base.’

‘She’s amazing!’

Gustav stroked the gaudy fuselage, like a father caressing his firstborn. ‘There is no other machine in the world to match her,’ he boasted.

By noon the following day Penrod Ballantyne had cabled the precise performance figures of the Meerbach Mark III Experimental to the War Office in London.

Leon’s next task was to select four landing strips in the wilderness, one at each of the widely separated locations where he intended to hunt with his client. Graf Otto had cabled him detailed instructions, setting out their required dimensions and their alignment to the prevailing winds. Once he had found suitable locations, Leon shot the levels with a theodolite and pegged out the runways. Meanwhile He

While He