Beyond the Call Read Online Free PDF Page B

paused. ‘What do you say?’
    There was a deathly hush on the line, filled with crackles and the ghostly echo of aching distance.
    â€˜Eleanor?’
    She found her voice, and it shook with emotion. ‘No, Robert. No. I need you home with me. I need you now; I can’t take this anymore.’
    A gusty sigh came down the line. ‘All right then,’ said Robert. ‘I’m coming home.’
    His tone was so heavy, so resigned, that Eleanor wished she could unsay what she had just said. ‘Robert, no. I’ve changed my mind. You have to do the right thing. I’m being selfish. I’m hurting, but I know you are too.’ She lacerated herself with every word. ‘I think I can stand life like it is for just a while longer’ – even though she couldn’t – ‘if it means you being safe. But I know I couldn’t stand to think of you going back into danger.’
    â€˜Eleanor, are you—’
    â€˜Stay; do what you have to do. Then come home to me alive, and never leave me again. Do you hear me?’
    â€˜Are you sure?’
    â€˜You heard me, soldier.’ Eleanor’s eyes were prickling with tears. ‘I love you.’
    â€˜I love you too. How’s Carol Ann?’
    The tears overflowed, and a little sob escaped Eleanor’s throat. ‘She’s fine! She’s fine …’ Eleanor could feel the knot tightening in her chest now, threatening to choke her. ‘Robert, I have to go now. I love you. Goodbye.’
    â€˜Goodbye.’
    Eleanor put the phone down, fumbling to set it on its cradle as the weeping flooded out of her and her vision dissolved in a blur.

    H ALF A WORLD away, in a freezing, concrete-paved field in Suffolk, Captain Robert Trimble stood under the lowering, slate-gray East Anglian sky – one of the biggest skies in the world, and at this moment the gloomiest. It matched his mood. Oh well, there it was – Eleanor had decided for him. He would be going to Russia.
    Later that day, he walked across to the control tower to report his decision to Colonel Helton, and to watch the squadrons fly in from their mission.
    Helton had been right – they were pretty beat up, and not all of them had come back. One ship had been lost somewhere over Germany. Altogether, more than 500 bombers from the 3rd Air Division had gone to bomb Misburg; 27 had been lost, ten times that number damaged, and more than 250 men would not be coming back to their bunks that night. 11 Robert could picture the whole thing vividly: the puffs of black flak, the shreds of torn metal falling from hit planes, the blossoming parachutes, the big silver bird turning helplessly over and sinking down to death. And one of the worst sights of all: a chute blooming prematurely, snagging on the falling bomber, and the entangled dot of a man being dragged down toward the distant earth.
    Maybe he really had made the right decision; better to postpone his homecoming than go through all that again. Assuredly the right decision. Robert felt better – resigned to his future, resigned to temporary unhappiness and permanent safety. As he watched the lumberingplanes taxiing to their dispersals, he reflected that he was indeed a Lucky Bastard. 12
    It was to be a while – more than a month, in fact – before Robert discovered the full extent to which both he and Colonel Helton had been lied to.
    Had he been able to see into the future, Robert might have gone to headquarters that minute and willingly signed up for a second combat tour. But even if he’d been granted a sight of what was to come, he might not have believed it. The creaking footfalls in the snow under the winter pines … the wild, demonic shapes of Cossacks cavorting around a flickering fire … the terrified, hate-filled eyes of the Russian colonel over the leveled barrel of the Colt … frozen corpses laid in rows along the lonely railroad tracks … the controls of