Chapter 2
The drone in his ears was loud, so loud that it filled his ears and pounded into his brain. He clenched his hands over his ears and fought to open his eyes. Through slitted lids he saw the curved sides of the plane, with webbing and strapping hanging everywhere. That was it. That was right. He was on a plane. The noise was the drone of the engines. They were flying over the Channel to France, that was it.
He couldn't move - the parachute on his back was too heavy. Was it strapped too tightly, cutting off the circulation in his arms and legs? He couldn't feel them at all. Well, he could feel them - they felt like hell...like they were on fire. He couldn't jump like this, they'd have to abort the mission.
Too late. The huge door in the side of the plane swung open, and great grasping fingertips of wind clawed at him, caught him up, lifted him up bodily and carried him out of the plane. He twisted to see his two mates, Varney and Ketch, and they were far back behind him, their chutes already popped, reaching for him, yelling his name.
Desperately he reached up and pulled the ripcord. The resulting jerk against his arms made him scream in pain. It felt as if the chute were trying to rip his arms right off. He looked up and the silk was streaming out...but it wasn't opening, wasn't billowing into that beautiful crescent that represented the difference between life and death. He was going to fall to the ground like an arrow...a human missile, and the impact was not going to be pleasant.
He twisted around and arced his body so that his entire body was perpendicular to the ground, spreading out his arms and legs to create the maximum wind resistance. All was not lost yet, as one of his Aunties used to say at appropriate moments. Never give up the ship. While there's life there's hope. He narrowed his gaze at the ground - it was still too far away for him to see anything properly....but he'd have to find a clump of trees, a stack of hay, a big pile of mud....something he could land in to break the shock of his fall.
He tilted up an arm which sent him rushing eastwards. The wind's fingers continued to claw at him, ripping at his clothing, the clothing of a French peasant, leaching tears from his eyes. You can't beat me, wind. You'll hold me up till I see somewhere I want to go...
There - that clump of trees there...next to that farmhouse. That was the place. He drew his arms and legs slightly closer to his body, and arrowed down toward his target. It was going to be rough, but if he crashed into the tops of the branches they'd brake his fall...so that the ground wouldn't break him.
What an ugly color green was. And how ugly were those trees. No...no...trees were his friend. They were going to save his life. Here they came....
It was like riding through a roller coaster that had broken loose from its track, or through the tunnel of a wave, or a green hell. Branches scratched at him, caught at his clothing, and the roar in his ears...was that the sound of his forward motion or was that the sound of his screaming?
Silence. No movement. Only pain. Pain and...swaying. He couldn't open his eyes...sticky...they were sticky...blood? Open them...just open them, dammit.... He opened slitted lids and looked up. There was a canopy of trees up there...and the crumpled remains of his 'chute, and the guylines of his chute. He looked down...far, far away, was the ground. He was swinging like a pendulum underneath a bloody great tree.
Stamp, stamp, stamp. What the hell was that? Jackboots...jackboots. Germans...the Germans were coming and they were going to see him unless he did something bloody quickly. He glanced up desperately, grabbed at the guylines with his useless arms...his shoulders screamed in agony...he couldn't haul himself up in time.
''Achtung!'' came a voice from down below. He looked down, at a squad of six Germans, all staring up at him, all carrying rifles. All lifting their rifles to their shoulders. He clutched at his chest, scrabbled at the quick-release, and as the bullets whined over his head he dropped straight down. Time it right, he told himself, time it right, hit, drop and roll...didn't have quite the same ring to it when you were falling straight down from a tree instead of angling in with a parachute above you.
The earth rose up to met him and crunched him in the face.
Roll over, he told himself. Can't. Can't move. Every bone in my body is bloody well broken. Doesn't matter, he told himself. Roll over. Face it. Face them when they shoot you. There was a knife in his boot...get it. He drew up, very slowly, his knees under him, and slipped his hands back...as if he were scrabbling to lever himself to his feet...he pulled out the knife with his right hand...he rose to his knees...his back screaming every inch of the way...he looked up into the faces of hundreds of Germans staring down at him, over the sights of their rifles.
He took a deep breath and lifted his chin...and the knife.
It wasn't the noise of their rifles that greeted him, but the sound of a submachine gun. A curtain of red swirled in front of him...and the chatter of the submachine gun became the clapping of hundreds of hands and the curtain of red was a curtain, falling down on the stage of the Paris theatre.
''Magnifique!'' yelled French voices. ''Wunderbar!'' cried German ones.
He was sitting in a French theatre and he was surrounded by Germans. Surreptitiously he looked down...his peasant attire had been replaced by the baggy trousers and much mended shirt of a townee. His knee was quite close to the knee of a woman - he turned and looked at her - she was young, her auburn hair swirled around his face, her chocolate brown eyes stared into his, lights dancing in them, and her wide, mobile mouth was stretched into a smile. She was beautiful...she was Mrs. Peel.
John Steed opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. What was that droning noise....oh, the heating had kicked in. He felt a wonderful warmth on his chest...Mrs. Peel had one arm around him and her head nestled on his shoulder. All he could see was her auburn hair but bits of it shone like gold. He moved his neck ever so slightly and placed a kiss on that hair.
Why had he woken up? Everything had been going so nicely.
It hadn't been Mrs. Peel, of course, that time. His first mission over enemy lines, botched from the get-go. He'd been scared from the very beginning, and everything had started going wrong, and his adrenalin had kicked in and the fear had gone leaving him with a desperate rage and a mind that had worked like a coiled spring. But he wouldn't have been able to escape those Germans...it hadn't been hundreds of Germans...it had just been five...but he couldn't have escaped them without....Lucille. Lucille Brouget. Yes, that had been her name. The woman from the French Undergound who'd saved his life. The first woman who'd shown him what a woman was capable of when placed in dangerous situations. Bravery. Determination. Strength. Skill. Humor. She'd possessed them all in spades.
He'd tried to fnd her, after the war. He hadn't fallen in love with her, didn't have any sentimental attachment to her, but he'd wanted to know that she'd survived. She hadn't...but it hadn't been the Germans who'd killed her. She'd been playing the Game...pretending to be a Collaborator, savings dozens of English and hundreds of French lives while she did so....and just days after Liberation the denizens of her town had condemned her and sentenced her to death. There'd been no trial, really, he'd been told, it had just been mob rage. They hadn't had the guts to resist the Germans openly while they'd been occupied, but once the Germans were gone they had no fear in ganging up on a single woman, dragging her through the streets, not listening to her explanations. Finally she'd spat at their feet before they shot her against the wall of the town church. This is what he'd been told by one of the grief-stricken murderers....only a few hours later the truth had come out when horror stricken Resistance leaders from Paris had told them what they'd done.
Steed brought his free hand up to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn't want to think of that. He had the urge to get up...move about...but he couldn't, not with Mrs. Peel lying there.
Why had he started dreaming about that, anyway? Oh, yes...the drone of that damned heater...like the drone of the engines on that plane. Funny, how things brought back memories. A smell, a taste, a sound. He remembered, just a few years ago, driving underneath a train track. There'd been a long line of traffic in front of him so he'd been stuck right underneath the tracks as the train had gone by. And as he'd sat there in his Bentley with the train rattling above him he'd begun to feel more and more nervous....his palms had gone damp and there was a chill in his chest. If the line of traffic hadn't started moving at just that second he'd been about to jump up and run out from that underpass. And for weeks after that he'd always avoided driving underneath train underpasses so that that wouldn't happen again.
He'd mentioned it to Dr. Teazel, the service psychiatrist - who'd also been in the War. And Teazel had asked him if he'd ever been under fire from a mortar barrage, or something similar, and Steed had nodded and said yes and the memory had clicked - the sound of that train roaring overhead had sounded exactly like a mortar barrage, and that sound had affected him subconsciously. The next day he'd driven to a train underpass and sat underneath it, waiting for a train to come by, and the sound of it hadn't affected him at all. Knowledge was such power.
Absently he began stroking Emma's hair.
The war had started it all, of course. When you are sure you're going to your death every day, you didn't want to miss a single thing that life had to offer. Eating a fine meal, drinking a fine wine, making love to a fine woman. But you might be dead the next day so you could never commit to that woman, never make her feel like there was a future between the two of you.
And after the War there'd been secret service work, and the same considerations had applied.
But with Mrs. Peel.... it was different. Not just the fact that she was so talented, so skilled, so capable of saving her own life as well as his - Cathy Gale had been the same way. But he wanted a future with Mrs. Peel. He felt that there could be one with her.
And what did Mrs. Peel feel? Well, she was here, in bed, with him. And that was something. ''This could be the start of a beautiful friendship,'' as Humphrey Bogart had said. Of course he was saying it to Claude Rains but that didn't invalidate the saying - it was something one of his Aunties would say as well.
"Mmmmm, Steed.''
Emma Peel stirred and lifted her head and looked into his eyes.
He smiled at her, and bent his head, and they kissed. Warm, soft, gentle lips. They parted and looked at each other.
''Feeling better?'' she asked.
''Mmm.''
Steed bent forward and kissed her again. Gently, softly. Emma raised her hand from his chest to his cheek and caressed it. Then she ran her hand back around his neck and pulled him towards her. Steed slid down and pressed his body over hers.
They made love quietly, gently. And afterwards they lay together in each other's arms.
A few minutes later: ''You realize we have the entire night left,'' Emma Peel said.
Steed grinned. ''The entire night. I wonder what we could do to fill the time.''
Emma Peel rolled over on top of him. ''I can think of a few things.''
''Be gentle with me, Mrs. Peel.''
She smiled at him. That lovely, poised, delicious smile. And then she bent down and kissed him. Steed smiled up at her. Yes, this was going to be the start of a beautiful friendship.