The Hornet's Sting by Mark Ryan Page A

midsummer days had already brought fresh complications. The turnip-pickers seemed to use every last minute of light for their toil now; and one man in particular tested the pilots’ patience. Perhaps he was keen to impress the boss, or maybe he just had extra mouths to feed, but he seemed obsessed with picking as many turnips as was humanly possible. And his chosen field was the one nearest to the hangar. Often he would work a seventeen-hour day, from 5.00 a.m. to 10.00 p.m. The harder he worked, the less time the pilots had to prepare their plane. Nevertheless, they seized every opportunity to finish their job. And halfway through June they knew they were ready.
    Out of courtesy to their former associate, Tommy and Kjeld revealed their intentions to Christian Michael Rottboell. After such a frustrating winter of aborted escapes by sea, Rottboell had declared himself anxious to be kept informed of any plans. When told of the plane, he insisted upon coming to Odense so he could gauge their chance of success. (Although he had never been a pilot, he had some basic mechanical knowledge of planes.) Though Tommy and Kjeld didn’t particularly want to hear his opinion, they thought it best to keep him happy.
    When Rottboell was brought into the hangar in the dead of night his eyes lit up, especially when he saw the size of the cockpit. ‘There’s room for a third man at the back,’ he declared. ‘I’ll show you.’
    Pedersen looked stunned. ‘No, Rottboell, it’s out of the question.’
    But the younger man was determined to illustrate his point. He clambered inside the cockpit and curled up in a little ball behind the two seats. ‘See?’ he said triumphantly. ‘It can be done.’
    ‘And where,’ asked Tommy, ‘do you suppose we’ll put the fuel?’
    ‘On top of me. Or around me. It doesn’t matter. There’s room.’
    Sneum was losing patience. ‘Rottboell, you don’t seem to understand. The tank isn’t much more than half the size it should be for this journey. The extra fuel is going to fill every inch of the cockpit not already taken up by Pedersen and me.’
    Rottboell wouldn’t give up. ‘But we’re a trio. That’s how we planned the escape by boat.’ The silence with which his comments were greeted only made him more desperate. ‘I thought we were going to stick together. Don’t leave me behind, for Christ’s sake.’
    Tommy could see the hurt in Christian Michael’s eyes. ‘Listen,’ he explained, ‘I made your father a promise that I would do my best to look after you. Believe me, if we try this with three people, we’ll crash. Or never even get off the ground.’
    Rottboell turned away, hardly able to hide his anger and frustration. Tommy recalled later: ‘Rottboell was furious that he couldn’t go with us in the plane but he was too well bred to cause a scene. He thought there was room in the back, but he didn’t understand the weight problem. I told him to stay put until I could find a way to pick him up, along with the others who wanted to come to England.’

    Determined to arrive in England with fully updated intelligence in addition to the precious radar installation film, Sneum and Pedersen decided to make a final sweep of their contacts around Denmark. Kjeld toured Jutland, while Tommy covered Zealand and Copenhagen. What they discovered was encouraging. The batteries and garrisons at Holbaek, Roskilde and Naestved had all been left intact, despite the Nazi occupation. Hundreds of men deemed harmless by the Nazis had secretly hidden thousands of rounds of ammunition in readiness to support the Allies if and when a liberating invasion came. After the capitulation of April 1940, the British had doubted the will of the Danish armed forces to fight the Nazis, but Sneum and Pedersen now felt they had evidence that the reality might be rather different. Danish servicemen were just waiting for the signal from London to mount a massive diversion in support of an Allied landing