The Post-War Trilogy: After Midnight, The Last Sunrise, and Dying Day

by Robert Ryan

Overview

Three post–World War II adventure novels inspired by real events—from an acclaimed British author who “skillfully blends fact with fiction” (Time Out London).
 
After Midnight: Ryan’s novel, based on a true story, begins with a letter from Australian bomber pilot Bill Carr to his daughter on her first birthday in 1944. That same day, he takes off on a mission over the mountains of Northern Italy and is never heard from again. Twenty years later, Lindy Carr arrives in Italy to find out what happened to her father. Her guide is Jack Kirby, a daredevil motorcycle racer and pilot who flew Mosquito fighters in the war and spent time among the Italian partisans. What Jack and Lindy uncover in the Italian Alps will change both their lives forever.
 
“Ryan’s mastery of 1940s detail and his ability to discover intriguing but unvisited byways of the war can be taken for granted; but the more recent storyline shows him equally adept at handling a 1960s setting.” —The Sunday Times
 
The Last Sunrise: The real history of World War II’s most daring fighter squadron is the inspiration for this riveting novel of adventure and romance in the Far East. In 1941, Lee Crane was a Flying Tiger, one of dozens of American pilots recruited to join the Chinese Air Force in the fight against the Japanese. Wild in the air and on the ground, the Tigers broke hearts all over Burma, and Crane was no different—until he fell in love with a stunning Anglo-Indian widow. But in the chaos of war, Crane lost track of the woman of his dreams, and spent the next seven years convincing himself it wasn’t meant to be. Now a chance encounter with another long-lost beauty has him ready to plunge back into the past, praying he will come up with a different answer this time.
 
“The flying scenes are brilliantly handled. Ryan’s research is impressive. . . . Bold and successful.” —The Sunday Times
 
Dying Day: In this Cold War spy thriller based on actual case files, a woman is willing to do whatever it takes to bring her sister home. In the darkest days of World War II, Laura McGill and her sister, Diana, ventured behind enemy lines on behalf of Britain’s Special Operations Executive. Now it is 1948, four years since Diana disappeared inside occupied France, and Laura has reached a point of desperation that leads her to kidnap the head clerk of the SOE at gunpoint to learn the name of the spy who ran her sister’s last mission. That spy, James Hadley Webb, will take Laura to the divided city of Berlin, where he is waging a shadow war of influence and intrigue—and losing. Laura’s arrival may be just what Webb needs to stop his agents from dying.
 
“Thrilling post war espionage action.” —Tatler

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504056618
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	10/30/2018
Series:	The Post-War Trilogy
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	1793
Sales rank:	804,762
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Robert Ryan was born in Liverpool and has worked as a race car mechanic, journalist, jazz composer, university lecturer, and more. He has written many novels, including Early One Morning, a Sunday Times (UK) bestseller. He lives in North London with his wife, three children, a dog, and a deaf cat.
Robert Ryan was born in Liverpool and has worked as a race car mechanic, journalist, jazz composer, university lecturer, and more. He has written many novels, including Early One Morning, a Sunday Times (UK) bestseller. He lives in North London with his wife, three children, a dog, and a deaf cat.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Italy, 1964

FOR THE BEST PART of twenty years he had lain, ready for someone to find him. To begin with, he'd been well hidden in the rear of the mountain hut, with bales of straw, two sheets of canvas, a long-departed montanaro's hoe and half a dozen tree branches piled on top of him. Over time, though, several of the layers had either rotted or been taken.

A few years ago, a group of teenage boys had removed the branches to make a St John's Eve fire in the meadow outside, digging a hole for their pyre with the alp-man's rusty hoe and enjoying themselves under the darkening summer solstice sky by telling ever-scarier stories of the witches and wizards said to inhabit this wild corner of the country, until most of them were too terrified to sleep. In the morning, bleary-eyed and weary, but infused with bravado by the return of the sun, the group had walked down the trail towards the nearest village for breakfast without exploring the hut further.

The brutal winters with their icy winds and heavy snowdrifts had eroded the door of the baita, which collapsed off its hinges, permitting various animals to enter, including the last of the wolves still roaming these hills, pulling away corners of the straw and the fabric, their noses twitching as they smelled the decay beneath. Gradually, he was revealed to the world, his right hand still clenched in the fist he had made as he died, containing a last bequest to his discoverers. Except, for the time being, nobody came to claim the piece of metal he held so firmly in his bony grip.

That next winter and summer removed his remaining clothes — his boots had been taken at the time of his death, too warm and comfortable to resist — and what little flesh was left clinging to the bones. His left arm was torn off and carried away by scavengers, which also removed his mandible and several ribs. He lay there now, a yellow-brown collection of bones, slowly collapsing into himself as the rest of his ligaments and cartilage dissolved.

It was this figure that the two giggling honeymooning hikers found when they peered into the hut, his head resting on his chest, as if he had nodded off. The new bride's screams echoed around the granite outcrops which overlooked the ancient alpine meadow and were lost in the mountains, much like the poor dead man's soul two decades ago.

CHAPTER 2

I CONFIRMED THAT I was, indeed, Jack Kirby, and the Italian operator told me to wait, as she was putting an international call through. As usual, the Italian state telephone company took its time about it. I was standing at the back of the hangar, staring past the dark shape of my plane, out onto the mess of Malpensa airport. They were lengthening the runway so that it could take the next generation of intercontinental jets. Already there were piles of gravel and sand, and bright yellow cement-mixers and Fiat bulldozers eyed us hungrily. We'd been given notice to quit. Kirby & Gabbiano Flight Services were situated right where the smooth, shining new taxiway was to be constructed.

'Sorry, chaps,' they had said. 'We'll try and squeeze you in somewhere, but space is going to be tight.' Well, they had the choice between keeping sweet a seat-of-the-pants outfit whose main client was the University of Milan Parachute Club or preparing for the arrival of hordes of Pan Am air hostesses. I'd tried to blame them for choosing the latter, but my heart wasn't in it.

We'd been living on borrowed time anyway. We had started out in 1962 when an old US TV series called Ripcord — about a couple of skydiving troubleshooters — had been dubbed into Italian and had generated a boom in would-be free-fallers. We had what we claimed was a Beechcraft Twin Beech — in reality, its ageing AT-11 variant, an ex-USAAF trainer — which was relatively easy to convert between skydiving and regular passenger use, so it seemed silly not to take advantage of the craze, what with the university jumpers already on the airfield and short of a decent lift vehicle.

Now the boom time might be over, because the same television station was showing Whirlybirds, and everyone wanted to be Bell helicopter pilots. TV was doing that to Italy — smoothing out the regional dialects, dictating the latest trends, unifying the nation in a way no politician had managed since you-know-who. Well, I didn't have a chopper, couldn't fly one, didn't want to learn. I didn't trust anything with a glidepath like a housebrick. Or one engine.

Furthermore, Malpensa were suggesting that they didn't really want idiot parachutists dropping in, dodging the new wide-bodied jets, now they were a grown-up international airport. I'd found out that morning that the parachute group had been given its marching orders, too.

On top of that the contract with our main client, Gennaro, the Milanese food conglomerate, looked shaky. During the last run down to Rome, I had overheard two of the buyers talking longingly about the new Learjets. Fast, comfortable, with air hostesses serving drinks and no glass nose to make them look like a retired World War Two bomber. I hadn't figured out how to introduce air hostesses into the jerry-built interior of our six-seat Beechcraft. Besides, I'd have trouble balancing a Scotch, peanuts and the control stick.

There was a hissing noise on the line. 'Pronto?' I said.

'Mr Kirby?' She sounded like she was calling from the Gobi Desert. But then, I had a grappa hangover, so everyone sounded like they were speaking to me from Mongolia or beyond.

'Mr Kirby?' she repeated from her yurt.

'This is he.'

'My name is Lindy Carr.' I tried to place the accent. It wasn't English, but then it wasn't Mongolian either.

'Hi. What can I do for you?'

'I got your name from Mr Lang.'

'Did you?' I thought he only said my name when he was in the middle of a satanic mass, performing strange rituals that compelled me to drink far more grappa than was good for my head.

'He's the Special —'

'I know who he is.' And I knew he was queer, which was fine by me, but a bit risky for a man in his position, and I wouldn't repeat that down the line. Archibald Lang was also Special Forces Adviser to the Foreign Office, the official archivist of sabotage and subversion. Which meant his job was to say to historians, journalists and families variations on: 'I'm sorry, we don't have that information' or 'Oh dear, that file seems to have been destroyed by a rather unfortunate fire back in forty-seven' or 'I'm afraid that is covered by the Official Secrets Act.' Why was he giving out my number?

I raised a hand to Furio, my partner, who was dragging his weary carcass into the hangar. A decade younger than me, he was tall, dark, without an ounce of spare flesh on him, and usually fresh-faced, but there were signs of a serious decline this morning. He steadied himself against the glass nose cone and, even in the gloom, I could see the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

Furio had started as a mere dogsbody at the outfit, but I gave him a share of the company and flying lessons after I was short for wages, hangar and landing fees one quarter, and to help me out he had borrowed the cash from his mother, a researcher on La Stampa newspaper in Turin. They now owned 24 per cent of the company.

Furio waved back at me but the effort was too much and he tottered out into the fresh air again, bent double, trying to stop himself throwing up. And I thought the young could take their drink. The previous night, we'd been in Milan, drowning our sorrows so comprehensively, we weren't quite sure what they were any more. Oh yes, I reminded myself. They're putting a new runway through our business.

'Mr Kirby?' came the voice in my ear.

'Yes? Sorry.'

'Mr Lang said you know Northern Italy very well.'

I waited while a BEA Viscount chattered its way into the air and flew directly over us, rattling the metal roof. Another threatened species. Turboprop passenger planes were being hunted to extinction by packs of shiny new Boeing jets. I knew how they felt. Old and in the way.

'Most of it. Which part are you interested in?'

'The lakes down to Milan, across to Turin one way, Bergamo the other. North to the Swiss border.'

I'd been there all right. Much of it was my backyard. The glass nose cone of the Beechcraft meant I was the number one choice for flight-seeing up and down the lakes. 'I'm familiar with the region. What do you need?'

'I'd rather show you in person than talk over the telephone.'

'You've been spending too much time with Lang. The only people likely to be tapping my phone are the bank, and only because they are worried about the repayments on the loan for the Twin Beech.'

'I might be able to help with those repayments, Mr Kirby. You see, I want to hire you for a few weeks. A month guaranteed, even if you end up only working a few days. But I'd like to talk about it face-to-face.'

I looked down at myself. Battered leather jacket, a stale shirt, oil-splattered jeans and dusty construction boots. I was thinking it was best to get this done over the phone, not in person. I wouldn't hire me for a month looking like this.

'When are we talking about?' I asked.

'September into October.'

I did some quick calculations. We had to be out of the hangar by November. We could pretty much guarantee skydiving income throughout the summer, and flying in the mountains in August could be tricky because of the thunderstorms. The two months she mentioned gave us a good window before the snow started. So the timing was good. If she was going to give us four weeks' work in the autumn, it'd certainly help see us through the winter and maybe into a new base.

'Where are you?' I asked, hoping she was closer than the line suggested.

'England at the moment. I will be in Italy at the end of August.'

I didn't want to leave it that long before locking this one down. Anything could happen in a couple of months. She might even find herself a proper outfit to hire. 'As luck would have it, I'll be over there in a few weeks,' I told her. 'You want to give me a number where I can reach you?' It was a London number; I was due to travel to the Isle of Man with my father, but I was certain I could add a meeting with Lindy Carr to my itinerary.

I scribbled the number on the whiteboard with a Chinagraph pencil, right next to the reminder that the plane needed to have the main spar checked for corrosion. Rumours had spread of an imminent airworthiness directive, mandating frequent X-rays of all Twin Beech spars — including any remaining AT-11's — which had sent the value of the aircraft plummeting. That was why I could afford the plane. Mine had had its spar tubes coated with linseed oil from the get-go, and I was confident it was clean, but it was as well to be sure. When I could afford it.

I looked outside again. Furio was talking to Professore Gianlorenzo Borromini, an art historian at the university, who was one of the keenest skydivers and a founder of the club. I could see him windmilling his arms in rage, doubtless cursing the airport and all who worked for it. We'd passed that stage a few days back. All I hoped now was that my partner could resist vomiting on the Professore's well-polished shoes.

I turned my attention back to my potential fairy godmother. 'You sure you won't give me a clue what the job is?'

She said: 'I want to find my father, Mr Kirby.'

'You think he's up there in the mountains?'

'I'm pretty certain.'

'When did you last hear from him?'

'1944, Mr Kirby. He's dead.'

After a few more questions, expertly deflected by Miss Carr, I hung up feeling unsettled, but put that down to the sourness of the grappa in my stomach. Of course, I didn't know then that I was the man who had helped get her father killed in the first place.

CHAPTER 3

A WELCOMING COMMITTEE OF screeching gulls appeared well before the once-familiar sight of Douglas Harbour on the Isle of Man hove into view. My father and I stood at the rail near the front of the good ship Mona's Isle, riding the sickly swell which had been running ever since the ship had left the mouth of the Mersey. Below deck, the air was ripe with a mixture of vomit and diesel. We were better off taking our chances with the voracious sea birds that whirled overhead and the knifing wind from the north that even managed to penetrate our leather jackets. Nobody had told the Irish Sea it was summer and it could calm down a little.

'You all right?'

My father put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed, a rare moment of physical contact. His grey face creased into hundreds of parallel lines as he smiled. A lifetime of building and repairing motorcycles meant that, for as long as I could remember, Dad had always been an unhealthy colour, the result of hours spent over carborundum wheels, lathes, soldering irons, grinders and oil baths. No amount of sun could soften the pallor, and it was as much a part of him as the dirt under his fingernails and the set of Allen keys he always seemed to have about his person. There were more grooves in his face now, and they were deeper than the last time I had seen him, nearly three years ago, but otherwise he was his old self.

'I'm fine,' I replied. 'Thanks for doing this.'

'I didn't have a fatted calf to slaughter to welcome you back. I thought this was the next best thing.'

'You could have done both,' I whined with mock petulance.

'Well, if the Bells in Douglas still does a good meat 'n' potato pie, I might throw that in.'

'It's a start.'

'It's good to have you home, Jack, if only for a couple of weeks.'

Before I could answer, something splattered onto his shoulder and he looked up at the cackling culprit that had defaced his leathers. 'Bloody shite-hawks,' he muttered as he searched for a handkerchief. I unzipped my jacket and passed him mine.

'You hear Winston is ill?' he asked with concern in his voice. My father was one of those Englishmen who treated Churchill with more respect than any monarch.

'No.'

'He was on television last year. Looked bloody awful. Was it shown over there in Italy?'

'I don't watch much TV, Dad. My landlord won't have it in the house. Thinks it poisons the mind.'

'He might just be right.' He pointed across the deck at two giggling girls, trying to hold their miniskirts down in the wind, both clutching the same LP record with a black-and-white picture of four hairy young men on the front. I guessed it was the Beatles. Or maybe the other lot, the Rolling Stones. I had trouble keeping up.

'It's a different world, Dad.'

'What say we skip seeing the course today and leave it until tomorrow?' my father said as he wiped the seagull excrement away.

I had to fight to stop my jaw dropping. Below us in the hold were two Kirby CrossCountry motorcycles, Father's latest project, which had little more than the miles from Brighton to Liverpool we had put on them. The idea was to give them a work-out on the Isle of Man's mountain course — the roads were being closed for two extra days this year because of the introduction of several new categories — and to get some much-needed publicity for the Kirby brand. They were going to need it: the CrossCountrys were odd bikes, higher and less streamlined than the norm, with a bulbous, humped tank and the engine caged in the chassis, which formed a kind of tubular exoskeleton. The look was growing on me, I suppose, albeit slowly. I wasn't certain the public would be so forgiving.

Perhaps the old man was worried about the impact that seeing the course would have on me — the place where I had started out as a bright shining star and fizzled out as a damp squib. Or perhaps he thought I would be rusty — it was a decade since I had ridden a bike in anger. Maybe he was just getting old, and I hadn't noticed. Then I caught his wink and he chortled as he gripped the worn rail and filled his lungs with salty air, as if trying to catch the whiff of motorcycle exhaust that would soon blanket the island.

I punched him on the shoulder. 'Okey-dokey. And I'll make the Horlicks, eh?'

An hour after docking we went across to the pits to have the bikes scrutineered. We weren't here for competition — my father had entered his last works bike thirteen years ago in 1951, the year after I'd quit racing — but any 'specials' which took to the mountain course were still subject to a safety check, apart from those on the free-for-all known as Mad Sunday, when the public got to ride the course. Dad had pulled strings to get us a place on one of the extra official practice days, even though we wouldn't be competing. When I asked how, he came out with some mangled aphorism about packdrills and blind horses. In other words: mind your own business.

It was the usual chaos in the pits, only more so since my day. There were trailers for the star riders, shiny portable workshops, legions of mechanics swarming over bikes, and plenty of banners bearing names unfamiliar back in the early 1950s — Suzuki, Yamaha, Honda. Unfamiliar and, to be honest, unthinkable back then.

While my father went off to sort out the passes and paperwork, I leaned against my bike, arms crossed, trying to take it all in. There were many new faces, people who had grown into legends in my absence — like Hailwood, who had started here in 1958 when he was just eighteen, before blasting a name for himself three years later, and McIntyre, Hocking and Read. The sights and sounds were much the same, I thought, except for one pungent odour, stronger than the reek of Castrol or REDeX. Money. The quirky little British outfits, once the character of the TT, were few and far between. It was a fierce battle between the big boys and their wallets now.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Post-War Trilogy"
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Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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Table of Contents

AFTER MIDNIGHT,
THE LAST SUNRISE,
DYING DAY,
About the Author,