ПЕРЕВИДИТЕ ПОЖАЛУЙСТА ПРАВИЛЬНО ЕСЛИ ЗНАЕТЕ ЯЗЫК НЕ НУЖНО ОТКУДА ТО КОПИРОВАТЬ ВЕЗДЕ НЕ ПРАВИЛЬНО ПРОШУ (ЗАРАНЕЕ СПАСИБО)
It was almost daylight. Hearne looked at the watch, and took the kit. Everything was ready. Under his flying suit in the inside pocket of the jacket were the letters and photograph and the identification papers.
The twenty-two-minute journey was almost over: only one more minute to go. The engine was suddenly silent and the pilot waved his hand.
"That is when you get ready," he had told Hearne in the morning over their last cup of hot chocolate. "Second time I wave is good-bye and good luck."
​​Hearne stood as he had learned during the past three weeks. His eyes hadn't left the pilot. How long did it take to glide from twenty thousand feet to six? He was answered by the movement of the pilot's arm. Good-bye and good luck. Well, here it was at last.
​​"Good luck, yourselves!" Hearne said. And then he was diving through air. He started to count. "Not too soon, not too late," he said to himself. "Don't think about what happens if the parachute does not work." He restrained himself from pulling the rip cord. Он сдерживал себя, чтобы не потянуть шнур. Not yet: the longer he fell, the quicker, the safer. He pulled the cord. It was not going to work. It was not going to - Then the feeling of being pulled backward in the sky again, then slow floating... He looked down at the fields. He could see a wood to the south. He pulled on the ropes. And then the ground seemed to rise up to meet him. As he landed, his right arm grasped the control rope, and the clip on his belt automatically released the parachute as it pulled him forward. That was all.
​​Hearne rose to his feet. He must reach the trees before the light. He could not leave the parachute here. He pulled and pulled. Then holding the bundle in front of him he half-ran towards the wood.
​​He finished the last twenty yards in a spurt... The trees closed in around and he fell on his parachute. At last he could breathe normally again. Then he began to work with his clasp knife, cutting the turf into squares. It took time, but in the end he had packed the parachute into the hole, then the flying suit and the helmet, and over them he put the turf and some stones.
He looked at the watch. Three hours ago he had spoken with the pilot over a last cup of hot chocolate. Three hour ago he had stood on English earth. Three hours ago he had been Martin Hearne with twenty seven years of his own life behind him. Now he was Bertrand Corlay, with twenty-six years of another man's life. He looked down at the uniform which had been Corlay's, felt once more for the papers in the inside pocket. From now on he wouldn't only have to speak, but think, in French.
He had some time now after he had got rid of the parachute and flying suit.
It was cold and damp. He thought of Bertrand Corlay in his white hospital bed in England. If Matthew had not been examining French and Belgian wounded, if he had not seen Corlay, believed he was Hearne, and then notified Military Intelligence that one of their men had just got back among the prisoners of war, then the scheme would never have been born in Matthew's
head. Two days after he had seen Corlay, he had not only the idea, but also the
go-ahead signal from his department. A week before the French-German
armistice he sent for Hearne.​
"How would you like to spend a summer in France?" he asked.
"But I have just come back from there."
"Brittany, this time. That should interest you, Hearne."
It did, in spite of the fact that for the last month he had not slept in a clean bed, or seen a bathroom.
"When do I go?" he asked. Brittany... well that was something.
"In about two or three weeks. If there is an armistice, then we shall use you. Every Frenchman who can get back to his home will go there. You are to be one of the Frenchmen who get back to France, and stay there."