by David Downie
“Nothing is simple,” Morbido muttered.
Bianchi splayed his arms wide and laughed good-naturedly. “This is Italy,” he said, “but it’s not just Italy, it’s the world, it’s all the same now, all very complicated.”
Bozzo grimaced at the banter, continuing to study the mechanism of the plane’s jaws and bay. He took several photos with his smartphone, zooming in for a series of close-ups. “In any case,” Bozzo remarked glumly, glancing back at the others, “the likelihood that any genetic material would be left in this kind of mechanism is low. How fast does this plane fly when it’s taking in water?” he queried Bianchi.
“Between thirty and fifty kilometers per hour,” Bianchi said. “Any slower and it falls to the surface and wallows. Any faster and it trips and flips.”
“And how many liters does it take in?”
“About six thousand.”
“And how far does the plane travel with the bay open while filling up?”
“Approximately one kilometer.”
“Well,” Bozzo replied, shaking his head, “imagine the scouring power of seawater running over stainless steel at forty kph for a kilometer.” He rapped the mechanism with his knuckles. “I will say this, however. The wounds on the subject’s body, and the lesions and tearing of the shoulder, as well as the shearing of the hand, might well have been brought about by a mechanism of this kind during the uptake or else as it released its payload.” He stuck his head through the cowcatcher into the bay. “If this screen mechanism had been removed,” Bozzo mused aloud, “There would be ample room for a man the size of the subject to travel undamaged or at least in one piece in it and breathe, if he were conscious and could raise his head above the water, assuming the bay is never filled to the top.”
“Correct,” said Bianchi. “It is never fully filled, and I have stood up inside these scoops many times in the old days.”
Taking off her sunglasses, Daria stared at the jaws and complex mechanism and turned to the mechanic. “From what you say, the Russian and Chinese planes could not have scooped up the victim—the cowcatcher device or whatever technical term you have for this screen would prevent that.” Bianchi nodded. “These new Canadair planes are also designed to avoid that danger, possibly because of accidents that occurred in the past, in Canada?”
Again, Bianchi nodded. “And elsewhere,” he added, “it’s rare but not unknown.”
“What about older models? These planes have been around for nearly forty years.”
Bianchi cautiously said yes, it was conceivable with the early models of Canadair, though most of them had been updated, retrofitted, and equipped with safety devices.
“Could a plane be modified to make it easier to scoop up more water, for instance, with no protection?”
“Affirmative, captain,” Bianchi said. “I have seen it done. The old Canadair planes that are sold on Third World markets, for instance,” he added, “where safety is not a consideration, and they want maximum water intake over the shortest stretch, where they’re dealing usually with rivers or lakes.”
“Any of those old models around? Any of them used in the last few days, during the competition, or otherwise?”
Bianchi shook his head. “Not here,” he said, “not in Albenga.”
“But elsewhere, nearby, perhaps?”
“Possibly,” he said, grimacing and crossing his arms as if a realization had struck him.
Daria drummed her lips. “Might we step into your office?” she asked, walking toward the hangar. She stopped and turned. “Osvaldo, I think we can let Emilio get back to work now. If you run him to the train station, he can be in Genoa in an hour, whereas a taxi will take twice that, with the traffic from the protest march near Villa Migone.” She glanced at Emilio Bozzo and smiled wryly. “I cannot thank you enough,” she said with a friendly, quiet laugh. “Cremation is definitely the way to go.”
Bozzo raised an eyebrow, his cheeks coloring. “Keep me posted,” he said, picking up his tool bag and following Lieutenant Morbido, who was already clomping toward his unmarked car, one hand raised to shade his eyes from the glare.
Twenty-Two
Inside Bianchi’s orderly, nondescript office, Daria took a seat and accepted his offer of a cup of coffee.
“American, please,” she found herself saying. “With lots of hot water.”
He studied her, a quizzical smile on his round, affable face. “No focaccia delivered this morning, I’m afraid,” he apologized, “but I do have some of those toxic, packaged breakfast rolls, if you’d care for one.” He paused and frowned. “Are you all right, captain?”
“Absolutely,” she lied. “I caught a chill this morning, that’s all.”
“A chill, in this heat?” He seemed incredulous. “Well, the coffee and chemical brioche will fix you.”
Picking up the thread of their conversation begun as they had crossed the hangar, Bianchi confirmed that the Civil Defense Department had retired two veteran Canadair planes recently, one of them approximately two years ago, the other six months ago. “The last one was my favorite,” he said with a sigh. He had nicknamed her Gilda, for a tortoise he’d had when a boy. “She was slow and persnickety and might even try to bite you, but she was tough and indestructible, and I loved her,” he remarked, shaking his head.
“The tortoise or the plane?”
“Both,” said the mechanic.
It was normal that, after a given number of years, the Civil Defense Department would auction off older planes, he added. When they were too old, metal fatigue set in. Also, the early models of Canadair were equipped with piston engines. They could be temperamental and were sluggish. Now they came equipped with turbo props. The retired ones, like old buses and trains and hospital equipment and everything else that’s out of date or worn and unwanted and sometimes dangerous, goes from Italy to Eastern Europe or Africa.
Because he had been so fond of the plane, Bianchi kept tabs on it and knew Gilda had been sold at auction to a company named Aviation Repair Systems Italia. It had bought most of the Civil Defense Department’s obsolete planes over the years and was going to rebuild and refit her, then deliver her to foreign clients. “I happen to know she was on the way to Morocco two days ago,” he added wistfully.
Aviation Repair Systems Italia had its own airstrip and worked out of facilities that once belonged to Camp Darby, the U.S. military base near Pisa. Daria knew that parts of the sprawling camp were still being used by the U.S. Army for unspecified activities. Most of the compound and its many runways had been leased out to private companies and the Italian government. The increasingly busy Pisa airport, a hub for low-cost airlines, occasionally redirected overflow charters to Camp Darby and farmed out maintenance to several companies there. “They rebuild old planes, convert passenger planes to freight, and decommission military planes,” the mechanic clarified.
Holding up her smartphone so Bianchi could see the screen, Daria showed him the image from social media of the seaplane that had been spotted shortly after 10:00 a.m. on April 23rd flying toward the Cinque Terre. “Might this be Gilda?”
Bianchi peered curiously at the screen, tilted it this way and that, trying to see through the reflection from the overhead lights, then tapped the screen accidentally, causing the image to disappear. Daria brought it back. “It could be,” he said. “That’s a blurry photo, but, let me see, let me blow up this part of the fuselage… Yes, I do recognize her.” He pointed at the screen again, careful not to touch it. “See the ding there, by the cockpit door? That was Mario, with the forklift, eight years ago. They obviously tried to straighten and flatten it, but I can still see it. And the oddity of the black and red stains on the tail? In other models, the tail was modified so the chemicals and exhaust would not blow back and stain the metal.”
Daria glanced at the screen, could not actually see what he was referring to, and concentrated instea
d on studying Bianchi’s expressions and manner. He seemed to be a straight shooter.
Finishing her watery coffee and wondering out loud if Bianchi could now make her an espresso, she asked with feigned distraction if it was normal that registration numbers be whited out on decommissioned planes. Yes, said the mechanic, it was not unusual. A temporary permit would be issued by the aviation authorities to allow the plane to get to its destination, then it would be up to any new owner to re-register it according to local laws.
“Old amphibious planes never die,” the mechanic said cheerfully, “I’ve seen some from the ’50s or even the 1930s, still flying.” He paused. “You can use seaplanes for all kinds of things. I heard there’s a millionaire in Sardinia using one of our old Canadair planes for sea skydiving.” Bianchi shook his head for emphasis. “Ever heard of it? He and his friends parachute at sea and the plane picks them up.”
“Picks them up?” she asked. “How? Surely it does not scoop them up?”
“No, no. It’s been modified for search and rescue. There’s a big sliding door and a ramp.” Before Daria could speak, he began again. “There are dozens of vintage seaplanes in Africa and Asia. Like I say, they’re used for all kinds of activities.”
“And in Canada, too, presumably,” Daria ventured, holding onto the vision of the millionaire skydiver in Sardinia. “I assume such planes are not habitually used for drugs and smuggling in Canada,” she added, fishing for a reaction, “or for search and destroy missions when the object is to find and kill migrants, not save them?”
The mechanic glanced at her warily but said nothing. He listened now as she asked him if he might know who the best water bomber pilot anywhere might be, perhaps the millionaire’s pilot, in Sardinia?
Pacing back and forth across his office, Vincenzo Bianchi shook his head and said that he could not say who the best water bomber pilot in the world was, but he thought he knew the best one in Italy, and it wasn’t the young pilot out in Sardinia, who was competent but nothing more. “Umberto Ansaldo,” the mechanic declared with admiration. “He retired about fifteen years ago.”
Ansaldo, the cadet scion of one cadet branch of one of Genoa’s oldest families, had flown for the Italian Air Force, then Alitalia, in the good old days, Bianchi added, then, for a lark, flew Canadair water bombers for the Civil Defense Department. “He was getting ready to retire again when I was hired,” Bianchi noted, “and that was about twenty years ago.”
What distinguished Ansaldo was his daring. He had been trained on prop planes in the 1950s and been a stunt pilot in the 1970s for Italy’s Hollywood—Cinecittà—before special effects.
Daria interrupted, asking how old this Umberto Ansaldo was and if he were still alive and flying—and, coincidentally, if he might know the Sardinian millionaire skydiver.
“Oh, he’s probably in his seventies or early eighties, but he’s still flying all right,” the mechanic said, pointing to a twin-engine Cessna in a hangar visible from his windows. “That’s his. He comes in once or twice a week. Whether he knows the Sardinian I have no idea.”
“And he did not fly in the competition?”
Bianchi shook his head, as if the question were ludicrous. “The best pilot in Italy could not have participated in that air show or scooped up the subject of your inquiry,” he said, “for any number of reasons, I suppose, but primarily because he was flying that plane over there with his son, Sandro, who is also a pretty good pilot. Ansaldo was gone most of the day. I could tell you exactly when he flew out and when he flew in,” the mechanic added, reaching out and pecking at the keyboard of a desktop computer.
Noting that Umberto Ansaldo enjoyed flying to Corsica, Sardinia and the Tuscan archipelago in particular, Bianchi confirmed that the Cessna had taken off at 7:45 a.m. and returned to Albenga at 4:47 p.m.
“Could that type of plane have flown as far as Olbia or Pisa?” she asked quietly.
“Of course,” the mechanic said, “it could fly to Moscow or Oslo!”
“And could one man fly it, without a copilot?”
Bianchi nodded.
“How long would it take to get to Pisa?”
“From here, about forty-five minutes, an hour,” he answered.
“Any record of where he might have flown that day?”
Bianchi explained that private planes don’t have to file detailed flight plans—they are used for tourism, entertainment, excursions. Improvisation and freedom are essential to the experience. “You want lunch in Olbia?” he asked rhetorically. “Sure! How about dinner in Florence? Plus, it’s the long holiday weekend, so he may have landed at a private airstrip somewhere to visit friends, go swimming, see his mistress, who knows? Why not ask him?”
Daria said she would be glad to and wondered if Bianchi might supply the contact information for Ansaldo and the Sardinian millionaire. The mechanic consulted the computer again and wrote two names and mobile numbers on a sticky note, handing it silently to Daria.
“So, this Signor Ansaldo could have flown to Pisa,” she summed up, “parked his plane, and then flown Gilda? It is conceivable?”
Bianchi smiled wryly and shook his head, seeing where she had been heading. “Anything is conceivable,” he admitted, “but that is highly unlikely. As I mentioned, I know Gilda was on her way to Morocco by the time the air show was under way.”
“Then perhaps her pilot, for the hell of it, flew slightly north to see the air show before heading south? Or the millionaire’s modified Canadair from Olbia flew over, piloted, perhaps, by the son of Signor Ansaldo, or by Ansaldo Senior, the father, why not, with the son taking over the Cessna and flying to Pisa? Perhaps both independently flew over from Olbia and Pisa to the Ligurian coast to see what was going on and give a hand to put out a fire near La Spezia?”
Bianchi continued to shake his head. “You would need to ask them. But I doubt anyone in Sardinia will speak freely with you, they’re a strange bunch, and I don’t think you will find anyone at Aviation Repair Systems Italia now. It’s a national holiday.”
Daria nodded amiably but, finding the number with Google, she called the company in Pisa nonetheless and was gratified when someone answered after the third ring. She identified herself and explained that she was trying to track a Canadair plane the company had just rebuilt and presumably sent to Morocco. Yes, said the male voice on the other end of the line, he knew the plane and knew it had been scheduled to fly out. No, he answered again, he wasn’t on duty yesterday or the day before. He did not know who was flying the plane to Morocco. He had been on vacation and had just returned and was holding down the fort while everyone else took their turn on vacation. Tapping at the keys of a computer, he came back on and told Daria the company registry showed the seaplane had flown out, heading for Morocco, at 11:15 a.m. on April 23rd.
“Was it also flown earlier that same morning?”
“It might have been,” said the voice, hesitating, then rattling the keyboard, “to make sure all systems were go before such a long flight, that would be normal practice.”
“Exactly,” Daria said. “Might I speak to the pilot?” she asked.
The man laughed heartily. “He’s not back yet,” he said at length. “He had three refueling stops and an overnight in Malta on the way.” It was a slow plane, not designed for long hauls. The pilot would be returning to Pisa in two days, on a commercial flight. She could talk to him then, if she wanted. Daria noted the man’s name, Stefano Molfino, thanked the helpful employee, and disconnected.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” Bianchi said, scratching his head and frowning. “That’s my opinion, for what it’s worth. Stefano Molfino would never do what you think has been done and he wouldn’t be capable of doing it, either.”
“Obviously there is no odometer in an airplane,” she said, her voice flat. “But there must be some way to know how far Signor Ansaldo’s Cessna flew on April 23rd?”
Reluctantly, Bianchi checked his computer file and told her the number of hours the Cessna had logged that day. “We check it every time a plane comes in,” he explained, “for maintenance.”
“And?”
“It could have flown to Sardinia or Pisa or both,” he said warily.
Daria drummed her lips, fully restored now. “Any other candidates for our mystery pilot? Someone capable, as you put it, of scooping up a moving swimmer and dropping him alive on a bull’s-eye thirty kilometers away?”
The mechanic whistled quietly and almost whispered, “I figured as much.” Buying time, he glanced at his watch and wondered out loud what had become of Daria’s lieutenant, Morbido. The train station was only fifteen minutes away. Then he said, “I can think of a few candidates, but none of them could have done it. Either they’re dead or out of commission right now.” He typed a name into his computer, then swiveled the screen around as a series of photos appeared on Google Images. Daria peered at them and smiled despite herself, recognizing the grinning, horsey face of Willem Bremach. “Now, this gentleman was an authentically great pilot,” said Bianchi, “good friend of Umberto’s too, kept a private plane with us for about thirty years. But I happen to know he’s injured himself and isn’t flying these days. He’s also over ninety.”
“He’s ninety-three, to be precise,” Daria remarked. “Ambassador Bremach could not have flown that plane, he was watching the incident unfold from his villa.”
“Ah, so you know l’ambasciatore! What a marvelous character, what an inspiration!”
Then Bianchi told her how Willem had flown Spitfires, an astonishingly overpowered fighter aircraft for its day, and could dive them like the Nazis’ Stukas, then slow them until they almost hovered above a target. “Then he would slide open the cockpit, pull the pin, count, and toss out a hand grenade, dropping it right into a foxhole or the turret of a tank, for instance, and then pull up the Spitfire before anyone knew what had happened.” The mechanic’s admiration appeared to be boundless. “You see, he was born in Genoa, but he’s half Dutch and half English, so, when the war was over, he left the RAF and the Dutch drafted him and sent him to fly in some horrible colonial war in a godforsaken place…” Bianchi paused and shook his head, crossing his arms and smiling. “I saw him flying Gilda more than once,” he whispered conspiratorially, “but we were sworn to silence. Everyone was. He didn’t want his wife, la signora Bremach, to know. She is a very severe Nordic lady and does not want him to fly anymore. But Willem—I mean, his Excellency the Ambassador—would always say, ‘Look at the Queen! If the Queen of England wanted to fly, who would stop her, and she is two years older than I am!’” The mechanic chuckled, beaming.