If neither action threw up anything that had been chained to solid proof, the kind cast in forged steel, then Jack would assume that his initial judgement on the man had been correct. He could then alleviate his fears and be assured that the idea of a child had been created for no other reason than for use as a bargaining tool.
In essence, whilst Jack had only fourteen days in which to decide whether or not to play ‘the game’, Simon had a little more than twelve hours in which to convince him that this was, in fact, a game worth playing...
...and dreams
Daniel 1:17
He opened the folder wide across his lap and took a moment to skim through its contents.
As well as technical data relating to Flight 320 and comprehensive details of the reconstruction work carried out by the NTSB, it also contained a sizeable cross-section of newspaper clippings. More or less everything he had expected.
Then, at the back of the file, Jack found three postcards. Rather than relate to the flight, however, each card detailed a historic work of art. Two concerned themselves with works by Leonardo Da Vinci, the most famous of the Renaissance artists, whilst the third showed Jean Cocteau’s mural; the mural on which Simon had already issued his unwelcome lecture. Jack decided that it was probably best to examine the cards first, for no other reason than that they looked so out of place alongside the technical and media information.
He pulled them out and closed the file.
The cards had been issued by different publishers and as such the amount of copy on the reverse varied greatly. The first, the one showing the Cocteau mural, gave only the location and a date [1957] whilst the second, showing Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper offered slightly more detail. It explained that this painting was also a mural, that it had been commissioned by Ludovico il Moro for the refectory of the convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan and that it had been completed in 1498. Jack smiled; slightly more detail.
The third card showed two almost identical paintings side by side and was designed to be used as an informative reference rather than a posted souvenir. As such the reverse contained a comprehensive narrative on the works. The paintings were Da Vinci’s two versions of The Virgin of the Rocks and consequently they both depicted the same episode, one not drawn from the Gospels but from a story apparently long present in Christian legend. During their flight into Egypt, the copy stated, Mary and the young Jesus had sheltered in a desert cave where they had encountered a similarly youthful John the Baptist under the protection of the Archangel Uriel. The point of the story was apparently to escape an obvious and somewhat embarrassing question raised by the Gospel story of Jesus’ own baptism. It claimed that it was at this highly fortuitous meeting that Jesus conferred on his cousin the authority to baptise him when both were adults.
But why, the card asked, should a supposedly sinless Jesus require any baptism at all?
The text explained that Leonardo’s first version of the scene, completed in 1485, had not been well received by its patrons, the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception at the Church of San Francesco Grande in Milan. It was commissioned to form the centrepiece of a triptych for the altar of their chapel. The contract for the commission, dated 1483 and still in existence today, carefully specified the imagery that the Confraternity were requesting. Leonardo, for reasons known only to himself, chose to deviate from that specification and a lengthy lawsuit followed. The artist eventually conceded to produce a slightly altered replica, completed in or around 1507. This was the version now resident in the Louvre in Paris. The rejected painting was now hanging from the walls of the National Gallery in London, ironically only a few minutes walk from the church Jack had visited earlier that day.
Nowhere on the three cards could Jack find anything that seemed to have any relevance to Lara, her flight from Frankfurt or the fact that she may have borne a child whilst she was away from home. So what, he asked himself, was the reason for their presence within the pack? Unless it had been an accident on Simon’s part, which he seriously doubted, he could only assume that the answer was either contained within the images so subliminally that he was missing it or there was some link between them that only his lack of historical knowledge prevented him from seeing. The only thing to do, he decided, was research the paintings more thoroughly when he arrived back home.
Thereby breaking his first self-imposed pre-requisite for the deal.
He placed the cards on the unoccupied seat to his left and turned instead to the extremely detailed accounts of the loading procedures used for container AVC 4119 TA, of the Libyan terrorists themselves and of the bomb and timer mechanism that had apparently been used. How Simon had obtained such information was not apparent, but then this was a man who had apparently spoken to Mil’el and had received the answers to the questions he had posed. A man seemingly very adept at getting what he needed.
Throughout the notes, certain words and phrases had been picked out with a yellow highlighter pen. Apparently irrelevant sections. The exception to the rule was one paragraph detailing the time that the accused baggage handler, Dieter Friedricks, had arrived for his shift and started loading the remaining five bags into baggage container AVC 4119 TA. In this paragraph, all twelve lines had been picked out in orange, not yellow, and no explanation had been attached as to whether the use of a different colour was relevant or not.
In the section of the file dedicated to newspaper clippings were even more words and phrases that for some reason had been highlighted in yellow. When Jack cross-reference the two sections he could see that each highlighted detail in the technical file had a corresponding detail highlighted in the media file. It was only when he realised that the technical data covered the loss of Flight 320 whilst the press cuttings detailed the bomb seized when Dalkamouni and Mal-Makhoub had been arrested in Neuss the previous year that he became aware of just how accurately the details tallied. It appeared that the make of radio/cassette player, the type of timer, the amount of explosives and the barometric triggers were all vividly outlined in German newspapers as much as five months before Flight 320 even left the tarmac.
What the newspaper cuttings did not contain, however, was any reference highlighted in orange, or indeed any information regarding Dieter Friedricks’ work as a baggage handler at all. Friedricks, certainly as far as the media was concerned, was fresh news.
So why, Jack thought, were details on Friedricks marked in such a way as to stand out from the others? Within the highlighted area the time of the man’s arrival at Frankfurt airport was detailed as 5:30am, but that was already common knowledge. Even the morning papers had demonstrated that Friedricks had been given a rota the previous week which had moved his start time from 4:30am to 5:30am, that he had arrived on time and had loaded five unspecified bags into container AVC 4119 TA. Nobody knew which bags he had loaded, only that there had been forty-nine in the container when he arrived for work and fifty-four when the plane took off at 5:51am. There was every probability that one of those five bags was a Bronze Samsonite containing a selection of gents’ clothing purchased in three German stores and a Matsutritsu model 2110 radio cassette player.
Jack turned back to the beginning of the file and began to read every page from scratch. This time in intricate detail, hoping that the answer to the use of orange instead of yellow would somehow become apparent. Dry-mouthed he read the passenger lists which included ‘Teresa Harman’, the pseudonym used on the passport carried by his only child, and the manifests that tallied the bags to the passengers. He read that there was no bronze Samsonite listed on these manifests and that there had been one more bag recovered than had been logged.
With the same sense of horror, heavy in his stomach, that he had felt when he had spoken to Andy he read how fifty one minutes after take-off a Semtex bomb, hidden inside a Matsutritsu radio/cassette player, which was in turn hidden in the bronze Samsonite, had exploded with devastating effect. It had punched a hole ten inches from the floor at the back of container A
VC 4119 TA, sent highly destructive shockwaves ripping through the fuselage and the air conditioning units which had ultimately peeled the main body of the plane open like a tin can 32,000 feet above the rolling fields of Elspeet, Holland. The notes explained how two minutes after the explosion the plane and two hundred and sixty one bodies, including that of his daughter, were back on the ground, this time scattered over a thirty mile radius.
He read in detail how the NTSB and Federal investigators had intricately pieced the plane back together, traced every line and determined beyond doubt the chain of events, at the same time as security personnel launched an investigation that tracked down Dalkamouni, Mal-Makhoub and ultimately Friedricks.
When he reached the end of the file Jack concluded exactly what he had suspected he might; that these three men were the same three men, regardless of what Simon and his ‘interested party’ might wish to insinuate, who had been wholly responsible for the murder of his daughter. They would rot in prison; the closest he could send them to hell. He, meanwhile, was left with an empty feeling, created both by the loss of his only child and the final realisation that the file held nothing of use. It was this feeling that made him realise for the first time that he had, possibly, been hoping that Simon had been right. That he had been offering something new.
He had not. There was nothing more to say or do.
There were no revelations and no details hidden within the pages that Jack and thousands of others with enough money to buy a daily paper did not already know about the bombing. Similarly there was nothing about the whereabouts of his daughter prior to her death and certainly nothing about a child. He concluded therefore that his suspicions had been correct; that the entire meeting had been an elaborate waste of time by a well-researched prankster who was probably laughing out loud right now at Jack’s expense.
Sighing heavily, he threw the file next to the postcards and tried in vain to rub away the aches which seemed to have become ingrained into the very fabric of his face.
A stewardess approached his seat from behind, leaning over with a dutiful smile and offering tea, coffee or perhaps something a little stronger. Tempted as he was by the third option, he politely declined all three. With three hours of the flight still to go, he could take no more. He reclined his seat, closed his tired eyes and allowed the mass of information swirling through his mind to hypnotise him darkly toward the relief of sleep. Having flown into London quite early that morning, it had been a long day. One that had somehow managed to feel even longer.
The deeper he fell, the closer to his daughter his dreams took him. He pictured a studious fifteen-year old collecting insects in the fields behind the ranch. Her eyes were full of life and her smile wide, but on the odd occasion that she had looked toward the house and seen Jack watching her from behind his computer, the smile had faltered. The pain had returned. His and hers.
There was no way she could have understood; no way for him to adequately explain that he was as bitter as she at Elizabeth’s death. It was a dark time and it reflected on those around him, not just his daughter. He wished he had been able to deal with it better. Then and now.
Suddenly a bang. The loudest he had ever heard, resonating from the floor directly beneath his feet.
The plane shook violently, throwing open the overhead lockers. Instinctively Jack sat up . A split second later a metallic tearing sound filled the air above his head. In an instant every light in the cabin was extinguished and he felt the fierce cold of a three hundred mile an hour wind tearing into his face. Shards of metal sliced through the air, ripping into his whole body and tearing the shirt from his chest.
He had never known pain like it, it stabbed savagely at every one of his nerve endings.
After a few moments his eyes became acclimatised to the darkness and looking back he saw the stewardess through the gloom, screaming as she clung desperately to the door which had once separated the first class section from steerage. As the force of the air tried to pull her away the strain was evident in every sinew in her arms. Then the plane lurched downward and she lost her grip, disappearing out into the night sky. There was time for Jack to notice only the slightest glint of realisation registering in her eyes before she was gone.
A drinks trolley plunged through the aisle, the glass shattering into Jack’s face as it crashed against the cockpit wall. The plane began to arc toward the earth and twist wildly out of control. It churned the contents of his stomach and brought him close to violent retching. The cold wind doubled in intensity and its ferocity pinned him firmly back into his seat. He tried to breathe, but it was impossible as his lungs expanded with every frightening second that passed. As he helplessly strained for air an elderly passenger, his flesh torn and bleeding, plummeted down the near-vertical aisle and hit the forward wall with a sickening crunch. As the man lay awkwardly against the wall, his legs and arms twisted at impossible angles, Jack saw his frozen look of horror and realised that the man was already dead. A moment later his body was joined by another; that of a woman.
With a wrenching scream that exploded through his ears, the right-side wing finally succumbed to the unnatural stresses being imposed and tore away from its housing. The burning fuel which followed in its wake briefly illuminated the cabin as it sliced aerodynamically past the fuselage toward the ground below. It allowed Jack to see the woman’s face more clearly. He saw her lips straining against impossible forces to speak and her eyes losing the battle with unconsciousness. She was young; a girl of perhaps eighteen or nineteen with long brown hair and light clear skin.
God, she was beautiful.
God Almighty. She was Lara.
As fast as realisation gripped his face she disappeared, her body sliding from the wall as the plane twisted. Like the stewardess before her she too was thrust into the darkness beyond. He tried to scream her name but his expanded lungs would not allow the words to escape. Had he been able, it would still have been too late. His daughter was gone forever.
“Sir?” A comforting voice. “Sir?”
Ashen faced, he opened his eyes to see the stewardess leaning over him again, neatly plucked eyebrows forming a well-rehearsed triangle of concern. She was very much alive. Was he?
“Are you alright, Sir?”
Jack could not speak. The images had been so real, so tangible. For a moment he thought that the reality of this new voice was the dream; a moment of everyday normality planted by his subconscious to ease the pain of a slow death. He closed his eyes again, took a deep breath and then opened them quickly. The stewardess was still there.
“Sorry I....” He felt the embarrassment of a child whose cries had woken his mother in the dead of night. “I think I was having a bad dream.”
The stewardess smiled reassuringly and pulled the handle which raised his seat into the upright position. “We’re starting our descent,” she said with a comforting smile, leaning to his waist to check that his seatbelt was firmly in place. “Landing in twenty minutes.”
As she continued along the aisle, passing the same instructions to other passengers who had yet to heed the overhead signs, Jack felt depleted and cold. He knew that the pounding he felt was his heart beating but at the same time he felt as though that same heart had somehow been ripped from his body to be tossed like a football between three Libyan terrorists and a stranger called Simon.
What had the man called it? A game.
There was a God, he decided. A God who had seen that Jack was standing on the precipice of making one of the most important decisions of his life. A God who saw that he had screwed up so many of his previous decisions, and one who had now chosen to throw the full extent of the nightmare into his mind, just so that he might truly understand what it was that man could do to man. Perhaps this ‘God’ felt that Jack needed a complete comprehension of these things if he was to even consider playing ‘the game’.
“Most of the passengers on the flight will have experienced a free-fall for two miles which will have lasted two minutes
. Many will have lost consciousness with instantaneous effect, given that the air at thirty-one-thousand feet is extremely thin. Added to the high winds, extreme cold and injuries from flying debris it is possible, if not probable, that almost all passengers would have experienced a complete black-out. Some passengers, however, may have regained consciousness as they entered the atmosphere closer to the earth where the air is more rich in oxygen. It has been discovered that at least half of those aboard Flight 320 were still alive when they hit the ground, dying only from the force of impact. One passenger’s body was discovered clutching a small child, indicating that there was a high degree of consciousness during what must have been a terrifying descent.”
Jack was left wishing with all his heart that he had not just read every last horrific detail contained within the file and that he had done more things of value for Lara long before somebody had stolen her away from him. Similarly, that he had never been drawn into meeting with Simon.
...at least half of those aboard Flight 320 were alive when they hit the ground...
But most of all, as he looked through the window into the darkness of the world outside, just like his daughter might once have done, Jack Bernstein wished to God that Lara had never chosen to board that goddamned plane.
understanding of the times
1 Corinthians 12:32
“You look like shit,” MaryBeth said, slender arms cloaked in trademark Versace and open in greeting. Having waited at arrivals as promised, she gave him an affectionate hug and they started drifting toward the exit. He carried no luggage; the laptop bag possessing an extra pocket large enough to accommodate the file and all the toiletries he had needed for what had initially been a thirty-six hour visit to London. As his meeting with Simon had increased that time to almost forty-three, he wondered why he had never been blessed with enough foresight to carry a change of clothing as well.
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