Flight

by Adam Thorpe

  He called the agency in Brighton. ‘I’m back in,’ he said. They laughed, almost dirtily. The great unwashed.

  ‘I’ll end up in Davis-Monthan Air Force Base,’ he told Olivia the day he handed in his resignation. They were in bed, reading. It was late.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Arizona. They call it the boneyard. It’s where obsolete aircaft end up, rusting under the hot desert sun. Rows and rows and rows of them.’

  He touched her smooth upper arm with the back of his knuckles.

  ‘Bob, this isn’t working.’

  He lifted the sheet. ‘It’s working all right. I just need to smell you and it works. Because you are you.’

  ‘That’s just physical,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not. It’s because I’m nuts about you. I am. Day after day.’

  ‘Don’t stroke me like that. Please.’

  ‘It was only your arm.’ He lay back, hearing the secretary’s unfortunate voice, smelling her bacon crisps. ‘You’re not nuts about me, on the other hand. That’s a problem, I grant.’

  She allowed in an air pocket of silence. She used, he recalled, to call him her ‘hunk’.

  ‘It’s not you, per se,’ she said. ‘It’s the whole thing.’

  He failed to find an answer. At the time he thought it was because she’d had a grand total of three customers in the shop the day before, and had laid off her teenage assistant. Or that she was pining for Miami, those far-off days with the World’s Most Experienced Airline. Being a naïve pilot, it never occurred to him that a pleasant Canadian guy could be a wife-sucking ghoul, his massage parlour merely a portal to various caves of wonders. But that wasn’t the whole story in itself. He recognised that, now. A plane only stays up in the air if it’s going not-too-slow, not-too-fast. Their marriage had slowed, he felt, but not yet run out of juice. He simply misread or ignored the data: it was, in fact, in a stable, stalled, horizontal descent, an unnoticed death spiral. It happened: pilots trying to fix a mild problem in slightly bumpy night conditions while the surface of the ocean is hurtling up, their vessel as airworthy as a lump of rock. Full realisation had to wait for a crisp, clear October afternoon, a nip of woodsmoke in the air, a smell of lavender oil in the hall. The water about to cleave into a phosphorus bomb.

  David got back to Bob in the afternoon. He’d just returned from what had been a decent little Crowthorne pub, the Star and Garter, but was now an offshoot of something like Cut-Price Records, judging from the ambient music and the quality of the food. They discussed this and other things. Remembering Sophie’s response, all Bob said was that he’d left the job in Dubai, that he wasn’t going back. This was no news to David, as his father had been flitting all his life, a kind of blur that coalesced at regular intervals into a dad he’d once been proud of and was now embarrassed by.

  ‘How’s uni?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Bob asked him if he knew a journalist called Matt Sharansky.

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘Personally?’

  ‘No, just his articles.’

  ‘David, did you put him on to me? Give him my details?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he knew where to find me.’

  ‘Dad, anybody going on the Web can find out you live in Dubai.’

  ‘My address is just a PO box. Otherwise you have to draw a map.’

  ‘I did not draw a map. I didn’t give him your address. Don’t get on my nerves, Dad.’

  Bob nodded, remembered you could hear a smile, so he smiled. ‘Isn’t that exactly what dads are for? Hey, I quite liked the guy, in fact. We had a useful chat. Trouble is, it turned out I wasn’t on the dodgy flight in question. So it was all a waste of time.’

  ‘Is Sharansky why you’re leaving Dubai in such a hurry?’

  Bob looked down on the bedraggled communal gardens. His bruised coccyx was saying, You bet it is. ‘No. Other reasons.’

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘Well, partly. Tricky time. But getting back to this Sharansky character, he’s in very murky waters. Best to avoid him.’

  ‘He usually is. He’s a fearless campaign journalist. We can’t avoid him. Did Mum tell you I’m in trouble with my tutor?’

  ‘She tells me nothing,’ he said, unable to stop himself.

  ‘Well, he’s thirty-five and he’s got seriously bad hair, literally like early Pink Floyd? I said so on Facebook and someone else showed him it. He was extremely cross,’ he added, laughing. ‘But it’s seriously, seriously bad hair. And strawberry blonde.’

  ‘I once had hair like early Pink Floyd,’ Bob said. ‘Before the RAF.’

  ‘Yeah, Dad, I know. But that was then.’

  That was then. And now is now.

  ‘I might take a trip up, David. Come and bother you in sunny Manchester.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘About this journalist? Don’t bother, Dad.’

  ‘Just to see you, mate. Truly. Dads like to see their sons from time to time.’

  ‘Hey, you don’t want to give a talk, do you? Might be a bit rough, though. A few pointed questions. Wear your body armour and all that. Could be pretty cool. What d’you reckon?’

  Bob promised he’d think about it and they said their goodbyes, chummily. He stayed staring out through the rain-spotted glass onto a brown-and-grey muddle that was toying with the idea of being England. His own hair was dark chestnut and flight-deck short, but there’d be no more flight decks. Could that be true? Another empty vow.

  He opened the window. A man was leaning against a tree on the far side of the road beyond the garden. A bird was hopping about on the grass below. A squirrel rippled up a trunk. The traffic hummed away unseen, overmastered by the beefier drone of a jet on its approach to Heathrow. And then another, and another. So large and loud a sound. He thought: I’ve completely forgotten what it was like before jets were hush-kitted. The BAC 1–11 was the loudest. Let the noise be with you, skipper. Birds manage it with no more than a faint sort of whispery thumping at most, if their wingspan’s big enough. But then the body of the biggest eagle is no bigger than a rat’s, or that squirrel’s on the lawn. An Antonov 124 is seven storeys high and can carry fifty cars.

  The air in his face did feel a touch too fresh after Dubai. Everything saturated, as if the country needed wringing out. And the spaces between all the brick and tarmac – green, matted, soggy! It was too cold to keep the window open. When he closed it he got condensation: rain-in-the-plane. As a kid he’d enjoy following the drips, seeing them join up, each individual journey. For want of anything else to do in deepest Suffolk. David had put Sharansky on to him, obviously. The key was to peel David away from this whole business, as the man down there had peeled away from the tree. Looking up at him. Walking off.

  Never mind the weather; he needed a drive.

  7

  BOB OPENED UP his garage in the row adjoining the flats. Inside, in a pleasant smell of oil, leather and petrol, was a two-seater Austin Healey Sebring, a souped-up replica of the 60s racing model, built in 1988, with a Ford V8 engine and convertible top in tan, nicely setting off the dark red body. It was a present to himself after the Congo accident, cheap therapy at around £9,000. The kids had loved it, and got to ride in it in turn. Now safely under lock and key, he never bothered to check it beyond kicking the tyres. He reconnected the battery and it started straightaway.

  He gave it a spin around the lanes, had lunch in Tadley, blew the dust off. He wished it was the summer, the wind in his face, blurred hedgerows. Instead, the windscreen kept fogging, the wipers wiping. When he got back, he went straight to the gym and renewed his membership. It was no good going slack: he felt like an animal in predator territory. And he was missing Leila.

  He called the McAl at home again, but he was still battling with the salmon.

  ‘Can’t I try his mobile?’

  ‘It doesn’t pick up where he is. Deepest Highlands.’

  ‘Is he semi-retired,
or what?’

  ‘Why do you say that, Bob?’ Jane sounded indignant. ‘Just because he keeps some bloody bees?’

  ‘He seems to have spare time.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘I guess everyone’s entitled to it,’ Bob said. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d started this: envy, perhaps. She asked how things were.

  ‘You mean the divorce. We’re almost dissolved. Sealed, signed and delivered. A few more stressed-out months of Olivia high on pulsatilla, and then it’s done.’

  She laughed, always the same high laugh. ‘That’s for colds. You make it sound like a death certificate.’

  ‘You bet. And you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean how are you? Al said you were not A-plus, healthwise.’

  ‘Did he now?’ Far from going cold, she went on for another half an hour. By the end, there was nothing that Bob did not know about fibromyalgia in all its manifestations, most particularly, the one that increased your sense of smell a hundredfold. So how did Jane put up with Hugh ‘Dog’s Breath’ McAllister?

  Marriage is a human mystery, Bob thought. Divorce is an exposed rock, by contrast.

  Saturday was sunny, between high white banks of cloud. He drove off again, but slightly further afield, up on the downs towards Hungerford. Olivia and he had taken the occasional break in a picturesque village up there in their early years. An old rectory of a hotel, as she’d put it. He just needed to be looked after for a weekend – he might have gone to friends, but had to play the lone wolf for a while. Crowthorne was a safe house. Even the prince didn’t know about Crowthorne.

  He hit metal with the pedal and overtook most of the cars on the M4, enjoying the noise. He didn’t like driving: other people in the way, bossy road signs, no views to infinity. He found a compilation Procol Harum that took him back.

  Did you hear what happened to Jenny Drew?

  I couldn’t believe it, but it was true.

  Too sad, too sweet: he whipped past Chieveley Services with Creedence Clearwater Revival blasting out so loud it made the gearstick vibrate. Old memories. He’d have to keep on Olivia’s good side, for the sharing of family yarns, within limitations.

  The Old Rectory Hotel, Ulverton was now a mere link in a chain, and a weak one. The receptionist was smoking mournfully in the porch, but smiled broadly on seeing him, her blonde hair scraped back. A client! She was from Estonia, so they chatted about Tallinn, in and out of which he’d flown freight. What he hadn’t banked on was off-season, post-crash sadness: the hotel supper was a juiceless flap of steak with oven chips and a something sundae, the dining room so empty it smelt of tablecloths. Thanks to a wedding the previous weekend, the bar was out of almost everything except Stella Artois.

  ‘But last weekend’s six days ago.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the Serb barman, grinning. ‘Much problems with delivery. Reminds of back at home. There we go. That’s life, sir, eh?’

  Bob had a long bath, dried himself on a spotless fluffy-white towel that, once wetted, smelt of cigarettes. The huge telly was on a dodgy bracket; he switched on gingerly and lay back on the bed, zapping through frantic tosh. This is no good, he thought. Fuck Sharansky. Fuck Bensoussan. I was enjoying Dubai. I miss the converted crate. Handled well, had class. He couldn’t face the village pub and had a bad night, dreaming of Olivia and Leila in cahoots behind him while he was flying over Worcestershire with the illuminated instruments about as useful as the dial on a food mixer.

  During breakfast in the chilly dining room downstairs, sepia ploughmen on the walls and a salesman-type picking at his fried egg while studying a folded Daily Mail, Bob placed his English mobile on the table and switched it on, and it immediately rang. It was a message from Matt Sharansky, received the previous night. He wanted to talk, urgent. Bob sipped his fruit juice. The Old Rectory was dull. Nothing needed him, here.

  ‘Matt Sharansky?’

  ‘Sure. Bob, hi. Where are you these days?’

  ‘Ever heard of hacked phones?’

  ‘Oh, come on. I’m in our office in Tel Aviv. I feel bad.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘You losing your job. But, you know, make hummus not war.’

  ‘I wasn’t making war and I’m not a great hummus fan. More serious is that I got back to my apartment after our meeting and three hired guns almost sent me over the balcony. Twenty-fifth floor.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘For once, I’m not. That’s why I got out of Windy City without stopping at Go. They told me to. Remember I said we were being shadowed? I think you should take extra precautions, Mr Sharansky.’

  ‘Scare tactics. This is how the goofballs keep control. They won’t bother you now. Do you know Radom?’

  Bob blinked. ‘I presume you mean Radom in Poland, famous for its air show.’

  ‘And for other things. Thirty thousand Jews lived in the ghetto. All killed. Did you fly out of there, ever?’

  ‘Listen, the guys that mistook my balcony for the lift said I wouldn’t have a second chance.’

  ‘They don’t need to know. I’ve been beat up a few times. It didn’t work: I still carry on. They try it, it’s scary, but as long as you’re not Hamas you’re OK. And you’re somewhere nice in England, not the city of a thousand slaves. Did you ever fly out of Radom, Bob?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Carrying arms? AK-47s?’

  ‘Radom has a very large arms factory. I was never on that leg to fly nappies. But I stress it was always just part of a many-legged tour which did involve a lot of stuff like nappies.’

  The salesman-type was pretending not to listen, but he’d been reading the same page of the Daily Mail for too long. It was so quiet in the hotel words were tannoyed. ‘I believe the arms you saw in the hold in Istanbul, those AK-47s, were made and packed up in Radom.’

  ‘Quite possible. So?’

  ‘I’m accumulating evidence. Tracing it all back to the source. I’ve been faxed the packing list of an Ukrainian subsidiary company called Finetrack Ltd. It’s actually controlled by one of Bensoussan’s outfits, but the connection’s a zigzag in a sewer. The packing list was for the first leg of a flight, to Bulgaria. Radom to Plovdiv International, where you then took over the flight with a substitute packing list.’

  ‘Medical supplies.’

  ‘Actually, as we all know, assault rifles, pistols, sub-machine guns. Great for the health.’

  The Estonian girl, waitress for this shift, approached with more weak coffee, and Bob held out his cup. She had electric-blue eyes you could dive into. ‘You would like something more, sir?’ You bet. He reluctantly told her it was all fine and returned to Sharansky’s voice, which was going into more detail about the sticky web of companies on which Bensoussan the spider sat. ‘Mr Sharansky,’ he interrupted, ‘you’re young; you think you’ll live for ever. I know I won’t. Behind every scar lies a story.’ The salesman-type was glancing over now. The rain spat and dribbled on the glass, distorting the view of the village church. ‘Nothing more to report. Sorry, chum. Can’t even point you in the wrong direction. Make this our last contact.’

  ‘Podgorica.’

  Bob’s thumb had been flexed over the red button. It froze. This left a rather telling pause.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The flights, back in 2000. Podgorica to Somaliland. Hundreds of boxes of miniature manhole covers. Landmines, courtesy of one Pierre Dufort, now in jail. I have the freight documentation. You signed all the papers, being the captain.’

  ‘If you say so. What’s the description on the loadsheet?’

  ‘Mechanical parts. Nice and vague, huh? As ever. But I have solid proof they were landmines. Worse, they were not anti-tank mines, they were anti-personnel mines. The type that blow kids’ legs off, years after the war is over and forgotten. I went to Montenegro and did my homework. The manufacturer was Fiat.’

  ‘I’ll bet you were always good at your homework.’

  ‘When it mattered.
At school it didn’t; you just had to be nice to the rabbi’s wife and bring your own toilet paper.’

  ‘Daimler made landmines, too. Toshiba Tesco KK, Nissan. They were all the rage. British Aerospace PLC.’

  ‘Anti-tank mines. Yours were AP. Trucked south to Somalia, naturally. I found that out from a frightened guy in Mogadishu, where they behead you for saying schmuck. Somalia was not a legitimate destination, as you know.’

  ‘I flew into the autonomous region of Somaliland. It was seriously in need of arms for its defence. Berbera, to be exact.’

  ‘Bob, I do not wish to have to post what I know about your Podgorica jaunts on the Internet. You know what my mum used to say to me? “Never forget you’re Jewish, because no one else will.” Now why does that remind me of the Web?’

  Bob reacted smoothly. Underneath he was more than a little cross. ‘I’m not sure exactly what you want to coerce from me, Sharansky. I’ve told you as much as I know.’

  There was a sigh at the other end, over the sound of car horns and voices. The window must be open on Tel Aviv, or maybe the journalist was sitting in a square. The hot sun on his face. Was Israel hot in November? Nice and dry, anyway.

  ‘OK, I believe you. But your flying buddies know more. First Officer Hans Schmitt. Flight Engineer Hugh McAllister. Apparently you’re not acquainted with the fascinating Captain Pedro Diez.’

  ‘What my crew do when I’m not commanding them is none of my business. I was not their captain on that leg. Do your own spadework, chum.’

  There was a brief pause. When Sharansky spoke again, it was in a higher, strained tone. ‘Look, I’m gonna be putting the final touches to my landmine article this week. Feel free to change your mind, Bob. Let’s say your deadline’s Friday after next? Today’s Tuesday. That gives you ten days. Here’s an extract. I corrected your name, thank you for that. “The aircraft, flown by mercenary pilot Captain Robert Winrush and his—”’

  ‘That’s crap, for a start. I’m not a mercenary.’

  ‘Then I’m not Jewish.’

  Bob felt a surge of annoyance. The man had the stubborn tenacity of a ferret, a yapping terrier, a leech. ‘Oh, look. While you’ve been wasting my time, my champagne’s lost its bubbles. I was enjoying this little break. Just what the doctor ordered. Put whatever you don’t know much about, anywhere you want, Sharansky. No one’s interested. Least of all me.’