by Hocking, Ian
‘Maybe the pilots were trying to isolate an electrical fire.’
‘Come on, Hrafn.’
‘Come on what?’
William tapped the fuse housing with his pencil. ‘Someone cut the power in a deliberate attempt to obscure the last moments of that flight. We know the flaps were not deployed at impact, so the pilots had not begun the emergency landing procedure. The crash either came without warning, or they were not in control of the aircraft when it happened.’
‘You’re getting way ahead of yourself. Let’s just assemble the data.’
‘At least we got the pilot’s last transmission – ‘Stentec.’ What does Human Factors think of that?’
‘It’s STENDEC, and not much,’ said Hrafn. He yawned and twisted his neck. Around him, the men studied their jigsaw. One had a jeweller’s loupe. Another had a shard of plastic in tweezers, which he waggled in saline solution to rinse off the last of the fuel, soil, soot, and human remains. ‘An anagram of ‘descent’. Also, ‘scented’. And ‘send etc’. There’s not much else to say.’
‘I wonder what the woman in the photograph has to do with all of this.’
‘I wonder too.’
‘Night, Hrafn.’
‘Yeah, sleep tight.’
Outside, Hrafn looked into the eddies of snow and saw the sleepy eyes of a beautiful Italian woman. He pictured zipping up the airtight recovery bag to quarantine inside himself the image, the hamburger smell, and the tears of a young co-pilot just happy to bring his 747 in to Singapore. Absently, he zipped his coat as he walked. He would buy Ragnar a book for his birthday. Something funny. With rabbits.
~
The drive to his temporary office in Wallhalla would take half an hour, but, given an empty road, Hrafn could shorten his journey by several minutes, thus banking some bonus sleep. A single windscreen wiper slung the snow clumps aside as he pulled onto the road. He searched the passenger seat for his pocket computer and put a headphone bud into his ear. His eyes switched between the road and the screen. He thumbed through the audio files and hit ‘play’.
‘Hi, this is Siggi,’ said a female voice. ‘I found something after all. Most of it is from the Ministry of Civil Aviation crash report and a book called ‘Star Dust Falling’. There’s a copy in your glove box. I’ve e-mailed you the report.’
Hrafn leaned across and opened the glove box. The rust-coloured paperback rested atop the car’s rental documents. He looked up and corrected his position on the road.
‘Star Dust,’ continued Siggi, ‘was an Avro Lancastrian Mk. III, which is basically a Lancaster bomber without the guns. This flight was designated CS-59. Chilean South, service fifty-nine. The operator was British South American Airways. It was merged with the British Overseas Airways Corporation in 1949.’
He watched the curving banks of snow.
‘Star Dust left Buenos Aires, Argentina, on the morning of August 2nd, 1947, for a short flight across the Andes to Santiago in Chile. It carried four crew and six passengers. They included a Palestinian businessman with a diamond stitched in his suit. A self-made–’
Hrafn paused the audio. He tapped his forehead. Remember the diamond. Then he pressed ‘play’ again.
‘–British businessman, a Swiss playboy, another Brit, an elderly German émigré returning to Chile with her dead husband’s ashes, and a British government agent escorting secret diplomatic documents. As for the flight itself, Star Dust made regular reports throughout its three-hour trip. The journey should have been straightforward from the perspective of the former RAF personnel, though the route was so high that oxygen canisters had to be used. Their navigation techniques were primitive. Advanced American navigation equipment was available, but Don Bennett, the boss of BSAA, refused to install it on patriotic grounds. The crew had to navigate by ‘dead reckoning’ and star fixes.’
Hrafn pushed his thumb into the book and held it to the light of the glove box. He looked at the monochrome photographs of RAF pilots and dapper civilians.
‘At 17:33 GMT, Star Dust radioed to Santiago that their estimated time of arrival was 17:45. It is understood that Star Dust had cleared the Andes and begun its final descent. At 17:41, the aircraft confirmed its ETA of 17:45, but the Morse code transmission was appended with the letters S, T, E, N, D, E, and C. The radio operator at Santiago Tower questioned it, and the letters S, T, E, N, D, E, C were repeated ‘loud and clear but rapid’. That was the last message sent from Star Dust. Some wreckage–’
Hrafn stopped Siggi’s briefing as the floodlit prominence of Walhalla rose above the trees. He waved to the security officer at the gate. The car slewed into the approach road, which had not been cleared since the last snowfall, and stopped on the quiet flatness in front of the building. Hrafn knew he should turn his mind to the meetings and their agendas, the crash and its lines of evidence – but seven letters stubbornly occupied his attention.
S, T, E, N, D, E, C.
He opened the driver’s door so the interior light would help him gather his belongings. As he reached for the PDA, he heard footsteps crunch to a halt behind him. Hrafn turned to the blackness.
‘Na, und?’
Two black shapes interrupted the bluish snow. Men. Hrafn stepped from the car and raised his torch. The first man wore designer glasses and a black greatcoat with shoulder-boards of snow. One sleeve was empty, and Hrafn could see the edge of a sling at his collar. The second man was taller and well built.
‘Guten Morgen, Herr Dr Óskarson. I am Inspector Karel Duczyński with the BKA. I must speak English in deference to my companion. Please don’t be afraid.’
‘Good morning,’ said Hrafn.
‘Hi, I’m Danny Shaw.’
‘Perhaps we could talk inside,’ said the policeman. ‘We’ve driven a long way.’
‘Duczyński, is it? I read about the disturbance at the Fernsehturm. Weren’t you suspended?’
‘Look,’ said Shaw, ‘my sister didn’t board the flight. She travelled down here and she may be in danger. It’s vital that we speak to you.’
‘Your sister?’
Hrafn held the torch on Shaw’s face. He could have both men arrested and let others unpick the threads of their involvement. But the seven letters had not faded from his mind. S, T, E, N, D, E, C. The CVR bus: sabotaged. The landing gear: not deployed. He let his mind travel the curves of a 737-800, felt the forces on its airframe, the cracks of overspeed vibration, and the insistence of a question for its answer.
‘Dr Óskarson,’ said the inspector, ‘I must tell you that an associate of Jem Shaw, Wolfgang Weber, was arrested two days ago with bomb-making instructions in his pocket.’
Hrafn’s tiredness evaporated. ‘What kind?’
The inspector raised a hand. ‘Don’t let me mislead you, sir. I believe that the papers were put on his person by a third party to incriminate him. Further, I believe that the party in question is Saskia Dorfer, a known alias of Saskia Brandt.’
Hrafn knew that any explosion severe enough to threaten a 737 would produce a wreckage footprint kilometres in area. There was, he had to admit, the possibility that a charge could be placed at the confluence of the hydraulic lines that connected the cockpit to the control surfaces. Then a non-compromising explosion could disable the aircraft. A variation of that malfunction had caused the crash at Sioux City in 1989. But, on the heels of this thought, came another: the pilots would retain some basic attitude control through the increase and decrease of engine thrust. And the problem with the radio communications blackout would not be addressed by that hypothesis, unless the saboteur had disabled the radio too. And what about the final transmission, ‘STENDEC’?
‘Mr Óskarson?’
‘You know, blowing up an aircraft, even a large one, by detonating a bomb is easy. I would say trivially easy, given the narrow range of forces the airframe is designed to cope with. But.’
‘But what?’
‘Inspector, my line of work discourages the development of premature hypotheses. If
you try enough keys in a lock, you might find one that fits, but it may not be the correct one. Between ourselves, I indulge my imagination a little in that regard. But I can give you two reasons that make me think Saskia Dorfer/Brandt did not blow up that plane with a bomb.’
‘Go on,’ said Mr Shaw. His eyes were fierce. Hrafn began to like him.
‘One, the wreckage pattern tells us that the crash was a C-FIT, or Controlled Flight Into Terrain. The aircraft was in one piece and travelling under power when it crashed.’
‘And the second?’ asked the inspector.
‘The bomber doesn’t usually board the plane.’
Hrafn opened his briefcase and removed the picture of Saskia taken mid-flight. He gave it to the inspector.
‘Is this Brandt?’ he asked. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Alias Dorfer, yes. One of the passengers had a camera. If the date stamp is correct, this was taken four minutes prior to impact.’
Mr Shaw said, ‘You know, there are plenty of bombers willing to give their lives for a cause. The terrorists who flew into the World Trade Centre seemed cool with it.’
‘I have to make decisions based on probabilities, not absolutes. A German woman in her late twenties does not fit the profile of a suicide bomber. Not these days. Besides, she’s carrying a gun in the photograph. That implies that things are, well, complicated.’
‘But whose gun is it?’ asked the inspector. ‘Did the flight have sky marshals on board?’
‘No. Current German transport policy keeps sky marshals on randomly-selected transatlantic flights, not intracontinentals. Now, gentlemen, given the late hour, I must press you. Do you have any information that might help determine the flight’s last moments?’
Again, the inspector and Mr Shaw exchanged a look. Mr Shaw, the taller man, folded his arms. ‘My sister, Jem, has some connection with Saskia Brandt. They were both due to board that flight. My sister–’ Danny faltered. ‘Look, she hasn’t done anything wrong, I promise you. She works in a hairdresser’s.’
Hrafn’s reply was interrupted by the overture to The Marriage of Figaro, which played when Siggi, his assistant, called. As he reached for his phone, he heard the chirrups of two more. Danny Shaw and Inspector Duczyński, each with trepidation, answered their mobiles too. The three men stood in the snow and listened. Their expressions questioned one another.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ said a voice in Hrafn’s ear. ‘Call me Mr Self. I’ve taken the precaution of speaking to you simultaneously. I wish to avoid misunderstandings. Now, please listen. We don’t have much time.’
Chapter Nineteen
Jem did not pass another car on her journey into the mountains. After half an hour, there were neither city lights to be seen nor moon. She phoned Ego and spoke about the special regard Germans had for their forests. Then she asked it who Saskia really was, expecting it to be reticent. The candour surprised her.
‘Saskia’s identity is a computerised representation stored on a high-density, solid-state device of uncertain origin. It has been surgically inserted at the back of her brain. Everything about her can be attributed to this device. That is, everything you would consider the product of her mind. When you asked Saskia a question, it was the device that replied. When you reached out for her, it was the device that took your hand. The device felt your touch.’
‘That’s weird.’
‘Think of it as a homunculus, or little person, truly controlling Saskia’s body.’
There was a logic within the idea. It explained Saskia’s perfect recall, her oddness, her virtuoso performance of violence. And yet: Whose eyes had Jem stared into? If Saskia’s conscious mind was contained within the device, what was contained within her flesh-and-blood brain? Was there another woman trapped inside that body, screaming unheard?
‘So the device sent you a mayday.’
‘It did once, and that confirmed its approximate location. It has not signalled since. I can’t be sure if it has survived the crash intact. Saskia may not be recoverable.’
‘God,’ said Jem. ‘It’s like she’s... a black box.’
‘We’re here.’
Jem steered the car into a small lay-by. She extinguished the headlights. The silence and the darkness, though expected, became a space for her loneliness to fill. She closed her eyes for five breaths. They opened with clearer night vision on snow-bright ground and glistening tree-trunks. She remembered the leather spine of the Grimm’s fairy tales that had unlocked the curtained door in Saskia’s apartment. And she recalled a music box that had played something by Bach. She opened the car door. She imagined new sounds in the silence: the patter of a wolf on patrol, its mouth shut and low, the flutter of a witch abroad.
Ssssssssssssss.
‘It’s cold out there,’ said Ego. ‘If your phone’s power fails, warm the battery. We may be separated. Don’t lose heart.’
‘OK.’
‘Do you see the dusky colour reflected by the clouds? That’s Regensburg. Keep it behind you and try to stay walking uphill.’
~
She locked the car with the radio fob. The indicators splashed orange. Then she took the torch – a metal, heavy comfort – and cut a piece of light from the darkness. She moved through the powdery mires, alert for other footsteps in the hush. The trees were black bars. She drew the cold air through her nose. At first, she could not separate the odours. Then she identified something like incinerator smoke and remembered the putrid rat Danny had discovered that wet August in Poole when they were eight or nine. And the tang of polystyrene melting on the woodland fire that had warmed Jem and her mates when, years after the rat, they downed Diamond White by the bottle, and spun the empties to mark the unlucky victim of an interrogation, sexual and hilarious.
‘One is never too old to play with matches.’
‘KGB or CIA, what’s the difference?’
‘Never follow me. Understand?’
‘I understand.’
She stepped on something that deformed like an oil can, and when she raised her foot, it barked across the forest and she understood that a great space had opened before her. In the failing light she saw scabs of ash and the grave of a whole aeroplane, wings and engines and all. A yellow cordon stretched away to her left and to her right.
Holy fuck.
Then.
Clock hands meeting at midnight. The night, under whose auspices Saskia had blossomed like a moonflower. Perfume drifting: conservative and sensible, mixed for her in the south of France. Her hair was long and never stronger was Jem’s urge to nose its waves. Later: a policeman, unconscious alongside his car, and Saskia reaching back for a fallen Jem.
The cavalier smile.
‘Take my hand.’
Reaching back.
The hopelessness was devastating. On what, truthfully, had she based her hope that Saskia was alive? A feeling? How could her intuition compare to the forces that could undo the fabric of a building’s worth of metal and plastic, swimming pools of fuel, this tonnage of raw meat? Saskia was hopelessly gone. Perhaps her superimposed spirit watched, alongside fellow passengers and crew as Jem lifted her phone and sobbed, ‘Ego, what now?’
But the phone had died. She pressed the power switch. Nothing happened. Was the battery too cold? She slipped the phone into her waistband and stepped back from the debris, fleeing, heading towards the blackness. The powder reached her knees as she strode. She pressed the car key. Nowhere did indicator lights blip.
She had been cut off from Ego and the heavy torch was no longer a comfort. It was painting her like a target. She turned it off.
Unseen, a branch broke.
‘Sss-sss-sss,’ she stammered, looking for the branch. ‘Sassssssssssskia?’
Calm. Only the weight of snow had broken it.
She backed against a trunk and slid down. Clods of snow struck her shoulders. She felt as though she could stay here. She put her nose to her knees and pulled a full, chill breath.
Her neck straightened.
>
Perfume.
‘It was made for me in the south of France.’
Her muscles, tired to the point of collapse, quivered as she stood.
‘Sssssss,’ she whispered. ‘Sss-sss...’
Her sudden, downhill strides slit the dunes. She fell from one tree to another. Fronds scratched her scalp. The powder grew wet underfoot and the dampness reached her ankles. The perfume was a will-o’-the-wisp; present and absent by turns. When, seconds later, she reached the trough of the valley, her exhaustion could no longer be outrun. She let her forehead rest against bark.
Snow quietness descended.
Yet the air was not empty. There was an element of static, of ssssssssssss.
Running water.
Jem crawled on, though her palms flamed with cold. Her breath shrank to snorts. A stone struck her shin and she was felled. She tumbled down a stony bank and stopped, sitting upright, with her boots on a hard surface. She had lost the torch but she could see a frozen stream sparkling beneath a sickle moon. There was a hut on the opposite bank. The wide, low roof was decked with firs. Behind it, trees rose. The forest and the hut had combined like the hands of father and son. Only a halo of red suggested the doorway.
Jem walked upstream and crossed the water on three concrete stepping stones. She placed each foot heel-to-toe until she reached the door. It did not squeak as she pushed it open. Warmth and smoke and a meaty smell puffed from the interior: a room lit by oil lamps and the flickering roundel of a pot-bellied stove. She looked about in wonder. A chandelier of powdered sausages and game birds hung from the low ceiling. A Dutch drier rocked over the stove. It held camouflaged trousers, long underwear, socks, and a dripping newspaper.
‘Hello?’
Jem closed the door and pulled across its blackout curtain. There was a cloth-covered table beyond the hanging sausages. She remembered her mobile phone and placed it near the stove to warm. On the table were empty beer bottles and a stack of newspapers. Next to them was a half-bitten piece of bread. An opened plastic container held some sliced meat and a paring knife.