by Stan Mason
As soon as the explosion occurred, the aircraft bucked wildly, tipping me back towards the tail end. Then it rolled forward on to its nose and hurtled downwards at uncontrollable speed. From my position on the floor, I had no idea of the altitude or how long it would be before the plane hit the sea or land. My mind could only focus on the speed of descent which seemed to be occurring at a remarkable rate. It had all happened so quickly I experienced nothing but panic in those few horrific moments, realising that the span of my life was limited to the matter of a few more seconds. It was not a pleasant thought. However, as luck would have it, an air current caused the aircraft to level out just a fraction. It finished its descent at an angle of forty-five degrees hitting the trunks of two tall trees which sheared off both wings simultaneously. This event was sufficient to reduce the impact of the crash, although the fuselage continued its momentum onwards like a rocket to bounce finally into a mound of earth. Fortunately, the fuel tanks had been jettisoned at the time of the explosion, eliminating the danger of fire. Providence caused it to be that way for neither of us was in a fit state to clamber out of the wreckage to run for our lives. I hadn’t worked out the odds for survival on the way down; they would have been extremely slim. Destiny, however, has an effective way of letting you know when your number is up. Clearly, it wasn’t our turn! Nonetheless I was to be punished for my procrastination. The delay in fastening my seat-belt around my girth resulted in some agonising injuries. I had been rocked from one end of the cabin to the other., suffering a painful head and knee injury, a damaged arm, and a very sore shoulder. Penny, on the other hand, was relatively unhurt having been safely secured in her seat. I was more than grateful to be alive as it had been on the cards that we would be killed on impact.
It was some time before Penny managed to clear her mind and extricate herself from the wreckage. She pulled me out with strength that seemed far beyond her slender form and I lay against a tree for a while trying to stem the blood which kept streaming from my nose. When I had taken full stock of my condition, there were bruises all over my body. My knee was very sore, my head sported a large swelling which throbbed angrily while my shoulder felt as though it had been wrenched out of its socket. But there were no dislocations... no broken bones. Eventually, Penny helped me to my feet an I staggered to the pilot’s cabin which had been ravaged and torn by the substantial force of the explosion. The evidence was indisputable. A gaping hole under the dashboard indicated that a bomb had been planted there. On exploding, it had caused serious damage to one of the engines and most of the electrical equipment. . Chedda was a mass of dead flesh mutilated beyond recognition and I turned away quickly trying to resist vomiting at the awful sight.
‘A bomb,’ I explained to Penny once I had pulled myself together. ‘Someone planted a bomb in the cockpit. It was probably timed to go off when we were over the Mediterranean ... about an hour before we landed. We were saved by a freak of nature. Those tail-winds allowed us to make fast time, defeating someone’s evil objective. Otherwise we would be feeding fish in the deep blue sea.’
‘But who would want to kill us?’ she asked. ‘Why should Primar make it his business to kill us?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I replied candidly ‘but I’m definitely going to find out. You can bet your bottom dollar on it. No one’s going to get away with this!’ Penny took a step forward towards the pilot’s cabin but I managed to grasp her arm firmly. ‘No... don’t go there! It’s not something you’d want to see!’
I looked round to determine our location. We appeared to be in a valley which had suffered much from the heat of the sun. I knew from reading one of the travelogues there were many places of this kind in Israel. From the lie of the land, I took a view that there was a main road on the horizon.
‘I have a hunch there’s a highway over there,’ I ventured, pointing in an eastern direction. ‘I’m going to try it. Whatever happens, you’re not to worry. Stay here. Don’t move! I’ll be back shortly.’
‘You’re in no fit state to walk,’ she uttered pitifully.
‘I’ll manage,’ I told her bravely although the effort was more than I dared to consider.
I started off hobbling painfully across a field. It took me a good ten minutes to get to the rise but my hunch was well rewarded. The highway was there as I predicted. There was a signpost close at hand with two arrows on the crossbar facing opposite directions. Under one was the name Agios Nikolaus, beneath the other was Rethymon. However, facing me from the centre of the post were the words Iraklion and Knossos. I froze in confusion. This wasn’t Israel! We were on the island of Crete! What was Primar playing at? Why the charade and all the nonsense about travelling to Israel when he knew that the aircraft would bring us here? Previously it had mattered little where he wanted us to go. We were at his mercy. But now the switch had been made there were questions which needed to be answered.
When I returned to Penny, I informed her of our location. She became very tearful, complaining that we were pawns being pushed around a giant chessboard. The impact of how close we had been to death clearly affected her. Then, suddenly, I had another hunch. The solution had to be in the pilot’s cabin. I didn’t like the idea of staring at Chedda’s remains but I needed to search that part of the plane. Avoiding his mutilated body as best I could, holding a handkerchief over my face, I rifled through the wreckage trying to find some evidence which would make sense of our landing in Crete. However there was nothing to be found. Whatever might have been there had been blown into the sky in the explosion. If so, it was lost for ever. I started to search the rest of the aircraft when Penny called out with an element of alarm in her voice.
‘Someone’s coming!’ she shouted. ‘I can see them at eleven hundred hours!’
I stopped searching and hobbled outside to see a man, with a pair of binoculars hanging idly at his chest, wearing a sports jacket and grey flannel trousers moving swiftly in our direction. I noticed particularly that he kept his hands in his pockets. When he reached us, he called out in an amiable manner with an American accent.
‘Are you two okay? You’re darned lucky to be alive. My God! Look at the state of this plane!’
I took him to be an American tourist on holiday having a stroll round before lunch. ‘Where are we?’ I asked unnecessarily.
‘You’re in Crete. Very close to Heraklion the capital,’ he replied honestly. ‘Where were you headed for before the crash?’
‘Israel,’ I replied, wishing I had kept my mouth shut.
He burst into laughter. ‘Israel... you must be kidding! That’s the best I’ve heard today. You’re some way off course, you know. Didn’t you use the compass?’ 37
‘Can you help us get to Heraklion?’ I asked. ‘Do you have a car?’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ he returned slowly in his drawl, his voice changing to a more menacing tone. ‘I’ll send you on your way all right but it won’t be where you’re thinking. That’s the reason I’m here.’ He removed the right hand from the pocket of his jacket to show that he was holding a revolver. He pointed the gun directly at my head, almost at point-blank range. I froze in my tracks unable to make a move to defend myself.
‘Who are you?’ I demanded as fear welled up inside me. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
‘Is this guy for real?’ he laughed glancing towards Penny. ‘I’m holding a gun at his head and he asks me what I’m doing.’ He turned to look at me again with an ominous expression on his face. ‘I’m finishing off the job, you dummy!’
Penny shifted her feet awkwardly as though a stone had crept into her shoe. Before I knew what was happening, she bent down and removed the shoe which she raised and hurled at the man’s neck with considerable force. The to-cap struck him in the neck, just below the Adam’s Apple, and he dropped the gun to clutch at his wound. I moved to reach for the weapon, hampered by the fact that my limbs were stiff and sore but he managed t
o kick it away and then began to grapple with me. I was no match for him in my injured condition and I knew that it would take little time for him to overpower me. As soon as he had gained the advantage, he took hold of my throat and began to squeeze tightly with both hands. I was unable to break his grip and it soon became impossible to breathe. A mist began to cloud my eyes and although I could hear Penny’s voice calling to me from the distance, it became fainter as the life drained from my body.
‘Roll clear!’ she shouted vehemently. ‘Roll clear!’
There was nothing I could do to comply with the order for the man’s strength was too much for me. As the life ebbed from me, the mist returned to red before my eyes. I heard the sound of a shot ring out which seemed to echo right across the valley. The man’s hands loosened on my throat and he collapsed on top of me. I pushed him off and rolled over as Penny allowed the pistol to fall from her hand.
‘Oh Lord!’ she screamed hysterically. ‘I’ve killed him! I’ve killed him!’
The man lay at full stretch on the ground with a bullet hole drilled neatly at his temple. It was pointless to test his pulse for there was no doubt that he was dead. I clambered into the aircraft and emerged with a bottle of brandy that was intact and a blanket. After covering the body with it, I opened the bottle and took a very long swig.
‘I had to shoot him,’ bleated Penny bursting into tears. ‘He would have strangled you.’
‘You don’t have to convince me of that,’ I responded, feeling my neck tenderly. ‘I must say you were very sharp. That action with your shoe was pretty quick thinking. It’s lucky you happened to hit him in the throat. I dread to think what might have happened had you missed.’
She shrugged her shoulders aimlessly. ‘I had to do something. It was ll I could think of at the time.’
I nodded and moved to the body. ‘I’d better check his identity,’ I told her. ‘Perhaps it’s best if you look away.’ She turned her face in the opposite direction as I lifted the blanket and searched the man’s clothing. I removed a wallet and some papers from the inside pocket of his jacket and then covered him up again. ‘His name’s Tomas Duran,’ I related after glancing at his passport. ‘It’s all right... you can look now. I’ve covered him up.’
She came towards me and stared at the passport. ‘Who are these people?’ she asked quietly. ‘Who are they?’
‘I wish I had the faintest idea. Perhaps we ought to fly back to London and forget the whole thing. Primar... Chedda... all of it. Primar probably thinks we’re dead.’
‘What about the letter Primar said he would send to our employer about the shortfall in fund... allegedly stolen by us?’
‘I reckon it was all a bluff.
‘How can we forget all this? Two men are dead. Primar might be missing. You’ve only Chedda’s word the he didn’t turn up. He may be in similar trouble elsewhere.’
‘Look Penny,’ I told her weakly. ‘I’m no hero. Who cares about the 21st Century Crusaders. It’s none of our business. I don’t even know what they stand for.’
She pretended not to hear me and took the papers I had taken from the dead man to read. ‘Nothing of much importance,’ she muttered. ‘A few odd notes and a memo from a Commander Spring.’
‘Commander?’ I echoed. ‘Here... let me see that!’ I took the memo from her and read it. The sheet of paper bore only two lines. ‘The Acropolis Restaurant, Heraklion,’ I read out slowly. ‘Urgent... repeat Urgent! Commander Spring!’ I stared at Penny blankly. ‘What do you make of it?’
‘I think we should go for it now that we’re here. Otherwise what was the point of it all?’
I pulled a wry face at the thought of pursuing the matter. uncertain whether or not I should allow Penny to influence me. It wasn’t my fault or my problem that two men had died. Less than twenty-four hours earlier I had been sitting in my office in the City of London with no serious concerns. Now there was conclusive proof of my adultery with my secretary, my wife had left me and two men were dead. In addition, I was shaken and physically injured, suffering a considerable amount of pain, lost in a foreign country with no money, and very displeased with my lot in life. But that wasn’t all. My secretary was now pressing me to become involved in someone else’s war. I was not amused!
We set off on towards the highway in the hope of hitching a lift and waited for a car to appear but the traffic was more than scant.
‘I reckon that Duran was waiting for us,’ said Penny pensively as we reached the main highway.
‘That’s impossible,’ I countered. ‘I he belonged to the saboteurs he would have expected us to be at the bottom of the Mediterranean. He wouldn’t need to be here,’
‘He may have been the long-stop... in case the plane did reach here,’ she said presumptuously. ‘Chedda must have know he was going to land in Crete but he didn’t know about the bomb. Someone had to be around in case it failed to explode. A person can position themselves here to be available at any part of the island. Someone monitoring the flight of the plane could have tipped off Duran as to its likely landing point... if indeed it did land. He could have driven close to the point of the crash. The main road runs straight across the north. It’s the only main road. I believe that his car can’t be far away,’
I wasn’t certain of the logic but there was nothing to lose and we wandered off in a northerly direction. Shortly, we came across an old Volkswagen parked in a lay-by. The driver was absent and there was no one else about. Penny searched the car in an attempt to connect with Duran so that she could be certain we weren’t stealing someone else’s vehicle. However it was a hired car devoid of any information that might help but the keys hung neatly in the ignition lock which was the most important fact of all. I drove directly to Heraklion, parking the car near to the Acropolis Restaurant. We entered the establishment naively knowing nothing except the name of Commander Spring. I had the awful feeling that we were putting our necks in a noose. We sat at a table and stared at the menu. Very shortly, a waiter arrived with a tea-towel draped around his arm and hurried across the room towards us.
‘Meester Scott!’ he whispered urgently. ‘You shouldn’t be out here with thee customers. Come queekly before you are recognised!’
I stared at him with incredulity. I had just entered a restaurant I never knew existed, in a town I had never visited before, on an island I had only seen in an atlas. Suddenly I was approached by a waiter I had never met who called me by my name. It was uncanny... almost mesmeric as though in a dream. He walked on and beckoned me with his hand and I followed him to the back of the room through an open doorway across which hung long strands of brown beads. He led the way down a series of steps into the basement leaving us there before returned upstairs to continue his duties. I adjusted my eyes to the gloom and noticed a television monitor fixed to the wall. I pressed a button to switch it on and, as it glowed into life, a man’s face appeared on the screen.
‘Commander Spring?’ I asked hesitantly, wondering how it was going to end.
‘Stop playing the fool, Scott!’ he admonished with irritation in his voice. ‘You’ve got to learn to temper the fun side of your personality! It’s just not on! Who’s there with you?’
‘Penny Smith... my secretary,’ I replied sternly.
He stared at us more deeply, scanning our faces as we stood in the dank area. ‘An excellent likeness!’ he commended brightening up considerably. ‘Yes... an excellent likeness. No one would know the difference. You’d better come down.’
The picture faded from the screen and a door opened automatically in the wall of the basement to exhibit a small elevator. We entered and the door closed sleekly before it went on its downward path. When the doors opened, we walked into a room filled with electronic equipment. The Commander, dressed smartly in a brown uniform, faced us with a broad smile on his face. My attention was taken up with the two other men seated at an ar
ray of monitors. They also wore brown uniforms and carried holsters containing revolvers. The Commander held up a photograph and compared it with Penny’s face.
‘An exceedingly good likeness,’ he went on. ‘It really looks like her. Does she speak English?’
‘Of course she speaks English!’ I snapped angrily.
‘Marvellous!’ He glanced at the photograph again. ‘I wonder if she has a mole on her right...
‘That’s enough, Spring! I interrupted. ‘You’d better tell me what you have in mind for us.’
He looked at me quite strangely. ‘Quite frankly, Scott, I wish they’d picked someone else for the task instead of you,’ he returned testily. ‘You’re too much to take sometimes! If your weren’t so good at bridge a dozen others could have taken your place. Just look at the state of your face and clothes! What have you been doing? You look as though you’ve been pulled through a hedge backwards! I really don’t know what to make of you!’
‘Bridge!’ I thought. He was not making any sense at all. ‘What has bridge got to do with it?’ I asked.
‘Oh do stop fooling around!’ he cautioned staring hard at Penny. ‘We’ll have to wait until Duran returns before we proceed to the next stage.
‘Duran’s dead,’ I told him bluntly, putting my head further into the noose. ‘The plane landed about a mile north of Heraklion. The pilot was killed and Duran was shot.’
‘Shot!’ echoed the Commander with surprised. ‘Who shot him?’
‘Never mind that now. I want to know what’s going on!’
‘Cut the crap, Scott!’ He was becoming angry with me. ‘All the information’s on a need to know basis and you don’t need to know. You’re here to do a job. All you need to do is to follow orders. Is that understood?’
He turned to one of the telephones on a desk and dialled a number. As soon as it was answered he spoke in relatively guarded tones. ‘Tell Commander Brooks in the European Area that Phase One Code B is completed. We’re still awaiting news on Code A.’ He paused to listen to the person at the other end of the line for a few moments. ‘My information tells me it exploded before landing. The timing device was set too late. Either that or the tail-winds were too strong. I had a man out there examining the wreckage but I’ve just learned he was shot and killed.’ He replaced the receiver into its cradle and turned to stare at us thoughtfully. ‘How do you know Duran was shot?’