by Craig Thomas
Marian's question returned to his mind, together with the sensation that when he had left that message for her the previous day, he had almost believed the supposition that lay behind it. Perhaps this…? The actors in the scene at the hotel were, indeed, the necessary cast for such a play. He scribbled their names on his legal pad. Rogier Transport, he underlined. Laxton Urban Development, a former Cabinet middleweight now punching above his talents in Brussels. The Euro MP, Campbell, Winterborne, Coulthard, Bressier from Balzac-Stendhal, his deputy… which meant Skyliner had to be the subject under discussion… Urban Development, funds for rundown regions, for grandiose renewal projects those in Italy and Spain notoriously corrupt, acting like desert sand on EC funds. Marian had asked speculated — whether funds could be diverted, moved by disguise to the Sky-liner project… The cast for the proposed play stared back at him in his large, untidy handwriting.
It would require secrecy… surveillance-He glanced out of the window.
The streets were drying. Fugitive sunlight glanced from thinning cloud, making blinding squares of windows and car windscreens. The pace of pedestrians seemed slower, less urgent. The scene had recaptured its innocence. It was if it was corruption; just worse than usual and more secret. It was within his province, familiar to him…
The sense of threat receded, the men who had been watching him were stripped of their stature in his fears. The names on the pad were familiar, after all, they remained fragments of the ordinary, the expected politicians, businessmen, functionaries. The men who provided their security screen were images of their guilt and paranoia, nothing more.
He breathed deeply, regularly for some moments, in imitation of a half remembered Buddhist exercise of meditation, the name of which he could not recall. That had been a passing college thing… He did feel more calm, he realised, more in control, even when he glanced at the names on the pad and delved into the shadows at the back of his mind where Marian's suspicions had become his own.
Then he grinned.
He would send the undeveloped film he had taken, and the handwritten sheet from the legal pad, and post them to Marian. She could ring him, for a change she could make the next move.
"Well?"
Jessop shut the door of the Peugeot behind him and grinned at Fraser, whose morose, demanding expression did not alter.
"Easy."
The old house, eighteenth century for the most part and floridly bourgeois in its external decoration, was fifteen minutes' drive from the Commission. Trees in full leaf lined either side of the quiet street. Children in bright clothes played on front lawns, sprinklers making screaming games and rainbows in the afternoon sunlight.
"Well?"
There's a woman living there, with him." Jessop loosened the buttoned overalls.
A reported smell of gas never failed.
"She's away overnight, so the inevitable nosy concierge told me. He's usually back around six."
"Find anything?"
"No, funnily enough. Looks like he's just begun this new job of his, watching us and ours. No tapes, no film, nothing in writing.
Last-number redial on the phone was interesting, so was the answer phone British MP Marian Pyott.
Asking him questions—" He held up his tape recorder.
"Played it back, got it on here. She's quite nosy—" Fraser stared through the windscreen at the passage of an estate car, then a 4WD.
Collecting-the-kids-from-school time was almost over, gin-and-tonic time almost here.
Fraser nodded, Jessop switched on the tape. Two messages from Marian Pyott one to warn him to be careful, but to try to get good photographs of anyone he thought might be attending the meeting… timed earlier that morning… second message just telling him she would be out that evening and to leave anything he had on the answer phone The woman's voice contained a residue of anger, frustration. Her interest did not seem urgent or precise, but it wasn't merely casual, either.
"Well?"
"Pat on the head, Jessop," Fraser offered sarcastically. I'll buy you an ice-cream for being such a good boy."
"What do we do?"
"I don't think there's much to worry about. Not yet."
"Oh, I found some coke a social amount, nothing heavy."
Tut, these fashionable young men and their thrill-seeking," Fraser mocked.
"Doesn't it disappoint you that their lives are so empty of meaning that they pursue such courses?"
"What course are we going to pursue?"
"I shall consult our employer, Jessop, like the dutiful subordinate I am. I shall recommend that the obstruction be cleared while it's still a stone rather than a rock in the road. I wonder why she, of the six-hundred-odd self-seeking bastards in the House of Commons, is interested in us…?"
"How?" Jessop asked with the intent and innocent malice of a child.
"You mentioned cocaine, Jessop. These trendy people, they don't stop at sniffing cocaine, you know. No, indeed. Very soon, it's the needle and the hard stuff stuff you have to know just how to handle, if you're not to do yourself a great deal of damage."
Jessop sat back in the passenger seat, his eyes closed, a beatific smile on his face.
"I suppose this drug habit of his is nothing new?" he murmured, seduced by the detail.
"I'm sure the Brussels police will find plenty of corroborative evidence in the young man's apartment," Fraser replied with a smile, his expression that of a gourmet consulting a titillating menu.
CHAPTER THREE
On-Site Analysis The desert already shimmered in the heat of the early morning, and the mountains surrounding Vance Aircraft moved in and out of focus, gained and lost weight and massiveness, like an army of giant shadows repositioning for some final assault.
Gant squinted even behind the filtering of his sunglasses. Heat struck through the soles of his boots and the stifling warmth of the hangar seemed cool the moment he left its shade. Vance, beside him, had begun to sweat freely. The airliner glared in the sun. Dust devils whirled like conjuror's handkerchiefs in the chokingly hot breeze.
Around the 494, the ground crew fussed and then stilled as they saw the two men approach. The plane was adorned with the livery of Artemis Airways, red and blinding white; the image of the virgin-goddess as huntress on the high tailplane, hair flying with two sleek hounds at her heels. The heavy tug had towed it from the hangar to the edge of the taxiway, and the walk round inspection had been done by the ground engineer. Both Gant and Vance could make straight for the flight deck.
Pausing while Vance spoke to his ground engineer, Gant looked back at the buildings of Vance Aircraft. The faces that would be at countless windows were obscured by the sun dazzling back from tinted glass, but there were small knots of workers at the open doors of the two main assembly hangars, others straddling a line of shadow and light at the entrance to the service hangar. The Superstition Mountains already seemed to seep into the drained blue sky, as if their mass and colour were being leached away. His mouth felt dry.
Vance was listening and nodding, then reluctantly took the engineer's outstretched hand. Barbara must have been dissuaded from accompanying them out to the 494.
"OK," Vance muttered throatily, and followed Gant up the passenger steps into the main embarkation door situated just aft of the flight deck.
Shadow, coolness. The air-conditioning was already operating from the APU.
There was the shadow of a technician at the door to the flight deck. He merely nodded at Gant and then swiftly glanced aside, as if he had seen warning or disease on his features. Vance closed the main door behind him and locked it.
Slowly, aware of the brightness of metal, the cleanness of plastic, the clarity of glass, Gant settled into the pilot's chair. Nothing was burned in there, no one had died there… The flight deck smelt new, as aseptic as the flight simulator in the boxlike confines of which he had spent most of the previous day. The flight engineer's chair behind him creaked as Vance lowered himself into it. Vance would have to act as
co-pilot on take-off, and double as flight engineer during the rest of the flight. He heard the man's stentorous breathing. Gant touched the control column and released it almost at once as it became instantly slippery with sweat from his palms.
After the simulator had come the analysis of the cockpit voice recorder and the computer-realised record of Hollis' last flight. The instability of the aircraft had been progressive, frightening. Just prior to flame-out of both engines and the inability to restart them, the oscillation had been as violent as if they had been flying through a hurricane. The plane had lurched and swayed, dipped and threatened to roll like a ship in great waves. He had known that it would have had to have been that bad for Hollis not to have gotten it under control… which was why he had committed himself to the simulator, prepared himself for the flight, before he had looked at the images of the aircraft on the VDU, behind the superimposed instruments which looked like searching gun sights and the 494 like a fighter plane trying to evade a pursuer.
The voice recording was fragmentary Vance had admitted that in the burned-out fuselage and provided no clues. Hollis, Lowell and Paluzzi didn't know what was happening to them, it was as simple as that. And neither did the flight recorder.
There was nothing to account for what had happened, either the instability or the engine failure… and now he was going to repeat the precise pattern of the flight Hollis and his crew had made and wait until it happened to him, until the 494's twin sister killed him, too.
Because it couldn't be a freak there was no weather, no pilot error, no mechanical, hydraulic, electrical or manual failure to account for what had happened… no system had failed.
It was, he realised, as if that ground-to-air missile was on the Phantom's tail again, over "Nam, and even though the instruments told him it was closing, he couldn't out manoeuvre or outrun it. It would hit his craft and the plane would catch fire… He found himself gripping the control column and hearing Vance ask:
"Pre-flight checks?"
"What?"
"You ready?"
He did not even half-turn to Vance, merely muttered:
"Sure." Then, with a greater emphasis that even to himself sounded like defensive anger, he repeated: "Sure."
The technician had already switched the three INS sets to align and inserted the plane's exact present position. The INS gyros had spun up and he could begin the instrument checks; all their displayed failure flags had retracted. He felt a bead of cold sweat slip down his cheek, over his jaw, into the collar of his denim shirt. He began his scan check at the top right of the overhead display panel, his eyes moving up and down through each piece of equipment, then down across the autopilot and the auto throttle and zigzag across the centre panel; finally, the centre console. Vance he turned now, knowing the man would be absorbed in his own work was making a similar scan check of his instrument panels… fire warning, engine instrument displays, the fuel system, fuel contents, fuel computer, booster pumps.
Somewhere there…? The instruments had shown that all of the systems had been functioning. The engines hadn't relit but there was no reason they shouldn't have.
He knew the passenger less weight of the plane plus the two of them and the fuel, and set the markers on the airspeed indicator for the take-off speeds at VI, V2 and VR. Hollis' engines hadn't failed at take-off… He put the thought aside and stopped himself staring through the glare shield at the vanishing length of runway and the desert. He tuned the VOR. Clamped on his headset, which at once made him aware of how much he was sweating. There was dampness, chill against his ears, then heat. The seat and the rudder pedals had already been adjusted to suit his height and frame.
"Engine start check?" he heard Vance ask.
"Engine start check."
Circuit breakers… INS… oxygen… radios, altimeters… boost pumps… start pressure… start engines… Gant swallowed.
"Let's go," he heard Vance breathe in his ear. The man's hand was heavy on his shoulder, then it was gone again. Its weight had seemed filled with a gambler's desperation.
"Starting number two," he heard Vance announce over the intercom to the ground engineer. The ignition switch was selected to ground start to turn the engine.
Gant heard the ground engineer's voice.
"N-One." The fan was beginning to turn.
"N-Two rotation and engine oil pressure rising," Vance murmured. Then:
Twentytwo per cent."
Gant moved the start lever to idle and started the stopwatch. Twenty seconds to completion of start-up. Fuel was now being pumped into the engine and the igniters were firing.
"Fuel flow normal," Vance called. Gant's instruments confirmed. The exhaust gas temperature began rising steadily. The engine had lit.
"Fifty per cent."
The engine was now self-sustaining and Vance would have released the ignition switch.
"Starting number one…" The process was quicker, it seemed, as if the engine start was being hurried in order that he would be placed in control of the airplane… "Fifty per cent."
He swallowed. His mouth was dry.
"Ground?"
"All cleared away—" There was the slightest hesitation, then: "Good luck, sir."
Gant checked the start levers were at idle, the stabiliser trim, power hydraulics.
Over the VHP, he contacted the huddled buildings and the toylike, glass-topped control tower at the far end of the runway.
"Request taxi."
"Clear to taxi."
Gant released the brakes and moved the thrust levers with his right hand, his left on the control column to steer the 494. There was no more than a momentary sense of the bulk of the airliner being drawn behind the tiny flight deck. He could hear the engine whine as the two huge Pratt & Whitneys spooled up. Vance began reading the take-off checks. Flaps at ten per cent, speed brakes checked, flight controls check, trim set check, annunciator panels check, pressurisation check
… Travelling down the taxiway… threshold."
He turned the airplane like some lumbering marine mammal stranded on a desert beach on to the end of the runway. Then the plane was still, massive. The desert air made the runway melt, re-form, melt again. It was hallucinatory, unnerving.
The mountains seemed starker now, crowding around the dwarfed, distant buildings and the tiny, isolated plane. The sky was almost colourless, utterly cloudless.
"Boost pumps on, fuel system set, hydraulics, brakes… ignition switches to flight start…" In case the engines flamed out on take-off, he could restart them… Hollis hadn't been able to relight the engines… forget that.
"Body gearing switched to off instruments, flaps set, trim set…"
He waited. Behind him, Vance waited on him. He was aware of the man's presence like a weight pressing at his back; felt the man's almost lunatic desperation, the madness of his enraged frustration and his fear.
The voice from the control tower startled him.
'494 cleared for take-off," it repeated.
"Let's go…" he heard Vance mutter, his voice as small as that of someone mumbling prayers.
Gant placed his hand on the throttles, tensing his right foot on the rudder. The 494 began to strain against the brakes. Vance took up his flight engineer's position between and just behind the two pilots' seats in order to monitor power. He was leaning forward, precisely adjusting the engine pressure ratios of each of the thrust levers. Gant had to rely on him to scan the instruments as any co-pilot would have done.
"OK, Alan here we go," he murmured, his throat tight and the sweat in rivulets on either side of his taut neck. He moved the throttle levers to vertical, then forward to just below the required power setting. The centre line of the runway stretched ahead, quivering in the desert heat or his imagination. The grey, dusty runway itself continued to melt, re-form, melt again in the haze.
"Here we go," he repeated quietly through clenched teeth.
He released the brakes and the plane leapt forward as if released from a chain.
There was no sense of its size behind him as it skimmed the runway, reaching eighty knots. Gant felt the rudder become effective. The airspeed indicator needles flicked upwards. A bird flashed across and beneath the nose of the 494.
The centre line wavered for a moment and Gant steered delicately on the rudder pedals, his right hand hovering over the throttles. If the engines failed now, he could close them down… Without reverse thrust, they'd plough into the desert at the end of the runway.
"V-One," he heard Vance call. Committed now. He moved his right hand to the control column as Vance assumed control of the engines.
One-fifty knots, one fifty-three, four, five eight.
"Rotate."
Gant pulled back on the column and the nose of the aircraft lifted towards the blinding, leached sky. Ten per cent, fifteen on the attitude indicator. He felt the undercarriage leave the runway.
"V-Two," he muttered to Vance.
"Gear up."
The undercarriage bay doors opened and he felt the slight increase in drag, then the bogies clunked home and the doors shut. He turned the aircraft into the wind.
Altitude five hundred feet, the mountains diminishing in bulk, becoming manageable, dismissible. Twelve hundred feet… He was sweating as Vance eased back the throttles to climb power. He dropped the nose to allow for the reduction. The miniature buildings of Vance Aircraft disappeared beneath the port wing and the mountains seemed to slip aside, leaving the emptiness of the air ahead and the architect's model that was Phoenix glittering on the desert floor, surrounded by reservoirs with mirror surfaces.
He was repeating the flight that had killed Hollis in every detail.
Vance's presence behind him made the hair on his neck itch. Farther behind him were the two huge engines that had failed, and for which failure there was no answer… The voice at the other end of the telephone, that of Michael Lloyd's only relative, an aunt in Crewkerne, seeped coldly into her ear like an ointment. Lloyd's untidy handwriting on the single sheet of A4 paper lay on her desk, reminding her of his undergraduate essays when she had been his tutor in modern history. She sensed that even those memories were an escape route, one unplanned but quickly taken.