Night Over Water

by Ken Follett

  That section alone was bigger than most flight decks; but the rest of the Clipper’s flight cabin was even more generous. Most of the port side, on the left as you faced forward, was taken up by the seven-foot-long chart table, at which navigator Jack Ashford now stood, bending over his maps. Aft of that was a small conference table, at which the captain could sit when he was not actually flying the plane. Beside the captain’s table was an oval hatch leading to the crawlway inside the wing: a special feature of the Clipper was that the engines could be reached during flight via this crawlway, and Eddie could do simple maintenance or repairs, such as fixing an oil leak, without the plane having to come down.

  On the starboard, right-hand side, immediately behind the copilot’s seat was the staircase that led down to the passenger deck. Then came the radio operator’s station, where Ben Thompson sat facing forward. Behind Ben sat Eddie. He faced sideways, looking at a wall of dials and a bank of levers. A little to his right was the oval hatch leading to the starboard wing crawlway. At the back of the flight deck, a doorway led to the cargo holds.

  The whole thing was twenty-one feet long and nine feet wide, with full headroom throughout. Carpeted, soundproofed and decorated with soft green wall fabric and brown leather seats, it was the most unbelievably luxurious flight deck ever made: when Eddie first saw it he thought it was some kind of joke.

  Now, however, he saw only the bent backs and concentrated frowns of his crewmates, and judged, with relief, that they had not noticed that he was beside himself with fear.

  Desperate to understand why this nightmare was happening to him, he wanted to give the unknown Mr. Luther an early opportunity to make himself known. After takeoff Eddie hunted around for an excuse to pass through the passenger cabin. He could not think of a good reason, so he made do with a bad one. He stood up, mumbled to the navigator, “Just going to check the rudder trim control cables,” and went quickly down the stairs. If anyone should ask him why he took it into his head to perform that check at that moment he would just say: “Hunch.”

  He walked slowly through the passenger cabin. Nicky and Davy were serving cocktails and snacks. The passengers were relaxing and conversing in several languages. There was already a card game in progress in the main lounge. Eddie saw some familiar faces, but he was too distracted to figure out who the famous people were. He made eye contact with several passengers, hoping that one would reveal himself to be Tom Luther, but no one spoke to him.

  He reached the back of the plane and climbed a wall-mounted ladder beside the door to the ladies’ powder room. This led to a hatch in the ceiling that gave access to the empty space in the tail. He could have reached the same place by remaining on the upper deck and going back through the baggage holds.

  He checked the rudder control cables in a perfunctory way then closed the hatch and descended the ladder. A boy of fourteen or fifteen was standing there watching him with lively curiosity. Eddie forced himself to smile. Encouraged, the boy said: “Can I see the flight deck?”

  “Sure you can,” Eddie said automatically. He did not want to be bothered right now, but on this of all planes the crew had to be charming to the passengers, and anyway the distraction might take his mind off Carol-Ann briefly.

  “Super. Thanks!”

  “Honk back to your seat for a minute and I’ll pick you up.”

  A puzzled look passed briefly over the boy’s face; then he nodded and hurried away. “Honk back” was a New England expression, Eddie realized: it was not familiar to New Yorkers, let alone Europeans.

  Eddie walked even more slowly back along the aisle, waiting for someone to approach him; but no one did, and he had to assume the man would wait for a more discreet opportunity. He could have just asked the stewards where Mr. Luther was seated, but they would naturally wonder why he wanted to know, and he was reluctant to arouse their curiosity.

  The boy was in number 2 compartment, near the front, with his family. Eddie said, “Okay, kid, come on up,” and smiled at the parents. They nodded rather frostily at him. A girl with long red hair—the boy’s sister, maybe—gave him a grateful smile, and his heart missed a beat: she was beautiful when she smiled.

  “What’s your name?” he asked the boy as they went up the spiral staircase.

  “Percy Oxenford.”

  “I’m Eddie Deakin, the flight engineer.”

  They reached the top of the stairs. “Most flight decks ain’t as nice as this,” Eddie said, forcing himself to be cheerful.

  “What are they like usually?”

  “Bare and cold and noisy. And they have sharp projections that stick into you every time you turn around.”

  “What does an engineer do?”

  “I take care of the engines—keep them drivin’ all the way to America.”

  “What are all those levers and dials for?”

  “Let’s see.... These levers here control the propeller speed, the engine temperature and the fuel mixture. There’s one complete set for each of the four engines.” This was all a bit vague, he realized, and the boy was quite bright. He made an effort to be more informative. “Here, sit in my chair,” he said. Percy sat down eagerly. “Look at this dial. It shows that the temperature of number two engine, at its head, is two hundred five degrees centigrade. That’s a little too close to the maximum permissible, which is two hundred thirty-two degrees while cruising. So we’ll cool it down.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Take that lever in your hand and pull it down a fraction.... That’s just enough. Now you’ve opened the cowl flap an inch more to let in extra cold air, and in a few moments you’ll see that temperature drop. Have you studied much physics?”

  “I go to an old-fashioned school,” Percy said. “We do a lot of Latin and Greek, but they’re not very keen on science.”

  It seemed to Eddie that Latin and Greek were not going to help Britain win the war, but he kept the thought to himself.

  Percy said: “What do the rest of them do?”

  “Well, now, the most important person is the navigator: that’s Jack Ashford, standing at the chart table.” Jack, a dark-haired, blue-chinned man with regular features, looked up and gave a friendly smile. Eddie went on. “He has to figure out where we are, which can be difficult in the middle of the Atlantic. He has an observation dome, back there between the cargo holds, and he takes sightings on the stars with his sextant.”

  Jack said: “Actually, it’s a bubble octant.”

  “What’s that?” Percy asked.

  Jack showed him the instrument. “The bubble is just to tell you when the octant is level. You identify a star, then look at it through the mirror, and adjust the angle of the mirror until the star appears to be on the horizon. You read off the angle of the mirror here, and look it up in the book of tables, and that gives you your position on the earth’s surface.”

  “It sounds simple,” Percy said.

  “It is in theory,” Jack said with a laugh. “One of the problems on this route is that we can be flying through cloud for the whole journey, so I never get to see a star.”

  “But surely, if you know where you started, and you keep heading in the same direction, you can’t go wrong.”

  “That’s called dead reckoning. But you can go wrong, because the wind blows you sideways.”

  “Can’t you guess how much?”

  “We can do better than guess. There’s a little trapdoor in the wing, and I drop a flare in the water and watch it carefully as we fly away from it. If it stays in line with the tail of the plane, we’re not drifting; but if it seems to move to one side or the other, that shows me our drift.”

  “It sounds a bit rough-and-ready.”

  Jack laughed again. “It is. If I’m unlucky, and I don’t get a look at the stars all the way across the ocean, and I make a wrong estimate of our drift, we can end up a hundred miles or more off course.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “We find out about it as soon as we come within ran
ge of a beacon, or a radio station, and we set about correcting our course.”

  Eddie watched as curiosity and understanding showed on the boyish, intelligent face. One day, he thought, I’ll explain things to my own child. That made him think of Carol-Ann, and the reminder hurt like a pain in his heart. If only the faceless Mr. Luther would make himself known Eddie would feel better. When he knew what was wanted of him he would at least understand why this awful thing was happening to him.

  Percy said: “May I see inside the wing?”

  Eddie said: “Sure.” He opened the hatch to the starboard wing. The roar of the huge engines immediately sounded much louder, and there was a smell of hot oil. Inside the wing was a low passage with a crawlway like a narrow plank. Behind each of the two engines was a mechanic’s station with room for a man to stand upright, just about. Pan American’s interior decorators had not got into this space, and it was a utilitarian world of struts and rivets, cables and pipes. “That’s what most flight decks are like,” Eddie shouted.

  “May I go inside?”

  Eddie shook his head and closed the door. “No passengers beyond this point. I’m sorry.”

  Jack said: “I’ll show you my observation dome.” He took Percy through the door at the back of the flight deck, and Eddie checked the dials he had been ignoring for the past few minutes. All was well.

  The radioman, Ben Thompson, sang out the conditions at Foynes: “Westerly wind, twenty-two knots, choppy sea.”

  A moment later, on Eddie’s board, the light over the word CRUISING winked out and the light over LANDING came on. He scanned his temperature dials and reported: “Engines okay for landing.” The check was necessary because the high-compression motors could be damaged by too abrupt throttling back.

  Eddie opened the door to the rear of the plane. There was a narrow passage with cargo holds on either side, and a dome, above the passage, reached by a ladder. Percy was standing on the ladder looking through the octant. Beyond the cargo holds was a space that was supposed to be for crew beds, but it had never been furnished: off-duty crew used number 1 compartment. At the back of that area was a hatch leading to the tail space where the control cables ran. Eddie called: “Landing, Jack.”

  Jack said: “Time to get back to your seat, young man.”

  Eddie had a feeling that Percy was too good to be true. Although the boy did as he was told, there was a mischievous glint in his eye. However, for the moment he was on his best behavior, and he went obediently forward to the staircase and down to the passenger deck.

  The engine note changed, and the plane began to lose height. The crew went automatically into the smoothly coordinated landing routine. Eddie wished he could tell the others what was happening to him. He felt desperately lonely. These were his friends and colleagues; they trusted one another; they had flown the Atlantic together; he wanted to explain his plight and ask their advice. But it was too risky.

  He stood up for a moment to look out of the window. He could see a small town, which he guessed was Limerick. Outside the town, on the north bank of the Shannon estuary, a large new airport was being constructed, for land planes and seaplanes. Until it was finished the flying boats were coming down on the south side of the estuary, in the lee of a small island, off a village called Foynes.

  Their course was northwest, so Captain Baker had to turn the plane through forty-five degrees to land into the westerly wind. A launch from the village would be patrolling the landing zone to check for large floating debris that might damage the aircraft. The refueling boat would be standing by, loaded with fifty-gallon drums, and there would be a crowd of sightseers on the shore, come to watch the miracle of a ship that could fly.

  Ben Thompson was talking into his radio microphone. At any distance greater than a few miles he had to use Morse code, but now he was close enough for voice radio. Eddie could not distinguish the words but he could tell from Ben’s calm, relaxed tone of voice that all was well.

  They lost height steadily. Eddie watched his dials vigilantly, making occasional adjustments. One of his most important tasks was to synchronize engine speeds, a job that became more demanding when the pilot made frequent throttle changes.

  Landing in a calm sea could be almost imperceptible. In ideal conditions the hull of the Clipper went into the water like a spoon into cream. Eddie, concentrating on his instrument panel, often was not aware that the plane had touched down until it had been in the water for several seconds. However, today the sea was choppy—which was as bad as it got in any of the places where the Clipper came down on this route.

  The lowest point of the hull, which was called the “step,” touched first, and there was a light thud-thud-thud as it clipped the tops of the waves. That lasted only a second or two, then the huge aircraft eased down another few inches and cleaved the surface. Eddie found it much smoother than coming down in a land plane, when there was always a perceptible bump, and sometimes several. Very little spray reached the windows of the flight deck, which was on the upper level. The pilot throttled right down and the aircraft slowed immediately. The plane was a boat again.

  Eddie looked out of the windows again as they taxied to their mooring. On one side was the island, low and bare: he saw a small white house and a few sheep. On the other side was the mainland. He could see a sizable concrete jetty with a large fishing boat tied up to its side, several big oil-storage tanks, and a straggle of gray houses. This was Foynes.

  Unlike Southampton, Foynes did not have a purpose-built jetty for flying boats, so the Clipper would moor in the estuary and the people would be landed by launch. Mooring was the engineer’s responsibility.

  Eddie went forward, knelt between the two pilots’ seats, and opened the hatch leading to the bow compartment. He descended the ladder into the empty space. Stepping into the nose of the plane, he opened a hatch and stuck his head out. The air was fresh and salty, and he took a deep breath.

  A launch came alongside. One of the hands waved to Eddie. The man was holding a rope attached to a buoy. He threw the rope into the water.

  There was a collapsible capstan on the nose of the flying boat. Eddie lifted it and locked it into position; then he took a boat hook from inside and used it to pick up the rope that was floating in the water. He attached the rope to the capstan, and the aircraft was moored. Looking up at the windshield behind him, he gave Captain Baker the thumbs-up sign.

  Another launch was already coming alongside to take the passengers and crew off the plane.

  Eddie closed the hatch and returned to the flight deck. Captain Baker and Ben, the radioman, were still at their stations, but the copilot, Johnny, was leaning on the chart table chatting to Jack. Eddie sat at his station and closed down the engines. When everything was ship-shape he put on his black uniform jacket and white cap. The crew went down the stairs, passed through number 2 passenger compartment, went into the lounge and stepped out onto the sea-wing. From there they boarded the launch. Eddie’s deputy, Mickey Finn, remained behind to supervise the refueling.

  The sun was shining but there was a cool, salty breeze. Eddie surveyed the passengers on the launch, wondering yet again which one was Tom Luther. He recognized a woman’s face, and realized with a faint shock that he had seen her making love to a French count in a movie called A Spy in Paris: she was the film star Lulu Bell. She was chatting animatedly to a guy in a blazer. Could he be Tom Luther? With them was a beautiful woman in a dotted dress who looked miserable. There were several other familiar faces, but most of the passengers were anonymous men in suits and hats, and rich women in furs.

  If Luther did not make his move soon, Eddie would seek him out, and to hell with discretion, he decided. He could not stand the waiting.

  The launch puttered away from the Clipper toward the land. Eddie stared across the water, thinking of his wife. He kept picturing the scene as the men burst into the house. Carol-Ann might have been eating eggs, or making coffee, or getting dressed for work. What if she had been in the bathtub? Eddie l
oved to look at her in the tub. She would pin up her hair, showing her long neck, and lie in the water, languidly sponging her suntanned limbs. She liked him to sit on the edge and talk to her. Until he met her, he had thought this kind of thing only happened in erotic daydreams. But now the picture was blighted by three coarse men in fedoras who burst in and grabbed her—

  The thought of her fear and shock as they seized her maddened Eddie almost beyond endurance. He felt his head spinning and he had to concentrate to stay upright in the launch. It was his utter helplessness that made the predicament so agonizing. She was in desperate trouble and there was nothing he could do, nothing. He realized he was clenching his fists spasmodically, and forced himself to stop.

  The launch reached the shore and tied up to a floating pontoon connected by a gangway to the dock. The crew helped the passengers disembark, then followed them up the gangway. They were directed to the customs shed.

  The formalities were brief. The passengers drifted into the little village. Across the road from the harbor was a former inn that had been almost entirely taken over by airline personnel, and the crew headed for that.

  Eddie was the last to leave, and as he came out of the customs shed, he was approached by a passenger who said: “Are you the engineer?”

  Eddie tensed. The passenger was a man of about thirty-five, shorter than he but stocky and muscular. He wore a pale gray suit, a tie with a stickpin and a gray felt hat. Eddie said: “Yes, I’m Eddie Deakin.”

  “My name is Tom Luther.”

  A red haze blurred Eddie’s vision and his rage boiled over in an instant. He grabbed Luther by the lapels, swung him around and banged him against the wall of the customs shed. “What have you done to Carol-Ann?” he spat. Luther was taken completely by surprise: he had expected a frightened, compliant victim. Eddie shook him until his teeth rattled. “You Christless son of a whore, where is my wife?”