Alistair MacLean: Fear is the Key

May 3rd, 1958

If you could call a ten by six wooden box mounted on a four-wheel trailer an office, then I was sitting in my office. I'd been sitting there for four hours, the ear-phones were beginning to hurt and the darkness was coming in from the swamps and the sea. But if I had to sit there all night, then I was going to do just that: those ear-phones were the most important thing in the world. They were the only remaining contact between me and all the world held for me.

Peter should have been within radio range three hours ago. It was a long haul north from Barranquilla, but we'd made that haul a score of times before. Our three DCs were old but as mechanically perfect as unceasing care and meticulous attention could make them. Pete was a fine pilot, Barry a crack navigator, the West Caribbean forecast had been good and it was far too early in the season for hurricanes.

There was no conceivable reason why they shouldn't have been on the air hours ago. As it was, they must have already passed the point of nearest approach and be drawing away to the north, towards Tampa, their destination. Could they have disobeyed my instructions to make the long dog-leg by the Yucatan Strait and flown the direct route over Cuba instead? All sorts of unpleasant things could happen to planes flying over war-torn Cuba those days. It seemed unlikely, and when I thought of the cargo they were carrying it seemed impossible. Where any element of risk was concerned, Pete was even more cautious and far-seeing than myself.

Over in the corner of my office on which a radio was playing softly. It was tuned in to some English-speaking station and for the second time that evening some hill-billy guitar-player was singing softly of the death of mother or wife or sweetheart, I wasn't sure which. "My red rose has turned to white" it was called. Red for life and white for death. Red and white — the colours of the three planes of our Trans-Carib Air Charter service. I was glad when the song stopped.

There was nothing much else in the office. A desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet and the big R.C.A. receiver-transmitter powered by a heavy T.R.S. cable that ran through the hole in the door and snaked across the grass and mud and one corner of the tarmac to the main terminal buildings. And there was a mirror. Elizabeth had put that up the only time she'd ever been here and I'd never got around to taking it down.

I looked in the mirror and that was a mistake. Black hair, black brows, dark blue eyes and a white strained haggard face to remind me how desperately worried I was. As if I needed reminding. I looked away and stared out of the window.

That was hardly any better. The only advantage was that I could no longer see myself. I certainly couldn't see anything else. Even at the best of times there was little enough to see through that window, just the ten empty desolate miles of flat swampland stretching from the Stanley Field airport to Belize, but now that the Honduras rainy season had begun, only that morning, the tiny tidal waves of water rolling endlessly down the single sheet of glass and the torn and lowering and ragged hurrying clouds driving their slanting rain into the parched and steaming earth turned the world beyond the window into a grey and misty nothingness.

I tapped out our call sign. The same result as the last five hundred times I'd tapped it. Silence. I altered the waveband to check that reception was still O.K., heard a swift succession of voices, static, singing, music, and homed back on our own frequency again.

The most important flight the Trans-Carib Air Charter Co. had ever made and I had to be stuck here in our tiny sub-office waiting endlessly for the spare carburettor that never came. And until I got it that red and white DC parked not fifty yards away on the apron was about as useful to me right then as a pair of sun-glasses.

They'd have got off from Barranquilla, I was certain of that. I'd had the first news three days ago, the day I'd arrived here, and the coded cable had made no mention of any possible trouble. Everything highly secret, only three permanent civil servants knew anything about it, Lloyd's willing to carry the risk even although at one of the highest premiums ever. Even the news, received in a radio report, of an attempted coup d'etat yesterday by pro-dictatorship elements to try to prevent the election of the Liberal Lleras hadn't concerned me too much, for although all military planes and internal services had been grounded, foreign airlines had been excluded: with the state of Colombia's economy they couldn't afford to offend even the poorest foreigners, and we just about qualified for that title.

But I'd taken no chances. I'd cabled Pete to take Elizabeth and John with him. If the wrong elements did get in on May 4th — that was to-morrow — and found out what we'd done, the Trans-Carib Air Charter Co. would be for the high jump. But fast. Besides, on the fabulous fee that was being offered for this one freight haul to Tampa…

The phones crackled in my ears. Static, weak, but bang on frequency. As if someone was trying to tune in. I fumbled for the volume switch, turned it to maximum, adjusted the band-switch a hair-line on either side and listened as I'd never listened before. But nothing. No voices, no morse call sign, just nothing. I eased off one of the earphones and reached for a packet of cigarettes.

The radio was still on. For the third time that evening, and less than fifteen minutes since I'd heard it last, someone was again singing "My red rose has turned to white."

I couldn't stand it any longer. I tore off the phones, crossed to the radio, switched it off with a jerk that almost broke the knob and reached for the bottle under my desk. I poured myself a stiff one, then replaced the head-phones.

"CQR calling CQS. CQR calling CQS. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Over."

The whisky splashed across the desk, the glass fell and broke with a tinkling crash on the wooden floor as I grabbed for the transmitter switch and mouthpiece.

"CQS here, CQS here!" I shouted. "Pete, is that you, Pete? Over."

"Me. On course, on time. Sorry for the delay." The voice was faint and faraway, but even the flat metallic tone of the speaker couldn't rob it of its tightness, its anger.

"I've been sitting here for hours." My own anger sounded through my relief, and I was no sooner conscious of it than ashamed of it. "What's gone wrong, Pete?"

"This has gone wrong. Some joker knew what we had aboard. Or maybe he just didn't like us. He put a squib behind the radio. The detonator went off, the primer went off, but the charge — gelignite or T.N.T. or whatever — failed to explode. Almost wrecked the radio — luckily Barry was carrying a full box of spares. He's only just managed to fix it."

My face was wet and my hands were shaking. So, when I spoke again, was my voice.

"You mean someone planted a bomb? Someone tried to blow the crate apart?"

"Just that."

"Anyone — anyone hurt?" I dreaded the answer.

"Relax, brother. Only the radio."

"Thank God for that. Let's hope that's the end of it."

"Not to worry. Besides, we have a watchdog now. A U.S. Army Air Force plane has been with us for the past thirty minutes. Barranquilla must have radioed for an escort to see us in." Peter laughed dryly. "After all, the Americans have a fair interest in this cargo we have aboard."

"What kind of plane?" I was puzzled, it took a pretty good flier to move two or three hundred miles out into the Gulf of Mexico and pick up an incoming plane without any radio directional bearing. "Were you warned of this?'"

"No. But not to worry — he's genuine, all right. We've just been talking to him. Knows all about us and our cargo. It's an old Mustang, fitted with long-range tanks — a jet fighter couldn't stay up all this time."