Douglas Preston - The Obsidian Chamber

Proctor knew next to nothing about Mauritania, save that the country consisted almost entirely of the ever-expanding Sahara desert and that it was racked by poverty, child labor, and even slavery. He could think of no reason why Diogenes would be heading for such a flyspeck of an airport, save one: a refueling stop. Shannon had obviously been such a stop: the Bombardier would have exhausted its fuel crossing the Atlantic. Clearly, Diogenes was not approaching his ultimate destination, whatever that might be, in a straight line: rather, the range of his aircraft was dictating his stops. And Proctor’s aircraft tracking apps had specifically shown a “CL30”—code for a Bombardier Challenger 300—en route to Akjoujt from Ireland, with no deviation in flight plan.

Once they reached Akjoujt, however, Proctor knew that he would no longer be able to rely on the Internet to track Diogenes’s movements. At such a tiny Mauritanian airport — an ideal stop for private planes in a hurry and with no interest in answering many questions — there would be ways around such formalities as the filing of flight plans. Proctor would have to make use of other methods to determine the man’s ultimate destination — because he felt in his bones that Akjoujt would be the penultimate stop. Four hops in a Bombardier or Learjet was enough to reach almost any destination in the world — and Diogenes was already on his third leg.

They reached Akjoujt — a flat, hot, desolate place, dry as mummy dust, with the sun boring like a heat lamp out of the sky — not long after eleven. Proctor quickly located an airport official who spoke decent English and — for a hefty consideration — was only too happy to talk about the big, gleaming Bombardier that had landed there. Yes, it had stopped to refuel. Yes, it had taken off again. The man knew its final destination, because he had overheard one of the pilots mention it. The plane was headed for the Hosea Kutako Airport in Windhoek, Namibia.

Given his lead, and his faster aircraft, Diogenes should have been over three hours ahead of them… except for a circumstance that the airport official now related. The Bombardier had been delayed taking off from Akjoujt. The man didn’t know what the reason was, exactly, except that the delay had to do with a problem involving one of the passengers. Ultimately, Diogenes’s jet had lifted off for Namibia just ninety minutes before.

Proctor considered the possibility that Diogenes had bribed or lied to the man, providing him with a false destination. After all, there was no way he could track his quarry’s plane any longer using normal technology. But his gut, which he always trusted, told him this man was speaking the truth. Besides, if Diogenes had already paid him to lie, the official wouldn’t have charged Proctor so much money for so little information.

He climbed back into the Citation. “We’re headed for Namibia,” he told Shapely.

The man stared at him with red-rimmed eyes. “You’re bullshitting me, right?”

“No.”

“You know how far that is from here?”

“Yes. Three thousand, six hundred miles.”

Scratching one of his sideburns, the pilot said, “That’s nine more hours of flying time. I’ll be a wreck.”

“It’s the last leg. You can sleep for a week once we get there.”

“Do you know how many hours over the FAA maximum I am already, mate?”

“I didn’t think trifles like FAA regulations concerned you.” And Proctor gave his bag, and the cash it contained, a meaningful pat.

“Bloody hell.” Shapely shook his head in disbelief. “Well, it’s your funeral. I’m so fagged I’m likely to augur in, or fly us straight into a mountain.” And with that, he popped a few more of the little white pills.

Hosea Kutako International Airport was large and — at quarter to eleven in the evening, local time — surprisingly busy. While nowhere near as strict as an American or European facility, the tower had questioned their lack of a flight plan, and Shapely had been forced to come up with a complicated story involving a leaky gas tank, trouble with his communications equipment, and a vulture’s close encounter with one of the jet intakes. Proctor had been surprised the pilot was still capable of such a feat of imagination: he’d been flying almost twenty-four hours straight now, and his jauntiness was long gone.

“I’m a corpse, brother,” he told Proctor as they turned off runway 26 and taxied toward the airport’s lone terminal. “If you want to fly any farther, you’re going to have to grow wings.”

“You’ve done well,” Proctor said, glancing out the windscreen. Then he froze. There, parked on the tarmac, was Diogenes’s Challenger.

“Stop,” he told Shapely.

“But—”

“Just stop .” Diogenes reached into his bag, pulled out another few stacks of hundred-dollar bills, quickly counted off forty thousand, and tossed them at the pilot with a hurried thanks. Then he opened the passenger door and was off, racing toward the parked jet even before the Citation had rolled to a halt.

Three hours , he thought as he ran. He’s just three hours ahead of me.

It had been an exhausting game of cat and mouse — from plane to plane, over oceans, over continents, keeping on Diogenes’s tail despite all the man’s stratagems. The Bombardier wasn’t going anywhere — one of its engine cowlings was up, and the door to the passenger cabin was open, the deplaning ladder still down. Diogenes and Constance wouldn’t be far, now. With any luck, they were still in Windhoek.

With a little more luck, they might even still be at the airport — perhaps in the arrival hall.

Reaching the jet, Proctor raced up the steps two at a time into the passenger cabin. It was empty, but the door to the cockpit was ajar. Inside, a man wearing a pilot’s uniform was seated in the left-hand seat. He was scribbling something on a clipboard.

Proctor ducked into the cockpit, grabbed the man by his lapel, and bodily lifted him out of the chair. “Are you the pilot from Shannon?” he asked.

The man blinked at him in surprise. “What the hell—?”

Proctor tightened his grip on the collar, adding pressure to the man’s neck. “Answer the question.”

“I’m… I’m one of them,” he said.

“The other?”

“He left the airport an hour ago. He already gave his statement. I gave mine, too.”

“Statement?”

“About the tragedy.” The pilot was recovering his self-possession. He was evidently American. “Who are you?”

“I’m asking the questions,” Proctor said. “What tragedy? And who were your passengers?”

“There were two of them. A man and a woman.”

“Names?”

“They wouldn’t give us names.”

“Describe them to me.”

“The man was about your height. Slender. Closely trimmed beard. Strange eyes — one was a different color than the other.” A pause. “He had a scar on one cheek.”

“And the woman?”

“She was young, maybe early twenties. Dark hair. Pretty. Didn’t get much of a look at her, actually. She was drunk.”

“And that was it? Just the two?”

“Yes. At least… at first.”

Proctor tightened his grip on the man’s collar. “What do you mean— at first ? What’s this about a tragedy?”

The pilot hesitated. “Well… it was the young woman.”

“What about her?” Proctor asked. “ What about the young woman? ”

The pilot looked down, then raised his eyes again to meet Proctor’s gaze. “She died midflight.”

“Died?” Proctor said. “ Died? ” For a moment, a red curtain fell across his vision. An overwhelming desire to inflict extreme violence — such as he had felt only once or twice before in his life, during times of intense danger and physical duress — came over him. It took a supreme act of will not to crush the man’s windpipe.