Ian Hocking - Flashback

The man turned. He, too, had been contemplating the hallway. ‘Dick Cory. But everyone calls me Cory.’

‘I’m Jem.’

At last, they shook hands. His palm had a rough knot of skin and, on instinct, Jem turned it over.

‘An old burn,’ said Cory. He made a fist but Jem had already seen the reversed letters.

‘‘Pyrene’?’

‘They make fire extinguishers.’ He smiled. ‘Ironically.’

‘I came to see if Saskia…’

‘Let me fix you a drink.’

‘She keeps a whisky bottle on the right of the dishwasher.’

Cory searched her face. ‘I know.’

Jem took the white leather sofa and Cory the reclining chair. They faced each other, stranger to stranger. The balcony doors were open. The net curtains sagged and bloomed. Rain was loud on the tiles. She rocked her glass: a tick to send the ice away, a tock to bring it back.

‘I am Saskia’s father.’

‘Her father?’

‘She came to us late in life. I retired when Germany was still in pieces. Don’t let the cane fool you. I can still click my heels.’

Jem smiled. His words were at odds with the artificiality of their situation. She suspected that he was used to keeping his head when all about him were losing theirs. It made her playful. She said, ‘Saskia never mentioned her father.’

‘I never mention Saskia.’

‘You’re not German. American?’

‘I was born in Atlanta, but took advantage of economic opportunities in Germany following the war. Dortmund, mostly. That’s where I met Saskia’s mother. Yourself?’

‘I’m from South West England.’

‘Oh, I’ve been to Plymouth.’

‘My sympathies.’

He blinked to acknowledge the remark, but his lips only curled with the application of his glass. He held the whisky in his mouth before swallowing.

‘So were you coming or going?’ she asked.

‘Pardon me?’

‘When I arrived, the lights were out upstairs.’

He sipped his drink again. ‘Going.’

As his eyes moved away from her, Jem considered his story. She believed that a man like him could father a woman like Saskia. The details, though, were too pat. The remark about Atlanta was redolent of rehearsal, smooth as Saskia thumbing bullets from her gun. Jem could imagine Cory as old guard CIA, a high-up bureaucrat who had long since abandoned the physicality of spying but not the comfort of tradecraft.

‘Jem, I’m afraid I have to tell you something about Saskia.’

Spoken, the name unlocked a door inside her. ‘I ran away at the airport.’

‘Tell me what happened.’

But she did not hear him. She gripped her chair and felt the shifting forces of the dive as the passengers held on and prayed that the pilots could solve the riddle of their instruments. Hands groping for other hands. Comfort in the last of moments. Business deals incomplete. Journeys truncated and lives unfinished. Jem shuddered. Something touched her hand and she focused her eyes on Cory’s palm, which he had placed again on hers. She felt his scar. Pyrene .

‘Hush.’ He touched away one of her tears. ‘As Saskia’s father, I am her next of kin. I should take care of her affairs. Do you understand?’

Jem nodded and let the water spill from her eyes. A drop found her lip and she remembered Saskia gathering fistfuls of her blue Schlumpf hair.

‘Jem? Does she have a computer? Is it behind the curtained door?’

‘Mr Cory, I’m tired.’

‘The door has a wirelessly-operated lock. Did you see her use the release? It could be anywhere. A TV remote control. An unused light switch.’

A fairy tale.

Jem shook her head to clear it. She noticed, again, that Cory was holding her hand, but now it felt wrong.

‘Are you really Saskia’s father?’

For a moment, anger collected in his eyes, and Jem wondered what he might do. But he resumed his chair. The lamp behind his head made an eclipse of his face. From the darkness, he said, ‘I should be down in Munich to identify the body. I guess I’m not brave enough.’

Neither spoke for a minute.

‘What do you think,’ she said, ‘about the idea that Saskia didn’t die? That, if there are survivors, she of all people…’

The severity of his expression stopped her.

‘It was a vertical impact, Jem.’ Cory’s eyes burned low like evening stars. ‘Do you want to watch the television? There might be developments.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘Did you hear about the pilot’s last message? A code-word. ‘STENDEC’. They were talking about it on the radio.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘You want me to tell you what they said?’

‘I think so.’

Cory waited a moment. Then he began, ‘In 1946, the Brits set up a South American airline under an old war hero, Donald Bennett. Many of his planes crashed. One, Star Dust , took off in August of 1947, on the last leg of its journey from London to Santiago, and was never seen again.’

‘Santiago is in Chile, right?’

‘In Chile. The flight involved a journey across the Andes.’

Jem let her imagination drift with Cory to the past. There was a comfort there. The past had already been; it was fixed and known. One could stand above the past. It contained a solace that, given years, Saskia’s death would be so distant that its hurt could dim.

‘That last flight, Star Dust , left Buenos Aires carrying mailbags, movie reels, and several examples of the rich and privileged. ‘Fly with the stars’. That was the motto of British South American Airways, written beneath an Art Deco star man. Each aircraft was given a name beginning with ‘star’.’ Another pause passed between them. It came cold, like an Andean wind. ‘Nobody knows what happened on board the flight prior to the crash. Some minutes before its wheels were due to hit the runway in Santiago, the radio operator on board Star Dust sent the message ‘STENDEC’.’

‘‘STENDEC’.’

‘ Star Dust repeated the message once and was never heard from again. In the weeks following the disappearance, the Chilean army scoured the Andes together with hundreds of amateur aviators and mountaineers. But Star Dust could not be found. Donald Bennett, the war hero, personally joined the search and continued it, in one way or another, until the end of his life. It was the last crash that the British government was to tolerate. Bennett was pressured to resign. He did, and returned to England under a cloud.’

Jem puzzled through the letters. ‘What do you think ‘STENDEC’ means?’

‘There are many possibilities,’ he said, smiling, ‘from the stupid to the plausible. An anagram of ‘descent’, for instance. Or ‘Severe Turbulence Encountered Now Descending Emergency Crash-Landing.’ Or perhaps Star Dust had already crashed, and the signal was sent by a third party to sow confusion.’

‘Why would somebody do that?’

‘There was a King’s Messenger on board. Perhaps someone didn’t want his secret documents to reach the British ambassador in Santiago. And there was a Palestinian businessman with a diamond stitched into the lining of his jacket. Perhaps somebody wanted that.’

‘How do you think it relates to Saskia’s flight?’

‘It’s late, Jem.’

She nodded. She did not trust this man. He had vast capability that his age only intensified. The net curtains bloomed like a cape and let in the sound of rain on the balcony. Minute upon minute passed and she fell asleep. When she awoke, Cory’s seat was empty, and in its place was the idea that he had never existed beyond a dream. Saskia was in the shower, surely, and any moment now she would return to Jem and the two would make up.