Ian Hocking - Flashback

‘Delighted to meet you all,’ said Cory. He turned to Miss Evans. ‘I do hope we can take off soon. Is the last passenger due imminently?’

Miss Evans blinked. ‘How attentive of you. We are indeed one short. Mr Simpson has special requirements and has already boarded.’

Cory struggled to quell his triumph. I have him , he thought. Harkes was waiting on the plane under the alias Simpson.

‘Is anybody else worried that our captain is called Cook?’ announced Pagh, at the piano. ‘It would give my travel plans an awful crimp if we were eaten by the natives upon arrival.’

‘Oh, Harald,’ said Gooderham, ‘you aren’t even drunk yet. Don’t offend.’

‘Whom do I offend? Tell me.’

Harald Pagh looked around the room, but the other passengers ignored him. Pagh raised his eyebrows at Cory. ‘ Herr Wittenbacher, erkennen Sie diese Melodie? ’ He conjured a tune with a melancholic opening followed by a forlorn chord, and a rising cluster of notes, growing hopeful. Pagh’s hands alternated base and treble, systole and diastole, drawing Cory’s thoughts out and in. Cory opened his mouth, ready to gasp, ‘Stop,’ but bile surged up. What was happening to him? He had barely enough time to command his automata to inhibit the nausea. The music ended with a chord unresolved. Concerned hands closed on his shoulders and arms. He allowed himself to be led to the sofa.

‘Harald,’ said Jack, ‘why must you always play the fool?’

‘It’s just a piece of music. Something by Carmichael, I believe. You must know our dear old aeroplane is called ‘Star Dust’ too. Herr Wittenbacher, was ist los? ’

‘Here, Mr Wittenbacher,’ said Miss Evans. She put a glass of water to his lips.

Cory swallowed. ‘Thank you.’ He tried to smile. ‘I’ve always found that piece of music… rather moving.’

‘You needn’t be concerned about the flight,’ said Miss Evans.

‘I’m not.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ said an unfamiliar voice. Cory turned to see Peter Young, his playing cards held to his chest, leaning over the sofa. ‘There’s no sense being worried in this day and age.’

‘It’s only across the hills,’ agreed Pagh. ‘And I’ve made the trip hundreds of times.’

‘They are not just hills, Mr Pagh,’ murmured Casis Said Atalah. He had not moved from the window. ‘They are the Andes. And this company has already lost two planes.’

‘Please,’ said Miss Evans. She chuckled. ‘We at BSAA enjoy a reputation for safety that is the envy of the world. Now, I believe it is time we embarked.’

Frau Limpert shuffled to face Mr Atalah. Her widow’s clothing reminded Cory of Jennifer beneath the Jacaranda. ‘ Es bringt nichts, sich über das Reisen Sorgen zu machen. Jede Reise hat ihr Risiko. ’

Dismay fell across all faces, even the Star Girl. Cory frowned. Limpert’s words were muddied by a difficult mix of accents. Finally, a meaning broke through. Jede Reise hat ihr Risiko : All travel has its risks.

Harald Pagh played Chopin’s funeral march and flourished his elbows. Nobody laughed. Even Jack Gooderham, his companion, turned away. Pagh closed the piano and slapped his own wrist.

As the bus came parallel to the Lancastrian , Cory saw sunlight flicker down each of her twenty-five silver yards. Her engines were loud and blaring. Just fore of the cockpit were the words ‘Star Dust’. Her raised nose was open. A ramp led to the gap, through which ground staff passed sacks of mail. There was a crewman visible inside the cockpit. He waved to the man in charge of the chock cable. The man waved back, then indicated the approaching bus with a tick of the head. Cory watched this exchange and envied its camaraderie. Never more intense was the feeling of being shanghaied. He was isolated from the good people at Project Déjà Vu, among whom he had been a favoured son.

Miss Evans parked upwind of the idling engines. She slipped from the vehicle to station herself by the wing. The passenger door was a rounded rectangle in the fuselage covered by the G of the aircraft’s huge registration code, G-AGWH. The door opened and a uniformed officer emerged.

‘Please approach First Officer Cook directly, ladies and gentlemen,’ called Miss Evans.

‘ Zu viele Köche ,’ muttered Harald Pagh, elbowing Cory. ‘ Sie verderben die Suppe . Mr Atalah, don’t you agree that too many Cooks spoil the broth? You have a similar idiom in Arabic, of course.’

‘I am Chilean, Mr Pagh,’ said Atalah. His coat whipped in the propeller draught and he fussed with the hem. ‘We do have a proverb about cooking, however. Nunca defeque más de lo que come .’

Pagh looked at Cory. ‘What did he say?’

‘‘Never shit more than you eat’.’

Pagh gasped, then erupted in laughter that rivalled the Lancastrian’s engines for volume. ‘Is that so, Mr Atalah?’

‘You had that coming,’ said Jack Gooderham.

‘A pen, Jack! It might prove profitable.’

‘ Grässlicher Spruch ,’ observed Martha Limpert. As she dismounted from the bus, she accepted the forearm of Peter Young. The pair drifted towards the aircraft.

Cory noticed that the burly first officer was checking tickets as passengers boarded. Cory opened the slim wallet that a member of the ground crew had passed to him: he found his expedited ticket and baggage check, and a leaflet about onboard entertainment—chess, jigsaw puzzles, poker dice—medicaments and (Cory smiled) ‘works of reference such as the Railway A.B.C. Guide ’.

‘Do come along, everyone,’ called Miss Evans. She watched Frau Limpert place her feet uncertainly on the steps. ‘That’s it. Warmer inside.’

While Cory waited, he regarded the Star Dust . It was still a Lancaster bomber at heart. Though the nose- and tail-guns had been amputated, the fuselage had been polished to the pointless shine of an infantry boot. Once military, always military.

He ascended the short stairs in his fancy shoes and feigned the ease of a fighter ace who had never existed. His mood had sunk. What if Paul Simpson, the only passenger he had not yet seen, was just a man called Paul Simpson, not Harkes? That, Cory had to admit, was unthinkable. He had killed Paloma for the information. It was charged with value. How could it be a ruse, when Paloma had maintained it to the end? If a lie, it was a weapon, but she had been unarmed when he stopped her life.

There was not, yet, a scent of the digital radio traffic that would betray the automata in Harkes’s body, but Cory knew that the signal could be smothered by the electromagnetic wash of the engines and the Faraday cage of the airframe. Cory needed to enter the aircraft to be sure.

He stepped into the sloping cabin. He was the last passenger to board. First Officer Cook followed him. He slammed the door and put his shoulder behind the locking lever. It clanked home.

Within the Lancastrian, the air smelled of the Elsan toilet, old clothes and fuel. Two ranks of winged seats lay either side of a raised aisle. At the head of the aircraft, rear-facing seats were separated from the rest by small tables. In one of those seats was a man whom Cory had not yet met. He moved forward, floor plates flexing, but was blocked by the wide back of Jack Gooderham.

Cory scanned for Harkes’s automata, but could only find the dim crackle of conversation from the cockpit voice loop.

‘Altimeter, flight instruments, carb heat.’

‘Check, Skipper.’

‘VG. Where’s our First Officer? Denis, go back and unplug him from Miss Evans.’

The passengers continued to mill in the aisle. Collars were upturned and woollen blankets shaken out. Dust snowed in the light of the portholes. Again and again, Cory glimpsed the stranger in the front-most seat. The space next to the man was filled by a canvas sack. Cory tried to continue forward but Peter Young was stretching his calves against the airframe.