John Davis - Seize the Reckless Wind

He looked at the front page for news of Rhodesia.

SMITH ANNOUNCES ‘INTERNAL SETTLEMENT’

The Rhodesian Prime Minister announced in Salisbury today that his government was setting out to seek an ‘internal settlement’ with the country’s moderate African leaders, in terms of which a ‘Transitional Co-alition Government would be formed with them, pending a new one-man-one-vote constitution …

Mahoney read the piece with stumbling speed: and for a minute he felt confused elation. Then he slumped. He thought: Big Deal …

Big deal, Mr Smith … You should have done this years ago when I told you to! … You think a coalition government now will get you international recognition so economic sanctions and the war will end? Well you’re too bloody late, Mr Smith …

Mahoney took a deep, bitter breath. Because it was too bloody late for such a compromise, because now the Rhodesians were fighting with their backs to the wall, and no way were Moscow and Peking going to rejoice in a nice moderate settlement and let their boys in the bush lay down their arms – Moscow and Peking didn’t want a nice moderate black government in Rhodesia, they wanted a communist one. You did not have to be a clairvoyant to see that the war would go on.

And the news of the war was shocking. The next headline made his guts turn over:

TERRORISTS SHOOT DOWN RHODESIAN TOURIST PLANE

A Rhodesian Airways plane carrying over fifty civilian holiday-makers, mostly women and children, from the Zambesi Valley to Salisbury, was shot down yesterday by terrorists using a heat-seeking anti-aircraft missile of Russian manufacture …

He felt sick in his guts. He could almost hear the screams as the plane came tearing down out of the sky, the smashing and crashing. Miraculously, ten survivors had crawled out of the terrible wreckage, hysterical, astonished to be alive, and four of them had gone off to find help: then the terrorists had arrived, raped the women, then shot them all. The Selous Scouts were now tracking the terrorists. Meanwhile, another mission station was attacked yesterday, all the missionaries butchered, two of them women, two babies bayoneted …

Jesus! He started the car furiously. What do you say about a war like that? You want to bellow to the world, ‘ What the hell are you supporting communist murderers like that for? ’ And he wanted to grab Ian Smith by the scruff of neck and shake him.

He drove angrily home. Through the cow-meadow, through the woods, to the empty house. He thought, And what are you doing about it, coming home hungover from a drunken orgy while the communists close in on your country – with your daughter in it?

He got out of his car, slammed the door. No, he did not believe that Catherine was in danger: the terrorists would never get the towns; they would only ravage the countryside like roving packs of wild dogs. But that would be enough to win the war.

He went inside, put the radio on loud to stop himself thinking about it. He went upstairs, changed into fresh clothes, to go to work at Malcolm Todd’s cottage.

By law he was only allowed to work ninety hours a month, to be in good condition to fly aeroplanes; but he could not stay in the empty cottage, so usually he went to Redcoat House and did his paperwork, then worked on drafting the new Civil Aviation Authority’s Airship Regulations. The best place for that was the Todds’ cottage, so that Malcolm could explain everything, the technicalities, the importance of each part, and Mahoney tried to put it into the legal language that civil servants like to hear.

‘Those heaters won’t go wrong,’ Malcolm said.

‘What minimum dimensions must they be to heat all that helium? And snow and ice?’

‘Snow and ice will not collect during flight,’ Malcolm said, ‘because of the slipstream of air around the hull. Snow collects while the ship is stationary, but the heating system will warm the hull and melt it.’

‘But if the heater broke down, how do we get rid of the ice?’

‘It won’t break down. It is simply the heat from the exhaust, piped through the hull and out the other side. That hot pipe is surrounded by a jacket with a built-in fan. The fan sucks cold helium in one end of the jacket, it is heated by the pipe, and blows warm helium out the end of the jacket. Can’t fail.’

‘But if that fan breaks down?’

‘You’d have to send a man inside to fix the damn thing, that’s all. With a breathing apparatus because helium contains no oxygen. What scuba-divers use.’ He added: ‘Helium’s not poisonous.’

‘Let’s make a note … And if he couldn’t fix the fan? He’d have to go out on top to shovel the snow off? Maybe during flight. What kind of life-lines must we have?’

Malcolm sighed irritably. ‘Any fool can fix that fan! And those German boys on the Zeppelins never wore life-lines when they went topside to stitch up canvas. But what you must impress on the C.A. A. is we can send a man up there to shovel snow off. But if the heating fails on the leading edge of a jetliner’s wings you can’t send a man out – you get iced-up and crash! … Bloody cats!’ he shouted. ‘Get out!’

A cat fled.

‘I heard you shouting at Napoleon,’ Anne shouted from the kitchen. ‘Poor Napoleon, was the general being nasty?’ Malcolm snorted wearily to himself.

‘I heard you snorting wearily to yourself in there, Field Marshal. Isn’t it time you boys knocked off, your dinner’s getting cold.’

‘It’s only eleven! We’re making history in here, woman!’

Anne recited in the kitchen:

‘I always thought it rather odd

That there should be two Ds in “Todd”

When after all there’s only one in “God”.’

She came into the room. She was a good-looking, weary woman. She slipped her arm around Malcolm’s shoulder. ‘Come on, old gas-bag, reveille, this man’s got to fly aeroplanes tomorrow.’

‘Less of the old,’ Malcolm muttered. ‘He’s got to bang the C.A.A.’s head together next month.’

‘Our attitude’, the very precise, hard-to-charm civil servant said, ‘is that we’ll believe it when we see it. Until then …’ Mahoney waited. ‘Until then, I’m afraid you can’t expect us to do any work on this. People have been talking about bringing back the airship for fifty years – ever since the Hindenburg. Nothing has ever come of it. Because the airship proved itself a thoroughly unreliable, dangerous machine. Oh, I’m aware that hydrogen caused those disasters and you want to use helium.’

‘The Graf Zeppelin’ , Mahoney said, ‘flew between Germany, South America and New York for years without a single accident – even though she was filled with hydrogen.’

The neat man nodded. ‘Mr Mahoney, the C.A.A. is a very busy government body which acts as watchdog on aircraft safety, and we’re very expensive. If you design a new aeroplane, our experts would check minutely whether it conformed to these safety regulations.’ He tapped a thick book. ‘Now, we’ve got no regulations on airships. And we’ve got no aeronautical experts on airships, because airships simply don’t exist. And I don’t know where such people are to be found.’

‘I do.’

‘I mean expert by our standards. And we’d have to put a lawyer exclusively on to drafting the legislation – and you’d have to pay for all this. We don’t give free legal advice, you know.’

‘I know,’ Mahoney said, ‘I’m a lawyer.’

The man was surprised. ‘I thought you were a commercial pilot?’

‘I’m both. I went to Aviation flying school a few years ago.’