Flashback

Chapter Thirty-Two

Miss Evans was a capable, pretty young woman in a uniform that reminded Cory of the British WAAF. Her designation ‘Star Girl’—the BSAA equivalent of stewardess—did not match her countenance, which was part matron, part butler. The impression she made on Cory was striking, to be sure, but this impression faded as the pair approached the passenger lounge. Harkes had to be inside. Cory knew that he carried enhancements that were rudimentary compared to I-Core. All things being equal, Cory would best him. But Harkes knew this, and unless he was stupid—which, as a scientist, Harkes was not—he would assume the advantage by other means.

As Miss Evans opened the door to the passenger lounge, Cory rose to the balls of his feet. He made a flash-bulb inventory of the passengers and referenced the passenger manifest he had glimpsed on the rack in the Star Girls’ office.

Miss Evans said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we will be boarding in a few minutes’ time. This means a slight delay, but Captain Cook is confident we can regain the time during flight. Please may I introduce Herr Wittenbacher?’

With a perfect recollection for names, Miss Evans presented each of the passengers. First was a Middle Eastern man silhouetted against the glass wall. His hands were clasped at his back and he nodded to Cory without expression. ‘Mr Casis Said Atalah,’ said Miss Evans. At an upright piano, stroking notes, was a gentleman with playful eyes. ‘Herr Harald Pagh.’ She turned to another who sat in a wicker recliner smoking a drooped pipe. ‘Mr Jack Gooderham.’ A fourth man, ‘Mr Peter Young,’ was playing cards with an elderly woman, ‘Frau Martha Horniche.’

None of the four men resembled Harkes, and Cory, slipping into the infrared, saw no evidence of twentieth-century plastic surgery. Harkes might have altered his appearance before he escaped, but Cory had not been apprised of this during his briefing, and he discounted the possibility.

‘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.

‘The cramps become worse,’ he explained, ‘as altitude increases.’

Cory’s reply was interrupted by the approach of a young man in full flying gear. The practicality of the leather helmet and sheepskin coat contrasted with his shirt and tie. He pushed between Cory and Young with a shy, ‘Excuse me.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Hilton,’ Cory heard the young man whisper behind him, ‘Cookie’s getting one of his moods.’

‘The cargo hasn’t sat down yet,’ replied Hilton Cook. ‘Tell him to keep his hair on.’

‘Hilton.’

‘We’ll be taking off soon, Herr Wittenbacher,’ said Miss Evans, loudly. ‘You may wish to take your seat. Then I can see about getting you a newspaper or a book. Here, this one is empty.’

Cory patted the bulge in his coat. ‘I already have a newspaper. But I am a little chill. Is it warmer further up the plane?’

‘Moderately, sir. The rear door can be quite draughty. There is a place next to Mr Simpson, the King’s messenger.’

Cory smiled. ‘A rather grand title.’

‘Poor man can’t leave his bag under any circumstances. I feel rather sorry for him.’

‘What’s in the bag? Do you know?’

‘I’m afraid we’re not allowed to ask.’

Cory calmed himself. A diplomatic pouch was an ideal container for the Cullinan Zero. ‘So it could be anything.’

‘I imagine the contents are between Mr Simpson and the King.’

Her expression was at once reproachful and humorous.

‘Quite,’ said Cory.

‘Let me take you to your seat.’

The King’s messenger smiled as Cory fell into the port-side chair. He wore a woollen suit and a greatcoat with its collar inverted. There was an unlit cigarette in his mouth. ‘I don’t smoke, of course. It’s just a superstition. I always have one out during take-off. That’s the most dangerous part, you realise. I haven’t crashed yet.’

‘I’m Wittenbacher.’

‘Simpson. Call me Paul.’

‘Constantin.’

They shook hands across the aisle.

‘You’re Austrian?’

‘German.’

‘Ah.’ Simpson nodded. ‘Have you flown before?’

‘Not as a civilian. Yourself?’

‘Ceaselessly. I’m afraid our conversation will not continue for long. These things have about as much soundproofing as you’d expect from an ex-RAF crate. Just wait until we take off. Your eardrums will rattle like castanets. We crossed from Lisbon in an Avro York. A much finer aircraft, relatively speaking. My niece informs me that, one day, we’ll travel using jet propulsion. God only knows what racket that will make. But, then, I always did prefer candles to electric light and hansom cabs to aeroplanes.’

‘Mr Simpson, forgive me, but are you a courier?’

The canvas sack opposite Simpson was the size of a man’s torso. It shuddered as he kicked it. ‘Sisyphus, rather.’ He studied Cory for a moment. ‘But I mustn’t make fun of myself in front of a new acquaintance. I am a King’s messenger, sir. My dumb companion, here, contains crucial documents, and, no doubt, a particular brand of toilet tissue that the British ambassador in Santiago has difficulty finding locally.’

Cory laughed, but his horror ran deep. Paul Simpson was not Harkes: Simpson had no active automata, was not a recent recipient of plastic surgery, and showed no elevated skin conductance response to Cory, whom Harkes knew to be in his pursuit.

Paloma tricked me, he thought. Fuck.

‘I say, is that the Herald?’ asked Simpson.

‘No,’ Cory said, hesitating over the newspaper given to him by Jennifer. It would not do for Simpson to read the news of the next day. ‘That’s to say, it is the Herald, but it’s out of date. Last month’s.’

Miss Evans stepped between them with a caddy. She took out a brown paper bag. ‘Here, Herr Wittenbacher. With the compliments of BSAA.’

Cory opened the bag. Inside was a packet of Wrigley’s Doublemint, a bale of cotton wool, some tissues, smelling salts, and a collection of barley-sugars. He looked at her.

‘Be sure to blow your nose before we take off,’ she said. ‘You’ll need to blow it again when we land. And if you suck the barley sugar, that will help too.’

‘Cotton wool?’

‘For your ears.’

Simpson helped himself to a bag. ‘Hearing aids, Constantin. It’s the industry of the future. Mind out with the barley-sugars. Cheap American variety. If I were you, I’d put those in your ears and chew the cotton wool.’

‘It’s time to remove your cigarette,’ said Miss Evans.

‘I have no intention of smoking it, madam. It’s a ritual of comfort.’

‘I’m certain you’ll find your seatbelt a more practical safety measure. You too, Herr Wittenbacher. The captain informs me that the weather is clear to Santiago. He wishes you a pleasant flight. In the event of an emergency, please follow my instructions on his behalf. You will find the WC at the rear.’

Cory felt his seat shudder. He turned to the window. The aircraft swung left to show the BSAA building.

Work the problem.

What did he know? Harkes had bought a ticket on the Chilean Southbound route. Star Dust was the fifty-ninth BSAA flight to Chile. CS-59. What if Harkes had travelled the week before, on CS-58? Cory abandoned that line of thought. He did not know if Harkes was booked on a flight at all. Maybe he had purchased the ticket to fool Paloma. But how could he know that Cory would visit her?

He considered forcing an exit from the aircraft, but that risked the involvement of the Argentine authorities, something he could only balance against a concrete benefit.

Cory’s musings were dampened by a surge of anxiety as the aircraft bucked. His automata tuned into the cockpit voice loop once more.

‘Hello, Hilton. Flaps at fifteen degrees, please.’

‘Set, Skipper.’

‘Carb heat cold.’

‘Cold.’

‘Heading indicator.’

‘Check.’

‘Hello, Denis. Get the green from Morón tower, please.’

‘Alright.’ Pause. ‘Permission granted.’

‘Hilton, brakes off, throttle open full. Slightly more on the outboard port, please. More. Imagine it’s the Jerry’s neck.’

The engines trumpeted. Cory reached into his brown bag and withdrew a barley-sugar. It tasted lemony and sour. Sulkily, he ripped away tufts of cotton wool and put them in his ears. Within this muffled world, his thoughts moved around Dr Patrick Harkes. The quarry had primed a trap for the predator, sugared it with Paloma, and withdrawn to safety. Cory had failed.

But still he wondered why, if Harkes had identified Cory as his pursuer, there had been no attempt to finish the job in a more permanent fashion. Wasn’t that what one did with an animal caught in a trap? Kill it?

Harkes would not survive a direct encounter with me.

He crunched the unpleasant barley sugar to nothing.

Hermes, star man, emblem of BSAA: God of those who cross boundaries, and the cunning of thieves.

‘Rotation and gear up,’ said Commander Cook.

‘That wind is tricky.’

‘We’re beating it.’

If I were Harkes, Cory thought, what would I do?

Suddenly, the shaking stopped. The window brightened.

Spring the trap. Kill the animal.

‘Good rate of climb, Hilton. Retract flaps.’

‘One-sixty.’

‘That’ll do. Verify landing gear up.’

With building dread, Cory unfurled his newspaper, Jennifer’s edition of one day hence, and scanned the first page. He let his automata process the text in parallel. His eyes widened.

Harkes, you beat me.

There was a short article that referred to Star Dust by name. The aircraft, he read, would be reported missing, presumed crashed. Her last transmission would be sent at 2:41 p.m. Buenos Aires time during final descent. Cory re-read the article. He was desperate to wring more information from it, but there was none. What was the transmission?

Fuck.

The aircraft banked and he looked onto busy dockland. He felt nauseous. Paul Simpson tapped his shoulder. Cory turned to see him take the cigarette from his mouth and wipe his forehead with theatrical relief.

A late lunch was served within minutes. Cory, a soldier, did not let events diminish his appetite. Indeed, anticipation heightened it considerably. He had the crème de volaille to start. It came on a simple, elegant plate with a spoon that, apart from being unusually heavy, was no different to what one could expect from a good restaurant. As Cory ate, he worked through the timings reported by the newspaper. He had less than three hours until the loss of radio contact and, without doubt, the aircraft itself. How? The newspaper claimed that a transmission had been received on schedule prior to landing in Santiago. Might the oxygen cylinders explode? But Cory had seen First Officer Cook check them in the moments before take-off. Ultimately, Cory thought, the disastrous failure could take any form: an electric short, bird strike, or the snapping of a vital control cable.

All he knew for certain was the time. In less than three hours, he had to leave the aircraft. How? The smart matter was at his side: a simple cane. Some agents were dextrous enough in their control of smart matter to cast rudimentary wings or angled shapes that could slow their descent when falling through air. Cory was not one of them—not yet. His control of the smart matter was conscious, not automatic, and rudimentary, not nuanced. Through dumb luck he might conjure a shape that could slow his descent, but he did not know if he would have the strength to hold onto it.

By the time his Tournedos chasseur arrived with new peas and mashed potatoes, Cory had convinced himself that one or more parachutes had to be somewhere on board this aircraft. Not enough for the passengers. Perhaps not even enough for the crew. The parachute would be part of the emergency provisions, as well as fire extinguishers, medical equipment, and so on. He looked behind him. The rest of the passengers were eating. Harald Pagh noticed him and waved a fork. Cory smiled. He looked deeper into the tail section and saw the bulkhead that marked the Elsan toilet. There was no room for emergency equipment back there. It had to be in the cockpit.

Unless there was none, and Cory was fooling himself.

‘I can recommend the Bourgogne rouge,’ said Miss Evans, offering Cory a tumbler. She smiled as Cory nodded his approval.

The newspaper suggested a solution to one mystery, at least. Given that Harkes had the advantage of full archive data for 1947, he could have identified ‘the Englishman’ from the same publication that Cory held. From there, it would be a short step to locate the murdered prostitute. Easy to let slip the details of his predicament, including Cory’s name, and easier still to let her find a ticket. But working backwards from the cause to its effect… Cory shook his head. He could not reach a mental state where this made sense. How can you decide to load a gun if you already know that it will fire, and where? In what sense is that a decision? Cory suffered under that thought—on the verge of insight but never grasped—as he finished his meal with apple pie, coffee, and cheese and biscuits.

‘Is everything acceptable, my friend?’ called Paul Simpson.

‘Wonderful.’

Paul Simpson was clean-shaven. Cory fought against the sudden recall of his own uncle’s dead visage, dolled-up in his casket, shaved of his beard by the mortician, and with a kicking

vertigo

nausea in his stomach he knew that Simpson was dead, as dead as Lisandro and Paloma and—he swallowed—soon every passenger and crew member on board this aircraft.

The sensation of entrapment made him want to burst. He fumbled for his seat belt but did not open the clasp. Instead, he gripped it. He pictured his fear as a horse that he could rein, but the mount changed into a snorting nightmare: he had succumbed to the dead, clockwork past. His struggles to remain outside the system had failed. He was a zombie like them.

No. I can still make it out of here.

Abruptly, Miss Evans put her hand on his shoulder. He looked at her red fingernails and could not suppress the image of her amputated hand. He bit his cuff and blocked his rising lunch.

Star Girl, he thought.

Paloma: a ghost under neon light.

No. I am the Ghost.

Cory choked and felt a new thickness in his throat. His eyes ached and ran wet.

I am the fucking Ghost.

Miss Evans: dead. Mr Simpson, King’s messenger: dead. And those behind him too. And Lisandro, harmless boy. Puppets, all of them, limbs strung by time—a puppet itself, an infinite regression of meaningless forces—and here was Cory, tangled.

Paloma: kicking.

I am the–

‘No’, came a voice. It sounded like Jennifer. ‘You are a necrophile. How does that feel, soldier?’

The boy from Georgia had never learned the word. His language-processing automata set to work on it.

Necrophile: A lover of death.

Paloma.

He thought of the bench in the courtyard. That moment still existed. It could be recovered. It was real in at least one sense. He watched his memory of Jennifer’s lips. They moved, but no sound issued. He no longer needed to hear.

‘Miss Evans, I’m very sorry.’

‘Not at all,’ she said, squeezing his shoulder again. ‘Can I get you anything? More coffee? Perhaps you’d like to challenge Mr Simpson to a game of chess?’

Cory laughed. Then he stopped, hoping this created the impression that something had just occurred to him.

‘I once heard of a man who became so claustrophobic on a flight between Paris and Berlin that he forced the captain to give him a parachute. In the event, they let him jump out somewhere in the vicinity of Amsterdam.’

He laughed again. Miss Evans crinkled her eyes and smiled. It was clear to Cory that she found his comment absurd, even worrying, but she was professional enough to come back with a throwaway remark.

‘Well, nobody has ever asked to use ours. After all,’ she said, moving towards the tail, ‘it is rather chilly on the cordillera.’