My Brother’s Keeper

- 1 -

My reunion with Leo, like many incidents of my life connected with airports, had begun badly. I was held up in rush-hour traffic in central London , arrived late at Heathrow, and by the time I reached the right part of the terminal the passengers from his flight had all cleared Customs and left. It took me a few minutes to find that out, then I headed over to El Al to look for messages and have Leo paged.

“What’s ’is name?” asked the young girl behind the desk. No Israeli she, but a genuine English rose, blue-eyed and pink-cheeked.

“Leo Foss. He was supposed to be coming in on Flight 221.”

“That’s in already. I’ll page ’im, though. And what’s your name?”

“Lionel Salkind.”

“Righto. An’ I’ll keep an eye open for ’im, as well.” She smiled at me — dimples, too. “Can you tell me a bit about what ’e looks like, so I’ll know what to be watching for?”

“No problem there. He looks—”

“Lionel!” The familiar voice came from behind me.

“—just like me,” I finished, as I turned.

I knew what the girl’s expression behind me must be. I’d seen it often enough. The fact that Leo and I had different last names only made it more confusing. I looked back at the girl and shrugged apologetically as Leo and I approached to within a foot of each other to perform our usual reunion inspection and survey.

Most people would say we are identical, but of course we’re not. We both are very aware that Leo is half an inch taller and usually five pounds heavier (Not this time, though. He was either a little thinner, or tired and worried). He was wearing his hair an inch shorter than the last time we had met, ten months earlier, but that was no surprise. So was I. We had become used to the built-in tendencies to favor the same actions at the same time. Now behavioral differences impressed us more than similarities. Today, for instance, we both wore dark sports jackets and red ties; but Leo was sporting a strange tie clip, rather like a little golden beetle. That was new, and rather surprising — neither of us liked to see men wearing jewelry, and we both shunned rings.

“Now then, about dinner plans,” I said, after we had sized each other up and were walking side by side through the terminal to the usual accompaniment of turning heads. “Are you ready for a Chinese meal experiment?”

“Sorry, I can’t do it this trip.” Leo shook his head, and I noticed what looked like a love bite on his neck, low down near the collar. “I tried to call you from Zurich , but I couldn’t reach you. There’s been a change of plans, and now I’ll have to fly on to Washington tomorrow morning.”

“But that still leaves tonight. I’m not playing.”

“I know — I found that much out from your manager. I’m relying on that. I have to talk to you, privately.”

There was an odd expression in his voice. It confirmed my first impression. He was tired, and under some unusual kind of strain. Others might not have noticed it, but I could feel it under my skin.

“Do you still keep the apartment up north?” he went on. “The one you don’t need.”

“Of course.”

It was a luxury, but when you travel as much as I do you really crave for a place where you can practice quietly and add to your repertoire. I’ve never been one of the Rubinstein types, who seem to be able to stay on top form without much daily practice. Maybe that’s one reason I’ll never be the world’s number one. But if you want to get into even the top hundred concert pianists, you have to work at it — and don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. It’s hard work, too.

“I haven’t been up there for a couple of months,” I said. “But it’s well looked after.”

“Good. I want to go there so we can talk in peace for an hour or two.” Leo was looking all around him as he spoke, very edgy. I was picking up his nervousness, and I didn’t like it at all.

“We don’t have time for a trip north if you have to leave tomorrow.” I accepted his need for a place to talk privately without even thinking about it.

“Yes, we do.” Leo managed a grin. “I called in here from Zurich and booked a helicopter. By the time we get over there the flight plan should all be cleared.”

“Up to Middlesbrough ?”

“Right. No Chinese meal tonight. You’ll have to feed me on black pudding and tripe.”

He faked a shudder. I’d been raised on them, but Leo’s American palate had trouble with some of the delicacies from the north of England .

It was clear that he didn’t want to talk any more serious matters until we were out of the airport, so I didn’t push it. We chatted about trivia on the shuttle bus to the pad, about two miles away, and when we got there found a little BMR-33 four-seater waiting for us. She was a lovely trim job, blue and red painted, with the engines all warmed up for us and ready to go when we walked up to her.

“Want me to fly her?” I asked. Leo and I both fell in love with flying and with helicopters fifteen years ago, when we were still in our teens, and we both held current licenses.

He shook his head. “No way. That’s my privilege as Big Brother.”

Leo was forty-three minutes older than me, and we never forgot it. Other people suffered some confusion when he referred to me as his “younger brother,” or I talked about his great age.

“All right, old man,” I said, and went to stow his bag in the rear. While Leo signed off for the ’copter, I climbed into the passenger seat and checked the weather report. It was nearly six-thirty, just getting dark, and there was cloud cover at three thousand feet. Not the most perfect conditions. Leo was shaking his head in annoyance when he finished with the paperwork and climbed aboard.

“Lots of traffic, I guess. Look at this lousy flight plan. We have to head way off to the west before they’ll let me swing up north.”

“What do you have as the Middlesbrough ETA?”

” Eight twenty-eight .”

“That’s not bad at all. I’ve done this before. You’ll find that everything clears up once we’re past Cambridge — it’s just this mess round London that’s a pain.”

He grunted, and settled in at the controls. Visibility was good in spite of the cloud overhead. I could see the dark flats of the Water Board reservoirs off to the southwest as we lifted, and away behind us the haze of London itself was a blue-grey ball over the city. We rose to two thousand feet and slid away to the west.

I hate to say it, but Leo was a better pilot than I was. That was a surprise to me, since on all the standard tests that we had been taking together since we were in our early teens, I scored higher on manual dexterity than he did. Leo had his own explanation for that. He said it was training, not talent, that gave me more nimble fingers. “What do you expect?” he would say. “You wouldn’t expect a pianist to act as though he was all thumbs. It’s mechanical aptitude that counts in being a good pilot.” And of course, on mechanical aptitude he usually scored a tiny fraction higher than I did — but not enough higher, in my opinion, to explain his easy skill as a helicopter pilot. I suspected that was training, too, rather than talent. Leo simply got in more flying hours, though it was hard for me to see how his job offered the opportunity for it.

He had relaxed a good deal as soon as we lifted off, and now that we were moving west towards Reading he began to whistle softly, just loud enough for me to hear him. It was the first movement of the Unfinished, taken a little slowly.

“You realize that you’re a semitone flat?” I said. “It’s in B, not B-flat.”

He turned his head and grinned at me. “Sorry, Little Brother. I just wanted to see if you were awake still.”

He had the ear, all right, but he had simply never got around to learning to play a musical instrument. When I thought of the huge chunks of my life that had been swallowed up on practice, I sometimes wondered if Leo had the right idea and I was off my head. But it was too late for that sort of thinking. I leaned back in my seat.

“All right, accept that I’m awake enough. How about a little light on the big mystery, and the rush to the north? It’s not like you to miss the chance at a good Chinese meal.”

He nodded, looking straight ahead, and sighed, “Too true. But this is really a tough business, Lionel.”

It was, too. I knew it as soon as he spoke. We never called each other “Leo” and “Lionel” in private unless some really serious matter was involved. I didn’t speak, but just sat and waited.

“You know,” he said after a few moments. “I’ve kidded you a lot about your job over the years, and told you you have to work your fingers off just to stay in the same place — you have the real Red Queen’s Race. But sometimes I envy you. It’ll pass in a few minutes, but I’m envying you right now.”

“That’s a first. You mean you’re disenchanted with your job? I thought you loved those AID jaunts, hopping all over the globe and dishing out the dollars. What’s up, have they stopped treating you like royalty all of a sudden?”

“Not quite.” His tone had changed. I realized that he had not listened to me, and was only able to reply from an instinct as to what I must have said to him.

“What’s wrong?” I looked at the instrument panel.

“She’s not handling right.” He was frowning at the gauges also. “Everything shows as though it’s fine, but it’s not. She’s yawing, and I can’t trim her to correct it. The hell with this, I’m going to take her back to Heathrow. Call in and request an emergency landing for us.”

I reached for the radio, but before I could make connection it became irrelevant. The helicopter lurched sickeningly to the right, levelled for a moment as Leo struggled with the controls, then swooped sideways again, vibrating madly.

“I can’t hold her at all,” Leo grunted. His face was tense and flushed with exertion. “We’ll never make it to Heathrow. What’s down there on your side? I’ll have to try and slip her that way and straighten us when we’re really low.”

Off to my right I could see a dizzying pattern of fields and roads, leading a mile or two ahead to the more heavily built-up area of East Reading .

“As soon as you can,” I shouted, still concentrating on the ground. “It gets worse the further we go. We’re better off here than nearer the town.”

Leo did not speak, but I heard his grunt of effort. The air was rushing past us and the helicopter was rolling and yawing crazily as we lost altitude. At three hundred feet we straightened for a moment. I could see a hedge, a muddy pool, and a plowed field, and beyond that the line of a major road with houses on the other side of it.

“Right here, Leo. Turn her now.” My voice was high-pitched and panicky. “Watch out, you’ll have us on the road.”

He did his best, pulling us close to level at the last moment. It just wasn’t good enough. I saw the ground coming towards me — much too fast — and in the moment before impact I could see so clearly that I could have counted the individual weeds that grew in the plowed furrows. When we hit there was a noise like the end of the world.

In a way, that’s exactly what it was.

Nobody would believe me when I told them that I had not — repeat not — lost consciousness when we hit. They pointed to my injuries as proof that I must have been knocked out. I couldn’t offer my proof for many months. But I was right. The idea that I had hallucinated in post-accident trauma was plausible nonsense.

To make this strictly and absolutely accurate, I actually did black out for maybe a second or two at the moment of impact, but I feel sure it was brief. I came to when the noise of settling metal and bending struts was still going on around me. Although I was in no pain, I couldn’t move a finger — or a toe either. The helicopter had struck almost flat, thanks to Leo’s last-ditch efforts, but fast. I had been thrown forward and to the right, to smash against the side panel and window as the machine jerked to a violent halt on the uneven ground.

It’s hard to say how long I lay there, listening to the creak of twisted metal and wondering what I would do if the wreck caught fire. (Answer: nothing, which was all I could do.) The right side of my head was flat on the metal, and I was looking out of the window at the dark brown earth. From where I lay the perspective was distorted. It seemed that my nose was flat against the steel surface, just as though my head had been sheared in two to the right of my nose, and the left half laid on the cold metal panel.

All the fear and emotion that I felt before the crash had gone. I remember thinking, About time, too, when I finally heard footsteps moving on the broken frame of the helicopter. Surely it couldn’t be Leo? He would have dragged me clear of possible fire before going to look for help. As the footsteps came closer I realized there were at least two people, stepping cautiously over the angled floor. There was a sound of labored breathing, and a grunt as some heavy object behind me was lifted and moved to one side.

“It’s not on him, Scouse,” said a voice a few feet from my head, “There’s no sign of it.”

“Bloody hell, it’s got to be,” said a second voice, this one with a strong Liverpool accent. ” ’Ere, you let me have a look at him, an’ you try the other one. Mebbe he already gave it to ’im. Are yer quite sure yer got the right one ’ere?”

“Of course I’m bleedin’ sure. He’s unconscious, but that’s Foss all right. See that tie pin, same as ’e ’ad on ’im last time? I’ll take a look-see at this one, but that’s Leo Foss.”

A pair of black shoes, leather-soled and black-buckled, appeared a few inches in front of my face. Hands were moving lightly over my body, patting and probing.

“It’s not on ’im, either,” said the first voice. ” ’Less it’s underneath ’im. I’d ’ave to lift ’im up to see that.”

“Well, get on an’ do it, yer great git.” Scouse sounded uneasy. “Lift him an’ do it sharpish. We don’t have all bleedin’ night ’ere.”

Up to that point there had been no pain for me, not even a twinge. But now hands began to raise and turn me, and that was murder. My long-suffering body began to protest, all the way from my toes to my neck. Streaks of agony were like darts shooting into my spine and my right side. It was too much. When I slid dizzily into unconsciousness I was very glad to go. My final thought was of Leo. I hadn’t seen him since the crash, but the words of the two men told me that he was at least still alive. That was some comfort during my descent into darkness.