Buch lesen: «High Citadel / Landslide»

ONE

The bell shrilled insistently.

O’Hara frowned in his sleep and burrowed deeper into the pillow. He dragged up the thin sheet which covered him, but that left his feet uncovered and there was a sleepy protest from his companion. Without opening his eyes he put his hand out to the bedside table, seized the alarm clock, and hurled it violently across the room. Then he snuggled into the pillow again.

The bell still rang.

At last he opened his eyes, coming to the realization that it was the telephone ringing. He propped himself up on one elbow and stared hatefully into the darkness. Ever since he had been in the hotel he had been asking Ramón to transfer the telephone to the bedside, and every time he had been assured that it would be done tomorrow. It had been nearly a year.

He got out of bed and padded across the room to the dressing-table without bothering to switch on the light. As he picked up the telephone he tweaked aside the window curtain and glanced outside. It was still dark and the moon was setting – he estimated it was about two hours to dawn.

He grunted into the mouthpiece: ‘O’Hara.’

‘Goddammit, what’s the matter with you?’ said Filson. ‘I’ve been trying to get you for a quarter of an hour.’

‘I was asleep,’ said O’Hara. ‘I usually sleep at night – I believe most people do, with the exception of Yankee flight managers.’

‘Very funny,’ said Filson tiredly. ‘Well, drag your ass down here – there’s a flight scheduled for dawn.’

‘What the hell – I just got back six hours ago. I’m tired.’

‘You think I’m not?’ said Filson. ‘This is important – a Samair 727 touched down in an emergency landing and the flight inspector grounded it. The passengers are mad as hornets, so the skipper and the hostess have sorted out priorities and we’ve got to take passengers to the coast. You know what a connection with Samair means to us; it could be that if we treat ’em nice they’ll use us as a regular feeder.’

‘In a pig’s eye,’ said O’Hara. ‘They’ll use you in an emergency but they’ll never put you on their timetables. All you’ll get are thanks.’

‘It’s worth trying,’ insisted Filson. ‘So get the hell down here.’

O’Hara debated whether to inform Filson that he had already exceeded his month’s flying hours and that it was only two-thirds through the month. He sighed, and said, ‘All right, I’m coming.’ It would cut no ice with Filson to plead regulations; as far as that hard-hearted character was concerned, the I.A.T.A. regulations were meant to be bent, if not broken. If he conformed to every international regulation, his two-cent firm would be permanently in the red.

Besides, O’Hara thought, this was the end of the line for him. If he lost this job survival would be difficult. There were too many broken-down pilots in South America hunting too few jobs and Filson’s string-and-sealing-wax outfit was about as low as you could get. Hell, he thought disgustedly, I’m on a bloody escalator going the wrong way – it takes all the running I can do to stay in the same place.

He put down the hand-set abruptly and looked again into the night, scanning the sky. It looked all right here, but what about the mountains? Always he thought about the mountains, those cruel mountains with their jagged white swords stretched skywards to impale him. Filson had better have a good met. report.

He walked to the door and stepped into the corridor, unlit as usual. They turned off all lights in the public rooms at eleven p.m. – it was that kind of hotel. For the millionth time he wondered what he was doing in this godforsaken country, in this tired town, in this sleazy hotel. Unconcernedly naked, he walked down towards the bathroom. In his philosophy if a woman had seen a naked man before then it didn’t matter – if she hadn’t, it was time she did. Anyway, it was dark.

He showered quickly, washing away the night sweat, and returned to his room and switched on the bedside lamp wondering if it would work. It was always a fifty per cent chance that it wouldn’t – the town’s electricity supply was very erratic. The filament glowed faintly and in the dim light he dressed – long woollen underwear, jeans, a thick shirt and a leather jacket. By the time he had finished he was sweating again in the warm tropical night. But it would be cold over the mountains.

From the dressing-table he took a metal flask and shook it tentatively. It was only half full and he frowned. He could wake Ramón and get a refill but that was not politic; for one thing Ramón did not like being wakened at night, and for another he would ask cutting questions about when his bill was going to be paid. Perhaps he could get something at the airport.

O’Hara was just leaving when he paused at the door and turned back to look at the sprawling figure in the bed. The sheet had slipped revealing dark breasts tipped a darker colour. He looked at her critically. Her olive skin had an underlying coppery sheen and he thought there was a sizeable admixture of Indian in this one. With a rueful grimace he took a thin wallet from the inside pocket of his leather jacket, extracted two notes and tossed them on the bedside table. Then he went out, closing the door quietly behind him.

II

When he pulled his battered car into the parking bay he looked with interest at the unaccustomed bright lights of the airport. The field was low-grade, classed as an emergency strip by the big operators, although to Filson it was a main base. A Samair Boeing 727 lay sleekly in front of the control tower and O’Hara looked at it enviously for a while, then switched his attention to the hangar beyond.

A Dakota was being loaded and, even at that distance, the lights were bright enough for O’Hara to see the emblem on the tail – two intertwined ‘A’s, painted artistically to look like mountain peaks. He smiled gently to himself. It was appropriate that he should fly a plane decorated with the Double-A; alcoholics of the world unite – it was a pity Filson didn’t see the joke. But Filson was very proud of his Andes Airlift and never joked about it. A humourless man, altogether.

He got out of the car and walked around to the main building to find it was full of people, tired people rudely awakened and set down in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. He pushed his way through the crowd towards Filson’s office. An American voice with a Western twang complained loudly and bitterly, ‘This is a damned disgrace – I’m going to speak to Mr Coulson about it when I get back to Rio.’

O’Hara grinned as he pushed open the door of the office. Filson was sitting at his desk in his shirt-sleeves, his face shiny with sweat. He always sweated, particularly in an emergency and since his life was in a continual state of crisis it was a wonder he didn’t melt away altogether. He looked up.

‘So you got here at last.’

‘I’m always pleased at the welcome I get,’ observed O’Hara.

Filson ignored that. ‘All right; this is the dope,’ he said. ‘I’ve contracted with Samair to take ten of their passengers to Santillana – they’re the ones who have to make connections with a ship. You’ll take number one – she’s being serviced now.’ His voice was briskly businesslike and O’Hara could tell by the way he sonorously rolled out the words ‘contracted with Samair’ that he saw himself as a big-time air operator doing business with his peers instead of what he really was – an ageing ex-pilot making a precarious living off two twenty-five-year-old rattling ex-army surplus planes.

O’Hara merely said, ‘Who’s coming with me?’

‘Grivas.’

‘That cocky little bastard.’

‘He volunteered – which is more than you did,’ snapped Filson.

‘Oh?’

‘He was here when the 727 touched down,’ said Filson. He smiled thinly at O’Hara. ‘It was his idea to put it to Samair that we take some of their more urgent passengers, so he phoned me right away. That’s the kind of quick thinking we need in this organization.’

‘I don’t like him in a plane,’ said O’Hara.

‘So you’re a better pilot,’ said Filson reluctantly. ‘That’s why you’re skipper and he’s going as co-pilot.’ He looked at the ceiling reflectively. ‘When this deal with Samair comes off maybe I’ll promote Grivas to the office. He’s too good to be a pilot.’

Filson had delusions of grandeur. O’Hara said deliberately, ‘If you think that South American Air is going to give you a feeder contract, you’re crazy. You’ll get paid for taking their passengers and you’ll get their thanks – for what they’re worth – and they’ll kiss you off fast.’

Filson pointed a pen at O’Hara. ‘You’re paid to jockey a plane – leave the heavy thinking to me.’

O’Hara gave up. ‘What happened to the 727?’

‘Something wrong with the fuel feed – they’re looking at it now.’ Filson picked up a sheaf of papers. ‘There’s a crate of machinery to go for servicing. Here’s the manifest.’

‘Christ!’ said O’Hara. ‘This is an unscheduled flight. Do you have to do this?’

‘Unscheduled or not, you’re going with a full load. Damned if I send a half empty plane when I can send a full one.’

O’Hara was mournful. ‘It’s just that I thought I’d have an easy trip for a change. You know you always overload and it’s a hell of a job going through the passes. The old bitch wallows like a hippo.’

‘You’re going at the best time,’ said Filson. ‘It’ll be worse later in the day when the sun has warmed things up. Now get the hell out of here and stop bothering me.’

O’Hara left the office. The main hall was emptying, a stream of disgruntled Samair passengers leaving for the antiquated airport bus. A few people still stood about – those would be the passengers for Santillana. O’Hara ignored them; passengers or freight, it was all one to him. He took them over the Andes and dumped them on the other side and there was no point in getting involved with them. A bus driver doesn’t mix with his passengers, he thought; and that’s all I am – a bloody vertical bus driver.

He glanced at the manifest. Filson had done it again – there were two crates and he was aghast at their weight. One of these days, he thought savagely, I’ll get an I.A.T.A. inspector up here at the right time and Filson will go for a loop. He crushed the manifest in his fist and went to inspect the Dakota.

Grivas was by the plane, lounging gracefully against the undercarriage. He straightened when he saw O’Hara and flicked his cigarette across the tarmac but did not step forward to meet him. O’Hara crossed over and said, ‘Is the cargo aboard?’

Grivas smiled. ‘Yes.’

‘Did you check it? Is it secure?’

‘Of course, Señor O’Hara. I saw to it myself.’

O’Hara grunted. He did not like Grivas, neither as a man nor as a pilot. He distrusted his smoothness, the slick patina of pseudo good breeding that covered him like a sheen from his patent leather hair and trim toothbrush moustache to his highly polished shoes. Grivas was a slim wiry man, not very tall, who always wore a smile. O’Hara distrusted the smile most of all.

‘What’s the weather?’ he asked.

Grivas looked at the sky. ‘It seems all right.’

O’Hara let acid creep into his voice. ‘A met. report would be a good thing, don’t you think?’

Grivas grinned. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said.

O’Hara watched him go, then turned to the Dakota and walked round to the cargo doors. The Dakota had been one of the most successful planes ever designed, the work-horse of the Allied forces during the war. Over ten thousand of them had fought a good war, flying countless millions of ton-miles of precious freight about the world. It was a good plane in its time, but that was long ago.

This Dakota was twenty-five years old, battered by too many air hours with too little servicing. O’Hara knew the exact amount of play in the rudder cables; he knew how to nurse the worn-out engines so as to get the best out of them – and a poor best it was; he knew the delicate technique of landing so as not to put too much strain on the weakened undercarriage. And he knew that one day the whole sorry fabric would play a murderous trick on him high over the white spears of the Andes.

He climbed into the plane and looked about the cavernous interior. There were ten seats up front, not the luxurious reclining couches of Samair but uncomfortable hard leather chairs each fitted with the safety-belt that even Filson could not skip, although he had grumbled at the added cost. The rest of the fuselage was devoted to cargo space and was at present occupied by two large crates.

O’Hara went round them testing the anchoring straps with his hand. He had a horror that one day the cargo would slide forward if he made a bad landing or hit very bad turbulence. That would be the end of any passengers who had the ill-luck to be flying Andes Airlift. He cursed as he found a loose strap. Grivas and his slipshod ways would be the end of him one day.

Having seen the cargo was secured he went forward into the cockpit and did a routine check of the instruments. A mechanic was working on the port engine so O’Hara leaned out of the side window and asked in Spanish if it was all right. The mechanic spat, then drew his finger across his throat and made a bloodcurdling sound. ‘De un momento a otro.’

He finished the instrument check and went into the hangar to find Fernandez, the chief mechanic, who usually had a bottle or two stored away, strictly against Filson’s orders. O’Hara liked Fernandez and he knew that Fernandez liked him; they got on well together and O’Hara made a point of keeping it that way – to be at loggerheads with the chief mechanic would be a passport to eternity in this job.

He chatted for a while with Fernandez, then filled his flask and took a hasty gulp from the bottle before he passed it back. Dawn was breaking as he strode back to the Dakota, and Grivas was in the cockpit fussing with the disposal of his briefcase. It’s a funny thing, thought O’Hara, that the briefcase is just as much a part of an airline pilot as it is of any city gent. His own was under his seat; all it contained was a packet of sandwiches which he had picked up at an all-night café.

‘Got the met. report?’ he asked Grivas.

Grivas passed over the sheet of paper and O’Hara said, ‘You can taxi her down to the apron.’

He studied the report. It wasn’t too bad – it wasn’t bad at all. No storms, no anomalies, no trouble – just good weather over the mountains. But O’Hara had known the meteorologists to be wrong before and there was no release of the tension within him. It was that tension, never relaxed in the air, that had kept him alive when a lot of better men had died.

As the Dakota came to a halt on the apron outside the main building, he saw Filson leading the small group of passengers. ‘See they have their seat-belts properly fastened,’ he said to Grivas.

‘I’m not a hostess,’ said Grivas sulkily.

‘When you’re sitting on this side of the cockpit you can give orders,’ said O’Hara coldly. ‘Right now you take them. And I’d like you to do a better job of securing the passengers than you did of the cargo.’

The smile left Grivas’s face, but he turned and went into the main cabin. Presently Filson came forward and thrust a form at O’Hara. ‘Sign this.’

It was the I.A.T.A. certificate of weights and fuel. O’Hara saw that Filson had cheated on the weights as usual, but made no comment and scribbled his signature. Filson said, ‘As soon as you land give me a ring. There might be return cargo.’

O’Hara nodded and Filson withdrew. There was the double slam as the door closed and O’Hara said, ‘Take her to the end of the strip.’ He switched on the radio, warming it up.

Grivas was still sulky and would not talk. He made no answer as he revved the engines and the Dakota waddled away from the main building into the darkness, ungainly and heavy on the ground. At the end of the runway O’Hara thought for a moment. Filson had not given him a flight number. To hell with it, he thought; control ought to know what’s going on. He clicked on the microphone and said, ‘A.A. special flight, destination Santillana – A.A. to San Croce control – ready to take off.’

A voice crackled tinnily in his ear. ‘San Croce control to Andes Airlift special. Permission given – time 2.33 G.M.T.’

‘Roger and out.’ He put his hand to the throttles and waggled the stick. There was a stickiness about it. Without looking at Grivas he said, ‘Take your hands off the controls.’ Then he pushed on the throttle levers and the engines roared. Four minutes later the Dakota was airborne after an excessively long run.

He stayed at the controls for an hour, personally supervising the long climb to the roof of the world. He liked to find out if the old bitch was going to spring a new surprise. Cautiously he carried out gentle, almost imperceptible evolutions, his senses attuned to the feel of the plane. Occasionally he glanced at Grivas who was sitting frozen-faced in the other seat, staring blankly through the windscreen.

At last he was satisfied and engaged the automatic pilot but spent another quarter-hour keeping a wary eye on it. It had behaved badly on the last flight but Fernandez had assured him that it was now all right. He trusted Fernandez, but not that much – it was always better to do the final check personally.

Then he relaxed and looked ahead. It was much lighter in the high air and, although the dawn was behind, the sky ahead was curiously light. O’Hara knew why; it was the snow blink as the first light of the sun caught the high white peaks of the Andes. The mountains themselves were as yet invisible, lost in the early haze rising from the jungle below.

He began to think about his passengers and he wondered if they knew what they had got themselves into. This was no pressurized jet aircraft and they were going to fly pretty high – it would be cold and the air would be thin and he hoped none of the passengers had heart trouble. Presumably Filson had warned them, although he wouldn’t put it past that bastard to keep his mouth shut. He was even too stingy to provide decent oxygen masks – there were only mouth tubes in the oxygen bottles to port and starboard.

He scratched his cheek thoughtfully. These weren’t the ordinary passengers he was used to carrying – the American mining engineers flying to San Croce and the poorer type of local businessman proud to be flying even by Andes Airlift. These were the Samair type of passengers – wealthy and not over fond of hardship. They were in a hurry, too, or they would have had more sense than to fly Andes Airlift. Perhaps he had better break his rule and go back to talk to them. When they found they weren’t going to fly over the Andes but through them they might get scared. It would be better to warn them first.

He pushed his uniform cap to the back of his head and said, ‘Take over, Grivas. I’m going to talk to the passengers.’

Grivas lifted his eyebrows – so surprised that he forgot to be sulky. He shrugged. ‘Why? What is so important about the passengers? Is this Samair?’ He laughed noiselessly. ‘But, yes, of course – you have seen the girl; you want to see her again, eh?’

‘What girl?’

‘Just a girl, a woman; very beautiful. I think I will get to know her and take her out when we arrive in – er – Santillana,’ said Grivas thoughtfully. He looked at O’Hara out of the corner of his eye.

O’Hara grunted and took the passenger manifest from his breast pocket. As he suspected, the majority were American. He went through the list rapidly. Mr and Mrs Coughlin of Challis, Idaho – tourists; Dr James Armstrong, London, England – no profession stated; Raymond Forester of New York – businessman; Señor and Señorita Montes – Argentinian and no profession stated; Miss Jennifer Ponsky of South Bridge, Connecticut – tourist; Dr Willis of California; Miguel Rohde – no stated nationality, profession – importer; Joseph Peabody of Chicago, Illinois – businessman.

He flicked his finger on the manifest and grinned at Grivas. ‘Jennifer’s a nice name – but Ponsky? I can’t see you going around with anyone called Ponsky.’

Grivas looked startled, then laughed convulsively. ‘Ah, my friend, you can have the fair Ponsky – I’ll stick to my girl.’

O’Hara looked at the list again. ‘Then it must be Señorita Montes – unless it’s Mrs Coughlin.’

Grivas chuckled, his good spirits recovered. ‘You find out for yourself.’

‘I’ll do that,’ said O’Hara. ‘Take over.’

He went back into the main cabin and was confronted by ten uplifted heads. He smiled genially, modelling himself on the Samair pilots to whom public relations was as important as flying ability. Lifting his voice above the roar of the engines, he said, ‘I suppose I ought to tell you that we’ll be reaching the mountains in about an hour. It will get cold, so I suggest you wear your overcoats. Mr Filson will have told you that this aircraft isn’t pressurized, but we don’t fly at any great height for more than an hour, so you’ll be quite all right.’

A burly man with a whisky complexion interjected, ‘No one told me that.’

O’Hara cursed Filson under his breath and broadened his smile. ‘Well, not to worry, Mr – er …’

‘Peabody – Joe Peabody.’

‘Mr Peabody. It will be quite all right. There is an oxygen mouthpiece next to every seat which I advise you to use if you feel breathing difficult. Now, it gets a bit wearying shouting like this above the engine noise, so I’ll come round and talk to you individually.’ He smiled at Peabody, who glowered back at him.

He bent to the first pair of seats on the port side. ‘Could I have your names, please?’

The first man said, ‘I’m Forester.’ The other contributed, ‘Willis.’

‘Glad to have you aboard, Dr Willis, Mr Forester.’

Forester said, ‘I didn’t bargain for this, you know. I didn’t think kites like this were still flying.’

O’Hara smiled deprecatingly. ‘Well, this is an emergency flight and it was laid on in the devil of a hurry. I’m sure it was an oversight that Mr Filson forgot to tell you that this isn’t a pressurized plane.’ Privately he was not sure of anything of the kind.

Willis said with a smile. ‘I came here to study high altitude conditions. I’m certainly starting with a bang. How high do we fly, Captain?’

‘Not more than seventeen thousand feet,’ said O’Hara. ‘We fly through the passes – we don’t go over the top. You’ll find the oxygen mouthpieces easy to use – all you do is suck.’ He smiled and turned away and found himself held. Peabody was clutching his sleeve, leaning forward over the seat behind. ‘Hey, Skipper …’

‘I’ll be with you in a moment, Mr Peabody,’ said O’Hara, and held Peabody with his eye. Peabody blinked rapidly, released his grip and subsided into his seat, and O’Hara turned to starboard.

The man was elderly, with an aquiline nose and a short grey beard. With him was a young girl of startling beauty, judging by what O’Hara could see of her face, which was not much because she was huddled deep into a fur coat. He said, ‘Señor Montes?’

The man inclined his head. ‘Don’t worry, Captain, we know what to expect.’ He waved a gloved hand. ‘You see we are well prepared. I know the Andes, señor, and I know these aircraft. I know the Andes well; I have been over them on foot and by mule – in my youth I climbed some of the high peaks – didn’t I, Benedetta?’

‘Si, tío,’ she said in a colourless voice. ‘But that was long ago. I don’t know if your heart …’

He patted her on the leg. ‘I will be all right if I relax; is that not so, Captain?’

‘Do you understand the use of this oxygen tube?’ asked O’Hara.

Montes nodded confidently, and O’Hara said, ‘Your uncle will be quite all right, Señorita Montes.’ He waited for her to reply but she made no answer, so he passed on to the seats behind.

These couldn’t be the Coughlins; they were too ill-assorted a pair to be American tourists, although the woman was undoubtedly American. O’Hara said inquiringly, ‘Miss Ponsky?’

She lifted a sharp nose and said, ‘I declare this is all wrong, Captain. You must turn back at once.’

The fixed smile on O’Hara’s face nearly slipped. ‘I fly this route regularly, Miss Ponsky,’ he said. ‘There is nothing to fear.’

But there was naked fear on her face – air fear. Sealed in the air-conditioned quietness of a modern jet-liner she could subdue it, but the primitiveness of the Dakota brought it to the surface. There was no clever decor to deceive her into thinking that she was in a drawing-room, just the stark functionalism of unpainted aluminium, battered and scratched, and with the plumbing showing like a dissected body.

O’Hara said quietly, ‘What is your profession, Miss Ponsky?’

‘I’m a school teacher back in South Bridge,’ she said. ‘I’ve been teaching there for thirty years.’

He judged she was naturally garrulous and perhaps this could be a way of conquering her fear. He glanced at the man, who said, ‘Miguel Rohde.’

He was a racial anomaly – a Spanish-German name and Spanish-German features – straw-coloured hair and beady black eyes. There had been German immigration into South America for many years and this was one of the results.

O’Hara said, ‘Do you know the Andes, Señor Rohde?’

‘Very well,’ he replied in a grating voice. He nodded ahead. ‘I lived up there for many years – now I am going back.’

O’Hara switched back to Miss Ponsky. ‘Do you teach geography, Miss Ponsky?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I do. That’s one of the reasons I came to South America on my vacation. It makes such a difference if you can describe things first-hand.’

‘Then here you have a marvellous opportunity,’ said O’Hara with enthusiasm. ‘You’ll see the Andes as you never would if you’d flown Samair. And I’m sure that Señor Rohde will point out the interesting sights.’

Rohde nodded understandingly. ‘Si, very interesting; I know it well, the mountain country.’

O’Hara smiled reassuringly at Miss Ponsky, who offered him a glimmering, tremulous smile in return. He caught a twinkle in Rohde’s black eyes as he turned to the port side again.

The man sitting next to Peabody was undoubtedly British, so O’Hara said, ‘Glad to have you with us, Dr Armstrong – Mr Peabody.’

Armstrong said, ‘Nice to hear an English accent, Captain, after all this Spa – ’

Peabody broke in. ‘I’m damned if I’m glad to be here, Skipper. What in hell kind of an airline is this, for god-sake?’

‘One run by an American, Mr Peabody,’ said O’Hara calmly. ‘As you were saying, Dr Armstrong?’

‘Never expected to see an English captain out here,’ said Armstrong.

‘Well, I’m Irish, and we tend to get about,’ said O’Hara. ‘I’d put on some warm clothing if I were you. You, too, Mr Peabody.’

Peabody laughed and suddenly burst into song. ‘“I’ve got my love to keep me warm”.’ He produced a hip flask and waved it. ‘This is as good as any top-coat.’