Permissible Limits (43 page)

‘
You’re right.’ I nodded. ‘But I expect we’d need a bigger house.’

‘
And more airplanes.’

‘
Exactly.’

‘
So is he looking?’

‘
Who?’

‘
Adam. This husband of yours.’

I stared at Chuck. It was a straight question.

‘
You haven’t heard?’

‘
Heard what?’

‘
About my husband, Adam.’

‘
No.’ He was frowning now. ‘What am I missing here?’

I told him briefly about the accident. Adam was dead. His Cessna had disappeared in mid-Channel and so far no one knew why. Chuck couldn’t believe it.

‘
And this happened… ?’

‘
Back in February. You’re telling me Harald didn’t mention it?’

‘
Not a word.’

‘
Did he mention I was married?’

‘
No, but then I guess I never asked. He just said you were a good friend. He said he owed you lots of favours, said you were crazy about Mustangs. I just thought…’ he shrugged, ‘… you know…’

‘
That we were together? Harald and I?’

‘
Yeah… well… kinda. He never actually said it, you know, spelled it out… but, I guess, hell…’ He shook his head, visibly embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, I’d no idea, Jeez.’

The next mile or so passed in silence. I stared out at the gathering darkness, trying to make sense of this little bombshell. How come Harald could lose one friend and not tell another? How come these separate compartments in his life were so bloody watertight?

Chuck was slowing now, and a sign loomed out at me.
Welcome to Corkscrew,
it read,
Gateway to the Everglades.
We turned left, and left again, and then coasted to a halt. The street was lined with low-rise, timber-framed bungalows. With the engine off I could hear the tick-tick-tick of a dozen lawn sprinklers. Chuck muttered that we were home and began to open the door but I reached across, my hand on his arm.

‘
How well do you know Harald?’ I asked him.

Chuck glanced back at me. His face betrayed his bewilderment.

‘
I know him pretty good,’ he said at last. ‘Yeah, pretty damn good.’

Chuck’s wife met us at the door. She was Costa Rican, at least half his age, with a beautiful smile and a figure most men would kill for. Her name was Esmeralda and she spoke American with barely a trace of an accent. The food was already on the table, a vast selection of exotic-looking salads, and she darted in and out of a nearby bedroom while Chuck busied himself fixing drinks from a huge fridge in the kitchen.

He and Esmeralda had just had their first baby, a little girl called Conchita, and when it was obvious that she wasn’t going to sleep I insisted she join us. If anything, she was even more exquisite than her mother - wonderful almond eyes and the most perfect little feet imaginable - and watching her nestled in Chuck’s huge arms it was obvious that this marriage, at least, had been a love match. He and Esmeralda had met at an embassy party in San Jose. She was working for one of the big American oil companies and within six months they’d been married. Chuck never actually spelled it out but I suspected there’d been other wives before Esmeralda. Not that Esmeralda seemed to care.

After the meal she disappeared back into the bedroom with the baby. I offered to help Chuck with the washing-up but he wouldn’t hear of it. He had some nice cool Chardonnay. We could take it through to the lounge and relax. Ezzie would join us when junior was finally squared away.

Chuck’s lounge reminded me a little of Harald’s den. There was a woman’s touch in the extravagant stands of scarlet flowers and the bits and pieces of what I took to be Inca pottery, but the biggest picture on the wall featured a huge twin-rotor helicopter half-glimpsed through swirls of rising dust. We all carry baggage from the past and this, I assumed, was Chuck’s.

I stood in front of the canvas. The helicopter was hovering on the edge of a paddy field. A nearby copse of spindly trees spat flame while a defensive ring of US Marines sprawled in the short grass were returning fire. Somewhere in the middle of the picture, his back against a dike, slumped a small, broken figure in a flying suit.

I stepped forward and took a closer look. Without doubt, the painting
was
an original. The colours
were
pretty
dramatic
and
some
of the figurework was a bit uncertain but the feeling of immediacy, of actually being there, was undeniable. This was an important corner of someone’s war and it wasn’t difficult to work out whose.

‘
Vietnam?’

Chuck was rummaging in a drawer behind me. ‘Yep.’

I pointed at the figure at the foot of the dike.

‘
And this is Harald?’

‘
Nope, another guy. Same year, though. Seventy-one.’

‘
And you rescued him? You pulled this guy out?’ I glanced round. Chuck was looking almost bashful.

‘
That’s right, ma’am. All part of the service.’

I went back to the picture again. The temptation was to ask about medals and citations and what twenty-five years had done to memories like these, but I sensed that Chuck was past all that. I could hear him drawing the cork from the wine. I sat down in one of the big Naugahide chairs.

‘
Tell me about Standfast,’ I said. ‘Tell me what happens there.’

‘
Like this morning?’

‘
Like any morning. Those guys I saw, the ones in combat kit, the ones you must have taken out to the swamp. What was all that about?’

Chuck was pouring the wine. He passed me a glass, complimenting me on the smoke bomb.

‘
You pickled it pretty good,’ he said. ‘Even Harald was impressed.’

‘
All I did was hit the release. He talked me through it.’

‘
Yeah, sure, but you were at the sharp end. At least that’s the way I heard it.’

I grinned, wanting to agree. The memory of what we’d done would be with me forever. The rich greens of the mangrove filling the gunsight, the flailing bodies of the soldiers, the way the g forces had tightened around my belly, forcing the blood to my legs the moment
I
hauled the Harvard out of the dive. I wanted to tell Chuck about it, to share the excitement, but to someone with his experience, my little adventure would be pretty small change.

He was telling me about Standfast. The business belonged to Harald. It had developed from stuff he’d been doing in the eighties, helping out the Reagan people down in Central America. The airfield had once belonged to the military, an important staging post on the resupply runs down to Honduras and El Salvador, but Harald had since acquired it on a thirty-year lease.

I frowned, trying to follow the history. The ins and outs of the Contra scandal were largely beyond me.

‘
What was Harald doing down there?’

‘
Training, mainly. We were helping out the rebels in Nicaragua. The strategy had to do with rolling back the commies. Same game plan as ‘Nam, except that Central America is a helluva lot closer.’

‘
You were there, too?’

‘
Sure. I was out of the Corps and bored to hell. Harald called up one day and asked whether I was interested in making a buck or two to help out Uncle Sam.’ He shrugged. ‘What do you say when a guy makes that kind of offer?’

He sipped at the wine, an infinitely delicate gesture from such a big man, and then he told me the way it had been down in Central America. The ferrying-down of supplies. The endless problems with spares and reliable munitions. The brutal fact that many of the so-called insurgents were simply in it for the money.

‘
We were flying into a couple of airstrips, Llopango and Santa Elana. As fast as we warehoused the stuff, they just sold it on. In the end we could have been working for Federal Express. Even Harald said so, and he doesn’t give up easy.’

‘
But what about the training?’

‘
We did what we could. The stuff we had to use was pretty Mickey Mouse. Fixed-wing, you’re talking Cessna twins with a couple of five-hundred-pound bombs strapped on. Most of the choppers were hangar queens.’

‘
Hangar queens?’

‘
U/S, unserviceable.’ He frowned, running his fingertip around the rim of the glass. ‘Wars like that, you don’t need anything fancy, but you’re still talking regular maintenance and proper operational procedures. That was pretty much first base to these guys and most of them didn’t make it. Hell, we tried our best. We all knew that without air support the Contras would go down. Turned out we were right, too.’

I was still thinking about Standfast, the kinds of planes I’d seen, good solid propeller technology, nothing complex, nothing too hi-tech. Was this the way it had evolved? Had Harald put his Central American experience to work back home?

Chuck nodded.

‘
You got it.’ He grinned, leaning forward in the armchair. ‘Harald figured there had to be a market for all that hardware. Refurbished Mustangs. Ex-combat choppers. Dumb bombs. Rockets that don’t cost a million bucks a throw. The name of the game is affordable air power, and believe me, we’ve got customers lining up all around the block. Harald sells them the package. Flight training. Aircraft. Aftercare. And any little extras they might care to name.’

‘
Extras?’ The word had a faintly sinister ring. ‘What kind of extras?’

‘
Stuff you pick up en route. Skills, tricks, techniques. You build up a kind of repertoire.’ Chuck gazed at me a moment. ‘Exactly how well do you know Harald?’

I thought about the question.

‘
My husband and Harald were good friends,’ I said carefully. ‘They had lots in common, flying mainly. Since Adam died, Harald has been incredibly helpful. Generous, too.’ For a moment I toyed with describing Harald’s several bids to buy our Mustang outright but in the end I decided against it. ‘He’s made a huge difference,’ I said instead. T don’t know what I’d have done without him.’

‘
Sure.’ Chuck nodded. ‘So you’ll know how hands-on he can be.’

For a split second, I misinterpreted the phrase. Chuck saw the expression on my face and roared with laughter.

‘
Excuse me, ma’am.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m talking hardware, nuts-and-bolts stuff. The man eats and sleeps schematics. Show him a wiring diagram, you’ve made his day.’

I nodded. I was thinking about the times I’d seen Harald and Dave Jeffries together, discussing how to fine-tune our Mustang. Chuck was right. Harald, it occurred to me, even thought like an engineer. Everything in its rightful place. Everything carefully buttoned down.

‘
So how does that relate to Standfast?’ I wondered aloud. ‘To what you’re up to here?’

‘
Hell.’ Chuck grinned again. ‘You’re talking business now. We get clients from all over, like I said. Central America, Latin America, the Pacific Rim, even Africa. Those guys you saw today, they’re from Honduras. If the shoe fits, we can give them anything, jungle survival, air combat, ground attack, reconnaissance, infil, exfil, deniable violence, you name it.’

‘
Deniable violence?’ I’d never heard the phrase before.

‘
Sure.’ Chuck was looking around now, trying to illustrate a point. ‘You’re holed up in some hotel room some place. You’ve got access to soap and maybe a little gasoline. You want to make yourself a bomb but you’ve no idea how. No problem. Our guys will talk you through it.’

‘
And Harald?’

‘
Harald teaches our guys. All that stuff just fascinates him. Always has done, ever since the Academy. Give the guy a screwdriver and a couple of batteries and a metre or so of wire and you’ve lost him for the rest of the day. I guess that’s partly why he’s such a good pilot. He thinks his way into it. He becomes the machine.’

I tried not to look shocked. The last twenty-four hours had given Harald Meyler dimensions which even Dennis Wetherall hadn’t suspected. Not just a merchant of death but maybe a practitioner, too. Soap? Gasoline? Screwdrivers? A length of wire? Was Chuck serious? Did Harald really specialise in blowing people up?