Dead in the Water (21 page)

Peters reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out an envelope. “Six thousand. Cash. And don’t ask.” Three and half of that is his own money; and he’s not boasting about it. It was difficult enough asking Boyd for half of five grand. He’s too proud to have called him back begging any extra.

“
You been carrying that around with you?” asks Sullivan. He opens the envelope, counts it, puts the notes back in the envelope and stuffs it into the pocket of his jeans. “OK. Right. I have to make some phone calls,” and he retreats into the back office, closing the door behind him.

He finds it hard to believe that has just said goodbye to six thousand dollars. And this Sullivan character, looking more than ever like an oversize pirate out of a pantomime
Treasure Island
, has just disappeared. He doesn’t even have a receipt. Best not even think about it.

The seating in the reception area has been arranged like a doctor’s waiting room, except that flying magazines are the only ones on the coffee table and the walls are adorned with captioned photographs of planes, aerial views and Terry Sullivan:
Angel Falls
, taken from the co-pilot’s seat with Sullivan at the controls; an aerial view
of
Sullivan Bay,
British Columbia
;
On Location
in New Zealand, with a couple of glamorous Hollywood B List actresses.

In other circumstances Jeremy might have enjoyed browsing through the flying magazines and inventing a cynical version of Sullivan’s flamboyant personal history, but he’s wrapped up in his own anxieties: apprehensive about the flight and fearful for Rachel’s safety. He waits for the best part of a long slow hour before Sullivan reappears. “Well, friend,” he says, “the good news is there’s a tail wind forecast for the flight down. A north easterly. Means we should make Puerto Ayacucho in about three hours.”

“
And the bad news?” Apart from three terrifying hours in a tiny plane?

“
Who said there was bad news?” Sullivan looks at his watch. “It’s half six now. I need to make some more calls, make sure we can refuel at Puerto Ayacucho. Clear a flight plan, get her filled up. I can take off in the dark, but there’s no way we can land until it’s properly light – not in Amazonas. So we aim to leave around three in the morning. Right?” Peters looks unhappy. “What’s the problem, pal?”

“
I’d hoped to go sooner.”

“
Well, there’s your bad news. We leave at three. There’s a fucking curfew if you hadn’t noticed. If they arrest you for being out on the streets, what do you think they do to a light aircraft flying over the city? You wouldn’t believe the arms I’ve had to twist.”

“
Point taken,” says Jeremy. Sullivan is beginning to piss him off. “Three a.m.,” he agrees; and they shake hands on the deal. “I thought Puerto Ayacucho was an International Airport.”

“
Tell that to the guys down there. Believe me you do not want to land at Puerto Ayacucho in the dark. The government put development money in to build a great long runway, and install state of the art radar. To the guys who run the place it’s still a grass strip. Fascinating little town, as you well know Mr Peters, but International the airport is not. We still on are we?”

“
Yes.”

“
Great. Better think about dress code then,” says Sullivan with a flash of a smile. The prospect of Sullivan’s company is almost as daunting as the flight itself. “Overalls for you, friend. Welcome to
Sullivan Air Taxis
. For the next couple of days you’ve got a job as a mechanic.”

Tuesday

39
London W2

Wondering how long the blackout will last, Mark, like thousands of others, watches out of the window to see if those first flashes will develop into fires. The stroboscopic blue and red lights of the emergency services hold his attention for several minutes, until a burst of light in the sky somewhere over South London convinces him that it is after all just a distant thunderstorm. Relieved, he goes to bed, and falls quickly into a heavy sleep.

Mark sleeps through the first half hour of the storm; but as the heart of it drifts over central London, sleep becomes impossible. And, like so many people in London this night, he is again at the bedroom window looking out. The power is still off, there are no street lights in the square below. Parts of London do still have power, but the pervasive glow of the city seems dim after the ferocious bursts of lightning that split the sky. The darkness is more disconcerting than the thunder. There is always light in London. Some residents in blocks on the other side of the square seem to have lit candles, their windows gleaming dimly through the sodden night. He returns to bed.

The storm drifts slowly away from central London, though the rain is no less heavy. Now wide awake, Mark puts on his dressing gown and, by torchlight, gets himself a glass of whisky and opens his laptop. After nearly an hour working solely by the light of the screen, his eyes are sore and he has managed no more than a collection of distracted notes. Outside, the storm grumbles on, its electrical heart wandering North, while the hammering rain continues undiminished.

He sits at his desk with eyes shut, trying to focus on the previous days events, trying to put Steve and Rachel from his mind, trying not to think about Sara or Daniella, trying to think positively about the visit to
One World
. But there is no escape from the tangled loops of interlinking thoughts, all of which seem to lead back to Joanna’s ultimatum, Stephen’s disappearance or Rachel’s strange text to Peters. Even the whisky glass on the desk was a present from Rachel that she brought back for him from the Edinburgh Festival last summer. Before shutting down, he checks for incoming e-mails one last time, in the faint hope that there may be something from Steve or Rachel; but there’s nothing, and at about half two in the morning he wearily decides to call a halt.

Half an hour, an hour, two hours pass; and although he may have dozed off for short periods, the oblivion of sleep is as elusive as it had been the previous night. Darkness lies heavily on the room. Surely Steve hasn’t got himself mixed up with something stupid? Given what Cathy told him – about the way the
One World
Offices had been raided, about the arrest of Allan Hunter – if he were involved with one of the more radical environmental groups, deciding to lay low for a while would not only be wise, but considerate: if he got himself arrested, it could be extremely embarrassing both for Mark personally and for the government. Allan Hunter… a reasonable enough sort of guy, a bit of a prat, but not dangerous… And Hunter is in prison… If suspicion can fall so quickly … Stephen held under anti-terrorist legislation… ? Stephen in a squalid flat … about to ring Dad when armed police make a forced entry. He wouldn’t have had time to leave a message or send a text. … And they’d have taken his phone. But twice? Why twice?

When the radio-clock fails to switch itself on at half six he sleeps on through, oblivious to the continuing absence of power in this part of London.

4
0
The Tin Duck

Dressed in blue mechanic’s overalls with the rather tacky logo of
Sullivan Air Taxis
emblazoned on the breast pocket, Jeremy Peters has been making a brave attempt at manual labour: removing and storing two of the passenger seats from the rather battered looking Cessna; filling ten litre plastic containers with petrol, wheeling them across the hangar that
Sullivan Air Taxis
shares with a couple of other small private operators, lugging them into the cabin and securing them. The plane can carry up to five passengers, one in the co-pilot’s seat and four in the cabin, but for this flight Sullivan wants to get rid of two of the seats in the cabin and use the space for extra fuel. Whether it’s legal to carry fuel in this way is one of several questions that Jeremy would rather not ask. He’s merely doing what his ‘boss’ has told him to do; Sullivan reckoning that the easiest way to avoid awkward questions would be for Peters to become an employee, albeit an employee who pays his boss six thousand dollars for the privilege of a job.

He is unused to heavy physical work and glad to get out of the hangar, with its pervasive smell of kerosene, petrol and engine oil. There seems nothing more for him to do other than wait back in the portacabin while Sullivan ‘sees people’ – presumably spending some of the six grand to get his flight plan accepted. But his absence is worrying. At 10.30 he said everything was OK for the three o’clock take-off; but it’s already gone 2.30. Jeremy hates inactivity. It preys on him. He cannot rid himself of this dart of fear that Sullivan’s done a runner.

He’s dozing half dreams that shouldn’t be allowed – of Rachel and an Infinity Pool – when Sullivan shouts through: “You ready Mister Spanner Monkey? Get your ass into the heap o’ tin.”

Less than twenty minutes later they are at the end of the taxiway, awaiting permission to take off. Sullivan has not spoken a word to Peters, who is sitting next to him in the co-pilot seat, since giving him terse instructions on how to tighten his seat belts. “Know the worst thing about these things?” he asks, breaking the silence.

“
The fuel consumption?”

“
Well, that’s pretty shitty too. Bastards to taxi. Those little wheels at the front of the floats; no steering on them. They’re just casters. Might as well be driving a fucking armchair. Turn the thing you’ve got to use differential brakes and the throttle. Imagine that on a grass field.”

He tries to imagine it, but his thoughts are elsewhere: he’s trying to calm himself with breathing exercises; and wondering why, with no other planes queuing to take off and nothing having landed since they emerged from the hangar, they are still waiting on near the end of the runway.

“
I hate big airports,” says Sullivan.

Jeremy has never much liked airports either. His usual way of dealing with the nerves of airline flying is to have several whiskies beforehand and sleep through the flight. “What’s the hold up?” he asks, not really expecting an answer he can understand.

“
That,” he says, pointing out of the windscreen to Peters’ right. A dull rumbling announces a large plane approaching, though all he can see of it are two ferociously bright landing lights cutting through the night sky and the regular flash of navigation lights as a giant silhouette passes overhead. “Don’t want to tangle with one of those.” The monster sets down on the runway and, as the pilot engages reverse thrust, the roar of engines drowns every other sound. Inside the cockpit of the Cessna the windows rattle, and the plane feels tiny and worryingly fragile.

“
What was that?”

“
C5 Galaxy. American military transport. In plain clothes by the look of it. Second biggest airplane in the world. And we’re not budging. Not for a couple of minutes. Turbulence in the wake of one of those bastards’d flip the
Tin Duck
on its back soon as blink.” Although he’d rather not be reminded of the vulnerability of the gawky little plane, Jeremy would rather
Sullivan
kept talking.

“
What’s it doing here?

“
You tell me, pal.” Then he lifts his hand to indicate that he’s getting something from Air Traffic Control. “Who fucking knows. But we’re outta here.” He eases the throttle forward and the ungainly little floatplane rattles out onto the main runway. After waiting for the wake turbulence to smooth out, they set off. Sullivan eases on full throttle, takes off the brakes – and the plane trundles lazily forward. The tiny wheels of the Cessna, protruding from under the floats, offer very little springing and the ride down the runway is long and rough, with the floats and the extra fuel taking it near to its maximum load; and once off the ground, the rate of climb is painfully slow.

By four in the morning they’ve left Caracas and the sprawling southern shanty suburbs long behind them; and Jeremy is a little less nervous. The tiny cockpit seems removed from the world, disconnected from past and future, from political upheaval and personal pain. Sullivan is flying on instruments, but when there are breaks in the cloud he’s quick to point out the constellations; and boasts that when he was learning to fly floatplanes in Canada, “where there are more lakes than runways”, he and his mate Bob managed a 200 mile night flight and a safe landing after an instrument failure. In other circumstances Sullivan’s hoard of flying yarns might be wearing; but Jeremy is pleased to be distracted.

It’s getting on for six, the sky in the East is lightening, they’re more than three quarters of the way to Puerto Ayacucho and on first name terms.

“
Heh Jez, this six grand you shelled out, that your own money?”

“
Half of it.”

“
None of my business if you don’t want to talk about it, pal.”

Jeremy had hoped that the subject of Rachel wouldn’t come up; but he realises, as Terry retreats back into anecdotes about airplanes and flying, that he does, after all, want to talk about her – not least because he would like to make sense of what the hell he’s doing here. And little by little, that’s what he does. He’d got Terry down as a shady businessman and amiable raconteur; but he proves to be a surprisingly good listener and, underneath the ribald joshing, unexpectedly sympathetic.