Night Over Water (28 page)

The thought of her fear and shock as they seized her maddened Eddie almost beyond endurance. He felt his head spinning and he had to concentrate to stay upright in the launch. It was his utter helplessness that made the predicament so agonizing. She was in desperate trouble and there was nothing he could do, nothing. He realized he was clenching his fists spasmodically, and forced himself to stop.

The launch reached the shore and tied up to a floating pontoon connected by a gangway to the dock. The crew helped the passengers disembark, then followed them up the gangway. They were directed to the customs shed.

The formalities were brief. The passengers drifted into the little village. Across the road from the harbor was a former inn that had been almost entirely taken over by airline personnel, and the crew headed for that.

Eddie was the last to leave, and as he came out of the customs shed, he was approached by a passenger who said: “Are you the engineer?”

Eddie tensed. The passenger was a man of about thirty-five, shorter than he but stocky and muscular. He wore a pale gray suit, a tie with a stickpin and a gray felt hat. Eddie said: “Yes, I’m Eddie Deakin.”

“My name is Tom Luther.”

A red haze blurred Eddie’s vision and his rage boiled over in an instant. He grabbed Luther by the lapels, swung him around and banged him against the wall of the customs shed. “What have you done to Carol-Ann?” he spat. Luther was taken completely by surprise: he had expected a frightened, compliant victim. Eddie shook him until his teeth rattled. “You Christless son of a whore, where is my wife?”

Luther recovered from the shock quickly. The stunned look left his face. He broke Eddie’s hold with a swift, powerful move and threw a punch. Eddie dodged it and hit him in the stomach twice. Luther expelled air like a cushion and doubled up. He was strong, but out of condition. Eddie grabbed him by the throat and started to squeeze.

Luther stared at him out of terrified eyes.

After a moment Eddie realized he was killing the man.

He eased his grip, then let go completely. Luther slumped against the wall, gasping for air, his hand on his bruised neck.

The Irish customs officer looked out of the shed. He must have heard the thump as Eddie threw Luther against the wall. “What happened?”

Luther stood upright with an effort. “I stumbled, but I’m okay,” he managed.

The customs man bent down and picked up Luther’s hat. He gave them a curious look as he handed it over, but he said no more and went back inside.

Eddie looked around. No one else had observed the scuffle. The passengers and crew had disappeared around the other side of the little railway station.

Luther put his hat on. In a hoarse voice he said: “If you mess this up we’ll both be killed as well as your damn wife, you imbecile.”

The reference to Carol-Ann maddened Eddie all over again, and he drew back his fist to hit Luther, but Luther raised a protective arm and said: “Calm down, will you? You won’t get her back that way! Don’t you understand that you need me?”

Eddie understood that perfectly well: he had simply lost his reason for a few moments. He took a step back and studied the man. Luther was well-spoken and expensively dressed. He had a bristly blond mustache and pale eyes full of hate. Eddie had no regrets about punching him. He had needed to hit something and Luther was an appropriate target. Now he said: “What do you want from me, you pile of shit?”

Luther put his hand inside his suit jacket. It crossed Eddie’s mind that there might be a gun in there, but Luther took out a postcard and handed it over.

Eddie looked at it. It was a picture of Bangor, Maine. “What the hell does this mean?”

Luther said: “Turn it over.”

On the other side was written:

“What are these numbers—map coordinates?” Eddie said.

“Yes. That’s where you have to bring the plane down.”

Eddie stared at him. “Bring the plane down?” he repeated stupidly.

“Yes.”

“That’s what you want from me—that’s what this is all about?”

“Bring the plane down right there.”

“But why?”

“Because you want your pretty wife back.”

“Where is this location?”

“Off the coast of Maine.”

People often assumed a seaplane could splash down anywhere, but in fact it needed very calm waters. For safety, Pan American would not allow a touchdown in waves more than three feet high. If the plane came down in a heavy sea, it would break up. Eddie said: “You can’t land a flying boat in the open sea—”

“We know that. This is a sheltered place.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“Just check it out. You can come down there. I made sure of it.”

He sounded so confident that Eddie sensed he really had made sure. But there were other snags. “How am I supposed to bring the plane down? I’m not the captain.”

“I’ve looked into this very carefully. The captain could bring the plane down in theory, but what excuse would he have? You’re the engineer. You can make something go wrong.”

“You want me to crash the plane?”

“You’d better not—I’m going to be on board. Just have something go wrong so the captain is forced to make an unscheduled splashdown”—he touched the postcard with a manicured finger—“right there.”

The engineer
could
create a problem that would force the plane down, no doubt about that; but an emergency was difficult to control, and Eddie could not immediately see how to arrange an unscheduled splashdown at such a precise location. “It just ain’t that easy—”

“I know it’s not easy, Eddie. But I know it can be done. I checked.”

Who had he checked with? Who was he? “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“Don’t ask.”

Eddie had started out threatening this man, but somehow the tables had turned, and now he felt intimidated. Luther was part of a ruthless team that had planned this carefully. They had picked out Eddie to be their tool; they had kidnapped Carol-Ann; they had him in their power.

He put the postcard in the pocket of his uniform jacket and turned away.

“So you’ll do it?” Luther said anxiously.

Eddie turned back and gave him a cold stare. He held Luther’s eyes for a long moment, then walked away without speaking.

He was acting tough but in truth he was floored. Why were they doing this? At one point he had speculated that the Germans wanted to steal a Boeing 314 to copy it, but that far-fetched theory was now washed out completely, for the Germans would want to steal the plane in Europe, not Maine.

The fact that they were so precise about the location at which they wanted the Clipper to come down was a clue. It suggested there would be a boat waiting there. But what for? Did Luther want to smuggle something or somebody into the United States—a suitcase full of opium, a bazooka, a Communist agitator or a Nazi spy? The person or thing would have to be pretty damned important to be worth all this trouble.

At least he knew why they had picked on him. If you wanted to bring the Clipper down, the engineer was your man. The navigator could not do it, nor could the radio operator, and a pilot would need the cooperation of his copilot; but an engineer, all on his own, could stop the engines.

Luther must have got a list of Clipper engineers out of Pan American. That would not be too difficult: someone could have broken into the offices one night, or just bribed a secretary. Why Eddie? For some reason Luther decided on this particular flight, and got hold of the roster. Then he asked himself how to make Eddie Deakin cooperate, and came up with the answer: kidnap his wife.

It would break Eddie’s heart to help these gangsters. He hated crooks. Too greedy to live like regular people and too lazy to earn a buck, they cheated and stole from hardworking citizens and lived high on the hog. While others broke their backs plowing and reaping, or worked eighteen hours a day to build up a business, or dug for coal under the ground or sweated all day in a steelworks, the gangsters went around in fancy suits and big cars and did nothing but bully people and beat them up and scare them to death. The electric chair was too good for them.

His father had felt the same. He remembered what Pop had said about bullies at school: “Those guys are mean, all right, but they ain’t smart.” Tom Luther was mean, but was he smart? “It’s tough to fight those guys, but it ain’t so hard to fool ’em,” Pop had said. But Tom Luther would not be easy to fool. He had thought up an elaborate plan, and so far it seemed to be working perfectly.

Eddie would have done almost anything for a chance to fool Luther. But Luther had Carol-Ann. Anything Eddie did to foul up Luther’s scheme might lead them to hurt her. He could not fight them or fool them: he just had to try to do what they wanted.

Seething with frustration, he left the harbor and crossed the single road that led through the village of Foynes.

The air terminal was a former inn with a central yard. Since the village had become an important flying-boat airport, the building had been almost entirely taken over by Pan American; although there was still a bar, called Mrs. Walsh’s pub, in a small room with its own street door. Eddie went upstairs to the operations room, where Captain Marvin Baker and First Officer Johnny Dott were in conference with the Pan American station chief. Here, amid the coffee cups and ashtrays and the piles of radio messages and weather reports, they would take the final decision whether to make the long transatlantic crossing.

The crucial factor was the strength of the wind. The westward trip was a constant battle against the prevailing wind. Pilots would change altitude constantly in a search for the most favorable conditions, a game known as “hunting the wind.” The lightest winds were generally found at lower altitudes, but below a certain point the plane would be in danger of colliding with ships or, more likely, icebergs. Strong winds required more fuel, and sometimes the forecast winds were so strong that the Clipper simply could not carry enough to last the two thousand miles to Newfoundland. Then the flight would have to be postponed, and the passengers would be taken to a hotel to wait until the weather improved.

But if that should happen today, what would become of Carol-Ann? Eddie took a preliminary glance at the weather reports. The winds were strong and there was a storm in the mid-Atlantic. He knew that the plane was full. Therefore, there would have to be a careful calculation before the flight could get the go-ahead. The thought ratcheted up his anxiety: he could not bear to be stuck in Ireland while Carol-Ann was in the hands of those bastards on the other side of the ocean. Would they feed her? Did she have somewhere to lie down? Was she warm enough, wherever they were holding her?

He went to the Atlantic chart on the wall and checked the map reference Luther had given him. The spot had been quite well chosen. It was close to the Canadian border, a mile or two offshore, in a channel between the coast and a large island, in the Bay of Fundy. Someone who knew a little about flying boats would think it an ideal place to come down. It was not ideal—the ports used by the Clippers were even more sheltered—but it would be calmer than the open sea, and the Clipper would probably be able to splash down there without great risk. Eddie was somewhat relieved: at least that part of the scheme might be made to work. He realized he had a big investment in the success of Luther’s plan. The thought left a sour taste in his mouth.

He was still worried about just how he would bring the plane down. He could fake engine trouble, but the Clipper could fly on three engines, and there was an assistant engineer, Mickey Finn, who could not be fooled for very long. He racked his brains, but did not come up with a solution.

Plotting to do this to Captain Baker and the others made him feel like the worst kind of heel. He was betraying people who trusted him. But he had no choice.

Now an even greater hazard occurred to him. Tom Luther might not keep his promise. Why should he? He was a crook! Eddie might bring the plane down and still not get Carol-Ann back.

The navigator, Jack, came in with some more weather reports, and shot a peculiar look at Eddie. Eddie realized that no one had spoken to him since he came into the room. They seemed to be tiptoeing around him: had they noticed how preoccupied he was? He had to make more effort to behave normally. “Try not to get lost this trip, Jack,” he said, repeating an old joke. He was not much of an actor and the gag seemed forced to him, but they laughed and the atmosphere eased.

Captain Baker looked at the fresh weather reports and said: “This storm is getting worse.”

Jack nodded. “It’s going to be what Eddie would call a honker.”

They always ribbed him about his New England dialect. He managed to grin, and said: “Or a baster.”

Baker said: “I’m going to fly around it.”

Together, Baker and Johnny Dott produced a flight plan to Botwood, in Newfoundland, skirting the edge of the storm and avoiding the worst of the head winds. When they were finished, Eddie sat down with the weather forecasts and began his calculations.

For each sector of the trip, he had predictions of the wind direction and force at one thousand feet, four thousand, eight thousand and twelve thousand. Knowing the cruising airspeed of the plane and the wind force, Eddie could calculate the ground speed. That gave him a flight time for each sector at the most favorable altitude. Then he would use printed tables to find the fuel consumption over that time with the current payload of the Clipper. He would plot the fuel requirement stage by stage on a graph, which the crew called “the Howgozit Curve.” He would work out the total and add a safety margin.

When he completed his calculations he saw to his consternation that the amount of fuel required to get them to Newfoundland was more than the Clipper could carry.

For a moment he did nothing.