Pulp Fiction | The Finger in the Sky Affair by Peter Leslie (11 page)

"Yeah. Landing, I guess, since the nose points down....So okay: he's painting us a picture of the plane coming in to land. So what's the significance of the two box-like shapes on top of one another? How do you figure them?"

"I think...Wait a minute, Napoleon! Suppose he was using the existing line—the black line of the graph—to represent the ground..."

"Yeah?"

"...then surely the two rectangles might be a simple way of indicating the airport buildings with the control tower above them?"

"They might at that," Solo admitted. "But then so what? We have a picture of a plane landing. It doesn't tell us anything
about
the landing—or about the wreck."

"Oh, but it could, Napoleon. Don't forget these smudges. I don't think they are random. They are very faint, but they are in a definite line...coming downwards from the plan—Look!—and reaching the red line below the black one. There are none above the plane and none below the red line."

"Kind of a dotted line, it seems."

"Exactly. And what's implied by a dotted line—in comic strips, for example?"

Solo considered. "As far as I'm concerned," he said slowly, "a dotted line between two objects implies some kind of relationship between them—nothing more, in the absence of other data."

"But that's just it! A relationship between the plane—the red plane—and the red line..."

"I still don't quite see —"

"Look at the red line," Illya said excitedly. "Everything else has been scrawled roughly, daubed in great haste. But the red line has been done very carefully, laboriously, even. In the desperate hurry he was in to get the message across before he was discovered, he took time to get this bit exactly right."

"How do you mean—exactly right?"

"It repeats the black line very precisely; same slope, same slight differences where the blobs occur, same length—see, it ends on the very same line of the graph paper."

"But if the black line represents the ground, as we think..."

"Then the red one also represents the ground."

"But that's crazy, Illya! One plane, one set of buildings, but
two
landing grounds—No! Wait a minute!...It's not so crazy, is it?...One plane, one set of buildings, and two landing grounds,
only one of which is related to the plane
. Is that it?"

"That's it. And the 'ground' related to the plane by the dotted line is
lower
than the real one, the one with the airport buildings on it. I'm sure that's it."

"You mean he's trying to tell us, via this dotted line, that—so far as the plane was concerned—the ground appeared to be lower than it really was?"

"Yes—and if the pilot, or in this case the Murchison-Spears equipment, is informed the ground is lower than it really is —"

"The aircraft will obviously level off too late; it'll fly straight in. Just as though, in an old-fashioned crate, the altimeter was reading incorrectly."

"Exactly."

Solo picked up the chart, scrutinized it, and laid it down on Matheson's desk. "Okay, wonder boy," he said with a grin. "Sold to the gentleman with the rich uncle! And if the survivor was tipping us off that the crash was due to faulty evaluation of height by the Murchison-Spears box, that ties in with what we already know, doesn't it?"

"It does. Witnesses all say the aircraft 'flew into the ground'; the survivor from the last crash was babbling something about 'it' being
too high
; Matheson advised us to look for a fault in that particular stage of the gear. It all ties in. I suppose the survivor meant that the
ground
, as it were, was too high: it rose up and hit them."

The door opened and Helga Grossbreitner came into the room. She hurried across to a filing cabinet, pushing a strand of golden hair that had worked loose out of her eyes.

"Sorry to interrupt you, boys," she said absently, flicking through a stack of folders. "Oh dear—those poor people. I'm trying to deal with inquiries from relatives and friends. It really is most distressing..."

"It's a tough job, honey," Solo sympathized. "But don't worry: I think we may be on our way."

"You mean you've found out who's causing these terrible crashes?"

"Not the actual individuals—though we know it must be THRUSH members. But we do have a line on
how
it's being done...and once we've established that definitely, it should be easy enough to pin down the culprits."

"But that's good. What have you found out?"

Solo gave her a brief resumé of the conclusions they had arrived at and the evidence which had led to them, adding: "And I'm real sorry, Helga—I guess I have to stand you up on that date tomorrow night...tonight, I mean: it's already past one A.M."

She flashed him her golden smile. "That's okay, lover boy. It'll keep—and me with it. What's the big deal, then?"

"We have to check our deductions, honey. No good acting on them unless we can prove they're right. Illya and I will go to Paris and fly into Nice tomorrow on the T.C.A. Trident—the same flight as the one that crashed here this evening—and keep watch in the pilot's cabin to see what we can see. They seem to be stepping up the disaster rate and there's a chance that we may find something out."

"Yes, I guess that seems sensible—but, darling, you will be careful, won't you? I can't have another date broken!"

Solo patted her rounded shoulder. "I'll take an ejector seat and a 'chute," he promised with a grin. "Expect me to drop in any time after nine...:

After the girl had found the file she wanted and returned to the outer office, Kuryakin looked up from some notes he had been consulting. "You know, Napoleon, there's one angle of this case that we haven't taken into account at all," he said seriously.

"What's that?"

"T.C.A.'s franchise to carry the fissionable material from here to the U.S. We haven't looked into that end of it at all. Do you think we should?"

Solo shook his head. "I guess that wouldn't figure in the case until
after
THRUSH had gained control of the airline," he said. "From their point of view, the number one priority is to discredit the company to the extent that they
can
take it over. Until they've achieved that, they can afford to ignore the radioactive bit. It only goes on one flight a month anyway—and there's a squad of men with automatic rifles guarding the armored car that brings it to the airport...Besides there's no question of the crashes being in any way connected with an attempt to grab the stuff."

"You are sure, Napoleon?"

"Sure I'm sure. All the crashes are incoming planes, and the fissionable material is flown
out
."

"Yes, of course. I just thought I'd mention it."

"Quite right, my boy! Quite right...And now let's go grab some sleep. We have to be back here on the first available flight to Paris tomorrow morning."

"You really meant what you told Helga?"

"Certainly. We'll sit right up in the front of that Trident with our slide rules and our compasses, watching every move," Solo said with a curious emphasis. He opened the door and ushered the Russian out of the office.

A shutter fell noiselessly over the concealed lens of the videotape camera which had been recording their conversation from its hiding place behind a relief map of Europe which hung on the wall.

A fringe of waves laced the edge of the blue-green Mediterranean as the Trident turned in a shallow bank and headed east along the coast towards Nice, gradually losing height. There had been stray banks of cumulus building up over the Basses Alpes and their passage over the Rhône delta had been quite bumpy. Once they passed Toulon, however, the sky cleared and the air was calm and still as the giant plane sank into the dusk which was beginning to shroud the fishing villages south of the Massif des Maures. The creased, iridescent surface of the sea dulled to a somber violet, reflecting the pinpoints of light beginning to twinkle among the craft massed in the harbors of Lavandou and St. Tropez.

Illya Kuryakin crouched with Solo in the airplane's rear baggage department, fiddling with a mass of dials which studded the steel surface of a complicated chassis packed, with other electronic equipment, in a huge suitcase lying open before them. The whining roar of the three jet engines above their heads made conversation difficult in the confined space.

Solo glanced at his wristwatch. "Stand by for action any time now," he shouted over the din. "We should be just about over Ste. Maxime."

The Russian nodded, spreading a sheet of squared paper marked with labeled columns across a board and clipping it into place at the top and sides. "I hope your hunch is correct, Napoleon," he called back. "I should have spotted that camera myself. Where exactly was it?"

"You know that enormous relief map fixed to one wall of Matheson's office—the one with all the mountains in Europe humped up across the surface?"

"Yes, I saw it."

"Well, you probably noticed that all the airports between the mountains—and those on the plains for that matter—were marked by small circles of colored glass; presumably to light up when T.C.A. planes were using them, or needed maintenance there or something."

Kuryakin nodded again.

"The camera lens had replaced the glass indicating one of the airports among the Alps—Zurich, I think—where it was least likely to be noticed among the relief. Fortunately, I happened to see it just when there was a slight movement...probably an alteration of aperture.. and the movement drew my attention to it."

"In turn, I hope
my
hunch is also correct," Illya said.

"It has a good chance. If what you tell me of your theory is true, the exact location of the Murchison-Spears box is critical—which is why we're lucky that T.C.A. equips its Tridents with a baggage compartment as far back as this."

"Yes, our duplicate box is as far away from the one in the cockpit as possible. I suppose that's why you made such a point of mentioning that we would be up front with the pilots—to tempt them to concentrate on that end of the plane."

"Sure. I figure that, since they know we're aboard and we know something of the system at least, then they're bound to try to bring the plane down. But it's a terrible risk, in a way—the crew's lives are at stake as well as our own."

"But we did manage to get all the passengers transferred to a relief flight ten minutes later, Napoleon."

"True. Nevertheless I—Wait a minute! The intercom's coming on!"

Over the noise of the jets, a metallic, disembodied voice was speaking: "
Hello, hello. Third pilot here. We are just passing Fréjus and the M-S gear is in action. Are you ready to start operating? Are you ready to start operating?
..."

"Solo to Third Pilot," Napoleon Solo said crisply above the racket of the jets. "We are ready to start....And just for the record, here's a recap on the M.O. You have the airplane's normal M-S box in your cabin, receiving signals from Nice and the ground, and the box interprets them and adjusts the plane's controls in such a way as to effect a correct landing. We have a duplicate M-S box back here, receiving the same signals but not hitched up in any way to the controls. The aim of the operation is to check the readings of the two boxes one against the other—and spot any discrepancies if present: okay?"

"
Roger. Our box up here has dials indicating distance from touchdown in meters, glide angle, and height in meters. I am to read you the relevant figures from our dials at quarter minute intervals, and you will write these down and check against your own readings at the same time.
"

"Roger. You can start any time you like."

"
Wilco. First reading coming up in fifteen seconds.
"

Solo picked up the board with its prepared paper and poised a ballpoint over its surface as Illlya Kuryakin threw a switch and studied the needles trembling across the dials in the suitcase. In the dim lighting of the baggage compartment his bland face, normally so placid, appeared strained and anxious.

"
First reading," the clipped voice on the intercom was saying: "Distance seventeen thousand five hundred; glide angle five per cent; height five thousand and forty.
"

"Seventeen thousand five hundred; five per cent; five thousand and forty," Solo repeated, writing the figures on the chart as Illya bent over the dials.

"Check," the Russian called. "One seven five double-o; five; five-o four-o."

Solo wrote the second set of figures below the first.

"
Second reading: fourteen six fifty; five per cent; four thousand six hundred.
"

Solo repeated the figures, wrote them down and looked across at Illya.

"Check," Kuryakin called again. "One four six five-o; five; four six double-o."

"
Third reading: twelve thousand; eleven per cent; four thousand and fifty.
"

"Check. One two o double-o; eleven; four-o five-o..."

Through the small double window on the port side of the baggage compartment, isolated lights spangled the dark bulk of the Alpine foothills massing against the sky to the north. Something on one of the luggage racks squeaked protestingly as the Trident's angle of descent steepened. Over the clamor of the engines, now altering in pitch, a faint rumble followed by two distant thumps marked the lowering of the wheels.

"...
Fifth reading: six thousand and twenty; fifteen per cent; one thousand six hundred.
"

"Check."

The lights of the coastal strip streamed past the port window, long chains of street lamps, illuminated hotels and automobile headlights whirling past them into the darkness as the great plane forged inexorably onwards towards the invisible runway. Through the starboard porthole, a lighthouse far out to sea winked twice against the dark.

"
Sixth reading: three thousand two hundred; eleven point five per cent; eight hundred and fifty.
"

"Check. Three two double-o; eleven point five—
No!
Wait, wait...the altitude reading's different! Napoleon—look!"

Solo was beside the dials in a flash. The needle of the height indicator was sinking steadily from 830 to 820.