Round the Bend (12 page)

He arrived at the Nederland Hotel the day before I did. When I found him lying on his bed after lunch, he was thinking over his interview in hospital that morning.

By the time he had told me all this it was three o’clock, and time for me to go to the Arabia-Sumatran office to find out about my return load for the Airtruck. They knew all about me. They had found a load of radio apparatus that had to get back to Holland in quick time for a rebuild; I was to take this back as far as Bahrein and arrangements would be made to get it on to Holland from there. It would be ready for loading into the Airtruck next morning.

I went back to the Nederland Hotel. Connie was in the room still, lying on his bed. I had been thinking as I walked back through the palm-lined streets by the canal. “Look, Connie,” I said. “I’ve got a proposition to put to you. Let’s go downstairs and have a drink, out in the cool.” The sun was going down, and it was getting cooler out in the open than it was in the bedroom.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve got one for you.”

He put his shirt and trousers on, and came downstairs with me to the open piazza in front of the hotel, with all the little
tables under sunshades. He wore a pair of khaki drill trousers and a white shirt open at the neck, and sandals. As we turned the corner of the stair I saw his face in profile, lean, Eastern, and ascetic, and I knew what he reminded me of. He looked like a priest.

He wouldn’t touch anything alcoholic, so I ordered fresh lime squash for us both. “Look, Connie,” I said, “this is what I had in mind. My show at Bahrein is growing, and the ground side’s getting a bit out of hand. I’ve been looking after that myself so far, with two Asiatic A-and-C’s to help me. God knows how it’s all going on up there now. Probably not so good. Would you like to come and work for me as chief engineer? I need somebody like you.”

“I’m still working for Dwight Schafter,” he said. “I’ve got his Carrier to look after.”

“He can’t go on employing you for long,” I said. “From what you tell me he’ll get a prison sentence as soon as he comes out of hospital.”

He nodded. “Yes, he will go to prison, probably for years. But that doesn’t mean that he won’t want to employ me. He’s made enough money to employ a dozen people while he serves his sentence, and still be a wealthy man when he comes out. The Dutch can’t touch his money. That’s not here.” He paused. “If he wants me to stay on and serve his interests while he is in prison, I will do so. I would like to come and work for you in Bahrein, Tom. I could help you with your Asiatic engineers and labour. But until Dwight Schafter comes out of prison I will stay with him.”

I took a drink of my lime squash and lit a cigarette. It was no good saying that Dwight Schafter was a mercenary soldier of fortune, about to be sentenced very rightly on a criminal offence, that he had been gun-running for the money there was in it, that he richly deserved all he got. That was the Western way of looking at things, but they seem different to Asiatic eyes. Connie probably liked and respected the man, probably regarded him as one who risked his life and liberty to help millions of Asiatics in their struggle for freedom. When liberty was lost, Connie would not abandon Dwight Schafter.

I sat there smoking for a time in silence, looking out over the canal to the white buildings on the other side.

“What’s going to happen to the Carrier, Connie?” I asked at last.

“I said I had a proposition for you,” he replied. “Shall I make it now?”

I glanced at him and nodded.

“I think you should take over that Carrier and fly it to Bahrein and operate it there,” he said.

Frankly, that thought had never entered my head, although I suppose it might have done. The Carrier was a real aeroplane compared with the small stuff I was operating. I measured my resources in hundreds of pounds at that time, but the Carrier cost more than sixty thousand. It was so far beyond my capabilities that I had never bothered even to consider the economics of operating a thing like that. But now that Connie mentioned it, I knew at once that in the Persian Gulf that aeroplane would pay. It could carry a big truck. It could carry five tons of machinery. It could carry a fair-sized boat, or about ninety pilgrims at a time over Arabia to Jidda for their pilgrimage to Mecca. It was a logical extension of the business I was doing.

“I couldn’t pay for it,” I said. “I’ve not got the money. And what makes you think that Schafter would want to part with it?”

“What else can he do? If he leaves it on the field at Damrey Phong some war lord will turn up before long and take it, and probably crash it. If he has it flown down here, the Dutch will take it from him. If he has it flown back to America, his own Government may take it from him to appease the Dutch. There are not many things that he
can
do with that aeroplane, if he wants ever to see his money again. But one of the first things he must do is to find somebody now to fly it away out of this area to some other part of the world altogether, and preferably into the British Empire where the laws of property are clearly framed and easy to understand. I think if you could use it, he would charter it to you, provided you would take it to Bahrein and operate it there.”

He paused. “If you did that, I would ask Schafter if I might go with it, and work for you. I think he would agree to that, because
that aeroplane is by far the greatest of the responsibilities that I now have for him. I think that he would want me to stay with it.”

We talked this over for half an hour, and the more I thought of it the more I liked the idea. I wanted Connie to come and take over the maintenance of my little fleet, and he wouldn’t come unless I took the Carrier too. Well, I was willing enough provided that I didn’t have to pay for this large aeroplane; anybody would have been. And the way he put it, my fairy godmother was going to give it to me free.

He got up presently and hailed a rickshaw, and went off in it to the hospital to see Dwight Schafter again before the nurses packed him up for the night. I sat on in front of the hotel in the cool of the evening, smoking and resting, with the fatigue oozing out of me. I was tired. It was very, very good to have found Connie again. It was like seeing a bit of light at the end of a tunnel.

He came back presently, and found me sitting in the same place. He dropped down into the same chair beside me. “I told Dwight about you and your business at Bahrein,” he said. “I said that you would take the Carrier on charter if it was available, and I would go with it to maintain it. He will think it over during the night. He wants you to go and see him early in the morning, before you leave.”

I nodded. “You’ll come along?”

He shook his head. “It will be better if you talk your business with him alone. I am a technical man. I am not interested in money matters.”

“Okay,” I said. “One little thing, though. Did you tell him I could fly it?”

“You can fly it,” he replied.

“It’s ten times heavier than anything I’ve ever flown before, ten times,” I said. “I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding about that. What happens if I crash it?”

“You can talk about that with Schafter,” he replied. “But I know this, that you will fly it, and you will not crash it.”

I glanced at him, but he was quite serious. He spoke almost as if it was a prophecy. “Oh, you know that, do you?” I replied.
“More than I do. I’m used to flying things that I land with my arse down on the ground, not twenty feet up in the air. Still, I don’t mind having a stab at it if nobody else minds.”

“You will have no difficulty,” he said. “It is just like any other aeroplane. They are easier to fly as they get bigger, provided you are not afraid of them. And you will not be afraid.”

I grinned. “It’s a long time since I’ve been afraid of an aeroplane.”

I went to see Dwight Schafter early next morning. He was in a good ward in a normal hospital; the ward sister was a Dutchwoman, the nurses Javanese girls. The only thing that marked him as a prisoner was a sentry on the door of the ward, a Dutch soldier in American battledress, armed with a rifle. He let me pass to see his prisoner without any question, which relieved me; I had thought that I might have to get all sorts of permits.

I sat down by Schafter’s bed and told him who I was, and he came to the point at once. “Shak Lin said you were here,” he said. “He told me about you. Said you wanted to charter my Carrier.”

“I can use it,” I said. “But I can’t pay much for it. If I’m to take it to my operating base—that’s Bahrein, in the Persian Gulf—it’s going to cost me six hundred pounds in fuel and oil and landing fees to get it there, as a start. That’s got to be recovered out of profits before I can pay you anything at all for the hire.”

“Baloney,” he said. “Fuel will cost you nothing. There’s over twelve tons of hundred octane fuel in the store at Damrey Phong right now. You can fill her up before you start and take five tons with you in the cabin. That’ll get you there. If you don’t take it, someone else will. There’s oil there, too. The rest is chicken feed.”

“Maybe it’s chicken feed to you,” I said. “It’s not to me. I’ve got to fly another pilot out to Bangkok to take over the machine I’m flying now. I suppose his fare is chicken feed, too.”

“That Carrier’s worth five thousand bucks a month in charter fees,” he said.

“You’d better find someone who can pay that much, then,” I replied. “I can’t. I’m operating in a small way. You’d better offer it to Pan American.”

“All right, wise guy,” he said. “What’s your angle on it?”

We started in then, and in a quarter of an hour we had thrashed out what I still think was equitable in the circumstances. I was to take the machine to Bahrein with any fuel and spares from Damrey that I could carry in it, with Connie Shaklin as my engineer. I was to hold it insured as soon as it reached Bahrein; insurance from Damrey was hardly practical. I was to charter it at the rate of a dollar a month for three months or three hundred hours’ flying time after reaching Bahrein, whichever was the least. In that three months Schafter’s attorney in Indianapolis would make contact with me at Bahrein and I would deal with him if I wanted to buy it, or charter it further, or surrender it to him. The machine was not to be flown into Dutch or U. S. territory.

“Jesus,” he said. “I wish some guy had given me a deal like this when I was young. I wouldn’t have needed to go flying guns.”

“It’s fair enough,” I said.

“Maybe. But you’re a darned lucky guy, all the same.”

I left the hospital, and went to the Arabia-Sumatran office, and borrowed a typist, and had copies of our draft charter agreement made, and took them back to the hospital for him to sign. We talked for some time about the flying qualities of the machine; he already knew from Connie that I had no large aeroplane experience. He was more phlegmatic about that than I had thought he would be; from something he said I knew that Connie had given me a good character. “I bring her in about a hundred knots,” he said. “Hundred and ten if it’s full load or very rough. Take it easy, and you’ll find her quite all right. You’ll have Shak Lin with you as flight engineer?”

“That’s right,” I said. “He’ll be with me.”

He turned and glanced at me from the bed. “Say,” he said. “You’ve known that guy a long time, haven’t you?”

“We started off together as boys in the same air circus,” I said. “I haven’t seen him since those days.”

“Oh … Well, he’s a good engineer. And he’s one you can really trust. You see the way he’s come down here to find out what I wanted done. But—say, he’s a queer sort of a guy in other ways, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I only met him yesterday. What sort of ways?”

“He’s got some mighty strange ideas for an engineer,” said Schafter. “It’s a thing you ought to know about, since you’re taking him on. About religion, and all that.”

I nodded slowly. Connie always had been one for going to odd churches, and he had the look of a priest. It was a pity. “Does it affect his work?” I asked.

“I’ll say it does. It makes his work a whole lot better.”

I glanced at this American gun-runner in enquiry. It wasn’t quite the answer that I had expected.

“I’ve been away a lot of the time,” he said. “I don’t know all of what’s been going on at Damrey Phong. He’s got a statue of a Buddha set up in a little sort of a pagoda just by where we park the aircraft. One of these painted clay Buddhas, you know, like you see in the villages. He has a sort of a prayer meeting there each day before they start work on the machines, and after they knock off.”

I blinked at him.

“That’s right. He runs a sort of Buddhist prayer meeting, all in Chinese or Siamese or something. He’s got both the other engineers coming to it, and the local labour, and the girls—they come along, too. See them all kneeling down in front of this Buddha with flowers in their hands, saying their prayers, every morning. Then up they get, and straight off to start work on the machines. And the same thing, as soon as they knock off. Down they go on their knees before that painted image, and pray for about ten minutes. Then off they go.”

“Is that usual with ground staff in this part of the world?” I asked.

“I’ll say it’s not. I’ve never seen it done before.”

“Did Shaklin start it, then?”

“I think he did. I think he must have.”

“Did you ask him why he did it?”

“I never had much time,” he said. “I’ve always been flying. I did say something once, and all he said was something like, men worked better if they prayed.” He grinned. “Just like a preacher back in Indiana. But I will say this, those boys at
Damrey Phong did a good job for me. Most Asiatic engineers, you know—you just can’t trust a thing they do. They mean all right, but they’re not responsible. Well, these boys weren’t like that. They’d look you right in the eye and tell you when they’d done a job on the aircraft that wasn’t quite so hot. Like using copper wire for locking instead of steel because they were out of steel wire, or putting gasket cement on an old washer to make it tight because there weren’t any new ones. Things like that. They’d just come and tell you. Like as if they were as good as you, and weren’t afraid of being bawled out.” He paused. “I never knew Asiatic engineers like that before,” he said. “It’s always been the other way.” He glanced at me. “Pack of lying, crawling rats, mostly. You know.”