The Veteran

by Frederick Forsyth

  He noticed that the hippie four rows ahead and across the aisle was also awake. He saw the man check his watch and begin to ease himself out of his blanket. Then the man stood up.

  He glanced round as if to see if anyone was watching, then moved up the aisle towards the bulkhead. There was a curtain here, but it was only half-drawn and a shaft of light spilled out of the galley area, illuminating a patch of carpet and the two lavatory doors. The hippie reached the doors, glanced at each, but made no attempt to test them. No doubt both were occupied, though Higgins had seen no-one else move. The hippie leaned against one of the doors and waited.

  Thirty seconds later he was joined by another man. Higgins was intrigued. The other man was quite different. He had a casual elegance and the appearance of wealth. He came from somewhere up front, Club or even First. But why?

  In the light from the galley it was clear he wore the trousers of a cream suit, a silk shirt and a loosened tie, also of silk. His appearance reeked of First Class. Had he come this far back to relieve himself?

  Then they began to talk: Mr Elegant and the hippie. It was low, earnest talk. Mainly the man from the front talked, leaning towards the hippie, who nodded several times in understanding. The body language said that the elegant man was giving a series of instructions and the hippie was agreeing to do what he was told.

  John Higgins was the sort who kept an eye on neighbours and he was intrigued. If Mr Elegant wanted to go to the loo, there were five or six in First and Club. They could not all be occupied at this godforsaken hour. No, they had agreed to rendezvous at this point and at this time. Their conversation was no idle chit-chat, as of two men who chance to meet in a queue.

  They parted. The man in the silk suit disappeared from view, heading back towards the front end. The hippie, without attempting to enter either of the lavatories, returned to his seat. John Higgins’s mind was in a turmoil. He knew that he had witnessed something odd and yet significant but he could not work out what it was. He shut his eyes and feigned sleep as the hippie glanced round in the gloom to see if he had been watched.

  Ten minutes later John Higgins believed he had his answer. Those two men had met by arrangement, a foreplanned rendezvous. But how had they agreed it? He was certain no elegant businessman in a cream silk suit had been in the Economy departure lounge. He would have stood out. Since boarding and seating, the hippie had not moved. He might have received a written note by the hand of a stewardess, but Higgins had never seen it happen, so that proved nothing.

  But if not that, then there was only one explanation. The rendezvous at the point where Economy met Club, and at that precise moment of the night, could only have been agreed back in Thailand. But why? To discuss something? To exchange a progress report? For the elegant man to issue last-minute instructions? Was the hippie the businessman’s PA? Surely not. Dressed like that? They were chalk and cheese. Higgins began to worry. More, he began to suspect.

  It was eleven at night in London when the two covert talkers parted company. Bill Butler glanced at his sleeping wife, sighed and put out the light. His alarm was set for four thirty. Time enough; at that hour he could be washed, dressed, in his car and at Heathrow by five fifteen, a full hour before touchdown. After that it would be pot luck.

  It had been a long day. When was it not? He was tired but still he could not sleep. His mind raced, and still the question was always the same. Was there anything else he could do?

  It was a tip from one of his colleagues across the water in the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the formidable DEA, that had started the hunt.

  Ninety per cent of the heroin consumed by addicts in the British Isles, and indeed most of Western Europe, was Turkish and therefore brown. It was a trade controlled with ruthless cunning by the Turkish mafia, among the most violent on the planet but extremely low-profile and unknown to most of the British public.

  Their product came from the poppies of Anatolia: it looked like demerara sugar and it was mostly smoked or inhaled as fumes from a burning pinch on a tinfoil sheet held above a candle. The British addicts were not great injecters; the Americans were.

  The Golden Triangle and hence the Far Eastern traffic did not produce this Turkish dope; it turned out Thailand White, like baking powder to look at, and usually ‘cut’ or mixed with similar white powder to dilute the quantity by twenty to one. This was what the Americans wanted.

  So if a British gang could get hold of it on a regular basis and in reasonable quantities, the Cosa Nostra would be interested. Not to buy but to swap. The finest Colombian cocaine would exchange at three to one: six kilograms of coke against two of Thai White.

  The DEA tip had come out of their Miami office. One of their underworld sources reported that three times in the last six months the Trafficante Family had sent a carrier or ‘mule’ over to Britain with six keys of Colombian pure and he had come back with two keys of Thai White.

  Not enormous but steady, and each trip worth £200,000 to the organizer at the British end. The quantities suggested to Bill Butler something other than ship or truck. Air. Passenger baggage. He tossed and turned and tried to grab four hours’ sleep.

  John Higgins could not sleep either. He had heard vaguely of that other, seamier side of the holiday paradise. He recalled reading an article about a mysterious place called the Golden Triangle: hillside after hillside growing Papaver somniferum,the opium poppy. The article had mentioned refining laboratories deep in the jungle along the border, impenetrable to the Thai army, where the opium toffee was reduced to base morphine and thence down again to powdery white heroin.

  The passengers slept but John Higgins tossed in a welter of indecision. There could be several innocent explanations for that extraordinary meeting by the lavatory doors; his problem was that he could not think of one.

  The little white plane on the screen was jerking its way into Anatolia, eastern Turkey, when John Higgins silently unbuckled himself, stood up and withdrew his attaché case from the rack above his head. No-one stirred, not even the hippie.

  Seated again, he scoured his case for a plain sheet of white paper and a pen. The latter was easy; then he found four sheets of headed paper, purloined from his room at the Pansea Hotel. Carefully he tore off the sections with the Pansea logo and address, creating the plain paper he needed. Using his case as a writing desk, he began to pen a letter, writing in block capitals. It took him half an hour.

  When he was done, the little white plane was edging over Ankara. He folded the sheets into the UNICEF charity envelope provided by BA and scrawled in heavy letters across the front: FOR THE CAPTAIN. URGENT.

  He stood up, walked quietly to the curtains by the lavatory doors and had a peek into the galley. A young male steward had his back to him, preparing a breakfast tray for later. Higgins withdrew, unseen. A buzzer sounded. He heard the steward leave the galley and head forward. With the space empty, Higgins slipped through the curtain, placed the envelope upright between two coffee cups on the food-preparation area, and went back to his seat.

  It was another half-hour before the steward noticed it as he made up more breakfast trays. He thought at first it was a donation to UNICEF, then spotted the writing, frowned, thought it over and finally went forward to find the Cabin Service Director.

  ‘It was propped between two coffee cups, Harry. I thought I should bring it to you rather than go to the flight deck.’

  Harry Palfrey twinkled benignly.

  ‘Quite right, Simon. Well done. Probably a crank. Leave it to me. Now, the breakfast trays . . .’

  He watched the young man walk away, noting the tight round buttocks beneath the uniform trousers. He had worked with a lot of stewards, bedded more than his share, but this one was drop-dead gorgeous. Perhaps at Heathrow . . . He looked at the envelope, frowned, thought of opening it but finally headed up the stairs and tapped on the door of the flight deck.

  It was just a formality. The CSD can enter the flight deck at will. He walked straight in. The relief captain
was in the left-hand seat, staring ahead at the lights of an upcoming coast. There was no sign of Captain Fallon. The CSD tapped on the door of the bunk room. This time he did wait.

  Adrian Fallon opened up thirty seconds later and ran his fingers through greying hair.

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Something a bit odd, skipper. Someone left this propped between two coffee cups in the midsection galley. Never showed himself. Anonymous, I suspect.’

  He held out the envelope.

  Adrian Fallon’s stomach turned over. In thirty years with the company he had never had a hijack and never a bomb-scare, but he knew several colleagues who had. It was the abiding nightmare. Now it looked as if he had one or the other. He tore open the envelope and, perched on the edge of the bunk, read it. The note began:

  ‘Captain, I regret that I am unable to sign this, but I absolutely do not want to get involved. Nevertheless, I hope I am a dutiful citizen and feel I should let you know what I have observed. Two of your passengers have been behaving extremely strangely and in a manner that defies logical explanation.’

  The letter went on to describe in detail what the observer had seen and why it had seemed so odd as to rank as very suspicious. It ended:

  ‘The two passengers concerned are a man who looks like a hippie: scruffy, disreputable, the sort probably no stranger to what are called exotic substances; he is seated in 30 C. The other I cannot place but he certainly came from First or Club Class.’

  There was a description of the elegant man and finally the words:

  ‘I hope I am not causing trouble, but if these two men are colluding with each other over some matter, it could be a matter about which the authorities would wish to be informed.’

  Pompous ass, thought Fallon. What authorities, if not Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, and spying on his own passengers was something that stuck in his craw. He passed the letter to Harry Palfrey. The CSD read it and pursed his lips.

  ‘Midnight assignation?’ he suggested.

  Fallon knew about Harry Palfrey, who knew he knew, so the captain chose his words.

  ‘Nothing to indicate they fancied each other. And anyway, where could they have met before, if not Bangkok? So why not make a rendezvous in Heathrow? Why outside a loo door which they did not attempt to enter? Blast and damn. Harry, get me the passenger list, would you?’

  While the CSD went on his errand, Fallon combed his hair, straightened his shirt and asked the relief captain, ‘Current position?’

  ‘Greek coast coming up. Something amiss, Adrian?’

  ‘Hopefully not.’

  Palfrey came back with the list. Seat 30 C was down to one Kevin Donovan.

  ‘What about the other man? The elegant one?’

  ‘I think I’ve seen him,’ said Palfrey. ‘First Class, seat 2 K.’ He riffled through the passenger list. ‘Down as Mr Hugo Seymour.’

  ‘Let’s confirm it before we jump anywhere,’ said the captain. ‘Slip down quietly and patrol both First and Club. Look for cream silk trousers coming out from under the blankets. Check in the wardrobes for a cream silk jacket to make up a suit.’

  Palfrey nodded and padded downstairs. Fallon rang for a strong black coffee and checked the flight details.

  The Flight Management System into which the route had been loaded before take-off nine hours earlier had ensured that Speedbird One Zero was right on track and schedule, passing over Greece four hours from touchdown. It was 2.20 a.m. London time and 3.20 a.m. Greek time and still pitch-black outside. There was broken cloud far below, showing the occasional twinkle of lights, and the stars were bright above.

  AdrianFallon was no more civically minded than the next man, and certainly less than the anonymous prat he was carrying in Economy, but he had a quandary. Nothing in the note indicated his command was in danger, and that being so his first reaction was to ignore it.

  The trouble was, the British Airline Pilots’ Association, BALPA, had a security committee and he was its vice-chairman. If anything was discovered at Heathrow, if either passenger Seymour or Donovan fell foul of the police or Customs for committing a pretty substantial offence, and word leaked out that he had been specifically warned about both passengers and had done nothing, the explanations would be difficult. A rock and a hard place. As Greece gave way to the Balkans he made a decision. Harry Palfrey had seen the note, not to mention the ‘dutiful citizen’ who had written it, and if anything blew up at Heathrow, who would stay silent to protect his rear end? So, better safe than sorry. He decided to transmit a brief non-panic forewarning, not to Customs and Excise but just to his own company duty officer yawning through the night shift at Heathrow.

  To broadcast on the open channel would be to tell half the pilots heading towards Heathrow and there would be a score or more at that very moment, so he might as well take an ad in The Times. But BA airliners carry a gizmo called ACARS.

  The Aircraft Communications, Addressing and Reporting System would enable him to send a message to BA (Ops) at Heathrow with some confidentiality. After that it would be thankfully out of his hands.

  The CSD came back from below. It is Hugo Seymour, he said, no doubt about it. Right, said Fallon, and sent his brief message. They passed over Belgrade.

  Bill Butler never received his four thirty wake-up alarm. At ten to four the phone rang. It was his duty man at Terminal Four, Heathrow. As he listened he slipped his legs from under the duvet and came awake fast. Twenty minutes later he was in his car, driving and calculating.

  He knew all about decoys and anonymous denunciations. They were almost the oldest trick in the book. First, the anonymous phone call from a public booth somewhere in the city, denouncing someone on an incoming flight as being a carrier.

  It was impossible for Customs to ignore the call, even though they might be 90 per cent certain the described tourist was simply an innocent, spotted and chosen at the point of departure. The caller would of course be a gang member based in London.

  The described person would have to be intercepted while unnoticed in the throng the real carrier slipped past, looking innocent as the morning dew.

  But a warning from the aircraft captain? That was new. A note from one of his own passengers? Two passengers denounced as suspicious? Somewhere behind all this was the organizing brain and it was Butler’s job to pit his wits against that man and win. It could just be that this time an interfering busybody had thrown a spanner in the works.

  He parked at Terminal Four and strode into the almost empty building. It was four thirty and a dozen huge jets in the livery of British Airways, which almost monopolized the fourth terminal, were heading in from Africa, the Orient and the Americas. In two hours the place would be bedlam again.

  The six p.m. departures from New York, Washington, Boston and Miami, flying for seven hours downwind and adding five hours, would be meeting the flights from the east, flying for thirteen and subtracting seven. Within minutes, between six a.m. and six forty, the first hesitant off-boarded passengers would become a tidal wave. Ten members of his Knock team were also heading towards Terminal Four, weaving their way through the darkened lanes of the Home Counties. Butler needed to have his men at every stage of the disembarkation, immigration and customs hall process, but inconspicuously so. The last thing he wanted was a ‘bottle-out’.

  There had been such cases. The carrier, knowing exactly what his main suitcase contained, had simply lost his nerve and refused to collect his case. The carousel had gone on turning in the baggage hall and the customs officers had gone on watching, but that last single case was never claimed. How the carrier expected to face a bitter and angry gang boss was his own business and some no doubt failed to survive the experience. Butler wanted more than an abandoned suitcase. He wanted the carrier and the consignment at least.

  According to instructions from West Drayton, Speedbird One Zero was moving across the Channel towards the coast of Suffolk. Her course was to bring her north of the airport, then a long, slow curve to port would l
ine her up with the main runway, approaching from the west.

  On the flight deck Adrian Fallon was back in the left-hand seat, listening to the instructions from West Drayton, on course and on schedule. The 747 was down to 15,000 feet and Fallon could see the lights of Ipswich drifting towards them.

  One of his two First Officers brought him a message received on the ACARS. It politely asked for the mysterious letter to be available at the door as soon as it opened, in the hand of the CSD and ready for collection. Fallon grunted in annoyance, took the two sheets of folded paper from his top shirt pocket and gave them to the First Officer, with instructions for Harry Palfrey. They crossed the coast. Six-oh-five.

  In the three cabins there was that air of expectancy that always precedes a landing. Lights were long up, breakfast trays removed and stowed, video entertainment terminated. The cabin crew now had their jackets on, distributing passengers’ jackets in First and Club. Window-seat occupants peered wearily out at the chains of lights passing beneath them.

  Mr Hugo Seymour emerged from the First Class washroom, clean, shaved, combed and emitting the fragrance of an expensive Lichfield aftershave. Back in his seat he adjusted his tie, buttoned his waistcoat and accepted his cream silk jacket, folding it across his lap for later. His crocodile attaché case was between his feet.

  In Economy the Canadian hippie shifted wearily and longed for a cigarette. Being in the aisle seat he could see nothing through the portholes and did not try.

  The Higgins family four rows back was fully awake and ready for landing. Between her parents Julie was carefully telling Pooky of all the wonders she would be seeing in her new homeland. Mrs Higgins was packing the last of her paraphernalia into her carry-on bag. The ever-neat Mr Higgins had his plastic attaché case on his knees, hands folded on top. He had done his duty and felt the better for it.