Touchfeather

by Jimmy Sangster

  I was damn sure Mr. Blaser wouldn’t approve, but Mr. Blaser was seven thousand miles away and I could hardly check with him. Anyway, he usually wrapped up a case by judging ends, not means, and without the means I hoped to use, there just wasn’t going to be any end for him to judge. Because, whichever way you sliced it, I had absolutely nothing on Roger Gerastan except what I had guessed. Proof was what Mr. Blaser had asked for, and proof I just didn’t have. I suppose Bill was something of a find, but he was about to disappear to the Eastern Mediterranean, there to lie low and continue the good work.

  If I had been able to report my theories to Mr. Blaser right now and assuming he went along, he would have had only one course open to him; he’d have had to summon his hatchet men and have them arrange an accident for Mr. Gerastan. Apart from the fact that this would be very difficult to do, considering how well he guarded himself, there would be a fuss kicked up that would make the Bay of Pigs look like a PTA meeting. No, Katy was in the best position to carry things through to their conclusion—the only position in fact.

  It was a long, hot morning. By eight-thirty I was praying for a return of the damp and cold of the night. In these parts, once the sun eases up over the horizon, it doesn’t hang about; it climbs fast and hot, until fifteen minutes after it first appears it seems to be hanging dead overhead. I’d had nothing to drink since God knows when, and walking showed me that my high-style Western boots weren’t as tailor-made for me as I had thought. I also began to appreciate the full benefits of air travel; I’d been in the air for about ten minutes last night, and I suppose I’d covered just about twenty miles. It hadn’t seemed very far then, but the thought of walking it now would have made me go cold if I hadn’t been so hot.

  Added to the vagaries of climate and feet, I had to make sure I wasn’t spotted by anyone from Santhoma. The helicopter knew exactly where I had crashed, so the search parties used that as their starting point. They headed straight there from Santhoma in their jeeps, and then they fanned out and started to scour every inch of desert between the wreck and Los Angeles. But Katy was travelling the opposite way, so apart from making sure they didn’t spot me on the way to their rendezvous, it wasn’t too much of a problem. Two choppers had arrived back on the scene twenty minutes after the first one had located the wreckage. By then I was three-quarters of a mile away, and only had the barest glimpse of this operation as I crested a small rise. Not long afterwards I saw the two choppers suddenly rise from behind the low hills and start to fan out on a search pattern moving in the opposite direction to the one I was travelling.

  I travelled a path about a mile East of the trail between the wreckage and Santhoma and, aside from the inconvenience of having to hit the dirt each time I saw an approaching cloud of dust, it served as a useful guideline for me to follow. I am notoriously lacking in sense of direction, and without this aid, it is quite possible I would have walked in a complete circle. Fortunately, dressing hoods up as cowboys doesn’t make them anything more than hoods dressed up as cowboys; a real cowboy would have been able to follow my trail blindfolded, even though the desert ground was nearly rock-hard. But there was nobody on Santhoma who had been born further West than Chicago, except the Mexicans, and they were merely house servants and had nothing to do with the serious business of manhunts.

  Like I said, it was a long, hot day, the longest and hottest and dryest and hungriest twelve hours that I have ever experienced. I took a one-hour rest about halfway through the day and very nearly didn’t start out again. I made the mistake of taking my boots off and, when the time came for putting them on again, I thought for a couple of minutes I wasn’t going to make it. Fortunately I had a hanky to stick on top of my head, but the sun played merry hell with any part of me it could find, which included my face. And, of course, I thought of water: running water, static water, tap water, spring water and rainwater; I thought about swimming pools and lakes, of streams and rivers; I thought about the six wells at Santhoma, and the way hundreds of sprinklers threw the precious stuff around, drawing it out of the earth simply to put it back again so that Roger Gerastan could have a green lawn and a couple of trees. I didn’t know that there were so many combinations and permutations all to do with water, and a couple of hours after my rest I became a little light-headed, beginning to think I was paddling in water, then wading and finally even swimming a couple of strokes. Then I imagined that there was a cloudburst and stood like an idiot, with my mouth open, looking up at the sun, trying to catch the drops as they fell.

  I’d probably still be standing there now if the sound of an aircraft hadn’t pulled me round. I flopped to the ground and lay there, twisted round so that I could see the source of the sound. I spotted it about a thousand feet up, still making height. This put the airfield closer than I had imagined, which was encouraging. It was climbing too fast and too high to be a search plane, but I recognised it nevertheless as one of the aircraft that had been parked beneath the wings of the DC-8. I wondered briefly who was flying out, and hoped that it wasn’t Gerastan. The only occupant of Santhoma I would have liked to have seen on the plane was Marvin. He was a poor, weak-minded fairy, but it wasn’t really his fault and I didn’t suppose he had much of an inkling as to what his lover boy was up to. If he wasn’t in that plane, then he would be mixed up with the nastiness that was going to follow, and while I didn’t want that to happen, it certainly wasn’t going to make any difference to the way I played it. I watched the plane almost out of sight, glad of an extra excuse to take a rest; then I pulled myself together, hauled myself to my aching feet once more and plodded on.

  A couple of hours later the sun seemed to get bored with the whole bit and decided to turn it in. It had raced to its zenith almost as soon as it had peered over the low hills at dawn; now it started to dive for the opposite horizon as though it were fed up with trying to fry Touchfeather and couldn’t wait to get to bed. It was standing balanced on top of a distant hill, taking one last look round, when I realised that I had arrived. I had crested a small rise, and three low hills beyond where I was standing I caught a brief glimpse of the main house, surrounded by its wall and greenery. The walls were bathed in red for a moment from the reflected sun, and then the whole thing disappeared like a mirage as I moved down the opposite side of the rise. At the same time the sun packed up, and within fifteen minutes it was totally dark.

  I wasn’t keen on the house. What I intended had to be done at the airfield. So, having fixed my bearings during that momentary glimpse of Santhoma, I changed direction. Now that the sun had gone down, the aches and pains of the day became less of a problem. I was still desperately thirsty, but it wasn’t torture any longer, and even my feet didn’t hurt as much. I located the road between house and airfield and, keeping to the edge so that I could duck if there were any vehicles about, I reached the point where Harry had dropped me off the night before.

  I moved round the edge of the hill and started to survey the general situation. There was no sign of Bud, nor was the small aircraft back yet. But the DC-8 was receiving attention. It had been towed across the apron to a refuelling point, and I could see one of the mechanics scrambling about on the starboard wing, dragging a thick fuel line which led back into an underground tank. I also noticed for the first time that the aircraft carried long-range fuel tanks, which was unusual on an aircraft the size of a DC-8. The mechanic was smoking, another sure sign that Bud wasn’t around.

  If they were making ready the big one, it supposed that Gerastan hadn’t yet left, but he sure as hell was going to have to pretty soon. When the search parties returned without Touchfeather, he was going to be a worried man. He wasn’t going to be able to appear anywhere until he was sure I was out of the way. I wished I had been around to see his face when the chopper pilot reported me missing. He would picture me at the nearest telephone, calling New York and London, and while he didn’t know I had guessed what he was up to, he did know that I could tie him in with Bill and the Eunuch. Explaining that away could
keep him busy for a long time. The only thing he could do was to disappear for a time and hope that his organisation could find Touchfeather before Touchfeather found a telephone. And once he was safely away someplace with Bill and the Eunuch he could only play it one way. He would have to pitch Bill and the Eunuch to the wolves: have them killed and then turn up and say that he had just discovered their duplicity. He would apologise all round and, after a suitable lapse of time, he’d find someone else to do his dirty work. So whichever way it came out, find Touchfeather or don’t, he would be all right in the long run. The second alternative would just prove a little more inconvenient.

  I was still sitting there working out the finer points of how I was going to handle it when the landing lights suddenly went on, cutting a great swathe across the desert air strip. A moment later I heard the sound of the approaching aircraft and, sixty seconds later, the small plane I had seen earlier was taxiing onto the apron. It stopped and Bud got out. He was followed by two men I hadn’t seen before and who I could only assume were the crew for the DC-8. Two men can fly a DC-8, especially if they are not governed by the rules of IATA which stipulate a minimum crew for airline purposes. It’s better with four, of course, but, if the Boss is in a hurry, no one is going to hang around waiting to pick up extra personnel. Still, two suited my plans about twice as well as four would have done, and I was eminently satisfied.

  As they climbed down from the small plane, they said something to Bud and then both of them headed towards the DC-8, while the mechanic on the wing doused his cigarette quickly. Bud moved over to the airport office, probably to call up to the house. If Gerastan was going off somewhere quiet, it was a fair bet that he would be making for his place in the Eastern Mediterranean—the one Bill had mentioned. If it was quiet and discreet enough to keep Bill hidden from the eyes of the world, it was going to be ideal for Gerastan as well. There weren’t all that many places in the Eastern Med where one could land a DC-8, but Gerastan had already shown how good his relations with Cairo were, and you can’t get much further East than that. If he managed to get there, he’d be as safe as if he’d gone to the moon.

  I didn’t know how many people he expected to take aboard his DC-8; it’s a big aeroplane and there’s room aplenty. But however many passengers Gerastan reckoned on, he was going to be carrying one extra—to wit, Katy.

  EIGHTEEN

  What I had been through before was child’s play compared to what was to come next. Somehow I had got to get aboard the DC-8.I could hardly go up to Bud and ask for a boarding card, and there was only one gangway in position, at the entrance that is normally used by the first-class passengers, the one up front. One of the crewmen had used it and I could just see his head at the flight-deck window as he made some of his pre-flight checks. The other crewman was standing with the refuelling mechanic, and at that moment the second mechanic came down the gangway and moved towards the hut where Bud had gone. Five men in all, and more to come at any moment. Whatever I was going to do had to be now, before the passengers came down from the big house. A diversion was needed, but a natural diversion, not one that could only be created by a body bent on mischief.

  I skirted round the back of the hangar, looking for a service door. I found one and let myself in. It was large and empty. The two big operational doors at the front were open and I could see the DC-8 on the apron beyond. Along the left wall was a workbench, loaded with enough paraphernalia to keep BOAC in the air; there was also an overhead chain tackle for lifting out engines, a couple of forklift trucks parked against the far wall and a few packing cases distributed indiscriminately around the place. But all this was lost to me at first because just inside the door, fixed to the wall, was a handbasin and, glory be, a tap. So as not to make any noise, I contorted myself and managed to twist my head around so that I could clamp my mouth completely over the end of the tap before turning it on ever so gently. The water was ice-cold and tasted to me like a particularly good year’s Dom Perignon. I wanted to bathe my sunburned face, but I was too frightened of making a splash, so I contented myself by allowing just a little water to trickle down my chin; it felt like cold velvet. Then I turned off the tap, and not until I was sure there were no drips hanging around did I remove my mouth. I straightened up, breathed very deeply for a couple of moments to try to slow down my pulse rate, belched once and then moved round to see what was happening outside.

  I could still see out to the apron, secure in the darkness of the back of the hangar. The crewman now said something to the refuelling mechanic and then headed back towards the gangway. Still five men: two in the aircraft, two in the office and one on the apron. Perhaps the crewmen hadn’t been told anything about me, but I couldn’t chance it; even if they hadn’t, they weren’t going to assume that I was a houseguest looking the way that I did. I couldn’t see my face, but I could feel that it was a bright, peeling red and my lips were cracked; my clothes were scuffed to hell and gone. I’d been in a couple of fights, an air crash and a twenty-mile trek. And my hair was a mess. So I was going to have to get everyone in one place, concentrating on one thing, all at the same time. There didn’t seem to be anything else for it. I set fire to the hangar.

  A small tin of turpentine, a small pile of rags, and all I needed was a match. Fortunately, America is a country that abounds in matches. Everyone has personalised books of matches and restaurants can’t give them away fast enough. There were a dozen half used books of matches strewn along the workbench, from the Whisky a Go Go and Pink Pussycat in Los Angeles to ‘Hank loves Dolly’. I struck one, threw it into my pile of turpentine-soaked rags beneath the bench and ran. I made for the side of the main doors where I crouched behind two disembowelled packing cases. I could just see through a crack in the wood out onto the apron. Everyone must have been awfully busy out there because the hangar wall was blazing merrily before anyone noticed it.

  The mechanic on the apron was the first. He yelled at the top of his voice and headed into the hangar at a gallop. He was the one with the careless cigarette and he probably thought the whole thing was his fault. The two crewmen were next, hurrying down the gangway. By the time they reached the fire the mechanic was already busy with an extinguisher. I prayed that he wouldn’t get it out before Bud and the other mechanic arrived. He didn’t, and a few seconds later Bud and companion, each carrying an extinguisher, dashed past my hiding place. There they were, five men, all in the same place at the same time, and all busy. Now or never, Katy. Ten seconds later I was on board the DC-8.

  I’d flown DC-8s for three different airlines and, apart from the décor, they’re all built the same way. As you come in through the front hatch, the door to the flight deck is on the left, and on the right is a small bar-lounge area, with a circular seat around a low table. Opposite this is the first-class galley and two toilets; beyond lies the passenger compartment. I’d already decided that I was going to hide in one of the toilets, so I felt like a right twit when I stepped on board and found there weren’t any. Neither was there a galley, nor a bar area. I had stepped straight into a living room right out of House & Garden. Not content with spending a million odd pounds on the aircraft, Gerastan had had the interior torn out and redesigned. What can be cramped for one hundred and forty people leaves an awful lot of room for one. The place I found myself in was forty feet long and as wide as the aircraft. It was furnished expensively, but with a casual, informal touch so that I wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen an open fire burning. But I wasn’t here to admire the furnishings. I was here to hide.

  I couldn’t see anywhere in this section, and I didn’t want to risk examining the rear. If I went through there and couldn’t find a handy place, I might not have time to get back. So I turned the only way I could, sharp left onto the flight deck. And I struck lucky. There was a toilet just inside the door. I suppose Gerastan didn’t approve of the hired help using the same toilet as he and his guests, so he gave them one of their own. Hoping the crew were efficient enough to know about the
‘not while standing at the station’ bit, I went in and sat down. I couldn’t lock the door in case they noticed the ‘engaged’ notice on the other side of the door, so I crossed my fingers, checked the gun which I had hung on to during all my trials and tribulations and, feeling unduly vulnerable, I prepared to wait it out.

  It was half an hour before the engines were started. During that time I sweated a great deal at what was taking place outside the door. Immediately after I had settled down, all I could hear was the crackle of the fire from outside and the shouts of the men who were fighting it. Ten minutes later there was no more crackling, and five minutes after that the two crewmen came back on board. Separated from them only by a thin partition, I didn’t even have to strain my ears to hear what was going on. The Captain was doing most of the talking; the other one was just replying in monosyllabic grunts. And the Captain was in a foul mood. One, he hadn’t filed a flight plan, and didn’t the old man know it was illegal to take off without filing a flight plan? Two, he couldn’t have filed a flight plan anyway, because nobody had had the courtesy to let him know where he was supposed to be going. Once he got off the ground he didn’t know whether he was supposed to turn left or right. Three, he didn’t approve of complicated pieces of aeroplane like DC-8s being kept on private airfields with a small staff, especially if he was going to fly them. Four, he was a pilot, not a bloody fireman. And five, he’d been given twenty minutes’ notice for this flight and couldn’t even tell his girlfriend when he’d be back, let alone his wife.

  Having got all that off his chest, he started his pre-flight check. Five minutes after that the other crewmen pointed out that there were headlights on the roadway from the house, and the Captain, still grumbling, went to meet the man who paid his wages. A few minutes later I heard everybody come aboard. Gerastan had told the Captain where they were going, and now he was even more bad-tempered.