The Whitehall Mandarin

by Edward Wilson

  ‘Security alert.’ Cauldwell was breathless. ‘There’s been a prison escape and the prisoners are holed up in the terminal lobby. We need to move this plane away as quickly as possible.’

  ‘What about the rest of my crew?’

  ‘There isn’t time. Let’s go.’

  The pilot turned and started walking towards the portable stairs that led to a door behind the cockpit.

  ‘Hurry up.’

  As soon as they got into the cockpit, the radio was loud with urgent calls from the control tower. Cauldwell whipped out his pistol and pushed it into the back of the pilot’s head. ‘Do exactly what I say or I’m going to blow your fucking brains out.’

  ‘Is this some sort of joke?’

  Cauldwell laughed. ‘Depends on your sense of humour. But I’m desperate. Taxi away from this terminal now and take off.’ The sirens were so near that their wail permeated the cockpit. Cauldwell’s biggest fear was that a cop might get the bright idea of shooting out the aircraft’s tyres.

  ‘It’s going to be difficult without any crew,’ said the pilot.

  Cauldwell grabbed him by the collar. ‘Get moving or you’re dead. You don’t need anyone else. I can do the navigating if you’re too stupid to follow the coast south to Miami.’

  The pilot nodded and smiled. He appeared, in his own way, as resigned to fate as Scooter. He began to flick switches and push buttons. Meanwhile the radio cackled with urgent calls from the control tower: ‘Delta Charlie Seven Zero, do you read me?’

  ‘Don’t answer,’ said Cauldwell, ‘and don’t send a Morse message by pressing the push-to-talk button either.’

  The pilot removed his left thumb from the transmit button which was attached to the control yoke.

  ‘Turn off the radio. We need to take off.’

  The pilot pulled back one of the clunky throttle levers and the outboard starboard engine of the Douglas DC-7 began to cough into life. The propeller finally began to turn slowly, like a man awakening with a bad hangover. The other three engines were woken up in turn, but these were quick and alert like young puppies eager for walkies. The pilot took his right foot off the brake pedal and controlled the rudder with his left. The plane began to taxi towards the main runway, but was tracked by a beam of searchlight.

  ‘Turn the radio back on and tell them to kill that light.’

  The pilot flicked a green switch. ‘Friendship Control, this is Delta Charlie Seven Zero. My passenger requests that you douse the searchlight – and he means business.’

  The light continued to gleam. Cauldwell whispered something in the pilot’s ear.

  ‘My passenger says that if you don’t douse that light and that if any cops get near the plane or try to shoot out the tyres he’s going to blow my fucking brains out and then he’s going to kill himself. And believe me, he means it.’

  The searchlight extinguished. The DC-7 moved into takeoff position at the end of the main runway.

  ‘So are we going to Miami?’ asked the pilot.

  ‘Head south, I’ll tell you later.’

  The pilot pulled back all four throttle levers and the engines revved to a high, deafening pitch. A minute later the lights of Maryland were diminishing into twinkling dots. Meanwhile, Cauldwell opened the navigator’s case and was looking at the aeronautical charts. He took out the three WACs – the World Aeronautical Charts – for the southern East Coast of the USA.

  ‘What do we need for landing?’

  ‘You need a Terminal Procedure Plate – we call them “flips”.’

  Cauldwell rummaged through the case and found what he wanted. ‘I’ve changed my mind. We’re not going to Miami. Head towards Columbus, Georgia.’

  ‘Can you work out a bearing? Use a set of parallel rules. They’re in the case.’

  Cauldwell found the rules and began to juggle them with the chart, which was on his knees, and the pistol.’

  ‘It would be easier if you used the chart table in the navigation cubby.’

  ‘No, thanks. I want to keep an eye on you. Why don’t you put us on automatic pilot and do it yourself?’

  ‘Wait till we get to cruising height.’

  ‘How did you learn to fly?’

  ‘In the Army Air Force during the war. I started off flying B-24 Liberators and moved on to the B-29 Stratofortress.’

  ‘Pacific or Europe?’

  ‘Both.’ Something inside the pilot seemed to wince, as if there was a sudden pain. ‘It’s a beautiful night, full moon. I hope you’re not a werewolf.’

  Cauldwell raised the pistol. ‘Pay attention to the flying.’

  ‘I used to be a werewolf, but I’m all right nooooooooow.’

  ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘No, but I wouldn’t mind a drink.’

  Cauldwell noticed there were tears running down the pilot’s cheeks. ‘Stay calm. Do as I say and you’ll be all right.’

  ‘Maybe I just don’t fucking care. Why don’t you just blow my brains out and fly the fucking plane yourself?’

  Cauldwell stared out the cockpit window at the moon-bright sky. The cold light was so clear and dazzling he had to squint. Ultimately, you could only control people if they had a fear of dying. Cauldwell wasn’t afraid of dying either, but his death would mean the end of the project. It wasn’t just about ideology. He wanted his life to be a work of art that changed things – and that self-vision was not even half-finished. This alone made him cautious – and was the only thing that gave his life meaning. Meanwhile the pilot’s tears had turned into convulsive weeping.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘My kids loved werewolf jokes. “Mommy, Mommy; what’s a werewolf? Shut up and comb your face.” But Honey didn’t think they were funny. She didn’t have a sense of humour at all – she was a greedy, deceitful bitch.’

  Cauldwell shook his head. Of all the planes in the world, he had to hijack one with a pilot going through an emotional crisis. He decided to humour him. ‘Your wife’s name was Honey? Really?’

  ‘Oddly, yes.’

  ‘I assume you’re no longer together.’

  ‘She went off with a rich bastard – a businessman in California.’

  ‘And took the kids?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The pilot wiped his tears with the back of his hand. ‘I wasn’t the world’s greatest husband – and the drink was a problem.’

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘I’m dying for one. You’ll find the liquor behind the curtain on the port side. There’s also a refrigerator with cold beer and ice cubes.’

  Cauldwell drew back a blue curtain. There were trays full of liquor miniatures, soft drinks, nuts and crisps set into a trolley. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Scotch.’

  ‘On the rocks?’

  ‘Just plain.’

  ‘Ring-a-ding okay?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Bell’s – that’s what they call it in England.’

  ‘You been there?’

  Cauldwell smiled. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I flew B-24s out of a base in Suffolk.’

  Cauldwell handed the pilot a miniature of Bell’s. He twisted the top off and downed the whisky in one.

  ‘I liked Suffolk. Quiet, soft-spoken people – and a gentle landscape. Kind of ramshackle. You’d see old men ploughing with horses.’

  Cauldwell’s memories of Suffolk were otherwise. Sex, murder, sex.

  The pilot looked at his empty miniature. ‘Where did that go?’

  ‘You want another drink?’

  ‘It would calm my nerves.’

  Cauldwell passed another whisky miniature to the pilot and opened one for himself. He wondered if he had somehow ingested the LSD that had begun the evening. Things were more than surreal, more than mad. There was something about the night that made him suspicious. It was as if events were being guided by a hidden hand.

  ‘We’re at cruising height now.’ The pilot tossed back the miniature and eased back the throttle levers. ‘You still
haven’t told me where you want to go.’

  ‘Lawson Field. It’s a military airbase in Georgia.’

  ‘I know. Lawson serves Fort Benning.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’d better put her on autopilot and plot the waypoints.’

  While the pilot plotted a course on the chart, Cauldwell scooped up a handful of miniatures from the drinks trolley. If it wasn’t LSD, it must have been the danger and adrenaline that made him reckless. The pilot looked up from the chart and sat upright.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘We’ve got company on our starboard wing.’

  Cauldwell looked out the cockpit window and saw the red navigation light of another plane and a sleek silver fuselage gleaming in the moonlight. It was so close that he could clearly make out the profile of the pilot.

  ‘It’s a US Air Force Super Sabre. I wish it wasn’t so close. A couple of months ago one of them collided with a DC-7 – which is what this girl is – and killed sixty people.’

  ‘Can you raise him on the radio?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be difficult.’ The pilot flicked a switch and the cockpit was filled with crackling static. ‘I’ll tell you a trade secret. If you ever want to talk to another pilot, simply go to 123.45 – easy to remember, one, two, three, four…’ The pilot found the air to air frequency and the static vanished. ‘What should I say?’

  Cauldwell slipped on the co-pilot’s radio headset and mike. ‘I’ll do the talking.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Cauldwell thumbed the push-to-talk. ‘Super Sabre, this is the DC-7 on your port wing. Can you hear me?’

  ‘Delta Charlie 7. This is Sierra Sierra. I read you five by.’

  ‘Talk plain English, you military asshole.’

  ‘Say again, over.’

  ‘Cut the fucking radio procedure and listen. The pilot is still alive and is my hostage. If my instructions are not followed, he is going to die – and a lot of others too.’

  ‘Can you confirm the status of the pilot?’

  Cauldwell passed the mike over.

  ‘Air Force Super Sabre. This is Captain Blanchard of Eastern Flight one zero six seven. Everything that my passenger says is correct.’

  ‘What is your date of birth and your mother’s maiden name?’

  ‘21 December 1920 – obviously the darkest day of the year and too near Christmas to get separate presents – and my mom was Marie Aubin.’

  ‘Can you spell the last name?’

  ‘Alpha, uniform, bravo, india, november.’

  ‘I’ve copied that and will be listening on this frequency.’

  Cauldwell turned to Blanchard; the pilot now had a name. ‘Let me handle this.’ He spoke into his mike. ‘Listen up, Super Sabre, and report this to your honchos. If I think there is any risk of an assault on this plane I will immediately kill Captain Blanchard and as many of the attackers as possible before killing myself. On the other hand, if my instructions are followed, no one will be hurt.’ Cauldwell removed his thumb from the transmit button. ‘Turn the radio off.’

  Blanchard flicked a switch and downed another whisky.

  ‘Can you land this thing when you’re drunk?’

  ‘Better than when I’m sober. I’m hungry. Are you?’

  No, I dined late.’

  ‘If you look in the refrigerator, you’ll find some chicken salad sandwiches with mayonnaise. Could you pass me one?’

  ‘I’m not your fucking servant, Blanchard.’

  ‘Yeah, but we’re in this together. If those shitheads – like the jet jock in that Super Sabre – don’t do what you say, we’re both going to die.’

  ‘How long is it to Lawson Field?’

  ‘About two hours.’

  Cauldwell went to the refrigerator, but kept his pistol pointed. He paused for a few seconds and stared at the back of Blanchard’s head. He wondered if it might be a good idea to kill Blanchard and try to land the plane himself somewhere safe. It couldn’t be that difficult. Cauldwell had already figured out which controls governed which functions. And the instruments – altimeter, attitude indicator and vertical speed – were pretty straightforward too. It might be a rough landing, but Cauldwell was sure he could do it. He lifted the pistol and aimed it at the back of the pilot’s head. And then he remembered the werewolf jokes Blanchard used to tell his kids. He hated the sentimentality. By the standards of the US military industrial complex, Blanchard was a damaged human resource. That’s probably why they threw him out of the Air Force and he ended up being a glorified bus driver.

  ‘If I don’t have to kill you,’ said Cauldwell slowly, ‘what are you going to do with the rest of your life?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I expect it will start with one fucking long FBI investigation.’

  ‘What are you going to tell them?’

  Blanchard laughed. ‘Anything you fucking want me to tell them.’

  Cauldwell suddenly had an idea and lowered the gun. ‘Who knows? You might have your uses.’ He handed a mayonnaise chicken sandwich to Blanchard. Meanwhile, the Super Sabre kept sentinel.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a beer with this sandwich.’

  ‘Don’t push it, Blanchard.’

  ‘A can of Pabst Blue Ribbon would be fine.’

  Cauldwell found a tin opener, punched two holes in the Pabst can and handed it to Blanchard.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Have you ever flown a plane when you were drunk before?’

  ‘Only in the Pacific towards the end of the war. The first time was the second big firebomb raid on Tokyo. Can you imagine five hundred Superfortresses packed with incendiaries? LeMay ordered us to fly low, 5,000 feet, to cause the maximum damage. You could smell the burning flesh from the cockpit. They say we killed a hundred thousand, but it must have been more.’

  Cauldwell opened himself a beer. He’d commanded a PT boat in the Pacific in the same squadron as Jack Kennedy. He’d liked the excitement – and had got a medal for rescuing downed airmen. ‘Did you think it was all necessary?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I suspect the atom bombs were pointless; the poor bastards were already beaten. No air force, no navy. They were gonna starve to death if the war went on.’

  ‘Do you know any of the guys who flew the A planes?’

  Blanchard laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘Shit, I was one of them.’

  ‘Is this the booze talking? Are you making it up?’

  ‘Well, I exaggerate. I didn’t fly the plane that dropped the fucking thing. I was flying Necessary Evil. Our job was to take photos of the A blast. Our call sign was Dimples Nine One.’ Blanchard shook his head slowly. ‘I can’t understand why we had all these stupid joke names – and naked ladies and cartoons painted on the fuselages. It wasn’t a fucking joke. Can you pass me another scotch?’

  Cauldwell handed him another and opened himself one too. ‘Did you see the bomb go off?’

  ‘No one saw the bomb go off – not the actual fireball. We had to wear black Polaroid goggles – and even with them, I was blinded. And when the shock wave hit us, it was like exploding flak. I thought we were done for.’ Blanchard gave a nervous laugh. ‘The only thing we saw afterwards was a massive mushroom cloud. You can’t imagine how huge the thing was. So unreal. It towered above our plane like a giant genie. It was eight miles high and we could still see it when we were 300 miles away.’

  Cauldwell knew that dropping As on Japan was America’s darkest moment. It had led to the suicide of a diplomat friend.

  The pilot tipped back his head and emptied the rest of the scotch down his throat. ‘These tiny bottles are stupid.’

  ‘Have you got a drink problem?’

  ‘My wife thought so. And, to be fair to Honey, she wasn’t always wrong about me. I suppose I really started knocking the stuff back just after the war. It wasn’t the war that drove me to drink; it was the assholes in charge.’

  ‘Who was the biggest asshole?’

  ‘There were a lot to choose from. Curtis LeM
ay, Tom Power – but Paul Tibbets probably takes the cake.’

  Cauldwell stared into the starry night. Tibbets had been the pilot of Enola Gay, the plane that had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. ‘Why was Tibbets an asshole?’

  ‘Because of his arrogant attitude – and his total lack of any remorse or realisation.’

  ‘How well did you know him?’

  ‘Well enough. We were based on Tinian Island. A crappy place, just south of Saipan – all air strips and barracks. They had built special pits for the As on the end of the North Field. Two days before Hiroshima, I remember Tibbets staring into the pit with his hands on his hips. I walked up to him and said, “You looking for your Little Boy” – that was the code name for the bomb. Tibbets didn’t answer. Then I said, “Why did you name it that, Paul?”’ Blanchard stopped talking and stared into the night.

  ‘What did Tibbets answer?’

  ‘He didn’t say a thing. He just turned and walked away as if I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the worst thing you can do to an asshole is show them that they are an asshole. Tibbets named the plane after his mother, Enola Gay, when the bomb it was carrying, a bomb that was going to kill a hundred thousand civilians, was codenamed Little Boy. If Tibbets had admitted the names were a sick Freudian joke, he wouldn’t have been an asshole, just an evil bastard.’

  Cauldwell looked out the window at the Super Sabre, a supersonic phallus that was only two wing lengths away. ‘How do you know about Freud?’

  ‘My ex-wife made me go to a shrink as a condition of our staying together. We were living in LA at the time and there certainly wasn’t any shortage of shrinks. I hated California – too much sunshine and too many rich guys fucking my wife. I think my shrink might have fucked her too.’

  ‘Are you bitter?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘The drink helps.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The problem with America, thought Cauldwell, was its unreality. But you had to remember that it was all real, that you had really hijacked an airliner with an alcoholic pilot who had witnessed Hiroshima – and undergone psychoanalysis to save a failed marriage. To pinch himself, and make sure he wasn’t hallucinating, Cauldwell looked at Blanchard and asked, ‘Did you say your shrink was a Freudian?’