Airship

by McAlan, Peter

  It was Bernard.

  ‘It’s growing chilly, madame,’ he said. ‘You’d best come in.’

  She smiled. As she returned to the living-room the man closed and bolted the windows.

  ‘Was your dinner alright, madame?’ he enquired politely, as he adjusted the curtains.

  ‘Excellent, Bernard. You are lucky to have such a splendid cook as a wife.’

  ‘I am lucky to have such a splendid wife to cook for me, madame,’ Bernard replied with a ghost of a smile. He turned to leave, but Janine stayed him.

  ‘I shall be using the Mercedes tomorrow, Bernard. I want you to drive me down to Fréjus and then you can bring the Mercedes back here.’

  Bernard showed no surprise.

  ‘Very good, madame. Will you be away for some time?’

  Janine laughed, a deep throaty laugh.

  ‘For a very long time, Bernard. For ever.’

  There was comprehension in the man’s compassionate eyes.

  ‘Very well, madame,’ he said imperturbably as he left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

  *

  By seven o’clock, the scheduled time of take-off, it had grown dark and the field was lit with searchlights, bouncing their rays off the low-flying, scudding clouds. The gathering crowd waited in growing impatience, shivering with the cold wind and sudden patter of short showers. Then came the noise of the engines; one by one the great diesels were started, coughing and spluttering like ancient asthmatics, showing sparks before they began to run smoothly. Soon ail the propellers on the great ship were turning and the hull seemed to shake with the engine vibration.

  Barjonet sat in his command chair and let his eyes run over the array of dials and gauges which told him how the ship was reacting.

  ‘Secondary checks okay, Hervé?’ he asked Hervé Blanchard, his swarthy Corsican co-pilot.

  ‘Everything is reading okay, captain,’ replied Blanchard.

  ‘Right. Let’s take her up.’

  Hervé flicked his radio switch.

  ‘Georges Zero One.’ he began, giving the Charles de Gaulle’s sign number. ‘Georges Zero One to control. We are preparing to lift off. Release fore and aft moorings.’

  The speaker crackled — they felt a slight shift in the displacement of the ship.

  ‘Moorings released.’

  Barjonet eased the boost on all engines, turning the vectoring propellers for vertical lift. There was a slight vibration.

  ‘Release all mid-ship moorings,’ cried Blanchard.

  They could feel the ship move slightly and see the lights on the ground beginning to recede.

  ‘Mid-ship gear released, Georges Zero One,’ came the voice from the speaker. ‘You are on your way. Bonne chance. Bon voyage.’

  ‘Merci, St. Lô. Merci,’ acknowledged Barjonet.

  He watched the needle of the altimeter moving forward to five hundred feet before he decreased power in the vertical lift and swung the nose of the ship towards the north-west. He was just beginning the turn when, with an abruptness, the nose of the airship jerked downwards.

  A warning light flashed on his control board.

  ‘Drop two tons nose ballast!’ he cried, reading the figures from the inboard computer. Blanchard stabbed at several switches.

  Below, the watching crowds saw an enormous waterfall gush from the forward section of the ship, cascading to the ground and soaking many of them. The nose of the airship, lit by numerous searchlights, edged slowly upwards until the giant craft was on an even keel again. Then they heard the engines being gunned, and the ship began to rise slowly until its great black shape was lost in the darkness among the clouds; until, finally, all that could be seen of it were the red and green navigational lights, and here and there, the flicker of the lights from the airship’s cabins.

  *

  Sitting on the floor of her apartment in the Rue Falguière, Tanya Le Solliec watched the departure of the airship on the television and let out a deep and troubled sigh. She was worried; oh, nothing that would make sense to a rational man like Charles Renard. It was a weird feeling of foreboding; a shiver of fear as she watched the great black bulk of the airship vanish into the clouds.

  ‘ … And so off it goes on its historic passage,’ cried the voice of the reporter. ‘And with it goes the pride of France.’ The cameras panned across the crowds and caught the reporter struggling to face them, with the crowd behind him pushing good-naturedly that they might have their faces recorded on this epic occasion. ‘This is Henri Tussard returning you to the studio in Paris.’

  Tanya leant over and turned off the set.

  She stood up and walked out on the tiny balcony which looked across to the Gare Maine-Montparnasse. A strong, cold, dry north-west wind was beginning to whisper and moan across the Parisian roof-tops. She shuddered in its icy breath and folded her arms tightly around her body, peering up at the sky. She could not dispel the feeling of gloom that settled over her.

  ‘Charles,’ she whispered softly into the sighing wind, ‘Charles, ma mie, be careful!’

  Chapter Three

  The Albatross flight deck crew began their final checks twenty minutes later than scheduled. There had been some trouble with the forward mooring coupling which had to be checked out. It was nothing more serious than an oiling job. Now Carson was going through the final flight manifests while Saxon re-checked the fuelling systems for the last time. Macmillan was carrying out his own checks on his engineering control panels while Billy Heath was making last-minute adjustments to his radio equipment. Carson finally glanced at the chronometer in the panel in front of him.

  ‘Okay; time for the final preflight check.’

  He glanced at Saxon.

  ‘You look a bit jaded, Tom,’ he frowned.

  Saxon bit his lip in annoyance.

  ‘I’m okay,’ he said shortly.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Carson lowered his voice. ‘I don’t want anything screwed up on this flight, Tom. If I catch a whiff of alcohol I’ll have you replaced by Art Stein.’

  Saxon controlled his anger.

  ‘I’ll do my job … ’ he began, and then stopped himself saying something that he’d regret.

  *

  Helen Carson sat with Maria Terrasino in the front of Maria’s car, watching as the huge silver-grey airship rose into the sky. It was a spectacular sight, with the colossal construction nearly blackening out the blue of the heavens. Both women felt unease; both felt it for different reasons. Maria Terrasino was worried for her husband. Although he had not said much since Keller was arrested, Maria felt that he did not believe that Keller was the mad bomber; that he suspected that the psychotic saboteur was at large and possibly on board the airship. Helen’s worry was, of course, Tom Saxon, mingled with anxiety about Garry. Her marriage had been a slow, rotting process but someone, somewhere, had written that friendship often ends in love but marriage in friendship never. She knew Garry could hold a grudge. She feared the consequences if he found out about her affairs with Saxon.

  Maria, glancing at her sideways, tried to bring her mind away from her own problems.

  ‘Are you making the right decision, Helen?’ she asked.

  Helen smiled without taking her eyes from the rising airship.

  ‘About Garry and me? Or about Tom and me?’

  ‘Terry doesn’t think much of your Tom Saxon,’ Maria said once again.

  ‘I know.’ Helen paused. ‘Tom has to come to grips with his problem. I hope I’ll be able to help him because … because I love him,’ she added defensively.

  ‘That means loving the bad as well as the good, Helen,’ replied the Italian girl. ‘Can you live with a drunk?’

  Helen was a long time replying.

  ‘I guess I’ll have to,’ she said finally, ‘if there’s no other option. But I hope there is another option.’

  Maria Terrasino turned her gaze back to where the Albatross floated some five hundred feet in the sky.

  ‘I hope it goes right
for you, Helen … for both of us.’

  *

  The gigantic vessel moved ponderously eastward over the Fore River and, keeping mid-river, traced its path towards the sea, with downtown Portland to its port side and South Portland on its starboard. Carson gazed ahead to the Portland Bridge across which they would pass into the Portland Harbour complex. Below them the giant fingers of the wharf system, culminating in the Grand Trunk Docks, were already poking into the river. Soon they would be away from Portland and heading into Casco Bay. Carson now began to raise the ship to 1,500 feet, which was the regulation height for skirting the city limits. Down below, so he guessed, most of the city traffic would have come to a halt as the silver dart of the Albatross purred its way sedately through the sky. Most people would be pressing to the windows of their office blocks or crowding into the streets to see the now famous airship commence its historic flight.

  For the next two and a half days a heavy responsibility would be Carson’s. Although he would work the shifts normally with his crew he was still captain of the vessel on or off watch, like a captain of any ordinary seagoing ship. Should anything important occur while he was off watch, Art Stein would have to rouse him and summon him to the flight deck either to take command or approve of his command decisions. It was going to be a tough trip for Carson.

  It had been a gentle, untraumatic take-off; few of the people on board had even noticed that the ship was airborne until it was officially announced by John G. Badrick in the main lounge to the gathering of pressmen, VIPs and other guests.

  ‘Mr. Secretary,’ Badrick had begun with his typical pomposity in public speaking, addressing himself to the Secretary for Air: ‘Mr. Secretary, we have commenced an historic flight for the United States of America and the United Kingdom. The skill and enterprise of our two nations has resulted in the design and building of this great ship of the air — the Albatross. That which for years was just a dream is now fact; it is a reality!’

  Terrasino glanced out of an observation port and saw the calm blue waters of Casco Bay below. Terrasino had decided that the bomber, equipped with the technical knowledge that ‘Max Prüss’ had displayed, would go for the vulnerable parts of the ship. Whoever the man was, he would surely strike soon. After his threats the bomber would not let the opportunity of this historic flight go by. Terrasino and his staff, Parish, Lindsay and Sands, had checked the likely places and, finally, he had reported to Harry Maclaren in the main lounge, where he sat listening half-heartedly to Badrick’s speech-making. Badrick was already into histrionics.

  ‘During the 1920s, ladies and gentlemen, a conference met to see if air transport systems could be evolved based on airships — in those days there was no possibility of such a system, especially a freight-carrying system, being based on aircraft. But as the 1930s advanced, the aeroplane and, more particularly, the flying boat began to provide a short-term satisfactory answer to freight transport requirements. After the Second World War, the aircraft, as a means of long-distance transport, came into its own. But today the aircraft is in trouble; costs are too high, there are problems about the supply of fuel and therefore new and more economic methods of transport have to be found … ’

  The press listened in polite boredom, sipping their drinks. It was all in the handouts anyway. All they had to do was sit back, enjoy themselves and luxuriate in this new and unique form of air travel.

  Maclaren shot an enquiring look at Terrasino; the security chief shook his head and dropped into an empty chair beside him.

  ‘You still don’t believe that Keller is our man?’ Maclaren smiled.

  ‘Keller?’ Terrasino grimaced. ‘Keller is a stupid bastard; greedy, avaricious, the get-rich-quick type. I still believe we’re looking for a psychopath, a real sick guy.’

  Maclaren waved to one of the waiters and offered Terrasino a glass of champagne, which Badrick had ordered to be served to celebrate the take-off. Terrasino shook his head.

  ‘It’s going to be a pretty tense trip, Harry,’ he said. ‘I’m going to try to organise shifts between Parish, Lindsay, Sands and myself so that there will always be one of us on duty. Trouble is, this bird is so big it takes hours to get from one end to another.’

  ‘I hope you’re wrong, Terry,’ Maclaren said.

  ‘From where I stand now, Harry, so do I. We can always hope.’

  Maclaren looked back to the chairman of Pan Continental.

  ‘ … since 1969 there has, in many quarters, been a growing pressure for the revival of the airship. Proposals and actual construction work have been going on in many different parts of the world, particularly in America, Britain and France. For the last four decades efforts to build commercial airships on a grand scale have ended in failure but only because of the complex interaction of politics and safety regulations. There have been technical weaknesses, admittedly. But given co-operation which was unknown in the 1930s, the differences could have been overcome. Today, technology has developed in many ways and there is now a much better understanding of the procedures necessary to operate in complete safety.’

  Maclaren leaned towards Terrasino and smiled.

  ‘Someone ought to tell Badrick to dry up. The Air Secretary looks about as bored as a eunuch in a harem.’

  Badrick was apparently coming to a conclusion.

  ‘The Albatross, my friends, is a creation of the new technology we possess. It has been designed by Doctor Oscar Van Kleef and is operated by a highly-trained crew. It is in every way a modem airship, in no way comparable with the old types … ’

  Claire Ashton waited until the polite applause had died away and the Air Secretary and his British colleague had made congratulatory speeches. She could not say that she was enthralled at the prospect of being part of an historic trip; she was more excited about being with Danny Macmillan for the next few days. She smiled happily as she made her way along the lengthy promenades towards the cabin section. On the way she bumped into the elderly, grizzle-haired Chief Purser, Olsen.

  ‘Hello, miss. How’s the press party going?’

  ‘Boring,’ she grimaced. ‘But it’s over now.’

  The Chief Purser grinned.

  ‘Mr. Badrick’s been making more speeches, has he?’

  Claire nodded.

  ‘Do you know what time the flight deck crew make their first change-over?’ she asked.

  Olsen peered at his watch.

  ‘About another two hours, miss.’

  Claire thanked him and went on to her cabin. Once inside she threw her clothes off and ran a shower. Thinking about Danny sent a tremendous thrill of desire through her which almost made her whimper. Perhaps it was a feeling mixed with the soft warm spray which caressed her body. She luxuriated with soap and water for a while then, stepping out, she spent ten minutes brushing her teeth before towelling herself. Then she began to unpack her bag and generally tidy the cabin.

  Eventually there was a tap at her cabin door.

  She opened it eagerly.

  Danny Macmillan must have come straight from his duty period on the flight deck. He was tousle-haired and smiling.

  ‘Hi … ’ he began.

  Claire hauled him into the cabin before he could get any further, flinging her arms about his neck, fastening her mouth to his, as the door swung shut behind them. She hung against his body, her mouth hungry against his. After a while she heaved a sigh.

  ‘You do love me, don’t you, Danny?’

  Macmillan grinned broadly.

  ‘I’m not exactly indifferent to you, Claire.’

  She gave him a light punch on the shoulder and he pretended to grunt in protest.

  ‘Tell me you love me,’ she demanded.

  Retrospectively, Macmillan was sure that the way he felt about Claire could be defined as ‘love’. But ‘love’ was so difficult to define — was it affection, fondness, warmth, liking, attraction, closeness, intimacy, adoration, devotion, esteem? Claire, in her insecurity, was very fond of the word; she seemed to use it for any
term of approbation and support. Macmillan gently patted her cheek.

  ‘I like you, Claire, and that’s more important.’

  He felt her stiffen.

  ‘You mean you don’t … ?’

  ‘I mean that you can’t demand love, Claire,’ he interrupted her. ‘Love is not a flip word. You can’t switch it on every time you jump into bed with a person. You need time … time to let it grow, time to get to know each other. Loving is knowing someone, Claire. Knowing them really well. It is more important to like someone, really like someone, at this stage.’

  She shook off his hand.

  ‘You pig!’ she hissed.

  Macmillan gazed at her in astonishment. Her face was suddenly red and contorted with hysteria.

  ‘Jesus, Claire! What’s with you?’ he demanded.

  ‘You had me believe that you loved me!’ she cried. ‘Do you think you can use me like … like … ’

  He gripped her firmly by the arms.

  ‘You’re being childish, Claire. If I said I loved you it wouldn’t mean a goddam thing. I suppose all the guys who laid you said “I love you”. What did they mean by it? We might have something going if only you give it time before making demands.’

  She broke away from him and a hairbrush narrowly missed his cheek.

  ‘Get out, you swine!’

  Macmillan hesitated. Claire Ashton was more screwed-up than he had imagined.

  ‘Alright, I’m going,’ he said as a bottle of perfume slammed against the side of the cabin. ‘But, Claire, you can’t demand flip words and phrases to … ’

  ‘Pig!’

  The word screamed at him as a powder compact shattered against the door. Macmillan left.

  As the door slammed, Claire’s face seemed to dissolve and pucker. She started to give long gulping sobs and threw herself onto the bed, unconsciously drawing her body into the foetal position.

  ‘Danny … Danny … daddy … ’

  The words were mixed and oddly contorted amidst her sobs.

  *

  Charles Renard was in his stateroom going over some technical details with Jean-Pierre Dubeaupuris, the French government official, when Villemur burst in, red in the face and excited.