by Henry Porter
He listened. A seabird called out in the dark and again he heard the rasp and click of reeds nearby. He had to think. He had to think, dammit. But his mind was moving so slowly. He’d crawl into the reeds where the mud would be firm because of the roots and he would drag himself to his feet and stand so that they would see him. That’s what he’d do. He would get up and wait there and not give in to the cold. Someone would come. He knew it. Marika and Langstrom must have made them understand where he was. He inched towards the clump of reeds where a mess of snow and sea foam had collected, grabbed on to a handful of stalks and hauled himself towards them. He rose to his feet and stood, swaying like a drunk.
A few moments later he heard the helicopter’s roar, turned and saw a light coming towards him. He raised both arms and held them high until it was hovering in front of him and throwing up a whirlwind of snow and dead reeds. Next he saw several bent figures emerge from a cloud of snow and foam and rush towards him. They carried lights and a stretcher. He felt himself stagger on his feet, topple backwards and then lurch forwards into their arms.
2
THE MISSING
Sister Rafael was rather proud of her patient in Room 132. Since the British UN official had been brought in early on the previous evening, she had seen the TV film of him standing out in the East River with his arms raised like he was defying death. It was a miracle that he hadn’t been killed with the others. The TV news had said twenty people from the two aircraft had died, and now their bodies were lying in a temporary morgue at the airport, most of them burned beyond recognition. It made her shudder to think of so many people’s grief, especially now, before the holidays. She felt his wrist and touched his forehead with the back of her left hand. There was no sign of fever and his pulse was normal.
She peered at him in the sliver of morning light that was coming through the blinds. He was a big man and she guessed he was naturally strong. When he was brought in they’d needed three people to lift him to put on the Heibler vest so his temperature could be stabilised. His face interested her because it had none of the weak, fleshy appearance she associated with the British. The jaw was well defined, like his dark eyebrows which ran horizontally until they plunged down at the ends. His hair was a lighter brown and was cut short so you could see where it had receded on his forehead. She felt there was an openness in his features, except in the mouth, which even in medicated repose was clamped shut. Tension showed itself elsewhere – in the long furrows that ran from his cheekbone nearly down to his jaw, in the crow’s-feet at the corner of his eyes and the single cleft at the centre of his brow. His eye sockets were blackened by fatigue.
She wondered what expression his eyes held when they were open and what his voice sounded like and whether he was married. There was no wedding ring on his finger and when his sister called from London to speak with Doctor Isaacson, she had not mentioned a partner or any family. Of one thing she was sure. Mr Harland was important. Twice that morning a woman had called from the Secretary-General’s office to ask about his condition. She had instructions to pass on his concern and to let them know when the doctor said it would be okay to talk to him. Everyone wanted to talk to him – the TV and the accident investigators, and the Secretary-General was even threatening to come visit in the hospital. People understood that this man’s escape was extraordinary. That’s why the picture from the TV film was blown up in all the papers and why they were still playing it on the news bulletins. She could see him in her mind’s eye, standing there, feet slightly apart, his arms raised outwards in an almost religious attitude.
She moved to the window and parted the blind to look down into the dazzling snow light. Four or five news crews were still there, waiting in the sunshine to hear about her patient. Then she returned to the bedside and gave the face a last glance before leaving the room. He would sleep for a while yet.
Late on the third morning after the crash, Harland woke as a breakfast tray was brought to him. He felt alert but also curiously light-headed. In snatches of wakefulness during the past forty-eight hours, he had struggled to make sense of the events that had brought him to a hospital bed. Drowsily he watched a report on TV and got more or less all he needed – the casualty figures, the shocked reaction in the UN headquarters, the approximate circumstances of the crash and the mildly unnerving fact that he had been picked up by a helicopter that was carrying a TV crew who had filmed the rescue. It had taken a few seconds before he recognised the absurd, panicky figure, gesticulating like a maniac out on the shoreline. He had pressed the remote and had almost immediately fallen asleep.
Now he was hungry and set about the eggs and toasted bagel with relish, his mind returning to the crash. There was a lot he didn’t understand, chiefly how he and Griswald had been thrown out of the fuselage and landed so far from the line of the wreckage path. He thought of finding Alan Griswald’s body and hearing the telephone ringing in the dark and then speaking to Sally Griswald. He remembered her from years ago when the Griswalds were doing the rounds of East European embassies. He could see her now, a small, bubbling natural blonde from the Midwest who never took anything very seriously, least of all her husband’s work as the CIA Station Chief. She was a breath of fresh air in the otherwise self-consciously discreet gatherings of spies and embassy staff. The Griswalds had two small boys then. They were now at college. Griswald had talked about them on the plane. They were home for the Christmas holidays and he was going to take ten days with them.
The door opened and the woman who had introduced herself the day before as Sister Rafael came in, followed by the doctor, who looked him over quickly and pronounced himself satisfied with Harland’s recovery.
‘Anything we should know about your medical history?’ he asked. ‘You have had one or two operations – appendectomy and … er?’ He pointed below Harland’s midrift to his groin.
‘That was a long time ago.’
‘And it’s what I think it was?’
‘Yes, but I’ve been clear for a dozen years or more now.’
‘Diagnosed early then?’
‘Yes,’ he said with finality. He didn’t particularly want to discuss it in front of the nurse.
‘And these scars on your wrists and chest. Nothing that should concern me?’
‘No.’
‘What were they caused by?’
‘An accident,’ said Harland, with a discouraging look.
Isaacson nodded, a trace of doubt showing in his eyes. He told him how his body temperature had crashed below the eighty-eight-degree mark and that it had been touch and go for an hour after he was brought in. An incubator had been used to warm him on Tuesday evening. He had spent the first night on a supply of slightly heated, moist oxygen. Now all he needed to do was to concentrate on building his strength with rest and a high calorie intake. He warned that there were bound to be some after-effects. He would feel weak for some time and his muscles would continue to ache for a few days. There might also be problems of delayed shock. If he felt unusually depressed or listless in the coming weeks, he should seek trauma counselling. It was important that he should not try to deal with the experience by himself, but talk it out with a professional. Harland nodded obediently, although the idea was absurd to him. He had talked only once in his life – to an elderly woman in North London. He’d found it exceptionally hard to be precise about the effects of torture.
Isaacson noticed his expression. ‘How would you feel about speaking with the crash investigators? I mean, about the facts of the crash – what you remember about the airplane journey? They’re very anxious to speak with you.’
Harland agreed and after another cursory check, Isaacson left. Half an hour later, two men were shown in with great ceremony by the nurse. They introduced themselves as Murray Clark from the National Transportation Safety Board and Special Agent Frank Ollins of the FBI.
Harland slipped his legs from the bed and indicated to the nurse that he would like the robe hanging near the door.
�
��Are you okay about this, Mr Harland?’ asked Murray Clark. ‘We can do it later.’
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Wish I’d shaved and washed before you came.’ He nodded to the nurse who left, almost regretfully. He stood up and looked at them. Clark was short and a little overweight and looked as though he had been plucked straight out of a college laboratory. Agent Ollins was in his mid-thirties and was crisply dressed in a blue suit and white shirt. He had a steady gaze and seemed more purposeful than Clark. They both carried heavy anoraks and had mud on their shoes.
They sat down either side of the little table at the end of his bed.
‘Why are you involved?’ Harland asked Agent Ollins. ‘This isn’t a criminal investigation, surely.’
‘Too soon to say what this case is about,’ Ollins replied equably. ‘We’re hoping that you will be able to help with that. There were a lot of important people on board and we need to cover all the angles. Mr Clark here is going to find out what went wrong with your plane. We take over if we think some party or parties intentionally caused that malfunction to occur.’
‘Fortunate about the cellphone,’ said Clark brightly. ‘You might still be out there if you hadn’t found it. We hear you suffered quite badly from exposure – it’s good to see you doing so well already, sir.’
He turned on a small tape recorder and asked Harland to take them through the flight, remembering anything that might be of use to them.
He told them how he had finished his work in Rockville, Maryland, and had gone to Washington National Airport, thinking that he had missed the ride offered to him by Alan Griswald. He explained that he had met Griswald the week before in Holland. They had travelled to Washington on consecutive days and had hoped to meet up in DC as well as fly together to New York. Both knew they were too busy and the arrangement was vague. However, he had bumped into Griswald at the airport which was how he came to be on the plane.
Harland said that there were some other UN people with him, people who had been at meetings at Congress. They were travelling together but there was some diplomatic nicety which meant that this was not an official delegation from the UN to Congress. Griswald seemed to know some, but not all of them. He remembered there were two or three young women in the party.
‘How did you know Mr Griswald?’ asked Ollins.
‘We worked on the same diplomatic circuit back in the eighties.’
‘Right – you were diplomats.’
‘Yes,’ said Harland. ‘We were diplomats in Europe. Griswald was in Germany and Austria for a long time, with a spell in the Middle East. We served in some of the same places. I saw a lot of him and his wife in those days.’ He paused and took some coffee. ‘Do you want some of this? I’m sure I can get a fresh jug.’
They shook their heads.
‘Were you both in the Middle East?’
‘No, just Griswald.’
‘So tell us about the flight.’
‘We left pretty soon after we met and we flew up to New York without any trouble. About twenty minutes out of La Guardia, I went to the lavatory and noticed that the cabin had grown very cold. As I was about to take a pee, the lights went out. So I went back into the cabin which was pitch black. Then we were struck by some turbulence which was uncomfortable but not severe. I think the pilot came on and told us to fasten our seat belts.’
‘Did the captain says anything else at this time?’ asked Clark, making a note.
‘Maybe. I didn’t pay much attention. We could see the lights of New York below us and we weren’t especially worried.’
‘What else do you recall?’
He said there wasn’t much he could add. He remembered Griswald turning on his laptop to use the light of the screen. As he spoke, Griswald’s face came back to him, lit by a blue-grey aura, smiling at the thought of one of his sons returning from college. Griswald lifted the computer and they struggled to fold away the table in the dark, and then looked down at the Bronx. Harland saw the white rooftops in his mind, the grid of little streets and the scrawl of new tyre tracks in the snow. Griswald made some remark about the weather.
‘Did the lights return before landing?’ asked Clark.
‘No.’
‘Can you remember anything else unusual, sir? What about the sound of the engines? Any significant increase in engine power while you were experiencing the turbulence? Do you recall a change of note in the engine noise as the plane came in?’
‘I’m not sure – maybe just before the impact. I was looking out towards Riker’s Island on the left of the plane and Alan Griswald said something which I didn’t hear. I turned back to face him. Then, bang! I don’t remember much else.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ said Clark. ‘You were looking out at Riker’s from the left of the plane? The first question is this: could you see Riker’s Island?’
‘I could see an orange glow which I assumed were the lights from the prison.’
‘But surely you mean you were looking out to your right, not left.’
‘No, I was in a rear-facing seat, across the table from Alan Griswald.’
‘Ah, I see. I guess that’s one of the reasons you’re here. Being at the back of the plane and facing backwards meant that you avoided the whole force of the impact. Tell me, was anything about the approach unusual?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t think that the plane was unusually low?’
‘No, I didn’t. Have you any theories yet?’
‘Right now, we’re considering a number of possibilities. The flight data recorder and the voice recorder were recovered on Wednesday; both are being analysed at our headquarters in Washington. We’ll get the results at the weekend.’
Ollins plucked a piece of fluff from his suit, looked up at the ceiling and began speaking.
‘As yet we don’t know why the plane crashed, Mr Harland. None of the theories about icing, wind-shear, poor visibility or a freak collision with Santa’s reindeers comes anywhere near to explaining it. How could this aircraft, flown by a pilot with over ten thousand flying hours, come in without any reported problems and just nose-dive into the runway?’
Harland got up from the edge of the bed, walked a few paces and worked his bare toes up and down to get rid of the prickly sensation in his feet. They watched him.
‘Nobody has told me what actually happened,’ he said, looking at Clark. ‘I mean, I still don’t see how the other plane was involved. Surely it was nowhere near where we came in?’
Ollins exchanged a look with Clark, as if asking his permission.
‘It’s simple,’ he said. ‘Your plane comes in too low, banks right and clips the light tower with the starboard wing. An explosion occurs in the fuel tank, debris flies back, tears into the cabin at the rear and loosens the spars supporting the starboard engine. The engines have already been put into maximum thrust because the pilot realises he needs altitude. All three engines are full on. The Falcon climbs momentarily, comes down, rolls through ninety degrees, banks right and hits more light towers with incredible force. The fuselage sustains more damage and the starboard engine becomes detached and is thrown forward for a considerable distance. It hits the wing of a Learjet waiting to take off. The Learjet explodes and catches fire, killing all seven passengers and the pilot. Meanwhile the Falcon is ploughing a trench at a thirty-degree angle from the runway towards the Learjet. Then your plane also catches fire.’
‘Jesus,’ exhaled Harland. ‘How on earth did I get out?’
‘Some time at an early stage in this sequence,’ replied Ollins, ‘the seat anchors in your section of the Falcon break free and you are propelled out of the fuselage and land in the soft terrain at the edge of the East River.’ He paused and gave a bleak smile. ‘The chances of anyone surviving this crash without injury must be one in fifty billion, Mr Harland. People don’t get breaks like that too often. I think you’ll realise that when you see the wreckage.’
‘You want me to see the wreckage?’
‘No
t so much the wreckage, but I would like to take you over the crash scene and have you look at a reconstruction we’ve set up there.’
Harland sat down on the bed. Clark asked if he wanted them to leave. But Ollins was clearly disinclined to go just yet.
‘There are a few more questions I want to ask you before we leave,’ he said. ‘It’s important that I have your attention for just a few more minutes, Mr Harland. One of the things we need to do in this investigation is to construct profiles of all the passengers and crew. We need to know a little more about your life also.’
A part of Harland went on guard. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘First off, tell me about your work, sir. You’re doing a special report for the Secretary-General’s office. Is that right?’
‘That makes it sound more important than it is. I’m looking into the ownership of the supplies of fresh water in Asia and Eastern Europe.’
Ollins looked puzzled. ‘Please explain.’
‘One of the big problems facing the developing world – in fact, the entire planet – is the shortage of fresh water. There are too many people and the major fresh-water resources, chiefly lakes and aquifers, are being drained at a very fast rate. The reduction in some of the bigger lakes, like the Aral Sea, is showing up on satellite photographs. Others, like Lake Baikal, which contains about a fifth of the world’s fresh-water supply, are being polluted by industry – a big paper mill in that instance. What this means is that fresh water is becoming a very scarce and valuable commodity. The Secretary-General wants to know who owns what. He believes that it’s going to become an important issue. He wants a briefing as much as anything else.’
Ollins listened to this impatiently. ‘But this wasn’t always your line,’ he said rather too quickly.
