by Adam Thorpe
After the shower and a sorting of his shame with the washing machine’s hottest cycle, he smoothed out the rucked rug, locked the front door and slipped the chain across, vacuumed the sofa and wherever else they’d been, put an old Earth Wind and Fire vinyl on the stereo, poured a triple Scotch raised up to the rim by crushed ice, tucked the pistol under a cushion within immediate reach, and worked on getting his heart back to boring old cruising speed. The sun poured in out of a cloudless sky, keeping the air con on its toes. The Scotch reminded Bob of his bitten tongue.
His coccyx felt fractured, but it probably wasn’t. The soft leather sofa kept engaging it.
He wondered whether to warn Sharansky. All potential leaks had to be plugged. They’d started with Lennart, and then—With a lurch, Bob thought of Al and ex-Swissair. To eliminate a paid-off crew really was outside the envelope, but he’d made a gaffe: he hadn’t informed his visitors that, whatever he’d put in the diary about Evron ‘Dutch’ Bensoussan, he’d told neither his co-pilot nor his flight engineer who the big-time broker was. Unlike himself, they had actually been part of the ops, shaken hands with the Taliboys (or hugged, or whatever the latter permitted) and touched the cash. Israel’s enemies would be most interested in their testimony. The happy soul beat moved his foot in time but didn’t make it to his muddied thoughts. He never usually drank before sundown. He wanted to dance, to work out, to run. But his balance system was made of jelly.
He must phone Al.
He realised that he’d hardly talked to Al since the fateful ops. Time pauses for no man; and men, Olivia would say, are bad at communicating. His new life in Dubai, his and Al’s tendency to be thousands of feet up, or sleeping it off, meant that they’d mostly texted, and usually for some precise or pragmatic reason. Apart from a couple of Christmas duty-cards with nothing written on them except From Al and Jane, that had been it. Texts, plus one long phone chat when Olivia had set the solicitor on him last year, during which Al’s advice was, ‘Man up and throw some plates around.’ On such flimsy piles is the house of friendship built. And a massive beam called Flying Together. But he did feel that his doing a runner might have damaged things: it was a kind of betrayal. He’d felt a cooling-off.
He would have to warn Al, however, as he didn’t think the Maidenhead area fell into the ‘long way away’ category. He turned down the soul pulse and dialled the Berkshire number. It was, as usual, on message. Al was a keen gardener. He tried Al’s mobile. Surprisingly, it was answered straightaway.
‘Al?’
‘Bob, blow me. Blow me to Bermuda. How’s it going with the belly dancers in DXB?’
He’s in a good mood, Bob thought.
‘I left messages.’
‘Christ, skipper, I know. I’ve been so damn busy. We’ve bought a place on the Virgin Islands.’
‘Nice one. I’ll house-sit any time.’ How the hell did Al do it? The house in Maidenhead was decent. Jane didn’t work. They had no kids, of course. No boarding schools hoovering up the greenbacks.
‘And I’ve been under a cloud, Bob.’
‘For the last two years?’
‘It’s Jane. She’s not well.’
‘Oh dear. What’s she got?’
Bob was expecting the big C, but Al gave him some medical mouthful of a name that wasn’t ‘life-threatening, but it’s got every bloody symptom going, including extreme irritability with your nearest and dearest’.
‘I think it’s common name is menopause.’
‘Bob, if you said that in front of Jane, you would be raw mince garnished with your intact balls.’
‘Talking of which, Olivia’s symptoms were, as you know, a hugely increased sexual appetite.’
‘Aye, and she couldnae wait for the captain to come home and furl his sail.’
‘Well put,’ said Bob, gamely, but flinching within. ‘Now listen, pardner.’ He explained briefly why he was phoning. The logbook and diary. His visitors.
‘Christ.’
‘Spot on.’
‘Did they, um, manhandle you?’
‘Yeah, but not really. It was psychological. I’m on the twenty-fifth floor and they pretended to send me the quickest way down.’
‘I always wondered what that might be like. You know, to fall from a great height. Like that stewardess sucked out from the Pacific Airlines jet, where was it, over the Pacific anyway – you know, whether she lost consciousness immediately.’
‘The cold would have killed her. Thirty-five thousand feet. The shock. Anyway, Al, just watch out. Keep a low profile, even in Berkshire. The main thing is, you don’t know what I know, do you? About the broker. Of that deal.’
‘Our man Evron B, you mean?’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah, Lennie told us. That poofy Swedish feller. He was a little worse for wear. Drink, maybe drugs. The fumes from the pools of crude, maybe. Terrible.’
‘A great pity, you knowing.’ In fact, he felt curiously relieved: a problem shared and all that. He was also beginning to feel nauseous, presumably an effect of shock. The back of his skull was hurting and his hands were shaking. ‘Al, Lennart’s no longer with us. This lot told me, in so many words. I mean, I definitely know he’s dead, and they implied it wasn’t an accident.’
Now Al sounded concerned. ‘That’s no fun at all,’ he said.
‘Who was your skipper, in the end?’
‘Well, he acted like he was one of their own people.’
‘Was his name Pedro Diez?’
‘Doesn’t ring a bell, Bob. Took hours to get him. We lost our slot. He hardly said a word. Though the guys at the other end were very polite, with the fat brown envelope and all. The ones beginning with T. I expected turbans and machine guns, but they had Western suits and terrible spotty ties of Twin Peaks vintage, all very smiley. Lousy coffee at Turkmenbashi, though.’
‘Did your new skipper have serious eyebags and a kind of dark, brooding look?’
‘Aye, I suppose he did.’
‘That’s Pedro. They’re looking for him, too. A rising tide lifts all ships.’
‘Oh.’
Bob could hear a television on in the background, maybe Jane’s voice.
‘They didn’t show me your handsome mug, though. Where are you, Al?’
‘Chemnitz. We’re loading in an hour. Like the early days, eh?’
Al was referring to a series of mysterious flights he and Bob made in their first year on freight, back in 1999, shipping out classic artworks and antiques from eastern Germany to the States – near Washington, going into an old USAF base. The old commie cadres, they presumed, and their illicit plunder. But they weren’t paid to presume; they were paid to carry, complete with an amended flight plan from Madrid.
‘So,’ Bob concluded, ‘if an Israeli journalist called Matt Sharansky or anyone else contacts you, you’re to refuse point-blank to cooperate.’
‘Ach, you know me, skipper, I love to swap yarns. But I always obey my captain.’
They talked shop for a few minutes. Al had passed his medical but hadn’t done much flying recently, just enough to keep his hours. They’d up-sized in Maidenhead, massive garden, he kept bees and made honey, had entered the fascinating world of koi fish. Then someone called him away with a faint shout. Bob had forgotten to mention the return flight’s bonus of heroin, but that seemed irrelevant anyway: the possible icing on the cake. The cake was the thing.
Bob felt better, however – not least because he’d assumed Al had been cross with his skipper since the bunk; he didn’t appear to be. Bob wondered whether to warn ex-Swissair, but reckoned he was safe, somehow. Too boring to bother with.
He found the folded bit of paper with Matt Sharansky’s number in his back pocket and called. He was instructed to leave a message, but he didn’t: it was a moot point whether the phone was still in the boy’s hands. Even journalists were fair game, these days.
He was fishing out his trousers from the washing machine when the flat’s phone went. Hardly anyone phoned him on the l
andline, these days. He picked it up carefully, as if it harboured toxins. It was Ellen, married to Dinesh, both in their early thirties and Fijian. Why would anyone from Fiji want to come and live in Dubai? Bob had met them at some do put on by Drip Tennyson, and liked them – they were part of the same expat group, although he kept on the fringes. She was glad he was in: Dinesh was bad. ‘He’s totally depressed, Bob. I’m going to join him with a breakdown. Please come and talk to him. He respects you. You’re his hero.’
The last thing he could face was seeing Dinesh and Ellen. They had been a bright, jolly, high-spending couple until Dinesh’s three-year visa had run out and mysterious Emirati forces had refused a renewal: so his employers, an enormous construction company, fired him. Or maybe the other way round. Anyway, for some weeks now he’d spent his days in bed. Bob had tried to help by asking the prince’s secretary to tap princely contacts, but to no avail.
‘Ellen, this is an awkward moment for me. I’ve had a spot of bother and I’m having to leave Dubai tomorrow. I’ve also been given the boot. By His Highness.’
Ellen began to cry, very softly. Bob’s sympathies were restricted by their connection with Fiji, which he’d flown 747s into for refuelling on the New Zealand route, and would have problems leaving every time. But apparently there were no buildings in Fiji higher than seventeen storeys, and Dinesh’s particular skills were not required. Now, of course, she was insisting he must come and say goodbye. He wondered if Dinesh’s self-defeating depression might have been solved by having the kind of near-death experience that he had just had. There was elation in the post-trauma air. He was not Dinesh, for a start. He was not depressed.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘after I’ve packed.’
So it was well into the afternoon by the time he was ready for the off. He bought a big box of chocolates for cleaning-whizz Maria (and another for Dinesh and Ellen) in a vast and gilded mall shaped like a ziggurat between their place and his. He’d fixed a slot to see the prince’s secretary around teatime, which gave him about half an hour with the depressed Fijians. He was somewhat nervous, driving. In fact, he’d checked and rechecked the bottom of the car before starting it: watching too many action films had left him with an inner simulation of cars transforming into fireballs. A loop tape of the balcony incident was running through his head, in which the ant played a starring role. His driving was so bad that it no longer stood out.
Dinesh and Ellen lived in a needle-like block with a lawn and fountains fronting it and a sweep of marble steps in case you were still in any doubt. Bob was held up at the bottom of these by a photo shoot, with a model sultrily descending and a dozen or so cameras heavy with lenses snapping away; their operators were mostly young women or men just past retirement age, and his expectations concerning the model were dashed: she was a gauche teenager, clearly an amateur, there for the benefit of what looked like an expat photography club, directed by a grey-haired American dame. They were being snapped in turn by a Middle Eastern guy with the stoop and hurriedness of a pro.
Bob’s mobile rang; otherwise he would have fled.
‘I want you,’ came a throaty, familiar voice.
‘You’re reading off your Love Hearts. The next one’ll say Blue eyes.’
‘No, it says Ever yours.’
‘Uh-oh.’
‘What’s that noise in the background, Bob?’
‘It’s an expat photo club, laughing coyly.’
‘You’re such a weirdo. Are all pilots weirdos?’
‘If they aren’t already, they become it. By the way, I’m off tomorrow morning. For good.’
‘Blimey. Where to?’
‘Far far away, but I don’t know where. I can’t really let you know, either.’
There was a silence. He ought to throw a farewell party. Leila (probably not her real name) was from deepest Birmingham and worked in a bar in one of the smarter clubs. She was a drifting, good-time girl, heading for thirty without a care in the world. She had nice butterscotch shoulders, so she was on his list. He’d tell her romantic stuff about his passenger-flying days, except that he’d swap BA for Pan Am, setting it back twenty years in the Golden Age instead of the late decline, after the split with National. She was so bad at maths she never noticed. ‘You really worked for Pan Am?’ ‘I cannot tell a lie. I did.’ She was excited by his conspiracy theories about Lockerbie, and aghast about his days in freight, ducking in and out of African hot spots. Never did she wonder what he might have been carrying; she’d just stroke his chest and snuggle up to her pilot hero, pretending to be his concubine.
There was a crackle on the mobile. ‘Bob, I’m really going to miss you. Honest.’
‘D’you know, that was too long for a Love Heart. I think you’re being sincere.’
‘I bloody am, Bob. Where are you, precisely?’
‘In Abu Dhabi,’ he lied. ‘If I ever come back, I’ll tell you.’
‘Gerroff. You won’t. You’ll forget me. Your floozy. Are you going somewhere where it rains?’
‘No idea.’
It was then that he had a startling image of soft bare hills and horizontal rain, while the sun-struck photo shoot seemed to evaporate.
‘Hope so,’ she said. ‘Ta-ra, then.’
This was silly. He cleared his throat of desert dust. ‘How about a farewell bite tonight, Leila?
‘Love bite? Or nosh?’
‘Both.’
‘I’m working. You’re away.’
‘I’ll drive back just to say goodbye, maybe.’
‘Buy the barmaid a drink.’
‘Done. And after?’
‘We’ll see.’
After that interchange, he was even less inclined to see the Fijians.
Dinesh looked terrible. He was lying on the bedcovers, one sock off, in his suit trousers and shirt, but with a dressing gown on top. Ellen wrung her hands in the corner. While she was what used to be called mulatto, Dinesh, despite his name, claimed to be descended from Captain Bligh; Bob reckoned he did look like a handsomer version of Charles Laughton, and had once told him so at a well-fuelled party in Jumeirah. Now he suggested anything was better than staying at home all day, and maybe people should be less fussy about the kind of job they wanted. He wasn’t really concentrating on the matter in hand. It was a duty call. His hands had only just stopped shaking.
‘You mean, become a builder,’ Dinesh scoffed. ‘Earn peanuts. Wear filthy overalls. Go get pissed and then knifed in Jebel Ali. Those Asian guys are slaves, more or less.’
‘They worked under you, didn’t they?’
‘No, not under me. I just drew plans and calculated stresses. I’m finished, man. This place swallowed me and now it’s spat me out. The bank phones every day. So do the credit card companies. I feel like killing myself.’
‘So Ellen told me. I’ll have another chat with the sheikh’s well-endowed secretary. Otherwise, I suggest going back to Fiji. Nice beaches. Let’s face it, Dubai is fairly unpalatable unless bucks are your sole object.’
‘There’s nothing in Fiji. What’s more, we can’t. We owe too much, even if we sold everything. Our mortgage is crazy. We had medical bills, for Shonika.’
Shonika was their small daughter, allergic to both Dubai’s dust and its seasonal steaminess.
‘OK, open a little South Sea stall here. In Karama, say. Work your way up. You know how I started in the airline business? As a handyman’s assistant. For instance, mending burn holes in the Clipper Club’s carpet in Heathrow. I was crawling around all these expensive shoes with a Stanley knife, plugging holes with cuttings taken from behind those plush curtains. I overheard the smoky conversations. I was eighteen. I said to myself: one day I’ll walk in here and everyone’ll look up to me instead of down to me. So what did I do? I got a job in Pan Am wash-up, where we’d drain the liqueur glasses on the trays fresh off the Atlantic haul. We were permanently blasted.’
‘I thought you were British Airways?’
‘Later, after the RAF. Pan Am were nationalis
tic when it came to pilots, but dishwashing was international.’
That extracted a smile from both of them. Dinesh told Ellen to leave the room. She said she’d say goodbye now as she had to go to her gym class (presumably on credit). She gave Bob a squeeze and that was it. He thought: people come in and out of your life.
Dinesh sat up and beckoned him to crouch down. He spoke softly in his bad aviation ear. ‘Bob, listen to me. I don’t know what to do. After I heard about the job, I got trashed on Singapore Slings at Barasti. I was a crazy idiot. I went with a downtown whore. I think she was Chinese. And I had this tiny fresh cut on my finger. I went right up her with it, you know? But I didn’t go the whole hog.’
And he’d heard how some of Dubai’s numerous sex workers were not necessarily free of HIV, but he didn’t dare to have a test. He looked at Bob in expectation.
‘Dinesh, you’re a hypochondriac, a coward and a lecher. Shame on you. Get the test. You’re clear, for certain. Remember, I was in Africa. I know all about it. I got worried once, too.’ A disarming look of relief came over Dinesh’s sallow face. ‘Oh, and here are some chocolates. For Ellen. You’re already spoilt.’
Bob dropped them on the bed, gave his friend’s hand a squeeze, and left.
The upshot of all this was that he was late for his appointment at the princely palace, partly because they’d swapped the roads about in his absence: the old one seemed to be stranded on pillars in the middle of a wasteland, or maybe that was the new one. Anyway, by the time he’d drawn up in front of the Chelsea-style wrought-iron gates, there was just a hint of indigo in the sky overhead and a flush of green on the desert horizon (the latter only being visible because the prince owned the land right up to it and probably beyond). Although the secretary worked till six most evenings, and it was now six thirty, she had waited for him. He had phoned her from the car. The secretary’s name was, for some reason known only to her Colorado parents, Filberta.
