“Capitalist swine,” Fergus remarked.
“Flatterer!” Mr. Harrison went inside. The rest of the party trailed behind him rather like a gaggle of ducks following their mother. “Chu-chu! Dive into the depths and have MacNeill fry me a couple of steaks. Clarence, you get your voice warmed up. I want to hear that number as soon as I’ve eaten. Irene, you come with me now.”
They scattered as instructed; even Helen appeared mesmerized and moved toward the rehearsal room. Clarence stood on the mezzanine, chewing his lip. “I’m truly sorry,” he said.
Jonathan shrugged. “The odds are we would have missed her anyway.”
“You must understand his point of view,” Clarence explained. “In this business you’re either going up or you’re going down. The only place you can afford to hover is at Number One. So we have to face facts. The current number is starting to slide. In a fortnight it’s going to be out of sight, and Pete’s worrying the D.J.’s may write me off on a one-shotter. He wants to hit them with a better number than ‘The Highland Beat’ while they still remember my name. And you know what makes one number better than another? The ballyhoo. The publicity. The gimmick that makes people want to play a particular record. The clapping was the gimmick with ‘The Highland Beat.’ It stopped being a gimmick with the second one. But topping the bill on a world-wide variety show with a brand new number, and a good number, will be as big as falling off the Empire State Building and landing on my feet, singing.” He sighed. “If I bring it off.”
“You don’t sound very keen,” Helen said.
“Oh, it’s a tremendous break. But I’m not the best pop star in Britain, by a heck of a long shot. Maybe next year . . . if Pete has a fault it’s that he drives a bit fast.”
“So you’ll dump a few thousand more in the kitty,” Jonathan said. “The woman I’m after is a murderess. She’s killed a man. She sat in the back of his van just about fifteen hours ago and talked to him in a soft, sweet voice, and while she talked she pressed a pistol to the back of his head and blew his brains out. And he was supposed to be on her side.”
“Then why’d she do it?”
“Because she’s playing for stakes that make your TV appearance look like a peanut. It’s as simple as that.”
“So what’s the point in beating our brains out?” Helen asked. “We can’t stop her now, no matter what we do.”
Clarence looked at his watch. “We could, you know, if we left now.”
“Don’t tell me you can fly a plane?” Jonathan cried.
“I can’t, as a matter of fact. But Helen can.”
“You never told me.”
“You never asked me,” Helen pointed out.
“And Clarence has?”
She pouted. “Clarence is interested. Anyway, I’m not flying anybody anywhere. I have a license, but I don’t get many chances. I’ve never flown a Beechcraft. And it would wreck Clarence’s career.”
“Listen!” Clarence held her hands. “You have a license. A Beechcraft is just a plane. And Clarence Bronson doesn’t have a career. He’s just a packaged commodity being flogged around the world. Just give me this opportunity to do something real.”
“You mean you’re coming too?” Jonathan said. “I don’t really think I could allow that. It could be quite dangerous.”
“I go, or Helen stays.”
“If you want to know what I think,” Helen began.
The door of the rehearsal room opened and Irene pushed her head out. “Come on, Clarence. Pete’s waiting.”
“Tell him I’m not available,” Clarence said, and half-carried Helen to the door.
“Clarence!” Irene screamed. “Pete! Clarence has run amok!”
Doors banged, voices shouted. “You drive,” Jonathan snapped, and ran across the yard to throw open the gate. MacNeill appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, hesitated when he saw his employer.
“Mr. Clarence?” he inquired uncertainly.
Clarence had already started the engine. Now he gunned it and swung the Land Rover. Helen clung to her seat.
“Hey!” Mr. Harrison joined the chorus at the living room door. “Clarence! You come back here!”
“Clarrie!” Mrs. Bronson tried to get outside. “You cannot do this, Clarrie. I forbid it!”
Jonathan swung the gates back, and scrambled in beside Helen as the Land Rover drew level. A moment later they were swinging across the fields, disturbing the unhappy sheep yet again, bursting on to the meadow and up to the plane.
“Do I swing a propeller or something?” Jonathan asked.
“This is nineteen sixty-nine,” Helen explained. “It’ll have an electric start. I hope.” She pulled open the door, climbed in, sat behind the wheel and surveyed the instruments.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how.” Clarence sat beside her, adjusted her belt. Away to their left the tractor came into view.
“Just collecting a nerve or two,” she muttered, and started the left engine. The right was not quite so obliging, spluttered for several seconds. Jonathan strapped himself in behind them, watched the tractor disappear into a slight hollow, appear again on the near side. Somebody, probably MacNeill, threw a shotgun up and fired into the air.
“Don’t do that!” Helen said, and opened the throttle. The two engines settled into a reassuring purr, suggesting a pair of outsize cats digesting a whale. The Beechcraft rolled forward, bouncing over the uneven ground. “It’s a matter of holding her steady,” Helen said to herself. They turned in a wide circle, away from the tractor, and gathered speed. There were no trees to disturb the skyline, but at the end of the meadow there was another of the disconcerting hollows which made up this country. Jonathan stopped looking in front of them and watched Helen instead. Her cheeks were pink, and now her tongue snaked out, very long and almost rigid with concentration, and remained thrust between her teeth. If we crash, he thought, she’ll bite it right off. Then the tongue moved, slowly circling the whole of her mouth, and she leaned backward, and he realized they were no longer bouncing. The engine pitch changed, and they soared over the hollow. It was time to look back. But the tractor was nothing more than a toy, its furious occupants outraged puppets.
They flew through heavy gray clouds. The Beechcraft bounced and slipped, and Helen’s tongue was back, clenched between her small white teeth. Then there was blue sky and sunshine, and the cotton wool was beneath them. Helen sighed, switched on the automatic pilot, took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes.
“You know we’re breaking just about every law there is in aviation? We don’t have a flight plan. No authority, no pilot knows we’re up here at all. We’re endangering other people.”
Clarence kissed her ear. “You’re doing marvelously. Now stay at about two thousand feet, and away from airports, and you should avoid trouble. Which way should we go, Jonny?”
Jonathan peered at the compass. “Not southwest, for a start.”
“It’s how we took off, I guess.”
“Then let’s turn and go northwest instead. At least until we cross the coast.”
Helen regained control, banked rather too steeply; they lost some height. “And then what?”
“Wait a moment while my stomach catches up. How fast does this thing go?”
“We’re making a hundred and fifty,” Clarence said.
“And that’s how we’re going to stay, if you don’t mind,” Helen said. “It’s the most economical.” She tapped the fuel gauge. “We don’t have much more than a couple of hours, as it is.”
“That ought to do it.” Jonathan opened the chart locker beside him, found the one he wanted, spread it on his knee. “How long do you figure we’ve been up?”
“Ten minutes,” Clarence said.
“Then at this speed we should cross the coast somewhere about Ayr in another ten minutes. Remember we want to avoid Prestwick Airport. Then we should have ten minutes of open sea, then Arran and Kintyre, then the Sound of Jura and then Jura itself. After Jura I figure we should
head a bit more north. We should be over the Passage of Oronsay about one hour after take-off, say ten minutes past eleven. Then there’s a small island called Colonsay, and then a straight run for Tiree. Tiree is maybe sixty miles northwest of Colonsay, so we’ll allow another half hour for that. We’ll be over Reef Airport by a quarter to twelve.”
“Supposing everything goes as easily as you make it sound,” Clarence said. “And what do we do when we get there?”
Jonathan had been wondering when one of them would ask that. “We stop Anna Cantelna,” he said confidently.
“Oh, great,” Helen said. “I hope she’s in the being-stopped mood. Oh, my.”
The earphones beside her crackled. She switched on, listened for a moment. Her ears turned pink. At last she lowered the phones. “It’s Prestwick Traffic Control. They’ve got us blipping their radar and they seem pretty mad. They want us to identify and come in. Right away.”
“Switch it off,” Clarence suggested.
“Won’t they send up a couple of fighters to convince us? They would in the States.”
“So let’s get lost before they decide we’re not coming in. Swing away south and take a sweep. Get out of their radar range. There’s a lot of cloud over there.”
“It’s not going to do our gasoline situation any good.” She banked once more, to the south now, and they dived into gray mist. Once again the little aircraft plunged like a small boat in a choppy sea, and Helen was forced to retain control.
“That’s far enough,” Jonathan said after five minutes. “Swing west, and listen.”
She obeyed, picked up the headphone. “Nothing,” she said, and peered into the gloom which surrounded them. “But you can bet they’re looking for us. I’ve got the willies but good, Clarence. Up, or down?”
“Search me. Jonny?”
Jonathan studied the map. Up promised nothing but empty sky. And he figured they were beyond the high ground. “Down a few feet.”
“You asked for it.” She eased the wheel forward. “Call, Clarence.”
“Eighteen hundred, and falling.”
“I don’t have a stomach any more,” she complained. “Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy. How ever did I let you con me into this. Oh, boy . . .”
“Fifteen hundred,” Clarence said, and the Beechcraft dipped through the last of the cloud. The coast was beneath them, stretching in either direction.
“So where are we?” Jonathan asked. “There’s a castle or something over there. Right on the cliff.”
Clarence pointed at an island some miles off shore. “And that looks like Ailsa Craig. So the castle would be Culzean. It used to be the family home of the Scottish Kennedys.”
“Is that a fact?” Helen asked. “Well, what do you know.”
“I know we’re a darn sight too far south,” Jonathan said. “Give her right rudder, or whatever, and you’ll have to up the airspeed.”
She obeyed, looked down at the whitecaps beneath her. “Funny! There doesn’t seem to be any wind, yet that looks grim.”
“You’ll have your wind,” Jonathan promised. Twenty minutes later it came, sweeping across Arran and howling into the Firth of Clyde. It carried with it masses of heavy cloud, black now, booming around the little aircraft like a series of explosions. The first gust sent them two hundred feet up, the next dropped the floor out from under them, and the needle hurtled round the altimeter.
“Any hills?” Helen gasped.
“On Arran,” Clarence said.
“Then we’re getting out of this.” She leaned back, the wheel pulled into her stomach, and the Beechcraft climbed steeply. Still the wind howled, and a sudden crackle of lightning split the gray only feet from the wing tip.
“I’m never going up again,” Helen wailed. “Never, never, never. I’m traveling by train.” But she kept her grip on the wheel, and her gaze remained fixed on the altimeter. “Not that that was so successful, either.”
Sunlight, and an open sky. She flattened, got her wing tips level, pushed hair from her eyes. Below them the sea and the island had disappeared beneath the jostling, angry clouds.
“Keep her north-northwest,” Jonathan said.
“I’d hate to fly the Atlantic with you navigating,” Clarence said. “You making any allowance for compass error, wind velocity, drift, air speed, anything?”
“Come again?”
“Oh, boy.” Helen switched on the automatic pilot, leaned back and closed her eyes. “Wake me up when you decide where we’re going. Or just before we crash.”
Jonathan checked the map against his watch. It was a quarter to eleven, and they could be anywhere in the world. “Ever been to the Hebrides?”
“Twice. The old lady has a thing going for Scotland.”
“So tell me how we know we’re over Tiree.”
“Tiree.” Clarence considered. “I know. It’s long and narrow, fairly rugged. There’s a hill they call Carnan Mor which pushes five hundred feet. And there are a few little lakes. But our best bet is Skerryvore.”
“Eh?”
“It’s a rock off the southwestern tip, with a lighthouse. If you figure we should be over the island by half past eleven, we want to go down about a quarter past and we should spot the lighthouse, and that should take us straight into Scarinish. That’s the main town on Tiree.”
“It must be marvelous to have traveled,” Jonathan said. “I guess we can all take five.”
Clarence nodded, but he remained awake, leaning away from Helen, gazing at her. Ah, well, Jonathan thought, it had never been on anyway, for him. Clarence certainly had a lot more to offer. Jonathan gazed at his watch. Anna Cantelna would have got there by now. But she would not be hurrying, yet. There was no reason for her to hurry. And what did he intend to do? The Luger was heavy in his pocket. If he could get her into this plane . . . but his merely waving a pistol was not going to upset Anna Cantelna, however much it might upset Tiree’s policeman.
But the mere fact of his presence might accomplish something. Supposing they could refuel the plane, they could shadow her, could stop in at Northbay and contact Craufurd . . . supposing Craufurd were there. Supposing . . . he sighed, checked his watch again. Eleven-fifteen.
He tapped Helen on the shoulder, and she sat up with a start.
“Take us down.”
She looked through the window. “Do I have to? Couldn’t we stay up here forever, just floating on a cloud?”
“It could come to that,” Clarence pointed out. “If I was driving a car I’d start hunting for a gas station.”
“Oh, boy.” She eased the wheel away from her, and the Beechcraft dipped. The cotton wool, black and solid, rose to meet them, and a moment later had them tight in its grip. The dreadful buffeting began again; the wing tips rose and fell and Helen’s cheeks were pink.
Clarence watched the altimeter. “Twenty-five hundred. Two thousand. Eighteen hundred. Sixteen hundred. See anything?”
“Not a thing,” Jonathan said.
“Fourteen hundred,” Clarence said. “Twelve hundred. One thousand.”
“I’m going up,” Helen said.
“We can chance another couple of hundred. Eight.”
“Look,” Jonathan shouted.
The clouds thinned, and beneath them were tossing waves, smothered in flying foam.
“It looks pretty lousy to me,” Helen said. “Let’s climb.”
“Down,” he insisted.
“Six hundred,” Clarence said. “Four hundred.”
Now they were completely clear of the clouds, but subjected to a tremendous rainstorm which splattered the perspex roof and cut visibility to a few hundred yards.
“I can’t hold it,” Helen panted.
“Where are we?” Jonathan muttered, straining his eyes.
“There’s a ship,” Clarence remarked.
It seemed to rush at them out of the mist, not very large, but frighteningly close.
“Yipes!” Helen cried, and pulled the wheel back. The plane responded immediately, a
nd then hung for a moment. She gave it full throttle, and it soared into cloud, was struck by a tremendous gust of wind, and turned upside down. Dimly Jonathan heard Helen screaming, but he was too busy keeping himself from falling out of his belt. A moment later they were right side up again, only now he didn’t need an altimeter to discover how close they were to the water.
“Take it up,” he snapped.
She reached for the throttle, and the starboard engine coughed. “Gas! What’s it say?”
“Empty.” Clarence reached beneath his seat, pulled out a life jacket. “Try to keep her even.” He unfastened her seat belt, dropped the lifebelt over her head; she leaned forward while he secured the straps, and then buckled her seat belt again. She was sweating, but otherwise seemed calm.
“There should be a couple more back there,” Clarence said.
“I have them,” Jonathan said.
“Well, hurry,” Helen muttered. “We’re flying on one, and that must be about through.”
Jonathan glanced through the window. The starboard propeller feathered idly. The wind picked up the little plane and flung it aside, and Helen mumbled and got it even again. The ship had disappeared. Jonathan secured his life belt.
“There’s a raft thing,” Clarence said. “Aft, by the door. Any good?”
“It’d better be,” Helen said. “I’m going to try to put her down gently. Once she settles, we get out. Right? I figure we’ll have maybe fifteen seconds.”
Clarence pulled on his life jacket. Jonathan counted, and his heart started thumping. He thought it was a bit much to drown twice in two days.
Helen’s tongue was out, and her forehead was contorted in the grimmest of frowns as she peered past the humming windshield wipers. Then she put her tongue away, bit her lips, and as the port engine coughed, shouted, “Geronimo!”
The Beechcraft touched the top of the wave, bounced, hit another wave with a shock which seemed to drive the seat right through Jonathan’s body, leaped into the air, and plunged nose first into the following trough. Helen lay across the wheel, blood dribbling down her forehead. Yet the perspex was intact, and the plane was floating.
Operation Destruct Page 17
