Night Over Water

by Ken Follett

  Cold fear touched her heart.

  Perhaps Nancy was in the ladies’ powder room. But then where was Mr. Lovesey? If he had gone to the flight deck or the men’s room, Margaret would have seen him pass through number 2 compartment. She stood in the doorway, frowning and staring around the suite as if they might be hiding somewhere; but there was nowhere to hide.

  Nancy’s brother, Peter, and his companion were sitting right next to the honeymoon suite, across the aisle from the powder room. Margaret asked them: “Where’s Mrs. Lenehan?”

  Peter replied: “She decided to leave the flight at Shediac.”

  Margaret gasped. “What?” she said. “How do you know?”

  “She told me.”

  “But why?” Margaret said plaintively. “What made her stay behind?”

  He looked offended. “I guess I don’t know,” he said frostily. “She didn’t say. She simply asked me to inform the captain that she would not be joining the plane for the last leg of the trip.”

  Margaret knew it was rude to interrogate him but she had to persist. “Where did Nancy go?”

  He picked up a newspaper from the seat beside him. “I have no idea,” he said, and began to read.

  Margaret was desolate. How could Nancy do this? She knew how much Margaret was relying on her for help. Surely she would not have left the flight without saying anything, or at least leaving some kind of message.

  Margaret stared hard at Peter. She thought he had a shifty look. He was a little too touchy about being questioned, too. On impulse she said: “I don’t believe you’re telling me the truth.” It was a very insulting thing to say and she held her breath as she waited for his reaction.

  He looked up at her, reddening. “You have inherited your father’s bad manners, young lady,” he said. “Please go away.”

  She was crushed. Nothing could be more hateful to her than to be told she was like Father. She turned away without another word, feeling close to tears.

  Passing through number 4 compartment she noticed Diana Lovesey, Mervyn’s beautiful wife. Everyone had been riveted by the drama of the runaway wife and the pursuing husband, and amused when Nancy and Mervyn had been obliged to share the honeymoon suite. Now Margaret wondered whether Diana might know what had happened to her husband. It would be embarrassing to ask, of course, but Margaret was too desperate to worry about that. She sat down next to Diana and said: “Excuse me, but do you know what happened to Mr. Lovesey and Mrs. Lenehan?”

  Diana looked surprised. “Happened? Aren’t they in the honeymoon suite ?”

  “No—they’re not on board.”

  “Really?” Diana was obviously shocked and mystified. “How come? Did they miss the plane?”

  “Nancy’s brother says they decided not to finish the flight, but I don’t think I believe him.”

  Diana looked cross. “Neither of them said anything to me.”

  Margaret looked an inquiry at Diana’s companion, the mild-mannered Mark. “They certainly didn’t confide in me,” he said.

  In a different tone of voice Diana said: “I hope they’re all right.”

  Mark said: “What do you mean, honey?”

  “I don’t know what I mean. I just hope they’re all right.”

  Margaret nodded agreement with Diana. “I don’t trust the brother. I think he’s dishonest.”

  Mark said: “You may be right, but I guess there’s nothing we can do about it while we’re in midair. Besides—”

  “He’s not my concern anymore, I know,” Diana said irritably. “But he was my husband for five years and I’m worried about him.”

  “There will probably be a message from him waiting for us when we get to Port Washington,” Mark said soothingly.

  “I hope so,” Diana said.

  Davy, the steward, touched Margaret’s arm. “Lunch is ready, Lady Margaret, and your family are at table.”

  “Thank you.” Margaret had no interest in food. However, these two could tell her no more.

  As Margaret stood up to leave, Diana said: “Are you a friend of Mrs. Lenehan’s?”

  “She was going to give me a job,” Margaret said bitterly. She turned away, biting her lip.

  Her parents and Percy were already seated in the dining room, and the first course was being served: lobster cocktail made with fresh lobsters from Shediac. Margaret sat down and said automatically: “I’m so sorry to be late.” Father just glared at her.

  She toyed with her food. She felt like laying her head on the table and bursting into tears. Harry and Nancy had both abandoned her with out warning. She was back at square one, with no way to support herself and no friends to help her. It was so unfair: she had tried to be like Elizabeth and plan everything, but her careful scheme had fallen apart.

  The lobster was taken away and replaced by kidney soup. Margaret took one sip, and put down her spoon. She felt tired and irritable. She had a headache and no appetite. The superluxurious Clipper was beginning to feel like a prison. They had now been en route for almost twenty-seven hours, and she had had enough. She wanted to get into a real bed, with a soft mattress and lots of pillows, and go to sleep for a week.

  The others were also feeling the strain. Mother was pale and tired. Father was hungover, with bloodshot eyes and bad breath. Percy was unsettled and nervy, like someone who has drunk too much strong coffee, and he kept throwing hostile looks at Father. Margaret had a feeling he. was going to do something outrageous before long.

  For the main course they had a choice: fried sole with cardinal sauce, or fillet steak. She did not want either but she chose the fish. It came with potatoes and Brussels sprouts. She asked Nicky for a glass of white wine.

  She thought about the dreary days ahead. She would stay with Mother and Father in the Waldorf, but Harry would not sneak into her room: she would lie in bed alone and long for him. She would have to accompany Mother on shopping trips for clothes. Then they would all go on to Connecticut. Without consulting her, they would enroll Margaret in a riding club and a tennis club, and she would be invited to parties. Mother would construct a whole social round for them in no time at all, and before long, there would be “suitable” boys coming for tea or cocktails or bicycle rides. How could she enter into all that when England was at war? The more she thought about it, the more depressed she felt.

  For dessert there was apple tart with cream, or ice cream with chocolate sauce. Margaret ordered ice cream and ate it all.

  Father asked for brandy with his coffee, then cleared his throat. He was about to make a speech. Could it be that he would apologize for the frightful scene at dinner yesterday? Impossible.

  “Your mother and I have been discussing you,” he began.

  “As if I were a disobedient parlormaid,” Margaret snapped.

  Mother said: “You’re a disobedient child.”

  “I’m nineteen years old, and I’ve been menstruating for six years—how could I be a child?”

  “Hush!” Mother said, shocked. “The very fact that you can use such words in front of your father shows that you’re not yet adult!”

  “I give up,” Margaret said. “I can’t win.”

  Father said: “Your foolish attitude just confirms everything we’ve been saying. You can’t yet be trusted to lead a normal social life among people of your own class.”

  “Thank heaven for that!”

  Percy laughed out loud, and Father glared at him, but spoke to Margaret. “We’ve been trying to think of somewhere to send you, a place where you will have the minimum opportunity to cause trouble.”

  “Did you consider a convent?”

  He was not used to her cheeking him, but he controlled his anger with an effort. “This kind of talk won’t make things any better for you.”

  “Better? How could things be better for me? My loving parents are determining my future, with only my best interests at heart. What more could I want?”

  To her surprise, her mother shed a tear. “You’re very cruel, Margaret,” she
said, wiping it away.

  Margaret was touched. The sight of her mother weeping destroyed her resistance. She became meek again and said quietly: “What do you want me to do, Mother?”

  Father answered the question. “You’re going to live with your aunt Clare. She has a place in Vermont. It’s in the mountains, rather remote; there will be nobody nearby for you to embarrass.”

  Mother added: “My sister, Clare, is a wonderful woman. She never married. She’s the backbone of the Episcopalian Church in Brattleboro.”

  Cold rage gripped Margaret, but, she kept herself under control. “How old is Aunt Clare?” she asked.

  “In her fifties.”

  “Does she live alone?”

  “Apart from the servants, yes.”

  Margaret was shaking with anger. “So this is my punishment for trying to live my own life,” she said in an unsteady voice. “I’m exiled to the mountains to live alone with a mad spinster aunt. How long do you expect me to stay there?”

  “Until you’ve calmed down,” Father said. “A year, perhaps.”

  “A year!” It seemed a lifetime. But they could not make her stay there. “Don’t be so stupid. I shall go mad, kill myself or run away.”

  “You’re not to leave without our consent,” Father said. “And if you do ...” He hesitated.

  Margaret looked at his face. My God, she thought, even he is ashamed of what he’s about to say. What on earth can it be?

  He pressed his lips together in a determined line, then said: “If you run away, we will have you certified insane and committed to a lunatic asylum.”

  Margaret gasped. She was speechless with horror. She had not imagined him capable of such cruelty. She looked at her mother, but Mother would not meet her eyes.

  Percy stood up and flung down his napkin. “You bloody old fool, you’ve gone off your rocker,” he said, and he walked out.

  If Percy had spoken like that a week ago there would have been hell to pay, but now he was ignored.

  Margaret looked again at Father. His expression was guilty, defiant and obstinate. He knew he was doing wrong, but he would not change his mind.

  At last she found the words to express what she felt in her heart.

  “You’ve sentenced me to death,” she said.

  Mother started to cry quietly.

  Suddenly the engine note changed. Everyone heard it and all conversation stopped. There was a lurch, and the plane began to go down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  When both port engines cut out at the same time, Eddie’s fate was sealed.

  Until that moment he could have changed his mind. The plane would have flown on, no one knowing what he had planned. But now, whatever happened, it would all come out. He would never fly again, except maybe as a passenger: his career was over. He fought down the rage that threatened to possess him. He had to stay cool and get this job done. Then he would think about the bastards who had ruined his life.

  The plane had to make an emergency splashdown now. The kidnappers would come aboard and rescue Frankie Gordino. After that anything could happen. Would Carol-Ann be safe and unhurt? Would the navy ambush the gangsters as they headed for shore? Would Eddie go to jail for his part in the whole thing? He was a prisoner of fate. But if he could just hold Carol-Ann in his arms, alive and well, nothing else would matter.

  A moment after the engines cut out he heard the voice of Captain Baker in his headphones. “What the hell is going on?”

  Eddie’s mouth was dry with tension and he had to swallow twice before he could speak. “I don’t know yet,” he replied; but he did. The engines had stopped because they were getting no fuel: he had cut the supply.

  The Clipper had six fuel tanks. The engines were supplied by two small feeder tanks in the wings. Most of the fuel was kept in four large reserve tanks located in the hydrostabilizers, the stubby sea-wings that the passengers stepped on as they got on and off the plane.

  Fuel could be dumped from the reserve tanks, but not by Eddie, because the control was at the second pilot’s station. However, Eddie could pump fuel from the reserve tanks up to the wings and back down again. Such transfers were controlled by two large handwheels to the right of the engineer’s instrument panel. The plane was now over the Bay of Fundy, about five miles from the rendezvous, and in the last few minutes he had drained both the wing tanks. The starboard tank had fuel for a few more miles. The port tank had now run dry, and the port engines had stopped.

  It would be a simple matter to pump fuel back up from the reserves, of course. However, while the plane was in Shediac, Eddie had come aboard on his own and tampered with the handwheels, moving the dials so that when they said PUMP they were in fact off, and when they said OFF they were pumping. Now the dials indicated that he was trying to fill the wing tanks when in fact nothing was happening.

  He had been using the pumps with the wrong settings for the first part of the flight, of course; and another engineer might have noticed that and wondered what the hell was going on. Eddie had worried every second that the off-duty assistant engineer, Mickey Finn, would come upstairs; but he stayed fast asleep in number 1 compartment, as Eddie had expected: at this stage of the long flight, off-duty crew always slept.

  There had been two nasty moments in Shediac. The first had come when the police announced they had learned the name of Frankie Gordino’s accomplice aboard the plane. Eddie assumed they were talking about Luther, and for a while he thought the game was up, and racked his brains for some other way of rescuing Carol-Ann. Then they had named Harry Vandenpost, and Eddie almost jumped for joy. He had no idea why Vandenpost, who appeared to be an amiable young American from a wealthy family, should be traveling with a false passport; but he was grateful to the man for deflecting attention from Luther. The police looked no farther; Luther escaped notice and the plan could go ahead.

  But all this had been too much for Captain Baker. Even while Eddie was still recovering from the scare, Baker had dropped a bombshell. The fact that there really had been an accomplice on board meant that someone was serious about rescuing Gordino, he said, and he wanted Gordino off the plane. That too would have ruined everything for Eddie.

  There had been a stand-up row between Baker and Ollis Field, with the F.B.I. man threatening to have the captain charged with obstruction of justice. In the end Baker had called Pan American in New York and dumped the problem on them; and the airline had decided to let Gordino fly on; and once again Eddie was relieved.

  He had got one more piece of good news in Shediac. A cryptic but unmistakable message from Steve Appleby had confirmed that a U.S. Navy cutter would be patrolling the coast where the Clipper was going to come down. It would stay out of sight until the splashdown, then intercept any vessel that made contact with the downed plane.

  That made all the difference to Eddie. Knowing the gangsters would be caught afterward, he could with a clear conscience make sure the plan went off without a hitch.

  Now the deed was almost done. The plane was close to the rendezvous and flying on two engines only.

  Captain Baker was at Eddie’s side in a moment. Eddie said nothing to him at first. With a shaky hand he switched the engine feed so that the starboard wing tank was fueling all engines, and restarted the port engines. Then he said: “The port wing tank ran dry and I can’t fill it.”

  “Why not?” the captain snapped.

  Eddie pointed to the handwheels. Feeling like a traitor, he said: “I’ve switched the pumps on but nothing’s happening.”

  Eddie’s instruments did not show either fuel flow or fuel pressure between the reserve tanks and the feeder tanks, but there were four glass sights at the rear of the control cabin for visual checking of the fuel in the pipes. Captain Baker looked at each in turn. “Nothing!” he said. “How much is left in the starboard wing tank?”

  “It’s almost dry—a few miles.”

  “How come you’ve only just noticed?” he said angrily.

  “I thought we were pump
ing,” Eddie said feebly.

  It was an inadequate answer and the captain was furious. “How could both pumps go at the same time?”

  “I don’t know—but thank God we have a hand pump.” Eddie seized the handle next to his table and began to operate the hand pump. This was normally used only when the engineer was draining water from the fuel tanks in flight. He had done this immediately after leaving Shediac, and he had deliberately omitted to reset the F-valve that allowed the water to escape overboard. In consequence, his vigorous pumping action was not filling the wing tanks, but just dumping fuel overboard.

  The captain did not know this, of course, and it was not likely that he would notice the setting on the F-valve; but he could see that no fuel was moving through the sight gauges. “It’s not working!” he said. “I don’t understand how all three pumps could fail at the same time!”

  Eddie looked at his dials. “The starboard wing tank is almost dry,” he said. “If we don’t splash down soon we’re going to fall out of the sky.”

  “Prepare for emergency splashdown, everybody,” Baker said. He pointed a finger at Eddie. “I don’t like your role in this, Deakin,” he said with ice-cold fury. “I don’t trust you.”

  Eddie felt rotten. He had good reason to lie to his captain, but just the same he hated himself. All his life he had dealt honestly with people, and scorned men who used trickery and deceit. Now he was acting in a way he despised. You’ll understand in the end, Captain, he thought; but he wished he could say it aloud.

  The captain turned to the navigator’s station and bent over the chart. The navigator, Jack Ashford, shot a puzzled look at Eddie, then put a finger on the chart and said to the captain: “We’re here.”

  The whole plan relied on the Clipper coming down in the channel between the coast and Grand Manan Island. The gangsters were betting on that, and so was Eddie. But in emergencies people did strange things. Eddie decided that if Baker irrationally chose another location, he would speak up and point out the advantages of the channel. Baker would be suspicious, but he would have to see the logic of it; and then he would be the one behaving oddly if he landed somewhere else.