“Incredible, isn’t it?”
“Do you like flying these planes?”
“I love it. Uh, look, I wish I had time to talk, but I have to finish these calculations, and it’s going to take me almost until takeoff.”
Harry’s heart sank. That meant the way to the hold would be blocked until it was too late. He could not think of an excuse to go into the hold. Once again he forced himself to conceal his disappointment. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll buzz off.”
“Normally we like to talk to passengers—we meet such interesting people. But right now ...”
“My fault.” Harry racked his brains for another moment, then gave up. He turned and went back down the stairs, cursing to himself.
His luck seemed to be failing him.
He went forward and gave the shaving kit to Mickey, then returned to his compartment. Margaret still had not stirred. Harry went through the lounge and stepped out onto the sea-wing. He took several deep breaths of the cold, damp air. I’m missing the opportunity of a lifetime, he thought angrily. The palms of his hands itched when he pictured the fabulous jewelry just a few feet over his head. But he had not given up yet. There was one more stop, Shediac. That would be his last chance to steal a fortune.
PART V
BOTWOOD TO SHEDIAC
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Eddie Deakin could feel the hostility of his crewmates as they went ashore in the launch. None of them would meet his eye. They all knew how close they had come to running out of fuel and crashing into the stormy ocean. Their lives had been in danger. No one yet knew just why it had happened, but fuel was the engineer’s responsibility, so Eddie was to blame.
They must have noticed that he had been behaving oddly. He had been preoccupied the whole flight, he had talked scarily to Tom Luther during dinner, and a window had inexplicably broken while he was in the men’s room. No wonder the others felt he was not one hundred percent reliable anymore. That kind of feeling spread fast in a tightly knit crew whose lives depended on one another.
The knowledge that his mates no longer trusted him was a bitter pill to swallow. He was proud to be considered one of the most solid guys around. To make matters worse, he himself was slow to forgive others’ mistakes, and had sometimes been scornful of people whose performance fell off because of personal problems. “Excuses don’t fly,” he sometimes said, a crack that now made him wince every time he thought of it.
He had tried telling himself he did not give a damn. He had to save his wife and he had to do it alone: he could not ask anyone for help, and he could not worry about other people’s feelings. He had risked their lives, but the gamble had paid off and that was the end of it. It was all perfectly logical, and none of it made any difference. Engineer Deakin, solid as a rock, had turned into Unreliable Eddie, a guy you had to watch in case he screwed up. He hated people like Unreliable Eddie. He hated himself.
A lot of passengers had stayed on board the plane, as always at Botwood: they were glad of the chance to catch some sleep while the plane was still. Ollis Field, the F.B.I. man, and his prisoner, Frankie Gordino, had also stayed behind, of course: they had not disembarked at Foynes either. Tom Luther was in the launch, wearing a topcoat with a fur collar and a dove gray hat. As they approached the pier, Eddie moved next to Luther and murmured: “Wait for me at the airline building. I’ll take you to where the phone is.”
Botwood was a huddle of wooden houses around a deepwater harbor in the landlocked estuary of the Exploits River. Even the millionaires on the Clipper could never find much to buy here. The village had had telephone service only since June. Such few cars as there were drove on the left, for Newfoundland was still under British rule.
They all went into the wooden Pan American building and the crew made their way to the flight room. Eddie immediately read the weather reports sent by radio from the big new landplane airport thirty-eight miles away at Gander Lake. Then he calculated the fuel requirement for the next leg. Because this hop was so much shorter, the calculation was not so crucial, but all the same the plane never carried a great excess of fuel because payload was expensive. There was a sour taste in his mouth as he worked out the arithmetic. Would he ever be able to go through these sums again without thinking of this awful day? The question was academic: after what he was about to do, he would never again be engineer on a Clipper.
The captain might already be wondering whether to trust Eddie’s calculations. Eddie needed to do something toward restoring confidence. He decided to show some implicit self-doubt. He went over his figures twice, then handed his work to Captain Baker, saying in a neutral tone: “I’d appreciate it if someone would check these.”
“Won’t hurt,” the captain said noncommittally; but he looked relieved, as if he had wanted to propose a double-check but had been reluctant to.
“I’m going to get a breath of air,” Eddie said, and he went out.
He found Tom Luther outside the Pan American building, standing with his hands in his pockets, moodily watching the cows in the field. “I’ll take you to the telegraph office,” Eddie said. He led the way up the hill at a brisk pace. Luther lagged behind. “Set fire, you,” Eddie said. “I have to get back.” Luther walked faster. He looked like he did not want to make Eddie angry. Maybe it was not surprising, after Eddie almost threw him out of the plane.
They nodded to two passengers who appeared to be coming back from the telegraph office: Mr. Lovesey and Mrs. Lenehan, the couple who had got on at Foynes. The guy wore a flying jacket. Distracted though he was, Eddie noticed that they seemed happy together. People always said he and Carol-Ann looked happy together, he recalled, and he felt a stab of pain.
They reached the office and Luther placed the call. He wrote the number he wanted on a piece of paper: he did not want Eddie to hear him say it. They went into a small private room with a phone on a table and a couple of chairs, and waited impatiently for the call to go through. This early in the morning the lines should not be too busy, but there were probably a lot of connections between here and Maine.
Eddie felt confident that Luther would tell his men to bring Carol-Ann to the rendezvous. That was a big step forward: it meant he would be free to act the moment the rescue was over, instead of continuing to worry about his wife. But what exactly could he do? The obvious thing would be to radio the police immediately; but Luther was sure to think of that, and he would probably smash up the Clipper’s radio. Nobody would be able to do anything until help turned up. By then Gordino and Luther would be on land, in a car, speeding away—and no one would even know which country they were in, Canada or the U.S.A. Eddie racked his brains for some way to make it easier for the police to trace Gordino, but he could not think of anything. And if he were to give the warning beforehand, there was a danger the police would blunder in too early and endanger Carol-Ann—the one risk Eddie was not prepared to take. He began to wonder whether he had achieved anything after all.
After a while the phone rang and Luther picked up the earpiece. “It’s me,” he said. “There’s going to be a change of plan. You have to bring the woman on the launch.” There was a pause, then he said: “The engineer wants it this way, and he says he won’t do it any other way, and I believe him, so just bring the woman, okay?” After another pause he looked at Eddie. “They want to talk to you.”
Eddie’s heart sank. So far Luther had acted like the man in charge. Now it sounded as if he might not have the power to order Carol-Ann brought to the rendezvous. Eddie said edgily: “Are you telling me this is your boss?”
“I’m the boss,” Luther said uneasily. “But I have partners.”
Clearly the partners did not like the idea of bringing Carol-Ann to the rendezvous. Eddie cursed. Should he give them the chance to talk him out of it? Was there anything at all to be gained by speaking to them? He thought not. They might bring Carol-Ann to the phone and make her scream, to weaken his resolve.... “Tell them to fuck off,” Eddie said. The phone was on the table and he spoke loudly, hoping they could hear him at the other end of
