Ground haze obscured the coastline as Hanley approached Northern Africa. He began searching the coasts for landmarks. The late morning sun reflected off the blindingly polished aluminum skin of the plane’s engine housings, causing glints of light to bounce around the cockpit, off the crystal of his sport wristwatch, up to the surface of his sunglasses causing him some momentary visual disorientation. The nose of plane was painted a flat black, extending up to the cockpit windows, reducing the glare of the bright sun at altitude.
The Beech cruised at one-hundred-and-seventy-five miles per hour. At eight thousand feet, Hanley could fly with his cabin unpressurized for hours at a time; enough to hop between Crete and Egypt. When distances permitted, he’d been doing that since leaving Kokomo, Indiana three weeks earlier. Hanley found flying in an unpressurized cabin less tiring, keeping him more alert.
Turbulence bounced him off the seat. He tightened his grip on the old black bowtie-shaped yoke. The Beech maintained its trim through the mild turbulent air over the Mediterranean Sea. Checking his fuel, then his manifold pressure and his air speed, he reached for the red-knobbed throttle levers and pushed them forward, reducing his speed, adjusted his flaps and started a slow descent.
Seeing the continent for the first time thrilled him more than he expected. He was in it now, he thought, pumped-up and scared at the same time. It caused his gut to tighten a bit just thinking about it. Before leaving Kokomo, Hanley spent some time talking to people who had business dealings in Africa, one man in particular that Sister Mary Kathleen put him in touch with. His name was Bobby Stein. He supplied oil companies with replacement valves and seals. Dealing primarily in Ethiopia and the Mideast, business was good for a while, but local politics caused too many problems. Bobby Stein switched his focus to the countries of the former Soviet Union. While certainly no picnic, dealing with the local Russian criminal element beat dealing with radical Muslims by a mile, he told Hanley. He rated doing business internationally at a three or four out of ten, he said. Doing some business outside America allowed him to keep his contacts in place and active. He explained that he at least hoped to create some balance as a hedge against the ever-increasing ups and downs of the American business cycle.
Hanley remembered the one point that Stein kept coming back to; that no matter what Hanley’s experience had been in dealing with European-based businesses, nothing would prepare him for being in Africa. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced or will ever experience,” Stein said. “I’m from northern New Jersey and thought I was tough, at least I would never allow anyone to get the best of me. But Africa, it’s something else entirely. It’s not really being tough or even shrewd. It’s not even that the rules are different. It’s that there aren’t any rules. I don’t know you, Mr Martin. Our mutual friend tells me you’re really successful. I hope you are good at covering your back or have someone around that will. It’s not just a requirement, it’s closer to survival. Being an American outside of America is becoming a risky business.”
Hanley thought of explaining what he would be doing there, but skipped it. It did not matter, at least not in this conversation. He was tired of explaining anyway. It was time to get on with it, he told himself.
Flying alone gave Hanley time to reflect on his recent decision. As he aged, he realized choices were accompanied by a certain finality or at least a limited amount of time to correct them if the decisions were bad. His accumulated decisions began to haunt him. His financial success was not a comfort, but only added to the doubt he had about what he had become. Success was not really success, he believed. Conversations he had with his uncle when he was young began to come back to him as he shaved or lay in bed, unable to sleep. He even began to drift away during telephone conversations, back to when he spent his summers on his uncle’s farm, listening to the lessons being taught. Not lessons, at least they weren’t meant to be lessons, more like advice. They were lessons nonetheless.
To Hanley, time became a package with a bomb inside. The package always had to be opened, but at what cost? Control of his life was lost. His daughter’s marriage and move to another state, his divorce, his loneliness, the creases and blotches on his skin. He came to see the wastefulness of the life he was leading and was ashamed. That vision became a burden he carried, the many minutes, hours, days, months and years he wasted piled on his back. Family and friends defended him from himself. He would not accept their support. Soon, events began pointing him toward change and the decisions made to make that change. He thought he saw a design to the events, maybe looked too hard, thought fate played a hand. Again thought himself foolish.
After landing in Heraklion on the island of Crete, he filed a flight plan that designated Cairo International Airport as his first stop after entering Africa. At every stop since leaving the US, he dealt with local customs officials, inspections and fees for landing, and parking while his plane was inspected. Most were polite or at least as polite as seemed reasonable in today’s world, Hanley thought. The farther south he went after leaving Greenland, the more difficult and time-consuming became the process. Apparently, the Beech C-45 was the type of plane every customs inspector south of France imagined a drug smuggler might use. So thorough and long was the inspection process in Crete that Hanley checked the inspection form for a section specifying a cavity search. Not finding it mentioned in English did not mean it
