‘Flight’s on time,’ her daddy whispered, pointing outside to the waiting aircraft. ‘That’s the cockpit. Can you read that, sweetie?’
Words had been painted on the front of the plane, right beneath where the captain was sitting. Gaby could see him through the window, flicking switches above his head.
‘That’s easy,’ she said. ‘It says Clipper Maid of the Seas.’
They were allowed to board first because Gaby was part of a family. There were other children behind her, but no sign of the boy who had been crying when they walked past the X-ray machine. It was cold in the tunnel. There was a colour photograph on the wall of the Statue of Liberty and the Hudson River, the Twin Towers behind them glinting in the sun. A tall stewardess wearing red lipstick and a pretty blue skirt said: ‘Hi there! Love your teddy bear! He’s huge!’ as Gaby walked through the big open door, right behind where the captain was sitting in the cockpit. It was dark now and the sound of the airport was deafening, but as soon as she entered the cabin and started following her father towards her seat, the noise seemed to fade away, as if Gaby had put in her mommy’s new earplugs.
They were seated towards the front of the plane. The stewardess strapped her in and gave her a set of headphones, explaining that a film would start playing once the plane was airborne over Scotland.
‘Scotland?’ Daddy asked. He sounded surprised.
‘Weather diversion,’ the stewardess replied. ‘Little bumpy tonight over Ireland.’
That was when she told Gaby that Teddy was so big he was going to have to go in a cupboard until after take-off. The cupboards were full of cases and handbags; it looked as though he was going to be squashed in there. Gaby felt like crying but she wanted to seem grown-up in front of the other passengers. The stewardess said she would give her candy to make her feel better.
‘You know they call candy “sweets” in London,’ Gaby told her.
‘Is that right?’ the stewardess replied, looking sideways at Mommy. ‘Sweets, huh?’ She had a pretty smile and very white teeth. ‘So does Santa Claus know where you’re going to be on Christmas Eve, honey? Have you told him?’
‘I don’t believe in Santa Claus. My friend Billy says it’s just my daddy dressed up with a beard.’
‘News to me,’ said Daddy, and secured his seat belt as the stewardess walked off. She was smiling.
Gaby owned a yellow Swatch. She looked at it as the plane took off; it said twenty-five past six. Mommy hated flying so she always sat between them, Daddy holding her right hand, Gaby holding her left. Mommy closed her eyes as the aeroplane climbed through the sky. It was a better feeling even than the swings in Battersea Park, the noise and the rattle and the power of the big plane taking them up towards the moon.
‘Set your watch to New York time, honey,’ said her father, reaching across and touching her wrist. ‘We’re going home.’
Beneath them, in the chill of the hold, was the luggage Gaby’s parents had checked in at Heathrow a little more than an hour earlier: clothes, toiletries, Christmas presents. Close by, secured inside a brown Samsonite suitcase loaded onto a feeder flight at Malta airport that morning, was a timer-activated bomb constructed with the odourless plastic explosive Semtex and hidden inside a Toshiba cassette recorder by agents working on behalf of the Libyan government.
Gaby and her parents and the more than 250 souls on board Pan Am 103 would never reach New York City, never return to their families for Christmas. At three minutes past seven, as the aircraft was passing over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie, the bomb exploded. Those sitting towards the front of the plane were killed instantly. Others fell for over five miles, some still strapped in their seats, thrown free of the fuselage yet conscious for up to three minutes as they plunged to the ground. The wreckage of the obliterated plane, scattered over an area of 850 square miles, destroyed twenty-one houses and killed eleven residents of Lockerbie. In an instant the Clipper Maid of the Seas had been transformed into a flight of angels, violated by terror.
London, the present day
1
It was Martha, of all people, who rang Kite to tell him that Xavier Bonnard had killed himself.
The call, logged to Kite’s mobile at 11.24 GMT, transcripted by GCHQ before midday and copied to Thames House, was traced to a cell phone in the New York metropolitan area registered to ‘Martha Felicity Raine’ of 127 Verona Street, Brooklyn. The take quality was considered moderate, but a recording had been automatically archived. An analyst in Cheltenham was able to provide a full account of the brief conversation.
LACHLAN KITE (LK): Hello?
MARTHA RAINE (MR): Lockie. It’s me.
LK
:
Martha. God. What a surprise.
MR
:
Yes.
[break, 1 second]
LK
:
Is everything all right? Are you OK?
MR
:
I’m afraid it’s something awful.
LK
:
What’s happened? Are the children all right?
MR
:
You’re sweet. They’re fine. They’re both well. No, something else.
LK
:
What is it?
MR
:
It’s Xavier. He’s gone. Xavier has died.
[break, 2 seconds]
I thought you would want to know. Perhaps you already do.
LK
:
No. I didn’t. I didn’t know.
[break, 1 second]
I appreciate you ringing. Must be early there.
MR
:
I only just found out. Thought I should ring straight away.
LK
:
Yes. What happened? What …
MR
[overlapping]: They think it was suicide. They’re not 100 per cent sure. He was in Paris. In an apartment. Not his father’s place, somebody else’s.
LK
:
Who’s ‘they’?
MR
:
Jacqui. She rang me. She’s in Singapore these days.
LK
:
What about Lena? Were they still together?
MR
:
I think so, yes. Just about. Living in London. They still have the Onslow Square house. I don’t know where the children are.
LK
:
(Inaudible)
[break, 2 seconds]
MR
:
Are you there? Are you all right, Lockie?
LK
:
I’m fine. I’m in the country. Sussex. We have
