"I warned you, my dear," Aubrey whispered, clinging to her like a child might have done, but anciently aware of her thoughts, like a sibyl.
"You wouldn't have listened to you," she retorted. More laughter, callow and momentary, but now it seemed cruel, unfeeling.
"Should I?"
Acting was a skill at anonymity. He had always enjoyed the role-playing element of his intelligence career the cover stories, the false identities, the disguise of himself. Standing in the great open doorway of the cathedral of the maintenance hangar, that sense of satisfaction returned, like the rediscovery of an old pastime.
"Sure," he found himself easily announcing, 'girls in offices, they screw up. Alan Vance put me on a flight over here, and here I am. He's just making double sure, I guess." Then he waited patiently, the smile retained like a credential, as the chief engineer subcontracted by Artemis Airways once more studied his papers. A few moments later, he offered: "Call the number — make the check." Even that invitation to be unmasked seemed to come easily, with hardly any constriction in his throat.
The Norwegian engineer looked up at him, and nodded.
"Your guy was lucky, j'a?" he grinned. The Seventh Cavalry came to the rescue, and no mistake!"
"Sure." Understanding that he was accepted as the deputy chief engineer of Vance Aircraft in Phoenix, he moved forward, nudging the Norwegian into turning with him. They began walking.
"The system we used on these two, this one and its twin—" As the Norwegian compliantly kept pace with him, he gestured towards the 494, the engine cowling bared like a striptease artiste's shoulder. The plane was surrounded by the metal cages of gantries and inspection hoists, fussed at by perhaps half a dozen overalled figures as ceremoniously as women arranging flowers in a church, '-not the same as the one in the accident. But Al Vance wants me to make sure- there's too much to lose if anything goes wrong." He clapped his large hand on the man's shoulder.
"I won't get in your way. It's just the fuel computer I need to check over. Maybe an hour, maybe even less before I'm out of your hair."
"You want coffee?"
"Great."
I'll organise it. You just go ahead—" He waved towards the aircraft.
Strickland grinned at the man's retreating back, then stretched small nerves out of his frame. He was now dressed in a check shirt, denims, high-heeled boots, a leather jacket. Maybe they would expect to see a stetson, but his sense of understatement had refused the notion. Idly, he walked towards the four-storey dock which was positioned halfway along the fuselage of the 494. Metal ladders, metal handrails, making the aircraft appear imprisoned. He watched it move on its rails, the motors whining, creeping like the shadow of an elaborate gallows along the liveried fuselage. For Strickland, there was the satisfaction of machines, the smell of oils, of metals, the single-mindedness of the service engineers.
It was eleven-thirty by his watch. After his meal, he had hired a car in the name under which he had flown in. He would be away from Fornebu by twelve thirty claiming that he was booked into one of the airport hotels until his return flight to the US the following afternoon. Then he would drive to Larvik and catch the ferry for Copenhagen. He could fly direct to Paris, then on to Bordeaux… then he would disappear for a while.
The huge flanged wheels of the dock ground along their rails and men moved purposefully around the aircraft. He clambered up the steps to the open mouth of the electrics bay of the 494, swinging his cabin bag into the hard-lit space, his head and shoulders following. An electrical engineer turned to him, at first surprised then rendered docile and accepting by Strickland's confidence and the voice of the chief engineer from the foot of the steps.
"You want your coffee up there you ready to start right away?"
Strickland looked down from the hatch.
"Up here and thanks. I'll get right on to it. It was a long flight and the movie was terrible!" He grinned confidentially.
"I don't blame you Europeans complaining about American culture — man, that movie!"
"We pretty much enjoy American movies," the Norwegian replied, handing him the plastic cup. It burned his fingers and he set it down on the floor of the bay which lay beneath the first-class compartment. That's Jorgensen," he continued.
"You need his help?"
Strickland smiled at Jorgensen, then shook his head.
"It's just a coupla panels no trouble, nothing heavy to lift. Thanks, anyway—"
"Sure. I'll leave you to get on with it."
As soon as his head disappeared from the open hatch, Strickland held out his hand to the Norwegian electrical engineer.
"Cal Massey," he announced.
"Vance Aircraft."
"Sure."
Jorgensen took his hand briefly, then at once returned to his inspection of the auxiliary power unit. He whistled between his teeth, some low, crooning Norwegian dirge. Strickland sipped his coffee too much sugar, but then he hadn't specified as he sat cross-legged in the narrow, racked, luggage-compartment-like electrics bay. Thick bundles of wiring passed overhead and along the metal walls, ropy and multicoloured like the old diagrams in a school science lab of the human body's muscles, arteries and veins. Banks of switches, backup systems, relays, batteries in racked order, like a library of electronics. The slow, submarine growl of flanged wheels on rails came to him from the hangar as he sat, patient and absorbed as a boy brought there by some adult as a birthday treat.
Eventually, Jorgensen muttered: That's me finished." He stood up in the cramped space and stretched. That's what the manual calls for," he added, seeming to resent Strickland's silence, even his presence.
Of course, he was from Vance Aircraft… "It's just a five-hundred-hour overnighter I know that," he soothed.
"I'm not here to watch you, fella. I'm here because of what happened back in Phoenix."
"You know how that happened?"
"We do now thanks to that pilot. He worked it out. I'm just here to check there's nothing wrong with the fuel computer system on this baby."
Now that he was assured he was under no kind of examination, Jorgensen's thin features lost all interest. He yawned extravagantly.
"Maybe I'll catch the wife with her lover," he muttered, looking at his watch. He seemed possessed of the kind of gloomy northern temperament that expected such surprises. As if to confirm Strickland's impression, he added: "If the damn car starts. I had trouble with it this morning…" He was already descending the steps, then his shoulders and thin, narrow features disappeared through the hatch.
Strickland tossed his head in dismissive mockery, then swallowed the last of his coffee. He put down the plastic cup and dragged his cabin bag behind him as he crabbed on his haunches along the racks of boxes, batteries, wiring. He paused before the labelled rack holding the fuel management system.
Kneeling, he opened a small toolkit and began unscrewing the panel of the fuel computer, the twin of the model in his barn in the Dordogne.
Familiar as an often possessed body, supple and known under his touch.
He, too, began whistling through his teeth as he studied the relays, chips and circuitry.
Simple job… She was penned near one idly flapping wall of the huge marquee by the chairman of the local party, who conveyed to her with overbearing gravity and at great length the displeasure of Central Office. He had been rung at home by a party deputy chairman who was a former advertising executive. The chairman's wife, with fussy grace, was attempting to moderate her husband's effective impression of a patronising sexual chauvinist. Marian nodded and smiled and held herself erect with the intent vacuity of a mannequin, her wine warming in her grip, her plate of salmon and salad untouched. It would be rude to stuff one's face while being lectured. She forced the laughter from her eyes and made a vast effort to control her features.