Nodding, he returned the mixture to normal running.
Someone would have heard the first failing notes of the engine. When he repeated it and seemed to drop more quickly out of the sky, eye-witnesses as they invariably did would embroider what they saw.
Smoke, maybe an engine fire, a wing coming off… People did that, trying to help the investigation. He smiled briefly.
The land was dotted with villages, some of them clamped like mussels on to rock outcrops, the roofs of the buildings biscuit-brown. Dark paint-spills of forest and cultivated orchards and groves. The threads of rivers like bright woollen strands accidentally plucked from a complex tapestry. He continued to toy with the mixture control, producing a rough-running engine note. Fifteen hundred feet below, a tractor, seemingly immobile, was tilted on a sloping field, earth crimped darkly behind its plough. The field looked free of fences, ditches, bushes. Dotted with old, broad trees, it sloped in such a way that it would provide sufficient approach and landing distance. He allowed the Cessna to sink leaflike towards the field, as if the plane was turned only by the wind. The engine continued to cough and bang convincingly. The man on the tractor seemed to be staring skywards, the vehicle unmoving on the slope of the field. A few sheep were grazing on part of it, but already seeking the shade of the trees against the heat of midmorning.
Eight hundred feet… A double bang, felt through the controls as much as heard.
He pushed the mixture to fully rich, alerted the pitch of the aircraft, as it seemed to wobble for an instant, as if about to tumble from a cliff-edge of air; levelled the wings. He checked the instruments furiously, unnerved. The controls responded normally. What in hell—?
There was a crimson and white stain on the starboard wing strut.
A bird strike. A bird had flown into the propeller. There were dark specks on the cockpit windscreen, a smear on the starboard wing. The engine coughed and choked now without his interference. The Cessna sank towards the trees and the sloping field. The man on the tractor watched him, posed in imperturbability. The wind direction was right.
He reduced power and lowered the undercarriage. A rabbit hole would be enough to fling the light aircraft violently tail over cockpit, send it tumbling to fragments down the slope of the field. He lowered the flaps a notch, his attention focused on a point perhaps two hundred yards beyond a small knot of trees and resting sheep. He closed the throttle.
He dropped the flaps fully and tensed himself against the first touch of the wheels now. The plane seemed to float for an instant, as if it had encountered water which buoyed it up. The wheels thumped, bounced, began to roll. He switched off the fuel. The engine's noise was replaced by the clatter of running over the rough pasture. He passed the tractor, glimpsing the driver's surprised expression. The plane slowed as if running through mud. Then it came to a gradual stop, the gradient of the field rising in front of the nose, the tractor in the mirrors abandoned by the farmer, who was stalking towards him.
The engine ticked as it cooled. He opened the cockpit door. The gyros whined down into silence. He heard birdsong and then the shouts of the farmer. The sheep had bolted from the shade out into the sunlight.
Gant waited for the Frenchman to reach the plane. Looking down at his reddened, perspiring features, his evident outrage, he shrugged and said:
"Sorry, fella. Engine trouble—" He climbed out beneath the wing, tugging at a rucksack, and dropped to the grass. The Frenchman was gesticulating angrily at the Cessna, at his field, at the already nibbling sheep even at the sky and the country around them.
"Sorry can't parlez Franqais, fella." A shrug of incomprehension as he continued: "Engine trouble." He spoke as if to an idiot child.
"I need a garage got to make some repairs… Understand?"
His relief had become amusement.
"Garage?" the Frenchman replied in heavily accented English. The aircraft your engine? I heard—" He pointed at the sky, at his ears.
Gant nodded.
That's right—" He looked at his watch, already possessed by a sense of the small scene as an interlude, something put in a Hitchcock movie, just before someone got killed or the audience, taken off-guard, was shocked in some other way.
Strickland's farmhouse was no more than a couple of miles from where he stood.
"I can leave the plane here While I go for spare parts?" He banged his hand on the engine cowling.
"Repairs? Can I leave the plane here?"
The farmer nodded furiously.
"Mais oui, m'sieur… You are OK?"
He should be making final approach to Bordeaux's Merignac airport in another ten minutes. He was overdue to contact them. Time was already being wasted, evaporating in the morning heat.
Thanks, fella I'm fine." He locked the door of the Cessna.
"Where's the nearest garage?"
"St. Amand-de-Coly, maybe." He shrugged.
"What do you need, m'sieur?"
"Just a couple of parts." He studied the map, pointing out the village the farmer had named. It lay in the same direction as Strickland's farmhouse, maybe a couple of miles farther southwest. He wouldn't create any suspicion by suddenly heading off in the wrong direction.
The farmer's blunt, earth-browned finger tapped the map in agreement.
St. Amand-de-Coly. I'll be maybe two hours, three—?"
"No one will steal your aircraft, m'sieur!" The farmer laughed. Gant slung the rucksack across his back, waved to the farmer, and began walking towards the gate of the field. Time began to hurry in his head. They would be waiting at Bordeaux airport, they would soon realise he wasn't going to show… There was more champagne, more canapes, then the sudden harsh lighting of the Channel Tunnel as the train sped into it like someone dashing for shelter from the rain clouds gathering in the blue Kent sky. Marian concentrated with a deliberate effort on the remnants of her constituency post bag the tickle of her claustrophobia raising her temperature, making her body wriggle uncomfortably in her seat. The table in front of her was littered with the ordinariness, the seductions of Parliament; submissions from researchers on half a dozen matters, her tape recorder and notepad. Roger and one or two others had already mocked her Goody-Twoshoes attention to Commons business as they wolfed the canapes, downed the champagne. Attentive stewards glided and poured and offered as brazenly as hoardings. Come to sunny Brussels for the Good Life… She rubbed her eyes, and looked up as Campbell slipped into the seat opposite her.
Ben Campbell again, as if to dispel the comfortable talismans she had drawn around her. The lights of the Tunnel flashed past the windows like some hypnotic and virtual reality.
"Looks fast, mm?" he murmured, nodding at the window.
"Wait 'til you try Skyliner you've never flown on her, have you?"
"No looking forward to it." Was it his presence or simply the nag of claustrophobia that made her feel heated, almost menopausal?
"Something to celebrate," she added.
"Too true! To think that a couple of weeks ago—" He shook his head.
"Skin of their teeth, Aero UK and the Froggies not to overstate the case."
"Are they all out of the wood?"
He waggled his hand.
"Let's say the Commission is still uttering collective sighs of relief." He grinned.
"Grandiose project back on the rails? Almost Napoleonic, one might say."
He seemed puzzled for a moment, then: "Ah, you're grinding your axe, Marian."
It was her turn to shake her head. Her hair fell across her face.
There was a moment of purely sexual interest in Campbell's brown eyes, then their interrogative, assessing expression was back. She brushed her hair back ostentatiously, teasingly, but he remained unaffected.