Webb thought about his colleagues on the team. Six Americans — Mark Noordhof, Judy Whaler, Jim McNally, Willy Shafer, Herb Sacheverell and Kenneth Kowalski.
Noordhof had been chosen by the Secretary of Defense or the President, because of his knowledge of missile defence technology. Judy worked in a corporation at the heart of the nation’s defences. Both these individuals needed the highest possible security clearance and must have been vetted to death at various times in their careers.
McNally was NASA’s Chief Administrator, for God’s sake.
That left Shafer, Sacheverell and Kowalski. But these were all in a sense accidental choices. Willy Shafer was chosen for his eminence as a physicist. Sacheverell because he was conspicuous in the asteroid business (okay he’s an incompetent loudmouth but that didn’t alter the fact). Kowalski just happened to be director of a remote observatory with the facilities they needed. None of these people could have even known about the Nemesis threat, let alone manipulated themselves on to the team.
Okay, Webb thought, everyone is squeaky clean.
Therefore exhaustion is making me paranoid. Leclerc’s death must have been an accident, and the robot telescope just has a remarkably fast response.
It was just odd that, at the moment he had been panning the robot camera over the bright, sunny Tenerife landscape, the Spot satellite had shown the island to be thick with cloud.
The twelve hours of flight, coupled with the loss of another eight hours due to the contrary motion of aircraft and sun across the Atlantic sky, meant that the Jumbo landed at de Gaulle at nine o’clock, local time, on a grey, stormy Friday morning. Webb adjusted his watch. It was now 3 a.m. Friday in Washington. He estimated that he’d had about three hours’ sleep in the last three days.
No, Monsieur, the flights to Rome are fully booked. There is, however, a flight to Nice, laid on by some small company capitalizing on the Air France strike. There is one remaining seat but it is a standby and it is for Monsieur to turn up before somebody else gets it. Oh, did I not say? Not from here, from Orly. Monsieur is most welcome. Monsieur took a taxi whose driver was as responsive to the promise of a huge tip as his Tucson cousin.
The standby seat was taken.
Yes, Monsieur, Quai d’Orsay Aviation do operate an executive air taxi but Monsieur appreciates that we cannot fly him into Italy without the necessary paperwork and at this time of year the Italians would simply file their flight plan away for days. Monsieur’s fastest route is to fly to Chamonix, on the French side of the Mont Blanc tunnel, and proceed from there.
He used the twenty minutes they needed for flight preparation to telephone Eagle Peak, where it would be about one o’clock in the morning. Noordhof came on the line almost immediately. The conversation was terse:
“I’m in Paris, just about to leave for Chamonix, arriving at L’Aèrodrome Sallanches in maybe three or four hours. Can I be met?”
“I’ll fix it.”
The office of Quai d’Orsay Aviation was about the size of a broom cupboard, dingy and empty. Webb fumed for about five minutes until a handyman, a small man with a handlebar moustache, entered carrying a tool box and a polythene sandwich box. He led Webb to the entrance of a hangar. Webb almost fainted at the sight of the tiny, two-seater Piper Tomahawk. He froze at the open door of the little toy, but someone heaved on his backside and he was in. The “handyman” turned out to be the pilot and Webb thought what the hell, I died trying.
They were a full half hour on the slipway waiting for clearance, during which time the pilot kept looking at the low clouds and making increasingly dubious noises about the flying conditions, while gusts of wind shook the aircraft. By the time the Tomahawk was bumping its way into the dark clouds, propeller racing, Webb reckoned he had attained some new plane of terror.
They jiggled and bumped their way across France, passing first over fields laid out like a patchwork quilt, and then over the white-covered Massif Central, occasionally glimpsed through snow-laden cumulus. Webb declined the offer of a sandwich although Monsieur would find the pig’s brain filling quite delicious. Low, white clouds ahead turned out to be the Alps which, as they approached, increasingly dominated the field of view. The pilot pulled back on the joystick to gain height. Soon they were flying bumpily over the Mont Blanc massif. Through the clouds they glimpsed needle-sharp peaks, icy blue lakes, and isolated villages in the snow. Circling L’Aiguille du Midi, the pilot tilted the aircraft on its side so that Webb could look straight down at the crevasses and banded glaciers falling away from the big mountain. Then the Tomahawk righted itself, and the pilot took it unsteadily down through heavy snow. Webb glimpsed the tops of pine trees just below their wheels; then there was open ground and an orange windsock, and the pilot managed a brief “Zut!” as a gust of wind caught the wings at the moment of touchdown.
Alive on the ground, Webb inwardly swore that his feet would never leave solid earth again. He resisted the urge to kiss the snow and instead settled up with the pilot, whose eyes lit up with simple joy at the sight of so much ready cash. The pilot disappeared into a wooden hut at the edge of the runway, and ten minutes later was taken off in a taxi.
Webb waited, shivering in Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts as the snow gusted around him. Through occasional patches of blue he could make out formidable, jagged peaks towering all around. He looked at his watch. He was attracting the amused attention of a plump girl inside the hut. He was about to head for Chamonix when a bright red sports car gurgled on to the airport road. A man emerged with green Tyrolean hat, complete with feather, and a long green trench-coat.
Webb climbed in. “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“I know,” Walkinshaw replied. “That’s why I hired the Spyder.” Bulls bellowed; a giant thrust Webb in the back; and in seconds they were on to the main road and moving at a speed which he associated with a race track.
They skimmed past a clutter of chalets and high-rise hotels on the left. On the right more chalets lay below an icy citadel, clouds swirling around its summit. Passing over a bridge Webb glimpsed turquoise, surging meltwater. Survival time two minutes, he thought for no reason.
“These chalets — aren’t they built in an avalanche zone?”
The civil servant shrugged. “What do rich foreigners know?” He turned on to a steep Alpine road whose route up the mountain towards the Mont Blanc tunnel was mapped out by crawling lorries. A notice advised snow chains and extreme caution. It came in several languages but to judge by his driving Walkinshaw seemed not to understand any of them.
Rain.
Rain, beating hard against a window.
Swish-swish.
The rhythmic swish-swish of windscreen wipers, and the hiss of tyres on a wet road.
The hum of an engine.
Heavy rain, driving hard. Powerful engine.
Webb drifted back to sleep.
The car slowed and turned. Headlights flickered in from outside. The car stopped and Walkinshaw stepped out, the door closing with a satisfying Clunk! Webb listened to his receding footsteps, the steady drumming of rain on the roof, and the thermal ticking from the cooling engine. There were voices outside.
Webb struggled up to a sitting position. His arms and legs were made of lead. An illuminated sign said Pavesi, and above it was a picture of a plump, smiling chef holding a roasted turkey on a tray. The clock on the dashboard read just after three, and the autostrada cafeteria was busy. The voices were coming from a group of truck drivers at the entrance of the cafeteria, one of whom made a dash for his truck, holding a newspaper over his head.