We went back to the airfield in the orange pickup truck, with directions from Amy, and among a surprising number of light aircraft standing in a separated area designated ‘general aviation’, Kris singled out and patted approvingly the twin-engine propeller-driven Piper that Robin had bought.
‘Why don’t you sit in this little beauty while I go and file the flight plan?’ Kris suggested. ‘I won’t be long.’
‘How about a map?’ I asked.
He fiddled about unlocking the door with his back to me and after a while turned and said, ‘What we really need is a direction to Odin’s eye, not a regular map.’
‘Can they give you that direction from here?’
‘They sure can.’
He more or less trotted off eagerly, leaving me behind.
He and I, I thought, had been friends for years and I’d seen him through enough suicidally bad times to know when he was avoiding telling me the truth. That morning in Cayman’s airport, he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
He came back from the offices waving a sheet of paper which he thrust into my hands for me to read while he went through his external checks. Those checks, for that aircraft, only semi-familiar to Kris, were in stapled sections of instructions, a small heap of them lying on the captain’s seat. Kris checked the exterior of the aeroplane with the appropriate section of instructions in hand to refer to, and I read the flight information sheet he’d filed with the Air Traffic Service.
Most of it was to me double Dutch. When he’d finished the external checks, I asked him what was meant by the addresses given for instance as MWCRZTZX and MKJKZOZYX.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said.
‘I’m not going unless you tell me.’
He stared, astonished, at my mild mutiny. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘the first lot of letters is the address of Grand Cayman Tower, in this airport, and the second is Kingston Airspace, Jamaica, where we’ll find Odin, probably. Satisfied?’
He pointed lower down the form to our ‘destination aerodrome’ which was listed as ZZZZ, because we weren’t sure where we were going. ‘Odin,’ he said.
‘And how about a map?’ I asked. ‘I’m really not going with you without a map.’
In England he would never have flown anywhere without a map. To set off into the wide Caribbean without one was madness.
‘I know where I’m going,’ he said mulishly.
‘Then you don’t need a navigator.’
‘Perry!’
‘A radio map,’ I said. ‘One with Trox Island on it.’
His half-awakened sense of shock came fully alive.
He frowned. He said, ‘Robin will be livid.’
‘Robin’s using us,’ I answered him.
‘How?’ He didn’t want to believe it. ‘He’s been the tops for us. He’s paying everything for us, don’t forget. He even bought this aeroplane from Amy.’
I said, ‘What if he bought himself an aircraft so that he could do what he liked with it? What if he got himself a good amateur pilot, little known in this area, and one, what’s more, who’s an expert meteorologist, who can deal with and understand cyclonic winds?’
‘But he’s just an enthusiast,’ Kris protested.
I said, ‘I’ll bet he’s got you to include the island in our flight... and perhaps it’s ZZZZ on the flight plan... and I’ll bet he persuaded you not to tell me where we’re going.’
‘Perry...’ He looked shattered, but denied nothing.
‘So did he tell you why?’ I asked. ‘Did he tell you what to do on Trox Island if we got there? Did he say why he wasn’t going himself? And, chief of the difficult questions, what is so odd about the destination or the purpose for going there, that it has to be camouflaged in a hurricane?’
Chapter 4
Kris and I climbed through the rear door of Amy’s/Robin’s truly terrific little aeroplane and sat in executive-style seats facing each other across a table. Designed originally for ten narrow people with only emergency male toilet facilities, Amy (I guessed) had rearranged things to two flight-deck seats for pilots, four for passengers in comfort in a cabin and, at the rear, a reasonable privy with a lockable door.
Kris confessed without shame that Robin had indeed persuaded him to leave me out of the flight planning. ‘Robin was afraid you wouldn’t agree to go to Trox Island,’ he said, ‘but I told him I would persuade you. And of course you will go, won’t you? I can’t do it all without help.’
‘What would we be going there for?’
‘To report back on the state of the mushrooms.’
‘Mushrooms!’ I didn’t believe him, and disliked the feeling.
‘It’s on the way to Odin,’ Kris said, cajoling. ‘Just a dog-leg, and a brief stop.’ He was trying to rationalise it. ‘And of course this super aeroplane has been fitted by Robin with extra instruments which will register air pressure in millibars and record it on tape from second to second, and wind-speed gauges too. They’re easy for you to operate from your seat. All you do is press buttons to activate the radio altimeter and it calculates everything by itself and displays the air pressure at sea level. I’ll show you.’
‘And these special altimeter and wind-speed measuring instruments are expensive?’
‘Very. They were installed with storms in mind, I think in time for Hurricane Nicky. That’s when Robin bought the aeroplane from Amy. And, as you see, Robin’s put so much money into our trip,’ Kris said plaintively, ‘I sort of had to agree to do what he asked.’
‘Why isn’t he going himself?’
‘You’re strong, he isn’t.’ Kris re-thought this and added, ‘He has an appointment back in Miami that he can’t avoid.’
‘And what he wanted,’ I suggested, ‘was for us to go to Trox, while I thought we were heading straight for Odin, because I had no map?’
Kris nodded without embarrassment. ‘We filled in most of the flight plan yesterday afternoon.’
The secrecy appalled me, but I did very much want to fly through a hurricane, and I was unlikely ever to have another chance. I settled for Trox, with or without lies and mushrooms, as the payment for Odin.
Kris, sensing it, and clearly relieved, pointed to various filled-in spaces on the form. ‘That’s the probable overall mileage. That’s fuel — we’re taking full tanks. That’s our cruising speed. That’s our flight level. Then, lower down, there’s our endurance, that’s the time we can stay airborne on full tanks. All of those figures allow for a dog-leg to the island. Then we circled M, which means maritime because we’re going over water, and the circle round J says we’re carrying life jackets, and F means the life jackets are fluorescent.’
‘And are they?’ I asked. ‘And do we in fact have life jackets on board?’
‘Perry! Of course we do. You’re so suspicious.’
‘No,’ I sighed. ‘Just checking, like you do.’
‘Well...’ he hesitated, but pointed again. ‘To set your mind at rest, that D stands for dinghy, and we do have one of those, too, and it says on this form that it has a cover for shelter, and it’s bright orange, and will accommodate ten people.’
‘Where is it?’ I asked, and Kris, still slightly hurt, pointed to a wrapped grey bundle occupying one of the passenger seats.
‘Robin bought a new one,’ Kris said. ‘He’s made a point of doing everything right. Everyone around us knew he was giving us the best equipment.’
‘Bully for him,’ I said dryly, but Kris was oblivious to sarcasm.
‘Then down near the bottom,’ he said, continuing to point at the form, ‘there’s the colour of this airplane, white, and Robin’s name and address as operator, that means owner in this case, and of course my own name as pilot, and my signature, and that’s the lot.’