“She was young, maybe early twenties. Dark hair. Pretty. Didn’t get much of a look at her, actually. She was drunk.”
“And that was it? Just the two?”
“Yes. At least… at first.”
Proctor tightened his grip on the man’s collar. “What do you mean—at first? What’s this about a tragedy?”
The pilot hesitated. “Well… it was the young woman.”
“What about her?” Proctor asked. “What about the young woman?”
The pilot looked down, then raised his eyes again to meet Proctor’s gaze. “She died midflight.”
8
“Died?” Proctor said. “Died?” For a moment, a red curtain fell across his vision. An overwhelming desire to inflict extreme violence — such as he had felt only once or twice before in his life, during times of intense danger and physical duress — came over him. It took a supreme act of will not to crush the man’s windpipe.
With the greatest effort, he mastered the urge. This man was simply an errand boy. There was something better the man could do than die: he could furnish information.
“Tell me what happened,” Proctor said in a low voice.
The man swallowed painfully. His face was ashen and beaded with sweat, as if he sensed how much danger he was in. “I don’t know much,” he said. “I wish I could tell you more.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“He wouldn’t let us out of the cockpit.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“The man. The man who chartered the plane.”
“The man with the scar?”
The pilot nodded.
“What else?”
The man swallowed again. “The trouble started after we landed in Akjoujt. I was taking a nap in the cockpit. Mark — the other pilot — woke me up. I saw another girl, a blonde, board the plane. After that, I heard cries, a heavy thump. That was when…” He paused. “He came in, told us to take off and stay in the cockpit until we landed here in Namibia. Gave us bed urinals, told us to use those if we needed to.”
The pilot seemed to see something in Proctor’s eyes, because the words that followed tumbled out in a rush. “Look, I didn’t see anything. She walked onto the plane in Shannon on her own two feet. When we got here, she was wheeled out dead on a stretcher.” A pause. “As we were landing, he… coached us. What to tell the officials, I mean. He said she’d had a lifelong history of heart trouble. Death at high altitude… it happens sometimes.”
“And the blonde? Who is this blonde?”
“I don’t know.” The pilot moved his head. “Do you think you could ease off a little?”
Proctor eased his grip on the collar.
The pilot nodded through the cockpit windscreen. “There. That’s the official who met the plane, interviewed our passenger.”
He had indicated a short man in a uniform, perhaps sixty years of age. The man was standing beneath a set of lights by a terminal door, at the center of a small knot of people.
“He’d know more than anybody,” the pilot said.
Proctor stared at the pilot — a long, hard stare. Then he pushed the man back down into his seat and quickly exited the jet.
As he walked toward the group, the man in question looked over at him. He had tired but kindly eyes, and his hair was very short, wiry, and pure white. Seeing Proctor, the others stepped away.
“Goeienaand,” the man said.
“Goeienaand,” Proctor replied. “My naam is Proctor.” He knew that, though the official language of Namibia was English, most people were more fluent in Afrikaans — a language that various classified ops had, in the past, given him some small facility with.
“Praat Meneer Afrikaans?” the man asked.
“Ja, ’n bietjie. Praat Meneer Engels?”
“Yes,” the man said, switching to accented English.
“Baie dankie.” Proctor pointed over his shoulder, toward the Bombardier. “I’m here about the young woman who was taken off that plane.”
“I am Masozi Shona. General manager.” The official shook his head. “Sad. Very sad.”
“What happened?” Proctor asked.
Shona stared at him. “Pray, what is your interest in the matter?”
Proctor hesitated a moment. “My daughter. It was my daughter on that plane.”
The official’s face, already serious, took on a mournful cast. “I am sorry. Very sorry. She is gone. Passed away on the flight.”
Proctor had not slept — not really — in over thirty-six hours. Ever since speeding away from 891 Riverside Drive, he had been on high alert, under terrific anxiety. Now he felt something give way within him. He did not cry — he hadn’t cried since he was six — but as he spoke, he felt his voice break and his eyes begin to fill. He let it happen, as it meshed with his cover. “Please. You must help me. I… I was following them. I got here too late. Asseblief—I need to know what happened. Do you understand? I need to know.”
The man named Shona took his arm. “I am very sorry. I will tell you all I know, which is very little.”
“What… what happened to her body?”
“It was taken away, sir. By private transportation.”
“What about the inquest? The medical examiner? Why wasn’t she taken to a hospital — or a morgue?”
The man shook his head. “It was all arranged before landing. A doctor was called to meet the plane. He made the initial examination, signed the papers.”
Proctor went silent.
The official shrugged with a look of sympathy. “You must understand. I am the general manager… but I am not in charge.”
Proctor understood. This was not America. If enough money changed hands, protocols could be bypassed.
“But my daughter,” Proctor heard himself say. “My little girl… Are you absolutely sure she’s dead? How can I know if it really was her? Maybe it was someone else.”
Hearing this, the man perked up slightly. “There is a way I can help you to be sure.”
“Anything.”
A hesitation. “It might not be easy for you.”
Proctor waved this off.
“In that case, follow me.”
The man led the way into the terminal, then passed through a set of swinging doors and down a rather shabby, official-looking hallway. Near the end of the hall, he opened one of the numerous doors and gestured for Proctor to step inside. The room contained desks and half a dozen video monitors with CPUs. Two men in short-sleeved shirts looked up as they stepped in. With a few curt words in Afrikaans, Shona ushered them out.
He glanced at Proctor in embarrassment. “Now I’m afraid I must ask you for… some consideration. It is not for myself, you understand, but—” and he nodded in the direction of the two men who had just left the security office.
“Of course.” Proctor reached into his bag, took out a small sheaf of bills.
The man pocketed the money and gestured toward a nearby video screen. “There is not much.”
He took a seat at the table and Proctor stood behind him. Despite the small size and disheveled condition of the room, the airport’s surveillance setup was of relatively modern design. Shona drew up a keyboard, typed in a few commands, pulled a DVD out of the nearest computer, consulted a tray beside it, pulled out another DVD labeled in longhand with a red marker, and inserted it into the computer.
More typing, and then a grainy image appeared on the computer screen, along with a running timestamp. There was the Bombardier — Diogenes’s plane. The passenger door was open, and the ladder was extended. Proctor watched as a man in a linen suit climbed the steps into the plane — evidently the doctor — followed by two uniformed orderlies. Quite some time passed, during which Shona sped up the playback. Then the doctor emerged, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He was followed by a young blonde woman that Diogenes didn’t recognize. Even in the low-quality video, he could see the sharpness of her cheekbones, the paleness of her eyes. She was followed by the two orderlies, carrying, with some difficulty, a stretcher between them. There was a figure on the stretcher, covered with a sheet. Proctor watched, scarcely drawing breath, as the orderlies manhandled the stretcher down the steps from the passenger compartment. Just as they reached the bottom step, the first orderly slipped, and as he regained his footing the body on the stretcher shifted and the sheet slipped partway off the face.