High Citadel. Desmond Bagley
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and was shocked and afraid. ‘As you wish,’ he said bleakly, and passed on to the last pair of seats opposite the luggage racks.
The Coughlins were an elderly couple, very Darby and Joanish. He must have been pushing seventy and she was not far behind, but there was a suggestion of youth about their eyes, good-humoured and with a zest for life. O’Hara said, ‘Are you all right, Mrs Coughlin?’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Aren’t we, Harry?’
‘Sure,’ said Coughlin, and looked up at O’Hara. ‘Will we be flying through the Puerto de las Aguilas?’
‘That’s right,’ said O’Hara. ‘Do you know these parts?’
Coughlin laughed. ‘Last time I was round here was in 1912. I’ve just come down to show my wife where I spent my misspent youth.’ He turned to her. ‘That means Eagle Pass, you know; it took me two weeks to get across back in 1910, and here we are doing it in an hour or two. Isn’t it wonderful?’
‘It sure is,’ Mrs Coughlin replied comfortably.
There was nothing wrong with the Coughlins, decided O’Hara, so after a few more words he went back to the cockpit. Grivas still had the plane on automatic pilot and was sitting relaxed, gazing forward at the mountains. O’Hara sat down and looked intently at the oncoming mountain wall. He checked the course and said, ‘Keep taking a bearing on Chimitaxl and let me know when it’s two hundred and ten degrees true bearing. You know the drill.’
He stared down at the ground looking for landmarks and nodded with satisfaction as he saw the sinuous, twisting course of the Rio Sangre and the railway bridge that crossed it. Flying this route by day and for so long he knew the ground by heart and knew immediately whether he was on time. He judged that the north-west wind predicted by the meteorologists was a little stronger than they had prophesied and altered course accordingly, then he jacked in the auto pilot again and relaxed. All would be quiet until Grivas came up with the required bearing on Chimitaxl. He sat in repose and watched the ground slide away behind – the dun and olive foothills, craggy bare rock, and then the shining snow-covered peaks. Presently he munched on the sandwiches he took from his briefcase. He thought of washing them down with a drink from his flask but then he thought of Peabody’s whisky-sodden face. Something inside him seemed to burst and he found that he didn’t need a drink after all.
Grivas suddenly put down the bearing compass. ‘Thirty seconds,’ he said.
O’Hara looked at the wilderness of high peaks before him, a familiar wilderness. Some of these mountains were his friends, like Chimitaxl; they pointed out his route. Others were his deadly enemies – devils and demons lurked among them compounded of down draughts, driving snow and mists. But he was not afraid because it was all familiar and he knew and understood the dangers and how to escape them.
Grivas said, ‘Now,’ and O’Hara swung the control column gently, experience telling him the correct turn. His feet automatically moved in conjunction with his hands and the Dakota swept to port in a wide, easy curve, heading for a gap in the towering wall ahead.
Grivas said softly, ‘Señor O’Hara.’
‘Don’t bother me now.’
‘But I must,’ said Grivas, and there was a tiny metallic click.
O’Hara glanced at him out of the corner of his eye and stiffened as he saw that Grivas was pointing a gun at him – a compact automatic pistol.
He jerked his head, his eyes widening in disbelief. ‘Have you gone crazy?’
Grivas’s smiled widened. ‘Does it matter?’ he said indifferently. ‘We do not go through the Puerto de las Aguilas this trip, Señor O’Hara, that is all that matters.’ His voice hardened. ‘Now steer course one-eight-four on a true bearing.’
O’Hara took a deep breath and held his course. ‘You must have gone out of your mind,’ he said. ‘Put down that gun, Grivas, and maybe we’ll forget this. I suppose I have been bearing down on you a bit too much, but that’s no reason to pull a gun. Put it away and we’ll straighten things out when we get to Santillana.’
Grivas’s teeth flashed. ‘You’re a stupid man, O’Hara; do you think I do this for personal reasons? But since you mention it, you said not long ago that sitting in the captain’s seat gave you authority.’ He lifted the gun slightly. ‘You were wrong – this gives authority; all the authority there is. Now change course or I’ll blow your head off. I can fly this aircraft too, remember.’
‘They’d hear you inside,’ said O’Hara.
‘I’ve locked the door, and what could they do? They wouldn’t take the controls from the only pilot. But that would be of no consequence to you, O’Hara – you’d be dead.’
O’Hara saw his finger tighten on the trigger and bit his lip before swinging the control column. The Dakota turned to fly south, parallel to the main backbone of the Andes. Grivas was right, damn him; there was no point in getting himself killed. But what the hell was he up to?
He settled on the bearing given by Grivas and reached forward to the auto pilot control. Grivas jerked the gun. ‘No, Señor O’Hara; you fly this aircraft – it will give you something to do.’
O’Hara drew back his hand slowly and grasped the wheel. He looked out to starboard past Grivas at the high peaks drifting by. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked grimly.
‘That is of no consequence,’ said Grivas. ‘But it is not very far. We land at an airstrip in five minutes.’
O’Hara thought about that. There was no airstrip that he knew of on this course. There were no airstrips at all this high in the mountains except for the military strips, and those were on the Pacific side of the Andes chain. He would have to wait and see.
His eyes flickered to the microphone set on its hook close to his left hand. He looked at Grivas and saw he was not wearing his earphones. If the microphone was switched on then any loud conversation would go on the air and Grivas would be unaware of it. It was definitely worth trying.
He said to Grivas, ‘There are no airstrips on this course.’ His left hand strayed from the wheel.
‘You don’t know everything, O’Hara.’
His fingers touched the microphone and he leaned over to obstruct Grivas’s vision as much as possible, pretending to study the instruments. His fingers found the switch and he snapped it over and then he leaned back and relaxed. In a loud voice he said, ‘You’ll never get away with this, Grivas; you can’t steal a whole aeroplane so easily. When this Dakota is overdue at Santillana they’ll lay on a search – you know that as well as I do.’
Grivas laughed. ‘Oh, you’re clever, O’Hara – but I was cleverer. The radio is not working, you know. I took out the tubes when you were talking to the passengers.’
O’Hara felt a sudden emptiness in the pit of his stomach. He looked at the jumble of peaks ahead and felt frightened. This was country he did not know and there would be dangers he could not recognize. He felt frightened for himself and for his passengers.
III
It was cold in the passenger cabin, and the air was thin. Señor Montes had blue lips and his face had turned grey. He sucked on the oxygen tube and his niece fumbled in her bag and produced a small bottle of pills. He smiled painfully and put a pill in his mouth, letting it dissolve on his tongue. Slowly some colour came back into his face; not a lot, but he looked better than he had before taking the pill.
In the seat behind, Miss Ponsky’s teeth were chattering, not with cold but with conversation. Already Miguel Rohde had learned much of her life history, in which he had not the slightest interest although he did not show it. He let her talk, prompting her occasionally, and all the time he regarded the back of Montes’s head with lively black eyes. At a question from Miss Ponsky he looked out of the window