Fear is the Key. Alistair MacLean
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rain into the parched and steaming earth turned the world beyond the window into a grey and misty nothingness.
I tapped out our call sign. The same result as the last five hundred times I’d tapped it. Silence. I altered the waveband to check that reception was still OK, heard a swift succession of voices, static, singing, music, and homed back on our own frequency again.
The most important flight the Trans-Carib Air Charter Co. had ever made and I had to be stuck here in our tiny sub-office waiting endlessly for the spare carburettor that never came. And until I got it that red and white DC parked not fifty yards away on the apron was about as useful to me right then as a pair of sun-glasses.
They’d have got off from Barranquilla, I was certain of that. I’d had the first news three days ago, the day I’d arrived here, and the coded cable had made no mention of any possible trouble. Everything highly secret, only three permanent civil servants knew anything about it, Lloyd’s willing to carry the risk even although at one of the biggest premiums ever. Even the news, received in a radio report, of an attempted coup d’état yesterday by pro-dictatorship elements to try to prevent the election of the Liberal Lleras hadn’t concerned me too much, for although all military planes and internal services had been grounded, foreign airlines had been excluded: with the state of Colombia’s economy they couldn’t afford to offend even the poorest foreigners, and we just about qualified for that title.
But I’d taken no chances. I’d cabled Pete to take Elizabeth and John with him. If the wrong elements did get in on May 4th – that was tomorrow – and found out what we’d done, the Trans-Carib Air Charter Co. would be for the high jump. But fast. Besides, on the fabulous fee that was being offered for this one freight haul to Tampa …
The phones crackled in my ears. Static, weak, but bang on frequency. As if someone was trying to tune in. I fumbled for the volume switch, turned it to maximum, adjusted the band-switch a hair-line on either side and listened as I’d never listened before. But nothing. No voices, no morse call sign, just nothing. I eased off one of the earphones and reached for a packet of cigarettes.
The radio was still on. For the third time that evening and less than fifteen minutes since I’d heard it last, someone was again singing ‘My Red Rose Has Turned to White.’
I couldn’t stand it any longer. I tore off the phones, crossed to the radio, switched it off with a jerk that almost broke the knob and reached for the bottle under my desk. I poured myself a stiff one, then replaced the headphones.
‘CQR calling CQS. CQR calling CQS. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Over.’
The whisky splashed across the desk, the glass fell and broke with a tinkering crash on the wooden floor as I grabbed for the transmitter switch and mouthpiece.
‘CQS here, CQS here!’ I shouted. ‘Pete, is that you, Pete? Over.’
‘Me. On course, on time. Sorry for the delay.’ The voice was faint and faraway, but even the flat metallic tone of the speaker couldn’t rob it of its tightness, its anger.
‘I’ve been sitting here for hours.’ My own anger sounded through my relief, and I was no sooner conscious of it than ashamed of it. ‘What’s gone wrong, Pete?’
‘This has gone wrong. Some joker knew what we had aboard. Or maybe he just didn’t like us. He put a squib behind the radio. The detonator went off, the primer went off, but the charge – gelignite or TNT or whatever – failed to explode. Almost wrecked the radio – luckily Barry was carrying a full box of spares. He’s only just managed to fix it.’
My face was wet and my hands were shaking. So, when I spoke again, was my voice.
‘You mean someone planted a bomb? Someone tried to blow the crate apart?’
‘Just that.’
‘Anyone – anyone hurt?’ I dreaded the answer.
‘Relax, brother. Only the radio.’
‘Thank God for that. Let’s hope that’s the end of it.’
‘Not to worry. Besides, we have a watchdog now. A US Army Air Force plane has been with us for the past thirty minutes. Barranquilla must have radioed for an escort to see us in.’ Peter laughed dryly. ‘After all, the Americans have a fair interest in this cargo we have aboard.’
‘What kind of plane?’ I was puzzled, it took a pretty good flier to move two or three hundred miles out into the Gulf of Mexico and pick up an incoming plane without any radio directional bearing. ‘Were you warned of this?’
‘No. But not to worry – he’s genuine, all right. We’ve just been talking to him. Knows all about us and our cargo. It’s an old Mustang, fitted with long-range tanks – a jet fighter couldn’t stay up all this time.’ ‘I see.’ That was me, worrying about nothing, as usual. ‘What’s your course?’
‘040 dead.’
‘Position?’
He said something which I couldn’t catch. Reception was deteriorating, static increasing.’
‘Repeat, please?’
‘Barry’s just working it out. He’s been too busy repairing the radio to navigate.’ A pause. ‘He says two minutes.’
‘Let me talk to Elizabeth.’
‘Wilco.’
Another pause, then the voice that was more to me than all the world. ‘Hallo, darling. Sorry we’ve given you such a fright.’ That was Elizabeth. Sorry she’d given me a fright: never a word of herself.
‘Are you all right? I mean, are you sure you’re –’
‘Of course.’ Her voice, too, was faint and faraway, but the gaiety and the courage and the laughter would have come through to me had she been ten thousand miles away. ‘And we’re almost there. I can see the light of land ahead.’ A moment’s silence, then very softly, the faintest whisper of sound. ‘I love you, darling.’
‘Truly?’
‘Always, always, always.’
I leaned back happily in my chair, relaxed and at ease at last, then jerked forwards, on my feet, half-crouched over the transmitter as there came a sudden exclamation from Elizabeth and then the harsh, urgent shout from Pete.
‘He’s diving on us! The bastard’s diving on us and he’s opened fire. All his guns! He’s coming straight –’
The voice choked off in a bubbling, choking moan, a moan pierced and shattered by a high-pitched feminine cry of agony and in the same instant of time there came to me the staccato thunderous crash of exploding cannon-shells that jarred the earphones on my head. Two seconds it lasted, if that. Then there was no more sound of gunfire, no more moaning, no more crying. Nothing.
Two seconds. Only two seconds. Two seconds to take from me all this life held dear for me, two seconds to leave me alone in an empty and desolate and meaningless world.
My red rose had turned to white.
May 3rd, 1958.
I don’t quite know what I had expected the man behind the raised polished mahogany desk to look like. Subconsciously, I suppose, I’d looked for him to match up with those misconceptions formed by reading and film-going – in the far-off days when I had had time for such things – that had been as extensive as they had been hopelessly unselective. The only permissible variation in the appearances of the county court judges in the southeastern United States, I had come to believe, was in weight – some were dried-up, lean and stringy, others triple-jowled and built to match – but beyond that any departure from the norm was unthinkable. The judge was invariably an elderly man: his uniform was a crumpled white suit, off-white shirt, bootlace necktie and, on the back of his head, a panama with