Ghost Flight (11 page)

Jaeger laughed good-naturedly. He’d warmed to the guy immediately. He liked his lack of pretension, of guile.

‘We are in something of a hurry,’ Carson cut in, glancing around at the TV execs. ‘Makes sense to talk to the archivist once we’ve dealt with the key agenda item, don’t you think – which is, are you on for this, or not?’

‘Whenever I make a decision, I like it to be an informed one,’ Jaeger countered. ‘So, Mr Jenkinson, your best guess. What’s it to be?’

‘Well, erm – if I might be so presumptuous . . .’ The archivist cleared his throat. ‘There is one aircraft that conforms to the specifications of this one. The Junkers Ju 390. German, obviously. A pet project of Hitler’s, as it happens. She was intended to spearhead the Amerika Bomber project – Hitler’s programme to fly transatlantic bombing raids against America, towards the end of the war.’

‘So did they?’ Jaeger queried. ‘New York? Washington? Were they ever bombed?’

‘There are reports of such missions,’ Jenkinson confirmed. ‘None absolutely verified. But suffice to say, the Ju 390 had the specifications to achieve it. She boasted in-flight refuelling capabilities, and the pilots operated her using cutting-edge Vampir night-vision equipment, which rendered night into near-daylight – meaning they could take off and land in utter darkness.’

Jenkinson tapped a finger on one of the aerial photos. ‘And you see that: the Ju 390 was fitted with a dome atop the fuselage, for celestial observations. The aircrew could navigate over vast distances using the stars, and without resorting to radar or radio. In short, she was the perfect warplane for making covert, untraceable flights halfway around the world.

‘So, yes, if they’d wanted to drop sarin nerve gas on New York, it was quite within her capabilities.’ Jenkinson glanced around the room nervously. ‘Erm . . . sorry. That last bit. The sarin on New York bit . . . Got a little carried away there. Are you all still with me?’

There was a series of nods in the affirmative. Oddly for Simon Jenkinson, he seemed to have his audience absolutely gripped.

‘Fewer than a dozen Ju 390s were ever built,’ he continued. ‘Fortunately, the Nazis lost the war before the Amerika Bomber
programme could become a frightening reality.
But the odd thing is, none of the Ju 390s were ever traced. At war’s end they . . . well, they disappeared. If it
is
a Ju 390, it’ll be a first, obviously.’

‘Any idea what a German warplane would be doing in the heart of the Amazon?’ Jaeger prompted. ‘And painted with American markings?’

‘Not a clue.’ The archivist grinned self-deprecatingly. ‘In fact, I must confess that’s what’s been preoccupying me, while locked away in the vaults. There’s no record anywhere that I can find of such an aircraft ever having flown to South America. As for it being in United States Air Force markings: well, the mind boggles.’

‘If there was such a record, you’d have found it?’ Jaeger queried.

The archivist nodded. ‘As far as I can tell, she’s the plane that never was. A ghost flight.’

Jaeger smiled. ‘D’you know something, Mr Jenkinson, you’re wasted in the archives. You should be dreaming up ideas for TV programmes.’

‘The plane that never was,’ Carson echoed. ‘The ghost flight. Pure genius. And Will, doesn’t that just quicken your appetite for the mission?’

‘It does,’ Jaeger confirmed. ‘So, I’ve got one final question and one caveat, after which I guess I’m on.’

Carson spread his hands invitingly. ‘Fire away.’

Jaeger let the question fall like a bomb into the room. ‘Andy Smith – any news on why he was murdered?’

Carson’s face remained an inscrutable mask, just the faintest twitching of a muscle in his cheek revealing how the question had unnerved him. ‘Well, it’s death by misadventure or suicide, as far as the police are concerned. So, whilst it’s certainly cast a malaise over the entire expedition, it’s one from which we will recover and move forward.’ A beat. ‘And the caveat?’

In answer, Jaeger slid a folder across the table. It contained a number of glossy brochures, each with a space-age-looking airship displayed on the front. ‘I called in at Cardington Field Hangar, Bedford, this morning, the headquarters of Hybrid Air Vehicles. I guess you know Steve McBride and the other people there?’

‘McBride? Yes, indeed,’ Carson confirmed. ‘A good, solid operator. But what’s your interest in HAVs?’

‘McBride assures me they can get a Heavy Lift Airlander 50 – their largest – standing orbit over that patch of the Amazon.’ Jaeger turned to the TV execs, two of whom were British, and one – the money man – an American. ‘Put simply, the Airlander 50 is a modern-day airship. Helium-filled, as opposed to hydrogen, so utterly inert. In other words, she’s no Hindenburg: she won’t explode in a ball of flame.

‘Four hundred feet long and two hundred wide,’ Jaeger continued, ‘the Airlander is designed for two things. One: persistent wide-area surveillance – keeping watch on whatever’s going on below. Two: lifting major loads.’

He paused. ‘The Airlander’s got a sixty thousand kilogram payload. McBride figures a warplane of these kinds of dimensions will weigh in at around half of that, so some thirty thousand kilos – maybe pushing fifty thousand if she’s loaded with cargo. If we deploy an Airlander 50, she can keep a watch over us and we can lift out that aircraft all in one go.’

The American TV exec slapped the table excitedly. ‘Mr Jaeger – Will – if you’re saying what I think you’re saying, that is a simply awesome proposition.
Awesome.
If you guys can go in, track this thing down, secure it and lift it out all in the one hit – hell, we’ll double our contribution to the budget. And correct me if I’m wrong, Carson, but we’re forking out the lion’s share here, right?’

‘You are, Jim,’ Carson confirmed. ‘And why not use an Airlander? If McBride says he can make it work, and you’ll be so good as to cover the extra budget items, let’s not just go in and find her; let’s go in there and bring her home!’

‘One query,’ one of the British execs cut in. ‘If as you say this Airlander can hover over the jungle and lift out the aircraft, why can’t it drop you guys direct on to it? I mean, the plan right now is for you to parachute into the jungle several days’ trek away and move in overland. Wouldn’t the Airlander save you all the trouble?’

‘Good question,’ Carson replied. ‘Three reasons why not. One: you never drop a team directly on to the site of an unknown toxic threat. It’d be close to suicidal to do so. You move in from a safe location to identify and assess the threat. Two: look at the terrain above the wreck: it’s a mass of dead, broken, jagged branches. We drop the team on to that, we’ll lose half of them speared in the treetops.

‘And three,’ Carson nodded at the American network executive, ‘Jim wants a parachute drop for the drama it adds to the show; for the cameras. That means dropping on to a clear, open, safe patch of ground. Hence why they need to go in as planned, using that one landing zone that we’ve been able to identify.’

16

An early lunch was served in the boardroom – an outside catering company brought in trays racked with cold bites, each covered in a cling-film wrapping. Jaeger took one look and decided he wasn’t feeling hungry. He worked his way around the room, until he had the archivist cornered somewhere reasonably private.

‘Interesting,’ Jenkinson remarked, studying a piece of particularly rubbery-looking sushi. ‘Amazes me how we end up eating the old enemy’s food . . . I take my own sandwiches into the archives. Mature cheddar cheese and Branston pickle.’

Jaeger smiled. ‘Could be worse: they could have served us sauerkraut.’

It was Jenkinson’s turn to chuckle. ‘Touché. You know, there’s a part of me that’s almost envious of you going in to find that mystery aircraft. Of course, I’d be next to useless in the field. But, well – you’ll be making history. Living it. Unmissable.’

‘I could find you a place on the team,’ Jaeger suggested, a touch of mischief creeping in. ‘Make it a condition of my going.’

The archivist choked out a piece of raw fish. ‘Oops. Sorry. Revolting, anyway.’ He wrapped it in a paper napkin and placed it on a convenient shelf. ‘No, no, no, no, no – I’m more than happy sticking to my vaults.’

‘Talking of vaults . . .’ Jaeger mused. ‘Just for a moment forget what you absolutely know. I’m after some pure conjecture here. Based on all you’ve seen and heard, what do you actually think that mystery aircraft is?’

Jenkinson’s eyes moved nervously behind his thick glasses. ‘I don’t normally do conjecture. Not my usual currency. But since you ask . . . Only two possible scenarios make any kind of sense. A, it’s a Ju 390, and the Nazis painted it with US markings so as to sneak around undetected. B, it’s a top-secret American warplane, one that no one’s ever heard of.’

‘Which is the more likely scenario?’ Jaeger prompted.

Jenkinson eyed the soggy napkin on the shelf. ‘B is about as likely as me ever liking sushi. Option A: well, you’d be surprised how common such skulduggery was. We captured their aircraft; they captured ours. We painted them in enemy colours and sneaked about up to all kinds of dodgy business. They did likewise.’

Jaeger raised one eyebrow. ‘I’ll bear that in mind. Now, slight change of subject. Got a puzzle for you. A riddle. Figured you probably enjoy a good riddle – but I’d like you to keep this one just between the two of us, okay?’

‘Never happier than when I’m trying to solve a good riddle,’ Jenkinson confirmed, a gleam in his eye, ‘and especially one that I have to keep a strict secret.’

Jaeger lowered his voice. ‘Two old men. Veterans of the Second World War. Served in secret units. All very sneaky-beaky. Each keeps his study decked out wall-to-wall with war memorabilia. There is one exception: each has on his desk an obscure ancient manuscript written entirely in an unintelligible language. Question is, why?’

‘You mean, why would they each have one?’ Jenkinson rubbed his beard pensively. ‘There’s no evidence of a wider interest? No reference works? No similar texts? No history of a wider study of the phenomena?’

‘Nothing. Just the one book. That’s it. Sat on the desk in each of the old men’s studies.’

Jenkinson’s eyes twinkled. He was clearly enjoying this. ‘There is something called the book code.’ He pulled out an old envelope from his jacket pocket and began scribbling. ‘The beauty is its absolute pure simplicity; that, and the fact that it’s totally unbreakable – unless, of course, you happen to know which book each person is referring to.’

He scribbled down an apparently random sequence of numbers: 1.16.47/5.12.53/9.6.16/21.4.76/3.12.9.

‘Now, imagine you and one other person each has the same edition of a book. He, or she, sends you those numbers. Starting with the first sequence, 1.16.47, you turn to chapter one, page sixteen, line forty-seven. It starts with an I. Next, chapter five, page twelve, line fifty-three: starts with a D. Chapter nine, page six, line sixteen: starts with an I again. Chapter twenty-one, page four, line seventy-six: O. Chapter three, page twelve, line nine: T. Put it all together and what have you got?’

Jaeger spelled out the letters. ‘I-D-I-O-T. Idiot.’

Jenkinson smiled. ‘You said it.’

Jaeger couldn’t help laughing. ‘Very funny. You’ve just blown your invite to the Amazon.’

Jenkinson chuckled silently, his shoulders rocking back and forth as he did so. ‘Sorry. It’s just the first word that came into my mind.’

‘Watch it. You’re digging yourself a deeper grave.’ Jaeger paused for a second. ‘But let’s say the book’s written in an unknown language and writing system. How does it work then? Surely that would make the code unworkable?’

‘Not if you have a usable translation. Without the translation you’d have a five-letter word that was utterly unintelligible. Without the translation, it’d be pure nonsense. But with the translation it adds another layer of encoding, that’s all. Both individuals have to have both books to hand, of course, in order to decode the message. But it’s a stroke of genius, actually.’

‘Can such a code be broken?’ Jaeger ventured.

Jenkinson shook his head. ‘Very difficult. Next to impossible. That’s the beauty of it. You need to know which book the two users are referring to, and in this case have access to the translation too. Makes it almost impossible to crack – that’s unless you capture the two old men and beat and torture it out of them.’

Jaeger eyed the archivist curiously. ‘That’s a dark mind you have there, Mr Jenkinson. But thanks for the insight. And keep digging for any trace of our mystery flight.’ He scribbled his email and phone details on the bottom of Jenkinson’s envelope. ‘I’d be keen to hear of anything you turn up.’

‘Absolutely.’ Jenkinson smiled. ‘Glad to see someone’s taking a real interest at last.’

17

‘Two-way mirror,’ Carson announced. ‘We use it for assessing which characters will appeal most to TV audiences. Or at least, that’s the bullshit theory.’

He and Jaeger were standing in a darkened room, before what appeared to be a long glass wall. On the far side was a group of individuals enjoying a cold lunch buffet, apparently oblivious to the fact that they were being watched. Carson’s patter had changed markedly. He’d slipped back into what he clearly figured was buddy-buddy soldier speak.

‘You wouldn’t believe the crap I’ve been put through pulling this team together,’ he continued. ‘TV executives – they wanted freaks, glamour and eye candy. Top ratings material, as they call it. I wanted tough ex-military types who’d stand at least a chance of making it through. That little lot,’ he jerked a thumb at the glass, ‘is the bloody result.’

Jaeger indicated the trays of sandwiches that the expedition team was busy tucking into. ‘So why don’t they get the revolting—’

‘The sushi? Perks of being management,’ Carson cut in darkly. ‘We get the obscenely expensive, indigestible food. So, I’ll talk you around the team, and then I suggest you go say a few cute ’n’ cuddly words of introduction.’

He pointed out a figure through the glass. ‘Big guy. Joe James. New Zealander. Former Kiwi SAS. Lost one too many of his mates along the way; plagued by PTSD, hence the long greasy hair and Osama Bin Laden beard. Looks like a biker crossed with a homeless bum, which the TV execs love, of course. But never judge a book by its cover: he remains a tough and resourceful operator, or so I’m told.