Mr Wong Goes West (27 page)

‘Earth Agents. Those dudes are bad,’ said Balapit.

Malachy nodded. ‘They may be bad dudes, but if they have really blown out the undercarriage and set the plane on fire, we are dead dudes.’

He pressed the button that summoned a senior flight attendant to the cockpit. As she entered, he yawned slowly and asked her to bring them a round of coffee. ‘Strong coffee. And cookies. I want Mrs. Fields. The ones with the chunks of white chocolate and the macadamia nuts. We got some sticky technical problems here and a man needs man-food to fuel the brain.’

In truth, he didn’t have the stomach for either the coffee or anything to eat, but it was important to send a message to the rest of the staff that their leader was calm and in full control of the situation. Malachy was fifty-eight years old, and had moved on from being a pilot to a senior business executive at Skyparc Airside Enterprises. But he liked to keep his hand in at flying, and was the perfect choice as the captain of the cabin crew for the launch of the luxury business super-jet. He had offered to command the inaugural flight not just for sentimental reasons, but because he had been one of the team that conceived the project, and he thought of it as his own. Now, he was in the biggest in-flight crisis he had ever encountered: there was nothing in the emergency manuals that offered help for such
a situation. They would have to rely on their own smarts. Thank God he had a good team with him. He had only flown with Enrico Balapit three times, but had found him a steady and reliable partner. They’d spent much of their time teasing each other mercilessly about their Roman Catholic names and upbringings. Malachy, Irish-born, had a string of names, while Manila-born Enrico’s middle name was Mary.

By this time, Balapit had got a signal to a contact in London and it was confirmed that Earth Agents had claimed they had placed bombs on board the plane. ‘Better keep calm, cool and collected, or I may be tempted to start referring to you as Captain Mary,’ Malachy said.

‘I may have a silly middle name, but at least people can spell it. Not like yours.’

‘You think Turlough is hard to spell? You should see it the Irish way. They spell it T.O.I.R.D.H.E.A.L.B.H.A.C.H. Now there’s a challenge for a three-year-old kid at school. All the other boys had names like Bob. I couldn’t even spell my own name—I only learned to when I was forty.’

Balapit smiled. ‘If I die and you survive, tell my wife that I died trying to spell your name.’

‘If I die and you survive, contact my cousins and tell them I love them. Their names are Turlough Malachy, Turlough Malachy and Turlough Malachy.’

‘All your cousins have the same name?’

‘They do. It’s a rule in Ireland.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘It’s true. Your have to name your first son after your father, the second son after your wife’s dad, and the third son after yourself. If there’s a group of boys, and their fathers are all brothers, and they’re named after the same grandfather, they’ll have the same name.’

‘No wonder they say the Irish are mad.’

‘Not mad. I prefer to think of us as lateral thinkers. And I think a bit of lateral thinking is what we need at the moment.’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘Find a body of water and ditch the plane.’

‘I’ve been looking.’

‘Found one?’

The only response to this was a sigh. After thirty seconds, Balapit added: ‘I need more time.’

‘That’s the one thing we don’t have, Captain Mary, the one thing we don’t have.’

The doomed plane was dead calm. The senior staff, with unspoken agreement, had left all the major decisions to be made to Captain Malachy. In the event of approaching disasters, human beings instinctively gravitate towards natural leaders. In this instance, the obvious choice was happily also the one with the most stripes on his jacket sleeves.

Pilots are, of course, provided with detailed instructions about what to say to passengers in the event of any conceivable type of emergency—and inevitable mass death was included in the list of situations with recommended liturgical pronouncements. The underlying principles that guided airline announcements were actually rather carefully worked out by intelligent and caring people, although one would never credit it, given the sneering lack of attention that frequent fliers gave to airline safety broadcasts. This was the basic shape of it. If the bad thing that had happened was minor, as it was in nine
thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine out of ten thousand cases (loss of power in one engine, air-conditioner system on the blink, technical problem in one of the electrical grids), then don’t say anything that might remotely cause panic. Instead, say what needs to be said that (a) fulfils the need to have shown you have kept passengers informed (b) gives a sanitised-as-possible version of the truth and (c) is fundamentally a message of reassurance. A tiny chilli hot dog wrapped up in an enormous bun of soft white bread.

However, if the bad thing that had happened was something serious and life-threatening and might not be recovered from (all engines gone, plane with no undercarriage set on fire three and a half kilometres in the air over mountains in China, et cetera), then one had to tell the passengers the plain truth. This was so they could make their final peace with God or Allah or The Divine Cow or whatever they believed in. But again, it should be done in a way that did not induce panic. It was a matter of overriding importance for elegance and order to be maintained, even if everyone was minutes away from being smashed to tiny pieces.

Clearly the authorities who wrote these manuals were British. How does one say, ‘We’re all gonna die’, in a way that does not induce panic? That’s the tricky one that airline staff manuals don’t really answer. Instead, they just give general advice. They suggest, sensibly, that the pilot sticks to the facts, and sandwiches his comments between softly delivered exhortations to maintain an atmosphere of calm: ‘Your tone of voice is as important as the words you choose.’

Malachy had been in the game long enough to know exactly the right tone to take without reading from the manual: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. I have an important announcement to make. I would ask that all passengers listen
to this announcement. It is not optional. I am turning off the entertainment system so that you will not be distracted. I will make the announcement in two minutes’ time. Please use this time to fully wake up, and to make sure other passengers are awake. If there are older children on board, parents may choose whether or not they wish to wake them. Thank you.’

Leaving a two-minute gap was a calculated risk. What Malachy had done had veered away from the written philosophy of announcements, which emphasised that you delivered the facts cleanly and quickly. But the pilot decided that two minutes was long enough to make it clear to the passengers that this was no normal aircrew chatter of the frequent flier loyalty club/duty free shop/spare change in UNICEF envelope/enjoyed having you/fly with us again variety. But it was not such a long period of time that the average passenger would have had time to conjure up nightmare scenarios which could send him screaming up and down the aisles.

When one hundred and twenty seconds had passed, Malachy was back on the speaker system: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? I am sorry to have switched on most of the lights and woken you up, but this is, as I said, an important announcement. A problem has occurred. Let me say first of all, that there is no need to panic. Problems do occur from time to time on aircraft, and the vast majority of problems are resolved without incident. However, at the same time, I want you to know that we are experiencing some technical difficulties. These concern the undercarriage of the aircraft, and we are continuing to work on this, to see what is the best way of dealing with the problem. There is also a problem, not fully identified, at the back of the aircraft. Passengers seated there who have not already been asked to move forwards please do so. This area is now off-limits to all passengers. You are free to
move about other areas of the aircraft but you may be more comfortable if you are seated with your seatbelts fastened. We are working very hard on resolving both these matters, and will keep you informed on our progress. The flight attendants do not have the technical background to answer your questions, but if you have some that you would like to write down and send them to my cabin, via the flight attendants, please feel free to do so. I will answer them as I have time. In the meantime, I, or one of my co-pilots, will make an announcement every ten or fifteen minutes to keep you informed of the situation. There is one very, very important thing that I must ask of all of you. We are working hard at solving the problems, but you all also have a job to do in this situation, and your job is every bit as important as our jobs. Your job is to keep calm, to help others keep calm, to listen carefully to announcements, and to be prepared to do whatever the flight attendants ask you to do. You may wish to use this time to reacquaint yourselves with the information on the flight safety card in front of you and watch the flight safety video which will be replayed now. After that, we will resume the full flight entertainment system, so that you can relax with music or a movie if you so wish. Thank you.’

Wong slept through the whole thing.

Joyce had woken up for the first announcement but had fallen asleep again before the second. She was eventually roused by Army, who had taken to padding around her without straying far, like a devoted labrador.

‘I think you should wake up now. I think the plane’s crashing or something. We have to get ready for it.’

‘Uh,’ said Joyce. ‘Thanks. Can I get some coffee?’ She could not help staring at the pimple on his chin, which had turned whitish since she had last seen him. It was not a pretty thing to see when waking up.

‘I guess so. I’ll ask the stewardess.’

‘Flight attendant.’

‘Yes, her.’

‘Did I miss any meals? Not that I’m hungry. I need a coffee though. I’m parched.’

‘Okay. By the way, did you hear what I said? I think the plane’s crashing.’

‘What?’ Joyce looked around. No one seemed to be running around screaming. Everyone was sitting quietly. The only surprise was that most people had their entertainment systems off. ‘Crashing? You sure? Doesn’t seem like it.’

‘Maybe I got it wrong. But the pilot made an announcement, all very low-key and polite—you know how they do it—but that’s what it sounded like to me. He was trying to be very calm and all that, but I think it was serious. I wonder if we should do something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Get in that sort of position, you know, where you put your head between your knees and say, “Brace brace”.’

‘Why would you do that?’

‘That’s what it says you have to do on the video.’

‘I don’t think you have to say, “Brace brace.” I think the pilot says “Brace brace”.’

‘Maybe everyone says “Brace brace” together. What does “Brace brace” mean, anyway?’

‘I have no idea. I really need that coffee now, if you don’t mind. I’m like,
dying
.’

‘Of course, hang on, I’ll get it for you.’

He raced off, leaving Joyce feeling confused and guilty. She was swinging, pendulum-like, in and out of love. Army was skinny and spotty and ill-dressed and a bit of an immature twit, but he was a likeable twit, and might not be bad looking, if he could be persuaded to have a haircut, a shave, and change his image, his wardrobe, the way he spoke, his mannerisms, his personality, and, well, pretty much everything else. She normally did not like young men who were delicate and winsome and confused, but he was a
real live
royal, and he had saved her life, so it was the least she could do to be nice to him. What on earth was he on about, saying that the plane was about to crash? Surely there would be massive panic if that were the case? No one had their heads between their knees saying ‘Brace brace’.

She stood up and looked around again, and was surprised to see a couple in front of her in tears. And then there was a lady to her left with her hands together, feverishly murmuring prayers of some sort. Perhaps something
was
wrong. She’d better ask Wong—no, he had gone to sleep in the Queen’s bed and had given strict orders not to be disturbed. But if the plane was crashing…? She decided she should ask Dilip Sinha, whom she vaguely remembered was sitting in the lounge ahead.