The Veteran (23 page)

“Yes.”

“Oh my God,” said the tourist. He thought for a while, then asked, “And you maintain this garden? For her?”

“I come every summer. Sweep the flags, tend the roses. It is just a way of saying thank you. Maybe she knows somehow. Maybe not.”

“It is the second day of July. Will she come again?”

“Perhaps. Probably not. But this I can guarantee to you. No-one, man, woman or child, will die in Siena this night.”

“There must be outgoings,” said the tourist. “Costs ... to keep it going looking like this. If there is anything ...”

The faded man shrugged.

“Not really. There is an offertory box, over there on the bench by the wall. It is for the orphans of Siena. I thought she would have liked that.”

The American was as generous as all his race. He delved into his jacket and produced a thick billfold. Turning to the offertory box he peeled off half a dozen bills and stuffed them in.

“Sir,” he said to the German when he had helped his wife to her feet, “I will leave Italy soon and fly back to Kansas. I will run my ranch and raise my cattle. But I will not forget, all my life, that I was here in this courtyard where she died, and I will recall the story of Caterina della Misericordia as long as I live. C’mon, honey, let’s go and join the crowds.”

They left the courtyard and turned down the alley to the sound of the celebrations in the streets beyond. After a few moments a woman emerged from the deep dark shadows of the cloister where she had remained unseen. She also wore stone-washed denim; her hair was braided in cornrows and ethnic beads hung from her neck. Slung across her back was a guitar. From her right hand dangled a heavy haversack and from her left her own tote bag.

She stood by the side of the man, fished a joint out of her top pocket, lit up, took a long drag and passed it to him.

“How much did he leave?” she asked.

“Five hundred dollars,” said the man.

He had dropped the German accent and spoke in the tones of Woodstock and all points west. He emptied the wooden box of the bundle of dollars and pushed them into his shirt pocket.

“That’s a great story,” said his partner, “and I love the way you tell it.”

“I rather like it myself,” conceded the hippie modestly, as he hefted his rucksack and prepared to leave. “And you know? They always fall for it.”

THE HOME RUN WAS ALWAYS HIS FAVOURITE. IN MORE THAN THIRTY
years driving large aluminium tubes around the world for British Airways he had seen over seventy major cities, most of them capitals, and the original appetite had long faded.

Thirty years ago, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, with the two rings of a Junior First Officer gleaming new on each sleeve, he had relished the far and foreign places. During the generous stop-overs he had explored the nightlife of Europe and the USA, taken the offered tours of the temples and shrines of the Far East. Now, he just wanted to get home to his house near Dorking.

Back then, there had been brief but torrid affairs with the prettiest stewardesses until Susan had married him and quite rightly put a stop to that sort of thing. Five thousand nights in hotel beds had long left only the desire to roll into his own and smell the lavender scent of Susan beside him.

A boy and a girl, Charles the honeymoon baby, now twenty-three and a computer programmer, and Jennifer, at eighteen entering York University to read History of Art, had given him stability and an extra reason for coming home. With two years to retirement the prospect of swinging his hatchback into the drive on Watermill Lane and seeing Susan at the door waiting for him far superseded any appetite for foreign parts.

Across the aisle in the crew bus his stand-in captain was staring at the back of the driver’s head. To his left, one of his two First Officers was gawping with still unsated curiosity at the bright neon sea of Bangkok as the city slipped away behind them.

Filling the rear of the crew bus, cool in the air conditioning, protected from the sticky heat outside, were the cabin crew: one Cabin Service Director and fifteen stewards, four male and eleven female. He had flown with them all from Heathrow two days earlier, and knew the CSD would handle everything from the door of the flight deck back to the tail fin. That was his job and he too was a veteran.

Captain Adrian Fallon’s task was simply to fly another Boeing 747--400 Jumbo with over four hundred passengers who paid his salary from Bangkok to London Heathrow, or, as his log book would soon record, from BKK to LHR.

Two hours before take-off the crew bus swerved into the airport perimeter, was nodded through by the guards on the gate and headed for the BA office. It was a long lead-time, but Captain Fallen was a stickler and the word from the BA office was that Speedbird One Zero, out of Sydney at 3.15 p.m. (local) would be landing bang on time at 9.45 p.m. Bangkok local. In fact it was already on final approach.

A mile behind the crew bus there was a black limousine. It carried one passenger, seated in comfort in the rear behind the uniformed driver. Both car and driver came from the exclusive Oriental Hotel where the impeccably accoutred senior executive had been staying for three days. In the boot reposed his single suitcase, a hard-frame case in genuine leather with solid brass locks, the case of a man who travelled lightly but not cheaply. Beside him rested his attache case, real crocodile.

In the breast pocket of his beautifully cut cream silk suit rested his British passport in the name of Hugo Seymour and the return half of a ticket from Bangkok to London, First Class of course. As Speedbird One Zero eased off the runway to begin its taxi roll towards the BA departure lounge, the limousine purred to a stop outside the check-in hall.

Mr. Seymour did not push his own luggage on a trolley. He raised a manicured hand and a small Thai porter hurried over.

Tipping the driver, the businessman nodded to his suitcase in the open boot, then followed the trotting porter into the check-in hall and pointed to the British Airways First Class desk. He had been exposed to the sticky heat of the tropical night for about thirty seconds.

It does not really take one hour and forty-five minutes for a First Class check-in. The young clerk behind the desk was attending to no-one else. Within ten minutes the single hide suitcase was on its way to the baggage-handling area where its tags would clearly identify it as heading for the BA London flight. Mr. Seymour had been issued with his boarding card and given directions to the First Class lounge, situated beyond passport control.

The uniformed Thai immigration officer glanced at the burgundy-coloured passport, then at the boarding pass and finally at the face through the glass screen. Middle-aged, lightly tanned, freshly shaved, iron-grey hair barbered and blow-dried; a soft and sweatless white silk shirt, silk tie from the Jim Thompson shop, the upper section of a cream silk suit from one of Bangkok’s better tailors where they can run up a replica of Savile Row in thirty hours. He passed the identity document back under the glass screen.

“Sawat-di, krab,” murmured the Englishman.

The Thai officer bobbed and smiled an acknowledgement at being thanked in his own language, usually impossible for foreigners.

Somewhere out of sight the disembarking passengers from Sydney to Bangkok were filing out of the Boeing and down the long corridors to Immigration. They were followed by the transit passengers until the aeroplane was empty and the cleaning staff could begin to scour the fifty-nine rows of seats, a task that would yield fourteen binliners of assorted garbage. Mr. Seymour, his crocodile attache case at his side, proceeded sedately to the First Class lounge where he was welcomed by two stunningly pretty Thai girls, seated and brought a glass of crisp white wine. He quietly buried himself in an article in Forbes Magazine, one among twenty passengers in a large, cool and luxurious lounge.

He had not seen, for he had not bothered to look, but as Mr. Seymour presented himself at the First Class check-in desk he was just a few yards from Club Class check-in. The Boeing 747-400 in the BA seat configuration has fourteen First Class seats, of which ten would be occupied and four of these coming in from Sydney. Mr. Seymour had been the first of the six boarding at Bangkok. All twenty-three Club Class seats would be full, with eighteen boarding in the Thai capital. These were the ones queuing a few yards from him in the check-in hall.

But beyond them were the Economy Class queues, now delicately referred to as World Traveller class. At these desks there was a seething mass of shuffling humanity. Ten desks were trying to cope with nearly four hundred passengers.

Among them were the Higgins family. They hauled their own baggage. They had come by coach, where the press of fellow travellers and the heat they generated had finally defeated the air-conditioning system. The World Travellers were dishevelled and sweaty. It took the Higginses nearly an hour to reach the departure lounge, with a brief visit to Duty Free, and to settle themselves in the No Smoking area. Thirty minutes to boarding.

Captain Fallon and his crew were long on board, but even they were preceded by the cabin staff.

The captain and his crew had spent the usual fifteen minutes in the office covering the necessary paperwork. There was the all-important flight plan which told him how long the flight would take, the minimum amount of fuel to be loaded and, over a number of pages, the details of the route he would be following tonight. All this information had been filed with the various air traffic control centres between Bangkok and London. A good long look at the weather for his route and in the UK revealed a quiet night ahead. He flicked quickly and with practised ease through the NOTAMs (Notices to Airmen), retaining the few pieces of information that affected him and disregarding the greater part which was irrelevant.

With the last piece of ‘bumf’ either retained or signed and handed back, the four pilots were ready to board. They were well ahead of their passengers, and the departers from Sydney were long gone. The cleaners were still on board, but that was the CSD’s problem, and Mr. Harry Palfrey would as usual cope with unflappable urbanity.

Not that the gang of Thai cleaners was the CSD’s only concern.

All the lavatories would be vented and scoured, then inspected. Enough food and drink for four hundred passengers was being brought aboard and he had even managed a selection of the latest newspapers from London, just arrived from Heathrow on another jet. By the time Mr. Palfrey was even halfway satisfied, his captain and crew were aboard.

In summer Captain Fallen would have been accompanied only by two First Officers, but this was late January and the winter headwinds would spin the flight up to thirteen hours, chock to chock, triggering a requirement for a relief captain.

Personally, Adrian Fallen thought it was unnecessary. At the rear of the flight deck, on the left-hand side, was a small room with two bunks and it was perfectly normal for the captain to leave the aircraft on automatic pilot and in control of two of the other pilots while he grabbed four or five hours’ sleep.

Still, rules are rules and there were four of them instead of three.

As the quartet marched down the last long tunnel to the almost empty aircraft Fallon nodded to the younger of his two First Officers.

“Sorry, Jim. Walkaround.”

The young man who had been staring at the delights of a vanishing Bangkok through the crew-bus windows nodded, opened the door at the end of the entry tunnel and slipped out into the sticky night. It was a chore they all disliked but it had to be done and it usually fell to the junior among them. If the Jumbo jet were encased in a square box from nosetip to tail fin and wingtip to wingtip, that box would cover more than an acre. The walkaround man has to do exactly that; walk round the entire aircraft checking to see that all that ought to be there is there, and nothing else. A panel might be half-detached, a pool of liquid might indicate a leak, unspotted by the ground crew. To put not too fine a point on it, there are ground crews and ground crews; airlines prefer to have one of their own do the final walkaround check.

Sometimes the weather outside is way below freezing; or bathed in a tropical monsoon. Tough luck. In this case the eager beaver with three rings arrived back twenty minutes later damp with sweat and bearing several midge bites but otherwise fully functional.

Captain Fallon entered his domain by climbing the stairs from the entry level to the upper cabin, then walking forward through the flight-deck door. Within minutes the two captains and the remaining First Officer had their jackets off, hung behind the door of the rest room, and were in their seats. Fallon of course took the left-hand one and installed his senior First Officer to his right. The relief skipper kept out of the way by retiring to the bunk room to study the stock market.

When he began his career and graduated from the Belfast milk run to the long-hauls, Fallon was still in the days when he would have had a navigator and a flight engineer. Long gone. His engineer was now a bank of technology above his head and facing him from wall to wall; enough dials, clocks, levers and buttons to do whatever an engineer could do, and more. His navigator was confined to three Inertial Reference Systems, ‘black boxes’ which between them could accomplish all a navigator’s duties and faster.

While the First Officer ran through the first of the five separate lists of checks, the Before Start checks. Fallen glanced at the load sheet which he would have to sign when all the luggage was confirmed aboard and the passenger list tallied with Mr. Palfrey’s head-count. Every captain’s nightmare is not so much the passenger on board with no luggage—that can follow on later; it is the luggage on board but a passenger who has decided to do a runner. The whole baggage hold has to be emptied until the rogue suitcases are found and expelled. They could contain anything.

The entire aircraft was still powered by its Auxiliary Power Unit, the APU, in truth a fifth jet engine of which few passengers knew anything. The APU on this giant aircraft is enough to power a small fighter by itself; its power enables everything on the aircraft to function independently of any source from outside—lights, air, engine-start, the lot.