The Veteran (25 page)

Julie had been so excited she raised her head to shout, in case her father had not seen them. But of course he had, so he gestured she should put her mouthpiece back in, before she took a gulp of water. Too late; he had to help her, spluttering and coughing, back to the beach.

There had been offers to give him a pupil’s scuba-diving course in the hotel pool, but he had declined. He had read there might be sharks in the water and Mrs. Higgins had squealed with horror. They were a family who wanted a nice adventure but not too much.

In the hotel shop Julie had found a doll in the form of a little Thai girl and he had bought it as a treat. After ten days at the Pansea, right below the stupefyingly expensive Amanpuri, they had completed the vacation with three days in Bangkok. There they had taken guided tours to see the Jade Buddha and the enormous Sleeping Buddha, wrinkled their noses at the stench coming off the Chao Praya river and choked on the traffic fumes. But it had been well worth it, the holiday of a lifetime.

On the seat-back in front of him was a small screen with a display of constant updates on their flight progress. He watched it idly. The figures were endless: time from Bangkok, distance covered, distance to destination, flight time ditto, outside temperature (a terrifying 76 below zero), speed of headwind.

Between the figures another image flashed up: a map of this part of the world and a small white aeroplane slowly jerking its way north-west towards Europe and home. He wondered if, like counting sheep, the mesmeric effect of the little plane might help him sleep. Then the Jumbo hit a small patch of clear-air turbulence and he was wide awake, gripping the seat-arms.

He noticed that the hippie four rows ahead and across the aisle was also awake. He saw the man check his watch and begin to ease himself out of his blanket. Then the man stood up.

He glanced round as if to see if anyone was watching, then moved up the aisle towards the bulkhead. There was a curtain here, but it was only half-drawn and a shaft of light spilled out of the galley area, illuminating a patch of carpet and the two lavatory doors. The hippie reached the doors, glanced at each, but made no attempt to test them. No doubt both were occupied, though Higgins had seen no-one else move. The hippie leaned against one of the doors and waited.

Thirty seconds later he was joined by another man. Higgins was intrigued. The other man was quite different. He had a casual elegance and the appearance of wealth. He came from somewhere up front. Club or even First. But why? In the light from the galley it was clear he wore the trousers of a cream suit, a silk shirt and a loosened tie, also of silk. His appearance reeked of First Class. Had he come this far back to relieve himself?

Then they began to talk: Mr. Elegant and the hippie. It was low, earnest talk. Mainly the man from the front talked, leaning towards the hippie, who nodded several times in understanding. The body language said that the elegant man was giving a series of instructions and the hippie was agreeing to do what he was told.

John Higgins was the sort who kept an eye on neighbours and he was intrigued. If Mr. Elegant wanted to go to the loo, there were five or six in First and Club. They could not all be occupied at this godforsaken hour. No, they had agreed to rendezvous at this point and at this time. Their conversation was no idle chit-chat, as of two men who chance to meet in a queue.

They parted. The man in the silk suit disappeared from view, heading back towards the front end. The hippie, without attempting to enter either of the lavatories, returned to his seat.

John Higgins’s mind was in a turmoil. He knew that he had witnessed something odd and yet significant but he could not work out what it was. He shut his eyes and feigned sleep as the hippie glanced round in the gloom to see if he had been watched.

Ten minutes later John Higgins believed he had his answer. Those two men had met by arrangement, a foreplanned rendezvous. But how had they agreed it? He was certain no elegant businessman in a cream silk suit had been in the Economy departure lounge. He would have stood out. Since boarding and seating, the hippie had not moved. He might have received a written note by the hand of a stewardess, but Higgins had never seen it happen, so that proved nothing.

But if not that, then there was only one explanation. The rendezvous at the point where Economy met Club, and at that precise moment of the night, could only have been agreed back in Thailand. But why? To discuss something? To exchange a progress report? For the elegant man to issue last-minute instructions? Was the hippie the businessman’s PA? Surely not. Dressed like that? They were chalk and cheese. Higgins began to worry. More, he began to suspect.

It was eleven at night in London when the two covert talkers parted company. Bill Butler glanced at his sleeping wife, sighed and put out the light. His alarm was set for four thirty. Time enough; at that hour he could be washed, dressed, in his car and at Heathrow by five fifteen, a full hour before touchdown. After that it would be pot luck.

It had been a long day. When was it not? He was tired but still he could not sleep. His mind raced, and still the question was always the same. Was there anything else he could do?

It was a tip from one of his colleagues across the water in the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the formidable DEA, that had started the hunt.

Ninety per cent of the heroin consumed by addicts in the British Isles, and indeed most of Western Europe, was Turkish and therefore brown. It was a trade controlled with ruthless cunning by the Turkish mafia, among the most violent on the planet but extremely low-profile and unknown to most of the British public.

Their product came from the poppies of Anatolia: it looked like demerara sugar and it was mostly smoked or inhaled as fumes from a burning pinch on a tinfoil sheet held above a candle. The British addicts were not great injecters; the Americans were.

The Golden Triangle and hence the Far Eastern traffic did not produce this Turkish dope; it turned out Thailand White, like baking powder to look at, and usually ‘cut’ or mixed with similar white powder to dilute the quantity by twenty to one. This was what the Americans wanted.

So if a British gang could get hold of it on a regular basis and in reasonable quantities, the Cosa Nostra would be interested. Not to buy but to swap. The finest Colombian cocaine would exchange at three to one: six kilograms of coke against two of Thai White.

The DEA tip had come out of their Miami office. One of their underworld sources reported that three times in the last six months the Trafficante Family had sent a carrier or ‘mule’ over to Britain with six keys of Colombian pure and he had come back with two keys of Thai White.

Not enormous but steady, and each trip worth £200,000 to the organizer at the British end. The quantities suggested to Bill Butler something other than ship or truck. Air. Passenger baggage. He tossed and turned and tried to grab four hours’ sleep.

John Higgins could not sleep either. He had heard vaguely of that other, seamier side of the holiday paradise. He recalled reading an article about a mysterious place called the Golden Triangle: hillside after hillside growing Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy. The article had mentioned refining laboratories deep in the jungle along the border, impenetrable to the Thai army, where the opium toffee was reduced to base morphine and thence down again to powdery white heroin.

The passengers slept but John Higgins tossed in a welter of indecision. There could be several innocent explanations for that extraordinary meeting by the lavatory doors; his problem was that he could not think of one.

The little white plane on the screen was jerking its way into Anatolia, eastern Turkey, when John Higgins silently unbuckled himself, stood up and withdrew his attache case from the rack above his head. No-one stirred, not even the hippie.

Seated again, he scoured his case for a plain sheet of white paper and a pen. The latter was easy; then he found four sheets of headed paper, purloined from his room at the Pansea Hotel.

Carefully he tore off the sections with the Pansea logo and address, creating the plain paper he needed. Using his case as a writing desk, he began to pen a letter, writing in block capitals. It took him half an hour.

When he was done, the little white plane was edging over Ankara. He folded the sheets into the UNICEF charity envelope provided by BA and scrawled in heavy letters across the front: FOR THE CAPTAIN. URGENT.

He stood up, walked quietly to the curtains by the lavatory doors and had a peek into the galley. A young male steward had his back to him, preparing a breakfast tray for later. Higgins withdrew, unseen. A buzzer sounded. He heard the steward leave the galley and head forward. With the space empty, Higgins slipped through the curtain, placed the envelope upright between two coffee cups on the food-preparation area, and went back to his seat.

It was another half-hour before the steward noticed it as he made up more breakfast trays. He thought at first it was a donation to UNICEF, then spotted the writing, frowned, thought it over and finally went forward to find the Cabin Service Director.

“It was propped between two coffee cups. Harry. I thought I should bring it to you rather than go to the flight deck.”

Harry Palfrey twinkled benignly.

“Quite right, Simon. Well done. Probably a crank. Leave it to me. Now, the breakfast trays ...”

He watched the young man walk away, noting the tight round buttocks beneath the uniform trousers. He had worked with a lot of stewards, bedded more than his share, but this one was drop-dead gorgeous. Perhaps at Heathrow ... He looked at the envelope, frowned, thought of opening it but finally headed up the stairs and tapped on the door of the flight deck.

It was just a formality. The CSD can enter the flight deck at will. He walked straight in. The relief captain was in the left-hand seat, staring ahead at the lights of an upcoming coast. There was no sign of Captain Fallon. The CSD tapped on the door of the bunk room. This time he did wait.

Adrian Fallon opened up thirty seconds later and ran his fingers through greying hair.

“Harry?”

“Something a bit odd, skipper. Someone left this propped between two coffee cups in the mid-section galley. Never showed himself. Anonymous, I suspect.”

He held out the envelope.

Adrian Fallen’s stomach turned over. In thirty years with the company he had never had a hijack and never a bomb-scare, but he knew several colleagues who had. It was the abiding nightmare. Now it looked as if he had one or the other. He tore open the envelope and, perched on the edge of the bunk, read it. The note began:

Captain, I regret that I am unable to sign this, but I absolutely do not want to get involved. Nevertheless, I hope I am a dutiful citizen and feel I should let you know what I have observed. Two of your passengers have been behaving extremely strangely and in a manner that defies logical explanation.

The letter went on to describe in detail what the observer had seen and why it had seemed so odd as to rank as very suspicious. It ended:

The two passengers concerned are a man who looks like a hippie: scruffy, disreputable, the sort probably no stranger to what are called exotic substances; he is seated in 30 C. The other I cannot place but he certainly came from First or Club Class.

There was a description of the elegant man and finally the words:

I hope I am not causing trouble, but if these two men are colluding with each other over some matter, it could be a matter about which the authorities would wish to be informed.

Pompous ass, thought Fallen. What authorities, if not Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, and spying on his own passengers was something that stuck in his craw. He passed the letter to Harry Palfrey. The CSD read it and pursed his lips.

“Midnight assignation?” he suggested.

Fallen knew about Harry Palfrey, who knew he knew, so the captain chose his words.

“Nothing to indicate they fancied each other. And anyway, where could they have met before, if not Bangkok? So why not make a rendezvous in Heathrow? Why outside a loo door which they did not attempt to enter? Blast and damn. Harry, get me the passenger list, would you?”

While the CSD went on his errand, Fallon combed his hair, straightened his shirt and asked the relief captain:

“Current position?”

“Greek coast coming up. Something amiss, Adrian?”

“Hopefully not.”

Palfrey came back with the list. Seat 30 C was down to one Kevin Donovan.

“What about the other man? The elegant one?”

“I think I’ve seen him,” said Palfrey. “First Class, seat 2 K.” He riffled through the passenger list. “Down as Mr. Hugo Seymour.”

“Let’s confirm it before we jump anywhere,” said the captain.

“Slip down quietly and patrol both First and Club. Look for cream silk trousers coming out from under the blankets. Check in the wardrobes for a cream silk jacket to make up a suit.”

Palfrey nodded and padded downstairs. Fallon rang for a strong black coffee and checked the flight details.

The Flight Management System into which the route had been loaded before take-off nine hours earlier had ensured that Speedbird One Zero was right on track and schedule, passing over Greece four hours from touchdown. It was 2.20 a.m. London time and 3.20 a.m. Greek time and still pitch-black outside. There was broken cloud far below, showing the occasional twinkle of lights, and the stars were bright above.

Adrian Fallon was no more civically minded than the next man, and certainly less than the anonymous prat he was carrying in Economy, but he had a quandary. Nothing in the note indicated his command was in danger, and that being so his first reaction was to ignore it.

The trouble was, the British Airline Pilots’ Association, BALPA, had a security committee and he was its vice-chairman. If anything was discovered at Heathrow, if either passenger Seymour or Donovan fell foul of the police or Customs for committing a pretty substantial offence, and word leaked out that he had been specifically warned about both passengers and had done nothing, the explanations would be difficult. A rock and a hard place. As Greece gave way to the Balkans he made a decision. Harry Palfrey had seen the note, not to mention the ‘dutiful citizen’ who had written it, and if anything blew up at Heathrow, who would stay silent to protect his rear end? So, better safe than sorry. He decided to transmit a brief non-panic forewarning, not to Customs and Excise but just to his own company duty officer yawning through the night shift at Heathrow.