Acts of faith (112 page)

Under a grass-roofed shelter at the side of the runway, Fitzhugh and Pamela waited with the reporters for the helicopter to finish refueling. Sitting on the ground against a post, she spotted an object lying in the grass—a small plastic bottle with an orange bullet-shaped cap. She removed the cap and squeezed the plunger, sending a jet of mist into the air.

“Maybe this will help,” she said. “That stench—I can’t get it out of my nose.”

“Could I see that?”

He held the bottle upright between a thumb and forefinger and studied it, like an archaeologist examining an enigmatic artifact. The label read,
NASOKLEAR
.
FOR RELIEF OF ALLERGY AND SINUS SYMPTOMS
.

“It was lying right there?” he asked.

“Yes. Maybe I’d better not use it. Who knows where it’s been.”

“Who knows,” Fitzhugh said. He thought of Adid’s “fresh ideas” and pocketed the bottle.
Un petit fait vrais
—a phrase his Seychellois father was fond of using.

Having not quite achieved closure, Pamela put past enmities aside and called on Douglas to help organize a memorial service for the three aviators. Malachy Delaney and John Barrett presided. The ceremony was held at sunset at the western end of the Loki airfield, some two hundred people in attendance. The clergymen said the sorts of things clergymen do on such occasions. Pamela delivered a moving tribute to Tara, Douglas paid homage to Wesley and Mary, striking a note of comic relief when he touched his nose and said that it was well known that he and Dare had differences of opinion, but those differences had not affected
one whit
his respect for the man’s abilities and courage, so amply demonstrated on his final flight. When the sermons and speeches were finished, four Knight planes flew over, one peeling away to make a “missing man” formation. A trumpeter from the local police barracks blew retreat. Listening to the fine words and the tragic notes of the trumpet echoing over the twilit landscape, Fitzhugh recalled the vultures pecking at Wesley’s corpse, of the arrival in Loki of the clear plastic burn bags containing the remains of Tara and her passengers.
Truth is Beauty and Beauty Truth?
he thought. Not always, but even when Truth was horrifying, it was preferable to the attractive lie of pretty clichés and the aesthetics of ritual. Likewise when Truth was commonplace. One small true fact, like a bottle of nasal spray found in a place where it did not belong, was in its way beautiful.

Douglas’s eulogy had partly rehabilitated his image among those who thought he’d deserved Dare’s punch in the nose. Fitzhugh didn’t think that was why he gave it. He sincerely wanted to honor the dead. The words he spoke were sincere. His sincerity added to Fitzhugh’s suspicions, for he knew the American was never more fraudulent than when he was most sincere.

Fitzhugh had presented Michael’s thank-you note to him. It included a new coded shopping list. With the danger of being exposed eliminated, Douglas was inspired to resume Busy Beaver’s operations. Perhaps he was driven by financial pressures as well. Tara’s fate had a decided chilling effect on Knight’s flight crews. Several had refused missions to the Nuba and other no-go zones, which caused some independent agencies to take their business to one-horse air operators desperate enough to risk their lives. Douglas himself appeared to think he was invulnerable, so much so that he began to fly the gun runs himself, with Tony as his copilot. Fitzhugh didn’t know if Hassan Adid was aware that his managing director was up to his old tricks; nor did he care. He was preoccupied with looking for another
petit fait vrais.
“
What are you, a fuckin’ detective?” Yes, Tony, I am,
he thought,
but without badge, gun, warrant, or intent of arresting anyone. I only want to know the truth of what happened.

He made a mental catalogue of his small facts:

Two planes carrying the people who could do the most harm to Douglas and Adid go down on the same day.

The bottle of Adid’s brand of nasal spray.

Wesley’s strange request.

The grease-stained mechanic’s coveralls in Tony’s hut.

He compiled the questions the small facts raised:

What were the odds of the two aircraft crashing on the same day?

Was Adid at the New Tourom airfield, and if he was, when and for what purpose?

How did he get there?

Why did Wesley ask him to retrieve the water jug and plastic bags and what did he mean when he said that someone had to clear out in a hurry?

Why had Tony balked when asked to search for the wreck of Wesley’s plane?

He concluded that he had slightly more than nothing.

He persuaded the UN authorities to send a crash-investigation team to look at the Hawker, and when they returned with photographs, key pieces of the wreckage, and the plane’s voice and flight data recorders, he told them to keep him abreast of their findings. They cautioned him not to hold his breath; even when a wrecked plane is in relatively good condition, as the Hawker was, crash investigations took a long time.

All right, he would do his own.

” ‘
W
AAAH
! I
FEEL
good, so good . . .’ ” VanRensberg, Knight’s flight mechanic, was singing on the tarmac, headphone clamped to his ears. He flipped Fitzhugh a wave and went on gyrating, shaking his big ass.
” ‘I feel good, so good, so good . . .’ “
A couple of Kenyan mechanics laughed at the crazy mzungu. An Afrikaner imitating James Brown was amusing.

Fitzhugh gestured to take off the earphones. “Could I talk to you a moment?”

“Sure,” the mechanic said, switching off his Walkman. “I’m not busy.”

“I see that. This must be a private conversation.”

VanResenberg squinted with one eye. “Don’t notice anybody listening in.”

“It has to do with Wesley’s crash,” Fitzhugh explained. “His plane had been overhauled a few days before. Do you know who did the work?”

“No. It wasn’t any of our people.”

“I was talking to him on the radio before he went down. He said some odd things. He was having trouble with his fuel pumps. Then he asked me to fetch a water jug and some plastic bags from a rubbish bin near the hangar. He told me not to empty the jug if there was anything in it.”

“And?”

“There was nothing in the jug, only a little dirty water. The bags were clean. What do you suppose he meant? What’s the connection between a discarded water jug and his fuel pumps?”

VanRensberg asked to look at the jug, and Fitzhugh brought him to the company truck and pulled the container out from behind the seats. The mechanic screwed off the cap, poured a drop or two of the contents into his palm, sniffed, and stood staring at the jug for several moments.

“If you had enough of that sludge in your fuel tanks, it could foul up the fuel pumps. Maybe that’s what he meant.”

“How? Give me a lesson in aircraft mechanics.”

“You’ve got two pumps for each engine,” VanRensberg began. “A low-pressure and a high-pressure. The first one brings the fuel up from the tank and to the engine. The high-pressure pump sprays the fuel into the burners. If crud clogged up the filters in the low-pressure pump and it quit, the high-pressure pump would feed fuel to the emergency fuel controller. Are you following me so far?”

Fitzhugh nodded.

“So that wouldn’t be a good situation—you’d have unfiltered fuel going into the engine—but it would still run. If there’s water in the fuel”—VanResenberg hesitated. “I’d better back up a little. Fuel is what lubricates the high-pressure pump. If there’s water in the fuel, it could cause the pump to seize up and shut down because water isn’t a lubricant. The pump quits, the engine quits. That’s a bad situation no matter what you’re flying, but it’s bloody bad if you’re in a Hawker as old as Wes’s—a seven four eight that vintage doesn’t have auxiliary engine power controls like, oh, say a Cessna two-oh-eight or a Let. Nothing you do will get the engine running again. And if it happens in both engines, you are well and truly fucked. But I don’t think that’s what happened to Wes, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Fitzhugh leaned against the Toyota, trying to absorb the technical information. “Why not?”

“Here’s a lesson in elementary chemistry. Water is heavier than aviation fuel. If Wes had water and mud in his tanks, it would have sunk down to the sump—that’s the lowest point in the tank. And it’s automatic in preflight to drain the sumps. Any water and crud would have been drained out.”

“I see. Of course Wesley wasn’t known for the thoroughness of his preflight checks.”

“He would’ve done that, Fitz. Like I said, it’s automatic.” VanRensberg’s teeth showed through his sweat-dappled beard. “I get what you’re thinking. Did somebody put muddy water in Wes’s tanks? Well, even if sombody did, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Wes would have gotten rid of it on preflight.”

“I will tell you why I think so. Wes said another odd thing. That whoever left those things—the jug and the bags—did it because he had to clear out in a hurry. He suspected sabotage. I am guessing, yes? But I believe he meant that the culprit fled in a rush because he saw someone coming, someone who might have caught him in the act.”

“Nasty, Fitz. Very nasty thought.”

“Yes, very. Please don’t mention to anyone that we had this conversation.” He placed the earphones back on VanRensberg’s head. “Keep feeling good.”

The next day, while Douglas and Tony were off on one of their Busy Beaver missions, Fitzhugh borrowed a spare key from the compound’s manager and broke into Tony’s hut. Inside, from among the stack of flight and operations manuals, he dug out repair and maintenance manuals for a Hawker-Siddley 748 and a Rolls-Royce 514 turboprop—the engine on Wesley’s plane. Tony’s coveralls had been laundered and were on a hangar. Although someone as sloppy as he wouldn’t notice that the manual was out of place, Fitzhugh was careful to put it back where he’d found it.
Un petit fait vrais.

He returned to the office, where he found VanRensberg waiting for him. The mechanic said he would like to have another private conversation. Rachel being at lunch, Fitzhugh replied that here was as good a place as any and sat down.

“I’ve been thinking about our talk yesterday,” VanRensberg said. “If Wes suspected someone of pouring dirty water into his tanks, why did he ask you to retrieve the plastic bags in addition to the water jug? I’ve asked myself, If the fuel had water in it, then why wasn’t the contaminant eliminated in preflight? Sloppiness on Wes’s part? Maybe. Or was it this?” He held up a freezer bag and snapped it. “Plastic, like aviation fuel, is made from petroleum. It has hydrocarbons, also like fuel.”

“This is another chemistry lesson?” Fitzhugh asked, bemused.

“A nasty lesson. You pour the muddy water into the plastic bags, seal them, and then squeeze them into the tanks through the fuel-fill. The plastic remains intact for some time. I’m not knowledgeable enough to say how long, but for a time. So when the pilot drains his system prior to takeoff, the contaminants will be sealed up in the bags and will not be eliminated. But eventually the fuel will dissolve the plastic, the mud and water will become mixed with the fuel, and the pilot will have a failure of his high-pressure pumps and then engine failure.”

Fitzhugh felt a catch in his throat.

VanRensberg said, “I understand there is an accident investigation going on?”

“That’s right.”

“So I assume the investigators drained the tanks and took fuel samples for analysis. They may detect the presence of water in the fuel, but they will find no trace of plastic because it has the same chemical makeup as the fuel. It will have vanished without a trace. And the investigators are likely to conclude that the pilot did an improper preflight procedure.”

The simplicity of it!
Fitzhugh thought.
The elegant simplicity of it!

“And Wesley, besides his reputation for not being thorough in his preflight, was in a rush that day,” he said.

“Yes. I heard that he was,” said the mechanic. “So if I was the one who sabotaged the plane in the way I have just described, that’s what I would want people to think. Wes was careless to begin with, and his hurry made him more careless.”

“That is your opinion?”

VanRensberg hesitated, glancing back and forth as if to make sure no one was listening in. “A theory, not an opinion. No—a suspicion. Wes lost both engines. A catastrophic failure of both engines isn’t likely. I’ve heard he almost made it. What do you think? You were out there.”

“Yes, it looked that way,” Fitzhugh answered.

“If any pilot could land a Hawker-Siddley dead-stick, he could. Maybe he was sloppy, but the man could fly. Nasty business.”

“Thank you, VanRensberg,” Fitzhugh said. “Thank you for the chemistry lesson.”

At the end of the week, routine banking business took him to Nairobi. If it hadn’t, he would have concocted a reason to go. When his business was concluded, he recollected a remark Wesley had made after the shareholders’ meeting and asked to see the branch manager, an Indian gentleman from whom he requested the records for Knight Air Services Limited for the previous twelve months. As a partner in the company, Fitzhugh was authorized to see them. The manager put on a puzzled expression and shook his head. The firm had been dissolved, as you must know, he said. The records had been disposed of. Yes, Fitzhugh replied, he was aware the the firm had been dissolved but was unaware that its bank records had been destroyed. Could he please see the records for Knight Relief Services? These were produced: a sheaf of deposits, withdrawals, and monthly statements in a file folder. Fitzhugh paged through them quickly, stopping when he observed a transfer of funds from the Uganda Central Bank to the account. It came to $72,000. That would be Busy Beaver’s earnings in the first week of its existence, four flights at $18,000 each. The debit column showed a withdrawal for $36,000, presumably the company’s share in the fifty-fifty split with Tony. Beside the figure was the notation “Wire transfer” and on the next page the words “Credit Suisse Bank, Geneva,” followed by several sets of letters and account numbers. Numbers but no names. And what is this? he asked. A request for a wire transfer of funds from this account to that account in Switzerland, the manager replied, in a tone implying that he considered the question idiotic. Fitzhugh prided himself on his tolerance but had to admit to owning one unreasonable prejudice: he didn’t like Indians. Their accent grated on his ears, and in their manner they managed to be obsequious and supercilious at the same time. Thank you, he said, masking his irritation. And did the manager recall if such wire transfers had been made when Knight Air Services was in existence? If so, who authorized them? Excuse me, Mr. Martin, but are you conducting an official audit? What is the reason for these questions? Fitzhugh merely smiled, thanked him for his time, and left.