‘I’ll rip the balls off someone if it is.’
‘On the other hand . . .’
‘Nothing we haven’t done before. On the sim.’
‘Yeah, I almost got down in one piece last time I tried it.’
The banter was heavy, but they knew they now faced a serious task – and some tough decisions.
‘So where are we going to put her down?’ the first officer asked.
‘You tell me. Is Stansted an option?’
If they diverted north, it would mean they’d avoid flying over central London.
‘I don’t think so,’ the first officer replied, flicking rapidly through the plates of his airfield handbook. ‘Runway Zero Four there is only three thousand and fifty-nine metres,’ he read out loud. ‘We’ll need more than that.’
‘So Heathrow it is.’
‘Heathrow Two Seven Right is three thousand nine hundred metres. That should do it.’
‘It will bloody well have to.’
The Airbus was now becoming difficult to control, the pilot’s sidestick refusing to cooperate. Every time it was shifted or turned, the plane decided to do something else, its own thing. It was like trying to command a wayward cat. They flew on through the night, but with much less certainty.
The two men weren’t frightened, they had their training to fall back on. Anyway, there was too much for them to do, no time for thought or fear. There was air traffic control to inform, Abi to brief once more – this would be an emergency landing, the passengers would have to be set in the brace position, not an easy task with so many kids on board. But they could still make it on one engine and one hydraulic system.
They were flying over the mouth of the estuary. Ten thousand feet, two hundred and twenty knots, two hundred and fifty miles an hour. Only ten minutes to landing. Ahead of them they could see the lights of the Dome and Kings Cross station, and beyond that the towers of the Parliament building and the stacks of Battersea Power Station. Everything was set out before them, dressed in its finery, London getting ready to celebrate Christmas.
Abi answered the summons to the cockpit. She listened quietly and very intently as the captain gave her the fresh briefing, repeating it back to him to show she had understood.
‘Soon home, love,’ the captain concluded, trying to reassure her.
But it wasn’t destined to be that simple.
The missile hadn’t exploded, yet the damage it inflicted had been catastrophic. The missile had hit the front part of the engine, sending shards of searing-hot metal into the hydraulic bay that lay just behind the wing. The missile itself had broken up and part of that, too, had bounced off the engine and been hurled into the bay, where it had made a direct hit on the first hydraulic reservoir. These were about the size of industrial pressure cookers, and Green had been destroyed immediately. Meanwhile the turbine discs in the rear of the crippled engine – that part of the engine where the energy was concentrated – had begun to spin out of control, speeding up until they shattered and flew apart. It was a fragment of one of these discs that had punctured the second reservoir. Green was dead, Yellow was dying.
The Blue System had survived intact, at first, but even though the hoses feeding it were made of stainless steel, in the intense slipstream that was ripping through the damaged fuselage, one of these had been bent and forced up against a fragment of missile casing that had lodged in the bay. As the plane flew on, the hose was pounded ceaselessly, remorselessly, against the razor-sharp shard of metal, until it, too, failed.
They were down to five thousand feet. Not much more than six minutes to Heathrow. They knew they weren’t going to make it.
No discussion, no time for that, and nothing in the manual for this, it was all instinct, an instantaneous throw of the dice.
‘I’m going for the river,’ the captain said.
‘Better that than another Lockerbie.’
‘I agree. Particularly when we’re doing the flying.’
The captain had to make a choice; he might still be left with some fragment of control before the last of the hydraulic fluid pissed away in the night air. Better the river than a crowded city centre, the scars on the landscape that had been left on Lockerbie. So, close the remaining thrust lever, shut down the final engine, trim the aircraft, try to glide her down. Damn it, that pilot had done it a couple of years back, the one who’d ditched in the Hudson, got everyone off alive when his engines had failed. But he’d still had hydraulics.
‘Shall I get Abi?’ Bryan asked.
‘Don’t see the point. No need to terrify the kids.’
‘Just us, then.’
‘Yes, just the two of us.’
Ahead of them, the Thames wound its way between the flare path of the riverbanks, twisting so sharply at points that on the ground it often deceived the eye, but from the cockpit they could see it all, laid out in spectacular and terrifying detail. They would have to get down before the bridges came into play. Hit one of those and . . . But the stretch leading up to Tower Bridge seemed about right. The captain lined her up, one last touch on the sidestick, and then all control was gone. They were gliding, their path set, for better or much worse. In the cockpit, without the engines, it seemed unnaturally quiet, except for a persistent banging that was coming from somewhere behind. He pushed home the ditching button that sealed off the cabin, gave them a chance of floating.
‘Should I go through the emergency ditching procedures?’ the first officer asked, holding the manual open, struggling to read in the dim emergency lighting.
‘I seem to remember it talks about making sure the galleys are turned off, useful stuff like that.’
Slowly, the first officer’s shoulders sagged, like an abandoned tent. He closed the book and put it aside.
‘London, this is Speedbird Mayday. I’ve lost all hydraulics and I’m trying to get into the river by Tower Bridge.’
Only the slightest hesitation before: ‘Er, Speedbird Mayday. Say again?’
‘Repeat, ditching near Tower Bridge. No hydraulics. We have one-one-five – repeat one-one-five – souls on board. That includes a whole playschool of kids.’
‘Speedbird Mayday, your message acknowledged. Emergency services will be informed.’ The controller’s voice had begun strong and matter of fact, but suddenly it ran out of breath. He had to clear his throat before he added: ‘Good luck.’
The captain found nothing to say in reply. He leaned down, cancelled the radio. The cockpit fell silent.
In the passenger compartment there was a surprising lack of panic. They’d been told they were only a few minutes from the airport and the change in the noise of the remaining engine wasn’t unusual as a plane prepared to land. Abi had done her job well. Yet she was too good to fool herself. Now she was strapped in her own seat, by the forward bulkhead beside another member of the cabin crew. She bowed her head in silent prayer and was struggling not to show her fear when through her tear-blurred eyes she saw a small girl appear in front of her. It was Cartagena. She was holding a glass-eyed teddy bear with a drooping, much-sucked ear.
‘We told them we’re all going to be OK, didn’t we, Edward?’ she lisped, interrogating the bear. She gazed up at Abi, her grey eyes filled with earnest. ‘My daddy told me he would never let anything happen to me.’
‘And who is your daddy, darling?’ Abi stammered, struggling desperately to hold back the tears.
‘He’s the ambassador.’
‘Would you and Edward Bear like to come and sit here on my lap?’ Abi asked. It defied every regulation, but there was no time to get the child back in her own seat. Anyway, there was no point.
Gratefully, Cartagena climbed into her arms as the other hostie looked on in horror, understanding all too well what this must mean.
‘You want to tell me about Edward Bear?’ Abi asked. ‘Does he have brothers and sisters?’
So Cartagena began to spell out Edward’s complicated family history while Abi, her arms wrapped protectively around the lit
tle girl, her face buried in the child’s hair, thanked God for the distraction.
Back in the cockpit, the two pilots stared ahead of them at the dark water that was now fast approaching. They were almost down to the height of the buildings scattered around Canary Wharf. The captain did a little mental arithmetic. They’d hit at around two hundred and twenty knots, and not quite level, around two degrees. Not a lot, but enough to spear the nose into the water and flip the plane on its back. That’s if they didn’t hit anything first. He’d once talked about these things with an old-timer, a retired test pilot who’d told him how it worked. You never drown, it seems. The plane hits the water and stops, but you don’t. Your head is fired forward and snaps your neck; either that or it shakes your brain to jelly.
‘Bryan, something I need to tell you.’
‘Yes?’ The first officer was startled from his thoughts, tearing his eyes away from the approaching water and the bridge beyond.
‘You were right.’
‘About what?’
‘Me and Abi.’
The two men turned to face each other. Slowly, as though it were made of lead, the captain extended his hand. His first officer took it. Then, once more, they stared out at what lay ahead, and said not another word.
The captain had chosen a section of the river called the Pool of London. This was the old mercantile centre, the site of the once-great port of the capital city and deep enough for a World War Two destroyer and even small liners. It was also playing host to a Polish tall ship, its masts towering more than a hundred feet above its wooden decks as it waited for passage through Tower Bridge later that night to begin a Christmas goodwill visit. The wingtip of the Airbus brushed the tallest of the masts, causing the plane to yaw. The aircraft was no longer level, the port wing hit the water first, tearing away from the fuselage, which then cartwheeled twice. As the chaos of the crash subsided, only the tail was clearly distinguishable, sticking out defiantly above the river, surrounded by floating debris and a small oil fire.
Even after the waters had ceased their raging and settled to nothing more than a dark tidal ripple, there was no sign of anyone on board. They were all dead.
Lake Taupo, New Zealand
Benjamin Usher, the British Prime Minister, a face fashioned for caricature. As a boy he had taken a tumble down the slope of a Cumbrian fell near his home, which had left him with a squashed nose, ragged ear and a scar high on his cheek. The passage of later years had given him wrinkles that left him looking rather like a bulldog. Resilient. Determined. Even a little stubborn. He was going to need all those qualities in the coming weeks; he had an election to fight, and no Prime Minister takes such moments for granted, even when eight points ahead in the polls, as he was. He had never forgotten the words of one of his predecessors, Harold Macmillan, who had been asked to define what worried him most. ‘Events, dear boy, events,’ he had replied.
At the moment Speedbird 235 hit the water a short distance downriver from the Houses of Parliament, Usher was tucked far away from his problems, or so he thought, in a luxury resort beside Lake Taupo on New Zealand’s north island, where he was attending the biennial meeting of Commonwealth heads of government. It had been a fruitful three days, swapping ideas and intimacies with leaders from vigorous economies like India, Canada, and Australia; countries that had escaped the economic permafrost that seemed to have settled on Europe and its currency, and now the deliberations were almost at an end, time to wrap things up and head home for Christmas. It was early morning on Lake Taupo, and the Prime Minister was enjoying his breakfast, sitting on the verandah of his lodge soaking up birdsong, when a nervous steward spilled orange juice over the Prime Minister’s immaculately laundered shirt. Only a few drops, but sufficient to drench the steward in embarrassment. Clumsy bugger. Yet Usher was an old hand, knew there would be a photographer’s lens pointing at him from behind some bush or across the lake, so instead of succumbing to an instinctive scowl he burst into laughter, making sure that the steward and the wide world beyond realized he couldn’t care less. It was to prove an unfortunate image, in the circumstances.
He first heard of the tragedy on the Thames while he was changing into a fresh shirt – only the sketchiest details, no one knew yet the scale of the disaster or the death toll, or even that there was a death toll, but it was not something that could be ignored. He immediately asked for an earlier flight home, but was told there was none. In any event there were still important details needing to be wrapped up at the conference, so with some misgivings he stayed on those few extra hours. Another misfortune.
The contrasting images of the wreckage and that smile were played side by side. The Prime Minister’s refusal to walk out of the conference led to questions about his sense of priorities. And even before he had arrived back in London, two days after the tragedy, the media had already made up their collective mind about this act of callousness, Usher’s failure to capture the sombre spirit of the moment, and on that point they were not for turning, no matter what the Downing Street press spokesman offered in explanation. Grossly unfair, of course, a despicable distortion, but such, in the end, is the fate of all prime ministers.
Makhachkala, inside the Russian Federation
There were other casualties. Even before the waters had time to settle above the fuselage of Speedbird 235, a small group of wind-scuffed portable cabins standing on a rocky outcrop overlooking the shore of the Caspian Sea were set ablaze. The spot was a little to the north of the dreary Russian city of Makhachkala, and the cabins were completely destroyed. The fire raised little local interest and was immediately attributed to unknown delinquents before it was filed away as being solved. The authorities had far more important things to attract their attention; the province of Chechnya was only down the road with its population of insurgents and suicide bombers, while the entire Caspian was a sea of troubles.
It was the world’s largest inland sea, or lake, and beneath it lay an ocean of oil and gas worth trillions of dollars. That made the region even more unstable. The countries that clustered around the Caspian shore – Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan – were without exception led by posses of adventurers and political bandits whose loathing was mutual. It was a region of irredeemable conflict, yet its peoples were never going to be left to fight it out amongst themselves, for there were too many others who were desperate to claim a share of the riches. There were plans to lay rival pipelines across the floor of the Caspian, which ensured that the neighbours fought amongst themselves ever more bitterly, arguing about where the pipelines should cross, and who should control them. And while they fought, the waters of the Caspian became more muddied, the sturgeon swam ever closer to extinction, and the Russians and Iranians ferried in warships to back up their rival claims. It was a desperate, bloody place, and nobody gave a damn about a Portakabin or two.
Mayfair, London
Even though he was only three miles away from the catastrophe beside Tower Bridge, Harry Jones heard nothing. He was in his mews house, his head bowed in concentration as he pored over the final draft of his election manifesto. He wasn’t enjoying it, never did. As a former soldier he knew that wars always carried their share of casualties, and what was politics, except for war without the ethical bits? Careers in Westminster were never more than a headline away from disaster, and one day they would get him, too. People glibly assumed Harry was better protected than most Members of Parliament – he was independently and almost indecently wealthy, had a thumping parliamentary majority and every year received a personalized Christmas card from the Queen, yet he took none of this for granted. So he sat in his darkened study, with light cast from a solitary desk lamp, working and reworking every word.
‘Harry, you going to be long?’
He looked up. Jemma was leaning against the doorjamb, yawning. A wisp of thick marmalade hair tumbled across her forehead and she was clad in nothing but a towel. Even in silhouette the effect was exceptionally distracting, the sort o
f woman men found difficult in describing without using their hands.
‘Five minutes, Jem,’ he said, returning to his typescript.
‘Make them short minutes,’ she suggested, dropping her towel before turning back to the bedroom.
He rewrote a couple of lines, marking corrections with his Parker Duofold, then reread the whole thing once more, but it was late, his brain too tired, he couldn’t catch the subtleties or the pace. Part of him, the obsessive part, said it needed another few minutes, one last look, his career depended on it, but instead he screwed the cap back firmly onto his pen and put it to one side. It was Christmas, dammit, time to follow his star, or at least the trail of light that led towards the bedroom.
Avenue de Cortenbergh, Brussels
The lights were still blazing on the fifth floor of the anonymous office building, a block down from the Park du Cinquantenaire. That was unusual. This was the European Quarter, the heart of government, where officials administered an empire that stretched from the Black Sea to the Atlantic and up as far as the Arctic Circle, although many of them had fled Brussels and already returned to their homes for Christmas. In any event, the business of running the Union of Europe was meant to be regular and methodical, it wasn’t supposed to be in need of unexpected late nights.
Even more surprisingly, the lights were coming from EATA – the European Anti-Terrorist Agency. Not that EATA was like the CIA or MI6, or those thugs at the FSB in Moscow; it was a relative infant in the intelligence game, no teeth, no claws, no spies wandering abroad with poison-tipped umbrellas or exploding toothpaste. The remit of EATA was simple, its task was to gather information about matters of public security and put it in a form that their busy bosses could digest. Other intelligence agencies joked that most of the job consisted of pasting up press cuttings and could better be done by circulating The Week magazine or the Wall Street Journal, but European bureaucracy never willingly took a short cut. Or worked a late night.
Midnight struck, the avenue grew silent except for the passing of an occasional street-cleaning truck. The park was deserted, its trees bowing their bare branches, the birds asleep. Yet still the lights in EATA burned. That could mean but one of two possibilities. Either the cleaners had been very careless. Or something was going very badly wrong.