And so began the search. We quartered the area in over-lapping sweeps so as not to miss anything, and it was damned hard work. This was not a mere matter of making a march; we had to cover and inspect an area, which meant scrambling over rocks and looking behind every column in that broken wilderness.
We searched all day without finding anything but rocks.
That night Paul was dispirited. He huddled in his
djellaba
and aimlessly tossed a stone from one hand to the other while staring blankly with unmoving eyes. I didn’t feel too good myself and said to Byrne, ‘What do you think?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe Atitel was out in his distance and direction. We’ll look again tomorrow. Get some sleep.’
‘God!’ I said. ‘Talk about needles in haystacks. And there’s that proverb about leaving no bloody stone unturned.’
Byrne grunted. ‘If it was easy to see it would have been found years ago. Atitel says he came on it only by chance four years ago. He’d come up here trying to trap wild camel foals and got himself lost.’
‘Why didn’t he report it when he got back to Djanet?’
‘It didn’t mean that much to him. If there had been a body he might have, but he said there was no body near.’
‘Do you think Billson tried to walk out?’
‘He was a damned fool if he did.’
Paul came alive. ‘He wouldn’t try that,’ he said positively. ‘He knew the rules about that. All the pilots in the race were told to stay by the plane if they came down.’
‘Yeah,’ said Byrne. ‘It’s the sensible thing to do and, from what I’ve heard of him, Peter Billson was a sensible guy.’ He paused. ‘Sorry to bring this up, Paul; but when Atitel told me there was no body I had my doubts about this being the right airplane. What in hell would a good flier like your old man be doing way over here anyway? He’d be off course by nearly two hundred miles.’
‘Atitel identified the plane,’ said Paul obstinately.
‘Yeah, but when I first suggested the Tassili you said yourself your father was too good a pilot to be fifteen degrees out.’
It was all very depressing.
We found it next morning only ten minutes after restarting the search. I found it, and it was infuriating to think that if Byrne hadn’t called off the search the previous night another ten minutes would have done it.
I scaled the side of a pillar of rock that had fallen intact and walked across it to see what was on the other side. There, in a sixty-foot-wide gully was an aeroplane looking as pristine as though it had just been delivered from the manufacturer. It stood in that incongruous place as it might have stood on the tarmac outside a hangar.
‘Luke!’ I yelled. ‘Paul! It’s here!’
I scrambled down to it, and they both arrived breathless. ‘That’s it!’ shouted Paul. ‘That’s my father’s plane.’
I looked at Byrne. ‘Is it?’
‘It’s a Northrop “Gamma”,’ he said, and passed his hand almost reverentially over the fuselage. ‘Yeah, this is Peter Billson’s plane. Look!’
Over forty years of wind-driven sand had worn away the painted registration marks but on the fuselage one could still detect the outline of the letters which made up a word—
Flyaway.
‘Oh, God!’ said Paul, and leaned on the trailing edge of the wing. Suddenly he burst into tears. All the pent-up emotion of a lifetime came out of him in one rush and he just stood there and wept, racked with sobs. To those brought up in our stiff-upper-lip society the sight of a man in tears is apt to be unnerving, so Byrne and I tactfully walked away until Paul could get a grip on himself.
We walked a little way down the gully away from the plane, then Byrne turned and said, ‘Now how in hell did he put it down there?’ There was wonder in his voice.
I saw what he meant. There was not much clearance at the end of each wingtip and beyond the plane the gully narrowed sharply and if the aircraft had rolled a few feet further the wings would have been ripped off. I said as much.
‘That’s not what I mean,’ said Byrne. He turned and studied the terrain with narrowed eyes. ‘This airplane is in a goddamn box.’ He pointed to the wall of rock at the wider end of the gully. ‘So how did it get in the box?’ He shook his head and looked up at the sky. ‘He must have brought it down like a helicopter.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘Unlikely. Look, the guy is in trouble; it’s night time and something has gone wrong, so he has to put down. He can’t see worth a damn, his landing speed is sixty miles an hour, and yet he sets that thing down right way up on its wheels in a space that should be impossible.’
I looked around. ‘No wonder it wasn’t found. Who’d look on the Tassili anyway? And if they did it’s in an impossible place.’
‘Let’s go get the gear,’ he said. ‘We’ll set up camp here.’
He called out, telling Paul to stay there, and we went to round up the donkeys, load them, and take them back to the plane. It was difficult to find a way in but we found a cleft big enough to take one donkey at a time, and unloaded and set up camp in the clear space just behind
Flyaway.
After that the donkeys were taken out again, hobbled, and turned loose to feed on what sparse vegetation they could find.
When we got back Paul had recovered, although his eyes were still red. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘That’s all right, Paul,’ I said. ‘I didn’t expect an icy calmness.’
Byrne was pacing the distance from the rock wall at the end of the gully to the tail of the plane. I walked towards him. ‘Sixty yards,’ he said, and blew out his cheeks expressively. ‘I still don’t believe it. Paul okay?’
I nodded and put my hand up to touch the rudder. ‘She looks ready to fly.’
‘You’d have to lift her out of here with a crane,’ said Byrne. ‘And then build a runway. But there’s more. Look!’ He pointed down to the tail wheel which was flat. When he kicked it, it fell apart in a powdery heap. ‘That’s the weak link. The airplane is fine—all metal. 24ST Alclad according to the specification, and the desert wouldn’t hurt that. The engine will be fine, too; it’ll just need the dried oil cleaning out and it’ll run as sweetly as new. But all the sealings will have gone, and all the gaskets, and anything made of rubber. And I guess any plastic parts, too. I hear those early plastics weren’t too stable chemically.’ He sighed. ‘No, she’ll not fly again—ever.’
As Paul joined us Byrne said, ‘Mind if I take a look in the cockpit?’ Paul looked puzzled, as well he might, because
this was the first time Byrne had asked his permission to do anything. Byrne explained, ‘I guess this is your airplane—by inheritance, Paul.’
Paul swallowed, and I saw the glisten of tears in his eyes. ‘No,’ he said huskily. ‘I don’t mind.’
Byrne walked around the tailplane and put his foot on the step on the wing fillet, then swung himself up to look into the cockpit. The cockpit cover was slid back and he looked down and said, ‘Fair amount of sand in here.’
I left him to it and walked back to get my camera. I spent some time cleaning the lens, which wasn’t easy because the air was dry and the static electricity such that you could see the fine dust jumping on to the surface of the lens under its attraction. I did my best and then loaded the camera with a film and went back to take pictures.
Byrne had got into the cockpit and was fiddling around with the controls. The rudder moved, but with a squeaking and grating noise, and then the ailerons went up and down with less disturbance. Paul was standing on one side, doing nothing but just looking at
Flyaway.
I have never seen a man look so peaceful, and I hoped he would now be cured of what ailed him, because there was no doubt that he had been a man badly disturbed to the point of insanity.
I used up the whole roll of film, taking pictures from various angles, including two of the faded name on the side of the fuselage. Then I rewound the film into its cassette and packed it away with my unused shaving gear.
Presently Byrne called me and I went back to the plane. He was still in the cockpit. ‘Come up here.’
I put my foot on the step and hoisted myself up. He had his pocket prismatic compass in his hand. ‘Look at this!’ He tapped an instrument set at the top of the windscreen.
‘What is it?’
‘The compass. It reads one hundred eighty-two degrees.’ He held up the prismatic compass so I could see it ‘Mine reads one hundred seventy-five.’
‘Seven degrees difference. Which is right?’
‘Mine’s not wrong,’ he said evenly.
‘An error of seven degrees wouldn’t account for Billson being fifteen degrees off course.’
‘Maybe not.’ He handed me the prismatic compass. ‘I want you to go back there—well away from the airplane. Take a sighting on the rudder; I want you lined up exactly the way the airplane is. Then take a reading and come back and tell me what it is.’
I nodded and climbed down, then went back as far as I had left the baggage. I sighted on the rudder and got a reading of 168°. I thought I’d made an error so I checked my position and tried again and got the same result. I went back to Byrne. ‘A hundred and sixty-eight.’
He nodded. ‘Fourteen degrees difference—that would be about right to put him here.’ He tapped the aircraft compass again. ‘Look, Billson is flying at night, right? So he’s flying by compass. Let’s say he sets a course of one eighty degrees. He’s actually going one sixty-six and way off course.’
‘His compass was that much out?’
‘Looks like it. And it must have gone wrong in Algiers because he got that far without trouble.’
I said, ‘Why did your compass give different readings in here and out there?’
‘Magnetic deviation,’ he said. ‘Remember what I told you at Assekrem about iron in the mountains causing trouble? Well, there’s a lot of iron here. Up front there’s a goddamn hunk of iron called an engine. That affects the compass reading. Now, that’s a Wright Cyclone with nine cylinders and, in flight, all the spark plugs are busy sparking and sending out radiation. They tell you they can
be screened but I’ve never seen anyone do a good job of screening yet And there’ll be other bits of iron about the airplane—the oleo struts, for instance.’ He tapped the metal of the fuselage. ‘This don’t matter—it’s aluminum.’
I said, ‘What are you trying to tell me?’
‘I’m getting to it.’ Byrne stared thoughtfully at the compass. ‘Now, you build an airplane, and you take a perfectly good compass and put it in that airplane and it gives you a wrong reading because of all the iron around. So you have to adjust it to bring it back to what it was before you put it in the airplane.’ He pointed to the compass. ‘Built in back of there are some small magnets put in just the right places to compensate for all the other iron.’
‘And you think one of them fell off? Because of vibration, perhaps?’
‘Nope,’ he said shortly. ‘They’re not built to fall off; they’re screwed in real tight. And there’s something else—any compass, no matter how good, will give a reading that’s a bit off when you’re flying on different courses. You see, the needle is always pointing in the same direction, to magnetic north; so when you change course you’re swinging all your iron around the needle.’
‘It’s getting more complicated.’
‘This is the real point. Every compass in every airplane is tested individually because all airplanes have different magnetic characteristics—even the same models. The airplane is flown along different known courses and the compass readings are checked. Then a compass adjuster does his bit with his magnets. It’s a real skilled job, more of an art than a science. He works out his calculations and maybe adds in the date last Tuesday, then he makes out a deviation card for the residual errors he can’t get rid of on various courses. I’ve been looking for Billson’s deviation card and I can’t find it.’
‘Not surprising, after forty-two years. What are you really getting at, Luke?’
‘You can bet your last cent that Billson would have had his compass checked out real good before the race. His life depended on it.’
‘And it let him down.’
‘Yeah; but only after Algiers. And compasses don’t go fourteen degrees wrong that easy.’
I stared at him. ‘
Sabotage!’
‘Could be. Can’t think of anything else.’
My thoughts went back to English, the journalist who had set fire to Paul. ‘That idea has come up before,’ I said slowly. ‘A German won the race—a Nazi. I don’t suppose he could have done it personally, but a friend of his might.’
‘I’d like to take this compass out,’ said Byrne. ‘There’s a screwdriver in that kit of tools I brought.’
‘I wondered about that,’ I said. ‘Were you expecting this?’
‘I was expecting something. Don’t forget there’s a son of a bitch who is willing to kill to prevent this plane being found.’
‘I’ll get the screwdriver.’
As I dropped to the ground Byrne said, ‘Don’t tell Paul.’
Paul was sitting on the ground in front of
Flyaway
just looking at her. I walked away, got the screwdriver and came back, concealing it in the folds of my
gandoura.
Byrne attacked the first of the four screws which held the compass in place. It seemed locked solid but an extra effort moved it and then it rotated freely.
He took out all four screws and gently eased the compass out of place and turned it over in his hands. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You see these two brass tubes here? Inside those are small pole magnets. This screw here makes the tubes move like scissor blades—that’s how the compass adjuster gets his
results. And this is a locking nut to make sure the tubes can’t move once they’re set.’
He tested it with his fingers. ‘It’s locked tight—which means…’
‘…that if the compass is fourteen degrees out of true it was done deliberately?’
‘That’s right,’ said Byrne.
Sabotage! An ugly word. An uglier deed.
I said, ‘How long would it take to do it?’
‘You saw how easy it was to take out this compass. To make the change and put back the compass wouldn’t take long. A maximum of fifteen minutes for the whole job.’
‘I’m taking that compass back to England with me,’ I said. ‘Just as it is. I’m beginning to develop peculiar ideas.’
‘It only tells half the story,’ said Byrne. ‘We have to solve the other half—why did he come down? I have ideas on that. I want to look at the plumbing of this airplane.’
‘I’ll leave you to it.’ I climbed down from the wing and joined Paul. ‘Well, Paul, this is it—journey’s end.’
‘Yes,’ he said softly. He looked up. ‘He wasn’t a cheat. That South African was lying.’
‘No, he wasn’t a cheat.’ I certainly wasn’t going to tell Paul that the compass had been gimmicked—that would really send him round the twist. I said carefully, ‘Byrne is trying to find out what was wrong with
Flyaway
to make her come down. Do you mind?’
‘Of course not. I’d like to know.’ He rubbed his shoulder absently. ‘That newspaper back in England. Do you think the editor will publish an apology?’
‘An apology? By God, Paul, it’ll be more than that. It will be headline news. There’ll be a complete vindication.’ But it would be better if we could find the body, I thought.
I looked around and tried to put myself in Billson’s place. He had either tried to walk out or he hadn’t, and both Paul and Byrne were fairly certain that he’d do the right thing and stick close to
Flyaway
; it was standard operating procedure. He must have known that an air search would be laid on and that an aeroplane is easier to spot than a man on foot. What he didn’t know was that no one dreamed of searching the Tassili area.
So if he hadn’t walked out where was he? Atitel had said he hadn’t seen a body, but had he searched?
I said nothing to Paul but walked away and climbed the side of the fallen rock pillar from which I first saw
Flyaway
, and began to walk along it. It was my idea that Billson would want to get out of the sun, so I was looking for a cave.
I found the remains of the body half an hour later. It was in one of the shallow scooped-out caves peculiar to the Tassili and the walls were covered with paintings of men and cattle and hunting scenes. I use the word ‘remains’ advisedly because scavengers had been at the body after Billson had died and there were pieces missing. What was left was half covered in blown sand, and near by was the dull gleam of a metal box which could have been a biscuit tin.
I touched nothing but went back immediately. Paul hadn’t moved but Byrne was on top of
Flyaway
and had opened some kind of a hatch on the side of the fuselage. As I climbed up he said, ‘I think I’ve got it figured.’
‘Never mind that,’ I said. ‘I’ve found the body.’
‘Oh!’ He turned his head and looked at Paul, then turned back to me. ‘Bad?’
‘Not good. I haven’t told Paul yet. You know what he’s like.’
‘You’ll have to tell him,’ said Byrne definitely. ‘He’ll have to know and he’ll have to see it. If he doesn’t he’ll be wondering for the rest of his life.’ I knew he was right. ‘But don’t tell him yet. Let’s get this figured out first’
‘What have you found?’
‘If you look in the cockpit you’ll see a brass handle on the left. It’s a sort of two-way switch governing the flow of gas to the engine. In the position it’s set at now it’s drawing fuel from the main tank. It was in that position when I found it. Turn it the other way and gasoline is drawn from an auxiliary tank which has been built into the cargo space here. Got the picture?’
‘He was drawing from his main tank when he crashed.’
‘That’s it.’ He fumbled in his
gandoura
and came out with the photocopies I had given him. ‘According to this, the main tank holds 334 gallons which gives a range of seventeen hundred miles at three-quarters power—that’s cruising. But Billson was in a race—he wouldn’t be cruising. I reckon he’d be flying on ninety per cent power, so his range would be less. I figure about fifteen hundred miles. It’s eighteen hundred from Algiers to Kano, so that’s a shortfall of three hundred miles.’
‘Hence the auxiliary tank.’
‘Yeah. So he needs another three hundred miles of fuel—and more. He’d need more because he might run into head winds, and he’d need a further reserve because he wouldn’t want to do anything hairy like finding Kano in the dark and coming in on his last pint of gas. At the same time he wouldn’t want this auxiliary tank to be full because that means weight and that would slow him down. I’ve been trying to figure like Billson and I’ve come up with the notion that he’d put a hundred fifty gallons in this tank. And you know what?’
‘Tell me.’
‘That’s just about enough to bring him from Algiers to here on the course he was heading.’
‘You mean when he switched over from the auxiliary to the main tank his engine failed. Empty main tank?’
‘Hell, no! Billson wasn’t an idiot—he’d supervise the filling himself. Besides, there are gauges in the cockpit. The engine quit all right, but it wasn’t because the tank was empty. I’d like to find out why.’
‘How?’
‘I’d like to open up the main tank. Think Paul would mind?’
‘I’ll ask him.’
Paul said he didn’t mind; in fact, he developed an interest as Byrne stood with hammer in one hand and cold chisel in the other surveying
Flyaway
, ‘I’ve been tracing the gas lines and I’d say the main tank is in this mid-section here—might even extend into the wing fillets. I’ll start there.’
He knelt down, laid the cutting edge of the chisel against the fuselage, and poised the hammer. ‘Wait!’ said Paul quickly. ‘You might strike a spark.’
Byrne turned his head. ‘So?’
‘The petrol…’
‘There ain’t no petrol—no gasoline—in here, Paul. Not after forty-two years. It’ll have evaporated.’
‘From a sealed tank?’ said Paul sceptically.
‘No fuel tank is sealed,’ said Byrne. ‘There’s a venting system. You try to pull gas from a tank without letting air in and you’ll get nowhere. It’s okay, Paul; there’s no fuel in here now.’
There was a clang as he struck the head of the chisel. He struck again and again and presently I went to help him by holding the chisel so he could strike a harder blow. But first I cautioned him to make sure he hit the chisel and not my hand. Slowly we cut a hole into the side of
Flyaway
and, oddly, I thought it an act of desecration.
The hole was about a foot by six inches and at last Byrne was able to bend back the flap of aluminium so that he could look inside. As he did so some brown powder dropped out to lie on the sand. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘An integral fuel tank.’
‘What’s the powder?’
‘You always get gunk in the bottom of a tank no matter what you do. The gasoline is filtered going in and filtered coming out but no gas is pure anyway, and you have chemical instabilities and changes.’ He put his hand inside and withdrew it holding a handful of the powder. ‘More in here than I would have thought, though. If I was Billson and entering a race I’d have the tanks scoured and steamcleaned before starting.’
I looked at the handful of dried sludge as he put it to his nose. ‘More than you would have thought,’ I repeated.
‘Don’t put too much into that,’ he advised. ‘This is the first time I’ve looked inside a fuel tank. It ain’t a job that’s come my way before. There were over three hundred gallons in this tank and God knows what was happening to it while it was evaporating. Constant changes of temperature like you get here could have started all kinds of reaction.’
‘All the same,’ I said, ‘I’d like to have a sample of that stuff.’
‘Then find something to put it in.’
I’m old-fashioned enough to use a soap shaving-stick and mine came in a plastic case. It hadn’t seen much use in the desert and I’d grown a respectable beard which, Byrne told me, was necked with grey. ‘Pretty soon you’ll look as distinguished as me,’ he had said. I broke off the column of soap and we filled the case with the brown powder and I screwed the cap back on and, for safety, secured it with an adhesive dressing from Byrne’s first aid kit.
By that time it was past midday so we prepared a meal. As we ate Paul said, ‘When are we leaving?’
Byrne glanced at me and I knew the same thought was in both our minds—we had a burial detail to attend to. He said, ‘Early tomorrow.’
I said nothing to Paul until we had finished eating and had drunk our tea. Then I put a new film in my camera because I wanted a full record. I said, ‘Paul, brace yourself; there’s something I must tell you.’
His head jerked and he stared at me wide-eyed, and I knew he’d guessed. ‘You’ve found him. You’ve found my father.’
‘Yes.’
He got to his feet. ‘Where?’
‘Not far from here. Are you sure you want to see him? Luke and I can do what’s necessary.’
He shook his head slowly. ‘No—I must see him.’
‘All right. I’ll take you.’
The three of us went to the cave and the tears streamed down Paul’s face as he looked down at what was left of his father. There were still scraps of flesh and skin left attached to the bones but it was brown and mummified, and a few tendrils of hair clung to the skull which otherwise was picked clean.
I took some photographs and then we began to brush the sand from the skeleton. Underneath the thin layer of sand was rock so we could not bury Peter Billson. Instead we piled a cairn of stones over the remains, Paul sobbing all the time. Then we went back to
Flyaway
, Byrne carrying under his arm the tin box which had been next to the body. There were a couple of other things we had buried with Billson; two packets bearing the name of Brock, the pyrotechnic company. One contained flares, the other smoke signals. Neither had been used because a rescue plane had neither been seen nor heard.
Standing next to
Flyaway
Byrne held out the box to Paul. ‘Yours,’ he said simply.
He took it and then sat down on the sand and laid the box in front of him. He looked at it for a long time in silence
before he stretched out with trembling fingers to open it. This was nothing like opening a Christmas present. There were a lot of papers inside.
In his last days Peter Billson had kept a diary, written in his log-book. I don’t propose to go into this in detail because it is most harrowing. A proposal has been made that it be published in a future edition of the
Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
I’m against the idea. A man’s mental agonies when facing death ought to be private.
There was Billson’s flying licence, a sealed envelope addressed ‘To my darling, Helen’, a worn leather wallet, a pipe and an empty tobacco pouch, a Shell petrol carnet, a sheaf of bank notes—British, French and Nigerian, and it was strange to see the old big British five-pound note—and a few other small odds and ends.
Paul picked up the letter addressed to his mother. His lower lip trembled. ‘I ought to have treated her better,’ he whispered, then handed it to me. ‘Will you burn that, please? Don’t open it.’
I nodded. Byrne stooped and picked up a card. ‘The compass deviation card,’ he said. ‘Not more than a degree and a half out on any course.’ He handed it to me. ‘It don’t matter if a compass has deviation as long as you know what it is.’
Printed on the card was a compass rose around which were written figures in ink. It was signed by the compass adjuster and dated the 4th of January, 1936. I turned it over and saw something scrawled on the back.
I wonder how bloody true this damn thing is?
I nudged Byrne and showed it to him, and said in a low voice, ‘He was beginning to guess in the end.’
The diary told Byrne what he wanted to know about the landing. ‘He
was
a good flier, Paul,’ he said. ‘This is how he got down. His engine had quit and he was coming down in a glide with an airspeed of fifty-five knots. There was a low moon and suddenly he saw rocks between him and the moon, so he stalled her. He pulled her nose right up and that lost his speed
and his lift at the same time, so he fell out of the sky damn near vertically. What he called a pancake landing. Never heard it called that before. He says, “The old girl pancaked beautifully but I’m afraid both oleo legs are broken—one badly. Never mind, she wouldn’t take off from here anyway.”’
I read the diary. He had lasted twelve days on two and a half gallons of water. At first the handwriting was firm and decisive but towards the end it degenerated into a scrawl. During the last few days he was apparently feverish and had hallucinations, communing with the painted men on the wall of the cave. The last entry was in a surprisingly firm hand and was a plea that his wife and young son be well looked after. The thought of the £100,000 insurance on his life seemed to comfort him a lot.
Byrne grunted and stood up. ‘A guy like that deserves better than a heap of stones. He needs a marker.’ He strode to
Flyaway
and jumped up on to the wing, then made his way up the fuselage until he was astride the cowling of the big radial engine. There was a banging and I saw he was unshipping the propeller.
That gave me an idea. I found the piece of aluminium we had cut from the side of the fuselage and, using the chisel and a small hammer began to incise letters. Paul came over to see what I was doing and stayed to help. When I thought we had finished I said, ‘That’s it, Paul.’
‘No—there’s something I want to add.’
So he guided the blade of the chisel while I thumped with the hammer and we added the fourth line so that our rough plaque read:
PETER BILLSON
A
IRMAN
1903-1936
Fly away, Peter