Ghost Flight

11

Jaeger sat at his kitchen table, his gaze turned inwards.

Before him were ranged three photographs: one, that of Andy Smith’s body, eagle symbol carved deep and bloody into his left shoulder; two, a photo that Jaeger had taken on his smartphone of the eagle symbol on the inside cover of the Operation Werewolf document.

And the third – the photo of his wife and child.

During his time in the military, Jaeger hadn’t exactly been the marrying type. A long and happy marriage and a life in special forces didn’t often go together. Every month was a new mission – pitting himself against a sun-blasted desert, a sweaty jungle or an ice-clad mountain. There had been little time for prolonged romances.

But then the accident had happened. During a high-altitude freefall jump over the African savannah, Jaeger’s ’chute had malfunctioned. He was lucky to have survived. He’d spent months in hospital with a broken back, and though he’d fought his way back to physical fitness, his days in the SAS had been numbered.

It was during that time – the long year’s recovery – that he’d first met Ruth. They were introduced via a mutual friend and at first they hadn’t got along at all well. Ruth, six years his junior, a university graduate and a diehard wildlife and environmental campaigner, had assumed Jaeger to be her polar opposite.

As for Jaeger, he’d presumed a tree-hugging type like her would despise an elite soldier like him. It was down to a mixture of his razor-sharp, teasing humour and her feisty attitude, coupled with her striking good looks, that they’d gradually grown to appreciate each other… and eventually to fall in love.

Over time they’d realised they shared a common bond – a burning love of all things wild.

Ruth was three months pregnant with Luke on the day of their wedding, at which Andy Smith had been best man. And via Luke’s birth and the months and years that followed, they’d experienced the miracle of having brought a mini version of their two selves into this world.

Every day with Luke and Ruth had been a wonderful challenge and an adventure, which made the void of their dark loss all the more impossible to bear.

For close to an hour Jaeger stared at those three images – a mouldering yellow Nazi document and a police photo of an alleged suicide victim, both displaying that same eagle symbol; and the photo of Ruth and Luke – trying to fathom the connection that lay between them. There was a feeling he couldn’t shake that somehow that eagle symbol was linked to the death – no: the disappearance – of his wife and child.

In some unknowable way – some way that he couldn’t for the life of him seem to grasp – there was a disturbing sensation of cause and effect here. Call it a soldier’s sixth sense, but he’d learned to trust that inner voice of his over the years. Or maybe this was all complete bullshit. Maybe three years in Bioko and five weeks in Black Beach Prison had finally got the better of him, the paranoia eating into him like a dark and corrosive acid, rotting his mind.

Jaeger had almost no recollection of the night his wife and son had been ripped out of his life. It had been a still winter’s evening, one of a crisp, breathtaking serenity and beauty. They’d been camped out on the Welsh hills, the sweep of the starlit sky wide and wild above them. It was the kind of place where Jaeger had been at his happiest.

The fire had died to ashes and the last conscious thought Jaeger had had was of crawling into the tent, zipping together the sleeping bags, and his wife and son wrapping close to him for warmth. He’d been left half dead himself – the tent pumped full of a toxic gas that had rendered him utterly defenceless – so the lack of any further recollection was hardly surprising. And by the time he’d come to, he was lying in intensive care, his wife and child many days gone.

Yet what he couldn’t fathom – what terrified him – was the way in which that eagle symbol seemed to dig into those long-buried memories.

The army shrinks had warned him that the memories would be in there somewhere. That one day they would very likely start to resurface, like driftwood washed ashore by a storm-lashed sea.

But why was it this – this dark eagle symbol – that threatened to reach so deep and drag them back to the light?