Ghost Flight

50

It was around first light when the Indians led Jaeger and his team into their village – not that much of it was visible.

There was a small clearing, at the very centre of which stood a single building – a large, doughnut-shaped communal-type meeting house. It was roofed over with reed thatch reaching almost to the ground, and a thin coil of grey cooking smoke snaked up from the open centre of the structure.

The entire building was shielded by trees, making it largely invisible from the air. For a moment Jaeger found himself wondering where the villagers actually lived, before he heard voices calling from above. He glanced up, only to discover the answer. This was a tribe who’d made their homes in the treetops.

Rectangular hut-like structures were perched sixty feet or more above the ground, shielded by the topmost branches. They were reached by ladders made of vines, and between some of the huts there were rickety-looking aerial walkways.

Jaeger had heard of tribes living like this. He’d been on an expedition to Papua New Guinea, where the native Korowai people were renowned for living in the treetops. Clearly they weren’t alone in their predilection for a life spent high above the jungle floor.

The column of marchers came to a halt.

Everywhere, eyes stared at them.

The adult males held their ground, but the women seemed desperate to hurry away, youngsters clutched protectively to their chests. Children – dusty, naked; half-curious, half-petrified – peered out from behind trees, eyes wide with wonder and fear.

An incredibly thin and gnarled old man came wandering over.

He straightened up and brought his face uncomfortably close to Jaeger’s, staring into his eyes – almost as if he could see right inside his skull. He carried on peering around for several seconds, then broke away laughing. The experience was strangely unsettling; violating almost. Whatever that aged Indian had seen inside his head, it left Jaeger nonplussed and disturbed.

Warriors crowded in from either side now – heavily armed with spears and blowpipes – until Jaeger and his team were surrounded. A second figure stepped forward – an aged and grizzled village elder. As the old man began to speak, Jaeger sensed that this was a person of some gravitas and standing.

The old man’s words sounded strange – the language echoing bird and animal cries, with its odd high-pitched chirps, clicks and yelps. To his immediate left stood a younger figure, who was clearly listening to the elder’s words intently. Whatever was going on here, Jaeger had the unsettling impression that he and his team were being subjected to some sort of trial.

After a good two minutes the chief stopped talking. The younger man at his side turned to Jaeger and his team.

‘You are welcome.’ The words were spoken slowly, in broken but perfectly comprehensible English. ‘The chief of our tribe says that if you come in peace – welcome. But if you come in anger, and you wish harm on us or our forest home, you will die.’

Jaeger did his best to try to recover from the shock. No tribe that had never had contact with the outside world had a young man in its number who could speak such English. Someone had either lied to them, or at the very least they had been badly misinformed.

‘Please forgive us if we look surprised,’ Jaeger began, ‘but we were told that your tribe had had no contact with the world outside. Some four days’ walk west of here lies an aircraft, something that we think crashed when the world was at war. It’s very likely seventy years old, maybe more. Our purpose is to find that aircraft, identify it and try to lift it out of here. We have entered your lands solely for this purpose, and we wish to pass entirely in peace.’

The young man translated, the village chief said a few words in reply, and he translated those back to Jaeger.

‘You are the force that fell from the sky?’

‘We are,’ Jaeger confirmed.

‘You were how many when you fell? And how many were lost along the way?’

‘We were ten,’ Jaeger answered. ‘We lost one almost immediately, in the river. Two more were taken that day, two more the following day. We don’t know how they were taken or their fates, but one of your men…’ Jaeger’s eyes searched the crowd, coming to rest on the warrior leader, ‘left this.’ He pulled Leticia Santos’s scarf from his pack. ‘Maybe you can tell us more?’

His question was ignored.

Words went back and forth between the chief and the young man, and then: ‘You say you come in peace – why then do you carry such weapons as we have seen?’

‘Self-defence,’ Jaeger answered. ‘There are dangerous animals in the forest. There appear to be dangerous people too – although we are unsure exactly who they are.’

The old man’s eyes gleamed. ‘If we offer to show you gold, will you take it?’ he demanded, via the translator. ‘We have little value for such things. We cannot eat gold. But the white man fights to get it.’

Jaeger knew that he was being tested here. ‘We came for the aircraft. That’s our only mission. Any gold – it should stay right here, in the forest. Otherwise it will only bring you trouble. And that is the last thing we would ever want to do.’

The old man laughed. ‘Many of our people say this: only when the last tree is cut and the last animal hunted and the last fish caught, only then will the white man finally understand that he cannot eat money.’

Jaeger remained silent. There was a wisdom in those words with which he couldn’t argue.

‘And this aircraft that you seek: if you find it, will it also bring us trouble?’ the old man queried. ‘Like the gold, is it better for it to remain lost in the jungle – the white man failing to reclaim what was originally his?’

Jaeger shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But I don’t think so. I think if we fail, more will come. What was lost has been found. And in truth, I think we’re the best you’re going to get. We understand the aircraft has poisoned the forest that lies around it. And this,’ Jaeger gestured at the jungle, ‘this is your home. It’s more than your home. It’s your life. Your identity. If we remove that aircraft, we’ll stop the forest from being poisoned.’

He let the silence hang between them.

The old man turned and gestured at the communal structure. ‘You see that smoke is coming from the spirit house. A feast is being prepared. We were preparing it for one of two reasons: either to welcome you as friends, or to say goodbye to an enemy.’ The old man laughed. ‘So, let us celebrate friendship!’

Jaeger thanked the village chief. A part of him felt driven by a sense of urgency to get on with their mission. But he also knew that amongst such cultures there was a way in which things had to be done, a timing and a rhythm. He would respect that and trust to his destiny. He also knew he had little choice.

As he fell into step with the chief, his attention was drawn to a group of figures standing to one side. In the midst was the warrior leader he’d first encountered at the riverside. Not everyone seemed happy with the outcome of the chief’s interrogations, it seemed. Jaeger figured that the warrior and his men had been sharpening their spears in preparation for ridding their forest of an enemy.

Distracted for a brief moment, he failed to spot Dale dragging out his video camera. By the time he’d noticed, Dale had it on his shoulder and had started to film.

‘Stop!’ hissed Jaeger. ‘Lose the bloody camera!’

But it was too late: the damage had been done.

A shiver of electric tension tore through the gathering as the Indians noticed what was happening. Jaeger saw the chief turn on Dale, his face stony, his eyes wide with fear. He uttered a few strangled words of command, and instantly spears were levelled at the entire team.

Dale seemed frozen, the camera clamped to his shoulder, all colour drained from his features.

The chief walked up to him. He reached for the camera. Dale handed it over, his face aghast. The chief turned it the wrong way around, put his eye against the lens and stared inside. For a long moment his gaze roved around the camera’s innards, as if trying to locate what exactly it had stolen from him.

Finally, he handed it to one of his warriors, then turned back without a word towards the spirit house. The spears were lowered.

The translator shuddered. ‘Do not ever do that again. To do so – it could undo all the good that you have done.’

Jaeger fell back a step or two, until he was on Dale’s shoulder. ‘You pull that trick again, I’ll make you boil and eat your own head. Or better still – I’ll let the chief boil and eat it for you.’

Dale nodded. His pupils were wide with shock and fear. He knew how close they’d come to disaster, and for once the slick-tongued media operator was lost for words.

Jaeger followed the chief into the smoky interior of the spirit house. It had no walls as such, only posts supporting the roof, but with the thatch reaching almost to the ground, it was shaded and dark inside. It took a moment for Jaeger’s eyes to adjust from the bright light to the gloom of the interior.

Even before they had done so, a voice rang out, one that sounded impossibly… familiar.

‘So tell me – you do have my knife?’

Jaeger felt rooted to the spot. That voice was one he’d told himself he would never hear again; it seemed to be speaking to him from way beyond the grave.

As his eyesight adjusted, he caught sight of an unmistakable figure seated on the ground. Jaeger’s mind reeled as he tried to figure out how she could have got there, not to mention how she could still be alive.

That figure was the woman he’d long presumed dead: Irina Narov.