The Lost Testament

104

They didn’t have long to wait. Only about fifteen minutes after Bronson had bought a couple of cups of coffee at the bar, a Piper landed smoothly on the runway and taxied across to the hard-standing close to the terminal building. Angela looked through the window at the aircraft as the pilot turned off the engine, checking the registration.

‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Keep your eye on him when he comes in, and then I’ll see if I can work my magic on him.’

Three figures, two men and a woman, emerged from the aircraft, one of the male figures with a bulky carryon bag in each hand, the woman carrying a slim handbag and wearing an attitude, and the other man holding a clipboard. It wasn’t difficult to work out the dynamics of the trio. Inside the terminal, the man carrying the bags escorted the woman through the building and they walked through to the other side to where a taxi was waiting. The pilot completed whatever paperwork he had to do at one of the desks manned by officials, and then strode over to the bar and ordered a coffee.

The moment he was settled at a table, Angela squeezed Bronson’s hand and then walked over to him.

A couple of minutes after she’d introduced herself and sat down beside him, she beckoned to Bronson, who walked over to the table and joined them.

‘This is Gary Burnside,’ she said, ‘and this is my husband Chris. Gary,’ she went on, turning to face Bronson, ‘has kindly agreed that we can hop a ride with him back to England, for the remarkably modest sum of one hundred pounds.’

‘Each, that is, and it’ll be cash, please,’ Burnside emphasized, looking Bronson slowly up and down.

Bronson nodded.

‘That shouldn’t be a problem, though some of it might have to be in euros, if that’s OK with you.’

‘Anything negotiable suits me, squire. And I gather you’re in a bit of a hurry, so as soon as I’ve put myself on the outside of this cup of hot brown, we’ll kick the tyres, light the fires and get going.’

‘You’re ex-military, aren’t you?’ Bronson asked.

‘How did you know?’

‘I was in the army,’ Bronson said, ‘and I’ve only ever heard people in the military refer to coffee as “hot brown”. And “kick the tyres” sounds like an RAF expression.’

‘It is. “Kick the tyres, light the fires, check in on Guard, last one airborne’s a sissy” is the full unexpurgated version. But you’re right. I did a short-service commission in the Crabs, went through Cranwell, learned to fly a Hawk and then had a slight difference of opinion with my lords and masters, which is why I’m now tooling around the sky in a red and white Piper, offering lifts to people I don’t know.’

‘Well, we’re both very grateful, and we are in a hurry, that’s true.’

Burnside drank the last of his coffee and stood up.

‘Then let’s get moving,’ he said, and led the way towards the doors.

‘Do you need to file a flight plan or anything?’ Bronson asked.

‘Yes, but I’ve already filed for both legs, because you have to give four hours’ notice of the return journey, which is irritating for such a short trip,’ he replied. ‘I do this flight on a regular basis, ferrying people backwards and forwards, and I’d only planned to be here at Le Touquet for about fifteen minutes.’

‘But you were planning on flying back empty,’ Angela pointed out. ‘Will it be a problem having us in the aircraft as well?’

‘Only if you want it to be,’ Burnside replied, ‘and if we tell them. I’ve never been met by any British Customs officers when I’ve landed after one of these trips, and if we keep quiet about the fact that you’re in the aircraft, the chances are nobody will ever find out. The Frogs aren’t bothered, and probably won’t even notice you climbing into the aircraft. I’ll just bend the rules slightly. Unless, that is, you’re especially keen to answer a lot of stupid questions from a man in a peaked cap and take the risk of a full body cavity search?’

Bronson grinned at him.

‘I think we can probably forgo that particular pleasure,’ he said.

Within twenty minutes, Burnside had taxied the Piper to the end of the runway, paused to allow another aircraft to land, then obtained take-off clearance from the local controller in the tower, swung the Cherokee onto the runway and pushed the throttle fully forward.

The ribbon of tarmac unrolled surprisingly quickly in front of them, and within a matter of seconds, he was able to ease back on the control column and lift the aircraft into the air. Burnside continued the climb to a westbound semi-circular flight level, then leaned back in his seat, his eyes never still as his gaze swept across the controls and instruments, then the view outside the cockpit, and then repeated the same sequence again.

Bronson and Angela were sitting in the seats behind the pilot. They’d tried as far as possible to remain out of sight.

‘It’s very noisy,’ Angela almost shouted.

Burnside half turned in his seat and smiled at her.

‘An inevitable consequence of sitting about three feet away from an unsilenced engine running at almost full power, my dear,’ he said. ‘It’s when it all goes quiet up here that you need to start worrying.’

‘I completely forgot to ask you,’ Bronson said, ‘where will we be landing?’

‘My home base is Redhill Aerodrome. That’s only a couple miles or so outside Reigate. You can pick up a taxi easily enough and there are plenty of railway stations if you need to go further.’

‘Excellent. That should do us nicely.’

As the Piper had taxied away from the hard-standing, a French registered car drove quickly down the approach road to the Le Touquet airfield and stopped in the car park outside with a brief squeal of its tyres. The driver got out and scanned the other vehicles that were parked there, clearly looking for one car in particular.

After a few moments, a grim smile appeared on his face, and he strode across the car park to where a Renault Megane was standing. He took a small piece of card out of his pocket and compared the registration number of the vehicle in front of him with the details he had written down several hours earlier. Immediately, he took out his mobile phone and dialled a number, and while he was waiting for the call to be answered he looked all around the car, noting the track of the bullet which began in the bonnet in front of the passenger’s seat and ended with a jagged tear in the right-hand front wing.

‘I’m at Le Touquet now,’ he said, as he turned and walked steadily towards the terminal building. ‘The car is in the parking area here. I’ve checked the number and it’s the same as we were told by our friends in Spain, and there’s a bullet hole just in front of the windscreen, passenger side. What do you want me to do?’

His steps slowed as he listened to the instructions he was being given, and he came to a complete halt a few moments later.

‘Done,’ he said, and ended the call.

Inside the terminal, the man checked every single person, looking for anyone who resembled the descriptions he had been given. It was soon obvious that his quarry was nowhere in the building, so they must have already left. But no matter, there was still a second part to the plan.

He strode across to the other side of the room, stopped a man wearing light blue trousers, a short-sleeved white shirt and a badge that identified him as a local official. The searcher produced his own documentation and asked a couple of questions, with the result that less than five minutes later he was studying the ATC logbook, which recorded details of all take-offs and landings and, more importantly, listed the destination airfields of every plane that had taken off from Le Touquet.

Three minutes after that, he had the information he needed, though he wasn’t certain there was enough time left to do much with it. The records showed that the two fugitives could have been passengers on any one of six aircraft, and they were landing at four different airfields in Britain, probably too many to cover at such short notice.

But as he left the air-conditioned interior of the terminal building, he was already passing the information up the line by text message.