‘Is everything all right?’ inquired Helen, in Portuguese.
The boy glanced up at her as though startled. Then he frowned and nodded curtly.
‘Sim,’ he replied.
‘Is there anything I can get you? A drink perhaps … a wet towel for your forehead?’
‘Nao.’ He shook his head and returned his gaze to the floor as though dismissing her from his thoughts. She shrugged and moved back to the narrow corridor between the tiny galley and the lavatory. You met all sorts of people aboard aeroplanes, she observed to herself as she prepared the drinks, and not always the kind you wanted to meet. That bearded man … she glanced at the flight list … Machado, his name was; there was definitely something very unpleasant about him. Still, she would be getting out of this life soon and she did not think that she would miss it overmuch. She would miss Mike, of course, for a time. But in the end, if she stayed firm, it would be no more distressing than the removal of a bad tooth. It would ache for a short while but then she would not even be aware that it was gone. She was remarkably adept at the art of healing her own wounds, simply because she’d had a lot of practise over the years. Before Mike, there had been Adam, an aide to her father at the embassy, a man several years older than her and, of course, married. Before that, there had been Tom, a plantation owner, and before him, a whole string of male disasters, not one of whom could have afforded Helen any future. Married men had been her singular passion and her greatest pitfall and, try as she might, there seemed to be no way she could shake off the obsession. The fact was that younger men had always bored her. Older men had more grace, more sensitivity, they were better lovers. Perhaps it was simply that her first stumbling attempts at high-school affairs with boys her own age had been so disastrous. A psychologist friend had once spent an entire evening trying to convince her that she subconsciously wanted to make it with her father, but the idea had seemed too ludicrous to contemplate. Her father was a pompous, overbearing, money-orientated bigot who treated his daughter as just another possession; more likely, she was trying to find a father figure whom she could find acceptable. Yes, she could buy that.
On her way back from serving the drinks, she noticed that the young boy in the last seat was heaving violently into a paper sick-bag. She stopped, meaning to comfort him, but he waved her away, presumably humiliated by his illness. Helen frowned. How like a man, she thought sadly. Caught up in senseless arrogant pride from the day they were old enough to spit. She sighed, wearied by the thought of the long, uneventful journey ahead. It was good that she was getting out of this business. She ought to have done it a long time ago.
As she came out of the galley, she saw the young man coming towards her along the aisle, his face rather pale beneath the tanned surface of his skin. Assuming he was heading for the toilet, Helen stepped back through the doorway of the galley to allow him to pass by. She was taken totally by surprise when the boy moved suddenly towards her, pushing her back out of sight with a quick shove of his hand. Helen was about to cry out in alarm, but the sound died in her throat as the black barrel of a gun was pointed unceremoniously at her face. For a moment, she was too stunned to register what was happening.
‘Is this some kind of joke?’ she asked brightly; but then she looked at the boy’s face, the grim, desperate expression on it and the wide, staring eyes that were shot through with fear, and she knew, with a terrible tightening of her stomach, that this was not meant to be funny. This was not funny at all. She seemed to lose the ability to control her breathing as she tried to stammer a question out.
‘What … uh … do you … uh … what … please?’
‘Shut up,’ he hissed fiercely; and he pushed the cold steel of the gun barrel against her throat to silence her. It felt like the touch of death and she recoiled from it instinctively, her elbow catching a metal coffee jug that stood on the counter behind her. It rolled over with a clatter and the boy threw out a hand to still it. Then he stood, the gun pushed up against Helen’s throat, while he listened intently for the sound of advancing footsteps. But nobody had heard. In the silence, the hum of the plane’s engines seemed to rise to a terrible crescendo.
Helen spoke again, more slowly this time, in a soft measured whisper. ‘Please … what is it you want? You must …’
‘I told you to shut up!’ snapped the boy. ‘I talk, you listen. I tell you what’s gonna happen, lady, you do like I tell you and you don’t get killed, understand?’ The boy was staring at her, his eyes bulging grotesquely in their sockets. There were thick beads of sweat on his forehead.
‘How old are you?’ asked Helen abruptly.
The boy ignored the question. ‘Here’s what’s gonna happen,’ he said. ‘You and me, see, we’re gonna take a walk up to where the captain sits. You’re gonna go first and I’m gonna be behind with my gun in my shirt pocket like this, see? It’s gonna be pointed straight at you, all the time and you say or do anythin’ makes me nervous and I’ll put a bullet in your back, can’t miss. And there’s five other shots here for anyone tries to get to me. You believe this I tell you?’
Helen gazed at the boy for a moment. There was not a trace of compassion in his face. She nodded. ‘I believe you,’ she said.
‘OK. Here’s the story, like in the movies, understand? You’re sorry for me, sick n’ all … gonna take me up to sit with the captain now, make me feel a whole lot better. Anybody asks you where you’re going, that’s what you tell ’em. Believe me lady, you try one thing that don’t seem right to me, I’m gonna waste you. Now, get walkin’ up there! Hurry!’
‘But why … why do you want to …?’
He jabbed the gun into her ribs. ‘I don’t have time to waste, lady. Move out, now.’
Helen moved rather unsteadily to the door. She had recovered a little from her original shock but her legs still felt like columns of rubber. She stood in the doorway for a moment, taking a deep breath and trying to steady her nerves. But another prod against her back started her on her way. She glanced back once and saw that the boy was indeed just behind her, his right hand pushed into the pocket of his baggy shirt. The boy glared at her and she turned back again, began to move slowly along between the rows of seats. The thought of a loaded gun pointed at her back filled her with unspeakable dread and she could only hope that her emotions did not show on her face. At the moment though, everybody seemed to be either asleep or engaged in conversation. Nobody so much as glanced up as she went by. The short distance to the pilot’s cabin seemed to take an eternity. At last she had the handle firmly in her grasp and was opening the door. She stepped through and the boy pushed in behind her, closing the door. The two pilots were intent on their instrument panels. They did not bother to look up.
‘I thought you were grinding that coffee grain by grain,’ yelled Mike over his shoulder. Helen stood there helplessly, willing them to look up; but it seemed a very long time before Ricardo glanced up and grinned good-naturedly.
‘Hey, who’s this you’ve brought with you?’ he inquired. Then his grin faded as he saw the gun in the boy’s hand. Mike glanced back now. His eyes widened and then narrowed to slits.
‘What the hell is this?’ he demanded angrily.
‘He pulled a gun on me, Mike,’ began Helen. ‘There was nothing I could …’
‘Shut up, lady!’ The boy motioned with the gun. ‘Move ahead of me, where I can see you.’ He licked his lips nervously and surveyed the two pilots for a moment. ‘OK, now here’s what we’re gonna do …’
‘Who the hell are you?’ interrupted Mike. ‘What’s the idea of coming in here like this?’
‘I’m about to explain that to you,’ retorted the boy. ‘Just take it easy. You do like I tell you and nobody … nobody on this plane’s gonna come to any harm. You got my word on that.’ The boy raised his left arm to mop at his clammy forehead with his sleeve. ‘Now what I want is for you to make a little change of course, OK?’
Mike frowned. ‘Oh,