I went back to the forward section and started work again. The thing was, how had anyone got a bomb past one of 'the most sophisticated security systems in the world'? It could have been sheet plastic, pressure-detonated.
In the heat of the mid-afternoon the mosquitoes came in, and the Red Cross people handed out citronelle. Later they brought sandwiches and coffee, and we sat on the cool fibrous earth clear of the wreckage to take a break. A light plane was circling, with big red letters on it: TV-2 Bangkok, banking sharply to get the camera angles it wanted. Choppers were leaving regularly now, returning regularly, taking the bodies out and bringing in supplies – parka jackets, torches, tools. Every time a machine landed, Rattakul went across to it as soon as the rotor began slowing; then he came back to tell me who had arrived. Four priests were now among us, a Catholic and three Buddhists in saffron robes. Incense blended with the other smell, the thick, overall, inescapable smell; the wind had died and the freight had burned out under the fire foam; the air was still and sounds seemed louder, and we spoke even more quietly.
Towards dusk they found the black box and brought it clear of the mess. It looked intact; it had been in the tail section but was fireproof. The American carried it to his chopper, tenderly; later he'd listen to the voices that had been silenced here among the trees as the big jet had come whirling through them from the sky, mortally crippled and carrying only the dying. It was easy to believe, as dusk turned to dark, that the spirits of the departed were stealing through the shadows thrown by the floodlights the rescue team had rigged – because we were tired now, and the stress of what we were doing had soaked us in our sweat; we itched all over because of that and the mosquitoes. Things had got worse, progressively, because the more ash and soot and debris we removed from the mess, the more we discovered of people, their faces, hands, feet, the colours of their clothes, the things that had belonged to them that had been so important, a nun's rosary, jade Buddhas with the price still on, a tennis racket -Kangaroo King.
Later the moon rose and the jungle held back a little, the shadows shifting as more lamps were rigged; the throb of the generator motors was constant, punctuated by the cries of birds and monkeys, restless and uneasy among the trees.
By midnight we were shivering, and the jackets were passed round. The night had taken on the semblance of a slide-lecture without sound as consciousness took pictures, sometimes out of sequence: a man flicking away a half-dead snake with a bamboo stick; a Red Cross worker standing perfectly still with tears streaking the soot-film on his face; a panel breaking away and a body falling to the jungle floor, groaning as the air was forced from its lungs – to be surrounded at once by a dozen of us, but that, yes, was all it was; just the air in its lungs.
By three in the morning we were working without any more pauses for breaks, because every time we took a rest we knew what we had to go back to, and it was easier to stay with it and get it over, though by now it seemed we'd been here all our lives, been born here just to do this, and would go on doing it, and never be done. Our eyes, fatigued and losing focus, had to keep on adjusting as someone moved a floodlight on its stand and the moon brightened and the landing lights of another helicopter flooded the scene and froze us in a silver-grey wash.
Then I found Lafarge.
He was flattened against a bulkhead that had been thrown thirty feet from the cabin section; his seat-belt had snapped and he'd been catapulted forward. It had taken an hour to clear the debris away from him and get a look at his face. I'd seen him at the airport and he was still recognizable, though his face was now ashen and his scalp had been ripped away. The briefcase was still chained to his wrist, and when I wiped the soot away I could see the initials D.J.L., heavily embossed in gold. His keys were in his pocket, and I tried the smallest of them first, opening the chain-lock and bringing the case away, the chain with it.
Rattakul took me across to the chief of the Thai police unit and I signed the necessary form, undertaking to return the under-mentioned passenger's personal effects, these being one leather briefcase and contents not herein identified.
Then we picked our way, Rattakul and I, across the web of white wires and the lamp-cables and the torn tree-roots to where our small military helicopter was standing.
'This is what you came for?' he asked me.
'Yes.'
It was all he said, and all I said. We were dog-tired, dirty and depressed, and my mind kept shifting focus – from the comfortable air-conditioned gate area where the nuns had gathered the young girl to them, her pale face upturned, and the Australian had gone running past me – Hey, Charlie, tell 'em to wait! – shifting focus to the grey and shapeless grave that we were leaving behind us in the jungle night.
As the machine lifted and the pilot opened his set and reported departure at 04.03, two thoughts came together in my mind. One was that Mariko Shoda hadn't ordered Flight 306 destroyed, because Lafarge, the chief source of her arms supplies, had been on board. So it had been someone else, and they might have ordered the bomber to carry out his mission for the same reason: that Lafarge had been on board, and on his way to meet Shoda.
So what worried me, as we headed south for Chathaburi, was that the briefcase that had been chained to Lafarge's wrist was now chained to my own.
10 Voices
'This side's the Flight Data Recorder, which does pretty well what you'd think.' The American wiped the bright orange casing with his soot-smudged handkerchief. His name was Bob Ryan. 'It records the time, speed, heading and altitude of the airplane and every movement it makes – climb, descent, turns, gravitational forces, acceleration, stuff like that. This side's the CVR – Cockpit Voice Recorder. It picks up from a mike in the flight-deck ceiling – every sound there is, radio speech and ordinary conversation between the crew.' He glanced at me with his red-rimmed eyes; it was now gone six in the morning and we still hadn't slept. Rattakul had talked to the chief analyst, a Thai, when we landed in Chathaburi, and arranged the meeting.
I wanted to know whether the crash of Flight 306 had in fact been 'drug-related', as the analyst had said, or not. It wasn't anything I could find out from the black box directly, but it might give me a lead.
'The tapes run for thirty minutes,' Rayn said, 'and then erase themselves. That's considered long enough to give us all we need to know about an accident situation. Often it's much less, maybe a couple of minutes or even a couple of seconds, like when they hit a mountain in the fog.' Sitting slumped in the tubular-frame chair, he reached for the box again. 'Okay, we'll just give it a whirl.'
While we were listening I peeled off the Red Cross parka; there was no air-conditioning in the small cluttered office. Rattakul sat upright near the window with his hands on his lap, his eyes uneasy; on our way out of the jungle he'd told me he'd survived a major crash three years ago, and still had nightmares.
Altitude 24,000. Airspeed 250 knots.
Then there was some conversation in Thai, and I asked Ryan to give me anything important; he was fluent.
We heard some laughter, and I looked at the American, but his eyes were closed; his head was forward and I thought he might be dozing off.
Heading 347. Medium aircraft at nine o'clock, four miles, five to six thousand feet below.
I looked at the map on the wall. Flight 306 was at that time fifty miles or so northwest of Chathaburi, on an almost direct course for Bangkok.
Airspeed 250. We're descending to There wasn't a crump or anything but Ryan's eyes came open. It had sounded more like a break in the transmission, but now there was muffled noise coming in and he started translating from the Thai as speech broke out.