Gavin Lyall The Wrong Side of the Sky Pan Books London and Sydney Also by Gavin Lyall in Pan Books The Most Dangerous Game Midnight Plus One Shooting Script Venus with Pistol Blame the Dead Judas Country The Secret Servant The characters in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any living person First published 1961 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd This edition published 1966 by Pan Books Ltd, Cavaye Place, London SW1O 9PG 10th printing 1983 ? Gavin Lyall 1961 ISBN 0 330 10488 8 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay Suffolk This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher?s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. PART ONE 1 I HADN?T BEEN in Athens for at least three months and hadn?t reckoned on being there for another three months, but there I was standing breathing the good fresh petrol fumes of Elliniko Airport and waiting for the starboard engine to get cool enough for me to start an appendectomy on its magneto. When we?d taken off from Turkey ? with no cargo ? we?d fuel enough to fly clear to Bari and beyond, with plenty to spare for dodging high ground and long sea passages. But these small Turkish fields aren?t too particular about how much water gets into the fuel, and when on-top of that we got a mag drop of two hundred revs just after clearing the coast, that meant Athens to me. In this world a man gets no more than he puts cash down for, and Hauser wasn?t paying me a big enough salary to get me charging out over the Ionian Sea with a load of watery fuel and shaky ignition. I called up Elliniko Airport and gave them a rough time-of-arrival and asked if they would ring Mikklos, who acted as our Athens agent, to suggest he cable Hauser in Berne and then try and rustle up a cargo for us. If it wouldn?t take his mind too far off his lunch. Young Rogers didn?t see the point of it all. He still had too much RAF Transport Command blood in his veins; to him, a mag drop was something to watch, not get worried about. He just hadn?t been co-piloting long enough on seventeen-year- old Dakotas with clapped-out engines, nor around the sort of business where you got dirty fuel and didn?t complain. The hell with him. While he flew with me he?d stay alive and like it. Elliniko called back in a quarter of an hour to say they?d contacted Mikklos and would I like a priority landing? I said no thanks; it was just a crack at the state of Aircargo?s planes, anyway. We made Elliniko at about half past one, with me doing a three-pointer to show the control tower that Jack Clay was in a better state of repair than the planes he flew. I don?t suppose it impressed them much. It stopped impressing me when I saw what else they?d got to look at in the way of aircraft handling. We?d got parked and I was standing around in the shade of the wing trying to remember the Greek for Customs Officer and waiting for Rogers to break out the overalls and spanners when I looked out along the approach and saw a plane I couldn?t identify at first. A small high-wing type with wing tip tanks. Then it turned head-on, showing me the cranked gull wing shape, and I had it; a Piaggio 166. A sleek little twin-engined executive job, four big passenger seats, a private bar and still room for the owner to curl up for a cuddle in the back. You don?t see many of them; I guessed this one be longed to one of the Greek shipping bigwigs. It eased round very smoothly on the final turn. I kept watching. There had been a bit of a bump, an updraught, as you came in off the sea ? but the Piaggio went through with never a quiver. Gradually the feeling began to grow on me, and me trying hard to disbelieve it as it grew. Only a pilot would have noticed it, and perhaps only a pilot with my number of flying hours in his logbook. But to me it was like seeing a beautiful woman in the distance and watching her come closer and waiting for the inevitable disappointment as she came. And then finding her perfect. You couldn?t say what it was about her that made her perfect. You couldn?t say what it was about the way the Piaggio landed. But it was perfect, too. It held the turn until it was a few feet off the runway threshold. Then the wings smoothed out, the nose eased back and it slid on to the ground with no apparent effort to the transition from one element to another. One in a thousand pilots has it. Maybe less. Screwball Beurling had it, and Ken Kitson, and Zurakowski ? though I never saw him, only heard what they said about him. And maybe a handful more in the whole world. Thousands of good pilots, great pilots even, who have every other quality or skill, don?t have this: a complete affinity with aeroplanes and the air that makes everything about the way they fly perfection. There was no envy about the way I watched. This was some thing too remote for envy, and it?s not every pilot who can put a Dak down on three points without swinging off the runway. I just watched. There are some women you can watch without wanting them. The Piaggio leant its nosewheel on to the ground, slowed and taxied clear in one flowing movement. I let out a long breath and found Rogers under my elbow. ?Well, how did you like that?? I asked. ?Nice little planes, those,? he said. A miracle could happen in that boy?s hip pocket and all he?d notice would be an itch in the backside. ?Get across and say hello to Control and Customs for us,? I snarled at him. ?And bring me back a bottle of beer.? I went off to wave my engineer?s licences in the face of some young hopeful of a mechanic to convince him that I could scrape the points of a Pratt and Whitney 1830 as legally as he could, and a damn sight cheaper. I spent an hour and a half crawling over and inside the starboard engine. Rogers spent the same time passing me spanners and fetching me bottles of beer and wishing I?d let him go away and prowl the city. Then, as I was getting the cowlings back into place, he rode back from one beer mission in a big, battered, old yellow Dodge coup?. Alongside him, driving, was Mikklos. Mikklos was a small, tubby character in thick spectacles and a bristly moustache, pushing fifty but not moving it much. As an agent, he would ship or fly anything anywhere and the fewer the questions, the better he liked it. Essentially, he was a small-time crook trying hard to be an upper-middle-class crook. He wore an expensive black-and-white hound?s-tooth check tropical suit, an open-neck cream silk shirt, a snappy straw hat ? and looked as if he had swum in the soup in them. ?Hello, Mikky,? I said, getting down off the wing. ?Captain Clay!? He stuck out a warm, fat little hand. But there was nothing soft about this grip. ?I have met your great friend and co-pilot.? He waved a hand at Rogers, who was standing and smiling fixedly at him. ?Sorry to butt in on you like this, Mikky,? I said, ?but I didn?t want to press on to Bari with a shaky engine. How?s the love life?? Mikklos liked that question: it saved him the trouble of bringing it up himself. He shrugged and smiled. ?Ah ? these young girls, they don?t appreciate me. Now ? if I were tall and thin and good-looking like you ?, He grinned at the idea. Anything that stepped up his pace would have killed him. I smiled back. ?Did you cable Hauser?? ?Of course. I told him I have a cargo for you.? ?Have you now? That?s quick work.? ?Can you fly to Tripoli, tonight?? ?Tripoli, Libya?? ?Yes. Tonight.? That was 650 miles: say five hours? flying. It would take me over an hour to get loaded and away here these things always take longer than you can see reason for. So I?d land at Idris airport at nine tonight. Fair enough. The trouble was that almost all those miles were over the sea, and still using a load of fuel that had too much water in it. I wasn?t keen on it ? but it was the job I was paid to do. ?I could do it,? I told him. ?What?s the cargo?? ?Oil-drilling equipment. 1,400 kilos.? ?About three thousand pounds. Where is it?? ?Right across there, Captain.? He pointed off behind the hangars. ?It is all arranged.? He gave me a quick grin, waddled over to the Dodge and whirled away. ?Extraordinary little chap,? said Rogers. ?Have you got that beer?? ?Yes.? He gave me the fat little brown bottle. ?Are we going to Tripoli?? ?Unless there?s a reason why not.? I took off the cap with the opener on my key ring and poured the beer down my throat. ?We could be back in Berne tomorrow lunchtime, then?? ?That?s right.? If an engine didn?t pack up half-way to Tripoli. I was wondering if I could jump straight across to hit the coast near Benghazi and then coast-crawl. It would add another 250 miles, and nearly two hours, but it would mean only 250 miles of sea instead of 650. The Dodge swept back around the corner of the hangar, trailing a rickety high-sided lorry in its dust. There was another man sitting beside Mikklos, a big dark bird with a small black moustache and showing a lot of dark hair through the open neck of his shirt. He stayed in the car while Mikklos came across. ?All here, Captain,? he grinned. The lorry pulled slowly round by the door of the Dak and backed up to within a few feet of it. In the back were ten wooden boxes, about the size of coffins, but built very strongly of battered, inch-thick boards that had gone grey from the sun and dust of a lifetime?s travelling. On top of them sat another well-built character in a white shirt and slacks and giving me an unfriendly dark eye. Mi...
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