Black Wattle Creek (Charlie Berlin #2)(76)
‘Windsocks are just a fabric tube on a hoop mounted on a swivel on a flagpole. They’re a basic bit of airfield gear going all the way back to the Wright brothers. Smaller planes need an indication of which way the wind is blowing and how strong it is for takeoff and landing. These days bigger planes and bigger aerodromes have better equipment, and pilots get the most up-to-date and accurate information from the control tower by radio. But at even the biggest aerodromes they tend to leave a windsock hanging about, possibly for nostalgia or the odd Tiger Moth dropping by, I suppose.’
Jessop finished off his whisky and poured himself another.
‘You started your job here around last Christmas, didn’t you?’
Jessop looked up and Berlin could see he was wary now. ‘I don’t see –’
‘Bear with me, Doc. So the Vulcan bomber I mentioned sits on a top-secret runway out the back of Woop Woop for a couple of days in March, because the wind has to be blowing in just the right direction, and consistent. Safety first, that’s the motto, right? Especially when dealing with radiation. Everyone wearing a dosimeter, hot-and cold-running meteorologists watching the wind, playing it safe.’
Jessop glanced at the telephone again. Berlin brought his iron water pipe down hard and Jessop flinched. The phone shattered, spraying splintered shards of black Bakelite and wires and bits of metal across the desk and down onto the floor.
‘I don’t think we need the distraction, do you, Dr Jessop? We’re just starting to get to the exciting part.’
Jessop stared up at him. The bloke was frightened, which was what Berlin wanted.
‘So, back to our story. After a few days parked on a runway somewhere out past the black stump, the boys in the Vulcan get the okay and, tally-ho, off they go into the wild blue yonder. It’s all going swimmingly but suddenly, just as they drop their bomb, things get a bit frantic with radio messages about wind changes and aborting the mission. But sadly it’s all a bit too late. Big bang, mushroom cloud and the wind blowing east.’
‘Which is exactly what I told you happened, OS Berlin. I’m not sure where this is leading.’
‘Hold your horses for a tic, Doc, and I think you’ll see. So anyway this Vulcan pilot starts to take it personally, as I suppose a bloke would, and the co-pilot too, and even the two navs and the AEO down the back.’
‘Navs? AEO?’
‘Sorry, navigators, and air electronic officer. Two navigators seems like a bit of a luxury to me, but I suppose if you’re dropping atom bombs you really want them bang on the right spot. So anyhow they start wondering about how it all went so wrong and what they could possibly have done differently.’
‘Under these circumstances, having a crew blame themselves for things beyond their control is understandable. In fact it would seem you are someone who has taken events beyond your control very much to heart.’
Berlin felt his hand tighten around the water pipe. ‘This isn’t about me Jessop, so shut up and listen. Accidents happen, people understand that, but this was a big one with big implications. And suddenly the Vulcan’s crew are being sworn to secrecy on top of all the oaths they’ve already taken and then they’re split up. Back in England the co-pilot drinks too much at some country pub, even though he was always a teetotaller, and drives himself head-on into an army truck on a narrow lane. The two navs and the AEO transfer over to a new squadron as a team and get killed on a training exercise when their Vulcan goes down after an onboard fire.’
‘That is most unfortunate.’
‘I’ll agree with you there. Nasty thing about the Vulcan is the pilot and co-pilot both have ejector seats so they can bale out quick if things get dicky. But the poor buggers down the back have to grab their parachutes and scramble to find an escape hatch if they want to get out in a hurry and in this case they didn’t make it.’
‘Flying is a dangerous profession, OS Berlin, you of all people should appreciate that.’
‘No argument from me there. And in fact this pilot suddenly has a few unexplained and very nasty near misses himself. So with his whole crew gone west, and it starting to look like he might be joining them very soon, he does a bunk. He starts hitting the grog heavily, starts having very bad dreams, replaying the whole mission over and over in his head, trying to figure out if he could have done things differently.’
‘I believe this is also a pattern of behaviour with which you have had some experience in the past, the drinking I mean.’
‘You want to go a bit careful there, Doc. I warned you I can be touchy. But anyhow, one night our pilot’s tossing and turning, and for the hundredth time he’s sitting on the runway in his Vulcan waiting for clearance and for the hundredth time he glances out of the cockpit just as they okay the mission. And across the field he’s looking at the airfield windsock and they’re telling him in his headset that what little wind there is that morning is blowing north-north-west. But this particular night it finally hits him, something he’s seen over and over but somehow missed. That tattered little windsock is fluttering in the breeze and when they give him final clearance to take off it’s pointing east-south-east.’
Jessop shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I really don’t understand what you’re driving at.’
‘Yes you do. The wind direction didn’t suddenly change, Jessop, you bastard. There was no accident at that test site, was there? When the bomb was dropped the wind was blowing in exactly the direction someone wanted it to. That bomb was detonated with the quite specific intention of the fallout going east.’