Her Last Flight(103)

All that effort and expense, you might think! All those pilots who put themselves and their airplanes in danger to look for Irene, when she wasn’t anywhere near the Sahara! All those newspaper headlines, all that suspense shared by the citizens of the world! How could Irene subject everybody to such an ordeal? Disappear without trace? Surely she knew there would be a search, there would be reporters dispatched to North Africa, there would be millions of dollars wasted on her behalf!

In fact, she did understand all those things, which was why she posted an express letter to George Morrow at the Anfa Hotel in Casablanca, the night before she departed Alexandria. In this letter, she informed her husband that she was irrevocably in love with Sam Mallory, was carrying his child, and had flown her airplane to join him instead of finishing the race. She asked George to forgive her and not to look for her, because she did not want to be found. She thanked him for all he had done for her, and wished him nothing but happiness in the future. She left it to him what to say to the press, but she trusted that he would encourage them to leave her in peace with Sam and their child, and allow her to find the contentment she had sought in vain all these years. (With love and gratitude, Irene.)

According to the hotel’s records and the testimony of the bellboy who delivered the letter, it arrived in George Morrow’s hands the next day while he sat in the lobby, waiting for news of his wife. He gave the messenger a ten cent tip and opened the envelope immediately.

So Irene hadn’t given her husband much thought. If there was one thing George Morrow could do better than just about anybody in the world, it was to handle the press. She figured—when she had time to think about it at all—that he had given the world some statement that skirted the truth, that made him out to be a patient, generous husband who wanted nothing for his wife but her happiness. She had, in fact, not the least idea that she had disappeared without trace, that she might now be clinging to survival amid the wreckage of her airplane in the middle of the Sahara, that the attention of the world was fixed on her, that hundreds of people were even now employed in a desperate race against the clock to find her. She would have been appalled; she would have been furious with George.

But she didn’t know any of this. If she had, she would have broken her silence long before she actually did crash in a desert, not in North Africa but in Spain, about three hundred and fifty kilometers northeast of Madrid.



As the Potez hit the ground, Irene expected to die instantly. She had forgotten that there was nobody in the world who had crashed an airplane so often and so skillfully as Sam Mallory. It was almost as if his entire career had been made in preparation for this moment, when the ship he was piloting—the one carrying the only person left to him on earth, in urgent need of medical care—ran out of fuel because some German bullet had pierced the main fuel tank, which went unnoticed until half an hour into the flight, when he was already over the strip of Nationalist territory between the Basques and Madrid.

The impact was like the end of the world. An almighty bang jolted through the metal frame and everything went flying, except Irene. She was strapped down not just to the stretcher but to the main deck itself, so that she was part of the airplane as it hurtled across the surface of the desert, over rocks and through bushes, bouncing and crashing and skidding until it came to rest at last, tail torn away, landing gear collapsed, propeller blades scattered across the desert floor.

Then silence.

The shock of it numbed Irene’s physical pain. She stared at the bare struts that ran along the top of this metal tube in which she was bound, unable to move. She tried to scream Sam’s name, even to whisper it, but she had no strength at all, not even that. Maybe I’m dead, she thought. A shaft of sunlight poured through some broken window. The pain returned. Her ears rang with it. Her lips were cracked and thirsty. She closed her eyes and thought, So this is how I die.



Some time later, Irene opened her eyes to sunshine and a desert landscape, a curious rock formation, pain such as she had never known. Something cool touched her forehead. Sam? she whispered.

I’m here, he said. The pressure of his hand on hers.

What’s happened?

We’ve crashed. We ran out of fuel. Waiting for help.

Sam?

What is it, Irene?

How bad am I?

He didn’t answer right away, and Irene thought that he wasn’t going to tell her, and she was angry. She had a right to know what was wrong with her body! She had a right to know what was causing this pain. She had a right to know if she was going to live or die. She had a right to know if her baby was dead.

Then he started to speak. He said that she was burned, on the side of her face and on her back, and that her left arm had been broken by some falling debris. The rest was cuts and bruises. He said she might lose the arm, but not to worry, because he always liked the right arm better anyway. As for her face, why, it just made her more interesting.

Sam? she said.

What is it, Irene?

I can’t feel the baby move. Is the baby still there?

There was a fragile silence.

Then: Don’t worry about the baby, said Sam.

Why not? said Irene. Why not worry? Is he gone? Is he gone, Sam? Tell me the truth. Is he gone?

Irene, said Sam. Irene.

Irene wasn’t crying, but a few tears slid from the corners of her eyes and down her temples into her ears. More followed, until they bled into each other, but she wasn’t crying. Her chest didn’t move, except in shallow, delicate breaths. A line of water ran from each eye. That was all.