“It was Kalkstadt they wanted most,” Taylor said with appreciation. “That’s first-class, Lansen, first-class. What was your airspeed?”
“Two hundred .. . two forty. Something like that. There was nothing there, I’m telling you, nothing.” He lit a cigarette.
“It’s the end now,” Lansen repeated, “however big the target is.” He stood up. Taylor got up too; he put his right hand in his overcoat pocket. Suddenly his throat went dry: the money, where was the money?
“Try the other pocket,” Lansen suggested.
Taylor handed him the envelope. “Will there be trouble about this? About the MIGs, I mean?”
Lansen shrugged. “I doubt it, it hasn’t happened to me before. They’ll believe me once: they’ll believe it was the weather. I went off course about half way. There could have been a fault in the ground control. In the hand-over.”
“What about the navigator? What about the rest of the crew? What do they think?”
“That’s my business,” said Lansen sourly. “You can tell London it’s the end.”
Taylor looked at him anxiously. “You’re just upset,” he said, “after the tension.”
“Go to hell,” said Lansen softly. “Go to bloody hell.” He turned away, put a coin on the counter and strode out of the bar, stuffing carelessly into his raincoat pocket the long buff envelope which contained the money.
After a moment Taylor followed him. The barman watched him push his way through the door and disappear down the stairs. A very distasteful man, he reflected; but then he never had liked the English.
Taylor thought at first that he would not take a taxi to the hotel. He could walk it in ten minutes and save a bit of subsistence. The airline girl nodded to him as he passed her on his way to the main entrance. The reception hall was done in teak; blasts of warm air rose from the floor. Taylor stepped outside. Like the thrust of a sword the cold cut through his clothes; like the numbness of an encroaching poison it spread swiftly over his naked face, feeling its way into his shoulders. Changing his mind, he looked around hastily for a taxi. He was drunk. He suddenly realized: the fresh air had made him drunk. The rank was empty. An old Citroen was parked fifty yards up the road, its engine running. He’s got the heater on, lucky devil, thought Taylor, and hurried back through the swing doors.
“I want a cab,” he said to the girl. “Where can I get one, do you know?” He hoped to God he looked all right. He was mad to have drunk so much. He shouldn’t have accepted that drink from Lansen.
She shook her head. “They have taken the children,” she said. “Six in each car. That was the last flight today. We don’t have many taxis in winter.” She smiled. “It’s a very little airport.”
“What’s that up the road, that old car? Not a cab, is it?” His voice was indistinct.
She went to the doorway and looked out. She had a careful balancing walk, artless and provocative.
“I don’t see any car,” she said.
Taylor looked past her. “There was an old Citroen. Lights on. Must have gone. I just wondered.” Christ, it went past and he’d never heard it.
“The taxis are all Volvos,” the girl remarked. “Perhaps one will come back after he has dropped the children. Why don’t you go and have a drink?”
“Bar’s closed,” Taylor snapped. “Barman’s gone home.”
“Are you staying at the airport hotel?”
“The Regina, yes. I’m in a hurry, as a matter of fact.” It was easier now. “I’m expecting a phone call from London.”
She looked doubtfully at his coat; it was of rain-proof material in a pebble weave. “You could walk,” she suggested. “It is ten minutes, straight down the road. They can send your luggage later.”
Taylor looked at his watch, the same wide gesture. “Luggage is already at the hotel. I arrived this morning.”
He had that kind of crumpled, worried face which is only a hairsbreadth from the music halls and yet is infinitely sad; a face in which the eyes are paler than their environment, and the contours converge upon the nostrils. Aware of this, perhaps, Taylor had grown a trivial moustache, like a scrawl on a photograph, which made a muddle of his face without concealing its shortcoming. The effect was to inspire disbelief, not because he was a rogue but because he had no talent for deception. Similarly he had tricks of movement crudely copied from some lost original, such as an irritating habit which soldiers have of arching his back suddenly, as if he had discovered himself in an unseemly posture, or he would affect an agitation about the knees and elbows which feebly caricatured an association with horses. Yet the whole was dignified by pain, as if he were holding his little body stiff against a cruel wind.