Аэропорт / Аirport. Артур Хейли

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      “You knew perfectly well that tonight was important to me, and a week ago you made a definite promise.”

      “A week ago I didn’t know we were going to have the biggest storm in six years…”

      “You’ve people working for you, haven’t you? Or are the ones you’ve chosen so incompetent they can’t be left alone?”

      Mel said irritably, “They’re highly competent. But I get paid to take some responsibility, too.”

      “It’s a pity you can’t act responsibly to me.”

      Mel sensed that Cindy was getting close to boiling point. Without any effort, he could visualize her now, clear blue eyes flashing, and her blonde coiffed head tilted back in that damnably attractive way she had when she was angry. In their early years of marriage, his wife’s temper outbursts seldom dismayed him. In the past, when his eyes had made their appreciative assessment, some two-way physical communion sprang into being, prompting each to reach out, to touch one another, impulsively, hungrily. The result was predictable. The origin of Cindy’s anger was forgotten in a wave of sensuality.

      It was, of course, not a way of resolving differences which were fundamental. As the years passed, and passion lessened, accumulated differences became more sharply accented.

      Eventually, they ceased entirely to use sex as a panacea and, in the past year or so physical intimacy of any kind had become more and more occasional.

      “Most of the time I go along with what you want, even though I don’t think the things we go to are all that important. What I would enjoy are a few more evenings at home with the children.”

      “That’s a lot of crap,” Cindy said.

      Perhaps she was right, to an extent. Earlier this evening he had been reminded of the times he had stayed at the airport when he could have gone home—merely because he wanted to avoid another fight with Cindy.

      But apart from that, tonight was different. He ought to stay on at the airport.

      “I do know you’re my wife, which is why I intend to get down there just as soon as I can.” A thought struck him. “Incidentally, what’s the occasion tonight?”

      “It’s a publicity party to promote the costume ball which is being given next month for the Archidona Children’s Fund. The press is here. They’ll be taking photographs.”

      Now Mel knew why Cindy wanted him to hurry. With him there, she stood a better chance of being in the photographs—and on tomorrow’s newspaper social pages.

      “Did you say the Archidona Fund? Which Archidona? There are two. One’s in Ecuador, the other in Spain.”

      For the first time, Cindy hesitated. “What does it matter?”

      Mel wanted to laugh out loud. Cindy didn’t know. As usual, she had chosen to work for a charity because of who was involved, rather than what.

      “How many letters do you expect to get from this one?”

      To be considered for listing in The Social Register, a new aspirant needed eight sponsoring letters from people whose names already appeared there. At the last count Mel had heard, Cindy had collected four.

      Cindy asserted, savagely, “Listen to me! You’d better get here tonight, and soon. If you don’t come, or if you do come and embarrass me by saying anything of what you did just now, it’ll be the end.”

      She hung up.

      When seated at his desk, Mel shivered as earlier. Then, abruptly in the silent office, a telephone bell jangled. For a moment he ignored it. It rang again, and he realized it was the red alarm system telephone on a stand beside the desk.

      “Bakersfeld here.”

      He heard clicks and more acknowledgments as others came on the line.

      “This is Air Traffic Control,” the tower chief’s voice announced. “We have an airborne emergency, category three.

      9

      Keith Bakersfeld, Mel’s brother, was a third of the way through his eight-hour duty watch in the air traffic control radar room.

      In radar control, tonight’s storm was having a profound effect, though not a directly physical one. To a spectator, Keith thought, it might have seemed that the storm, raging immediately outside, was a thousand miles away. The radar room had no windows. Day and night, at Lincoln International, ten radar controllers and supervisors labored in perpetual semidarkness under dim moonglow lights. Around them, tightly packed equipment—radarscopes, controls, radio communications panels—lined all four walls.

      The pervading tone in the radar room was calm. However, beneath the calmness, at all times, was a constant nervous strain. Cause of the added tension today was a signal on a radarscope which, in turn, had triggered a flashing red light and alarm buzzer in the control room. It denoted an aircraft in distress. In this case, the aircraft was a U.S. Air Force KC-135, high above the airport in the storm, and seeking an immediate emergency landing.

      The tower watch chief on the floor above had been promptly informed of the distress signal. He, in turn, had declared a category three emergency, alerting airport ground facilities.

      The flatface scope, at the moment the center of attention, was a horizontal glass circle set into a tabletop console. Its surface was dark green, with brilliant green points of light showing all aircraft in the air within a forty-mile radius. As the aircraft moved, so did the points of light. Beside each light point was a small plastic marker, identifying it. Controllers moved them by hand as aircraft progressed and their positions on the screen changed. As more aircraft appeared, they were identified by voice radio and similarly tagged. Tonight there was an extraordinary number of aircraft on the screen.

      Keith was seated closest to the flatface. His body was tense, he was concentrating, his face strained, as it had been for months. The green reflection of the scope accentuated deep hollows beneath his eyes. Anyone who knew Keith well, but had not seen him for a year or so, would have been shocked both by his appearance and his change in manner. Keith was six years younger than his brother, Mel, but nowadays appeared a good deal older.

      The radar supervisor, Wayne Tevis, was observing Keith covertly at this moment, watching the signs of increasing strain. Tevis was ready, if necessary, to relieve Keith from radar watch, a decision which instinct told him might have to be made at any time.

      His eyes on Keith’s flatface scope, Tevis drawled, “Keith, that Braniff flight is closing on Eastern. If you turn Braniff right, you can keep Eastern going on the same course.” It was something which Keith should have seen himself, but hadn’t.

      The problem, which most of the radar room crew was working at feverishly, was to clear a path for the Air Force KC-135, which had already started down on an instrument landing approach from ten thousand feet. The difficulty was—below the big Air Force jet were five airline flights, stacked at intervals of a thousand feet, and orbiting a limited airspace. All were awaiting their turn to land. A few miles on either side were other columns of aircraft, similarly stacked and, lower still, were three more airliners, already on landing approaches. In between them all were busy departure СКАЧАТЬ