Desperate Games

For no apparent reason, she felt suddenly that the atmosphere in the airplane had changed. The weather was still glorious. The aircraft was gliding along in a cloudless sky, but her sense of peace had vanished. It took her a moment to realise that the unpleasant feeling that she was experiencing was caused by a change in her husband’s attitude. Oh, there was nothing all that abnormal about it. But at the beginning he spoke to her from time to time… and above all, every few moments he turned his head towards her and smiled. He had not done anything like this for… for probably several minutes, perhaps longer. It was this absence of contact which was worrying her.

She looked at him. The way he was sitting at the controls was normal… though not entirely so. Looking at him more closely, she thought she could make out an unusual stiffness… He was tense, that was it, though he usually enjoyed flying this airplane.

‘Darling, are you all right? You’re not tired?’

She had asked the question almost in spite of herself. He replied, but with a slight delay and without turning his head towards her. The tone of his voice betrayed the fact that he was strangely preoccupied.

‘No, no. Everything’s fine. Only… Excuse me.’

He interrupted himself to call a station that they were due to fly over without stopping. When contact was established, he asked a question and she could not help noticing the tone of anxiety in his voice.

‘Has your radar located me?’

‘Just a minute, Mr Zarratoff,’ said the voice, in a respectful tone.

He was well known in all aeronautical circles, both for his exploits as a cosmonaut and as the son-in-law of the President of the world.

‘…Yes, there you are. You must be over the railway, coming directly towards us.’

When the pilot asked him, the employee informed him of his approximate distance from the station and his speed, insofar as these could be calculated from the ground.

‘Could you give me more precise figures for the distance?’ Nicolas asked in an imperious tone.

‘Eleven kilometres, three hundred and fifty metres,’ the voice replied with a touch of surprise. ‘You must be almost directly above the stone bridge.’

‘Almost –!’ the cosmonaut began to say.

Ruth started. There was an angry tone in his voice, for which there was no justification. He calmed down just as suddenly, and said with obvious relief, ‘That’s right, that must be right. I’m flying over the stone bridge. I recognise it.’

‘I don’t think there’s any way you could miss it,’ the voice said, now with a touch of irony.

This bridge was in fact the only one of its kind in the whole of Africa. It had been constructed by an engineer who was somewhat mentally disturbed, and who had had an ancient European bridge, several centuries old, transported stone by stone. When the authorities noticed this fantastic thing, they decided at first to demolish it, but finally let it remain as a curiosity, contenting themselves with having another more modern and sturdier bridge built some way away. Nobody could mistake its appearance.

‘Is there any other way we can be of service, Mr Zarratoff?’

‘Just a moment, I beg you… Don’t leave me alone!’

Ruth became panic-stricken. He had almost shouted, and his voice betrayed real anxiety. She had never heard him speak like that.

‘Is there something wrong on board?’ asked air-traffic control in surprise.

‘No, everything’s fine. I just want to check… Can you give me my exact altitude?’

‘Is your altimeter broken?’

‘I don’t know… and also this type of equipment lacks precision. I have more confidence in your radar.’

‘Two thousand, three hundred metres.’

It was the figure indicated by the instrument on board. Once again the pilot seemed to be relieved. But it seemed to Ruth that he continued to speak in the same way, as if he could not resign himself to cutting off communication.

‘Can you give me my exact course?’

When this was done, he asked a question which was very strange in the circumstances.

‘Could you take over by radio control?’

This time the man’s voice sounded astonished. He asked for the phrase to be repeated, which Nicolas did with another burst of impatience.