Douglas to help organize a memorial service for the three aviators. Malachy Delaney and John Barrett presided. The ceremony was held at sunset at the western end of the Loki airfield, some two hundred people in attendance. The clergymen said the sorts of things clergymen do on such occasions. Pamela delivered a moving tribute to Tara, Douglas paid homage to Wesley and Mary, striking a note of comic relief when he touched his nose and said that it was well known that he and Dare had differences of opinion, but those differences had not affected one whit his respect for the man’s abilities and courage, so amply demonstrated on his final flight. When the sermons and speeches were finished, four Knight planes flew over, one peeling away to make a “missing man” formation. A trumpeter from the local police barracks blew retreat. Listening to the fine words and the tragic notes of the trumpet echoing over the twilit landscape, Fitzhugh recalled the vultures pecking at Wesley’s corpse, of the arrival in Loki of the clear plastic burn bags containing the remains of Tara and her passengers. Truth is Beauty and Beauty Truth? he thought. Not always, but even when Truth was horrifying, it was preferable to the attractive lie of pretty clichés and the aesthetics of ritual. Likewise when Truth was commonplace. One small true fact, like a bottle of nasal spray found in a place where it did not belong, was in its way beautiful.
Douglas’s eulogy had partly rehabilitated his image among those who thought he’d deserved Dare’s punch in the nose. Fitzhugh didn’t think that was why he gave it. He sincerely wanted to honor the dead. The words he spoke were sincere. His sincerity added to Fitzhugh’s suspicions, for he knew the American was never more fraudulent than when he was most sincere.
Fitzhugh had presented Michael’s thank-you note to him. It included a new coded shopping list. With the danger of being exposed eliminated, Douglas was inspired to resume Busy Beaver’s operations. Perhaps he was driven by financial pressures as well. Tara’s fate had a decided chilling effect on Knight’s flight crews. Several had refused missions to the Nuba and other no-go zones, which caused some independent agencies to take their business to one-horse air operators desperate enough to risk their lives. Douglas himself appeared to think he was invulnerable, so much so that he began to fly the gun runs himself, with Tony as his copilot. Fitzhugh didn’t know if Hassan Adid was aware that his managing director was up to his old tricks; nor did he care. He was preoccupied with looking for another petit fait vrais. “What are you, a fuckin’ detective?” Yes, Tony, I am, he thought, but without badge, gun, warrant, or intent of arresting anyone. I only want to know the truth of what happened.
He made a mental catalogue of his small facts:
Two planes carrying the people who could do the most harm to Douglas and Adid go down on the same day.
The bottle of Adid’s brand of nasal spray.
Wesley’s strange request.
The grease-stained mechanic’s coveralls in Tony’s hut.
He compiled the questions the small facts raised:
What were the odds of the two aircraft crashing on the same day?
Was Adid at the New Tourom airfield, and if he was, when and for what purpose?
How did he get there?
Why did Wesley ask him to retrieve the water jug and plastic bags and what did he mean when he said that someone had to clear out in a hurry?
Why had Tony balked when asked to search for the wreck of Wesley’s plane?
He concluded that he had slightly more than nothing.
He persuaded the UN authorities to send a crash-investigation team to look at the Hawker, and when they returned with photographs, key pieces of the wreckage, and the plane’s voice and flight data recorders, he told them to keep him abreast of their findings. They cautioned him not to hold his breath; even when a wrecked plane is in relatively good condition, as the Hawker was, crash investigations took a long time.
All right, he would do his own.
” ‘WAAAH! I FEEL good, so good . . .’ ” VanRensberg, Knight’s flight mechanic, was singing on the tarmac, headphone clamped to his ears. He flipped Fitzhugh a wave and went on gyrating, shaking his big ass. ” ‘I feel good, so good, so good . . .’ “ A couple of Kenyan mechanics laughed at the crazy mzungu. An Afrikaner imitating James Brown was amusing.