Take off, p.1
Take-off!, page 1
Take-off!
Jacques Vandroux
Copyright 2013 Jacques Vandroux - All rights reserved
Translation by Christopher Parkinson
Cover by Kouvertures.com
Modified picture CC BY-SA 2.0 ramonbaile
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ramonbaile/
Please Note
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity therefore to persons living or dead or past events is pure coincidence and will under no circumstances incur the responsibility of the author.
Contents
Welcome aboard
Chapter 1. The Contract.
Chapter 2. Fear of Flying
Chapter 3. Snow in New York
About the author
Welcome aboard
This novella is based on the following principle: the same paragraph introduces three short stories each with a different ending. The business class cabin in a plane, a violent and windy rainstorm, a man in his seat with the adjoining seat unoccupied. Who is going to come and sit next to him and what will be the chain of events from then on?
All that remains is to kindly ask you to turn off your mobile phones, turn down the main lights in your room and to wish you a pleasant moment of relaxation in our company.
Of course, all the characters in this story are fictional and any resemblance to existing people is pure coincidence.
Chapter 1. The Contract.
Heaven's sluice gates had opened. The rain streamed down the cabin window in strange shaped torrents.
The hostess with the perfect smile handed back to the passenger his boarding card. He headed towards the front of the plane, gave his coat to the steward beside him and put his suitcase in the compartment above his head. The man collapsed into his seat and breathed deeply. He took the glass of champagne offered by a young Asian girl with a pleasant face.
The business class cabin of the Airbus in which he took his place exuded luxury and calm. He shuddered when he thought of how the day had ended. The final negotiations which he had been conducting over the last two weeks had come to an unforeseen grinding halt. That very same morning, he had been expecting to put the finishing touches to a contract worth more than fifty million dollars with an American finance group. At one pm, after a short break for lunch, everything had gone pear shaped. His opposite numbers had had a sudden change of mind. Article twenty three which both parties had agreed to two days earlier seemed to have become an insurmountable obstacle. The Americans had given him one hour to call his financial director. The French lawyer had left the meeting and contacted his firm. He could not understand why they were so angry. Article twenty three had been carefully scrutinized and no-one had had any problems with it. He regretted that the rest of the French delegation had already left the previous day. To all intents and purposes, the job was finished.
The lawyer managed to reach his finance director. After twenty minutes of tense conversation, the penny had dropped: the directors had hidden from him an important piece of information. Article twenty three could turn out to be a dangerous trap for the Americans. He himself, in spite of all his experience had not seen it. Somehow, God knows how, the people who had been sitting opposite him had worked it out. His firm had left him high and dry, hoping that their partners would sign a contract which in the short term would fleece them of part of their assets.
When he had come back into the board room there was an atmosphere of barely contained aggression.
The passenger put down his empty champagne glass. He took a long breath, trying to empty himself of at least some of the tension and angst which had gripped him for over four hours now.
A hostess bent towards him, asking if he felt all right. His face was as white as a sheet. He forced himself to smile and assured her that he was fine.
He was now quite safe inside the plane. He had gone through the departure procedures with a watchful eye on the crowd around him. Anyone who looked at him for more than a few hundredths of a second was a suspect. Boarding had been a huge relief.
He suddenly relaxed. He was safe now. He asked for a second glass of champagne which he savoured in little mouthfuls.
On his return to the boardroom, the Frenchman had expected to hear all kinds of imprecations and be besieged with questions–he would not have held it against them. Instead, there was just a silent hostility you could cut with a knife. The wall projector was switched off. All the laptops were closed and the participants had put away their files, ready to leave the room.
The Chief negotiator of the FFC, Fakman Financial Company, looked him straight in the eye:
“I have conducted many, many, negotiations and I have to tell you that my company has never been treated like this. Sure, business is business, but you have shown yourselves unworthy of the quite exceptional degree of trust shown to you by our Board of Directors. Mr. Gazzetti is very upset and he will make his feelings known to your management without delay. You know the way out.”
The Frenchman had tried to make his excuses, but the Americans pretended not to hear and walked out.
The lawyer started to shake as he put his things away. If the contract had been signed the way it had been worded, the Gazzetti family would have lost millions of dollars in less than eighteen months. His company had left him in talks with a Mafia front company while all the time withholding from him a fundamental aspect of the negotiation. How could an enterprise like Crédit Commercial du Sud have attempted this sleight of hand?
The quiet in the empty boardroom terrified him. Giuseppe Gazzetti would want to show his displeasure in the shortest time possible. What better demonstration than to take it out on the messenger of the French financial organisation. They were already waiting for him at the exit.
The window of the board room looked onto the car park. It looked like two men were pacing up and down by his hire car. His brain seemed to seize up with panic and he could not think straight. He had had to force himself to calm down and work out a strategy for leaving the United States as quickly as possible.
Flight AK 345 was due to take off from Newark international airport in less than twenty minutes. Boarding was nearly complete. A noise behind him made him turn round. A last minute arrival had come on board just before they started to count the passengers.
The young woman, who was out of breath, held out her jacket to a hostess and sat down in the seat next to the lawyer. She fastened her seatbelt and then held out her hand to her neighbour.
“Hello, I'm Sophie. I'm so relieved to be sitting beside you this evening. The traffic was awful because of the rain. I was starting to think I would never get on board my plane.”
The woman looked to be around thirty. Her enthusiasm and her contagious smile opened up a little chink of blue sky in the otherwise dark future of her neighbour. He shook her hand.
“Hello! I'm Sébastien. I'm very happy too that you managed to catch your flight.”
The young woman laughed out loud, relieved to be in the plane which started to roll along the soaking wet tarmac, happy no doubt to have someone to talk to.
Sébastien looked at her a little more carefully. She was tall with short hair and green eyes. She was wearing a designer suit which looked like it was made to measure. She crossed her long, slender legs which distracted him. After the fear and angst he had just experienced, Sébastien needed to find some lighter subjects to think about. The last minute arrival of this woman was very welcome. It was above all her face which fascinated him most of all. She had high cheek-bones, no doubt from some kind of Slav inheritance and her brilliant smile made him want to get to know her. He felt like he had met her before… probably in a magazine! Sophie took off her suit jacket, drawing looks from the passengers seated to her right. She assumed an amused pout, pretending she had not noticed.
While the plane positioned itself to join the runway, Sébastien thought back to the last moments preceding his arrival at the airport. There were indeed two men waiting by the side of his car. He hadn't waited to find out what their intentions were and had managed to discretely hail a cab to take him to Newark airport. He had been supposed to leave the next day, but he was not going to take any chances. The lawyer had not gone back to his hotel and had succeeded in getting a place on the flight leaving for Paris that same evening. He was not really sure of anything. Mr. Gazzetti's displeasure might well have been limited to just a complaint to the company's management, but a voice inside him was shouting: “Look out!” and he followed his instincts.
Sébastien closed his eyes as the wheels lifted off the ground. His departure from American soil meant that all his fears were left behind there. He noticed that Sophie was looking at him. This woman fascinated him. He decided to start a conversation in the most down to earth fashion he could think of.
“If I told you that I thought I had met you before, what would you say?”
“That you're only the fifth person to tell me that this week!”
“Sorry, I just thought your face looked somehow familiar.”
“It’s quite possible. I work in the fashion industry and I'm a model in my spare time. Maybe you saw a glimpse of me in an advert.”
Now he had broken the ice, Sébastien needed to talk to rid himself of the tension and relax. Sophie herself seemed quite happy to have found an affable neighbour. Dinner proceeded quite smoothly. They took advantage of the selection of Bordeaux vintages offered by the Airline to get to know each other better.
Sophie had an American father and a French mother, was twenty nine years old and spent half her time in Ne
The FFC now seemed far behind him. His bosses had put him in an impossible situation. Let them sort things out with the Americans without him. He had had nothing to do with the failure of the negotiations after all. What's more, he had even done his job perfectly until the discovery of the attempted con by the Crédit Commercial du Sud.
Replaying the film of his afternoon, he wondered if he had not been a bit paranoid. If they wanted to harm him, the Americans would surely not have been so obvious about putting two men beside his car. They could have just taken it out on him in the company's headquarters. Real life is not a Robert de Niro film.
Moreover, the way the conversation was going with Sophie was becoming very interesting. He had met quite a few women since his divorce, but this young model was, without a shadow of a doubt, the cream of the crop. Intelligent, beautiful, charming and approachable, he would do anything to see her again. He had made an approach and she was quite open to the idea of a dinner in Paris.
He needed to sleep now before arriving at Roissy airport, but Sébastien was buzzing and he had left his sleeping pills in his toilet bag at the hotel.
Sophie grabbed her hand bag, took out a container and handed a pill to her neighbour.
“I'm used to planes and I've got a wonder drug. Just take one of these and you will sleep like a log for three hours and then wake up fresh as a daisy.”
“Thanks! Where do you get them from?”
Sophie looked at him, a little embarrassed.
“I've got a supplier in New York.”
Sébastien swallowed the pill with a mouthful of water. Lulled by the humming of the engines, he slowly started to lose consciousness. A flash exploded in his brain. He knew where he had seen her. She had been at the gala evening organised by the FFC at the start of the week. He had to wake up! But he was no longer the master of his wits and could no longer move.
Sophie lent towards the slumbering man and whispered in his ear:
“Mr. Gazzetti wishes you a long, a very long sleep!”
Chapter 2. Fear of Flying
Heaven's sluice gates had opened. The rain streamed down the cabin window in strange shaped torrents.
The hostess with the perfect smile handed back to the passenger his boarding card. He headed towards the front of the plane, gave his coat to the steward beside him and put his suitcase in the compartment above his head. The man collapsed into his seat and breathed deeply. He took the glass of champagne offered by a young Asian girl with a pleasant face.
The business class cabin in which he had just taken his place exuded luxury and calm. He tensed thinking about the rest of the journey. The fear of flying which he thought he had managed to suppress had him in its grip again and seemed to be becoming ever stronger. The route from Philadelphia to Newark international airport had been hellish. Non-stop rain had continually battered his wind screen, making the free way almost undriveable and gusts of wind had forced him to use the utmost concentration every second of the way. He could still hear the air horn blast of the huge truck which he had only missed by a lightening reflex jerk of the steering wheel. Giving back his hire car was a first relief but the ordeal in front of him was going to be a lot worse.
He turned his head to his right. Lost in his thoughts he had not even noticed the woman sitting beside him. She was immersed in a fashion magazine. He envied her relaxed face. She looked up in his direction, giving him the opportunity to engage in conversation.
“Do forgive me. I came and sat down here without even saying hello. You must think I have no manners at all. I'm Sébastien.”
The woman shut her magazine and placed it on her lap.
“Don't worry, I was reading a fascinating story about Guadeloupe. Probably trying to forget this rainstorm… My name's Sophie.”
She gave him a firm hand shake. Sébastien relaxed–Sophie must have been sent by the Gods to take his mind off his fears. His neighbour continued.
“Some weather eh? This is the tail end of a tornado. It’s rare though for them to travel this far up and even rarer for them to still be so violent. It will certainly be something to remember.”
The man's silence surprised Sophie. His face was as white as a sheet. Worriedly she asked?
“What’s the matter? Are you ill?”
Just as she was about to call a hostess, Sébastien put his hand on her arm. She was surprised by the strength of his grip.
“I'm not ill, at least not medically speaking. It’s just that I'm... you'll probably laugh... scared to death.”
Sophie looked at him for a few seconds without saying anything, then treated him to a big smile.
“Don't worry! You know flying is statistically the safest form of transport. I fly more than four times a month in all kinds of weather. The worst that's ever happened, apart from delays, was a bottle of Pauillac spilled on my favourite jumper and a neighbour who, to put it delicately, left his meal all over my boots. Don't worry though, I managed to clean my boots. My jumper was not so lucky”, she added, laughing.
Sébastien was cheered up by Sophie's prattling. She was a flame bringing a little light into the darkness of his nightmare. He came out of his torpor in order to observe her a little more carefully. Although she might not be a head turner, she was nonetheless quite pretty and certainly attractive. A round face surrounded by blond curls, green eyes and a smile which was an invitation to see the sunny side of life. She was wearing a black jumper–her new favourite jumper?–and boots. A woman who made you want to get to know her, to become friendly with her or perhaps more? The eternal bachelor, Sébastien had had many adventures but he had never felt the urge so strongly to want to get to know a stranger! For a moment, he felt a wave of sweetness and light smothering his deep seated angst.
All this time, Sophie was taking everything in. Her neighbour seemed to be genuinely terrified, in spite of his best effort to conceal it. Her experience as a child psychiatrist had taught her to observe her patients. He was ashen faced. A square jaw, crew cut and greying temples gave him a determined air. He was in his forties and distinguished looking. A ladies man no doubt, struck right in the middle of a flight by a fear of flying. In just a few moments he had clung on to her like someone who was shipwrecked would cling on to a life raft which by some miracle had come within reach. It was quite touching really and his fearful air made her want to help him. She found him endearing... he was rather good looking after all.
The doors of the Airbus A330 had just closed and the flight crew had finished counting the passengers. As Sébastien felt the plane start to move forwards, he closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe deeply. Once again he was in the hands of fate. Even though he was a great pragmatist and had always thought that religions were just stories made up to reassure people who were afraid of living life to the full, the irrational nonetheless took hold of him when he flew. He imagined the skies and the clouds were peopled with fantastic creatures ready to play games with those who dared to defy them. He knew it was ridiculous but he could not shake off an image he had seen as a youngster in the television series, “The twilight zone”. A gremlin, sitting on the wing of a plane during a storm, who was methodically ripping out the electric cables of an engine, all the while looking at a passenger with a malicious look on its face. This scene had had a deeply disturbing effect on him.
The steward brought him back from his thoughts.
“Sir, we are about to take off. Please fasten your safety belt.”
Take-off! They were about to leave the ground and put themselves at the mercy of a savage tornado. His hands trembled as he tried to grab hold of the safety belt buckle. The steward helped him and tried to reassure him.
