Chapter 6: Something in the Air

Monday, July 13^th. Gatwick Airport.

What the hell was wrong with me!? Why had I worked so hard to get here? How did I not realise that pretty much the last thing I ever want is to be away from my family, particularly my little boy? Why the fuck was I going to a country where I’d be practically illiterate, dependant on the good will of the very people I was going to spy on to speak English with me! And how in the world was I going to be a spy when I had a sodding Wikipedia page and an IMDB entry? I can’t so much as buy some cheese without ending up taking a selfie with someone, but now I was sporting a beard and some glasses and expecting the entire English speaking world (and Germany, let’s not forget the fans there) to ignore me! Who am I, Clark Kent?

Caroline was opposed to all this. Caroline KNOWS STUFF. The only reason we are not all subjects of her Imperial Majesty Caroline Keller, with Peter Fox and myself serving as her loyal henchmen Oddjob and Lord Haw-Haw respectively, is that she can’t be bothered to summon her armies of darkness because it would eat into her shoe-buying time. MI6, who had spent a week getting to know me and then, having gotten to know me, swiftly kicked me out, also felt this was a bad idea. Everyone I knew, myself included at this point, felt there was no need for me to do this and zero chance of it ending well. And yet here I was, at Gatwick airport, waiting to board an Emirates flight to Abu Dhabi and then fly onwards to Doha. Why not to Riyadh? Because I’d be bringing a metric fuckton of illegal stuff with me, so I’d have to cross the Saudi border by car. I’d be a smuggler from the start. Isn’t that lovely? I also couldn’t fly Qatar Airways, because we’re best buddies and each and every crewmember on that route would recognize me and want to feed me chocolates for 3200 miles.

I had just presented a false passport in the name of Reginald Carstairs to a UK Border Force officer. Actually, the passport was completely genuine, issued by HM Passport Office, backdated and decorated with some immigration stamps from previous trips I’d never been on. But over 65,000,000 Britons would be able to spot it as fake, because that guy from the Three ads and the war movie isn’t actually called Carstairs, isn’t he? He’s an actor, mate! He’s Belgian, or summink! It’s like David Suchet walking around with a button that says: ‘Bonjour, I am Hercule Poirot!’ on it. Just daft.

I stood in line for passport control after the bag drop, sweating buckets and hoping the officer wasn’t the sort of person who watches television, when a senior officer appeared behind him in the booth. He whispered something in his ear and they both stared at me at the same time. The passport checker then nodded almost imperceptibly, took my passport when it was my turn, gave me a very curious look when he read the name and said:

“Have a good flight, Sir.”

Only engrained British reflex action allowed me to reply with a ‘Thank you’ rather than ‘Thank goodness’. Look at me: this was only London and I was already worried! Rationally speaking I knew that the worst thing that would have happened if the officer had detained me for using an obviously false name would be an hour or so in a holding cell until the matter was cleared up. And yet I was going to a country where beheadings and corporal punishment were commonplace, with the express goal of spying on the highest in the land. Something for which I had not been trained (adequately) and which had never been my ambition.

But I had made a promise. I owed a debt. And they had come after my family. And that was just not on...

To make things worse, Prince Asim texted me while I was having a lovely little panic attack whilst browsing the duty free magazine shop. He had unknowingly been chatting with an MI6 officer for the past few weeks, but now I had Carstairs’ phone and it was up to me to continue our chats.

“Hello my friend, what u up to?”

I had a shortcut for Your Royal Highness set up.

“Hello, yrh. Last couple of days at the office,” I answered. He wasn’t supposed to know I was already on my way.

“Good! I am looking forward to showing u my counter.”

Then:

“Country.”

“Wonderful. I will let you know my itinerary, yrh.”

Thankfully he shut up after that. It was a wonderful summer day in London and normally I’d have sat down to watch the planes for a while, but right now my stomach throbbed. I wanted a cup of tea. Not to drink; just to hold it.

I would be travelling Business Class and Emirates had a lounge here at Gatwick airport, which turned out to be about as dismal an airport as Heathrow, but I wasn’t interested. I wanted to pace. Preferably towards the exit. The reason I was in Business Class was not because MI6 liked me so much, but because the beard could use a few more days to grow thick and real and because six to ten Business Class passengers stuffing themselves with foie gras and feeling very important were much less likely to recognize me than five hundred Economy passengers with fuck all to do. Besides, the last time I flew to the Middle East I ended up in Economy and then spent half the flight knee deep in vomit, so I was due a comfy ... a ... calm...

OH, FUCK! I shouldn’t have done that. Pretty much the last thing I needed to think about was the last time I went on a plane. I had to land the bloody thing! Okay, technically the last time had been my flight from Doha back to to London, but I am pretty sure Caroline spiked my Diet Coke, because I don’t really remember much of that flight and she did insist I try it with a twist of lime. I remember being quite hungry at the baggage belts, which isn’t very likely if you’ve been in First Class for six to seven hours. They do like feeding you. I must not have eaten on board, although for the life of me I can’t remember anything about it. But I did remember seeing a dead Captain in his bunk and a First Officer throwing up all over the cockpit on the way there. And those memories, plus those of what followed, did very little to calm me down.

Calm down. Calm down, Martin. Reginald, I mean. Reggie. Calm down, Reggie. Take a seat, focus on Kate and Mel and Edwin and Kelly and all the others I wouldn’t be seeing for ... Okay, focus on something else. Think of Samantha. Samantha is nice. Totally addicted to sucking dick, which is a lovely quality in a woman. We should develop a test, really. If you’re on a date, just steal a napkin she used, send it to the lab and they’ll let you know if she has the cock gobbling gene. If not, just delete her number and move on.

I missed Sammy. We were friends in name only, these days. She couldn’t be around me, much like Mel Gibson just can’t walk past a barrel of Jim Beam without wanting to dive in. I spoke to her wife Susan more than I did to Samantha nowadays. We did have fun together. So think of Sammy, not of your family, or the fact you’re going to voluntarily lock yourself up in a metal tube, controlled by two people who might well have been eating from a Burger King dumpster yesterday.

Honestly, I wasn’t doing well. I was already at the gate, which wasn’t even open yet. Staying home for another half hour would just have prolonged the agony, and since Ali was already there to collect me I made my goodbyes and more or less legged it.

Maybe I should go back to the shops for some Tums. Or some Valerian. I was within smelling distance of a coffee bar, but feeling alert and focussed didn’t seem like a good state to be in right now. Drowsy and distracted would be better. Although sweating less would be nice.

“Monsieur? Allez-vous bien? Are you okay?”

Oh God, now strangers were noticing. Well, I was more or less doubled over in my seat, my elbows leaning on my thighs. A young woman with brown curls and a fashionable blue scarf sat opposite me, with a travel case between her legs.

“I’m ... uhm ... Yeah. I’m fine. Thanks. Just a bit...”

Nauseous. Sad. Afraid. Cowardly. I went with:

“Tired.”

“You are sure?” she asked, in an adorable French accent.

“Yes, Merci. Don’t worry about me.”

She stood up and took the seat next to me, determined to do a good deed.

“Are you ... afraid of the flying?” she whispered, conspiratorially. I latched on to that, because I was clearly unwell and the real reasons were best kept to myself. I looked sideways and just nodded, feigning embarrassment. She smiled.

“It’s okay. I have always the fear as well. This is the worst. The waiting. When you are flying, it is not so bad. Are you up the front?”

“The what? Oh ... Yes. I’m up front.”

“Good! That helps. I am on standby, so I hope for to be on the front as well. But if not, is okay. I relax, I have some wine, I listen to music. You have music?”

“Some, on my phone. Good advice.”

“See? We can...”

An announcement interrupted her.

“Passenger ... Hachimi ... Please approach the podium. Passenger Hachimi, please approach the podium.”

“Oh! C’est moi! Squeeze your thumbs for me!”

I assumed that was the French expression for crossing one’s fingers, so I did. It was something to do, wasn’t it? As I watched her speedwalk towards the desk, I decided one last toilet visit was in order. I took my time and found they were ready to board Business Class passengers when I came back, which meant I had to brave a few hundred suspicious looks as I walked past the row of passengers who hadn’t even been called yet.

“Ah! You ARE in the front! Good luck-eh!” someone said to my back, sounding very cheerful. I turned my head, grimaced in her direction (it was meant to be a smile) and made my way down the jetway.

I was among the first to board the plane, so I was greeted by a clutter of uniformed people. What do you call a group of airplane staffers, anyway? A bunch of owls are a parliament. A group of crows is a murder. What would you call this? A voucher, perhaps? Seems about right. So I was met by a voucher of cabin crew and a small mistress of pilots.

“Good morning, Sir! Welcome on board,” said the Captain, smiling broadly. I didn’t have a similar smile available to greet him at that point, I’m afraid.

“Yeah, yeah. You and him ... Did you have dinner together last night?”

I pointed at the two uniformed men.

“Excuse me?”

“Did you have the same food in the last twenty-four hours?” I said slowly, ignoring the important looking businessman harrumphing behind me. I’m an important looking businessman too, you know!

“N ... no?”

My ticket was checked extremely carefully by the purser, who presumably hoped this lunatic had somehow snuck past the fifteen previous checks so they could ditch me. But I wasn’t going anywhere.

“Good. Everyone feeling okay? No dicky tummies? We’ve all done this before? Often?”

Comprehension dawned on the Captain’s face.

“Yes, Sir. Is there ... Perhaps you would like a tour of the cockpit? To put your mind at ease?”

“No thanks. I’ve been in one. Just ... Never mind. Thanks.”

“Seat 9B for you, Sir,” said the purser, ready to break up this uncomfortable chat. That was the first row of the Business Class section, near the door.

I was on my second cup of tea before the bloody plane was finished loading. Did you know there has been research on ways to load planes more efficiently? We could do it in half the time and nobody would feel rushed. But we can’t do it, because it would involve a few hundred people having the discipline to line up only when called and then to follow basic instructions. They won’t, more so because airlines make us pay more for checked luggage and that means everyone brings vast rolling cases with them nowadays, to store in the overhead bins. But the idea is that you board groups of people who are at least 2 rows apart. That way, they can all do their stuff without holding up the line. It’s called the Steffen method and it is as likely to happen as universal healthcare, because it requires common sense and an IQ over 90. And there’s just not enough of that around. When I’m in power you won’t be greeted with a smile when you board: you’ll be smacked with a big fat truncheon if you show up before you’re called. A tad draconian perhaps, but I’m Dutch, a nation famous for being completely unable to queue. We respond only to the threat of physical violence.

I couldn’t even mess about with my phone, because this wasn’t my phone. It was a Samsung the size of a pavement tile and it didn’t have a single picture of Edwin on it. My own phone, which was God knows where right now, had hundreds. But this was Reginald Carstairs’ phone, with some pictures of his late wife Gertrude (Kelly’s mother in better days, which weren’t all that good even before the eating disorder: we picked her because she had no social media presence whatsoever and did actually look like the sort of woman Carstairs might have married) and a house in Somerset where I was supposed to have lived, near Shepton Mallet. There were pictures of a car, an olive green Jaguar, and some young children who were supposed to be his niece and nephews. All of this had been carefully curated. I had to memorise a file about Carstairs’ life, too. He was born on October 1^st, 1977 in Bury St. Edmunds. That’s quite near Cambridge, but poor Reginald had attended an unremarkable district school near his house and therefore only managed to get into a very mediocre business school, in Leeds. He obtained a degree in business studies, working in a succession of increasingly upscale restaurants to pay for his tuition and his rooms. He met Gertrude in one of them and they were married three years later. She died of something awful in 2011. They had no children.

Reginald had two siblings: his older brother, Mark, was a dentist. He had moved to New Plymouth in New Zealand, taking their mother with him. His younger sister, Karen, lived in Scotland and had given Carstairs a niece and two nephews. Supposedly they were very close with their uncle, because there were emails from them dating back to 2010. Carstairs used Outlook.com as his sole email provider and the only music he had on his phone were full classical albums: Bach, Chopin, Brahms and Liszt. I like a bit of classical music as much as the next man, but this wouldn’t keep me amused for the next six hours.

There was much, much more, but I hadn’t had the time to memorise all of it. It was on my phone, in a PDF file masquerading as the manual for a Denon DAB receiver. Right now this was enough. I just had to make sure to respond to the name Carstairs, but I do that anyway.

The weirdest thing was the fact that I was now called Reginald. People call me Carstairs, not Reginald, so that would take some getting used to. It is actually my son’s middle name. He’s Edwin Reginald van de Casteele. I think Kelly originally came up with Carstairs’ given name, mentioning it in an interview or a Facebook post, but I found it suitable. Edwin got it as his second name as a nod to the character that had helped bring his mother and me together. Kelly was pleased as punch we used her idea. But now I was Reginald, or ‘Reggie’ for my friends. I wondered if they’d made up some friends for me as well ... I’d have to look it up in the PDF.

A few minutes before take-off, I saw the French lady waiting in the gangway, standing next to a folded up wheelchair and a tired looking Asian man in a high-viz vest. She clutched her carry-on, which she was clearly hoping to have carried on to this plane by now, with a resigned expression. Next to her, but blocking the way into the plane, was the purser. She was scanning a paper print-out. Her lips moved as she counted. I accidentally made eye contact with the young woman, who smiled at me and shrugged. And there I was, sat next to an entirely empty Business Class seat...

The purser saw her looking at someone and turned her head.

“Wait here,” she said, admonishingly. Then she stepped inside and stooped down beside my seat.

“Sir? Would you mind terribly if we put someone in this seat? We’re overbooked, and ... Normally we don’t put people in Business, but if you have no objection...”

“Not at all. I didn’t pay for that seat and you can put anyone you like there. She’s more than welcome as far as I’m concerned. We’ve met. I’m sure we’ll get on fine.”

The purser went back, whispered what seemed to be some very strict instructions on how to behave to a fully grown woman, and then led her to the empty seat next to mine.

“This is your seat. I’ll take your bag. We are late for push-off as it is,” said the purser, and stowed the girl’s bag.

“Hello! Thank you for letting me sit here! I cannot believe it!” she beamed.

“No need to thank me. I’m glad you didn’t get left behind.”

The door closed as the girl sat down. She offered her hand.

“My name is Anaïs.”

I shook her hand and immediately messed up:

“Mah ... name is Reginald. How do you do,” I answered, sounding distinctly American for the first part of that introduction. Some secret agent ... A nice girl introduces herself and I’m all at sea.

Fortunately she didn’t seem to have noticed. She was expecting to sit in a middle seat somewhere at the back, and now found herself in the luxurious leather seats most people only ever shuffle past on their way to the torture rack.

First Class on Emirates is actually quite weird: you get a private room the size of a small lavatory to yourself. They only had eight of those on this plane, at prices that boggle the mind. Their combined floor space could seat another 160 economy class passengers!

Business Class rates seemed positively spartan compared to that, even though we all had little cubicles, which is to say there were partitions around our seat that didn’t reach the ceiling. I always prefer an aisle seat so I wasn’t quite so boxed in, but the young woman got the window and that meant she had to pass in front of me to get to her seat.

Hang on, that’s always the case, isn’t it? I meant that in this case she could do it without giving me an involuntary lap dance. There was still a good metre between us.

If you know anything about the economics of flying, you’ll know that First and Business Class are where airlines make their money. About two-thirds of it, in fact. The slobs in Economy are transported basically at cost, even though some will pay hundreds more for their seat than others. When all is said and done, the airline will have made about ten dollars per seat on the Economy section, which given the risks of running an airline really doesn’t seem worth the bother. It’s those fat cats in their reclining seats and sealed off ‘suites’ who turn the sort of profit you need to order a hundred Airbuses at seventy million a pop and put fuel in them. Those people are the reason the flight departs at all, not you and your twenty bucks per suitcase. You’re just there to fill space. They’d knock you out with laughing gas so they could stack you five high if that were legal. Which it might be one day, who knows?

Still, it’s weird to see the extravagance of First and Business and the divide between the haves and the have nots in aviation. You can’t help but think that if we paid just twenty percent more for our economy seats, we’d all be a lot more comfortable. But you’d be wrong and airlines know it. That’s why you pay extra for your luggage, while the airplane also carries an incredible amount of food and drink along that never gets touched. I know this because there was a printed menu available to Business Class passengers. Just the drinks section was seven pages and it contained options such as a ‘breakfast Martini’, three types of Bourbon, nine types of wine and even Drambuie. I mean, who the fuck drinks THAT? Drambuie goes into Christmas cake and that’s it!

The food section also contained a short monograph about the nature of the perfect panna cotta, in which the airline’s ‘chef’ waxes lyrically about the perfect ration of solidity to softness and how it ‘should slide smoothly over the palate without any grittiness or lumps’. And that we should all be grateful we have gelatin available to us these days, because they used to set the cream with fish bone meal. That’s a full page out of the menu! For panna cotta! Which you can get in pumpkin or spring pea, depending on your destination.

While I was shaking my head about the menu and, in a broader sense, the nature of man, the French girl next to me was having the time of her life. She opened every door, pressed every button and couldn’t stop giggling. It was actually quite infectious. She was given a stern look during the safety demo, but as soon as we were wheels up she went back to her game. There was a lot to do in those two square metres, I’ll admit. A large widescreen TV screen in front had a great selection of shows, but you could also watch them on a complimentary tablet. (Not to take home, obviously.) There was also a mini fridge, although oddly it wasn’t chilled. Under the TV was a sort of shelf, where the stewardess sits if you’re one of those people who enjoy trapping helpless flight staff into awful conversations about yourself. It’s where your feet rest when the seat becomes a bed, if you’re tall enough.

Eventually the partition between our seats lowered.

“Hello! How are you doinguh? It’s not so bad, no?”

Oh right, she thought I was afraid of flying. I gave her a meek smile.

“I’m over the worst of it, now. Take-off is always the scariest part.”

“Good! We can have wine to relax. Do you know ... When can we ask for wine?”

“I think we need to level off first. They’ll make their first round soon after that. You can have something from your fridge, though.”

“I know, but I saw a 2010 Chateau de Fonbel. That’s a fantastic St. Emilion. I think it’s about sixty Euro per bottle!”

“Oh, right. Well, here’s your chance!”

She moved about slightly and then sat actually on her knees, like a kid on a school trip looking out of the bus window.

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Carstairs of Arabia

Ron Dudderie

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