Chapter 1: Flight from the UK

Henry Clegg looked nervously around at the departure lounge. Of course he really knew that the armed police, in their flack jackets, carrying their disturbing array of weaponry, were only there to provide security, but he couldn't help feeling that they were also keeping a close eye on him, personally.

In Henry's mind the question was which of the forces of law and order would be first through the door of the departure lounge ready to snatch away his ticket and boarding card before he could get to his flight. There was the bank's inspection department, their auditors, the financial services regulator, the head of consumer finance watch, and of course the police themselves. And that didn't include the irate parents of his recently pregnant P.A. Lately things just seemed to have piled up and now he was just glad to be getting out. Some bankers might be getting bailed out but it certainly didn't seem to extend to him.

"Air Kushtia is pleased to announce the departure of flight 003 to Riga, Strigino, Tashkent and Kolin. Passengers should please board now through gate 27."

Henry felt relieved by the announcement. He picked up the small bag that carried the few things that would sustain him on board and scurried towards the gate. It had been awfully good of Uncle Freddie to arrange this for him, he thought, and at such short notice. He'd certainly needed the chance of a new job somewhere far away from where he had been working. Somewhere far removed from structured funding arrangements linked to the American sub-prime market, the fall out from his deal with Lehman Brothers, from his negotiations with a certain savings bank in the North East of England or indeed the exit strategy for his finances that he had arranged with Landsbanki, Glitnir, and Kaupthing in Iceland.

With his current set of problems, the Kushtian capital of Kolin had sounded attractive at the instant that Freddie had mentioned it; if only because he'd never heard of it before and he could readily imagine that none of the people who were hoping to find him would have heard of it either. At the very least it would allow him to keep his head down for a few months. That way he could wait until the more acrimonious scalp hunting had finished and then he could work out what his options were.

The boarding gate was curiously quiet. Looking around, as far as Henry could tell, he was the only passenger. Airline staff walking back along the pier to the terminal building looked at him with what seemed to Henry like a mixture of astonishment and sympathy. Henry got his first inkling of why when the stewardess came forward to open the gate. He wasn't sure what sort of 'plane the flight was using but with her bulk he hoped it was a large one. He'd been used to the idea of wide bodied aircraft, he was surprised to see it applied to cabin crew too. She peered at him through thick lensed, heavy black framed spectacles and beckoned him forward. Henry looked around to make sure it was him she wanted but to his disappointment there was no one else.

As he handed the woman his boarding card, his eyes were drawn to the thick dark moustache that adorned her top lip. She misinterpreted his startled curiosity for some form of flirtatious interest and handed him his boarding card back with a disturbing smile. As Henry got back to his seat he noticed her adjusting her dark brown uniform jacket in some sort of vain attempt to pretend that it had anything to do with the figure of the woman underneath it. When she straightened her jacket, her body appeared to move off in another direction entirely. As far as Henry could tell the uniform had been created by dyeing a khaki Soviet army jacket with cold tea and replacing the badges with the insignia of Air Kushtia. You could still see darker patches where the military badges that had been there before had stopped the fabric from fading.

When the fight attendant pulled back the curtain that closed off the boarding ramp he was only too pleased to slide past her and on towards the plane.

As he walked down the ramp he peered out of the window into the gathering gloom of the evening. The aircraft that was waiting for him was no sleek jet but one of the largest propeller driven aircraft that Henry had ever seen. With its thin fuselage, steeply swept back wings and four large engines each carrying two sets of propellers, the thing looked more like a bomber from the cold war than any sort of airliner that Henry had travelled on. He would have to ask his uncle about it, Henry thought, Freddie knew a lot about aircraft. He emerged from the ramp close to tail of the aircraft. Its fin and rudder stretched up high above him. Henry could see the insignia of Air Kushtia on the fin; it appeared to have been painted over a Soviet red star. Maybe his theories about cold war bombers weren't so far off the mark.

The bulky, moustachioed, flight attendant was waiting at the head of the stairway as he climbed up to the rear passenger door. Henry was a bit puzzled as to how she might have got there given that she hadn't passed him on the ramp but he managed to squeeze by her. As he did so he realised that it was not, after all, the same woman as had checked his ticket at the gate. He was depressed by the idea that, in Kushtia, maybe all women looked like this.