'Hurry! Hurry!' Whale yelped.

  I thought of suggesting that he take the parachute and make the crawl himself if he was so keen on getting the shot, but I didn't. I checked the 'chute, unbuckled and hoisted myself over the side of the cockpit onto the wing. The wind whistled past me and plucked at the flaps of my jacket and the ends of the parachute straps. I tried not to look down as I edged along the strut gripping the uprights and moving by inches.

  'Okay, Dick?' Boyd yelled. I wondered what he expected me to do – give him a thumbs up? I clung on and inched forward. Luckily, I knew the structure of an aircraft wing – where the strength was and wasn't. Boyd kept the plane rock steady, I'll say that for him, and if I'd been bolder I could have got out and back to the camera in a matter of seconds.

  'Hurry! Hurry up!' This was Whale shouting as I crept forward. My stomach had left for the ground long ago; I had none of the pill confidence left. I was all on my own and making a hash of it. I was close to freezing when the plane listed a little and I had to grab harder. I looked down.

  Wisps of cloud floated just below me. I could see roads, some of them snaking across the landscape, others ruler-straight. The roads were yellow, I don't know why. The worst thing was the feeling of speed – the ground seemed to be moving rapidly and not in any uniform way. The blades of the propeller were slicing up the air and they seemed to be only inches away. Then, in a horrible surge, a lurching, head-pounding rush, the wish to leap out into space took hold of me. I wanted to dive towards the ground and be swallowed up. I ground my teeth, clawed my way forward and moved the switch on the camera.

  I heard the cameraman yell and felt Boyd correct as a wind gust hit the plane, but I have no memory at all of getting back into my seat. One minute I was out on the wing, the next I was in the cockpit fumbling with buckles.

  'Well done,' Whale said. Then he laughed, 'You should've asked for the grand.'

  I didn't care. I was too busy feeling the different parts of my body reuniting as the all-over trembling abated.

  'We're set, Mr Whale,' the cameraman said.

  'You know the plan,' Whale rasped. 'Follow it. You sure the camera's right?'

  'Hundred per cent. Here we go. Mr Kelly, will you tell Mr Boyd we're shooting?'

  It had been a long time, it seemed, since I'd heard such respect in a man's voice. Heroes must hear it all the time but you learn to live without it. I grunted something to Boyd who nodded and banked left.

  The mock Gotha lumbered through the skies and the fighters burst out of the clouds and began to buzz around it like angry wasps. Wilson made a few turns and lost height; the fighters came in firing. During the war, don't ask me how, they'd devised a way for planes to shoot forward, through the props. Before that it had been all back and sideways firing which was much less spectacular and effective. Now the fighters buzzed and blazed, raking the bomber from end to end. Smoke billowed from the Gotha; Wilson kicked it into a spin and jumped.

  Everyone in my plane cheered as we saw the 'chute open. I could hear the camera whirring and Whale was sucking air in through his teeth as he watched the bomber spin towards the ground. Joe Boyd was singing some terrible fly-boy song –

  Ten thousand feet up in the air

  I haven't got a single care

  or something like that. The bomber came down in a rocky field, still spinning, seemingly gaining speed. It hit and a sheet of flame ripped through it burning like a beacon in a mass of dense, dark smoke.

  I spotted Hughes' scout plane cruising above us and then everything seemed to go crazy. Hughes' plane swooped towards the ground and the fighters circled, broke pattern and regrouped and began to peel off, all trying to find landing spots at once. I had my eye on Hughes' plane. It was making for the place where the bomber was burning.

  'Christ,' I said. 'He's going to land on top of it.' I was very peeved. I'd been looking forward to getting down and being the hero of the hour. A thousand bucks was nothing to Hughes; I didn't see why I shouldn't have it, and a gallon of whisky and a lot of back-slapping besides. Now it looked as if nobody would care. 'What the hell's going on?' I yelled at Whale.

  The Fokker's motor was quiet as Boyd made a stately descent but I could still barely hear what he said he spoke so quietly.

  'Only one 'chute opened. Phil went down with the plane.'

  23

  There was a hell of a flap on the ground. Hughes had risked life and limb (his and his pilot's) to land on a rock-strewn stretch near the crashed Sikorsky. But it was no use; the plane was burning and Jones was already dead when they got to him. It was all shouts and clanging bells; the heroism of yours truly got completely lost in the shuffle. Al Wilson had landed soft as a feather a mile away and when he got out of the car that had brought him to the crash everyone surrounded him, babbling questions.

  What happened, Al?'

  'Did he get stuck, Al?'

  Wilson was white-faced and shaking. Someone gave him a cigarette and he had trouble holding his mouth steady enough to get it lit.

  Why didn't he jump, Al?'

  Wilson shrugged and drew on his cigarette. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I wasn't there.'

  Hughes left the scene pretty quickly but Whale was on the job. I saw him checking with the cameramen from the different planes. Each nodded. They'd got the shot.

  'That makes four,' Joe Boyd said as we tied down the Spad. 'Counting the three pilots got killed before. How much d'they reckon this thing's gonna cost?'

  'I heard four million.'

  He shook his head. 'Not worth it. Look, Dick,' he leaned towards me and I smelt the liquor on his breath. I was glad I hadn't known about that when we went up. We should hit Whale for the grand on that wing-walking stunt.'

  'We?'

  'Sure. You need a witness, bit of pressure applied. Specially after what's happened. If you're willing to split it with me I'll get to work on it.'

  That was Hollywood for you – in mourning one minute and counting cash the next. But there was no way to beat the system. 'OK, Joe,' I said. 'Fifty-fifty.'

  Along with some of the other fliers and members of the film crew we went drinking at a roadhouse on Sunset. Joe was secretly celebrating his five hundred; the others were holding a wake for Phil Jones; I was wishing I had Terri's shoulder to cry on and trying not to think about meeting up with anyone named MacKnight. We made an afternoon, an evening and a night of it. I don't remember many details. There was a lot of bad singing and cursing of Hughes which only stopped when an assistant editor who was rough-cutting the rushes raised his glass in a toast.

  'Gennlemen,' he said, 'le's drink a toas' to a four million dollar turkey.'

  Everyone around the table fell silent. We'd all put a lot of work into the picture and to even the drunkest of us four men's lives and four million bucks meant something.

  Whaddya mean, Ed?' Boyd rasped. 'You're cuttin' the stuff, ain't ya? You mean to tell us it's no good?'

  "S good. 'S great. Wunnerful action. Brrroooowwww . . .' He emptied his glass and buzzed the table with it. Boyd grabbed his hand.

  'What the hell d'you mean by calling it a turkey, then?'

  The editor shook free and poured another drink from the litter of bottles on the table. 'It's magnif'cent film. But it's silent! Mar'my words. By the time it's released, silent films won' be worth a dime.'

  He burst into laughter and everyone joined in. They toasted the turkey and someone tried to order one from the kitchen. The party got a new lease of life from that moment. It was as if the failure of the film was the right monument to the dead men – don't ask me why. You can see that Howard Hughes hadn't exactly won the hearts and minds of the people who worked for him.

  I woke up on the back seat of the Dodge. The flies' buzzing sounded as loud as the planes in a Hell's Angels' dogfight and my mouth felt as if I'd been drinking aviation fuel. It was noon; I'd parked the Dodge any old how the night before and now I wished I'd put it under a tree. The sun was high and I badly needed a drink. I also needed some courage because, mysteriously, a plan of action had come to me through the booze haze sometime in the last twelve hours. It was Thursday; MacKnight had said to contact him after Friday but only an idiot gives an adversary the upper hand like that. At the very least I'd take a look at Mr MacKnight before we met and, with any luck, I'd hit on a way to neutralise him.

  The address was Highland Avenue, way back down the Boulevard. I found a pair of sunglasses in the car, hooked them on with difficulty, nearly poking an eye out, and drove west. In those days that part of Hollywood was a mixture of business and residential. It wasn't a place you would go to if you had a lot of money but neither would you fit in if you had none. That's the worst kind of person to deal with: someone who has some money always wants more. I felt very shaky; there were various MacKnights at my wedding and very big, strapping chaps some of them had been. Others, cousins and such, were positively weedy. There were young and old among them; I was hoping for one of the old, weedy ones.

  I stopped somewhere near Las Palmas and bought a bottle at a place I knew would sell a man a bottle if he needed it badly enough and had enough money. I don't remember what was in it, maybe there was no name for it, but I do remember that there Was a good few swallows less of it by the time I got to the bungalow court on Highland Avenue which MacKnight had given as his address.

  The smallish houses were situated around a wild, rather overgrown patch of garden. Grass had broken through the gravel drive in spots, and trees and creeper vines couldn't quite conceal the fact that paint was peeling off wood. It was the sort of place the studios parked actors they couldn't use but didn't want to discard, or where companies kept space for their travelling salesmen or where divorced wives lived. Or blackmailers. Cash for the rent and clear away your own bottles.

  I snooped, located the right bungalow and prowled around it. No car, no bottles out back, no mail in the box. The place looked empty but not uninhabited; there was something about it, the half-drawn blinds on some windows, the flattened grass beside the path (that time with the Indians hadn't been entirely wasted) that indicated occupancy. I steeled myself to break in at the rickety-looking back window.

  'Dick Browning?'

  Everything about the sound made me jump – the Australian tone, the confidence and, above all, the closeness. I was standing by a tree looking at the back of the house and he was by another tree not twenty feet away. It's an odd thing but I remember that the trees were gums. They're all over California. He was just as I'd feared – six foot two if an inch, with a chin like a rock. Huge shoulders; a rowing eights type; they tend to be fiercely family-minded and unimaginative. The white suit and hand-painted tie probably weren't what they were wearing in Melbourne that year, but he was still a figure of terror and retribution to me.

  'Ah,' I said.

  He shoved a great red, meaty paw at me. 'Rupe MacKnight.' I caught just a faint tang of Californian under the Australian tone. It became stronger when he added, 'Attorney at law.'

  'Jesus,' I said, 'and you'd be Elizabeth's . . . ?'

  'Cousin.' He'd been gripping my hand in a circulation-cutting way all this time, now he let it drop. 'Her father and mine are brothers. You ever meet your Uncle Angus? Uncle by marriage, that is? He wasn't at the wedding.'

  I shook my head.

  'A real bastard,' MacKnight said. 'Well, let's go inside and get to it. We've got a lot to talk about.'

  In fact I was thinking of running, but by this time he had his heavy arm around my shoulders and was steering me towards the front of the house. He let himself in, talking and shoulder-gripping the whole time; I wasn't sure but I thought he might be frisking me.

  'Got a jug back here.' He made a mock-conspiratorial skip as we passed from the hallway into the kitchen. 'I figure you for a drinking man.' He was getting more Californian by the second. If I'd been wiser in the ways of the world I'd have considered recruiting him to my side. It's been my experience that men and women who can't decide which nationality they are can be 'turned', as the intelligence people say. I . . . [The tape becomes indistinct at this point as Browning breaks off. The tape apparently still ran for a time but attempts to reconstruct what was recorded have so far failed. At a guess, Browning was about to allude to some experience in 'the intelligence community' but thought better of it and moved back from the microphone. It is possible that audible references to this as yet unsuspected aspect of his life history may emerge in later tapes. Ed.]

  We went out to a garden bench, table and chairs under pine trees at the back of the house. MacKnight carried the pottery jug by the handle. I suppose, I could have disappeared into the trees at this point but there were a number of things against that. In the first place, he didn't appear violent. Secondly, he knew me by sight and would be able to find me if he tried. Third, there was a comforting sloshing sound in the jug. Fourth, though fearful, I was curious and, despite myself, ready to hear news from home.

  'Take a seat, Mr Browning, sir. Be a while since anyone called you that, I'll bet.'

  I sat on one of the seats, lit a Camel and didn't say anything. MacKnight took a swig from the jug, wiped the lip with the back of his hand and passed it over. I had a cautious belt.

  'Biding your time, I see. That's wise.' He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and extracted a fat wallet. From one of its compartments he extracted a newspaper cutting. We exchanged – the jug for the cutting. The clipping was from the Melbourne Argus and it showed the immediate aftermath of Hughes' crash in the Morse. I was there among the helping hands; full face, looking up, clipped moustache, no goggles, no helmet. Just good old Dick Browning as large as life.

  I heard the jug slosh as MacKnight lowered it; I reached out blindly and he hooked my finger through the handle.

  'Elizabeth saw the picture and got in touch with me. She knew I'd opened a practice in these parts. Be years since we met, mind.' He grinned. "Bout the same for you, I'd guess. How did you get to America?'

  I let the corn liquor slide down while my mind raced back over my entrances and exits from America. I was confused. By plane was it? No, mule. Or was it boat? Yes, that was it.

  'Stowaway,' I muttered.

  'Illegal entry. My God, has she got the goods on you!'

  What d'you mean?'

  'Why we've been in correspondence some time now. Lot of family gossip, of course, but also tin tacks. Elizabeth is discreet about it but I'm given to understand that you could face charges back home – civil and military.'

  'Civil?'

  He beckoned for the jug. I'd left the cigarettes on the table and he shook one out and examined it in his thick, blunt fingers. 'Matter of assault on a railway train. Serious injuries resulting. Also fraud proceedings in respect of . . . ah . . . Brown Knight Films, I believe.'

  'That'd be old Campbell's doing,' I said bitterly.

  'Very likely. But you see the spot you're in. You've as good as admitted illegal entry . . .'

  'No, I . . .'

  He held up his hand. 'Doesn't matter. Working under a false name. Tax problems for sure. And I've done a little sniffing Dick, old son. There's a matter of a yacht.'

  'Jesus.'

  'I'm glad you dropped by early. Gives us a bit more time to sort things out. Now, Elizabeth's a slighted woman, very badly damaged emotionally and so on. You follow me.'

  I stubbed out my cigarette and lit another. MacKnight replaced the one he'd taken. 'No,' I said.

  'I'm sure you do. Deserting a woman in that state

  'State? What the hell d'you mean? New South Wales? She was a train ride from home, sort of.' 'She was pregnant, Dick.' 'Pregnant?'

  'You're the father of a child who's, let me see, going on eight now, or is it nine.'

  My hand shook as I took the jug. 'Boy or girl?'

  'You're not to know. Elizabeth wants a divorce.'

  I swallowed gratefully. 'Well, of course, after all this time she . . .'

  'And money.'

  'Money?'

  'Twenty five thousand dollars to be exact. That's your own true wife's price for not dumping you in the shit.'

  24

  It was just the sort of unreasonable demand Elizabeth would make. Where the hell would I get twenty-five thousand dollars? MacKnight took out a handkerchief and mopped his face. We were half in the sun and the day was warm. I was sweating inside my leather jacket. I peeled it off and some papers fell out of the pocket. MacKnight leaned forward quickly and grabbed them.

  'Hey,' I said.

  'Come, come, cousin. What do we have here?'

  There was a cheque book and a few other bits of Aussie Air paperwork – fuel bills and the like. MacKnight smiled as he handed them back. 'Told you I'd done some sniffing. Not a bad little concern, this company of yours. Your interest's worth a few dollars, I'd say.'

  The liquor had soothed the hangover and the tobacco slowly unravelled my nerves. Perhaps things weren't too bad after all, I thought. Divorce from Elizabeth – that was a plus, and maybe I could extract some promise of silence from her as part of the deal. An affidavit even. And the work on the picture was coming to an end. I wasn't sure that I wanted to be part of an expanded Aussie Air. Maybe it was time to sell out. How much was the thing worth? Then a wave of excitement hit me. Divorced from Elizabeth, I could marry Terri! Maybe that was what she was holding out for all along. Things began to look rosy. I had another drink. A child in Australia, eh? One I'd never seen and probably never would see. Well, you can't have everything.

  'Mr MacKnight,' I said. 'I think we can do business.'

  We finished the jug and in the process I found that MacKnight was not a bad chap. Grasping and ambitious, of course, but all the MacKnights were like that. He had no love of the clan himself and had come to the States to get away from them.

  'Father wanted me to be a stock and station agent. C'n you imagine that?'

  I looked at his white suit, now a little grubby around the edges from spilt liquor and the ash from the small, black cigars he had begun smoking. He was wearing wingtip shoes, I noticed, and silk socks.

 

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