Invisible Drone
Dinner at the Hansens was always messy when Humphrey did the cooking. Charlie’s intervention didn’t help. Both regarded themselves as experts in the culinary arts and refused to take advice. Kirstin recalled the saying about too many cooks and spoilt broth. It was as true now as it had ever been. She left the kitchen and joined David in the dining room. He wanted to talk about her granddaughter Elizabeth.
‘Have you any recent photos of Lizzie?’ he asked.
Kirstin produced a photo album. Elizabeth was passionate about David. He was five years older and had flitted back and forth in her life since they were children. Kirstin couldn’t imagine a better relationship. She found a photograph of Elizabeth, in a swimming costume, posing beside a bronze mermaid.
‘Where is she now?’ David asked.
‘She finished her studies in Copenhagen and enrolled in a linguistics course at the University of British Columbia. That’s in Vancouver. I have a cousin there and she is living with her.’
‘Charlie says she’s a talent spotter for free operators.’
‘She is,’ Kirstin nodded. ‘Lizzie has put him in contact with people who can provide the sort of expertise he needs.’
‘That’s a bit of a laugh …’
‘In what way?’
‘Some people are recruited. Others get sucked in. That’s what happened to me. I guess the same happened to Lizzie.’
‘She wasn’t sucked in,’ Kirstin protested. ‘Elizabeth forced her way in against her father’s wishes. Humphrey was determined to shield her from the hazards of our way of life.’
They were interrupted by Humphrey’s booming voice.
‘Dinner is served. Come and get it.’
He appeared, carrying a steaming casserole. Charlie followed with a tray of dishes. A rich aroma of fresh spices filled the air. Humphrey placed the casserole on the table and Charlie arranged the dishes around it. A bottle of vintage wine was uncorked.
Kirstin sat down and David took his place beside her. She was pleased to see that Humphrey and Charlie were careful to limit their intake of wine to a few glasses. She and David stuck to mineral water. This wasn’t a party. It was a business meeting.
The meal ended. Charlie cleared away the dishes and Humphrey produced a sheet of butcher’s paper. It was time for a case diagram. Kirstin sat back. It was like old times again. Sir George insisted on case diagrams. Kirstin and Charlie had been trained by him and they always used them.
Charlie selected a felt pen and drew a circle in the middle of the sheet. That was the defining point. A mistake could set them off on the wrong foot. He turned to David.
‘What do I write here?’
‘Flight-145,’ David said.
‘Agreed,’ Charlie nodded. ‘The case begins with the missing flight. I’ve checked the details with my contacts in the aviation industry. The plane was a Boeing-717, modified to accommodate sleeping and office facilities. There were five crew members and twenty-five passengers on board.
He included the information in the diagram and looked up.
‘Humphrey thinks the flight was droned.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ David asked.
‘Taken over by a third party. We think that’s what happened to the plane Humphrey and I were in … the one I told you about.’
‘When you were forced to bail out?’
‘That’s right. The plane continued on its merry way and crashed into Mont Blanc. It was quite a spectacle. Some mountain guides recorded the event. They had reached the summit with their parties and had them lined up for a video when the plane arrived out of the blue.
The videos went viral. People were passing them around. Humphrey and I spent hours studying them. At first, we were reminded of the cruise missiles that knocked out Saddam Hussein’s blockhouses during the First Gulf War. They were programmed to hug the ground and follow a programmed route to their target.’
‘Do you think that happened to you?’
‘No, David. I put the plane on autopilot after we left Rome and everything felt fine until I tried to go onto manual. After that it was like flying a plane with dual controls … and another pilot had taken over.’
‘That got us thinking about drone missiles,’ Humphrey said.
‘You mean like those used against insurgents?’
‘Yes. They are flown by a pilot sitting at a desk and sending instructions by radio. He might be in the warzone or a long way from it. Distance doesn’t matter so long as the signals get through.’
David rocked back on his chair and pursed his lips. Kirstin could almost see him thinking. He didn’t have Charlie’s skills with foreign languages or Humphrey’s knowledge of computers but he had a good basic grasp of how things worked.
‘You think someone tampered with your plane?’
‘Precisely, David. We think it was converted into a drone. Perhaps during servicing. Maybe at some other time. A competent team could have completed the transformation in a few hours. A single person would have taken longer. That would be my way of doing it. The fewer people involved the better.’
‘And you didn’t notice anything?’
’No,’ Charlie shook his head. ‘You wouldn’t in a modern plane. Pilots don’t pull levers anymore. The same goes for cars. Drivers once used muscle power. Then power steering came in. The next big change was when computers came on the scene. Drivers and pilots now rely on them and computers can be accessed from outside. It’s no longer necessary to break into the pilot’s cabin to hijack a plane. You can do it from the other side of the world if the plane has been suitably modified.’
‘It’s a frightening thought.’
‘It is, David, and it doesn’t stop there. Have you ever wondered why you are told to turn off computing devices during take-off and landing? The message for humble passengers is that their computers can stuff things up. Even without trying they can menace the operation of a plane. Think what they could do if they tried.’
‘You think that happened to Flight-145?’
‘It’s a distinct possibility.’
‘And the plane that hit Mont Blanc?’
‘Ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain. It was a precision shot. The plane zeroed in on the summit. The investigators were amazed by what happened but couldn’t find anything to explain it. There were no charred bodies and no black box because the plane wasn’t carrying one. Everything that could burn had burnt. The plane’s electronic circuitry was totally destroyed. The incident has gone down in the annals of aviation history as an unexplained mystery.’
‘I think of it as an invisible drone,’ Kirstin remarked.
‘A what?’
‘Invisible drone, Humphrey. It’s one of those things that you fail to see because you think it is something else. It looks like a normal plane but it is really a drone.’
Humphrey crossed out Droned Plane? in the case diagram and replaced it by Invisible Drone? Then he wrote Olaf Magnusson? beside it and drew a line connecting the two.
‘Who is Olaf Magnusson?’ David asked.
‘A clever fellow who invented a control system for drones and failed to take out a proper patent. He accused the companies that manufacture drones of bribing his attorney to make a bum job of the patent application. He could be right for all I know. At any rate, he lost a lot of money when he should have gained a fortune. It made him very bitter.’
‘What’s that got to do with the plane crash?’
‘Magnusson was staying at a tourist chalet near the Saint Bernard Pass when we dropped in. He was more than a little surprised to see us. We met him at dinner and had a confused conversation. Then a sinister-looking fellow arrived and Olaf took off. I had seen him with Olaf at a conference in Rome. He never let Olaf out of his sight.’
‘Like he was Olaf’s minder?’
‘Precisely.’
‘Is that the only thing to connect him with the plane?’
‘No. The patent attorney, who let Olaf down, died in a mysterious car crash. The man’s widow sued the car’s manufacturer, claiming that the vehicle’s cruise control had malfunctioned. The manufacturer produced convincing evidence to prove otherwise. Witnesses described how the car left the road and made a series of complicated manoeuvres before crashing through a fence and plunging into a reservoir. A coronial court recorded a verdict of suicide.’
‘You think the car was converted into an invisible drone?’
‘I think that is a distinct possibility,’ Humphrey smiled. ‘At any rate, Kirstin and I intend to go to Europe to see if we can track down Olaf Magnusson. On the way, we shall visit an elderly fellow, called Steven Mason, who is a close friend of the de Villiers family.’
He handed the felt pen to Charlie.
‘Tell us about the de Villiers.’
‘The missing plane belonged to the Simon de Villiers Foundation,’ Charlie said. ‘In his day, Simon was one of the world’s great mining moguls. His interests stretched from gold and diamonds in South Africa to copper and other minerals in South America. His eldest son, Richard, now heads the de Villiers empire. Richard is best known as a political activist and environmentalist. He is also an exceedingly rich and powerful man.
Richard married a black lady who died some years ago. They had two daughters. Steven has met both of them. Petra is twenty-two and of a serious disposition. Anna is five years older. She is a very different sort of lady.’
