Departures by Tony Parsons

Author:Tony Parsons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Chapter Five

No Tower for Old Men

Through the smoked glass of the control tower, the Jumbo 747 first revealed itself to Spike as if it were a star above a distant manger, a glittering point of white light in the ink-blue sky.

It was the hour before dawn on a midsummer’s day and Spike loved this moment.

Because the star was always getting bigger, and getting closer, and the naked eye of the young man in the Air Traffic Control tower could make out other stars, other bright pinpoints of light stacked up behind it, and he knew that these lights were the first arrivals of the new day, the night flights from Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok.

There was a bank of screens before Spike but his eyes were on the sky, and the pinpoints of light above the distant London skyline.

There were three 200-ton planes up there – twenty-five miles away, twenty miles away and fifteen miles away respectively – their nine hundred passengers coming awake to see the sprawl of London beneath them. Three giant aircraft, heading this way at the end of their journey through the night.

And young Spike was going to land them all safe and sound before he had his morning macchiato.

Now he looked at the bank of screens. The Jumbo from Hong Kong appeared as a flight number – BA26 – an altitude – 9000 feet – and the ID of the airport where it was landing – LL for Heathrow. Just a bunch of letters and numbers on a screen, moving with the jerkiness of some video game from the last century. Spike looked at it, and he registered the information, but it was almost subconscious. The most important screen, Spike always said, was the window.

And now a shadow passed across it.

Spike ignored the shadow.

But Earl, Spike’s lighting operator, stirred at the sight of the shadow falling across the window. Earl was sitting on the lower level of the tower, the perimeter, and from up on the podium Spike heard his lighting operator chuckle to himself.

‘Final approach,’ Spike said calmly to the pilot of the 747. It was no longer a shining light in a summer sky but a recognizable wide-body four-engine aircraft capable of flying 345 people across 8000 miles at over 600 miles an hour without once touching the ground. ‘Speedbird 26 established on Instrument Landing System,’ Spike said. ‘Continue approach, clear to land. Wind speed thirty knots at fourteen hundred feet. Stand eighteen. Follow the greens.’

The 747 came out of the sky. Earl had lit up a string of green lights that would guide the pilot safely to his aircraft’s designated stand. These were the greens – a unique lighting system that meant that nobody was going to hit the 747, and he was not going to hit anything.

‘Left on Bravo, hold on Link four-one-seven,’ Spike said. ‘Follow the greens.’

‘The shadow’s back,’ Earl said. ‘Check it out, Spike.’

Finally Spike looked at the shadow on the glass.

There was a window cleaner on the outside of the Air Traffic Control tower.

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