High Citadel / Landslide Read Online Free Page A

authority; all the authority there is. Now change course or I’ll blow your head off. I can fly this aircraft too, remember.’
    ‘They’d hear you inside,’ said O’Hara.
    ‘I’ve locked the door, and what could they do? They wouldn’t take the controls from the only pilot. But that would be of no consequence to you, O’Hara—you’d be dead.’
    O’Hara saw his finger tighten on the trigger and bit his lip before swinging the control column. The Dakota turned to fly south, parallel to the main backbone of the Andes. Grivas was right, damn him; there was no point in getting himself killed. But what the hell was he up to?
    He settled on the bearing given by Grivas and reached forward to the auto pilot control. Grivas jerked the gun. ‘No, Señor O’Hara; you fly this aircraft—it will give you something to do.’
    O’Hara drew back his hand slowly and grasped the wheel. He looked out to starboard past Grivas at the high peaks drifting by. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked grimly.
    ‘That is of no consequence,’ said Grivas. ‘But it is not very far. We land at an airstrip in five minutes.’
    O’Hara thought about that. There was no airstrip that he knew of on this course. There were no airstrips at all this high in the mountains except for the military strips, and those were on the Pacific side of the Andes chain. He would have to wait and see.
    His eyes flickered to the microphone set on its hook close to his left hand. He looked at Grivas and saw he was not wearing his earphones. If the microphone was switched on then any loud conversation would go on the air and Grivas would be unaware of it. It was definitely worth trying.
    He said to Grivas, ‘There are no airstrips on this course.’ His left hand strayed from the wheel.
    ‘You don’t know everything, O’Hara.’
    His fingers touched the microphone and he leaned over to obstruct Grivas’s vision as much as possible, pretending to study the instruments. His fingers found the switch and he snapped it over and then he leaned back and relaxed. In a loud voice he said, ‘You’ll never get away with this, Grivas; you can’t steal a whole aeroplane so easily. When thisDakota is overdue at Santillana they’ll lay on a search—you know that as well as I do.’
    Grivas laughed. ‘Oh, you’re clever, O’Hara—but I was cleverer. The radio is not working, you know. I took out the tubes when you were talking to the passengers.’
    O’Hara felt a sudden emptiness in the pit of his stomach. He looked at the jumble of peaks ahead and felt frightened. This was country he did not know and there would be dangers he could not recognize. He felt frightened for himself and for his passengers.
III
    It was cold in the passenger cabin, and the air was thin. Señor Montes had blue lips and his face had turned grey. He sucked on the oxygen tube and his niece fumbled in her bag and produced a small bottle of pills. He smiled painfully and put a pill in his mouth, letting it dissolve on his tongue. Slowly some colour came back into his face; not a lot, but he looked better than he had before taking the pill.
    In the seat behind, Miss Ponsky’s teeth were chattering, not with cold but with conversation. Already Miguel Rohde had learned much of her life history, in which he had not the slightest interest although he did not show it. He let her talk, prompting her occasionally, and all the time he regarded the back of Montes’s head with lively black eyes. At a question from Miss Ponsky he looked out of the window and suddenly frowned.
    The Coughlins were also looking out of the window. Mr Coughlin said, ‘I’d have sworn we were going to head that way—through that pass. But we suddenly changed course south.’
    ‘It all looks the same to me,’ said Mrs Coughlin. ‘Just a lot of mountains and snow.’
    Coughlin said, ‘From what I remember, El Puerto de las Aguilas is back there.’
    ‘Oh, Harry, I’m sure you don’t really remember. It’s nearly fifty