Will and Rob, who’d thoroughly enjoyed our rapid ascent, began calling out familiar sights as we swept over them: Anscombe Manor, the Pym sisters’ house, St. George’s Church, Hodge Farm. Each place-name brought a neighbor’s face to mind, and a host of memories. I thought of how snugly my family fit into the tight-knit tapestry of everyday life in our tiny English village, and my anger at Abaddon surged. With a few malicious keystrokes, he’d robbed us of our home, our village, our place in the world. Using fear as a weapon, he’d torn our family apart and turned us into fleeing refugees. If I ever got my hands on him, I told myself, I wouldn’t need a flamethrower. My rage alone would burn him to a crisp.
“Snacks in the overhead for anyone who’s peckish!” Sir Percy’s voice roared in my headset. “Special treats for junior airmen!”
I’d lost all interest in food, but the boys were perpetually hungry, so I retrieved two bright red plastic boxes from the overhead compartment. I was afraid that the special treats would be sugary concoctions guaranteed to send my overexcited five-year-olds into orbit, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that the boxes contained bananas, nuts, carrot sticks, peanut butter crackers, and small bottles of juice. The special treats turned out to be inedible: two pairs of small but powerful binoculars, two large boxes of crayons, and two sketch pads. The sight of the crayons warmed my heart. Sir Percy might be a busy man, with many irons in many fires, but he’d somehow managed to remember the twins’ love of drawing.
I left the boys happily munching, peering, and coloring, and returned to my seat to watch the countryside slide by beneath us. I knew that Sir Percy owned at least two estates in Scotland and tried for a while to figure out which one he was taking us to, but the helicopter changed directions so often that I soon gave up. It was as if Sir Percy were taking evasive action in order to elude our enemy. I wondered if the maneuvers were necessary—a chilling thought—or if they were just Sir Percy’s idea of fun.
“Percy?” I said, pushing a button that I hoped would exclude the twins from our conversation.
“At your service,” Sir Percy boomed back.
“Can the boys hear us?” I asked.
“Not if they’re wearing their headphones,” he replied. “Unless you start shouting, of course, and even then you’d need the lungs of an opera singer to get through to them. The headsets are designed to keep noise to a minimum.What’s on your mind, old thing?”
“Are we being followed? By something other than a flock of geese?” I added hastily, to preempt a humorous reply.
“Not as far as I can tell,” said Sir Percy, “but one never knows. Better safe than sorry, I always say.”
I doubted that he’d ever said such a thing in his life. The Percy Pelham I knew drove fast cars, flew jets, scaled mountains, and raced yachts on stormy seas. He’d almost always rather be sorry than safe, but it was possible that he’d curbed his addiction to risk-taking for our sakes.
“How soon will we land?” I asked.
“Impatient, are we?” Sir Percy returned.
“Not impatient,” I said, “just curious. Bill wouldn’t tell me where we’re going because he was afraid I’d tell someone else, but there’s no one to tell up here, so I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you told me. Go ahead, Percy, spill the beans.”
“Not for a thousand gold sovereigns,” he responded stoutly. “It would spoil the surprise. You like surprises, don’t you, Lori?”
“Not as much as I used to,” I said. “I’ve had a few too many of them in the past twenty-four hours.”
“Courage, my dear,” Sir Percy said bracingly. “You’ve one hundred and twenty channels of music and other entertainment to choose from. Avail yourself of them. It’ll do you good to relax.”
“If you insist,” I said, and after checking in with the boys, who were absorbed in making highly detailed drawings of fantastic helicopters, I followed Sir Percy’s advice. Although it felt a bit like fiddling while Rome burned, I pushed buttons on the headset controls until I heard an actor reading The Wind in the Willows, settled back in my capacious seat, and confounded my own prediction by falling instantaneously into a deep and mercifully untroubled sleep.
Four
When I awoke, we were flying low over the sea. It had to be the sea, because even the largest lakes in the United Kingdom didn’t stretch out to the horizon in endless, rolling swells, but whether it was the North Sea or the Atlantic Ocean, I couldn’t tell.
A glance at my wristwatch told me that I’d been asleep for nearly an hour. Will and Rob, who were now engaged in drawing fantastic whales, sharks, and octopi, looked up from their sketch pads and bobbed their heads cheerfully at me. I switched my headset back to intercom mode—cutting off, with some regret, a dramatic recitation of Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”—and asked them if Sir Percy had said anything about our destination while I slept, but Percy broke in before they could reply.