Most of them were sleeping. Women, men, children. Exhausted from all the ticket and passport and baggage checks, weary from the long wait before boarding. Lulled by the engine purring, full from warmed-over prepared meals, the cabin lights already dimmed. Only a few passengers had switched on reading lights and many, their faces glowing from their monitors changing colours with every scene, had their eyes closed. They’d fallen asleep during the movie.
Sleep. Such a merciful state of unconsciousness.
Mats felt his way along the aisle of the lower passenger area, his eyes stinging from tears, and his inner unease swelled the closer he got to the wings.
One of the passengers had pulled down their shade despite the darkness, which was smart if you didn’t want to be woken by the sunrise in a few hours.
As long as they were all still alive.
Mats prayed that Feli really had found out something that could save Nele’s life without endangering the innocent.
He saw a few unoccupied seats on his way back through the plane, now orphaned place holders for the lucky ones who’d changed or missed their flight or hadn’t flown for some other reason and because of that would still be able to enjoy their lives tomorrow.
Apart from the seats he’d booked himself, though, almost all taken. A young couple in row 31 had made themselves comfortable across four seats and by the time the plane took off must have been feeling pretty lucky about having so much room. And an older man with thick-framed glasses used the empty spot between him and a sleeping woman as his shelf for the various documents he apparently needed to work on, tapping away at his laptop. Otherwise the rows hardly showed any open spaces.
If this lunatic somehow managed to make his goal a reality, 626 people would die. Murdered, insidiously.
By me.
The aeroplane glided along straight as a board, yet it felt to Mats like he was having to climb a mountain. It seemed to take forever for him to finally reach row 47. He first glanced at Trautmann. That twelve-thousand-dollar pill of his was working perfectly – the businessman slept with his mouth open, snoring, and the strings of drool hanging on the stubble at the corners of his mouth reminded Mats of a bulldog. Trautmann must have woken briefly, since his seat was all the way back. The slight incline could hardly be bringing him much comfort, and the way Trautmann was stuck all crooked in his seat was sure to make itself known in every joint once they landed.
That is, if they hadn’t smashed into the concrete-hard water of the Atlantic by then.
Mats carefully opened the baggage compartment over his seat, slowly and deliberately so that his bag didn’t fall out after possibly shifting on take-off. But his concern was unfounded. He took it out and set it on the outside seat. His Maxalt painkillers were in the outside pocket for easy grabbing. He hastily placed one on his tongue and waited for it to dissolve. He briefly imagined the kink in his neck already loosening its grip somewhat, then opened his eyes again.
Only now had he noticed it.
47F.
A window seat.
It was empty.
In theory there was no cause for alarm or even concern, since the passenger who’d been occupying his seat might have simply woken up and gone to the restroom. Yet Mats had just been on the lookout for empty spots on his way back here, and he was certain that he hadn’t seen this one.
It was dark, sure. And from far off a person might mistake the crumpled blanket for a person and possibly the pillow squashed between the headrest and cabin wall for its head.
Or, maybe not.
Mats looked around. Among the restroom signs, only a single red showed anywhere near. All the other restrooms were free. With the exception of the one he himself visited earlier.
To call his blackmailer.
He considered what to do, asking himself what exactly was troubling him. Considering the clear threat he was currently facing, it was absurd to lose control all because of a passenger who’d earlier been sleeping and was now presumably taking a moment to relieve himself. And yet Mats could feel his aviophobia symptoms flaring up again. Heart racing, sweating, trouble breathing. That snake of fear was tightening its grip and Mats needed to sit down, also to make way for a young father dragging his groggy son in tow, presumably to the restrooms by the end rows.
Trembling, he stroked at his suit trousers restlessly, in an attempt to wipe the sweat from his hands, yet his eyes found seat 47F.
Nothing.
No handbag, at least not under the front seat. No personal objects in the storage net on the back of the front passenger’s seat.
Nothing, apart from a tiny glass ampule. So small that Mats had nearly overlooked it. It was lying under the sky-blue airline blanket, along the depression from the seam of the fabric seat. Mats turned it in his fingers, unsure what he was holding and whether it had any significance. He turned on the reading light and inspected it. The little vial held a gleaming brownish liquid similar to whisky, though it was also possible it was just the coloured glass. He looked around. The restroom ‘occupied’ light that had been on was now out, but there was no one in the aisle. No one finding his way back to row 47.
Well then.
He held the ampule up to his nose. When he didn’t smell anything, he took the next step and opened it, doing so with even more care than he had the baggage compartment, yet that did not prevent its enormous, breathtaking, and wholly transformative power.
Mats shut his eyes and so wished he could scream. With rage, happiness, sadness, pain, despair and delight all at once.
Yet this unsettling scent stimulating all his senses, this unmistakable smell that he thought he’d recognised shortly after take-off, it literally jolted him out of his seat. It wasn’t his body, but his very soul taking a journey back through time. Four years back, to Berlin. To the bedroom of his apartment on Savignyplatz, where he’d once been so happy. Back to then, that last time he had smelled that rare perfume on her.
Back to Katharina, his dying wife.