The snake was back. It had long stayed hidden, somewhere in those well-cloaked dark chambers of his consciousness, keeping warm from his despair, nourished by his nightmares. Yet now it had awoken from its hideous slumber and was reasserting itself with renewed strength.
What was she planning? Did Kaja want to make the plane crash? Was she even capable?
Mats felt the python of fear wrap tighter around his chest with every question. Tighter than the cuffs around his wrists and feet.
What have I done? What have I set in motion?
If it was true that crashing the plane had never been the blackmailer’s true goal, then it also made sense that the perpetrator was here on board. And if Nele’s fate was completely separate from that of all these people on board, then it was ultimately his fault if a catastrophe were to now happen after all.
‘I should have known better.’ Mats recalled Kaja’s last words. There could only be one explanation. She was in on it. She’d known he would try to break her mentally. A fellow conspirator who thought she could play a part in the charade and withstand his attempts at psychological manipulation.
‘But you were simply too good, Dr Krüger.’
He had achieved the unexpected and triggered her despite all expectations. Presumably with the video where he’d spotted something that had remained hidden from all involved until this point. And now Kaja really was a living hand grenade whose pin he’d pulled and who at this very moment was seeking out some extremely vulnerable location somewhere on board. Ready to explode there.
‘Damn it!’
Mats could hardly get air. The panic throttled his breathing and made the pressure inside his head swell like a diver sinking deeper and deeper into the ocean of his greatest fears. His ears hurt, his eyes teared, and the latter made him recall the last thing that caught his eye.
The cigarette!
On the table.
Kaja had stubbed it out carelessly, leaving a black burn mark on the fine pale wood.
Hurriedly, hands trembling, without any caution. Which was why a nearly invisible thread of smoke was now rising up to the cabin ceiling from the tip of the crumpled butt.
It was still burning!
It burned with only a dull glow, a reminder of its former blaze, little more than a dying echo.
And yet… It was his only chance. Possibly the last chance of his life.
Mats leaned over the table as far as his cuffs let him, but it was hopeless. He wasn’t near enough.
The cigarette lay a couple of centimetres from his chin, but it might as well have been a metre since the result was the same: he couldn’t get hold of it.
He stretched out his tongue for the smouldering stub, but that was pointless too. Plus trying that only increased the danger that he’d end up extinguishing the cigarette.
Mats looked around.
The glass, the remote, the water bottle – all out of reach.
He was like a man dying of thirst before a soda vending machine. He let his head drop to the table in frustration and screamed out loud. In his despair he’d forgotten about his broken nose. It now felt as if he’d deliberately jammed a screwdriver through his crushed septum.
He struggled to keep his senses and wondered, as he landed back on the side of consciousness from that smouldering ledge of pain-scorched darkness, if he shouldn’t have just let himself black out.
And wondered if Nele was feeling the same now.
No, she was guaranteed to be feeling worse. He could only pray that there were no complications with the birth. That someone was caring for her and the baby. But he held out little hope in that regard when he recalled the photo and her scream.
Mats shook his head as if doing so could wipe away the cruel images in his mind. Then he blinked and opened his eyes. It took him a while to notice what had changed.
The cigarette.
On the table.
It had moved. Only a few millimetres, but in the right direction. His head striking the tabletop had shaken it just enough to make a difference.
‘Okay, good, okay,’ Mats said, filled with a euphoria that actually dulled his pain.
Then he did it once more. Let his head fall again, this time only letting his forehead strike the surface. That alone was still enough to send the pain shooting from his teeth to behind his eyes again. He became nauseous. Yet he was also delighted because the cigarette had again hopped in the direction that could save him. And it was still glowing, which was why he did it again. And again. And again.
Until he felt a lump the size of a plum on his forehead, like he’d grown a third swollen eye.
With an agility he didn’t know he had as a non-smoker, he used his tongue to flip the butt about fifty degrees until he could grab the filter end between his lips. Then he sucked on it.
Greedily, like an addict. His eyes kept watering, now from the pain, so he couldn’t see if the glow was increasing again, but he could taste it. Next to the iron and mucus in his mouth he suddenly tasted something wood-like, scratching at his throat. He smelled the smoke in the same breath. And now he saw that the gentle thread had become a column. Yet his inner joy didn’t last long.
It now had to be proven if this idea he’d formed under fear of death truly was feasible.
Plenty spoke against it.
For one, he could still only use his mouth for placing the burning glow on the right spot.
And it was entirely possible that he wouldn’t only singe the plastic of his cuffs. There was also his skin under them, around them.
But he had no choice, and he needed to use the time he had – no matter how much he had left. Especially now that the fear snake had loosened its grip again somewhat and seemed to have returned to lying in wait on high alert.
Here goes…
Mats raised his wrists, leaned down and pressed the cigarette onto the plastic around his left wrist. He sucked in air, and the unfamiliar smoke in his lungs made him cough. The cigarette slipped and struck his skin, which didn’t hurt at first but was then so harsh that he nearly dropped the cigarette from his mouth.
Don’t scream or your lips will move, he warned himself and only tried expressing his total anguish with moaning, whimpering. He needed to utter some kind of noise. Burns caused the worst torment on earth. No one endured them silently.
Just like no woman endured a silent birth.
Again Mats couldn’t help thinking about Nele and that drawn-out, misery-filled ‘Fuuuuuhhh’ of hers, and this time the horrible memory motivated him to try once more.
To direct his mouth to his hands, to suck in, to press the glowing butt to the plastic. To suppress the pain, to whimper, to ignore the hissing singe and to keep the stub touching the cuff longer and longer, even though he could already feel the burn hole not just eating through plastic but through his wrist and down to the bone.
‘Yeesss!’
He yelled and jerked his head up again, yanking his arms outwards at the same time, and his yell sputtered out in horror when he realised that he still was not free, that his hands were still bound together. Yet he’d lost the butt. It had fallen from his mouth and off the table’s edge and onto the floor. Half a metre from his feet, which might as well have been kilometres away.
‘Noooo!’
Mats jerked on the cuffs like a man possessed, pulling his hands apart, banging them on the table’s edge, heaving his arms apart with all his power and even hitting himself on the chin when the plastic suddenly gave way. At its weakest point, damaged by the heat.
‘Yes, yes, yes!’
Mats kept yelling but now from joy and relief.
His hands were free. Now it was on to the glass, which he could shatter and use the shards to undo the rest of the cuffs.
The urge to act surged through him. For the first time he felt confident he could influence this crisis through actions of his own.
Until the in-flight announcement from Kaja Claussen so abruptly destroyed his hopes:
‘Attention, this applies to all passengers, pilots, and crew. Remain calm. Do not try anything stupid. If anyone thinks of standing up and tries to overpower me, or if altitude, speed or anything else changes – we’ll all die instantly!’