Skut looked out the window and watched the sunset. The sky seemed to be on fire burning bright red. Their plane was waiting in line for takeoff on the next leg of the flight from Jakarta to Bombay. It had been excruciatingly hot out on the tarmac, where only a few seconds of the humid heat caused one's shirt to be soaked in sweat. Inside the plane it was pleasantly cool; in Tallinn it would likely be well below freezing right then.
Haddock and Calculus had argued again during the stopover in Jakarta, but neither Tintin nor Skut understood nor even cared why. The plane had taken on additional passengers, and Haddock and Calculus were squeezed into the middle and window seats next to a large lady from Liverpool, who hadn't stopped talking to them since they had boarded. She told them about her son, who was a banker in Jakarta. Calculus was enthralled by the lady, and responded to everything she said with completely irrelevant information. She didn't seem to mind and continued talking. Haddock stared out the window. Tintin and Skut still had three seats to themselves; so far they hadn't told Haddock or Calculus they had been talking about trying to sneak into Estonia.
The plane roared off into the night sky, and later, out over the Bay of Bengal, they were served a delicious nasi goreng for dinner. After Bombay the plane was scheduled to make a final stop in Rome, before flying to its final destination of London. Tintin was to take another plane to Brussels from Rome, while Skut's ticket was for London. After dinner, Tintin asked Skut whether he'd come to Marlinspike with him. Skut thought for a moment about his appointment in London. Being blind in one eye made it hard to get good flying jobs. He had been let go from Carreidas' employ after their recent ordeal. The cargo flying job he had lined up in Britain seemed to be a good one, but he thought about Madli and immediately agreed to stick with Tintin.
Tintin told Skut they would encapsulate themselves in an unused wing of Marlinspike hall for several weeks, where they would focus all their efforts on learning Russian. Skut spoke fluent Estonian and Russian quite well. Tintin spoke no Estonian, but had a basic grasp of Russian. They would hire a Russian language instructor to live with them, and otherwise avoid all contact with the outside world. By the end of their crash course, Tintin hoped they would be able to pass themselves off as Russians. Meanwhile, Tintin hoped that Haddock would help out, by getting a friend from Naval intelligence to provide them with fake documents, to help get them into the Soviet Union. It wasn't Tintin's first experience with the communist nation, and he looked forward to the challenge of going there again.
