Authors: David Hagberg

High Flight (15 page)

BOOK: High Flight

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“What do I call you?”

The old man studied him for a second before he answered. “Edward R. Reid,” he said. “Your general and I go back a long way together to when he first worked for the BND.”

Mueller's eyes narrowed in surprise. “Do you know what I am?”

“You're an assassin who the West Germans would like to eliminate.”

“West Germans?”

“Germans,” Reid corrected himself.

“Knowing this, you have work for me?”

Reid nodded.

“Do you understand the consequences if you are discovered and arrested?”

“I'm an old man, colonel,” Reid said. “And I don't frighten easily.”

“I'm not an old man, and I do frighten easily, so you will be very careful for my sake. When I am cornered I fight back. If I am betrayed, I kill my betrayers. And if this is to be the time and place of my death, then I will take a great many with me. Police, soldiers, civilians â¦ you.”

“Put your things away,” Reid said after a moment. “I believe that you will work out just fine.”

“It was too easy,” McGarvey said.

“Turn your back on it,” Yemlin replied as their limousine was passed through the east gate at Sheremeteyvo Airport. “We have the resources and we're experts at the game. You'll be sucked in until all your choices but one will be gone.”

“Is that what Karyagin means to do?”

“He's a desperate man, Kirk. You're going to have to understand how it really is with us here. General Polunin is snapping at his heels from below, just waiting for him to make a mistake. While Yeltsin and that crowd in the Kremlin are pressuring him from above for answers he simply cannot give them. And you know what happens in this country when you can't give your masters the answers they want to hear.”

McGarvey looked away for a moment. A light breeze had sprung up that made for some fantastic wind-chill numbers. Yemlin had always been a pragmatist. Even during the interrogations and his later visits to the hospital at Volodga, he'd spoken only of practical matters. “What will your families do now? Can we get word to them? Are you reasonably comfortable? Are you certain that nothing can be offered you in exchange for further information?” Maybe it was still the same now.

“Why are you telling me this, Viktor?”

“I always thought you were a good man. A little ahead of your time but basically decent. You proved that by taking poor Tania as far as you did. Baranov was no friend of the
Rodina.
Let's say I want you to come into
this operation with your eyes open. If it fails it could be disastrous for your company, and you personally.”

“You could be fired for telling me this.”

Yemlin had to smile. “I already have been. I'm no longer Washington
rezident.
”

“You're not flying back with me this morning?”

“No, Kirk. But I will be returning to Washington soon.”

“To do what?” McGarvey asked him.

“To act as your handler, of course,” Yemlin said. “My boss thinks that you and I have a special relationship. Sometimes this sort of a bond develops between the interrogator and his subject. It was me who you first approached for help.”

“You were the logical choice.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe I'll kill you when I get the chance. I have the motive.”

“Then they will have been proved wrong.”

“Perhaps I'll use you.”

“By all means,” Yemlin said. “There's nothing a great Russian loves more than intrigue. You know all about it.”

“Again, why tell me this?” McGarvey asked, although he already knew the answer.

“Because you're no good to us unless your eyes are wide open. We're talking about international industrial espionage. Your company is hiring a Russian federal agency to work for it, in violation certainly of many of your laws, and even some of our own. The quid pro quo remains information in trade for information.”

“In addition to the assembly factory.”

“As you say, Kirk, without information for both sides, the factory becomes a moot point.”

The limousine took them directly to the ramp where the same airliner that had brought them from Washington was being readied for the return flight. The other passengers were still in the terminal waiting for the first boarding call.

“Get some sleep, Kirk. I'll see you in a couple of days.”

McGarvey got his single overnight bag and got out of the car. Before he walked across to the waiting aircraft he turned back.

“Perhaps I
will
kill you before this is all over, Viktor Pavlovich.”

Yemlin shrugged, but it was clear that the remark bothered him. “We'll see.”

Five bells went off in the operations room of the U.S. Navy Seventh Fleet's Intelligence Unit at Yokosuka, Japan, indicating a FLASH-priority message was incoming on the ready circuit from the Pentagon.

Z072315ZJAN

TOP SECRET

FM: CINCPACCOM

TO: CINC 7TH FLEET

SUBJECT: READINESS STATUS

1.
7TH FLEET NORTHERN OPERATIONS TO INCLUDE GUAM BUT NOT XX RPT NOT XX INDIAN OCEAN DETACHMENT ARE ORDERED TO DEFCON 4.

2.
THIS IS NOT XX RPT NOT XX A COMMANDWIDE UPGRADE.

3.
EVIDENCE CONCENTRATED RUSSIAN NAVAL FORCES IN TATAR STRAIT VICINITY 47-42-3IN XXX 140-32-OOE.

4.
REQUEST ID AND PRESENT WHEREABOUTS OF JAPANESE MSDF SUBMARINE RESPONSIBLE FOR ATTACK OF 04â01â97.

5.
USE OF ALL APPLICABLE LOCAL RESOURCES AUTHORIZED, BUT UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES MUST MSDF BECOME AWARE OF YOUR INVESTIGATION.

Chief Signalman Joseph Woodmark, Jr., tore the message off the printer and hand-carried it back to the duty
officer's cubicle. They'd been expecting something like this to come, and the search for the MSDF submarine had already begun. So far as the traffic Woodmark had seen coming through operations indicated, the brass was looking for the
Samisho,
which had left Yokosuka ten days ago. But no one had expected the upgraded defense condition. DEFCON 5 was normal, and DEFCON I meant war. Four was nothing more than a preliminary precaution, but it was on the way up.

Lieutenant, j.g. Jan Mills took the dispatch, logged it in the Top Secret control book, and shook his head. “Somebody's smoking something in D.C.,” he said, picking up the phone and punching in the fleet commander's office. “First they're late asking us to look around, and then they up the ante a notch.”

Last night he'd watched a video tape of the Pearl Harbor movie
Tora! Tora! Tora!
and now he felt unsettled.

SIX

F
acing northeast toward the Columbia River and southwest across the city, Guerin Airplane Company's staff headquarters was housed in a sprawling glass and aluminum-framed four-story building at Portland International Airport. Nearly five thousand executives and engineers worked there. Along with the seventy-five thousand welders and riveters, tool and die makers, machinists and designers, electronics experts and metallurgists, chemists, mathematicians, and a host of other specialists in various facilities around the city and up at Forest Grove and Gales Creek, Guerin was by far Portland's largest employer. And, like Boeing in Seattle, the gigantic aircraft company dominated nearly
every aspect of the city, from its taxes to its Monday-through-Friday traffic made worse this morning because of a rare snowstorm that had begun overnight. Three lanes of cars and vans streamed through the main gates into the parking lot, which was being plowed and sanded even as the day shift was showing up.

Like most upper-level Guerin executives, Kennedy had a limousine and driver at his disposal. The presidents of almost every other division made use of the privilege, claiming it gave them much needed time to and from work to review paperwork. But often he drove his own car. It gave him the time to clear his head. To get ready for the day and to come down after a long one.

This morning, however, he found it difficult to think about anything other than the Japanese, and Chairman of the Board Al Vasilanti's intransigence when it came to them. It had caused them trouble before, but they'd always managed to sidestep the issue or dig themselves out of whatever hole they'd been placed in.

During the final design stages of the P522's fly-by-wire system in the mid-eighties, Mitsubishi had come up with a new design application for its CPU that made the computer-to-sensor interface one hundred times as fast and as accurate at half the cost, as the American designed and built application.

The logical step, of course, would have been to subcontract the system to the Japanese. But Vasilanti had been adamantly against working with them, and he'd convinced the board of directors to go along with him, promising that American Micro Devices was on the verge of a better design.

AMD had come up with a system that was at least as good as Mitsubishi's. Whether by luck or by inside information, Vasilanti came out smelling like a rose.

This time there was no miracle looming six months down the road, unless McGarvey was successful, or unless Congress passed an act protecting them from a Japanese takeoverâsomething he did not think Washington was ready to do considering the fact that the
United States had become the world's largest debtor nation and Japan had become one of the largest purchasers of that debt.

As one U.S. Senator had told him off the record last year, “We're beholden to the little bastards.” It was a double-edged sword.

Parking the four-wheel-drive Range Rover in his slot in the heated executive garage, Kennedy took the elevator up to the fourth floor. Traffic on Interstate 205 had been snarled up because of the weather, and as a result he was late. He'd telephoned his secretary to have Vasilanti's meeting pushed back to nine, which had been approved, but she'd warned him that his phone was ringing off the hook. The usual spate of Monday morning problems. But there was one call from Washington that he would have to deal with personally. “I don't recommend you use the car phone.”

Anyone could monitor cellular telephone conversations, and it was assumed by Guerin and every other high-tech company that such eavesdropping was common. But if the call was from McGarvey, back from Moscow, it might mean trouble.

It was 8:30 A.M. when he stepped off the elevator, crossed the broad, thickly carpeted corridor, and entered his suite of offices down the hall from the boardroom. His secretary, Nancy Nebel, was just putting down the phone.

“Let's get started,” he said, going directly into his office.

“Am I glad to see you,” she said, jumping up. She snatched a stack of mail, a couple of thick file folders, and a steno pad from her desk and followed him inside.

His office was large and well-appointed, with expansive windows that looked toward the airport terminal and the two main runways. From his desk Kennedy could see jetliners, many of them Guerin's, departing for and arriving from all over the world. Sometimes he felt a great sense of pride and achievement. But at other times, like this morning, he felt a sense of impending disaster.

“Mr. Vasilanti wants you in his office at nine sharp,
which gives you a half-hour,” Nancy said, pouring Kennedy a cup of coffee as he hung up his overcoat in the closet. She was fifty-something and plain looking but pleasant.

“Is Gary back from Rome?”

“He got in last night.” Gary Topper was Guerin's vice president in charge of sales. “Mr. Vasilanti's already talked to him along with Mr. Socrates and Mr. Soderstrom.”

George Socrates was vice president in charge of new airplane design, and Jeffery Soderstrom was Guerin's chief financial officer. The old man had called all the heavy guns. This morning's meeting was going to be a council of war.

Kennedy hung his suit coat on the back of his chair, then took the cup of coffee from his secretary and sat down. She laid out a couple of legal pads and several sharpened pencils for him, along with a typed copy of his tentative schedule for the day, week, and month.

She set the stack of mail to his left. “Nothing that won't wait until this afternoon. Two queries from Washington. One from the FAA wanting a clarification on our suggested modification of the 422 rudder sensor AD that was issued in March.” An AD, Airworthiness Directive, was an order from the Federal Aviation Administration requiring that a fix or modification be made to an airplane.

“And the second from Congressman Benton's office requesting our current thinking on inertial guidance systems for airliners.” Benton was the new chairman of the House Subcommittee on Aviation and was interested, because of the tremendous savings for the government, in what
Aviation Week & Space Technology
was calling the “next generation” of aids to navigation.

Airliners found their way around the world using a combination of high-frequency radio beacons, radio locating networks, and a series of satellites in geostationary orbits that provided precise location information. But such systems, especially the satellites, were expensive to maintain.

Using an inertial guidance system similar to ones installed in U.S. submarines, an airliner's exact location could be entered into the navigational device on the date the set was installed. At that point the aircraft “knew” exactly where in the world it was located. Thereafter, anytime the aircraft was moved, up-down, left-right, forward-backward, even by a few feet, the movements were sensed and the airplane's true position was computed by the system.

“Engineering can handle that,” Kennedy said.

“Mr. Taich bounced it back here. Said our research was too sensitive to share with Washington at this time.”

Kennedy had to smile. Fred Taich, vice president in charge of engineering, was one of the true “squirrels” in the business and had probably made a reply along the lines of “Fuck the bastards!” But Nancy had cleaned it up for him.

“Send a letter to Benton's office advising them we're putting together a comprehensive study package that we'll forward soon.”

“A letter to that effect is in the pile for your signature,” Nancy said. “Nothing else in the mail is pressing. But I've put together two files you should look at before you see Mr. Vasilanti. The first involves the Japanese. I pulled what we had on their commercial aircraft and engine research, and Dominique's office faxed us everything they had.”

“Can we get anything from the State Department updating who we might be dealing with?”

“Should be here within the hour.”

Nancy had been his secretary from the day he'd started with Guerin. The third-floor junior executives called her “Attila the Hun.” But it was a term of respect, not derision.

“What about this other file?” Kennedy asked.

“The project,” Nancy said. “Mr. Vasilanti asked me to see that you brought it along.”

He flipped the file open to the artist's rendering of the P/C2622. It looked sleek and fast.

“He's scheduled a news conference at noon sharp at Gales Creek.”

Kennedy understood what the old man had in mind to counter the expected move against them by the Japanese and to prod Washington into standing up for them. NASA had used the same technique when the shuttle was in its developmental stages and Congress was dragging its heels over funding. A mockup of the space plane was shown to the public, and it made a big hit. Practically every television station, newspaper, wire service, and magazine in the world had covered the event. Congress quickly changed its mind.

The P/C2622, minus its supersonic engine, was almost ready for its first test flight at subsonic speeds. He and Vasilanti had discussed the strategy of letting the media in on the event but had rejected it for being overly sporty at a time when they could ill afford such a gamble. If the test failed Guerin would suffer. Now, however, things were different.

“What else?”

“Mr. McGarvey called from Washington and said it was urgent that you call him the moment you got in.”

“Get him on the phone,” Kennedy said, his chest tight. God only knew what had happened in Moscow.

Nancy left the office, closing the door softly behind her, and Kennedy swiveled in his chair so he could look out toward the airport. Snowplows and sanders were busy clearing the active runway. For the moment Portland International was open.

Another thought intruded. The Japanese weren't his only problem. His marriage was in trouble too. Last night he and Chance had fought bitterly again. Something had gone terribly wrong with their relationship in the last year or so. In part, he thought, because of the long hours he worked and the frequent absences when he had to be in Washington or Paris or London. But, like a man who wants to get off a roller coaster, he was helpless until it stopped. Until the P/C2622 was flying.

The telephone rang. He turned back and picked it up. “Mac?”

“There's no answer at his hotel room,” Nancy said.

“Did you try Dominique's?”

“No answer there either, but I left a message at both places.”

“All right, Nancy, call me if you get through to him, and buzz me when Mr. Vasilanti is ready.”

“You have about twenty minutes.”

Kennedy hung up, drew the first Japanese file to him and opened it to the first page:
Japan
â
A Manufacturing Nation Without Natural Resources.

McGarvey had picked up a tail the moment he'd passed through passport control and customs at Dulles Airport. They were probably FBI, one dressed as a customs agent and the other as a terminal cop. Both of them wore uniforms, but both carried handguns in shoulder holsters beneath their jackets, something uniformed officers never did.

Outside, there'd been three pairs: one in a dark blue Ford van and a second in an electric-green Chevrolet Cavalier, alternating front and back of the Yellow cab McGarvey had taken into the city. He had the cabby slow down twice, and both times the two pairs slowed up. The third set materialized in an older brown Mercedes at the Hyatt Regency where McGarvey checked in under his own name. The driver stayed with the car, while the other agent pretended to carry on a conversation with someone on a house phone. And when McGarvey boarded the elevator to his floor, the man put down the phone and approached the registration desk.

If they wanted to charge him with something, the FBI would have picked him up by now. Which meant that to this point they were merely curious about his movements. Waiting for him to make the next move, such as meeting with his Russian control officer. If they caught him at that, he would definitely be picked up.

McGarvey did not bother going to his room. Instead, he took the service elevator down to the laundry and left
the hotel by a back exit. He walked a couple of blocks to D Street and Third, got a cab to the Howard Johnson Downtown Motor Lodge across Virginia Avenue from the Watergate, and checked in.

Standing at his fifth-floor window, he looked across the avenue as he waited for his Portland call to go through. He thought about Dominique Kilbourne. She was attracted to him because he was a dangerous man. Race-car drivers experienced the same thing. There was a type of woman who made a career out of having affairs with men in deadly occupations. But excess baggage was the bane of the field officer. The weak link that had brought down more than one good operative. A lover was an Achilles' heel. He could write the book on that story.

He got Kennedy's secretary on the line. “McGarvey. Let me talk to David Kennedy.”

“He's right here, Mr. McGarvey,” Nancy said, and a moment later Kennedy came on.

“You weren't supposed to call this number.”

BOOK: High Flight

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