High Flight (43 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: High Flight
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“Just who the hell are you?” someone demanded from behind him.
Zerkel pocketed his miniature camera and turned around calmly, although his heart was hammering
wildly. He'd been in situations like this one before. Panic and you got busted. The guard was a man in his late forties or early fifties. He was armed with a pistol, but he'd not drawn it.
“I had to come down and sneak a look,” Zerkel said. He turned back to the airplane. “She's beautiful.”
“She sure is something,” the guard agreed. “Now don't tell me that you left your badge upstairs. Let me see some ID.”
“I got my wallet,” Zerkel said, turning back.
The guard came within arm's reach. “You engineers are all alike …”
Zerkel grabbed the man's jacket front in both hands and yanked him sharply forward, driving his forehead into the guard's forehead. The man went limp, and Zerkel eased him to the floor.
It was bad luck. Zerkel hesitated for a second or two before he stomped on the guard's throat with the heel of his shoe, crushing the man's windpipe. He stomped a second time and then a third, the guard's face puffing up and turning purple. After a few moments the guard's body went completely limp. He was dead.
Bad luck, Zerkel told himself. The guard had seen his face.
 
Karl Schey showed up at the Sterling, Virginia, farmhouse around 10:00 P.M. He'd been picked up from his New York hotel and driven up to the airport at Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he'd been flown by private plane to Washington's National Airport. A
Lamplighter
staffer picked him up and drove him out.
“I approve of the precautions,” he told Reid in the stair hall.
Mueller watched from the darkness in the dining room as the two men embraced.
“You look tired, my old friend,” Reid said. “The journey must have been long. I assume you took care not to be followed.”
“Yes, I am tired. And no, I was not followed. Of that you can rest assured, Edward. But what about you and
your fantastic plans? Did Bruno arrive? Have you put him to work?”
“Yes, to your last two questions. And as for my fantastic plans, well, I'm glad that you're here to share them with me, Karl. We'll talk. But would you like to go up to your room to rest? We can talk in the morning.”
“I'm too keyed up to sleep now. Perhaps I can have a glass of cognac and we can sit by the fire. It's good to be here.”
Reid hung the older man's coat in the hall closet, and they went into the living room where he poured them both a drink. Once they were seated in front of the fireplace, their backs to the door, Mueller slipped out of the dining room and silently searched Schey's coat and his leather bag at the foot of the stairs. There were no weapons, only clothing, toiletries, and an envelope containing several thousand American dollars. If he'd left Germany for good, he'd left light and apparently in a hurry. A man like Schey, however, would certainly have secure access to a considerable amount of money. Enough so that no matter what happened, he could insulate himself from arrest.
Mueller turned and looked up. Louis Zerkel stood at the head of the stairs watching him. He held a batch of computer printouts, and he'd evidently been on his way down to talk to Reid about something. Mueller waved him back. The younger man stood his ground, but finally he turned and disappeared down the hall.
Reid and Schey were talking in low tones when Mueller went to the door. He could just make out what they were saying, but if there was any desperation in Schey's sudden appearance here it was not evident in his voice. He was the Karl Schey that Mueller had always known: strong, certain, and definitely in control.
“It is an ambitious undertaking, my friend,” he said. “But will it work, and will you be able to extricate yourself when the time comes?”
“Nothing is foolproof, but just now the Japanese seem to be cooperating with us, and I do have some capable men working for me.”
“Bruno is unstable, you know. But he can be useful this one last time. Never again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Interpol knows his name and face, and it's possible they know or suspect that he is here in the United States. Which means the FBI has been alerted. Once you are finished with him I would suggest that he be eliminated.”
“Thank you for the suggestion.”
“We have worked well together for a great many years,” Schey said conversationally. “In all that time I have found you to be an engaging, enterprising man. Our little projects have always been interesting, and certainly profitable for both of us.”
“Beginning with those pistols.”
Schey chuckled, the sound dry in his throat. “Yes, the Lugers. They wound up in Moscow, you know. The Russians paid very well. No telling how many pompous old men showed their subordinates a Luger and told how the pistol was taken from an unwilling Nazi in the Great Patriotic War.”
“I think you sold them for more than a hundred dollars each.”
Again Schey chuckled. “Of course. I did all the work, took all the risks.”
“The Stasi would have bailed you out had you been caught,” Reid said evenly.
Schey hesitated for a beat. “How long have you known?” he asked cautiously.
“I've suspected for a long time that you were a double agent. Bruno confirmed it for me.”
“Is he here now?”
“I don't know exactly where he is, Karl. He is a difficult man to control. He was concerned that you were in some sort of trouble in Germany, so you were coming here to escape. You've left much behind.”
“Is that why you went to such extraordinary lengths to cover my tracks to this place?”
“Yes, it was,” Reid admitted. “Are you in trouble in Europe? Are the police searching for you?”
“No one is looking for me, Edward. I swear it. But if they were this would be the last place I would come. At this moment I would be enjoying the summer sun on a certain island where I am well known—by another name of course—and well respected.”
Reid looked up as Mueller silently entered the living room and came up behind Schey.
“Maybe you should have gone to your island after all, Karl.”
Schey, sensing at the last moment that he might be in mortal danger, started to turn around, but he was too late. Mueller clamped his powerful hands around the old man's throat and squeezed. Schey came half up out of the chair, thrashing and fighting with every ounce of his strength, but it was no use, and in under a minute and a half he was unconscious, and four minutes later his heart stopped.
“You can bury his body in the garbage pit behind the barn,” Reid said, shakily.
 
Louis Zerkel stood in the relative darkness of the stair hall. He'd seen and heard everything, and whatever lingering doubts he might have had about Reid's plans for him and his brother were dispelled. At the end everyone would be eliminated except for Reid.
He backed away, and stopped at the foot of the stairs as he tried to catch his breath, slow his heart. Glen would have to be warned. In the past days working together he had come to appreciate his brother. It was blood. Even though they had different mothers, they shared their father's genes.
There was no safe way for them to get out of this project now, he told himself as he went silently up the stairs. But there could be a way for them to come out on top. To profit by it, while at the same time saving their own lives.
For the first time in many years, he felt as if he did not need Dr. Shepard. He was free.
“What do you think about that?” he muttered.
R
eid knew that his rationalizing was over. He could put the murders of hundreds or thousands of people in the airliners he would cause to crash in a compartment of his mind where his ideals lived. It was a war he was waging. In war a lot of people got killed. But in war grand issues were at the center of the struggle. Freedom from oppression. The saving of a nation or a religion or a way of life. In this case the saving of the United States from the Japanese. He could also put the murders of Tallerico and Dr. Shepard at the back of his mind because he never really knew either of them. In any event they had been soldiers as well. But the killing of Karl Schey was completely different. He had known and worked with the man for more than fifty years. In a strange way he had trusted the German through all those years, because Schey had it within his power to bring Reid's career crashing down. Now the man was dead, and his body would be buried here. There was no way of rationalizing himself out of that simple fact.
“I'll take his body out now,” Mueller said. “You can bring his coat and overnight bag.”
“No.” Reid stood by the fireplace, looking at Schey's body.
“Why not?”
“We go back too many years together, Karl and I.”
“Alive he would have created problems for us. It is better that he is dead. Do you see this?”
Reid nodded. “He should have stayed in Germany, or gone to his southern island to enjoy his retirement. He could have died at peace.”
“Do not grieve for this one, Reid. In his long, distinguished
service, he was the direct cause of a great many deaths.”
“So were you.”
Mueller smiled faintly. “It's what I do. What he did.”
“Get rid of his body,” Reid ordered. “Bury it deep.”
“I'll take care of it. But check with the FBI or Interpol. If he was traced here to this country, then we will have to take measures to further mask his coming to this house.”
“I'll see what I can do,” Reid said.
Mueller gathered up the old man's body as if it were nothing more than a bundle of clothes. “I told you that if I were to be cornered I would take out a lot of people. You included. I'm here to do a job for you. See that you hold up your end of the operation.”
Reid said nothing. He felt flushed.
“In the meantime, our strange friend upstairs has something for you, I think. See what he wants.”
Reid waited until Mueller was gone and then went upstairs. Zerkel was seated at one of the computer terminals, his fingers flying over the keys, a dense stream of binary figures scrolling in broad columns up the orange-lit screen.
“Do you have something to tell me, Louis?” Reid asked from the doorway.
Zerkel looked up guiltily, then plucked a few sheets of computer printout from the table. “I need these parts for the repeaters.”
“Anything difficult?” Reid asked, taking the sheets.
“No,” Zerkel said. He typed something else, looked up again at Reid, this time with a sly grin, and hit ENTER, then the print command. The big laser printer began spewing out copy.
Reid watched. Something about Zerkel was different, disturbing. “Is it something more for me?”
“As soon as it finishes printing out,” Zerkel said. He nodded toward the door. “Is Bruno burying your friend's body?”
Reid was taken aback. “You saw …”
“And heard everything.”
“What have you done, you fool?” Reid demanded. He went to the laser printer and pulled the first section of printout from the tray. “What is this?”
“Insurance,” Zerkel said. “Names, dates, places, murders, plans … everything.”
Reid looked up hardly believing what he was reading, what he was being told.
“All of it is buried now inside the FBI's computerized fingerprint records. It'll pop up in the clear all over the place unless I feed it a code word every twelve hours.” Zerkel smiled smugly. “What do you think about that?”
 
“Report tubes one, two, three, and four are flooded,” the growler in the
Samisho
's attack center rattled.
“Confirm visually,” Minori ordered.
A few moments later the forward torpedo room watch officer came back. “Visuals of one, two, three, and four confirm weapons in place and tubes flooded.”
Captain Kiyoda stood at the periscope ready to raise it the moment they came to depth. He looked across at his weapons control officer, Lieutenant Takasaki. “No mistakes, Shuichiyo. Only on my orders will you open all four doors. And you will do it smartly.”
“
Hai, kan-cho.
”
“And only on my orders will there be a weapons launch. Is that clear?”
“
Hai
,” Takasaki replied crisply.
Minori was bringing the boat up slowly, so as not to spook the captain of the American destroyer into doing something rash. If the confrontation were going to come here—which Kiyoda did not think it would—then so be it. But he preferred to push the Americans a little farther if possible. Into the East China Sea, and hopefully to within spitting distance of Okinawa.
After the destroyer was sent to the bottom there would be other American sub-hunters in the vicinity, which would make for interesting targets.
Kiyoda closed his eyes for a moment, and a billion fireflies fluttered in front of him. He had met with
Kamiya-san
several years ago at a house in the peaceful mountains outside Tokyo. They'd sat on tatamis on the veranda listening to the gurgle of water and the tinkling of a windchime. It was not Kamiya's house, but, as the old man explained, it was an oasis of peace and hope in a world that had somehow gone terribly mad.
It was then that
Kamiya-san
had assigned Captain Kiyoda a
sensei
to begin his instructions. Since then Kiyoda had barely been able to contain himself waiting for this day. One year ago the fireflies had come to him, and at first he had been disturbed. But his
sensei
explained that what Kiyoda was seeing was in fact a window into the universe. Fireflies or stars, they were of no consequence except that they represented the correct path. They were, in effect, guiding lights.
Kiyoda opened his eyes. His XO was looking at him.
“Our depth is twenty meters,
kan-cho
.”
“Up periscope,” Kiyoda ordered. “Stand by weapons control.”
“
Hai
,” Takasaki responded eagerly.
Kiyoda squatted to rise with the periscope, and he smiled inwardly. With this boat and this crew he was invincible.
 
“Port wing lookout has a periscope directly off our quarter,” Lieutenant Commander Ryder said.
Captain Hanrahan stepped over to that side of the bridge and raised his binoculars.
“Bridge, sonar. The target has leveled off at six-zero feet, inbound relative bearing two-seven-zero, range two thousand yards.” The comms had been put on loudspeaker.
“I have the periscope wake abaft our beam,” Hanrahan said. “Secure from active sonar. Listen for tube flooding noises.”
“Bridge, sonar, he's opening his doors!” the chief sonarman reported excitedly. “I'm getting four transients. He's definitely opening his doors.”
“Stand by to launch ASROC tubes one through four
on my command,” Hanrahan ordered calmly. He watched the wake the
Samisho
's periscope made in the rising seas. “Have the choppers converge and prepare to launch on my command. Tell the Orion driver what we're doing, and get me Seventh HQ on the secure phone.”
 
“Thanks for coming up on the double, Don,” Admiral Ryland said. “We're in trouble, and I want your input.”
“I'd say we are at that, sir.” Captain Donald Moody, Jr., Chief of Seventh Fleet Intelligence, took his place next to Ryland at the situation board. “Mike's going to have to back off, and do it now. We don't want to get into a shooting match, even by mistake, with the MSDF.”
“If the sub-driver fires first, Mike will have to defend himself.”
“If he gets in the
Samisho
's way, Admiral,” Moody said without hesitation. The intelligence chief had worked for the CIA and National Security Agency as well as naval intelligence. He knew the business backward and forward. Which meant he knew when to tell it exactly like it was no matter the fallout.
“That particular submarine has no business at our back door in the East China Sea. Not after its performance in the Tatar Strait.”
“Are you willing to kill that boat in order to stop it from getting past the
Thorn?
”
“You know as well as I do, Don, that it'll come,” Ryland said. “Either here and now, or later farther south where he'll be in a position to pose a greater threat. The man is crazy.”
“We're talking about our allies, Admiral,” Moody said.
“Don't I know it,” Ryland admitted darkly. “I'm getting no answer from MSDF Fleet Headquarters. Admiral Shimakaze is not available for my call. The
Samisho
may not be operating under direct MSDF orders, but at least it has tacit approval.”
“We'll never be able to prove that. And now's not the
time for us to be taking a stand out here. Christ, Admiral, you know what Washington would do to us. Especially after what happened last week.”
“The
Thorn
is my boat, my crew. Means I'm responsible until I'm ordered off the job.”
“You're paying me for intelligence estimates and advice. If the
Samisho
wants to bull its way into the East China Sea, let it go. It'll take at least forty-eight hours, maybe longer, for that submarine to get into a position dangerous to us. But that gives us the time to make it an issue with MSDF command and bounce it back to the Pentagon, or at the very least bring up more assets from Okinawa. But goddammit, Admiral, these are Japanese home waters. And they have the right to come and go as they please.”
Ryland's XO, Captain Tom Byrne, had been on the phone with MSDF headquarters. He hung up and shook his head. “Admiral Higashi is in conference,” he said. Higashi was CINC of the MSDF Submarine Fleet.
“Don thinks Mike Hanrahan should back off,” Ryland said.
Byrne eyed the intelligence officer and nodded slowly. “I agree with him, sir. It would give us a little breathing room. Time to press the issue.”
“There's always Subic Bay to consider,” Moody said.
“I am,” Ryland said. “Once they're back on the Philippines and well established we'd have our hands full out here.” No matter what the
Thorn
did we were going to come out the losers. If Hanrahan engaged the submarine and sank or damaged it, the Japanese government would be all over the U.S. Navy. These were Japanese home waters. If the
Samisho
got lucky and sent a U.S. destroyer to the bottom, Japan would apologize for another dreadful mistake and offer to make reparations to the families of the victims. And if he ordered Mike Hanrahan to step aside, the MSDF would have won a moral victory over the U.S. Navy, which was coming under increasing pressure to get its bases off Japanese soil and its ships out of Japanese waters.
“Get Hanrahan on the scrambler,” Ryland said. “Tell him to back off and allow the
Samisho
through the strait.”
“Yes, sir,” Byrne said.
“Tell him that I want him to stick on that sub wherever she goes, whatever she does, and I don't care what he has to do to accomplish that mission. Clear?”
“Aye, aye, Admiral,” Byrne replied crisply. He picked up the encrypted phone at the same moment Hanrahan's call from the
Thorn
came in.
 
“Bring me up to date,” SUR Director Aleksandr Karyagin said. “Our Tokyo Station cannot be so weak that after all this time nothing has been learned.”
“Mintori Assurance is definitely behind the attack on Guerin,” General Polunin replied. He'd been called upstairs to have lunch with the director. From the Lubyanka's ninth-floor dining room he could see that this morning's snowstorm had increased in intensity. Coming in from Mar'ina Roshcha traffic had been snarled up, and he'd been late, but not so late he didn't have time to prepare for the director's summons. “There is some question about the Dulles accident, however. From what
Abunai
is giving us, Mintori was just as surprised and shocked as Guerin was.”
“The timing seems odd.”
“Yes, sir, considering all that has been happening recently. It would have done them no good to engineer such an accident now. They would stand to lose much more than they could gain.”

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