High Flight (45 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: High Flight
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He had to survive.
Slowly he brought his hands back from the keyboard and laid them on his lap, then he turned against the pressure of the gun barrel and looked up into Mueller's eyes.
“Yes,
Herr
Mueller, we will construct a safeguard that we all can live with. In the meantime please leave me now. I have to get back to work on my signal system design. It is at a very delicate stage.”
Mueller drew back after a beat, safetied the Luger, and headed out of the room. “What do you think about that?” he said as he passed a stunned Reid.
 
Chance Kennedy spotted Arimoto Yamagata at a window table. She headed across the elegant old Columbia Gorge Hotel dining room aware that it was unlikely anyone here would know her. The hotel was fifty miles east of Portland, and it was frequented mostly by tourists. She'd been here only once, and that had been years ago. Still, she rightly remembered how beautiful the place was with its gardens, stone bridges, and waterfall. But Yamagata's call this morning inviting her to lunch had come out of the blue. Her immediate reaction had been to turn him down. She'd only met the man
once, casually, and had barely spoken ten words with him. Although she'd never thought of herself as having sharp prejudices, the man was Japanese. He was of a different race. His skin color was different, and his eyes were not Western.
Too, he was here to do business with Guerin, so by taking the wife of the commercial airplane division's president to lunch he might feel as if he would find an opening. Every company had its secrets. Who better to tell him than a top executive's wife?
But to understand the risks was to be prepared. The Japanese might be using her, but the fact of the matter was that she was bored out of her skull. David was gone most of the time, and the rare moments he was at home he was barricaded in his study reading stacks of arcane reports on everything from* the global economy to the stress points of hybrid ceramics.
Besides, she told herself, the game Yamagata was probably playing slid both ways. While he was trying to get information from her, she could be doing the same to him. If she were able to bring some juicy little tidbit of information about the Japanese home with her, David would certainly sit up and take notice for a change.
Yamagata rose as she approached. “Hello again,” he said, his voice pleasant, with no trace of an accent. He held out his hand, and Chance shook it.
“Your call this morning came as a surprise,” she said. His grip was gentle, his palm warm and dry.
“A pleasant one, I hope.”
She looked into his eyes, but there was nothing in them except warmth and a friendly good humor. “Frankly it made me nervous. How'd you ever find this place?”
“The Japanese are inveterate tourists, didn't you know? We go nowhere without a camera and a guidebook.”
He helped with her chair, and their waiter came over with menus. Chance ordered a dry vodka martini on the rocks with a twist, and Yamagata ordered another white wine.
“I guess I deserved that,” Chance said. She smiled. She felt like a fool.
Yamagata returned her smile. “You were being candid—may I call you Chance?”
“Please do.”
“Let me be equally candid. I came to Portland to explore the possibility of doing business with Guerin. But I would like to find out the kinds of things that do not ordinarily show up on an annual report. The sort of things that men sitting across a conference table from one another rarely bring up, or are reluctant to discuss. I felt that you might be able to help me.”
Chance could hardly believe what she was hearing. Either the man was a raging idiot or he thought she was. “Like who is sleeping with whom?”
For an instant Yamagata looked startled, but then he threw back his head and laughed, the gesture without guile. He'd heard something funny, and he'd responded.
“My dear lady, what do you take me for?” he asked, when he recovered.
Chance was confused. “I know nothing about you. Nothing at all, except that by your own admission you're some sort of a spy.”
“That's exactly what I am. And let me tell you the kind of information I'm looking for. Great corporations, like great nations, often rise and fall not only because of economics but because of an esprit de corps, some inner drive or purpose. If its leaders and its workers are excited then good things usually follow. Strength. Clear-mindedness. Fairness.” Yamagata lowered his eyes for a moment. “If the esprit de corps is lost, for whatever reason, the future of a great corporation such as Guerin may not be so clear.”
Chance did understand. She nodded. “I know.”
“It's hardly a subject I could bring up at a Guerin board meeting, you know. ‘Gentlemen, accept my condolences for your recent loss at Dulles Airport, but can you tell me if your mood has been permanently damaged? Are you crying tears of sadness? Has the joy gone out of your soul?'”
Chance could not envision Al Vasilanti shedding tears about anything. She'd attended his wife's funeral four years ago, and the old bastard had sat through the entire ceremony at the church and at the cemetery completely dry-eyed. As if he were attending a stranger's funeral.
“Do you catch my meaning?”
“Yes, I certainly do. But so far as I can tell it's business as usual. It's the new airplane everybody's been talking about. It's the holy grail for all of them—my husband included. And it's the same with every new project. They're in their own little worlds. It's a wonder to a lot of us why the divorce rate among airplane executives isn't higher than it is.”
Yamagata shook his head wanly. “Forgive me for saying this, Chance, but if Western men could have the feminine quality of understanding—just that one characteristic—America would be a million times greater than it already is.”
“It's called empathy,” Chance said, and she felt stupid. The man was obviously using her. It was so flagrant she almost wanted to laugh. And yet there was a quality about him, about his face, the way he held himself, about his eyes, and the set of his mouth, his lips, that was intriguing.
“That's a good word,” Yamagata said, studying her face.
She raised her eyes and looked frankly into his. “Do you think so?”
“
H
e came through the fence at West Thirteen,” Guerin's chief of security William Lisch told the Portland Police detective. “But like I said we didn't catch it until first light this morning.”
“Camera troubles out there?” Lieutenant Peter Geiger asked. He was just going through the motions until the feds showed up.
“We maintain sixty-seven miles of fence line, some of it through pretty rough terrain. We always have troubles somewhere. But he was a pro, I can tell you that much. He didn't take any unnecessary chances. The camera was moved a quarter-inch, which gave him about fifteen feet of dead zone to work in, and he shunted the outer fence before cutting a hole in it so nothing showed up on our monitors. When he was done he closed the hole, removed the shunt, and took off. Our first team didn't catch it last night. We had to wait till daybreak.”
The Oregon Bureau of Criminal Investigation van had arrived the first thing this morning, along with the medical examiner and a team of forensics experts. It was their responsibility to secure the crime scene, making sure no one inadvertently trampled over some evidence.
“So, he's through the fence. How do you see it from there?” Geiger asked.
“It's about three-quarters of a mile, as the crow flies, from there to Hangar One. I'm guessing he came behind us, across to the operations building, then into One. Would have kept him in the shadows.”
“Anything missing? Sabotaged?”
“There's a hundred million dollars worth of parts and equipment lying around here that could be easily sold on the open market. It'll take time to inventory it all.”
“He carried it out himself, if he was alone.”
“Any one of a half-million sensitive parts would bring that bird down. It's going to take an even longer time to complete that inventory. After Dulles we're all gun-shy.”
Geiger looked up, his interest suddenly piqued. “Are you saying that the two incidents are related?”
They stepped into Lisch's office to look at the perimeter map on the wall. The security officer closed the door.
“A lot of strange things have happened around here in the past six months or so, Geiger. You've heard the rumors … everyone in Portland has … about what the Japanese are trying to do to us. One of our foremen
was killed in Portland a few weeks ago. We had the Dulles crash. And now this.”
“Anyone have a grudge against your man?”
Lisch shook his head. “So far as I know he was well liked. With us for thirteen years. Wife, three kids. Helped run our softball league. Perfect record.”
“Gambling, drinking, another woman?”
“I don't think a jealous husband would have broken in here to kill him.”
“Unless it was one of your security people. Could have covered his tracks with the trick in the fence.”
“Not a chance. Whoever it was came here looking for something, or looking to do something to us.”
“And they were willing to kill for it,” Geiger replied. “Who? If you had to guess. The Japanese?”
Lisch's eyebrows narrowed. “That'd be my guess,” he said. “But if you claim I told you that, I'll call you a liar to your face.”
“The Bureau will ask the same questions.”
“Don't I know it,” Lisch said heavily.
 
Special agents Albert McLaren and Phillip Joyce arrived from Washington at six sharp at the Air National Guard hangar, where they were met by the FBI's Portland field office A-S-A-C Edward Judge. The weather had turned mild, but they did not linger on the apron, instead they hurried directly to the waiting automobile and headed into the city. During the twenty-minute drive McLaren and Joyce flipped through the package of material assembled for them.
“Anything new since this was put together?” McLaren asked when he was finished.
“The coroner's report came over just as I was leaving for the airport, but nothing's changed. A broad hematoma at the right temple area might have caused unconsciousness. But what killed him was respiratory failure due to massive injuries to his trachea.”
“The perp hit him on the head with something, and when the man was down he stomped him on the throat,” Joyce commented dryly. “Nice.”
“That's how it looks,” Judge said. He was a big man, in his thirties, with wide, serious eyes.
“Anything missing or tampered with?” McLaren asked.
“To this point the Guerin people have found nothing, but it'll take a few days. It's a big place.”
“Nobody saw or heard a thing?”
“No. Whoever it was knew his way around.”
McLaren looked up at that. “Are you saying it was an inside job? A Guerin employee?”
“Probably not. What I mean to say is that whoever got through the fence and killed the guard was a pro. He had the layout of the place down pat. But that's easy information to come by.”
“He did his homework, gained entry to the hangar, for whatever reason, and left,” McLaren summed it up. “Killing the guard was happenstance. It wasn't planned.”
“No argument,” Judge said. “The question is, did he accomplish what he set out to do? Could be the guard interrupted him before he got to it. Might have shaken him enough to make him run.”
Joyce shook his head. “If he was on the run he wouldn't have taken the time to put the fence back together. He would have just shagged ass.”
“Right,” Judge agreed. “So what words of wisdom are you bringing from Washington? Or are you just here to help out?”
“Neither, actually. We're following up a murder investigation in Washington and several more in the San Francisco area that might be related to what happened here.”
“Anything to do with the Dulles crash last week?”
“Not so far as we know,” McLaren said. “Have you come up with something?”
“The Portland cop who was the investigating officer in charge out there until we showed up said that Guerin's chief of security mentioned the two incidents along with another, apparently an accidental death recently.”
“What's the connection?”
“Guerin has been having trouble with a Japanese group gearing up for some sort of a hostile takeover attempt. Off the record the chief of security thinks the Japanese might be involved with the crash, with the accidental death, and with last night's incident.”
“That's not the company's official position?”
“No.”
“Can we bring this chief of security in for an interview tonight?”
“His name is Bill Lisch, and he'll cooperate to a point. But we're told that he'll deny ever saying anything about the Japanese.”
“I think we can get it on the table,” McLaren said.
They parked behind the Federal Building and went upstairs. Special Agent in Charge Jack Franson was waiting for them in his office. He was ten years older than Judge and fifty pounds lighter. His hair was already starting to go gray. He looked like a banker, or a college professor.
“Your boss wasn't very specific about what you're looking for, but he asked for my complete cooperation,” Franson told them. “You have it.”
“Thank you, sir,” McLaren replied. “What we need is the short course on Guerin Airplane Company so that when we go out there in the morning we won't be going blind.”
“Are you taking over this investigation of last night's murder?”
“No, sir. That's still in your ball park. But we'd like to tag along and maybe point you in some directions you might not have come up with on your own.”
“I told them what Geiger told us,” Judge said.
“There are a lot of rumors floating around Portland just now,” Franson said, clearly not happy with his number two. “That statement might have been made in the heat of the moment. First lesson about Guerin: The company is very big, the biggest thing in Portland. So whatever happens over there affects the entire region. It's just like Boeing up in Seattle.”
“Yes, sir, we understand. But last night's incident may have some connection to our investigation.”
“I'm listening.”
“We've brought a summary file for you, but very briefly we started out on an industrial espionage case involving a man named Benjamin Tallerico. In the middle of our investigation he was murdered. The two men we think did it—they're still at large—are Bruno Mueller, who was, until '89, a colonel in the East German Secret Service, and an environmental terrorist by the name of Glen Zerkel.”
“That Idaho ski resort incident—what, five years ago?” Judge said.
“He's on the hit list,” McLaren confirmed. “Glen Zerkel's brother, Louis, worked for a company in San Francisco called InterTech, which among other things designs and manufactures electronic subassemblies for Guerin. By the time we got out there to ask him about his brother, he'd skipped. But not before murdering his psychologist and raping her corpse.”
“Quite the pair,” Franson said. “Are you saying that Louis Zerkel might have sabotaged something InterTech was supplying Guerin?”
“That was our first thought. But as it turns out Zerkel never worked on anything even remotely connected with the devices InterTech built for Guerin.”
“I'm assuming that in any event InterTech has been checked out.”
“Top to bottom, and they come out clean. Zerkel's behavior is just as big a mystery to them. According to them he might have a grudge against the company. Last week there was a fire in the shipping and receiving area. One of the night watchmen was killed. That same night, Louis Zerkel's supervisor and his wife and children were also killed.”
“Anything missing from InterTech?” Judge asked.
“The company says no,” McLaren answered.
“If I'm following you the only connection you've come up with between your case and last night's incident
is the fact that InterTech is a Guerin subcontractor,” Franson said. “That's thin.”
“Yes, sir, it is. But the break-in and murder last night do have some similarities with what happened at InterTech. We're just trying to cover all our bases.”
 
Assistant FBI Director Kenneth Wood looked up from his reading when John Whitman showed up at his door. “Come in, John.”
“I think I might be getting in over my head,” Whitman said. “If you have a minute I'd like to bounce this off you.”
“Is it the InterTech case?”
“That's the one. I'm going around in circles, but I keep coming up with the same two names: Kirk McGarvey and Edward R. Reid.”
“Close the door, will you, John?” Wood said. He dialed his secretary. “No calls until John and I are finished. And if the director has already left for the day, have Marjorie pencil me in with him for tomorrow, eight sharp.”
Whitman sat down across from his boss, his ears still ringing from the conversation he'd had with Colonel Marquand. The man was insistent.
“I'm going to tell you right off that your surveillance request on Reid will be denied,” Wood said. “So unless you've come up with something rock solid to nail him with, don't even ask.”
“I don't know what I've got, Ken, but it's big. What's the deal with Reid?”
“Is he crucial to your case?”
“He could be.”
“Are you talking about the French thing? Has the SDECE been pressing?”
“I talked with Marquand a half-hour ago,” Whitman said. “He made his position clear. He says he's talked to the CIA as well.”
“Reid has been agitating a lot of people about the Japanese with his newsletter. The State Department
asked us to back off for the moment because of the Tokyo Summit. And from what I understand, that has the backing of the White House.”
“Back off from what?” Whitman asked. “Who said anything about investigating Reid?”
“I don't know, John. I'm guessing a leak somewhere. Reid knows everyone in Washington, including Director Harding. So unless you've come up with something very big there's nothing I can or will do for you, except put Internal Affairs on it if you want to make waves.”
“We'll keep IA out of it for the moment, but without Reid I don't know where I'm at.”
Wood leaned forward. “Let me make something perfectly clear, John. I'm saying that if you can come up with probable cause, a strong probability of cause, then we'll go after him no matter what State tells us.”
“Four points, not necessarily in any order,” Whitman said. “The crash at Dulles last week. That flight was returning from Moscow, where we believe Guerin Airplane Company brass were trying to sell the Russians on some sort of a joint project. Best word I've got is that it involves a significant amount of money that would have to be given to Russia in the form of loan guarantees. The man at the middle is Kirk McGarvey, who Guerin hired to check out a rumor that a Japanese consortium might be trying to buy out Guerin.”

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