High Flight (57 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: High Flight
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He turned that thought over. If Reid and the Zerkels were found dead, the search would be concentrated on one man. Their murderer. But if they were found dead by suicide or by accident, and if his name were to be removed from Louis's computer programs, he might have a head start. ,
Mueller had no illusions about the FBI or the CIA. They had the money, the expertise and, after the button was pushed, they would have the motivation. As did the French.
Over the past few years the SDECE had become more aggressive, emboldened by the end of the Cold War. Yet he thought the French would have been more cautious because of the reunited Germanies.
It was a different world. And it would be made even more different by what Reid had set them to do.
That was the other thing. After this was over he was going to have to retire. Reid had made good on his promise by depositing one million dollars in Mueller's account. The question was where could he go? The Caribbean? The South Pacific? Perhaps South America? Wherever, he needed to begin making his arrangements.
Zerkel climbed down from the wheel well a half-hour later.
Mueller moved out of the shadows. “Something wrong?”
“No. Help me up on the wing, and then watch for company, I've got to open the engine cowling.”
Mueller boosted him up onto the wing, then tossed the tools up. “Did you get the harness?”
“Just the plug. There's nothing between the panel and the frame except wire.”
“Are you sure?”
Zerkel looked down at him. “I think so.”
“Do it correctly, Glen. I don't wish to return here.”
“I'll do what I can. But to get the entire harness out I'd have to tear the wing apart. Watch for the patrol.”
Zerkel undid a dozen fasteners and lifted a section of engine cowling up on its hinges.
Mueller saw the problem at once. “How long are you going to be up there with the engine open?”
“I don't know.” Zerkel shined a dim red light inside the cowling. “An hour, maybe less if I'm lucky.”
“Hurry,” Mueller said, and he headed down the road in the direction from which the patrol had come. At the first intersection he looked back. Just as he thought, the upraised cowling broke the orderly line of silhouettes. It was out of place and would be noticed even at a distance if another patrol came by.
From the number of airplanes and the size of the area, Mueller doubted that more than three patrols would be mounted each night: one at dusk, one in the middle of the night, and one at dawn. With luck they'd be okay here for several more hours.
He settled down to wait in the shadows of a Boeing 727 from where he would see an approaching patrol before it reached the airplane Glen was working on. If one did come he would have no time to warn Zerkel. He would have to flag them down, kill however many guards there were—one or two, he suspected—and move their bodies to another area of the mothballed fleet. He thought about this without any emotion, only a detached interest in the technical difficulties of such an action.
Looking back again the cowling still jutted above the wing. But an hour later it was gone, and Mueller trotted back to the jetliner.
“Where the hell were you?” Zerkel whispered urgently.
“Making sure you were not disturbed. Are you finished?”
“Yes.” Zerkel handed down a stamped metal frame in the shape of a capital A about three feet long, and two feet wide at the base. Several dozen single wires, plus a thick bundle tied in a harness, dangled from the sensor frame. It was lighter than Mueller thought it should be if it were made out of aluminum. Titanium, possibly.
Zerkel tossed down his tools, and then eased himself off the wing. “Let's get out of here. I've got a bad feeling.”
“Are you finished up there, and inside?” Mueller asked calmly.
“I said I was—”
“You left no outward traces? Nothing that a casual inspection would uncover?”
“Christ.”
“Think about it.”
Zerkel started to say something, but then he looked up at the engine cowling, and back to the nose gear well, and nodded. “It's cool, man. They'd have to tear this plane down to find out what happened. I even tucked the loose wires out of sight.”
“Then it's time to go.”
“What about the hole in the fence?”
Mueller smiled. “As you say, they'd have to tear this aircraft apart to find out what you did. I don't think they'll do ten thousand.”
 
Air Force One, the Presidential seal on her tail and the American flag on her fuselage, was trundled out of her hangar at Andrews Air Force Base. At two hundred eighteen feet in length, she was nearly as large as Boeing's 747, and in her various configurations could
carry up to four hundred passengers. Except for the two accidents in seven years, the 522's safety record was perfect. The engines had been replaced by a Guerin AOG team three days ago, and no one this morning expected any trouble. Yet everyone on the maintenance team and flight crew was nervous.
The pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Bob Wheeler, went through the extensive pre-flight checklist one meticulous step at a time with his co-pilot, Major Larry Marthaller. On this flight the maintenance crew aboard would backstop every move that was made on the flight deck. Test equipment monitored every electrical, hydraulic, mechanical, and electronic function of the jetliner's 3.7 million parts. A crew on the ground would monitor everything from their vantage point. As the saying went, the President was a hundred times safer aboard Air Force One than he was riding out to the base on his chopper, and ten times safer than in his limousine.
“That line of thunder bumpers to the southeast isn't breaking up as fast as we thought it would,” Chief Master Sergeant Mazorsky said.
Wheeler looked up from the checklist. “What'd meteorology say?”
“They'll hang around a couple of hours. You might swing that way. Tops at less than forty thousand.”
Wheeler shrugged. “We've got the time if you've got the stomach, Chief.”
“I hate these goddamned things, Captain, but I want to see what shakes loose. We'll tear the airframe apart when we get back.”
“Scuttlebutt is that we might fly in two weeks. President may be moving his Tokyo trip up.”
“We've got plenty of time. I just want to make sure.”
Major Marthaller had been talking to ground control. He looked up. “You know something we don't, Chief?”
“Not a thing.”
“But?”
Mazorsky hesitated a moment. “After the incident at Dulles I want to make sure about this bird.”
“Has anything turned up?”
“
Nada
. I just want to make sure about her.”
“So do we, Chief,” Wheeler said. “One thunderstorm coming up.”
 
Getting off the base was no problem. By ten in the morning they had driven the one hundred twenty miles to Phoenix where they rented a Ford Taurus at the airport. They transferred the frame and harness plugs to the car, and turned the van in where they'd rented it at the Hertz counter downtown. By lunch they were headed north on Interstate 17.
“It'll be a long haul back to the East Coast,” Zerkel said. He drove.
“It's too risky to take that thing on a plane.” Mueller laid his head back. “When you get tired I'll drive.”
“It'll be awhile. I'm too keyed up. But we did it.”
“What do you think about that?” Mueller mumbled, and he fell asleep.
“
H
ave you talked to your friends in Washington?” Kennedy asked on the way down the hall to Vasilanti's office.
“I wanted to update you first. You're going to have to make another hard decision,” McGarvey said. “What did Carrara tell you?”
“They want you in Washington. Has something to do with your trip to Tokyo, but he wouldn't be more specific.”
“Did he warn you off?”
“Wouldn't have been very politic. They recommended you.”
“Things have changed again, David. Maybe now you won't want me on the payroll.”
“Thank God that's not a decision I'm going to have to make alone,” Kennedy replied. “But for what it's worth, I still have confidence in you. It's the situation that has me worried. It may be out of our hands. Out of your hands.”
“You may be right,” McGarvey said, and Kennedy gave him a strange, penetrating look.
McGarvey had met with Guerin's chairman of the board and chief executive officer only once since the Dulles crash, so he wasn't prepared for the drastic change in the man. Where before Vasilanti had been a tough old buzzard with an acerbic tongue, now he appeared subdued, even withdrawn. His eyes darted around the room to his executives as if he were looking for their approval. Or, McGarvey thought, their sympathy. Besides Gary Topper, George Socrates, and Newt Kilbourne, who glared at McGarvey, Kennedy introduced Tony Glick, who had taken over as Guerin's general legal counsel, and Maggie Drewd, who'd taken over as chief financial officer. No one seemed happy. Their conversation died when McGarvey came into the room, and no one said much when Kennedy made the introductions.
They were expecting more bad news. One thing he had learned about airplane people was that they were an emotional breed. Much more so than the intelligence community. They were boys and girls playing with toys, and when something went wrong they pouted. He knew that wasn't exactly right, but it seemed that way. Especially now.
“Mr. McGarvey has just returned from Tokyo. He's warned me that we're going to have to make some tough decisions,” Kennedy said.
No one responded.
“The Dulles crash and the American Airlines crash in 1990 were both acts of sabotage,” McGarvey said. “By the Japanese in an effort to bring this company down.”
“Christ,” Vasilanti said softly.
“Rolls-Royce is under intense pressure to stop engine deliveries to you—including the hydrogen engine—until we get this business straightened out.”
“Sir Malcolm tell you that?” Socrates asked.
“Yes.”
“He told me the same thing,” Topper interjected.
“That's it then,” the design vice president said in resignation. “I don't build gliders.”
“But he's agreed to try to figure out how his engines are being sabotaged,” McGarvey told them. “In the meantime Rolls will keep to its delivery schedules.”
“Wait a minute,” Vasilanti said looking up. “You mean to say that Malcolm O'Toole wouldn't listen to Gary, but he would you?”
“That's right. I told him that I had proof that the Japanese sabotaged his engines, that I just didn't know how they did it. I asked him to figure it out.”
“Do you have this proof?” Tony Glick asked. He was a blond, blue-eyed California lawyer who'd been Howard Siegel's assistant.
“Sokichi Kamiya, the head of Mintori Assurance, admitted it.”
“Extraordinary,” the company lawyer said excitedly. “No witnesses, of course. Just you?”
“Just me.”
“So it's your word against his. Lay it on your friends in Washington. The State Department is slavering at the bit about anything having to do with the Japanese. Somebody will listen.”
“It won't be that easy,” McGarvey warned. “I was set up over there, so I don't think my word is going to carry much weight. At least not until I can get the hard evidence.”
“You're saying there's nothing we can do about it?” Kennedy demanded.
“Not that at all. But it's going to get a lot tougher from here on out. I'm going to get a lot more unpopular than I already am. Might even become a fugitive. And there'll almost certainly be some more deaths.”
Vasilanti sat up. “Another crash?”
“Possibly,” McGarvey said. “I'm going to stir things up, and Kamiya's people will probably come after me. Or at least I hope they will. Maybe we'll get lucky, maybe they'll make a mistake.”
Maggie Drewd shuddered. “Jeff wasn't very keen on hiring you,” she said. “I guess I can see why. Is there any other way out for us? Short of this violence, I mean?”
“Stop building airplanes, stop flying.”
“What about your pals the Russians?” Kilbourne asked.
Kennedy said that Dominique had returned to her job in Washington, and that she and her brother were not talking. The new product development vice president blamed McGarvey.
“They pointed us in the right direction. Knowing who we're fighting helps.”
“What good is it if no one will believe you?” Kilbourne looked at the others. “I don't know if I do.”
“Then fire me, and go about your business.”
Kilbourne flared. “I'd just as soon see you in jail—”
“For what? Upsetting your sister?”
The airplane executive half rose from his seat. “For taking advantage of her. You're sleeping with her …” Socrates waved him off.
“We build airplanes, Newton. Mr. McGarvey catches spies,” the designer said. “Let's all of us get on with it.” He turned to McGarvey. “Nine days from now—Sunday, February ninth—
America
flies. Portland to Honolulu. I think you have that much time to help us. After that it will be too late. Once our airplane flies, we will have won. Nothing will hurt us.”
“I'll do what I can. But it'll get ugly. Guaranteed.”
McGarvey walked down the hall to Kennedy's office where he tried to call Carrara, first at Langley and then at the DDO's home without luck. His old friend was either not in, or he wasn't taking calls.
Next he tried to get through to Danielle or the General, but neither of them was accepting his calls
either. Which was odd, he thought, if they wanted him in Washington.
Kennedy came from Vasilanti's office a minute later. “When are you leaving for Washington?”
“Not just yet. Is Yamagata still here in Portland?”
Kennedy looked startled. “Has he got something to do with this?”
“He's connected with Mintori.”
“He's here. At least I think he still is.”
“What's wrong, David?”
Kennedy shook his head miserably. “Tit for tat, I guess. Only if it's true he's using her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My wife and Yamagata. I think they're having an affair.”
 
“He's made four calls here,” Carrara told the DCI. “One to my office, one to my home, one to Larry's office, and finally one to you, General.”
“From Portland?” Howard Ryan interjected. He was practically licking his chops.
“David Kennedy's office at Guerin's headquarters. We lost him at Narita, and this is the first we've heard from him.”
“That's been more than twenty-four hours, Phil. He could have gotten into a lot of mischief in that time,” Ryan suggested.
“Doesn't mean he did.”
“Greg Isaacs was a good man, from what I'm told. His body was broken up by the long drop onto the rocks.”
“I don't have to listen to your fucking histrionics, Mr. Ryan,” Carrara sparked. “He was my field officer. I read the reports. I talked to Cort Gates and Steve Pelham.”
“All right, Phil,” Director Murphy said placatingly.
“No, sir, it's not all right. Kirk McGarvey deserves at least the benefit of the doubt from us, considering everything he's done for this country. Some fucking New York corporate attorney—”
“That will be enough!” Murphy roared.
Ryan was grinning behind his teeth. “Phil, for God's sake, we're all on the same side here. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: just because McGarvey and I have a personality conflict doesn't mean I don't respect what the man has done for this Company. And I appreciate your friendship with him. And understand it, too. All I'm saying is that this time there have been too many coincidences surrounding him to ignore. I say we turn this over to the FBI and let them handle it as a counterespionage investigation.”
“As a criminal investigation,” Carrara countered.
Ryan raised his hands in defeat. “Okay, Phil, we'll do it your way. But let's get the investigation—whatever sort you recommend—out of the realm of emotions. Considering everything that's at stake I think it's terribly important.”
“That's fair,” Murphy acceded.
“If he's found innocent, we back off,” Ryan said.
“You're forgetting something, Mr. Ryan,” Carrara reminded the attorney coldly. “That surprises me, especially coming from a man of your training and background.”
“Yes?” Ryan asked languidly. “What's that?”
“In this country a man is still considered innocent until proven guilty. Don't forget it. I won't.”
Carrara went back to his bailiwick on the third floor and instructed his secretary that he was not to be disturbed for the next half-hour. He poured a stiff measure of brandy from a bottle in a sideboard and set the glass on his desk. He looked at it for a long moment, then turned away to stare out the window. He had been a sober alcoholic for the past eleven years. Whenever he was in crisis he poured a drink as a test of willpower—his, over whatever problem he was facing. He had beat the booze. He could beat anything else in his path.
McGarvey had been placed on at least two occasions in the company of a Japanese national by the name of Arimoto Yamagata.
He had made inquiries about the man.
He'd met an unidentified Japanese man at his hotel in Tokyo. They'd had dinner and drinks together at an exclusive club, and that evening McGarvey had been involved in a street brawl in which at least three Japanese were killed.
He'd been arrested and released within hours, and had shown up at Yamagata's home outside of Tokyo, to meet with a so far unidentified Japanese.
Isaacs was dead.
McGarvey had shaken their leg men at Tokyo's airport, and now he was back in Portland trying to call in as if nothing had happened.
Yamagata was presently in Portland.
What was going on? Was Mac finally around the bend? Had he finally snapped? Gone freelance, in the parlance? Or was there some other explanation?
If there was, Carrara thought, it would be ominous. He shivered. He'd not felt this bad for a very long time. It was time to look a little deeper into McGarvey's background. A lot deeper, as a matter of fact.
 
The sensor frame was clamped to the bench in the basement workshop at the Sterling farmhouse. Mueller and Reid watched from the foot of the stairs as Louis hooked test equipment to the several dozen wires connected to various parts of it. For the moment he ignored the main wiring harness, which would have to be reconstructed from the connector plugs that Glen had snipped from the frame and from the heat monitor unit in the airplane's electronics bay. It would have to be tested as part of the entire assembly, including his decoding and triggering circuits.
“Each of these has a diode on the frame side,” Louis said to his brother who was helping.
“What does that mean?” Glen asked. “Does it tell you something?”
Louis looked up, a wide-eyed expression on his face. “You clipped the ends of all these smaller wires because they were connected to self-locking plugs on various parts of the engine. Right?”
“We didn't have much time.”
“No sweat. What I mean is that each of these wires comes
from
the engine. Information is coming down these wires, across the frame, and out the main harness.”
“I still don't understand.”
“A diode lets a signal move in only one direction. In this case
from
the engine to the wiring harness and heat monitor's CPU. The only reason you'd design a diode into this circuit is if there were stray signals floating around the frame that might accidently find their way back into the engine. Probably burn up the thermocouples that measure the heat output at various sections of the engine.”

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