Authors: David Hagberg

High Flight (60 page)

BOOK: High Flight

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“It's what I do. It's my job.”

Chance could feel tears well up in her eyes. But she didn't want to cry in front of David. “What about our marriage?”

“What about it?” he asked.

“You're never home!” she snapped, her voice brittle.

“If I did come home, would I find you here?” he demanded.

For a second she was speechless. She hadn't thought he'd bring it up so fast. It wasn't his style. She figured there would be days or weeks of hints and arguments about every subject but that one. David was something of a prude, and naive. Only once in their marriage had he strayed, and he had been so miserable for so long that Chance had ended up comforting him when it should have been the other way around.

He stormed into the bathroom.

Chance threw back the covers and went after him. “What do you mean by that?” she screeched.

David refused to turn toward her. Instead he faced her reflection in the mirrors above the sink. “Arimoto Yamagata.”

“I've had lunch with the man twice, and dinner with him once. For you and the company.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“He's here spying on us. He told me that the people he
works for back in Tokyo want to buy Guerin and build an airplane factory in Japan. He wants to know everything about us. Especially about you, and about McGarvey. But that's a laugh.”

David turned. “What?”

“McGarvey was here. Warned me away from Arimoto. He's trying to protect his friend. Did you know that?”

“When was McGarvey here? What'd he want?”

“You told him I was having an affair. If you want to discuss our marriage, David, discuss it with me. Not the people who work for you.”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?” Chance asked, her voice disdainful. But she was frightened that he was willing to take this so far.

“Sleeping with Yamagata?”

Her breath caught in her throat. She raised a hand to her mouth. “Why do you think that?”

“I saw the way you reacted to him at Saunders' party. I know the signs.”

“Like what? Have you had me followed?”

“No need for it. Somebody mentioned to me on Thursday that they'd seen you in Holbrook. You and Yamagata.”

“I told you I met him.”

“Lunch and dinner. Not overnight. Are you sleeping with him to get back at me? Is that what this is all about? Tit for tat?”

“What if it's true?” Chance blurted, surprising herself.

“Is it?”

“Are you going back to that bitch Dominique Kilbourne?”

David shook his head sadly. “That was a mistake that I'll never live down. But I didn't love her then, and I don't love her now. I love you.”

“You love airplanes and jet engines and rockets more than you love me!”

“That's not true.”

“I'm trying to help!”

“Don't. I mean it. Stay away from Yamagata. These
people are out to hurt us, and they'll do whatever it takes to win. Including using you.”

“Then stop him!” Chance cried.

“We're trying.”

Stop me, she wanted to say, but he looked away, and after a moment she went back into the bedroom.

Chance Kennedy got to the newly opened Hyatt Regency Hotel downtown on the riverfront about noon and took a seat in the bar overlooking the water. Her emotions were badly bruised. She wanted to hide in a dark corner somewhere until everything worked itself out. Maybe they would take a vacation in the spring after all. If she could hold out that long.

David was right, of course. She was out of her league trying to deal with Yamagata. Yet being with him was like nothing she'd ever experienced or even imagined. He was so different. So caring. So knowledgeable. No fumbling, no hesitation, he knew exactly what pleased her.

She ordered a glass of champagne, and when it came she had to force herself to sip it and not gulp the whole thing down at once. She was being an absolute fool to think that she could outwit the main. The first time she'd laid eyes on him she'd been captivated. And since the tea ceremony she'd not been able to stop thinking about him.

David was respectful of him, and even McGarvey had warned her away. Which meant he probably had the key to their problems. Break him and they'd have the answers. Sex, after all, was a powerful persuader. She was no slouch. Her breasts were small, and though she often went without a bra, they were still firm. Her tummy was reasonably flat, her ass wasn't sagging, and her legs were in great shape because of tennis. He wouldn't get so aroused if she were unappealing. The trick would be to make herself alluring to him. There wasn't a man she knew who couldn't be brought around by sex, or the promise of a lack thereof. And when it was
over she would make David understand what she had done and why she had done it. Hadn't he said that he'd never loved Dominique? Well, she certainly didn't love Yamagata. That was ridiculous.

When they came out here to see about a position with Guerin, Al Vasilanti had told them that working for an airplane company was more than just a job. Because of the complexity of the product, and because of the religious commitment to safety, building airplanes was a way of life that involved the entire family. Chance would have to be like a doctor's wife: on call with her husband twenty-four hours a day. At first she thought it was a bunch of macho bullshit, but now she was starting to think that maybe the old fool had something after all.

Chance paid for her drink and took the elevator up to the twenty-first-floor penthouse with the key Yamagata had given her. The suite had already been cleaned, but he wasn't there.

She stood in the middle of the big living room, her heart beating rapidly, torn by two emotions. She was sorry she'd missed him, and yet she was glad he wasn't here. She was frightened of him. And of herself.

His clean, sandalwood scent was in the air. She could almost feel his touch, his caress.

She needed help, but there was no one to turn to. This time she was on her own.

It was for David, she told herself. Otherwise she would not be here. For David and for the company.

“The certificate is ready for my signature?”

“It will be by this afternoon,” the FAA's Flight Standards Service Director Archie Darden said. “Are you going to stop down, Jay?”

“Monday morning will be soon enough.”

“The Renton, Washington, regional office gave the bird a clean bill of health.”

“This one's got to be right for them,” Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Jay Hansen said from his house. “And for us too.”

“Nothing more we can do with this budget. Every time one goes down they scream for our blood. But in the interim they cut our funds so we can't do the job they expect of us.”

“That's called politics. Nothing we can do about it. But if our Northwest office says Guerin's plane is ready to fly, then I'll sign off on their recommendation.”

“Yes, sir,” Darden said. He was in shirt-sleeves, his thick red hair tousled. A 24x30 color photograph of the P/C2622, America painted across her fuselage, was propped up on a chair across the room. She was stunning.

“It's my own neck as well.”

“You flying to Honolulu on Sunday?”

“That's right, Archie. So I've got a vested interest to watch.”

“Well, we've done our job.” He looked at the photo. “I can tell you that I wish it was me instead of you on that flight.”

Lieutenant Sattler watched over the radarman's shoulder as the slow-moving target passed across the very top of the screen. The aircraft was an Orion P-3D on a parallel track just under one hundred miles south-southwest of the Thorn's position.

“Fifteen thousand feet at two hundred twenty knots, he's mushing along up there,” the radar operator said. “He's not one of ours, L-T.”

“Japanese?”

“Not Chinese or North Korean out here. I'd say ASDF. I can try their patrol frequencies.”

“Go ahead. Ask them if they've lost something,” Sattler ordered. He turned to the ECM's console. “Is he looking at us?”

“His radar just went active,” the rating said. “He has us. Shall we jam?”

“Negative.”

“There's his IFF. We've been interrogated. He wants to know who we are.”

“As if he didn't already know,” Sattler said.

The radar operator looked up. “Negative response on the regular channels. Want me to keep trying?”

“Stand by,” Sattler said. He called the bridge on the growler phone.

“Hanrahan.”

“We've just detected what appears to be an ASDF Orion one hundred miles south of us. We've been illuminated and interrogated, but we're getting no response on any of their patrol frequencies.”

“Is he one of ours out of Okinawa, Don?”

“Negative. We can jam his radar.”

“He knows we're here, and he knows what we're doing. Keep an eye on him.”

“Will do, Skipper.”

“What about the
Samisho?
”

“Same as before.”

“This might get interesting after all,” Hanrahan said. “Keep me posted.”

“We have to talk,” Reid said from the doorway. “We've just eight days to get everything into place.”

Louis Zerkel sat at the bedroom window watching the lights of Dulles Airport in the distance. “Ending up buried in a fucking garbage dump isn't right. He deserved better than that.”

“There wasn't much else we could do. I'm sorry, Louis.”

“I owed him.”

“Do you believe in God?” Mueller asked.

Louis turned away from the window. The German leaned against a work table, a hint of compassion in his expression that was probably fake. “Of course not.”

“Then it doesn't matter where his body ended up. Your brother is dead, and you killed him.”

“Jesus,” Reid said softly.

“It was an accident,” Louis blurted.

“Glen knew that a bullet in the head from some cop somewhere was always a possibility. It's better than
spending the rest of your life cooped up in a prison, being fucked up the asshole.”

Louis wanted to throw up. He had nobody to rely on now that both Dr. Shepard and Glen were gone. He had no idea where he could go, or what he could do. He was lost.

“Question is, are you capable of finishing the project?” Mueller asked. “If the tables were reversed do you think Glen would give up?”

“No. He'd rather die than quit.” Louis stopped. “Christ.” He couldn't get the sight of Glen's horribly charred body out of his mind's eye. The heat had been so intense that there'd been very little left that could have been identified as human.

“That's right, Louis. So now it's up to us to finish the job. Otherwise his life would have been in vain.”

Louis wanted to tell Mueller to shut his lousy lying mouth. But if they quit now all the work would go to waste. The Japanese would continue to threaten us, and no one would do a thing about it. Worst of all the devious ones, the devils, the power-mad money brokers of the world would have won.

“Eight days.”

“That's the day of Guerin's VIP flight to Honolulu,” Reid explained.

“I built an extra repeater for Portland.”

“You're a very strong man,” Mueller said. “I'm impressed.”

Louis looked at the German to see if he was kidding. But Mueller was deadly serious. Reid had brought him over from Europe, and even Glen respected him. Something in the set of the man's jaw, in the confidence of his manner, was frightening and yet comforting in an odd sort of way. Louis could see that Mueller had something that neither Dr. Shepard nor Glen had. Experience in the real world of international struggles.

Mueller knew the score. He'd been a soldier for practically all his life. He wasn't afraid to kill or be killed. He was a force unto himself.

He'd been an East German intelligence officer. But
when the Wall came down and East Germany ceased to exist, Mueller hadn't quit. He'd taken the fight elsewhere.

Mueller was a soldier.

“My life for yours,” Louis mumbled, a part of him afraid that he would be rejected.

BOOK: High Flight

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