“What’s that?”
“Johnnie Walker Black cough syrup.”
“In Riyadh?”
“Understanding doc. Drink up.”
The liquor burned nicely going down. “What’d the doc tell you?”
“You’re mostly in one piece. Slight concussion. You’ll live, whether you want to or not.”
“Good deal.”
Kimball crossed the room to his own bed and sat on the edge of it.
The phone rang.
He looked at his watch. 12:15 A.M. in the morning. 3:15 A.M. in Phoenix.
The phone rang again.
“You want to take that, Sam Eddy? It’ll be Susan.” McEntire splashed more scotch in their glasses.
The phone rang again.
Finally, he picked it up. “Grand Central Zoo.”
He listened for a minute, then told Kimball, “She wants to know how our day went.”
“Tell her about yours. Tell her mine was a bust.”
Kimball lay back and closed his eyes to rest them, but they didn’t want to open again.
Fourteen
Bangkok was teeming with life. Too much life. It flowed through the jammed streets on tireless, sandaled feet and in shrilly honking, smoke-emitting trucks, automobiles, and weaving motorscooters, and it sailed along the edges of the Chao Phraya River and the canals, the klongs, in thousands of well-maintained or decrepit longtail boats called hang yao, propelled by ratty motors driving propellers mounted on long driveshafts.
The silver and gold spires of the city were slowly becoming hidden by the glass-faced highrises imported from Western architects. This holiest of cities was being subverted by the devils of America and Europe. Still, Buddha reigned, and foreigners who wished to reside in the city paid at least superficial homage to the prevailing attitude of serenity. A Thai did not increase the volume of his voice, debate meaningless issues, nor demonstrate anger.
In a city that appeared so wealthy, where gold leaf was left at the feet of the Buddha in innumerable temples, there was still an underlying patina of vast poverty.
It seemed to Lon Pot that almost every citizen of the Thai capital either had his hand out, pleading for alms, or had his hand out, offering breadfruits, orchids, and cheap watches in exchange for pitifully few baht. The gem dealers were scarcely more subtle.
Lon Pot’s white Lincoln passed over the main canal, Phadung Klong, coming close to mashing a pedicab. His driver was more concerned with his destination than with those who might possibly get in the way of it.
The Lincoln dwarfed most of the automobiles on the street and signified that a great personage sat behind its darkly tinted windows.
The personage, Lon Pot, was accompanied by two bodyguards in addition to the driver. He was dressed in a white silk suit, silver-blue shirt, and spotless white tie. When he came to Bangkok, he liked to dress for the occasion.
They passed the small temples that proliferated through the city, bedecked with purple orchids, yellow roses, and white jasmine. Monks in saffron robes moved along the sidewalks, appearing and disappearing in the crowds. The city of six million international souls had grown too fast.
Pot ordered the car stopped at a grocer’s stand, and Dhat, one of his guards, got out and bought mangoes and durian, a spiky fruit that he loved.
Just before reaching Yawaraj Road, the driver turned left into a narrow alley containing several houses and apartment buildings. He drove slowly until reaching the front of a narrow, newer building, then stopped at the curb.
Dhat got out of the car and explored the street with his eyes. He walked to the nearest structures and examined the doorways, then walked back and opened the rear door of the Lincoln.
“All clear?” Pot asked.
“Chai, Prince.”
Pot got out of the car and was nearly run over by a bicycle that appeared from nowhere. He jumped back against the car as Dhat backhanded the boy on the bicycle.
The boy and the bicycle landed four feet away.
After examining the boy, no more than nine years old, for hostile intent, Dhat helped him up.
“I apologize,” the bodyguard told the boy. “It was a mistake.”
“Mai pen rai,” the youngster said, pushing his bicycle away.
Never mind. It was the philosophical bent of the Thai people.
Pot crossed the sidewalk, and unlocked the front door with his own key. He pushed open the steel door, which had a wrought iron grille over its window, and stepped into a small foyer. There were two apartments in the building, the main floor quarters dedicated to Pot’s employees who happened to be in the city on one errand or another. The upstairs apartment was his own.
A flight of steps with a black wrought iron railing climbed along one wall, and he immediately took them. On the landing at the top of the stairs, he was faced with another locked steel door which yielded to his key.
He shoved it open with a bang.
“Aie!” a small boy yelped, then gushed, “Father!”
He rose to his feet from the carpet of the living room, where he had been reading a book, and bowed to his father. At ten years of age, he had his father’s lanky, black hair, and nothing else. He wore round, thick spectacles, and his chin receded as if he had no jaw at all. His stature was tiny, his shoulders thin and slumped. All in all, he was not very regal, and he was a disappointment to the Prince.
“Where is your mother?”
“I will get her.”
He raced from the room.
Dhat stepped inside and looked around. It was a large room, the far windows overlooking a large balcony decorated with white-painted wrought iron furniture and potted orange trees. The railings were draped with bougainvillea. Beyond the balcony was a view of Yawaraj Road and beyond that, the river and Chinese Town.
Satisfied that only the proper persons were in residence, Dhat withdrew and closed the door behind him.
Besides the large living room, the apartment contained a small kitchen, a dining room, a very nice Western bathroom, and two bedrooms. It should not have been difficult for the boy to locate his mother.
Pot walked across the deep-pile carpet to the sideboard and used another key to unlock it. He withdrew a bottle of Glenlivet scotch, checked the mark on the bottle to be certain it had not been tampered with, and poured several centimeters in a lead crystal glass. Lon Pot had acquired the taste for Scotch whisky from an American CIA agent with whom he did business during the crisis in Vietnam. He put the bottle back and relocked the cabinet.
“Master.”
She said it in such an even-toned, noninflected way that it was difficult to interpret her as either softly yielding or brazenly insubordinate.
Lon Pot turned to face his wife, who stood in the entrance to the hallway. She was tiny, less than one-and-a-half meters tall, and obviously the source of his son’s stature. She was also an exquisite miniature, with finely formed features, flowing hair so shiny it appeared to be silk, and delicate, almond-shaped brown eyes. She wore the traditional ao dai of her Vietnamese culture, this one a pale-cream with an intricate embroidery of rose petals outlined in gold.
He had bought her when she was fourteen, and she was now twenty-five.
“Hello, Mai.”
“It is a pleasure to see you after so much time,” she said. “Will you be here long?”
Again, the even tone of her voice displayed no pleasure, nor any reticence. Her vocal presence was always less demanding than the words she placed in her letters.
“Perhaps a week. It depends on events.”
“We can look for a new apartment?” There was the first hint of a light in her eyes.
“Perhaps,” he said, though he had no intention of doing so. A week from now, who knew where he might wish to live? It could be here, it could be in Rangoon.
Her flower-red lips parted in the trace of a smile.
“We will go to our room,” he said.
She pivoted gracefully toward the hall and led the way.
*
The lady in the pink sweatband and stuffed blue sweatsuit yakked on and on. Dixon figured she was not talking to her lover, so it had to be her mother.
He sat on the blond wood bench in the middle of the mall and watched the people sauntering up and down the shiny, rose-tinted tile. They were dressed in ultra casual, and not many were carrying shopping bags. They weren’t buying; they were cruising the neighborhood.
Brock Dixon felt out of place in his thousand-dollar charcoal suit.
Every few seconds, he glanced back at the woman gripping his telephone. Beside him, a huge, plastic philodendron in a redwood planter was coated with dust.
Two boys and four girls dressed in black leather and multi-hued tattoos stopped to peer in the window of a formal wear shop. With the haircuts that made them nearly indistinguishable as to gender, he could not imagine them in tuxedos and gowns. Maybe they were going to have their own prom.
He checked his watch. Eight minutes late.
Get off the damned phone, lady.
A mall security guard moseyed along, staying close to the black leather.
Finally, she hung up and jogged away from the public phone, most of her moving in up-and-down directions.
Dixon stood and crossed to the telephones. There were three of them, side by side, but she had taken his.
He had almost reached it when it started to ring.
The security guard cast a questioning look in his direction, and Dixon chose to ignore it.
He grabbed the receiver.
“Yeah?”
“We’re in New Delhi,” Crider said.
“You think that’s where they’re going next?” Dixon wished he knew Kimball’s schedule. He could have discovered just what it was with a few phone calls, but he did not want anyone remembering who made those few phone calls.
“Who knows? But we got out of Riyadh just as soon as the package was placed. Anything in the papers there?”
“The Post gave it almost two inches on page fifteen,” Dixon complained. “All it said was that a plane crashed on a Saudi training mission and that there were no casualties. No mention of the manufacturer.”
“Same thing in the international edition of the New York Times,” Crider said. “The Saudis are protecting Kimball’s reputation for some reason.”
“I can figure out the reason easy enough.”
“What?”
“They know it wasn’t an accident or design flaw. You screwed it up.”
“You want to do it?”
“How did you set it up?” Dixon asked.
Crider told him about the small dab of plastic explosive in the electronics compartment.
Dixon shook his head.
The kids in leather had moved on, and so had the security guard.
“That was stupid, Crider. Those planes have two, maybe three systems. Even if the black boxes are side by side, and they must be if you succeeded, they have armor protection from the exterior. Two or three systems aren’t going to fail at the same time, not for electronic reasons. They’ll examine the armor and know the explosion came from inside the plane.”
“You wanted aircraft engineers, you should have hired aircraft engineers. We can quit now and go home,” Crider told him.
“No, damn it! You’ve got your money. Earn it!”
“Find me an itinerary,” Crider ordered, which Dixon did not like. “Working off the cuff, on the spur of the moment, isn’t going to do it. We need some planning time.”
“That’s too damned risky.”
“Let’s compare your risk to mine.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Dixon said and slammed the phone down.
Digging some quarters from his pocket, he picked up the receiver and dialed a number.
“Weapons Procurement, this is Linda.”
“Is General Ailesworth in, Linda? This is Brock Dixon.”
“Just a minute, sir.”
When Ailesworth came on the line, the first thing he said was, “Pretty disappointing, Brock.”
“You read the paper?”
“I read it every morning. Our friends aren’t getting their money’s worth.”
“This last one was a good idea. It just didn’t come off well.”
“Banner headlines would be better. Lots of discredit falling where it belongs.”
“You’ll get them. Just hang on.”
“It’s a funny thing about time, Brock. When it runs out, it’s gone. If the man from the desert makes one good sale, then he’s a contender, and the committees on the Hill will take a good look at what he has to offer. We’ll have civilians dictating hardware purchases to the services. Given the penny-pinching attitudes, I think there may well be a shake-up in traditions that have lasted decades. Where were you planning to work after you retired, Brock?”
Dixon had always thought that, after he earned his third star, he might snoop around for one of the major aerospace contractors. They always had a need for decent intelligence-gathering.
“Same place as you, Jack.”
“They might not be there,” Ailesworth said.
Which was overstating the case, Dixon thought. The industries would still be around, but they would be downsizing and scrambling and not hiring retired generals at inflated salaries. Unless, of course, they knew by word of mouth or some other way that Brock Dixon had helped them out when they needed it most.
“We’re working on it,” he said.
“Work fast. Time is money, as they say.”
*
Islamabad was not Ben Wilcox’s idea of an exotic paradise, not even close to it.
Kimball’s recital about his downed Alpha Kat was also not a story he wanted to hear.
Wilcox, Kimball, and McEntire were in Wilcox’s hotel room. It was a small room, and they sat in straight chairs around the double-sized bed. McEntire had his big feet up on Wilcox’s pillow.
“You said you were working on it,” Kimball said. “What have you found out?”
“To date, not a damned thing.” Mostly, that was because he had not been actively investigating who might be sabotaging Kimball’s aircraft. There was no way in hell that he was going to get the Agency crosswise with the law concerning domestic activity.
“Shit.”
“That’s right, Kimball. I have my suspicions, of course, but there’s not a rumor, not a whisper, out about any group that’s targeting you.”
“We all know who wants us to fail,” Kimball said, with some earned bitterness.
“We all think we know,” Wilcox said. “I’m looking around … I’ve got my people looking, but you’ve got to remember that we’re not dealing with nerds. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make a connection between the attempts on your aircraft and anyone who matters.”
“I think you’re probably right,” McEntire agreed. “The CIA couldn’t find its ass with ten assistant directors and a flashlight. We’ll do it ourselves.”
Wilcox gave him a dirty look, but decided not to get in a pissing match with him. Not just now, anyway.
“What do the Saudis say?” he asked.
“They’re still investigating the remains from the crash scene, but offhand, they seem to agree with us. That bird was sabotaged,” Kimball said.
“Any salvage at all in it?”
“No,” Kimball said. “There was a secondary explosion, either fuel or another bomb. Then, the little packages we got from you went off and evaporated most of what was left.”
“And you?”
“I’m okay. The back’s a little stiff, but the headache’s gone.”
“We’re out an airplane,” McEntire said.
“You knew there was going to be a risk.”
“Not from in back of us, we didn’t. We’re still a couple thousand miles from the danger zone.”
“You’re insured,” Wilcox said, knowing they were not.
“On experimental fighter aircraft? How dense are you, Wilcox?”
“If I dig deep, I can maybe
come up with another million,” Wilcox told him.
“That’s about two million short,” McEntire said. “Transfer it to our accounts this week,” Kimball told him.
On this quiet, hot night in Pakistan, there was a difference in the personalities. In Colorado, Kimball had been the reticent one and McEntire had been more than a little flippant. Here, the flippancy had disappeared. McEntire was being tough. There was a heavy current of anger running through the man, and Wilcox guessed it was probably the result of the near-miss with his best friend. McEntire was not likely to be very demonstrative with male friends though the feelings would run deep. That was contrary to his behavior with his female friends.
Kimball was very reserved, though not as negative as he had been in Colorado. He hadn’t mentioned dropping the mission, so Wilcox figured he was still locked in on that.
“You’ve got to skip New Delhi,” Wilcox said.
“Fuck that,” McEntire said.
“I second Sam Eddy. Motion passes,” Kimball said. “We’re not going to blow even one of our chances to show the airplanes. It might not ever come around again.”
Wilcox weighed his alternatives, but the options were fast depleting. Simonson would not be happy with his divulging the information, but time was now crucial.
“There’s a new factor,” he said.
Kimball grimaced. “There always is.”
“Tell us about the new factor,” McEntire urged. “Then we’ll cancel everything and go home.”
“Our sources tell us there’s a deadline.”
“What sources?” McEntire asked.
“What deadline?” Kimball asked.
Wilcox shifted his gaze to McEntire. “There’s no way in hell I’m going to give you a name. But the source is damned highly placed.”
“Deadline?” Kimball asked again.
“July twenty-seventh.”
“For what?”
“That’s the tricky part of it,” Wilcox said. “Lon Pot is staged for a coup. He’s planning to take over the Burmese government.”
“Shit!” McEntire said. “The druggie becomes a dictator? Never happen.”
“Look at Colombia. Who’s really running the important things?” Wilcox asked.
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