Tom Clancy's Power Plays 1 - 4

by Tom Clancy

  “Don’t bother yourself about the hotel tab, I’ll take care of it,” he said.

  And turned from her shocked face, opened the door, and left the room.

  NINETEEN

  VARIOUS LOCALES

  SEPTEMBER 25/26, 2000

  “LOCAL TRAFFIC, LEARJET TWO ZERO NINE TANGO CHARLIE, READY to go off Runway Two at the east end,” Gordian was saying into his mike, informing any nearby multicom users of his departure. The small private airfield UpLink shared with a handful of other Silicon Valley firms had no ground radio facilities, but the nationwide advisory frequency of 122.9 was often monitored by pilots, and his practice was to broadcast his takeoff and landing intentions as a courtesy to them and a hedge against unwanted—and potentially disastrous—midair encounters.

  Not that it looked as if there would be anything but smooth flying today. With a clear blue sky, high ceiling, and gentle winds, Gordian was anticipating a takeoff into ideal weather conditions. His only fillip of concern, and very slight concern at that, had come when he’d lowered his flaps while taxiing and noticed the hydraulic-pressure gauge drop off a hair more readily than normal.

  This was something a less cautious pilot probably wouldn’t have detected, nor found of much interest if he had, and quite understandably so. Gordian himself couldn’t see any reason to worry. Though the aircraft’s flaps, speed brakes, and landing gear all operated on the same hydraulic line, they would continue to respond properly, if perhaps a bit slowly, with the fluid level on the low side. Further increasing his confidence was the knowledge that his engine instrument-and-crew-alerting system—or EICAS—annunciators would flash a warning to indicate a problem with the circuit, serious or otherwise. And they had remained dark.

  Still, he couldn’t help but feel disappointed in Eddie, who’d inspected the plane the day before, and was usually an even bigger stickler for safety than he was … too thorough to let even a minor abnormality slip past his attention.

  But later for that, he thought. As always in the moments before going airborne, Gordian could feel the sky exerting an almost physical pull. Moving the throttles forward, he concentrated on the EFTS panel in front of him, his eyes shifting between its flat-screen primary flight displays—arranged in the same “standard T” of old-fashioned analog instruments—and the bars of his ITT gauge, which measured the internal temperature of the turbofans. A hot start could lead to engine failure within seconds, making the ITT readout one to watch carefully.

  Nothing to trouble him on that score; the turbos were operating well within standard limitations.

  Its compressors whining and sucking in air, its wheels rumbling over the tarmac, the Learjet rolled up the centerline straight as an arrow. Gordian felt the shove of acceleration, and then the excitement that had accompanied each of the hundreds of takeoffs he’d flown over the past thirty years. He snapped his eyes to the window and quickly observed the distance markers along the runway— a feature as rare to civilian fields as it was common to military ones, and emplaced at Gordian’s direction as a nod to his fighter-jock days.

  Returning his attention to the EFIS, Gordian saw his virtual airspeed bug indicate that he had reached 104 knots, go-or-no-go speed. He conducted a last-minute check of the crucial displays. Everything was running smoothly, the bank of caution lights still out, his system readings A-okay. Go,

  He released the stick, gripped the yoke with both hands, and rotated the jet to a seven-point-five-degree nose-up angle for liftoff. There was a slight jolt and another familiar tingle of excitement as his wheels left the pavement. His hands on the control column, Gordian increased his pitch to ten degrees and continued his ascent.

  After several seconds he again looked outside to confirm what the altimeter and his own physical sensations had already told him. He had reached a positive rate of climb, the ground rapidly dwindling beneath him, the undivided blue of the sky pouring into his windshield.

  His gear and flaps up, Gordian accelerated to two hundred KIAS, or over three hundred miles per hour. At a thousand feet he would very gradually trim airspeed until he attained cruising altitude.

  Right now, though, it was time for an announcement to his passengers.

  He switched on the cabin intercom.

  “Vince, Megan, Rich, we’re on our way,” he said. “ETA in D.C. is nine o’clock. So make yourselves comfortable and try not to discuss business. There’ll be plenty of time for that later.” He reached for the “off” switch, thought about the chattery teeth Scull inevitably got when he flew, and added a few words for his benefit. “There’s a bottle of Glenturret in the wet bar for anyone who wants it. Courtesy of your captain. Later, folks.”

  Smiling a little, feeling easier with himself than he had in weeks, Gordian cut the intercom and settled back into his pilot’s chair for the trip.

  In a drawing room at the Leominster country club in Southampton, Reynold Armitage was gazing out the window at the ocean. It was a drab, chill day in eastern Long Island, and the threat of rain had driven the gulls close to shore. They wheeled in erratic circles, their wings tearing ragged holes in the stationary film of mist that had settled over the beach and jetties. Distantly across the water, Armitage could see a lighted buoy twinkling bright and red.

  Ensconced in the armchair opposite him, William Halpern released a long, heaving sigh. Wearing dark flannel pants and a herringbone blazer, he was a spare, white-haired man in his mid-fifties with an undershot chin and virtually neutral complexion.

  “Awful outside, isn’t it?” he said in a haughty Connecticut Yankee accent. “The forecast was for sunny and warm, you know.”

  Using his wheelchair’s joystick control, Armitage swiveled around to face his host. He was feeling winded from the dampness, which exacerbated the respiratory problems associated with his condition. The mere act of breathing was a reminder of the limitations of his failing body. Yet from the way the president and chief executive of MetroBank seemed to take the bad weather as a personal affront, one would think he was the man in poor health.

  “It’s difficult to make predictions for the shore,” Armitage said. “Don’t bother yourself about it, William. I’m hardly up to a stroll on the beach, and found the ride in your corporate helicopter to be quite entertaining.”

  “I’m glad,” Halpem said, although he still had the look of someone who had booked reservations at an exclusive restaurant and found his meal to be a cold disappointment. He glanced out the window again and then settled back, appearing resigned and vaguely disgusted, as if realizing there were no one in charge of the climate to whom he might complain. “I wanted a discreet and quiet spot for our meeting, you see.”

  Armitage said nothing. There were, he thought, any number of quiet places in Manhattan where they could have met with greater convenience. But even in their elevated circles a Leominster membership was a glowing symbol of status, and Halpem obviously liked to showcase it. He was also well aware of the attention being paid to Marcus Caine’s grab for UpLink voting stock, and with MetroBank retaining a significant percentage of the company, wouldn’t want to start rumors flying by being seen with Roger Gordian’s most noted media critic.

  No, there was nothing mysterious about Halpern’s desire to meet where they were. The real question for Armitage was why he’d wanted to get together in the first place. And with their mannerly preliminaries out of the way, he wasn’t about to kill time waiting for an answer.

  “So,” he said. “What gossip about the financial community can we exchange? Let’s think of something blis-teringly hot and in the news. Something that gets flashbulbs popping. Shall we?”

  Halpem looked at him.

  “There’s Monolith and UpLink,” Armitage said with an arid little smile. “Not to mention UpLink and Monolith.”

  Halpern seemed perplexed by his sarcasm. “I’ve sat down with some of the men on MetroBank’s executive board to discuss liquidating our UpLink shares,” he said. “Prior to a formal meeting, you understand.”

&
nbsp; “And?”

  ‘The consensus to go ahead with the sell-off hasn’t materialized as I’d expected.”

  “Interesting,” Armitage said.

  “It gets more interesting,” Halpern said. “As you know, I have no allegiance to Roger Gordian, and think his mission to save the world by planting a wireless telephone booth in every garden is nothing but horse crap.”

  “You’re mixing metaphors,” Armitage said. “And being a tad reductionist about his goals, wouldn’t you say?”

  Halpern shrugged. “Call it what you will, I am concerned with MetroBank’s stake in his corporation only insofar as its profitability, or lack of same. But there are directors on the board who feel a personal loyalty to the man, and have been reluctant to part ways with UpLink despite the diminishing returns on our investment. Before yesterday, though, I’d convinced most of them that hanging tight would be an abdication of their fiduciary responsibilties.”

  “And what’s changed that?”

  “Not ‘what,’ but ‘who,” Halpern said. “Gordian himself phoned three senior executives. He requested they hold off on considering any offer from Marcus Caine until he’s had a chance to meet with them.”

  Armitage wondered if he was expected to be surprised.

  “A sensible preemptive move,” he said. “And one with nothing behind it. As long as UpLink’s value continues to deteriorate, your board is obliged to take a serious look at Marcus’s bid. Money, not loyalty or misplaced faith in Roger Gordian, is what will count in the final tally.”

  “And Gordian has promised to address shareholder doubts about UpLink’s future at his press conference tomorrow,” Halpern said. “He assured the directors he would be making a major, positive announcement. And that they would, at the very least, want to reassess their options after hearing what he has to say.”

  This time Armitage raised his eyebrows.

  “I thought his reason for going to Washington was to protest the Morrison-Fiore legislation,” he said.

  “So did I,” Halpern said. “And I’ll tell you something else. His top securities attorney caught a red-eye out to San Jose last night. Canceled all his other appointments at the last minute.”

  “How do you know?”

  Halpern stared at him.

  “I have my contacts,” he said, shrugging again. “You … and Marcus … can take my word for it. Something’s in the air.”

  Armitage inhaled. His chest felt tight. If the feeling persisted, he would have to page his nurse into the room and be administeed a respiratory dilator. He felt a sudden bolt of hatred, and wasn’t sure why. Nor was he even certain toward whom it was directed.

  Outside the window a seabird emitted a shrill, ribboning cry as it plunged through the low veil of fog.

  He looked at Halpem.

  “I appreciate the tip, William,” he said. “But the one thing you haven’t told me is where you come down in this.”

  Halpem crossed his legs and was silent a moment.

  “We’ve known each other for years, and you’ve always given me sound financial advice,” he said finally. “But as you said yourself, this business is about money, not loyalty or faith .. . and like all bankers, Vm an agnostic.”

  “Meaning you’ll be listening to Roger Gordian’s statement before deciding whether to stay behind the bid.”

  Halpem nodded, brushing a speck of lint off his trousers.

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “And very closely.”

  On a stubby finger of rock jutting off his island base’s ocean side, Kersik stared out across the benighted water at the lights of Sandakan Harbor. Restless, he had left camp alone, thinking the freshness of the breeze would somehow dispel his somber mood, but instead it had made him feel worse. He supposed it was his knowledge of the violence that soon would be launched from his pristine shoreline, the deaths that were inevitably to come. There would be dozens, perhaps hundreds … if not many, many more. For a just cause, yes, or anyway a cause in which he squarely believed. But wasn’t that the same ancient, self-righteous madness which drove every act of war?

  Men fought. They had always fought, whether armed with stones, arrows, guns, or nuclear torpedoes. And they found their reasons. Indeed, Kersik sometimes felt that belief in a cause was nothing but a dark funnel into which both heroes and villains leaped with equal certitude, all tumbling together like clown players in a circus. Like the man who presently ruled Indonesia as if he were a Javanese king, parsing the nation’s wealth out to his courtesans … like his predecessor, and Suharto, and those who had come before them, Kersik saw himself as being on the right side of history. Zhiu Sheng, Nga, Luan, they too were right from their individual perspectives—and yet the forces that had moved them into alignment were far too complex to be defined by absolutes.

  Kersik’s brow creased above his bushy eyebrows. Wasn’t the judgment of right or wrong only a matter of who survived to render the verdict when the smoke cleared and the spilled blood of the dead was washed away? He had renounced his allegiance to his country’s government and was about to place himself in defiance of ASEAN, Japan, and the United States. The entire world, really. Before all was said and done, he would be called a rogue, an international pariah. And what would he think of himself in the end? Might a division ultimately form in his own mind … half of him feeling validated, half condemned?

  Kersik gazed out at the lights of a city that in the last 150 years had been governed once by the Germans, twice by the British, and exploited by traders, gunrunners, and timber lords from diverse comers of the globe. That during World War II was invaded by the Japanese and leveled by American bombs … and that now literally and ironically held the keys to the fate of both those nations.

  Kersik stood and thought and looked out across the ocean swells .. . and after a while became dimly aware of a scurrying in the mangrove thicket behind him.

  He turned, snapping on his flashlight, his right hand falling to the bolstered Makarov at his waist. The sound had not really alarmed him; the only men on the island were the Thai’s seawolves and his own commando units, and both groups had lookouts posted along the shore. Still, he was beyond all else a soldier. . . and good soldiers had cautious habits.

  He trained the beam of his flash at eye level, saw nothing but smooth, gangling mangrove trunks and prop roots, and lifted it higher. Just below the leaf cover, a flying lemur clung to the bark and watched him with huge orblike eyes. .

  For a moment Kersik experienced a queer, almost dizzying transference, imagining how he might appear to the strange little creature—clumsily threatening, out of place, himself the real alien. He withdrew his hand from his pistol grip as if it were red-hot, feeling an intense and incomprehensible guilt.

  The creature studied him for another second or two with its perfectly round eyes, and then spread its flight membranes and kited off into the forest blackness.

  Shaken and hardly knowing why, Kersik stepped into the brush and walked back toward camp.

  As one of the test pilots of the original Learjet had told Gordian about its maiden run, the flight had gone better than expected and he’d expected it to go well.

  That about said it for the trip to Washington.

  Now, approaching Dulles International Airport at 8,500 feet and 350 knots downwind, autopilot off, the night sky clear and moonlit, Gordian cross-checked the Global Positioning System and VOR windows on his horizontal-situation indicator for a course fix, then radioed ahead to request airspace clearance.

  “Washington, Learjet Two Zero Nine Tango Charlie, over Alexandria VOR at eight thousand, landing Dulles. Squawking one two zero zero,” he said, finishing his initial communique with the standard numeric identification code for civilian aircraft.

  A moment later the traffic controller responded, providing the computer code by which his radar-beacon system would differentiate Gordian’s plane from other aircraft in the vicinity as it was guided down.

  “Good evening Nine Tango, Washington Approac
h. Squawk five zero eight one and ident. Radar contact es-tabUshed, cleared into Washington Class B airspace. Descend and maintain four thousand.”

  “Roger. Learjet Nine Tango, squawking five zero eight one. Understand cleared into the TCA. Out of eight for four.”

  The buildings and illuminated landing strips of Dulles in sight below, Gordian trimmed power and entered a steady sink, carefully monitoring the instrument panel, making small heading corrections as he descended. Less than ten minutes later he again contacted the man on the ground floor.

  “Approach, Learjet Nine Tango, level at four.”

  “Learjet Nine Tango, roger. Am familiar and would like Runway One Four Left.”

  “Cleared for approach One Four Left,” the Approach controller began after a brief pause, then vectored and sequenced him into the lineup of arriving aircraft.

  Not at all to Gordian’s surprise. Approach concluded the transmission by informing him he would have to hold and circle at four thousand feet. In D.C. and other major cities, the terminal environment was often stacked with inbound traffic, in which instances one could look forward to a tedious wait.

  He re-engaged the auto and informed his passengers they would have time for at least a couple of Scull’s equally tedious jokes.

  It was twenty-five minutes before the controller assigned a further descent altitude and then handed Gordian over to the tower—not as long as it might have taken, although he was still glad to be out of the pattern. The repetitive banking maneuver had been tiresome, and gobbled up more fuel than he would have preferred.

  He switched to the tower frequency and identified himself.

  “Learjet Two Zero Nine Tango Charlie cleared to land Runway One Four Left,” the ATC acknowledged.

  Gordian took the wind headings from him, rogered, and then read down the items on his computerized final checklist, mentally ticking them off to the line above Gear and Flaps. Although it sometimes seemed he had memorized the various checklist tasks when he was still in diapers, Gordian conscientiously ran through it before, during, and immediately after each flight. To do otherwise would be to deny his own fallibility, and that was not a mistake he ever intended to make—most especially not at the risk of people’s lives.