High Flight

by David Hagberg

  “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.

  TWENTY-SIX

  “Have 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 Where before Vasilanti had been a tough old buzzard with an acerbic tongue, now he appeared subdued, even withdrawn.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.”

  “Is that how they fuck with the engines?” Glen asked. “By sending an overriding signal to burn out the diodes and then the thermocouples?”

  Louis looked at his brother with new respect. “Nice idea, and it’d work, but I don’t think that’s going to happen here. The sensor wires are also electrically isolated from the frame. In fact they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to completely isolate the frame.”

  “Go on.”

  “Think about it. Every electrical circuit needs a two-way path. The hot side and a common ground. The frame, in this case, should be the common ground. But it’s not. It’s electrically isolated for some reason.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Louis admitted. “But I’m going to find out as soon as I finish running down the rest of these connections.”

  “How long before you will be ready?” Reid asked from the stairs.

  “Few hours,” Louis said, glancing over.

  “I mean with everything. With the entire detonating setup.”

  “Depends on what I find out when I test the frame with the monitor and my circuits. I’ll probably do that later today, maybe tonight.” Zerkel grinned. “Don’t worry, Mr. Reid. Won’t be long now and you’ll get what you want. More than you want.”

  “Very well,” Reid said, and he and Mueller went back upstairs.

  “No use in putting the repeaters in place until he’s ready,” Mueller said.

  “I agree.” Reid poured a drink of Irish whiskey at the sideboard in the living room. “The chances of discovery would be too great if we had to wait long.” He took a deep drink. “February ninth is the day we go. Guerin is sending its new airplane on a flight from Portland to Honolulu. A lot of VIPs will be aboard, including the Vice President of the United States.”

  “That will create a lot of attention.”

  Reid smiled. “Indeed it will, my friend. Indeed it will.”

  “What’s going on with Ed Reid?” U.S. Representative John Davis asked on the phone. He’d become increasingly worried about his own vulnerability since speaking with the former deputy undersecretary of state.

  “You’ve got to see Harding on that one,” Dwight Coster said. He was legal counsel for the Bureau, and a friend of Davis’s.

  “Ed’s damned worried about what’s going on over there. Someone put the bug in his ear that it had to do with his stand on the Japanese. Either State or the White House is trying to sit on him.”

  “Come on, you know I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation with anyone outside the shop. Not even you.”

  “Then you’re saying it’s true that Reid is under investigation? What the hell’s he done?”

  “Nothing, so far as I know. His name just popped out of nowhere in another investigation.”

  “What kind of an investigation? Does it have anything to do with the Japanese? Because if it does it’s going to look damned suspicious when the dust settles that someone was out to put the ax to Reid.”

  “I wouldn’t answer that even if I could, John. All I can say is what I’ve already told you.”

  “This is counterespionage, right?”
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  The line was silent for a long time. Davis almost thought he had lost the Bureau lawyer. But when Coster came back his voice was guarded. “Where’d you get that?”

  “Does the name Kirk McGarvey mean anything to you? Former CIA spook on contract to Guerin Airplane Company. Does a deal Guerin’s cutting with the Russians have anything to do with it? Or a French Action Service inquiry into the whereabouts of a couple of former East German spies?” It was all the stuff Harding had given him in confidence, but Davis figured Coster didn’t need to know his source.

  “I’m not going to talk about this on the phone.”

  “Fine. Name a time and place.”

  “Ten minutes. The atrium bar at the Grand Hyatt Washington Center. It’s public enough that nobody’ll notice.”

  “Ten minutes.” Davis took a cab over to the hotel and arrived just as Coster was sitting down at a table near the front where everybody could see that they had nothing to hide.

  “I could get my ass in a major jam here,” Coster said.

  “When we signed on the dotted line for this town we took that responsibility. Nixon found out the hard way. You don’t beat the system, you just play the odds.”

  When their drinks came, Coster eyed his old friend speculatively. “Is that what this is all about, John? Odds? You owe Ed Reid a favor?”

  “Sort of. But I also want to cover my own ass. If he’s in trouble I want to know about it.”

  “Where’d you get all that information?”

  “Harding. Said it was confidential.”

  “Why the hell don’t you go back to him?”

  “Because I figure he’s already given me as much as he’s going to give. And two calls in one week will start him wondering.”

  “And I’m the boy who’s got to play ball with you and lie to his own director.”

  “We’re friends.”

  “Yeah,” Coster said. “In this town that’s more expensive than a mistress. McGarvey is under investigation for industrial espionage, selling or trading secrets to the enemy, and murder. That’s just for starters. The CIA called today to turn up the heat. They want him burned. Somebody over there has a grudge.”