High Flight

by David Hagberg

  “What’s Reid’s involvement?”

  “Nobody knows, but he’s on the top of the hit list because of State’s queries, the White House’s interest—and by rights I should throw your name onto the list.”

  “That’s his only connection?”

  “One more. When Reid was stationed in Germany in the sixties he knew Karl Schey, who was a deep-cover East German intelligence agent working for the West German Secret Service.”

  “Did Reid know that he was a double agent?”

  “I don’t know. But Schey is one of the East Germans who is missing.”

  Davis sat back with his drink. “Shit,” he said softly. Knowingly or not, Reid was up to his elbows in this one. The question was what to do about it?

  CIA Director Roland Murphy rode his limousine to the White House. The President had agreed to see him immediately. He wasn’t going to like what Murphy was bringing over, not so soon before the Tokyo Summit. But that’s what being President was all about: making the tough decisions when no matter what you did was wrong. This one, Murphy thought, was doing a better job than most.

  There was trouble enough without McGarvey’s meddling, which was on a much larger scale than ever before. Despite the fact that Howard Ryan could be an asshole at times, he was essentially correct in his fears about McGarvey screwing up the works. Negotiations with the Japanese were at a critical stage. A wrong move on our part could push the United States one step closer to bankruptcy. Not in any real sense, but in the sense that trying to pay down the national debt would cut even further into such basic services as health care, entitlement programs, and aid to states.

  Murphy was damned glad that he wasn’t President. In fact he thought any man who aspired to the job had to be certifiably nuts.

  “Go right in,” the President’s Appointments Secretary, Steve Nichols, said.

  “Ask Harold Secor to join us,” Murphy said.

  “He’s already inside.”

  “Good.” Murphy entered the Oval Office. The President and his National Security Adviser were hunched over a series of documents spread out on the desk. They looked up.

  “Hello, Roland.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. President. Harold.”

  “What crisis are we facing this afternoon?”

  “The situation with the Japanese military. It looks as if it’s beginning to heat up.”

  The President exchanged glances with Secor. “What have you got for me this time?”

  “National Reconnaissance Offfice satellite photographs, along with the latest batch from our own KH-15.”

  Secor moved the documents he and the President had been studying.

  Murphy opened his briefcase and spread out a dozen high-resolution photos on the desk. “These are Japanese Air Self Defense and Maritime Self Defense bases. Atsugi, Iwakuni, Komatsujima, Shimofusa, Hachinowe, and Tanegashima.”

  “What am I looking at here?” the President asked.

  “It would appear that there’s a lot of activity,” Secor suggested. “An exercise?”

  “That’s right,” Murphy replied. “Every base we’ve looked at is on alert, only no one is calling it that.”

  “What do you mean?” the President asked.

  “When the Japanese military stages an exercise it always informs us well in advance. More often than not we’re invited to participate, or at the very least, observe. Not this time. Seventh Fleet Intelligence at Yokosuka spotted this for us.”

  “All right, Roland, spell it out for me.”

  Murphy took another series of photographs out of his briefcase and laid them on top of the first. “Russian naval and air force bases at Korsakov, Kholmsk, and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin Island. Svetlaya, Sovetskaya-Gavan, and Vladivostok on the mainland. And Kurilsk on Iturup Island in the Kurils. All on alert, all gearing up for an exercise.”

  The President was stunned. “You mean to say that they’re going to shoot at each other over the Tatar Strait thing? The Russian ambassador sat in this room last week, and there was no mistake that he understood perfectly what I told him.”

  “I don’t know if it’ll come to that, Mr. President, but something else has caught our attention.”

  “What?”

  “Half the Japanese bases that are on alert are in the south and east. Nowhere near the Russian threat.”

  “What’s that supposed to indicate?” Secor asked.

  “The same submarine that sank the Russian frigate in the strait is now heading toward Okinawa in the East China Sea. One of our ships is shadowing it, but we were overflown by a pair of fighter/interceptors from Tanegashima.”

  “What do the Japanese have to say about it?” Secor demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “Let’s put a different spin on this, Roland,” the President said. “The Japanese and Russians have apologized to each other for the incident in the strait. But we’ve upgraded Seventh’s readiness status to a DEFCON FOUR. Perhaps the Japanese forces are simply following suit, which has made the Russians wary. We’ve heard nothing from Moscow?” the President asked Secor.

  “Not a word.”

  “Are any of their other bases on alert?”

  “We’ve had no indications of that,” Murphy said.

  The President nodded. “As far as the submarine is concerned, the East China Sea is its home waters. It’s got every right to send a patrol down there. Isn’t that correct?”

  “Yes, sir. But this time is different. We ought to keep an eye on it.”

  “I agree,” Secor said.

  “Very well. We need to hold the status quo for another nine days, that’s all.”

  “Sir?” Murphy said.

  “I’m going to Tokyo several days before the summit is scheduled to begin. Prime Minister Enchi and I have several things to work out between us before we get started. I’ll discuss this with him.”

  “We won’t make an announcement until the last minute,” Secor said. “Sunday, February ninth.”

  “The conspirators appear before me.”

  “Do not be so certain in your judgment, or so quick to make it,” Sokichi Kamiya said. He and Hiroshi Kobayashi, who’d come from Kobe for the meeting, sat across the low table from Hideyoshi Nobunaga, the director of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, and Tadashi Ota, the Deputy Director General of Defense. They met in a private room at Fukudaya, Tokyo’s premier rotei restaurant.

  Nobunaga, a short thin man with a deep bass voice, took a thick envelope from his coat pocket and tossed it imperiously on the table in front of Kamiya. The rude gesture was an insult. “Your connection to Rising Sun and what we have managed to gather so far about your project Morning Star is there.”

  Kamiya did not even look at the envelope. “Shall we meet with the Prime Minister, Nobunaga-san? Or debate before the Diet?”

  “I forbid this insanity.”

  “Amusing, coming from a man who directs spy efforts against the United States and every other Western industrialized nation. Your efforts would be better spent against China and North Korea. Leave the real work to those of us who have the intelligence and the stomach for it.”

  Their attendant, a beautiful young woman in an immaculate flowered kimono, entered the room on her knees to serve them tiny lacquered trays of artfully arranged seafood and vegetables. She poured each of them saki in Imari porcelain cups and then gracefully withdrew. She glanced up at the hanging scroll in the alcove before she closed the rice-paper door.

  “He prospers who values another’s life.” The Deputy Director General of Defense motioned toward the printing on the scroll. “Fifty years is not such a long memory for a man of your … wisdom, Kamiya-san.”

  “I have not forgotten, but you were a snot-nosed kid. You can’t remember.”

  “Whatever you think of me, I am a student of history. Perhaps I can see the past better for not having been prejudiced by living through it. These are not such simple times.”

  “I disagree. These are the 1920s and
1930s all over again. Dai Nihon is again faced with terrible choices for her survival. If you do not understand, then come with me to the stock exchange and I will explain the facts of our life to you, Deputy Director General!”

  Ota wanted to argue, but Nobunaga gestured for him to be still.

  “We are working toward the same ends, Kamiya-san,” the MITI director said. “Many of our methods are similar. But yours will surely end in catastrophe.”

  “Think what you are saying.”

  “I have. But you must think what you are doing. Your misadventures are ego-driven. The last acts of an old man.”

  Kamiya smiled. “Then why are you here?”

  “Because you and your foolish friends are powerful men.”

  “Patriots,” Kobayashi spoke for the first time.

  “Misguided.”

  “No. I remember as well.”

  “Do you fools want to start that all over again?” Ota blurted. “Don’t you remember the privations? The humiliations? The patronizings?”

  Kamiya leaned forward and stabbed a blunt finger in Ota’s direction. “Tell me who we share Yokosuka with? Tell me who we defer to on Okinawa? Tell me whose television, and blue jeans, and pop culture our young people are being force fed?”

  Nobunaga leaned forward, his palms on the table. “And tell me who buys more manufactured goods from us than any other nation on this earth? Tell me who provides jobs? Tell me who has become friend from enemy?”

  “Then why are you spying on them?” Kamiya asked.

  “It is business. It is war. But not your kind of war.”

  “We’ll see.” Kamiya and Kobayashi got up and made to leave.

  “Don’t forget your envelope,” Ota said. “If you look inside perhaps you will gain some respect for loyalty.”

  “We will stop you,” Nobunaga warned sternly.

  Kamiya looked down at him. “I would not suggest you try to arrest us. It would tear the country apart. We have many more friends than you can possibly imagine.”

  McGarvey spent the afternoon with Socrates and the team of crash engineers that had been assembled after Dulles. Every system on the airplane had worked to its design parameters up to the moment of the crash. The only possible conclusion was that somehow the engine’s composite turbine blades had failed.

  “But I don’t like it,” the chief engineer said.

  “Maybe Sir Malcolm will come up with something for us,” McGarvey replied.

  “I’m glad you talked to him, and made him see our point. Hell, we’re all grateful. But everything is so bollixed up around here that nobody can think straight.”

  “Maybe you people should think about postponing the Honolulu flight.”

  “Believe me, that’s the only thing keeping us going.”

  It was almost five when McGarvey went up to Kennedy’s office, but his secretary said he would be in conference for at least another two hours, after which he, Mr. Vasilanti, and Mr. Kilbourne would be having dinner in the executive dining room.

  “If it’s urgent, I can break in on him.”

  “Tell him I’ll see him tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  From his own temporary office downstairs next to security he tried again to call Carrara without luck. The Deputy Director of Operations was away from his desk.

  Next he telephoned Dominique’s office, but they would tell him nothing. Her secretary was even hesitant to take a message. Nor was Dominique’s answering machine switched on at her apartment. He could understand why she was avoiding him. It was probably for the best. But he wished she had remained in Detroit. In Washington she was impossible to protect.

  Before he went out there, however, there were a few things he wanted to take care of here.

  Guerin supplied him with a Buick Riviera. He drove south to the affluent suburb of Lake Oswego and was just pulling into the Kennedys’ driveway when the garage door opened and Chance Kennedy backed out in a metallic green Mercedes 560SEL.

  She stopped when she saw him and powered down her window.

  McGarvey got out of his car and went over to her. “Can I have a couple minutes of your time, Mrs. Kennedy?”

  “David’s not home.”

  “I know. I came out to see you. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”

  She eyed him with mistrust. “You’re the spook they hired. What do you want with me? Shouldn’t you be chasing bad guys?”

  “I am.”

  “Peachy. But I have to run now. Maybe if you can corner my husband long enough to sit down for dinner you can come back Sunday.” She hit the garage-door switch.

  “Arimoto Yamagata.”

  An abject look of terror crossed her face, and was gone.

  “Are you going to see him now?”

  She shivered. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re having an affair with him, Mrs. Kennedy. But I have to warn you that he represents the people who want to bring Guerin Airplane Company to its knees. His people sabotaged that airplane that went down at Dulles. Some good people were killed. Even more may die.”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said, regaining some of her composure. “Why’d you come here?”

  “To warn you. And to find out how much you’ve already told him.”

  “I don’t know where the hell you got the idea that I was having an affair. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—”

  “Your husband told me.”

  For just a moment Chance looked up, but then her face sagged, and she averted her eyes. “He wouldn’t have told you something like that, even if he believed it was true. Not my four-square David.”

  “What have you told him?”

  “David’s a forty-three-year-old Boy Scout. True blue, loyal to the platoon, or corps, or whatever.” She looked up again. “But not to me. Can you understand that?”

  McGarvey felt sorry for her. But then, he thought, he wasn’t such a hot judge of women. He’d never been able to sustain a relationship. The job comes first. Hadn’t that always been the line?

  “Yamagata is a dangerous man.”

  “Somebody give me at least a little credit,” she said, once more in control. “I’ve not told the man a thing that he couldn’t get out of a newspaper or an aerospace magazine. But he will tell me what I want to know. What David wants to know.”

  “Stay away from him, for your own sake.”

  She laughed. “Even if I were having an affair with him, it wouldn’t be any of your business.”

  “I’ll follow you if need be.”

  She laughed even louder now. “Go ahead. I’m having drinks downtown with the girls. But you’re welcome to tag along.” She powered up her window and backed out of the driveway.

  When she was gone, McGarvey glanced up at the house. Nine days, he thought. He wondered where they’d all be on the day after.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The sensor frame was set up in the wine storage room forty feet from the heat monitor unit. Louis had rewired the connector plugs. The thick cable snaked across the basement floor from the workbench.

  “This probably seems like a waste of time, but it isn’t,” Louis said, adjusting a signal generator’s output. “I’m not sure about that first incident. Could have been a fluke. Could have been a real accident, not caused by me.”

  “Is that possible?” his brother Glen asked.

  Louis looked up. He stank of stale sweat, garlic, beer, and perfume from the whore he’d been with. He hadn’t taken a shower in days. “Anything’s possible. This is a lot more complicated than you think.”

  “I know.”

  “No you don’t,” Louis said sharply. “It’s complicated in a different way. This circuit is designed to look like one thing so that even an expert would be fooled. Really it’s something else. And I’ve got most of it decoded. Most of it, Glen. We’re not there yet.”

  “It’d be a hell of a coincidence.”

  Louis smiled grimly. “Would you bet your life on it?”

&nbs
p; Glen held his silence for a long moment, but then he shook his head. “Let’s get on with it. What do you want me to do?”

  “There’s a hundred thirty-two leads coming out of the monitor. Almost all of them are interrogators. Asking the frame to ask the engine thermocouples what the temperatures are. The CPU processes the data, and sends it up to the cockpit. I want to check each of those wires, one at a time, for any surprises.”

  “You say almost every lead checks temperatures?”

  “One should be the common ground to the frame.”

  “But it isn’t?”

  “It comes from the modified CPU in the monitor, but there’s a signal on the line when my encoder keys the circuit.”

  “To shut down the thermocouples?”

  “I thought that. Or to burn out the diodes, like you suggested. But it’s not that. The goddamned signal is modulated.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean when I key the encoder, a tone is sent from the CPU to the sensor frame. When I say hello or boom, or when I send an audio frequency signal, the CPU sends out a stream of information. The monitor talks to the sensor frame. It tells it something.”

  “Like what?”

  Louis shrugged. “I don’t know. If I put it up on a speaker the signal sounds like a bunch of monkeys in a zoo all getting pissed off at once. Gibberish.”

  “Then what?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out tonight, just as soon as we finish with the first hundred thirty-one interrogators.” He was being overly cautious, but he didn’t want to admit that he was totally at a loss. Whoever had designed this circuitry was cunning as well as intelligent. Alien, the notion popped into his head. It was the Japanese. They thought differently from us. Their culture and background were vastly different from ours, so their engineering would be different too.

  “I don’t understand, Louis.”

  “I was hoping to find something on the frame. Something that would explain how it works. Something that would make it clear. But I can’t see a fucking thing. Wires, diodes, and metal. Aluminum, magnesium. I don’t even know that. I’m no metallurgist.”