Dick Robb introduced himself as co-captain and shook her hand, letting his eyes openly wander down to her chest for a second or two before resuming eye contact. She had already turned her head back toward Holland and hadn’t noticed Robb’s interest, so he turned back to the instruments. Holland motored his electrically positioned seat back so he could partially turn and see her as he talked.
“James Holland, Ms. Sherwood. Good to meet you.”
It was the handsome pilot she’d noticed in the airport. She extended her hand and he took it gently, his huge warm palm completely enfolding hers as those deep blue eyes looked up at her, triggering a flutter of visceral feelings that surprised her. There was something about him—something very disturbingly sensual, she thought, though he carried an air of sadness.
The same vibrations that had shuddered through her back in Frankfurt erupted again now with seismic force, and she cleared her throat, worried that the professional ambassadorial assistant was going to sound like a giddy young girl.
Looking directly at Holland, unable to even glance away, she explained the ambassador’s worries.
“No. No hijackers here,” he assured her, “but since you folks are from the State Department, let me ask you a question. Isn’t there a major diplomatic problem when a foreign country effectively orders an American airliner full of American citizens back for quarantine?”
Rachael stopped dead for a second. What was the word “quarantine” doing in that sentence? On the PA, Holland had said only that they were returning to Frankfurt for better medical aid for the heart attack victim in coach.
“There’s more, I’m afraid,” Holland began, understanding her puzzled expression. “I forgot you didn’t know.” He relayed what had happened, and the fact that the heart attack victim had come aboard ill with a serious strain of the flu, and that everyone aboard could be exposed.
Alarm flared in Rachael’s eyes. “All of us?”
He shrugged. “Apparently.”
She stared into space a few seconds, saying nothing before he pointed to the floor. “Your boss, Ambassador, ah …”
“Lancaster. Lee Lancaster,” she replied, jumping slightly as she jolted herself out of a shocked stupor.
“Right. Ambassador Lancaster. He might want to help us deal with this on a governmental level, since both of you are affected as much as we are.”
“How long a quarantine is it to be?” she asked, her mind reeling at the thought. They had schedules. They had to be in Washington, and then there was the speech to the National Press Club …
He shook his head and glanced at Robb, who was pretending to pay no attention.
“I don’t know, Ms. Sherwood,” Holland said.
“Rachael,” she replied, far too quickly.
He nodded. “Rachael. Of course.” He paused and almost smiled, as if he saw her differently all of a sudden. He could see the quarantine information had upset her even more than the possibility of exposure to a bad flu.
“We don’t have any idea, Rachael, how long they mean to keep us, or what kind of treatment they’re talking about. I mean, how do you stop a virus? How do you impound foreigners legally? This is uncharted territory and I could sure use some diplomatic guidance.”
Rachael stood and, almost without realizing it, touched his shoulder with her left hand in a gesture of reassurance.
“Please,” he continued, “say nothing about this to anyone else. I haven’t even briefed my crew.”
Her voice was soft and distracted. “No problem. I’ll ask the ambassador to come up.”
Rachael returned to the first class cabin, oblivious of the tall, familiar, silver-haired occupant of seat 3B, who was hunched over and urgently discussing changed schedules with someone half a world away. Now he slammed the satellite telephone handset back in its cradle and mashed the flight attendant call button in anger. The Reverend Garson W. Wilson, a household name in American evangelism, turned to his startled secretary—a young man named Roger—and gestured toward the ceiling with undisguised disgust.
“We can’t reschedule the NBC interview! That was their producer, Casey somebody, and the … the … sumbitch …” He almost whispered the word conspiratorily, but Roger sat forward with a wide-eyed expression and put his finger to his lips as his boss frowned and rolled his eyes.
“… the misguided young miscreant, how’s that?” Wilson continued, his voice still a whisper.
“Better,” Roger replied. “There are ears everywhere.”
“Okay, the misguided young cretin.” Wilson mouthed the words with exaggerated theatrics, his famous Tennessee accent a slow, precise drawl that tinged the words with special sarcasm, as if he were tasting each one and finding it acidic. “He says he’s got some movie star booked for Thursday’s show. We either get there this evening, in time, or we lose it.”
“It’s okay, sir. We can rebook later. I’ll call them.”
Wilson shook his head in disgust. “We can’t afford to sit around Frankfurt, Roger! As soon as we get on the ground, I want you to find whoever’s in charge, tell him who I am, and get us the heck out of there. Rebook us to London and get us on the Concorde. I’m not going to miss that show! The audience is too big, and we need the kickoff momentum for the new book.”
Roger rubbed his fingers together frantically and stared at the seat back. He hated these confrontations, but he had no choice. He took a deep breath and turned to Wilson at last.
“You know I’m worried about that interview, don’t you? You remember I told you they could be setting you up on the income tax questions regarding the Kansas City hospital, right?”
“Yes, yes, yes. I remember, but I can handle it. I’ve been handling it for forty years, haven’t I, praise the Lord.”
Roger shifted in his seat. “Sir, have you considered that perhaps God arranged for us to be on this flight just to keep you off that show?”
It was a good argument, Roger knew, and it had worked in the past.
Wilson snorted and shook his head. He hated it when an aide was right. He was supposed to be the omnipotent one, not the little college snot to his left. But maybe he was being too eager for publicity, and the TV newsmagazine was smelling blood. A national spotlight on the deductibility issue of the Wilson hospital chain was not the best idea for the business right now. The business of saving lives and souls, he reminded himself. Never forget your image!
He straightened himself in the plush first class seat and adopted a stern expression seen by no one. He imagined himself wearing the most righteous of expressions, clutching his Bible, and speaking into a phalanx of outstretched microphones. My business, sir, is spreading the word of God through various testimonies. The unspoken phrase sounded as good as it always had. He was a man of the cloth, not an accountant. He was trying to serve God, not the IRS. He would look persecuted. The exposure wouldn’t hurt.
He realized he wasn’t interested in hearing an alternative point of view. He just wanted to get to New York.
Some thirty rows to the rear, Keith Erickson passed the telephone handset to his wife, Lisa, and bit his lip. The kids sounded fine, and his sister-in-law seemed okay with the news that they’d be delayed. The connection in New York to their homebound flight would be too tight to accommodate a delay. They’d miss it for sure.
He glanced at Lisa as she spoke to two-year-old Jason, then five-year-old Tommy. The baby was too young to hold a conversation, but Keith knew that Lisa would insist on the phone’s being held against her youngest child’s ear so she could say reassuring things. He could imagine even his sister-in-law rolling her eyes.
He looked down the aisle and wondered how the heart attack victim was doing, and how fast they could get him to a hospital and get under way again. It had taken a year of almost constant cajoling to get Lisa to come on a vacation without the kids.
“Of course they need a mother, but I need a lover too,” he had told her.
“Why Europe?” she’d countered.
He remembe
red his response all too well. “Because you can’t call the kids every day.”
But she had, with a manic vengeance that had become obsessive. The whole trip had been a tense disaster. It had started with an embarrassing goodbye scene at the Des Moines airport, where she’d held up the plane with repeated tearful hugs that had reduced the boys to tears as well. She had fretted and worried all the way to Frankfurt, and refused to leave a pay phone at the airport for nearly two hours until her mother had returned with the kids from a simple evening excursion. And now the tearful response when Lisa discovered they’d be delayed. It was becoming typical, and frightening, as was her dark, furious resentment at him for taking her away.
She had looked at little for two weeks other than pay phones that might reconnect her with her children. There was no interest in history, no interest in sex, no interest in him, and no room for anything else in her mind but the hysterical reaction to being separated from her children. She hated him for it, she had screamed in the Paris hotel. No. No, she’d said, without meaning, prowling the bed with a wild-eyed expression. He was plotting, wasn’t he, to take her children away from her. It was all a scheme!
He had known deep down, even in Des Moines, that her reactions were not right, that she needed professional help. But at home the eccentricities could be tolerated.
In Frankfurt he’d slipped out of the hotel to call a psychiatrist back in Des Moines, scheduling an appointment for her the following week. The doctor had listened intently. Hospitalization, he had warned, was not an outlandish possibility.
Lisa finished cooing at the baby, wiped her tears away, and asked to talk to Jason again. Keith Erickson cupped his chin in his hand and waited, knowing the dollars were flowing at a heavy clip on the satellite call.
But he knew better than to interrupt her again.
DUTCH AIR ROUTE TRAFFIC CONTROL CENTER, AMSTERDAM
The word arrived in Amsterdam Center in the form of a simple teletype message, followed by a phone call from Frankfurt Center. When it was handed to the puzzled Dutch controller handling Flight 66, he read it and shook his head in puzzlement—but keyed his microphone immediately. The aircraft was passing thirty-three thousand feet above the Dutch town of Tilburg, around fifty miles from the German border. He had no time to think about it.
“Quantum Sixty-six, Maastricht Control. Be advised, sir, that Frankfurt Center has just canceled your clearance into German airspace. We must reclear you now to another destination. What are your intentions?”
In the cockpit of Flight 66, the words fell like a hand grenade. “How could they cancel the clearance?” Robb asked. “First the British and now the Germans? The Germans started it all!”
Dick Robb squeezed the transmit button on the back of the control yoke immediately.
“Maastricht Control, Quantum Sixty-six is returning to Frankfurt at the specific direction of the German government, and we’ve got a medical emergency on board.”
The reply was unsettlingly swift.
“Quantum Sixty-six, according to the communication we have just received, you are prohibited from entering German airspace. I will be forced to put you in a holding pattern before you reach the border if you fail to request something else.”
James Holland raised his hand, signaling Robb to wait. His mind was racing over the possibilities. Had Quantum headquarters changed the game plan and forgotten to tell him? Maybe the dispatcher had refiled them for another destination, informed Frankfurt Center, and simply neglected a small detail like telling the crew.
Possibly. But the word “prohibited” kept ringing in his ears. They wouldn’t have used “prohibited” if it were just a simple change.
Holland felt the hair standing up on the back of his neck. Suddenly he wanted to get on the ground somewhere as fast as possible—as much for himself as for the sick passenger in the back. There was a mindless rush of apprehension that time was running out, and he had to act fast.
He triggered the transmit button.
“Maastricht Control, we’re requesting vectors for a landing at Schiphol in Amsterdam immediately.”
The controller sounded relieved. “Understand, sir. Turn left now to a heading of two-nine-zero degrees, and descend to and maintain six thousand feet. Amsterdam’s altimeter is two-nine-eight-eight, and set transponder code three-four-five-seven.”
Robb repeated the clearance as Holland disconnected the autopilot and autothrottles and banked the huge 747 gently to the left, beginning a descent with the power back to idle. He could trust the Dutch to help.
I should have diverted to Amsterdam to begin with! Holland chided himself. The Dutch would never refuse a civil aircraft in distress.
FIVE
AMSTERDAM—FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22–6:40 P.M. (1740Z)
With a freshly brewed cup of coffee sitting before him and his office door closed, the director of airports for the Transport Ministry of the Government of the Netherlands leaned back slightly in his swivel chair and relaxed as he punched up the sound on his television with the handheld remote. All day he’d looked forward to this, especially the coffee. The small grinder and French press in the credenza were prized possessions that he kept stocked with an ample supply of imported beans from Starbucks in the United States. It was a European indulgence American-style that he usually allowed himself in the late afternoon, but his addiction to world news was entirely American—and CNN was his connection.
It was a small extravagance—a perk of office—but having a cable-connected color TV on his office wall made him feel plugged into world events, and something on the screen had just snagged his attention: the picture of an airliner that had flashed on and off while he had been on the phone.
A crash somewhere, perhaps? Curiosity seized him, but so far nothing more had aired. Now the anchor in Atlanta cleared his throat as a small picture of a Boeing 747 appeared in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen, and the director leaned forward to listen.
“There are reports out of the U.K. this afternoon that an American airliner headed for London has been refused landing permission and forced to leave British airspace. In a radioed exchange between the pilot and an air traffic control supervisor monitored in London, the captain of the Quantum Airlines flight reported that he had a heart attack victim aboard who needed immediate help, but he was reportedly told that the British government would not permit the aircraft to land. Apparently, according to the same radio conversation, a passenger aboard the flight is reputed to have been exposed to an especially dangerous strain of the flu, and authorities are worried that …”
His phone rang and the director frowned. His secretary knew better than that. No, wait a minute. His secretary was gone for the day.
It rang again, and he picked it up angrily as the CNN report continued.
“Yes?”
“… now said to be en route to an airport in Germany where the passengers and crew are to be quarantined in what may be an unprecedented incident in international civil aviation involving biological …”
“Say that again, please.” His attention was divided, but the aide’s voice sounded concerned about something. There was an emergency of some sort at Schiphol, the man reported.
“… reported to be Quantum Flight Sixty-six, which was headed originally for New York. We emphasize that the aircraft and passengers are safe, but at present their new destination is not known. CNN will continue to monitor this breaking story as it develops.”
“What kind of emergency?” The director glanced at the screen, irritated at the interruption. He picked up a pen and scribbled down the information coming across the phone line, including the call sign of the inbound airliner.
“He’ll be down in fifteen minutes and needs a medical crew,” the aide reported. The director nodded an invisible response and laid the pen down, then picked it up again and added the name of Quantum Airlines Flight 66.
He thanked the aide and ended the call, trying to focus on the screen once again. But the story was over.
What had he missed? There was something about a contaminated plane in London? Oh yes, it was refused landing and sent to be quarantined. They’d probably declared an emergency by now. Strange, he thought, that there would be two emergencies in the same area at the same time …
He stared at the notepad in front of him. All at once the number 66 on the pad coalesced with the words of the CNN anchor. It had to be the same flight the British had turned away. A 747, he had been told, but the aide had said nothing about potentially contagious passengers.
And it was diverting into Amsterdam! No one at Schiphol was ready to handle such a problem!
The director fairly dove for the phone.
ABOARD FLIGHT 66
Captain James Holland eased the big Boeing into a course correction to the right and waited for approach clearance. Amsterdam was a carpet of twinkling lights in the distance.
The controller’s voice came back as expected. “Quantum Sixty-six, you’re cleared for the ILS approach to runway three-five. Turn right now to a heading of three-two-zero degrees and join the localizer. Call Schiphol tower at the outer marker.”
“Quantum Sixty-six, cleared approach, tower at the marker,” Dick Robb replied, reaching down to touch the small toggle switch separating the current radio channel from the one for Schiphol’s control tower. He hesitated the usual few seconds before switching, in case the controller had anything more to say on the old frequency.
This time the controller’s voice returned almost instantly with an urgent tone.
“Quantum, are you still there?”
“Roger,” Robb replied.
“We have a change to your clearance, sir.”
The controller’s voice trailed off for a few seconds, and another male voice could be heard in the background through the open transmitter. The controller had left his finger on the transmit button, but the background conversation was in Dutch—an exchange ending with “ja” as the controller noisily adjusted his microphone.
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