Loren Miller’s voice snapped the line of thought prematurely.
“Or a former employee, which is equally possible. We’ve already been working with your personnel department on that possibility.”
“You’ve checked all our file prints against the one you found?” Brian asked.
Miller nodded. “Every index fingerprint in your personnel files has already been checked. There’s no match.”
As Brian Murphy left the Federal Building, Pan Am public affairs chief Ralph Basanji was slamming the door of his car and fumbling with the key, trying to calm down so he could get it in the ignition. After leaving Jack Rawly, he’d searched quietly through the corporate offices for Chad Jennings for half an hour before discovering that Pan Am’s acting president had just done a telephone interview with a newspaper reporter and was now headed to the local CBS affiliate for a network TV interview.
That Jennings would dare go on national television without at least having the courtesy to inform his PR chief was insulting, but what he was probably about to say to the world would be impossible to take back. Basanji reminded himself of the newspaper interview. It was probably already too late, but he had to try.
Basanji punched the number of the Seattle Chronicle from memory into his car phone and asked for Adrian Kirsch, the reporter he assumed Chad Jennings had been talking to. There was no way Kirsch would suppress the story if Jennings had launched an attack on the other airlines, but perhaps he could lessen the damage.
Kirsch’s extension rang fruitlessly. Basanji left an urgent message on Kirsch’s voice mail.
The cameraman was dismantling his equipment and Chad Jennings was just getting to his feet when Ralph Basanji located him in a back room at KIRO television.
“Ralph!” Chad said with a saccharine smile when he spotted Basanji.
“Uh, could we talk, please?” Basanji began.
“Sure. I’m finished here.” The reporter and crew thanked him, and he walked out to the parking lot with Basanji.
When they were out of earshot, Basanji whirled on Jennings.
“Chad, did you say anything in there about blaming other airlines? Did you say anything to a newspaper reporter before?”
Chad Jennings met Basanji’s gaze and didn’t blink.
“Yeah, I did. Is that why you’re down here?”
“What did you say?”
“The truth. That United, Delta, and American are trying to run us out of business with a dirty-tricks campaign.”
“Oh, jeez!” Basanji’s shoulders slumped as he folded his arms and looked down at the sidewalk. “What else did you say?” Basanji asked quietly.
“Well, I said that because we refuse to fly cattle-car interiors like our competitors, and because our special interiors and our service are truly first-class, even in coach, the big three in North America are facing the terrifying prospect of having to reconfigure their aircraft to meet our challenge. That’s why they’ve panicked and started hurting us.”
Basanji looked back up at Jennings with a hard stare. “What did you accuse them of doing, Chad? What, specifically?”
“Sabotaging our reservations computer. But I also said we’re actively investigating whether they’ve had a hand in anything else adverse to our interests, and that the FBI is also involved in the investigation.”
Basanji closed his eyes momentarily and groaned.
“Hey,” Jennings said harshly, “I’m in charge now, and that’s my decision! We know they’re behind this stuff.”
“You also have a board of directors, Chad, and an executive committee, and they should have been in on this, as should I. We don’t have any proof, Chad! This is grossly premature! What did you say about the accidents? What did you say about the 747 and the 767 incidents?”
Jennings snorted and smiled. “Nothing, of course. I’m not crazy.”
They returned to the office separately and walked in on a frantic beehive of activity. Every telephone line seemed to be in use, and executives and secretaries alike were ebbing and flowing in fluid confusion back and forth through the various offices and hallways of the fifty-sixth floor, awash on the crest of some new crisis.
Basanji caught the eye of an administrative assistant and motioned her over to ask what was happening, already expecting the worst. Obviously, he thought, Jennings’s hell-bent drive toward self-destruction had already blown into the media, and this was the opening round of the response.
“The baggage computer!” she said. “It’s gone nuts.”
“The … what?”
“Our baggage-routing computer. You know, the one that puts the barcode tags on each bag and then tracks each one wherever it goes? Sometime this morning it decided to start sending every passenger’s bag to the wrong location on different airlines, all over our system. Our first flights of the morning just began arriving in New York and in Washington, D.C., and not a single passenger’s bag was on board, and it’s the same for every flight worldwide that departed this morning our time.”
“None?”
“None. The planes are carrying bags, but they’re all the wrong ones. Our passengers’ bags have been interlined all over creation!”
“By the computer?”
“Yeah. You wouldn’t believe it! We’ve got”—she checked a long computer printout—“fourteen bags headed for Bangkok on Thai Air, several dozen routed on United to all sorts of destinations, about fifty into Delta’s system, headed for Frankfurt, and several were even routed to Aeroflot.”
“Aeroflot?”
“Right. To Kamchatka. We’ve got other bags headed for Buenos Aires, Cairo, Kotzebue in Alaska, Beijing, Cape Town, and”—she looked up at him over the top of her reading glasses—“and one lonely little cosmetic case bound for Katmandu, Nepal.”
A harried-looking secretary hurried up to the woman with more printouts and Ralph excused himself and slipped into his office, closing the door on the baggage disaster. There was a worse disaster in the making. The CBS evening news would air on the East Coast in less than an hour, and the newspaper story would probably hit the wires later in the evening. Adrian Kirsch had not returned his call, which probably meant he had filed his story and gone home. With the media following what had already been dubbed “The Perils of Pan Am” in the previous week, Jennings’s accusations would undoubtedly be a lead story. He decided to warn Joe Taylor, but first the legal department needed to gird for warfare.
He picked up the phone with a weary sigh and dialed Jack Rawly’s extension.
Friday afternoon, March 17
Over northern Canada
Elizabeth came awake slowly, aware of the glare in her eyes as the British Air 747-400 chased the sun westward toward Seattle. She had been asleep since takeoff, some five hours ago.
She checked her watch and calculated their position. Somewhere below the solid cloud cover was the frozen lake that for many long hours had been both savior and captor to Brian, Kelly, and her mother.
At 41,000 feet there was only the soothing sound of the slipstream outside and the gentle rush of heated cabin air through the sidewall vents. Whatever might be going on in Seattle without her, she would be back in the thick of things soon enough. Another few hours of blissful ignorance seemed a reasonable indulgence.
She thought of Brian then. He would be there at Seatac Airport when her plane arrived, waiting to take her home. Maybe they could clear away the hurt of the previous weekend.
She glanced out at the clouds and let the full terror of almost losing her beautiful daughter wash over her, examining the fears that had been triggered and suppressed when she found they were all three on the ice. She had been panicked for Kelly’s safety, and scared for her mother’s.
But she had been terrified of losing Brian, and in that realization lay a decision. She wondered if he felt the same.
Elizabeth slowly closed her eyes, feeling herself relax, and let Brian’s image smile at her as she drifted off into a dream state.
23
&nb
sp; Friday, March 17, 4:45 P.M.
Denver, Colorado
Through the huge western window of the penthouse, the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains hung like a frosted living tapestry of rock and snow, a craggy backdrop spread from south to north beneath a cold azure sky dusted with the lacy beauty of cirrus clouds.
In the center of the industrialized frontier city, the skyscrapers of modern Denver stood like sentinels around the one glass-and-metal spire that supported the two-story penthouse—a five-million-dollar aerie reachable by private elevator or the helipad on its roof.
The owner—a lone figure clad in a silk bathrobe—paced now in silhouette before the mountain panorama, cordless telephone in hand. His footsteps echoed softly from the surface of the oak floor as he navigated around his expensive leather furniture and past a massive floor-to-ceiling collection of signed, first-edition works on the American West.
A lone servant, an elderly Filipino man, quietly cleared breakfast dishes and checked the progress of the brewing coffee as he practiced a long-standing and deliberate ignorance of his boss’s business—while tracking his every move.
“By the way, where the hell have you been?” The man growled the question into the phone. “I’ve been waiting for you to call back for the past three days.”
The man fell silent for thirty seconds as the person on the other end talked.
“You bet your ass I’m concerned! I sit here in Denver watching the news and hear that a 747 almost crashed because someone blew up an engine, and then a 767 loses both of its engines, and I can’t help wondering if these little inconveniences might just be connected to you somehow, in which case I’d want to ask …” He stopped pacing and leaned over as if bowing deeply, shouting into the phone, “HAVE YOU LOST YOUR ALLEGED MIND?”
With the window still vibrating from the words, he reversed direction and began pacing again, his right hand and arm flailing toward the window for emphasis.
“HEY! Don’t forget this for a second. I didn’t authorize—I haven’t even SUGGESTED—screwing around with their planes! Yeah. Yeah. You damn well better NOT have had anything to do with—”
The man paused to listen.
“The woman’s smarter than you thought she was. We lost her in New York, and it took days to find her again. She turned up in the U.K., and we tried to neutralize her efforts there, but we were too late. So now she’s sucked the money in to pay off the bonds and that’s that. We just go on to the next phase, that’s all.”
Silence.
“Yeah, well, it’s time to finish this. It’s been rather entertaining, shadow-boxing with that bimbo the last few days, but enough’s enough. Her ability to interfere is coming to an end. I’ve got a timetable, and I’m under more pressure than you’d ever understand.”
The servant quietly slipped a coffee service tray on the ledge in front of him and departed as silently as he’d come. The man in the bathrobe picked up the coffee cup and took a sip as he watched an airliner climbing out to the west over the mountains.
“Let’s just put it this way: we’re on schedule, and the clients are happy. It should be all over by the first. Now get back to work before somebody sees you hanging around a pay phone.”
Friday March 17, 5:00 P.M.
Maple Valley, west of Seattle
Marvin Grade replaced the telephone receiver with a shaking hand and sat back in a rickety kitchen chair, his mind in confusion. His dark, fulminating hatred for the airline that had ruined his life had suddenly been emasculated by the reality that they were offering him a job. It made no sense, but it was an answered prayer.
After the collapse of the original Pan Am, he had spent the following years in a mist of deep depression, alcohol, odd jobs, and overdue bills. But when the new version of Pan Am started up, suddenly there had been hope again.
He remembered all too well having been turned down by the new Pan Am in the days that followed. The shock had left him broke and devastated, and nursing a dark and fetid hatred that grew like a cancer.
Grade’s thoughts returned to the present, and he checked his watch. The Pan Am recruiter had said to be at the Seatac Operations Hangar at 9:00 P.M. He needed a shower, and looked down at his torn undershirt with embarrassment. He decided to wear his one remaining business suit and look sharp.
It was just after 5:00 P.M. The urge to get cleaned up and ready was overwhelming. He knew just how long it would take to get to the Pan Am Operations Center, and the last thing he wanted to be was late.
Friday, March 17, 8:05 P.M.
Seatac Airport
Elizabeth rubbed her eyes briefly before reaching down to close her briefcase and her carry-on bag, pointedly ignoring the irritated look on the face of the customs officer as she waited for Elizabeth to clear her table.
She’d slept for hours on the flight from London, but not well. Now she felt disoriented and tired—and disgusted with the dishwater blonde in the customs uniform and her obnoxious, officious attitude.
Elizabeth lifted the bags and walked the short distance across the bland linoleum floor to the exit and pushed through the doors—right into Brian’s arms. They stood there holding each other tight as passengers navigated around them.
She sighed deeply at last and rested her head on his chest.
“I missed you so much!”
“I missed you, too,” he said, gently pushing her away to look in her eyes. “You won’t believe what’s been happening!”
Brian took her bags and pointed toward the underground shuttle to the main terminal. Elizabeth reached up with her free hand and brushed Brian’s cheek as the car began to move. “I want to go straight to Bellingham. Will you come with me? After what happened up there in Canada, I want all three of you with me.”
He thought it over quickly and agreed. It was Friday night, and he’d done about as much as he could do before Monday.
“Thank you!” she said, relieved, not taking her eyes off his.
Brian smiled and nodded.
“Okay,” Elizabeth said. “So tell me what’s going on.”
Brian leaned toward her and lowered his voice.
“In a nutshell, the FBI has evidence that whoever rifled my files also caused my engines to fail over the Arctic. Chad Jennings has gone public and accused United, American, and Delta by name of trying to run us out of business.”
Elizabeth drew back, shocked, and looked at Brian’s half-scared, half-incredulous expression. She had noticed his pent-up excitement, but she had assumed she was the cause.
“Gone public?”
He bobbed his head in a rapid, staccato motion.
“Lead story on two of the three networks this evening, and sure to be all over the newspapers in the morning.”
Elizabeth realized her mouth was hanging open, but she was too preoccupied to care. She felt destabilized, her mind racing to calculate the effect on the financial community, none of whom would believe for an instant that the big three could be behind any of Pan Am’s problems.
“Did you … ask him to do that?”
“Hell, no!” Brian looked slightly offended, then defensive, his right hand rotating palm-up in an apologetic gesture as a nearby passenger turned to scrutinize the source of the outburst.
His voice lowered, Brian continued.
“I … all I did was what I told you I was thinking of doing. I called a meeting this morning and told him my suspicions. I never recommended or even thought for a second he’d go public, but the next thing I know he’s on the tube and flatly saying they’re out to get us.”
“This is what I warned you about. We’re going to sound paranoid, Brian!”
“We already do,” he agreed. “The FBI is on the trail of these people, and I am still convinced I’m right, but—”
“We have no evidence yet,” she finished the sentence for him, watching him grimace and nod.
The doors opened and they moved out of the security area and up the escalator into baggage claim, Brian guiding Elizabeth to o
ne side and away from other ears.
He filled her in on the FBI’s theories and what he had told them of his suspicions, talking with animated gestures punctuated by flaring eyebrows. Elizabeth followed every syllable, interrupting occasionally with questions, until they both noticed that the bags had arrived on the carousel.
“I need to get my briefcase and overnight bag from the office,” Brian said. “You need to stop by the condo?”
She shook her head. “No, but I’d like to stop at the Safeway up the street first.” She raised the palm of her left hand and shrugged slightly, looking for an explanation. “There are some things I need to pick up. There was no time in London.”
Friday, March 17, 8:05 P.M.
Maple Valley, east of Seattle
Marvin Grade ignored the fact that he’d already retied his tie three times, and did it again. He wanted to look professional.
He slid behind the wheel and fired up the throaty engine, checking his watch as he put the old Chevy in gear.
Eight-fifteen. I’ve got forty-five minutes. Good!
He accelerated slowly down the rural street—mindful of the noise his decaying muffler would make if he gunned the engine—and turned the corner, oblivious to a dark, late-model sedan that had been sitting in the shadows a half-block away.
As Grade’s taillights disappeared around the corner, the sedan’s engine came to life, and it began to move forward slowly, without headlights at first, following at a discreet distance the same path Marvin Grade had taken.
Friday, March 17, 8:45 P.M.
Seattle
Brian slowed as he rolled his BMW across the double speed bumps at the entrance to the Operations Center parking lot.
“No gate guard yet?” Elizabeth asked, surprised.
Brian shook his head. “The guard box will be installed next week. Meanwhile, we’ve got a guard twenty-four hours a day just inside the entrance to the complex, and a second one roving around with a radio.”
Phoenix Rising Page 27
