Phoenix Rising

by Nance, John J. ;

  She zipped the overnight case with shaking hands, closed her briefcase with the computer inside, and yanked open the door to the hallway, gasping at the sight of Jason Ing standing just outside her door.

  He muttered something and grabbed her shoulders as she tried to twist away in fright and run for the elevator, ignoring his voice.

  “Elizabeth! Elizabeth!”

  She stopped and looked back at his face.

  “Where are you going?” he asked in an amazed voice.

  “Is your car here, Jason?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Take me to the airport. Now. Please!” She realized her voice sounded panicky, but there wasn’t time to care. The urge to get out of the hotel and out of the city was becoming overwhelming.

  “If you want to go, of course, but—”

  “I mean now!” Her voice was almost a shout and it startled Ing, who nodded immediately and joined her in a dash to the elevators and the lobby. She shot out the door and into the backseat of his limo before the driver could emerge from the car. Jason followed, shutting the door behind him. As they pulled away, two police cars rushed past them and turned into the entrance of the hotel.

  She already knew what they were looking for.

  Jason Ing seemed stunned. He turned to Elizabeth, full of questions—which she deferred.

  They rode in silence for several minutes before Elizabeth spoke again.

  “How close are we to concluding this loan, Jason?”

  He looked confused. “Close, if you can solve your regulatory problem, and I think I may have the key to that. Cathay Alliance will loan you the one hundred forty million in an unsecured note by Monday, which will make your deadline. But we’ll wait for your government’s approval before bringing in the other funds, which originate from Chinese sources. We’ll take the chance ourselves for the first payment.”

  “But the corporation is owned in part by the Chinese government, right?”

  She had swiveled around to look out the small rectangular rear window, expecting to see flashing lights chasing them down.

  “Technically, no. My family holds almost all the stock, but we’re a captive instrument of the Chinese government if we want to stay in business beyond 1997, like I explained to you.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened as she searched his. “That may solve the problem, Jason! I’ll have to talk to our lawyers again, especially since the next installment is due in fifteen more days, and that’s probably too quick for government approval.”

  “We can’t advance any more than the first payment until the whole package is approved, Elizabeth.”

  “I’ve got one other straw to grasp at. I think we can go to court and block the creditors from calling a default now. That will give us some additional time.”

  “How?”

  She shook her head. “Not right now, Jason. I’ll explain later, but Creighton was right about Irwin Fairchild. I think we’ve found a connection between Fairchild and the lenders.”

  A British Airways 747-400 was scheduled to leave nonstop for London in thirty minutes when they reached the airport. Elizabeth bought a one-way ticket, worried about using her own credit card, but having no choice. She said goodbye to Jason Ing at the curb and thanked him profusely, promising to call within the next twenty-four hours. Jason waved as they pulled away, deep puzzlement still showing in his face.

  The security and passport checks loomed ahead of her like the shadow of a noose on a distant wall. If the police had already been notified, they would certainly call the airport and make sure that neither Ann Murphy nor Elizabeth Sterling slipped through the net. She analyzed the motions of the immigrations officer as she stood in line, tensing for the mere flicker of an eye in her direction.

  But nothing seemed abnormal.

  The young man stamped another piece of paper and called up the passenger in front of her, and then it was her turn.

  She walked to the podium and smiled in his direction, but there was no smile in return. He opened her passport and looked from the picture to her face and back twice, then paused.

  Elizabeth could hear her heart pounding in her ears loudly enough to be heard throughout the airport. Her mouth was dry and her mind out of options. With each passing second she was sure she was going to be spending the next few hours in a Hong Kong police station rather than the first-class cabin of a British Airways jet.

  She realized he was looking at her with some irritation, and holding out her passport.

  “Please move along, miss.”

  “What?”

  The security officer rolled his eyes and motioned toward the gate. He was through with her. She could go. He wanted her to go!

  She heard herself exhale as her fingers closed around the passport.

  Not until the 747 had reached cruising altitude could Elizabeth relax fully. She checked carefully to make sure no one was watching, and opened her computer, using several spare diskettes from her briefcase to make copies of the most incendiary information she had purloined from ITB’s computer. The plan had been forming in her mind since leaving the hotel. If something happened to her computer—or to her—the information had to survive.

  Brian had once told her about an alcoholic steward who had for years hidden a flask of vodka behind the mirror in the restroom of a Boeing 727 before every flight sequence. The man would nip at it on numerous trips to the facility. There were removable panels in each restroom, Brian told her.

  She locked herself in one of the first-class restrooms and began searching the wall, finding a small latch that gave access to an inside compartment that would work perfectly. She wrapped the three diskettes in an airsickness bag and carefully placed them behind the insulation in a remote section of the compartment before closing everything up and returning to her seat.

  She picked up the satellite phone at her seat and called Creighton in New York. She was shocked at how surprised he seemed that she’d called.

  “Elizabeth! Thank God. Where are you?”

  “In flight. On a British Airways jumbo headed for London. Why?”

  There was a momentary silence from the other end.

  “I just got off the phone with Cathay Alliance. Jason Ing was kidnapped at gunpoint just outside the airport, and his driver was killed. I was afraid you might have been with him. I’ve been frantic—”

  “What do you mean, kidnapped?” she interrupted, trying to keep her voice low and out of the ears of the adjacent passengers, but she’d wanted to scream the question into the phone.

  “Hundreds of people saw it happen, I’m told, but the police couldn’t get there in time. They blew his driver away and pulled Jason into another car and sped off. So far, there’s no ransom call.”

  “I know what they want, Creighton. They want me, and what I’ve got in this computer!”

  The memory of the police cars driving into the hotel as they left replayed in her mind. But the police wouldn’t have shot a driver, which meant that Costas’s people were on the trail as well, and were probably the ones who had Jason Ing.

  “Can I trust this satellite phone to be secure?” she asked Creighton.

  “No, you can’t. Anyone could listen in.”

  “Okay. Creighton, listen closely. There’s a story about an airline crew-member and a flask of vodka our chief pilot tells. If anything happens to me or my computer, that story will lead you to copies of what’s on my hard drive.”

  “I don’t understand that, but I’m writing it down. When are you scheduled into London?”

  “Ten P.M. tonight,” she told him. “I’ll need to come on to New York immediately.”

  “Someone will meet you at the gate in London with the tickets on the next flight out.”

  She scribbled a note to herself. She needed to call Jack Rawly, the general counsel, Chad Jennings, her mother and Kelly, and Brian.

  But she hated to let Creighton go.

  “You still there, Elizabeth?” he asked.

  “I’m here. Will
you wait for me in New York?”

  “I will,” he said instantly. “I’ve got some of the evidence you’ll need, you know.”

  The call ended, but Elizabeth sat for many minutes staring out the window and holding the receiver on her lap as the sounds of the high-speed slipstream passing the metallic skin of the 747 washed a roar of white noise into her consciousness. She found herself wondering what Scotland was like the rest of the year.

  29

  Friday, March 24, noon

  Amsterdam, Holland

  The police inspector made one last note to himself before looking at Jacob Voorster with a disgusted sigh and a shake of his head.

  “For the moment, you are free to go, Mr. Voorster. I thank you for coming straight here.”

  Jacob’s right hand fluttered above the scarred surface of the wooden conference table. “And what is to happen now?”

  “Mr. Voorster, we will continue to gather the evidence, and then we will present it to a magistrate who will decide whether or not you are to be arrested and tried for embezzlement. Until then, you remain free.”

  “I … did nothing. I have told you that. I know nothing of any private accounts. I’ve never taken a penny of my company’s money.”

  The inspector got to his feet and gestured toward the door. “You will have a chance to present your arguments to a magistrate, not to me.”

  Jacob retrieved his overcoat and hat with shaking hands and walked through the door of the police station, certain that dozens of eyes were following his departure with the utter disdain reserved for the newly unmasked criminal.

  He sat behind the wheel of his car for fifteen minutes, seeing nothing, his head in a fog, as he tried to relive the previous hour.

  The police had been waiting for him when he arrived at his office, as had his immediate supervisor, who slammed a computer printout down in front of him listing the transactions of a bank account at Barclay’s in London that now contained over three hundred thousand guilders, all of it coming from VZV payments of bogus invoices for stock investments that didn’t exist.

  The account—which he had never seen before in his life—had been traced back to him, they said. A passbook for the same account had been found in his desk. It had been planted there, of course, but the passbook was damning. As soon as it surfaced, no one at VZV was willing to listen.

  He was fired instantly, his pension canceled and his office sealed. The police had given him a choice: voluntarily follow the officers in for questioning, or be handcuffed and arrested and transported to the same place for the same purpose.

  His blood pressure soared and his head pounded, his mind filled with hurtful thoughts of disbelief and betrayal.

  It hadn’t taken him long to realize that recent events were no coincidence. It was the morning after he had turned in a senior director to the managing director. The connection—though he longed to believe otherwise—was obvious.

  For a few optimistic minutes he wondered if the false accusation had been launched without the managing director’s knowledge. But the sickening sight of Frederick Ooest’s signature on the formal VZV complaint snatched the last vestige of hope from his fingers.

  Not since his wife had died of breast cancer five years before had life looked so bleak.

  Jacob started his car and drove slowly home, his mind roaming in a daze of pain back over the evidence he had found—a trail of computer records of strange payments that he had spent the past two months following and unraveling. At the end of the long, tortuous trail of deception and international intrigue, he had unmasked the identity of the perpetrator: the VZV director he had reported.

  Jacob parked his car in front of his small suburban house and approached the front door, looking for signs of forced entry. He had been told to turn over all his office files and disks to Ooest, and he had. But had they guessed he had copies at home?

  Now the second set was the only hope for proving himself innocent.

  The house was pristine, and the damning collection of evidence was where he had left it, including the strangest evidence of all—the trail of VZV’s purchase of a Hong Kong bank that had been subsequently all but given to Costas. For what reason he didn’t know.

  He reached into a file cabinet and rummaged around for the folder marked “Costas, Nicolas.” There had been an article several years back in The Economist about Costas and the collapse of Columbia Air Systems. As he reviewed it now, his determination built by the minute.

  It would be useless to fight VZV’s trumped-up charges directly. VZV was too strong and clever, and could create a hundred such fake accounts with correspondent banks if it liked. It came down to a tradeoff and a matter of survival: to prove himself innocent, he would have to prove his beloved company guilty, and of a much greater crime.

  The enemy of my enemy is now my friend. The paraphrased quotation rolled around in his head as he began stuffing the papers and disks into his briefcase along with his passport. He had but one possible ally on the planet now, and that was the new Pan American Airways. He would approach them in London. He had already made a reservation on a seven-o’clock flight to Heathrow.

  If he could save them, perhaps they might be persuaded to return the favor.

  Friday, March 24, 9:00 A.M.

  Seattle

  Brian Murphy found Bill Conrad in the upper first-class lounge of Ship 609 as it sat behind the closed doors of the Seatac hangar.

  “We’ve been over all four engines, Brian, every inspection plate and door on the outside, and the electronics and baggage compartments. They’re starting the interior in about an hour. I told my people we think someone’s likely to try to blow this bird out of the sky on Monday between Seatac and Kennedy. They’re determined as hell not to let that happen. If anything’s been messed with or planted on this ship, we’ll find it. You still going to captain it on Monday?”

  “Damn right. Since I’m the one who predicted the attempt, either we cancel the flight or I’m honor-bound to fly it.”

  Conrad got up and walked over to one of the windows. “Jennings thinks all this is nonsense, but I could care less. I’ve hired all the security teams we need. No one’s going to get close to this bird, or any of our other airplanes, for that matter.”

  “Bill, did you ever order a rubber stamp?”

  Conrad turned suddenly from the window and stared at Brian.

  “A rubber stamp,” Brian continued. “You know, like one with your signature on it, or something that says “Received” or “This End Up”?

  Bill sat down again, his eyes searching Brian’s face for clues to what was behind the question. “I suppose I have, at one time or other. Why?”

  “I found out today how easy it is to get creative with rubber stamps. You can take a Xerox copy of a fingerprint, for instance, and one of these companies can make a rubber stamp that, when you ink it, will print that same impression line for line on a piece of paper or anywhere else.”

  Bill shot an even more quizzical look at Brian. “Then you could go around and stamp your fingerprint on things. Why would you want to do that?”

  “Indulge me a second. I get your fingerprint, have a stamp made, and instead of ink, I just rub my hand on the stamp to get it full of natural oils, and then I press it down on a piece of paper, say a manila folder. Someone comes along with dusting powder and finds the print. Could they tell it wasn’t you in person?”

  Bill was staring hard at Brian, but now he nodded slowly. “I’ve never been in law enforcement, but no, I don’t see how they could. Why? What’re you driving at?”

  “Suppose someone did exactly that with Marvin Grade’s index finger—made a stamp, that is?”

  Bill Conrad sat down, his right hand stroking his chin. “Jesus, Brian. You did say they only found the print for Grade’s index finger, right? And that’s the sole reason they maintain Grade was the saboteur?”

  Brian was nodding energetically. “On my pilot file folder and on the circuit board, that’s right. ‘Fing
erprints don’t lie, Brian,’ was what Agent Miller said.”

  “Have you talked to Miller about this new idea?”

  “That’s where I’m headed now.” Brian pulled a small, red-handled stamp from his coat pocket, rubbed it with his hand, and pressed it onto a glass inlay on one of the teakwood tables. The clear image of a fingerprint was left behind.

  “That’s my fingerprint, by the way. I had it made yesterday to prove the point.”

  Ten miles to the north, at Swedish Hospital, Pan Am President Ron Lamb looked up from a stack of papers and focused on Public Affairs Vice-President Ralph Basanji’s worried expression. The right side of Lamb’s face still drooped a bit, but he had been struggling night and day to recover his ability to speak, and the effort was working—though not as fast as he would have liked.

  “Ra … Ralph … get me … th … the computer.”

  Basanji picked up the small laptop from an adjacent table and placed it on Lamb’s lap.

  “Reee … read … what I … write here.”

  Basanji watched the screen as the fingers of Ron’s left hand flew over the keys, typing his side of the conversation.

  Jennings is ruining us! Why didnk … didn’t Taylor fer … fire him after the newspaper/tv attack on the big guys?

  Ralph Basanji had been standing by the bed and leaning over to watch the screen. He stepped back a bit to face Ron and reply.

  “I don’t know, Ron, but he’s so busy playing games with this issue of who’s after us, he’s doing nothing about the real problem. Elizabeth Sterling is … I don’t know, somewhere … trying to get us the money, but as far as I can tell from her assistant, Monday morning we’re going to be shut down.”

  Ron Lamb resumed typing, motioning Ralph over to sit on the bed for a better view of the screen.

  eliz … Elizabeth’s good person … capable and smart. if anyone can do it she can, but need … we need to know what’s going on with her. who is she talking to daily?

  Basanji shook his head, palms up.

  ok ralp … sorry, Ralph …

  “Forget about the capital letters, Ron, I can figure it out.”