“What time is it?” she asked, her voice edged with despair.
“Twelve-fifteen,” Jack Rawly replied. “We’ve got four and a half hours.”
Monday, March 27, 10:30 A.M. Mountain/12:30 P.M. Eastern
In flight, Clipper Fifteen
Brian left control of the aircraft with the first and second officers and returned to the cabin for a private telephone call to Elizabeth’s cellular phone in New York. He was hoping for good news.
He didn’t get it. The sound of her soft voice carrying tones of inevitable defeat broke his heart. He longed to hold her. With less than three hours’ flight time left before landing at Kennedy, they tried to arrange a logical time and place to meet.
“I was going to be there for the sendoff ceremony, but it looks like I’ll be in court, hoping Jack Rawly can produce a miracle,” Elizabeth said. “Call me at about five-thirty on the cellular, okay?”
“Okay, babe. Keep your chin up.”
There was a small, rueful snort from the other end.
He didn’t want to return to the cockpit just yet. He had already decided not to tell the others how grim things were looking. One terrified crew-member was dangerous enough.
Brian strolled toward the back of the half-empty main cabin. He wore an artificial smile and uttered a few pleasant words to a passenger here and there, and stopped to chat with a passenger who had a sizeable video camcorder case on the seat next to him. Brian had wanted to bring his camcorder on many trips, but had been afraid of the jostling and rough treatment it might receive. Something about the fellow seemed familiar. The way I feel right now, Brian cautioned himself, my memory is not reliable.
He said a few falsely encouraging words to the worried flight attendants before retreating back to the flight deck, feeling like a damned liar.
Monday, March 27, 12:35 P.M.
Foley Square, Manhattan
Jacob Voorster had gone straight to the sixteenth floor after thanking Dieter Hoffman, the driver who had rescued him and rushed him to the courthouse. He had to wait his turn in the clerk’s office in the appellate division, but at last the young man behind the counter turned his attention to Jacob.
“Excuse me, please. It is urgent that I speak with the corporate officers of Pan Am who are here for a hearing.”
The man cocked his head and thought. That was a curious request.
“I’m sorry, sir, but that matter was heard this morning in a special session at ten. They’ve all gone. Hours ago.”
Jacob Voorster looked staggered. He had just assumed …
“How do I find the Pan Am people, then? The officers from Pan Am?”
The clerk thought for a second and sighed, shaking his head. “You know, Pan Am in the old days was headquartered here in New York at the Pan Am Building, but I’ve heard they’re now somewhere else. Anyway, you could call the law firm representing them in New York, the attorneys of record on the case this morning.”
He looked around, trying to decide where to find the papers, but another clerk nearby had overheard the conversation and turned toward him.
“That was Sol Moscowitz’s case. I know him.”
“Was it?” the first clerk asked.
“Yes. His office is right where you indicated, in the Met Life Building—the old Pan Am Building—by Grand Central.”
“Would you be so kind as to write it down for me?” Jacob asked. “Where to find this lawyer’s office, and his name?”
“Sure. And I’ll give you the location of the nearest subway entrance. That’s the way to get right into Grand Central.” The clerk grabbed a preprinted memo pad embossed with the court of appeals name and justice department logo, and began writing.
On the western perimeter of Foley Square, Dieter Hoffman sat parked on a side street facing the courthouse, watching with mixed emotions as Jacob Voorster left his cab and headed toward the courthouse on foot. He should burn rubber and get the hell out of there, he thought, but he just couldn’t force himself to drive away.
Instead he circled the block and parked up the street, partially screened from the main entrance, but within view of it. Within ten minutes another taxi screeched to a halt in front of the courthouse—the same one, Dieter saw, that had brought the two gunmen to Brooklyn. This time he didn’t hesitate. The two Germans scampered up the steps and into the building. Seconds later, Jacob Voorster emerged from the same entrance!
Jacob had just placed his hand on the door to the street when he spotted two men who fit Dieter Hoffman’s earlier description running toward the same entrance. He’d dropped back instantly, out of sight, and spotted a maintenance man coming out of a door a few feet away. Jacob slipped through the door before it swung closed. He’d then turned around to peer back toward the entryway through the crack, watching with rising apprehension as the two men rushed inside and moved directly into an open elevator.
When Dieter saw Voorster, he nearly sideswiped a delivery van as he accelerated back into the street and through a green light, screeching to a halt in front of the Dutchman as he reached the curb.
“Get in!”
Voorster, surprised and relieved, complied instantly.
“This time to the police?” Dieter asked.
“No. I need to go to the lawyers’ office. They will take care of me. Thank you for waiting.” He showed Hoffman the memo with the address of the lawyers’ office. Dieter wheeled the cab back into traffic and made a left at the next intersection.
They had driven for two blocks before the pieces fell into place in Jacob’s mind.
Oh my Lord! They’ll get the same information I obtained!
“Stop! Here, please! I must make a call!” Jacob’s voice was a barked order, and Dieter complied instantly, slamming on his brakes and maneuvering to the curb in front of a small restaurant.
Jacob leaped out and dashed through the door of the restaurant. Finding a pay phone on the wall, he fed it a quarter and dialed the number on the memo, relieved that the court clerk answered so quickly.
“This is very important,” he said. “I came to your office a few minutes ago, looking for the Pan Am lawyers. I was carrying a briefcase. Do you remember me?”
“Sir, everyone who comes in here carries a briefcase. But I remember your voice,” the clerk answered. “Why?”
“My name is Jacob Voorster. There may be one or two men coming in there shortly looking for me by name, and asking you where you sent me.”
“You’re right. One of them is already here. Do you want to talk to him?”
“No! Listen carefully. If he can hear you, please do not give away the fact that you are talking to me. Your life may depend on following my instructions.”
There was a hesitation, and he heard her say to someone in the background, “No, not you.”
“Listen very closely,” Dieter continued, “and answer yes or no only. Have you already told him where I am headed?”
“No.”
“Then for God’s sake, don’t. The man in front of you has a partner, and both of them are hired gunmen from Europe, probably Germany. You have probably already heard an accent in his voice. They intend to kill me. They have no connection with any law enforcement agency.”
“You’re kidding!”
“This is not a joke. Please pay attention. You cannot take the chance that what I’m saying isn’t true. When the man leaves, if you can alert your security police to catch this man downstairs with his partner, you’ll find that at least one of them has a pistol with a silencer. The partner may be waiting just outside the security checkpoint. There’s a cabdriver waiting for them at the curb who’s probably had his life threatened, too.”
The voice on the other end had tightened with nervousness, but she was following his instructions.
“Okay, I … ah … thank … thank you, we’ll … handle it.”
“Please understand. If you tell them where I’m headed, a murder will occur. Mine.”
“Okay.”
Jacob hung up
and returned to his taxi, relieved to find Dieter still where he’d left him. Within ten minutes they had pulled up to Grand Central Station.
“Okay. Go through the doors into the main terminal lobby. The steps on the other side lead directly into the Pan Am elevator lobby.”
The shorter of the two Germans had acted innocent and puzzled when a team of federal security guards surrounded him in the lobby of the federal courthouse. He was carrying no weapon, and his passport seemed in order. But security held him for ten minutes while running a computer check by hand-held radio—a check that came up with no “wants or warrants.”
“Must’ve been a hoax,” the supervisor told his dispatcher by radio. “This one’s German, okay, but he’s clean.”
It would have ended there except for the last-second decision of the lead guard to walk the man to the exit by holding his upper arm lightly in his big fist.
The German’s accomplice, trying to remain casual on the outside of the security checkpoint, saw movement and looked up to see his partner apparently in custody.
There was no time to waste.
The accomplice pushed his hand in his coat and fingered his 9mm, calculating the right moment to move. They were coming straight toward him. When the guard and the short German closed to ten feet away, the waiting accomplice dropped to a shooter’s stance and pulled his gun free, taking careful, rapid aim at the guard’s head. He squeezed off two perfectly placed rounds.
The shorter man saw his accomplice crouch and take aim, but there was no time to warn him off. He heard the two soft thumps and felt the guard’s hand slip from his arm as the uniformed body crumpled to the floor.
There was no time for regret. He abandoned the dying guard and sprinted toward the security checkpoint, broad-jumping the table as his accomplice dropped a second guard. As a score of lawyers and litigants dove for cover, the two men fled to the waiting taxi.
“Drive!” The taller gunman shoved the barrel of his gun in the back of Singhman Nahjib’s neck before turning to his partner.
“Where do we go?” he asked in a tense voice, his eyes flaring. New York City would be alive with cops looking for them now. They should abandon the hunt for Voorster and flee. But the price on Voorster’s head was too good to pass up, and they were professionals.
“The woman in the court office mentioned the Pan Am Building when I walked in. We go there. Driver? Go to the Pan Am Building.”
Singhman knew that the name Pan Am was no longer on the building, but he wasn’t about to argue. He made a left on Third Avenue and accelerated northbound. The shorter gunman turned a dark expression on his companion, his voice an evil hiss as it reached Singhman’s ears.
“Why did you start shooting, you fool? I wasn’t arrested. The guard was walking me to the door!”
Jacob Voorster felt strangely at home in the elaborate reception room of Sol Moscowitz’s office because the dark woods and elegant decor reminded him of VZV’s executive suite. He suddenly felt sad and apprehensive at the same time.
Moscowitz was in.
Voorster had cooled his heels for ten minutes before his patience ran out and he approached the receptionist again.
“Tell Mr. Moscowitz, please, that I have come from Amsterdam with vital information about what is happening to Pan Am, and with evidence involving the Pan Am case.”
The receptionist looked slightly startled and searched Jacob’s face before nodding and relaying the message to an unseen secretary.
Within five minutes he was shown in to an even more sumptuous office, where a short, fierce-looking man stood in front of his desk. The lawyer had his arms folded, and did not offer his hand. He gestured to a large leather armchair instead.
“Your name is Voorster?”
“That is right.”
“I’m very busy, Mr. Voorster. What is this evidence you mentioned to my secretary? Kindly give it to me in summary form.”
Jacob briefly described his years with VZV first. “In short, Mr. Moscowitz, I have proof that VZV hired Mr. Nicolas Costas and his company to put Pan Am out of business, and VZV also supplied the money to do that, nearly five hundred million of which was loaned to Pan Am as their revolving credit line after we laundered it through several financial institutions, including one in Hong Kong and several banks right here in New York.”
Sol Moscowitz leaned against his desk and looked hard at the ramrod-straight way Jacob Voorster sat in his chair, his eyes meeting his head-on.
“What,” Moscowitz began, “is the name of the lead New York bank in that revolving loan you mentioned, and were they innocent bystanders?”
Voorster shook his head in the negative. “Intertrust Bank, here in New York, and no, Intertrust is one of our indirectly owned institutions. VZV’s, I mean. VZV pulls the strings.”
Sol Moscowitz stood up, his eyebrows flaring. “Mr. Voorster, those are potentially slanderous allegations. Do you have any proof at all?”
Voorster reached down and snapped open his briefcase, handing over a thirty-page report that Moscowitz scanned quickly, his face becoming more ashen with each page. He handed it back then, and turned, walking to his window and standing there with his hands clasping and unclasping behind his back in full view of Jacob Voorster, who was very puzzled.
This man should be happy, Jacob thought, yet he seems agonized.
For several minutes, Moscowitz stood in silence before turning back to fix Jacob Voorster with an unyielding stare.
“You’ve made an unfortunate mistake, Mr. Voorster. You’re the Yankee pilot who’s mistakenly landed his fighter on a Japanese carrier.”
Voorster looked lost. “I beg your pardon?”
“Mr. Voorster, I am the lawyer for Intertrust Bank. From what you’ve told me, I think you were trying to find the lawyer representing Pan Am, and I’m going to give you his name, address, and phone number. I should not hear any more of this, and I want you to make sure you have left none of your papers here. I’m sorry I didn’t catch the error when you first came in.”
Jacob was in shock. He had told everything to the attorney for the wrong side?
Jacob nodded and retreated in confusion after Sol Moscowitz handed him a piece of gold-edged notepaper with the address of Jamison, Reed, Owen, and Phillips, and Bill Phillips’s name and number.
“Call them, Mr. Voorster. And tell them I told you to do so immediately when I discovered your mistake.”
Jacob turned toward the door as Moscowitz addressed him one last time.
“Tell them, Mr. Voorster, that I play by the rules.”
34
Monday, March 27, 1:40 P.M.
New York City
Dieter Hoffman heard the news flash on his AM radio just as he finished dropping off a fare on the East Side. The words “federal” and “courthouse” riveted his attention. The on-the-scene report that the gunmen had last been seen rounding the corner in a taxi caused him to race back to Grand Central Station.
It was 1:45 P.M. by the time Jacob boarded the elevator and started down to the lobby of Moscowitz’s building. For the first time, he felt truly frightened. He submerged into the main Grand Central terminal and into one of the passageways as fast as possible, looking for a public phone with some privacy.
He found one at last, in a back passageway. He had to struggle through Dutch coins for several more American quarters, but found them at last and dialed Bill Phillips’s number. It took the attorney several minutes to come on the line, but the news that a semihysterical man was demanding an immediate audience with him and claiming that the life or death of Pan Am hung in the balance was too much to ignore.
When Phillips answered, Jacob Voorster took no chances. He grilled Phillips to make sure he really represented the airline, then finally told him the story in capsule form.
“Good Lord!”
Jacob asked to speak to Elizabeth Sterling.
“I’ll do better than that,” Bill Phillips said. “I’ll connect all of us on the same line.” He had a
lready been waving at the others to gather around him as he activated the speakerphone.
Phillips introduced Jack Rawly, Creighton MacRae, and Elizabeth, and asked Voorster to repeat who he was and the information he had.
Jacob Voorster took a deep breath and went through it again, mentioning the report that summarized it all, with attachments that provided proof of VZV’s intent and involvement.
“Where are you?” Elizabeth asked.
“Somewhere in Grand Central Station,” Jacob replied.
“Okay, we’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” She told him which street to find and where to wait at the curb before Jacob interrupted to tell them about the two men who had been chasing him with guns, and about his close encounter at the federal courthouse.
They had heard the news report of the shootings at Foley Square just before Voorster’s call. Undoubtedly the murders at the courthouse were related to Voorster.
“Okay, find the bookstore,” Elizabeth told him. “It’s on the eastern side, off the main atrium. Go in the bookstore and stay tucked away in the far corner, in the science fiction section. I’ll find you there in twenty minutes.”
Jacob hung up, feeling better. He had told them of his mistake with Moscowitz. Bill Phillips had been incredulous, but had taken careful note of the fact that Moscowitz had not attempted to mislead or divert Voorster.
Jacob left the phone booth and rounded the corner, deciding to head back toward the line of shops he had seen, and ask someone where the bookstore was. But no one seemed to want to answer, and the entrance eluded him. He stopped at last near a stairway up to the main terminal, wondering where to go for information. He thought about Dieter Hoffman and what Dieter had done for him. He was grateful for the man’s help. He owed the cabby his life, he was sure.
Phoenix Rising Page 40
