Air Force One is Down u-2

by John Denis

  McCafferty turned his attention back to Dunkels, estimating the Kamov’s course at about 190 degrees. Setting the same course for himself, he climbed four thousand feet to enlarge his view and compensate for the start the German had on him. He figured he could make up the leeway with the superior performance of the UTVA — particularly if he pushed it slightly beyond the recommended limit. He scanned the area below him on both sides, every inch of land and sky, not seeing the beauty of the rolling countryside nor the sunlit, tree-lined slopes … he looked only for the tell-tale signs which would betray the elusive helicopter: the glint of reflected light from the whirring blades; the fly-sized black speck against the bright blue; the dark shadow stealing across a green meadow.

  A road, a river and a railway line passed beneath his gaze. To his left a small town nestled in a fold of the gentle hills. Mac fumbled for a crumpled, dog-eared chart left in the cockpit, and identified the town as Glina. He peered more closely at the chart: next stop, Topusko — to starboard.

  He leaned to his right, looking out, searching for Topusko, and there was the Kamov, flying so low that it appeared for one ludicrous moment to be covering the ground like a car. McCafferty chuckled and spat out the chewing-gum, which in any case had lost its flavour …

  * * *

  While rerouting McCafferty to Yugoslavia, Philpott decided that Sonya and he should stick to their original plan and make for Rome. Whisked through customs at Fiumicino as VIPs, they left the airport with their minimal luggage untouched, ignored the thieving con-men operating as unlicensed taxi-drivers, and the yellow cabs themselves, and made for a NATO staff-car sitting by the ‘No Parking’ sign. The jaded high-ranking officer in British Army uniform standing by the car unlaced his arms and pasted on a welcoming beam.

  The officer — tall, greying and keen-eyed, with a toothbrush moustache that ended precisely at the corners of his mouth — threw up a salute that was somewhere between a wave and a semaphore signal. ‘Morning. Tomlin. Brigadier.’

  Philpott replied, ‘Morning. Philpott. UNACO.’

  Tomlin said, ‘I’m NATO. Naples. In charge of the local end.’

  Philpott said, ‘My associate, Mrs Kolchinsky. We’re in charge of both ends.’ He nodded towards Sonya and then they both shook hands with the soldier.

  ‘We don’t usually meet — ah — visiting firemen,’ Tomlin continued earnestly, ignoring Philpott’s darkening brow. ‘However, I’ve been ordered to this time, so you must be pretty important.’

  ‘Not really,’ Philpott responded off-handedly, ‘just an ordinary chap with some ordinary questions, Brigadier.’

  ‘Oh, splendid,’ Tomlin said, conducting them into the car and seating himself in a jump-seat. ‘Jolly good show. Well then, fire away.’

  Sonya’s firm grip on his wrist was helping Philpott control his rising temper, though he found it difficult to fuel his anger in the face of Tomlin’s complete insouciance. ‘Well, to start with, is there any word on the wreckage of Air Force One?’ he inquired.

  ‘Ah,’ Tomlin said, leaning forward conspiratorially, ‘yes, there is.’ He instructed the corporal at the wheel of the car to drive them away, then confided to Philpott that the wreckage of the plane had been located.

  ‘But—’ he added, and gaped when Philpott supplied, ‘But it’s not Air Force One.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Tomlin confirmed. ‘But how on earth did you know?’

  Philpott tapped the side of his nose. ‘Fireman’s secret,’ he whispered. ‘It was a Boeing 707, I take it?’

  It was, Tomlin conceded, though as far as they could make out from the debris, it was a freighter, not an airliner. There was no registration mark, so the plane could take days to trace.

  Philpott digested the news; he had hoped to link Smith definitively with the hijack through an instant identification of the ‘look-alike’ Boeing, but it seemed he would have to wait for his affirmative evidence. Not, though, for long.

  A squawk from the front of the vehicle announced a radio message. Tomlin shot back the dividing partition and rapped, ‘What did they say, Corporal?’

  ‘Headquarters, sir,’ the NCO replied. ‘Ransom demand for the OPEC ministers received in Trieste and, I think, Dubrovnik. Something’s gone out on one of the American news agencies, too.’

  The Brigadier was all business now. ‘HQ then, and step on it.’ He preened himself as though he had been personally responsible for the invention of radio, and said to Philpott, ‘Bit of a turn-up, no?’

  ‘No,’ Philpott said, ‘I was expecting it.’ The soldier arched an expressive eyebrow, but said nothing. Philpott moved in smoothly for the kill. ‘What’s more, Brigadier,’ he said slyly, ‘one gets you ten that the guy behind the ransom demand is called Smith.’

  Tomlin sniffed. ‘Bit, eh, sort of — commonplace, isn’t it?’

  Philpott chuckled. ‘The name, maybe; not the man.’

  In the operations room at NATO HQ, Philpott and Sonya studied blow-ups of the Polaroid pictures wired over on request from Trieste and from the AP bureau in Belgrade. Tomlin shot one of the prints under a desk magnifier and the image was thrown on to a wall screen. ‘All present and correct, sir?’ he inquired, suitably chastened since his discovery that the hijacker was indeed named as Mister Smith.

  Philpott and Sonya mentally ticked off ministers and crew members, all of whose faces were on record at UNACO. Unobtrusively, they were intently scanning just one among the dozen or so faces — for Jagger, naturally, was in the group of captives.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ Philpott murmured. ‘Uncanny,’

  Sonya said. ‘It’s the greatest surgery I’ve ever seen. Everything … even Mac’s mother would swear—’

  ‘Brigadier —’ Philpott cut her off with a peremptory, though not unkind, gesture, ‘have you formed any opinion about the background to the snapshot?’

  The Brigadier said without hesitation that it was a castle. ‘Flagstone floor,’ he explained airily, ‘roughcast walls. We’ve got a few of ’em in England, you know.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Philpott interestedly, ‘you must tell me some time.’

  The sarcasm was lost on Tomlin, who merely nodded sagely and repeated, ‘No doubt of it. A castle.’

  Philpott agreed, and asked the Brigadier if he knew of any castles in Yugoslavia.

  ‘Is that where it’s supposed to be?’ Tomlin bleated. Philpott nodded. The Brigadier shrugged: ‘Hundreds?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Philpott said. ‘But there are certainly enough to make the right one difficult to find without any other identification.’

  A clerk brought in copies of the ransom note and, like Hemmingsway had done, Philpott whistled when he saw Smith’s demand for fifty million dollars’ worth of cut diamonds. ‘It’s a helluva lot of money,’ he mused.

  ‘What about the rest?’ Tomlin said shakily.

  ‘Rest?’ Philpott echoed.

  Tomlin flourished the Associated Press tape, giving the full story, unlike the UNACO report, which had been split up into paragraphs with analysis, of which Philpott had only the first.

  Tomlin paraphrased, ‘Unless the Arab nations — or someone … UNACO’s mentioned — meet Smith’s demands, he’ll kill one minister every three hours.’

  ‘My God,’ Tomlin whispered, ‘he must be mad. Do you think he means it?’

  Philpott looked up from the UNACO report. ‘Oh, he’s serious all right,’ he said gravely. ‘And he may also be mad enough to carry it out.’

  Sonya Kolchinsky compressed her lips into a line. ‘Is there a deadline, Brigadier?’

  Tomlin glanced back down at the paper in his hand. ‘There is,’ he verified. ‘It’s one hour from—’ he looked at his watch ‘—about now. UNACO’s acceptance of Smith’s terms must be broadcast on the American Forces’ Network from Rome at precisely 1000 hours, local time.’ He looked levelly at Philpott. ‘Over to you, sir,’ he added.

  Philpott drew a large breath and vented it as a sigh compounded as much of resigna
tion as of frustration. ‘An hour …’ he muttered, ‘… just one hour and we could lose Hawley Hemmingsway.’

  ‘Why Hemmingsway?’ Sonya inquired.

  Philpott smiled. ‘Can you see Smith executing a valuable Arab before a non-negotiable American?’

  * * *

  A stiff breeze ruffled Philpott’s hair, and the warm sunlight filling the Piazza Barberini caused him to shade his eyes and squint up at the waiter.

  ‘Signore?’ the waiter asked.

  ‘Eh — capuccino,’ Philpott replied. Then he caught sight of the figure of a man crossing the road from the Metro station.

  ‘Signore!’ he called after the retreating waiter. The waiter turned, his newly-pressed white smock bristling with anticipation. ‘Due capuccine,’ Philpott ordered. The waiter echoed ‘Due. Prego, Signore,’ and scuttled off. The man from the Metro advanced and sat, uninvited and unsmiling, at Philpott’s table …

  * * *

  UNACO’s first priority after examining every aspect of the ransom demand had been to plan how to stall for time. Secondly, the ransom must be assembled. This had been the easier option. Sonya put through telephone calls at Philpott’s direction to the Johannesburg and Amsterdam Diamond Exchanges and to the chief executive of De Beers. On UNACO’s credit the sum was promised. Delivery of the equivalent in cut diamonds would be made from Amsterdam by the next flight from Schipol to Fiumicino.

  Meanwhile, Philpott had anxiously probed the situation from every angle. ‘I must have time to find Smith,’ Philpott demanded, slapping the table in the NATO Ops room with his open palm. ‘He cannot be allowed to take command. Once we broadcast our agreement to his terms, he’ll follow up with the location of the ransom dropping point in double-quick time, and before we know it he’ll have got away with it.’

  ‘But you will make the broadcast?’ Tomlin asked cautiously. ‘I know it goes against the grain, sir, but I think you’ll agree that we dare not risk the lives of any of the OPEC ministers. Unless you feel Smith is simply bluffing.’

  Philpott slowly passed a hand across his forehead and allowed the fingers to slide down his face. He looked out of the window and stared at the silent maelstrom of Rome’s traffic far below. ‘He may be bluffing in the sense that I don’t believe he will himself kill a minister,’ he finally replied. ‘Killing’s not Smith’s style. On the other hand, there will be by the nature of things unstable people with him … I have a sketchy outline of two of them. And apart from that, Smith is certainly not above staging an execution convincingly enough to persuade one of the other hostages to pass it on to us as a fact. I’ve no doubt Smith has radio facilities — and will use them to blackmail us, broadcasting in short bursts so that we are unable to track down the frequency.’

  Tomlin nodded gloomily. ‘We wouldn’t know whether it was true or not,’ he agreed. ‘We would have to assume it had actually happened. It would be a bluff we could not call.’

  The two men sat for a minute immersed in their separate thoughts, and then Philpott jerkily shifted to the front of his seat and scribbled on the notepad before him. He tore off the first page and handed it to Tomlin.

  The Brigadier studied it and smiled bemusedly.

  ‘As easy as that?’ he inquired. Philpott shrugged. ‘We have to buy time.’

  ‘But you have no idea how to contact Smith because we don’t know where he is,’ the Brigadier objected.

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to do,’ Philpott replied. ‘I must smoke him out. Have that message broadcast on AFN at nine-thirty, and again at ten, and Smith, I guarantee, will be in touch. By then, I’ll have found out the way to get through to him.’

  ‘And if you don’t?’

  ‘If I don’t, we lose Hemmingsway.’

  Tomlin pursed his lips ruefully and said, ‘I’m glad it’s not me taking that kind of chance. Your President would not be best pleased at losing a friend as well as an aeroplane, if you’ll excuse the levity, sir.’

  Philpott inclined his head. ‘We have to grab our chances where we can with Smith, Brigadier,’ he continued. ‘And rest easy,’ he assured Tomlin, ‘I have no intention of needlessly sacrificing Hawley Hemmingsway or any other oil minister, as President Wheeler knows full well. I think I can pull this off, but it’ll take time — and time is something we don’t have. Now if you could give me a couple of minutes?’

  Tomlin nodded and walked to the far end of the operations centre. Philpott picked up the telephone and replied in Russian when the man at the Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics said, ‘Buon giorno, Signore.’

  Philpott was playing a hunch which, if he was wrong, not only would put them completely at Smith’s mercy, but also could lead to the murder of an American Secretary of State. He swallowed the touch of bile which had risen to his mouth, and said, ‘I wish to speak to General Alexis Nesterenko.’

  There was the expected silence before the man gave the expected answer: there was no General Alexis Nesterenko at the embassy. Philpott continued smoothly, ‘You may know him better by his code-name: Myshkin.’ He could hear the click as the resident KGB station commander cued in to the call.

  ‘We know of no one of that name, and we do not understand what you mean when you refer to a code-name,’ the operator said stolidly.

  ‘Very well,’ Philpott said, ‘I will have to assume that you do not wish to communicate to your superiors some information which it is crucial to their plans that they should receive. I will bid you goodbye, then.’

  ‘Eh, wait for just one moment, Signore,’ the operator broke in, switching to Italian. ‘You — you did not —’ he was obviously trying to interpret instructions whispered to him across another line ‘— you did not give us your name.’

  ‘My name is Malcolm Philpott, and I am the Director of the United Nations Anti-Crime Organisation. I fail to see how that can interest you, since you claim to have no knowledge of the man to whom I wish to pass this information.’

  Another delay, and Philpott could hear clicks multiplying on the line like mating grasshoppers. Then the operator came back on. ‘It is as you say, Mr Philpott, we do not know the man you have spoken of, nor indeed the other name which you used. It might, however, be helpful if you could tell us your immediate movements.’

  ‘For what purpose?’ Philpott inquired innocently.

  The operator had stumbled again over his words, then managed to get out the lame excuse that it could be of assistance to the matter in hand.

  Philpott toyed with him for another minute, then said, with a touch of asperity, ‘Oh, very well. I shall be in the Ristorante Aurelio in Piazza Barberini in precisely ten minutes from now. I’ll be drinking coffee at a sidewalk table. I may well enjoy a cigar as well. No doubt I shall insult the waiter and refuse to pay the bill. Piazza Barberini, as you may know, is quite close to the American Embassy in the Via Veneto.’

  ‘We know where the American Embassy is, Signore,’ the operator replied stiffly, and broke the connection.

  * * *

  ‘You must have been expecting my call,’ Philpott observed pleasantly as the coffee arrived. Myshkin sniffed disapprovingly and changed the order for himself to caff è negro. Philpott apologised and slid the second cup of cappuccino to his own side of the table.

  ‘Say what you have to say, and please be quick about it,’ Myshkin pronounced tartly.

  ‘Aren’t you interested in learning how I knew you were involved, or even that you were in Rome?’ Philpott asked.

  ‘You didn’t,’ Myshkin rejoined. ‘It was a blind guess. You can also have no certain knowledge of any implication of myself or my country in the affair which at present occupies your attention.’

  ‘Then why are you here?’ Philpott pressed gently. He could not risk frightening off the Russian, though he surmised correctly that Myshkin had no intention of being intimidated.

  Myshkin allowed an inchoate smile to illumine his wintry face. ‘Curiosity, Mr Philpott, nothing more. Clearly my — eh — swift accession to a posi
tion of power in the Politburo has interested not merely the Western secret services but also UNACO, otherwise you would not be familiar with even my real name, let alone my code-name. Also, there …’ he hesitated as if reluctant to admit a weakness, ‘… there may be ways in which we can help each other.’

  ‘In too deep, Myshkin?’ Philpott inquired ironically.

  ‘By no means,’ Myshkin protested. He lit a vile-smelling cigarette with a Dupont lighter and sipped his coffee. Then he examined his fingernails and glanced out appreciatively into the square; a party of four girls, beautiful and freshly groomed, young and enticing, was bound for the Via Veneto. ‘An illicit rendezvous?’ he whispered to Philpott. ‘Meeting sugar daddies at one of those ruinously expensive hotels?’

  ‘At this time of day?’ Philpott queried, enjoying the Russian’s dilemma. Then he glanced at his watch and realised that the charade must soon end. The KGB clearly could not take the initiative; so UNACO must.

  He began slowly, after lighting a cigar and breathing a speculative wreath of smoke Myshkin’s way, ‘Since you mentioned the matter which is at present occupying my attention, as I believe you phrased it, would you consider it discourteous or outré if I referred to it directly?’ Myshkin affected not to have heard him. Philpott grinned and tapped a corrosion of ash on to the pavement.

  ‘UNACO’s involvement is obvious,’ Philpott went on. ‘An attack on the personal aircraft of the US President is bad enough, but when the passengers include the leading lights of OPEC, this is something which surely the whole world must deprecate — or at least which it cannot ignore. The criminal Smith, whose name may not be unknown to you —’ Myshkin considered the point, then shook his head ‘— this man Smith stands vilified at the bar of global opinion, from every quarter. It is an act of cynical brigandry, and must be condemned with all the force at the command of right-thinking nations with the security of civilised behaviour at heart.’