The Zero Option

by David Rollins

  ‘No one looking over your shoulder, eh?’ Hank said with admiration.

  Hamilton appeared from the washroom.

  ‘How are they doing?’ Garret asked him.

  ‘Chun is undecided, Kim is against, and Sohn is waiting on Chun. Whichever way Chun jumps, Sohn will follow. Kim won’t want to be left outside on his own.’

  The skinny KCIA man, Agent Lee, slid back his headset and addressed Garret. ‘Sir, they’re talking about fuel loads, insurance policies . . .’

  ‘That’s a good sign,’ said Hamilton.

  ‘Flight Engineer Kim is still not convinced,’ Lee said, adjusting one of the headset cups over his ear. ‘He could be trouble . . . wait . . . Kim is talking about the Soviets, reminding the others that they have many surface-to-air missiles, fighter jets and other defenses in the area. Many radars, too. He says it is one of the most heavily defended areas on earth.’

  ‘And he’d be right,’ Hank said.

  ‘Should I put them on speaker?’ enquired Special Agent Lee.

  Garret gave him a nod.

  Voices came through, speaking Korean. Lee translated.

  ‘No one will believe it. And I don’t believe them. Saving our careers? We will never fly again.’

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Hank.

  ‘Kim, I think,’ Garret said.

  ‘Look, this is dangerous, but we live in dangerous times. Our country is surrounded by enemies. Every Korean is still part of the fight . . .’

  ‘That was the captain,’ said Hamilton, with nods from Garret and Hank.

  ‘We should go somewhere else to talk about this. They will be listening for sure.’

  ‘Kim again,’ said Hamilton.

  ‘That guy has seen too many movies,’ Hank added.

  ‘What does it matter if they are?’

  ‘Sohn,’ Hamilton said, Garret agreeing.

  Silence for a long period.

  ‘So you really think we should do this?’ said the flight engineer, suddenly speaking English.

  ‘Do we have any choice?’ Sohn replied.

  ‘How about those names: Chun Byung-in, Sohn Dong-hwin and Kim Eui-dong. Sounds like someone dropped a xylophone, don’t it?’ Hank said, grinning, extinguishing his cigarette with a hiss in a half-empty coffee cup.

  Garret and Hamilton glanced anxiously at the KCIA agents but got nothing from their eyes.

  ‘What’s the usual ethnic make-up of the passenger list on the intended route?’ Hank continued. ‘I got asked that this morning. I’m going to get asked it again.’

  ‘KAL’s 747-200s are configured for more than 300 passengers,’ Hamilton said. ‘For the flight between Anchorage and Seoul-Kimpo, we can expect roughly two-thirds to be Korean, one-third American.’

  ‘That many Americans?’

  ‘Anchorage is a US airport. You were hoping for Canadians?’ said Garret.

  ‘What about a passenger manifest?’

  ‘Not yet. We’re too far out.’

  Hank extracted his Marlboros and pulled one out with his teeth. ‘So you got a mission date in mind, Roy? We’re running out of time.’

  ‘A couple of options in mind, but the odds on the early morning of September 1 are firming. That’s a Thursday.’

  ‘What’s the flight number, so I can be sure to miss it?’

  ‘007.’

  Hank grinned. ‘And here I was thinking you had no grasp of irony.’

  January 4, 2012

  Miami, Florida. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Ben replied.

  ‘Please make yourself comfortable, sir. Mr Bourdain won’t be long.’

  The receptionist was sleek, her skin the color of milk chocolate, and she resumed doing what Ben’s arrival had interrupted, her fingers caressing a slim Apple keyboard. He glanced around the room, which was dominated by the high-altitude panorama of downtown Miami and the beach beyond. The furnishings were stark and modern, and on the wall behind the receptionist was a striking painting of colorful squares and triangles that he vaguely recognized from a book. Ben gave the letterhead in his hand another examination. McBride, Sweeney, Sweetman & Bourdain LLP. Wealthy respectability certainly wasn’t what he’d associated with his estranged father, but from the address, the hot receptionist, the artwork and the minimalist décor, this was clearly a high-end firm.

  He took a chair beside a middle-aged, silver-haired man in an expensive suit who was sipping a cappuccino and reading the Wall Street Journal. There were no other clients in the room. Ben picked up a Time magazine and began to flip through it.

  An African-American man walked out from behind the wall of modern art. ‘Ben,’ the man said, walking toward him, hand outstretched. ‘Kayson Bourdain.’

  Ben stood. They shook.

  ‘Let’s go into my office.’

  The fifty-something year old attorney led the way. He swiped a card and a glass security door slid open.

  ‘Nice office,’ said Ben.

  ‘We like it.’

  ‘The receptionist come with the lease?’

  Bourdain smiled over his shoulder.

  They continued past a buzzing open-plan office populated by young lawyers and legal secretaries before entering a corner office. The view was the same as the one in reception. Bourdain closed the door behind them. Ben noted a couple of tall bookshelves containing various green and red leather-bound volumes. The mushroom-colored walls were hung with framed degrees, diplomas and awards.

  Bourdain motioned at Ben to take a seat on the sofa, a collection of interlocking black leather shapes. ‘You look like him.’

  ‘Look like who?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Your old man.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘You’ve never seen a photo of him?’

  ‘They were thrown out when I was a kid.’

  ‘We served together in the air force, y’know.’

  ‘How nice for you.’

  Bourdain picked up a stack of folders from his desk and sat opposite Ben in a matching armchair version of the sofa. ‘Do you know much about your father’s military career?’ he asked, placing the folders on a low frosted-glass coffee table between them.

  ‘No,’ Ben replied. ‘I’ve been going out of my way to give the guy no thought whatsoever.’

  ‘Curtis was one of the best pilots in the air force. I met him at Offutt Air Force Base—in Nebraska, just outside of Omaha. I was a maintenance engineer back then, a ground pounder. Then Curtis got assigned to Eielson AFB in Alaska.’

  ‘Gee, that’s great,’ said Ben, glancing around distractedly. ‘Is there something you wanted to see me about?’

  Bourdain cleared his throat and said, ‘Well, I guess we should dive straight into it then.’ He opened one of his folders, sat a pair of gold-rimmed bifocals on his nose, and picked up a sheet of paper. ‘“I, Curtis Eugene Foxx,”’ he read, ‘“am making this will in the presence of witnesses. My son, Benjamin Curtis Harbor, is my sole beneficiary. To him I leave all my possessions to do with as he pleases. Inclusive is the total of all money in any bank accounts, minus any debts I may have. I ask only that my remains be cremated and scattered over Chena Lake, Fairbanks, Alaska. I want no headstone, no memorial, no religious service. I leave to my son, Ben, my service dress, which I want him to preserve for only as long as he wishes. Ben, I am proud of you and I will be prouder still if you embrace the truth. Yours sincerely, Curtis Foxx.”’

  Two words stuck firmly in Ben’s craw: My son . . . And then the final paragraph, the change in tense: I will be prouder still if you embrace the truth. It sounded weird, like the man was actually in the room. ‘Is that a legal document?’ he enquired, rattled.

  ‘You asking because there’s no Hollywood baloney about being of sound mind and body and so forth?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Curtis drafted this will in my presence with Jim Sweetman, my partner here, as witness. It’s a legal and binding document.’ Bourdain opened another folder. It contained an unsealed envelope, w
hich he handed across. ‘This is yours.’

  The envelope was weighty, thick with paper. ‘For Ben’ was written on the front, neat and precise.

  ‘Curtis prepared the package himself,’ Bourdain said as Ben examined it.

  ‘So he knew he was going to die?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ben opened the envelope, removed the contents and sifted through them. The first item that caught his attention was a photo, an old washed-out Kodak color print. He flipped it over. On the back, ‘1983’ was penciled in the bottom right-hand corner. The picture showed five young men from waist to shoulder, the nose of a large aircraft behind them. The men were all in flight suits, smiling, enjoying the sunshine. Bourdain was right. The guy at the far left could have been Ben’s twin, except for the whitewall haircut.

  ‘Who are these others?’ he asked.

  ‘His crew.’

  Ben put the photo on the table and looked at another item—a postcard. ‘Relax at Chena Lake’ was written in the top left-hand corner. It showed a man, his back to the photographer, standing waist-deep in clear green water, whipping a trout fly out over the lake. The postcard was hand-colored, the blues, greens and purples pushed beyond reality.

  ‘What’s this about?’ Ben asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t know, but he wanted you to have it. The place was important to him. He wants his ashes scattered there.’

  Ben frowned and put it down. There was also the man’s birth certificate, his medical discharge from the United States Air Force, an official copy of his death certificate and a copy of the medical autopsy performed on his remains at the Northside Hospital mortuary in Atlanta, Georgia.

  ‘Is that where he lived, Atlanta?’

  ‘No. As far as I know, Curtis had no fixed address.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Ben examined the birth certificate: Curtis Eugene Foxx, born San Antonio, TX, July 19, 1950, at 7:42 a.m. in Wilford Hall Hospital, Lackland AFB. His mom and Curtis had met each other in San Antonio, he knew that much. What had his mom told him? That they’d both grown up in San Antonio but had gone to different schools. Nikki had met her future husband when she’d gone back to visit her parents, a PhD in English Literature from Louisiana State University in her suitcase. She was thrown together with Curtis at a mutual friend’s pool party and they had something in common: Curtis was heading to a new assignment at Offutt AFB and Nikki was also going to Omaha, to take up a posting as an assistant professor of English Literature at Creighton University. Four years later, they were married.

  Ben picked up the autopsy report. Here was something new. ‘It says he died of acute liver failure, cirrhosis. Was he a drunk?’ Ben asked.

  ‘For a while,’ Bourdain said. ‘But Curtis eventually pulled out of it. The cirrhosis stemmed from a blood transfusion that came with a dose of hep C.’

  ‘Why’d he need a transfusion in the first place?’

  ‘He got mugged.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about the guy.’

  ‘Curtis would drop me a line from time to time.’

  ‘More than I got.’

  The lawyer made no comment.

  Ben flicked through to the medical discharge. ‘How’d you get to be his lawyer?’

  ‘I left the air force, went back to school. A couple of years down the road, he looked me up.’

  Ben went back to the photo. ‘What did he fly?’

  ‘RC-135s.’

  ‘What kind of plane is that?’

  ‘Reconnaisance—spy planes. Basically a Boeing 707.’

  ‘If he was such a hot shit pilot, why’d they kick him out?’

  ‘Curtis had some problems he couldn’t deal with. I believe he suffered from severe post-traumatic stress syndrome, back when no one knew what that was.’

  Bourdain pulled a second envelope from the folder and slid it across the table. ‘And this is also yours.’

  Ben took the envelope. It was unsigned and unsealed. A weight inside it was causing the envelope to bend. He tipped it up and a key dropped into the palm of his hand. There was a number on it.

  ‘007. Is that a joke?’

  ‘Yeah, license to open. Ha!’ Bourdain said, amusing himself. ‘He left you a safe deposit box.’

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have a clue. Not my business to know.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘At a branch of the Bank of America, up in Orlando. The address is on the back of a sheet of paper in the envelope.’

  Ben dropped the envelope back on the table with an air of indifference.

  ‘I really think you should have a look for that sheet of paper,’ Bourdain advised. ‘Make sure it’s there.’ The attorney leaned back in his chair and interlocked his fingers on his stomach, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

  Ben picked up the envelope again, held it upside down and gave it a shake. The sheet fluttered into his lap. There were figures on it, and when he saw the amount in bold at the bottom of the right-hand column, his jaw swung open.

  ‘The tax accountant here has completed the reconciliation and we’re holding the balance in escrow. Just email me your bank details and I’ll make an EFT.’

  ‘For . . .’ Ben examined the amount again, ‘$96,112.90?’

  ‘You’ll have to pay his burial expenses out of it,’ the lawyer told him with an apologetic shrug. ‘But my fee was taken care of in advance.’

  ‘Curtis had money?’ Ben asked, stunned.

  ‘Yes, he had a small armed forces pension, a casual job here and there. I guess he saved.’

  ‘Jesus. We never saw a cent.’

  ‘Never too late to make things right.’

  ‘Ya think?’

  ‘Well, that’s up to you, I guess.’

  Bourdain sat back again and regarded Ben. ‘You’re a pilot, too, aren’t you? Just like Curtis.’

  ‘No, nothing like Curtis,’ he said, his anger flaring.

  After a few moments of silence, Bourdain said, ‘The burial. What would you like to do?’

  Ben shook his head slowly. He felt trapped by the sudden responsibility for a man he’d only ever resented. ‘I’ve never had to bury anyone before.’

  ‘It’s easy. Choose a crematorium and let them know the body’s at the Northside Hospital mortuary in Atlanta. I’ve taken care of the obituary and all the legals. The crematorium will look after everything else.’

  ‘What if I just leave the bastard where he is?’

  ‘If you like, I’ll get my assistant to handle it.’

  ‘Works for me.’

  ‘Obviously, a lot of this has come as a shock,’ Bourdain said. ‘That’s understandable. You know, despite your experience with Curtis—or should I say, lack of it—he was a good man. Troubled, yes, but decent.’

  Ben flipped back and forth through the documents as Bourdain got up and walked behind him.

  ‘There’s one more thing he wanted you to have.’

  Ben glanced over his shoulder. Hanging on the door was a pressed blue USAF coat, encased in clear plastic. He caught a glimpse of a major’s gold oak leaf clusters on the epaulets. He put the key and all the documents back in the envelope and then stood up. Bourdain lifted the uniform off the hook and gave it to him with some reverence. The uniform was heavy.

  ‘Those ribbons on the blouse tell you a lot about his military career,’ Bourdain said.

  ‘Blouse?’

  ‘The jacket—the Air Force calls it a blouse.’

  ‘Mr Bourdain—’

  ‘Call me Kayson.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what he might have meant when he said he’d be prouder if I embraced the truth?’

  ‘I’m a lawyer,’ Bourdain grinned. ‘What the hell would I know about truth?’

  Ben worked the keyboard. His own image shrank to one corner of the laptop’s screen as a woman’s face filled it. She was in her early fifties, her skin still smooth and remarkably line-free. A handful of light freckle
s sprinkled her small straight nose. She smoothed her hair, hooking a tawny lock behind her ears. A dead leaf hung from her fringe, which she hadn’t noticed. Nikki had been gardening.

  ‘Hey, Mom,’ said Ben.

  ‘Hi, Benny. You okay, honey?’

  ‘Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Oh, you know . . .’

  ‘Hey, Ben,’ a man interrupted, his face suddenly crowding the frame. ‘How they hangin’, pal?’

  ‘Like Sweet Chariot’s, Dad.’

  ‘What’s the weather doing down there?’ Frank asked.

  ‘The usual perfection. I heard it’s raining in Norfolk.’

  ‘I’m not complaining. It’s good for the garden,’ Nikki said, reclaiming the computer. ‘Now go away, Frank.’

  Frank disappeared.

  ‘So, what happened? How’d the reading go?’

  Ben began with the money, which elicited genuine astonishment, then followed with a run-down of the documents and the uniform. ‘It’s weird. I feel like he’s trying to communicate with me. You know, make up for lost time. I found out more about him in one hour than I‘ve known over the last twenty-eight years. Like, I didn’t know he drank.’

  ‘Yes, he drank,’ his mother said flatly.

  ‘That’s because he was a loo-ser,’ Frank called out from somewhere in the room.

  ‘Shoosh, Frank. Curtis had a breakdown,’ Nikki told Ben. ‘He went through some kind of hell—real or imagined, I don’t know—but the point is, he changed.’

  ‘Into a jerk!’ Frank interjected.

  ‘Frank!’

  ‘The kid should know!’ shouted Frank. ‘It’s time. He’s twenty-eight, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Don’t make it out to be more than it was,’ said Nikki.

  ‘And what was it, Mom?’ Ben asked.

  ‘He came back from a mission rotation. And he was damaged.’

  ‘So he had a bad day at the office,’ Frank said. ‘That’s no excuse.’

  ‘Do you want to tell it, Frank, or shall I?’

  Silence.

  ‘Thank you.’ Nikki fumed, looking off screen, and then to Ben she said, ‘At first I thought he might have been having an affair, but it wasn’t that—it was something worse, if that’s possible. He’d seen or done something he just couldn’t come to terms with. He wouldn’t talk about it, so he just ended up in this downward spiral. What did the lawyer say about it?’