Fly by Wire (2010)

by Larsen, Ward

"Why?"

  "I visited his wife back in Houston. After I saw her, I made a side trip to Moore's apartment. In truth, I found a few things I hadn't wanted to find. An empty Jack Daniel's bottle in the recycle bin. A few beers in the fridge. But that was it. And thank God, no goodbye cruel world' note sitting like a headstone on the dining room table."

  "So he had been drinking," she said.

  "Apparently. Just like at the hotel the night before the flight. But I found some other things in his apartment. There was a schedule for his son's soccer team with the scores filled out to mid-season. An e-mail confirmation for a pair of shoes he'd ordered online the day before he left. He just wrote a check to fund his IRA account. And Moore TiVo'd two ballgames on TV."

  Davis drained the last of his beer and looked squarely at Sorensen. "I can't say what was on his mind the day of the crash. But when Earl Moore left home, he had every intention of coming back."

  Two hours after spotting Fatima, Whittemore was sipping ginger ale in a dark corner of a cheap bar. He would have preferred something more substantial -- disciple of the grain that he was -- yet the idea that Caliph might be nearby demanded absolute sobriety.

  Fatima had taken a cab from the ferry terminal and checked into a cheap hotel, a place that might get two stars if the rating inspector came on just the right day. She had taken a key from the front desk, given her bag to a bellman, and gone straight to the bar. That was over an hour ago. Since then, she'd done nothing but drink -- rum and soda, if he wasn't mistaken. The more plowed she got, the more Whittemore was sure that Caliph's arrival was not imminent. Who would meet their boss in the shape she was getting into? Especially when your boss was the world s most ruthless terrorist.

  It was a dreary establishment. The old wood floors had been worn smooth by generations of hard boots and dragged chairs, and patterns of dirt and dust denoted the spots where there had been no recent meeting between spilled beer and a mop. A brass rail, dull and dented, ran along the foot of a hardwood bar. The elbow-high bar itself had probably been stout fifty years ago, but now was riddled with tiny holes -- termites or worms. Above it all, the wall trim sported a coat of fresh red paint that accented the rest like lipstick on an aging drag queen.

  It was just after nine in the evening and the place was half full, a typical mix of transients and regulars, Whittemore figured. Groups of men and women interacted casually, and a few couples nuzzled in dark corner booths. A handful of men were perched at the bar on high wooden stools. They were spaced evenly between empty seats, hunched and immovable, the type who hold drinking among life's more solemn pursuits.

  Fatima was largely ignored.

  Whittemore decided that the pictures he'd seen had not done her justice. She was even uglier in real life. The dim light, mostly red and green hues cast from neon beer signs, gave her dark, pitted complexion an unearthly aura. She still had on the same clothes she'd worn on the ferry, and if Whittemore had read the immigration guy correctly, she probably smelled like puke. Even from thirty feet away in a dark room, her hair looked like she'd just rinsed it in the crankcase of an old truck. She was overweight, maybe a hundred extra pounds on a five-five frame. Not obese by American standards, but her clothes were inappropriately tight and highlighted the fact that all her acreage was down the wrong roads. Big thighs, big belly, no chest -- Fatima was the penultimate loser in life's genetic game of roulette. Whittemore's regard for Caliph slipped a few notches. If I was the world's most wanted terrorist, I'd at least have a hot messenger.

  His attention ratcheted up when Fatima stood. Looking marginally steady, she stretched like an overweight cat, scratched her crotch, and moved to the bar.

  "I wan' another drink!" she demanded in English. Her voice was throaty, the words slurred like she had a mouthful of glue.

  The bartender was a short, heavyset guy wearing an apron. He frowned. The room was relatively quiet, so Whittemore heard his response. "One more," he said, "then you must go."

  Fatima smiled and looked the guy over like he was hanging on a hook in a butcher's shop. "You married?" she asked.

  He held up his hand to show a ring.

  "Ah, hell, that don't matter! You kinda cute."

  He slid her cutoff drink across the bar, along with the tab.

  "What time you finish work?"

  The man ignored her and went to the far end of the bar to engage one of his regulars -- a guy who was snickering.

  Whittemore gauged the scene. He knew a lot about drinking. Knew people handled it differently. Some giggled. Some got nasty. Some fell asleep. From the look of it, Fatima Adara got horny. One of God's little jokes, he decided. He hoped none of the men at the bar was that desperate. The last thing he needed was for some free-range drunk to stumble in and confuse things. Ever so briefly, Whittemore considered sending Fatima a drink himself, maybe engaging in some alcoholic nuptials. A little amorous pillow talk might give him Caliph. Then again, it might give him erectile dysfunction. Whittemore wanted a promotion, but he had his limits.

  Fatima downed her last drink, snapping her head back to get every last drop. Then she fished into her pocket, dropped a wad of euros on the bar, and headed out.

  Whittemore had settled in advance. He was increasingly disappointed. Short of spotting Caliph, he hadn't known exactly what he was looking for, what to expect. But so far, Fatima had gone to a hotel, gotten drunk, and now she was probably headed to her room to pass out. Once that happened, there wouldn't be anything to do until morning. If that was how it went, Whittemore didn't have much choice. He would have to call in the contact. Take his commendation plaque.

  He followed Fatima into the hotel lobby. Whittemore looked discreetly toward the elevator, expecting to see her there. Nothing. His head whipped around and he spotted her, just a flash, as she cleared the main entrance and headed down the street.

  Chapter TWENTY-TWO

  The bar menu had a decidedly European tilt. Davis and Sorensen both skipped the special of the day, seaweed and oyster tartare, and neither gave a thought to ordering snails. He went with the salmon bagel, while she settled on onion soup.

  "So that file you have on me," Davis asked, "what's in it?"

  Sorensen dipped a crusty piece of bread into her soup. "It said you put your fist through a wall at an officer's club."

  "That was in there?" He shrugged it off.

  Sorensen gave him a look that asked for more. Perhaps a reasonable explanation.

  "I was at a dining in," he said.

  "A dining in?"

  "It's a formal military banquet where the whole fighter wing gets dressed up in our best uniforms. We do guy stuff--eat meat, drink bourbon, smoke cigars. On the night in question, some of my squadron buddies and I were having a stud-finding contest. I lost."

  Sorensen took the bait. "Okay -- and what does the winner get in this event?"

  "A broken hand."

  She paused, but then moved on without comment. "The file said you spent three years in the Marines, then got an appointment to the Air Force Academy. Why did you switch services?"

  "The Marine Corps is a great organization, but I wanted to fly jets. The Air Force seemed the most likely place. Plus I was a little tired of living in dusty tents and eating MFJEs."

  "And you shot down a MiG in the first Gulf War?"

  "Yeah, I was flying F-15s at the time. My wingman and I tracked down a MiG-23 that was headed for Iran. Saddam thought his jets would be safer there."

  "I guess you proved him wrong."

  "I guess."

  "So it was a dogfight? Just like in the old movies?"

  "You mean like with the wind snapping at my scarf, maybe shaking my fist at the other guy? No. The real thing is very clinical, very quick. And usually very one-sided. The Iraqi pilot had been ordered up on what was basically a suicide mission -- his commander told him to fly a jet to Iran before we blew it out of its bunker. He got airborne and was running away at six hundred knots. I chased him down doing six-eighty, put a heater up the p
oor bastard's tailpipe. Bottom line, we both had jobs to do and gave it our best -- but my airplane, missiles, and information were a lot better. So I killed a guy in a fight that wasn't fair."

  "In combat I suppose that's how you want all your fights," she said.

  He shrugged.

  She said, "I remember reading a report a few years back -- it said a lot of those Iraqi pilots who actually made it across the border were never heard from again."

  "Which means what? That I gave his family a little ... closure or something?"

  Sorensen said nothing.

  Davis spread mustard on his bagel. He had an urge to change the subject. "So tell me what you found out about our Egyptian friend."

  "Dr. Jaber? Nothing troublesome. At least not yet. He's a career engineer, sort of a vagabond. He's worked for a number of the big aerospace companies. There's no evidence of any fringe politics, no family members in the Islamic Brotherhood. Jaber has a wife and two kids back in Cairo."

  After a pause, Davis said, "And that's it?"

  "Langley says they're still working on it."

  Davis was putting the finishing touches on a clever reply when the phone in his pocket buzzed. "Excuse me." He wedged it open with a thumb and saw a message from Jen: aunt l can chaperone at dance, please! please.1 kisses, j.

  Davis weighed a reply, maybe something like: GO DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Sure. That would score points. Davis put the phone away and frowned. He rubbed a hand over his face, top to bottom, and let out a long, controlled sigh.

  "Your daughter?"

  He nodded.

  "Can I help?"

  "You don't even know her."

  "I'm a girl."

  Davis gave her a hard look that said, No shit. He turned his beer mug by the handle. "Jen is fifteen years old. It'll get easier, right?"

  "My mom used to say that kids are the reverse of anchors -- the more they weigh, the less they hold you down."

  He didn't reply.

  "Jammer ... what happened to your wife?"

  The question caught him off guard. He replied in a smartass tone, "Wasn't that in the file?"

  This time Sorensen went silent.

  "Sorry," he said, "you didn't deserve that."

  Davis had told the story more times than he could count. But not lately. Family and friends all knew what had happened, which meant he only had to deal with fresh acquaintances now. People like Sorensen, Jen's teachers every year, the occasional new neighbor moving in. Someday, he figured, time would do its thing. People would stop asking altogether. Davis wasn't sure if he'd like that or not.

  "Diane was killed in a car crash. It was almost two years ago now. She was on her way home from a night class, some kind of healthy-living nutrition class. A big delivery truck -- not a semi, but the next size down -- blasted right through a stop sign and hit her Honda square in the drivers-side door."

  "God, how awful. For you and your daughter. I can't imagine dealing with something like that."

  "I'll tell you what really made it hard. It was just an accident. The truck driver was an old Guatemalan guy, barely spoke English. But he was here legally. He'd been working a thirteen-hour shift. That's legal too."

  After a pause, Sorensen said, "So there was nobody to blame."

  "Exactly. If he'd been drunk, I could have kicked his ass. Maybe I'd have stopped drinking myself and joined MADD, or DADD, or whatever the hell. Or if she'd died from colon cancer I could run a race, wear the right color ribbon, eat cruciferous vegetables the rest of my life. But the way it is--"

  "No reason," she said, finishing the thought. "Just random chance."

  "But doing what I do, Honeywell, investigating accidents -- if it's taught me anything, it's that there's never just one single cause for any disaster. There's always a chain, a series of things that go wrong."

  "Even with what happened to your wife? One guy running a stop sign?"

  "That night I had thought about calling her on her cell. If I'd gotten through when she was walking out of class it would have slowed her down. Maybe she wouldn't have been at the intersection at that one precise moment. Maybe the truck would have just clipped her. And when she bought that car I tried to talk her into something bigger, something with a little more iron. But Diane insisted on doing the right thing for the goddamn environment. And--" Davis stopped abruptly.

  She eyed him with concern. "Jammer -- you can't blame yourself."

  He stretched, trying to force the tension from his shoulders. "That's what I do for a living, isn't it? Find blame. Sometimes I don't like the answers, don't like what I find. But it's there all the same."

  She thought about this, then said, "My job can be a challenge sometimes too. You know -- the evasion, the lies."

  "Like you did to me?"

  "Yes," she said squarely. "Like I did to you."

  Davis nodded, took it as an apology. He worked some more on his bagel, then asked, "What about you, Honeywell? Husband, kids, tragedy, scars?"

  She looked skyward in mock contemplation. "Almost but no, no, yes, and--"she lifted the sleeve of her dress to reveal a three-inch scar on one shoulder.

  "Rotator cuff?" he asked.

  "And then some."

  "What was the tragedy?"

  "Not a big deal, but you'll have to get me much drunker to hear about it."

  He nodded. "It's a date."

  Davis grabbed the bill and stood. "But in the meantime, confessional's over. I spent some time in the hangar this afternoon -- a good part of the wreckage has made its way there. Let's head over, there's something I want to show you."

  Seared scallops and mushrooms in a basil reduction. Or braised veal cheek served with semolina gnocchi. For Dr. Hans Sprecht, it had been an exquisite dilemma.

  The place was called Il Lago, a transcendent sliver of Italy that had found its way to central Geneva. The decor was sublime, the walls a sweeping array of hand-painted murals in a room divided by gilt French doors. Accenting brocades and crystal chandeliers gave the place a positively palatial feel.

  Sprecht chased the last scallop around his plate, allowing it to baste fully in the superb sauce. He had surely made the right choice. The waiter appeared, prompt and efficient -- as all good waiters were -- and took away Sprecht's empty plate. The man was immediately replaced by a wine steward who had already been most attentive. Sprecht hesitated, but then signaled the fellow one last time, curling three fingers. His glass came full.

  The dinner flow was at its peak, and he watched the diners as they changed shift, early birds leaving and late comers finding seats. Waiters and busboys circulated at speed, maintaining the establishment's epicurean lifeblood. On top of the wine, it all made Sprecht's head spin.

  An elegantly dressed man roughly Sprecht's age was walking smoothly up the main aisle, an attractive woman on his arm. She was not young, not old. Her dress was expensive, and there was jewelry around her wrist and neck -- only a few pieces, but there again, quality. When the man whispered into her ear she laughed on cue. Hans Sprecht sighed.

  Earlier, a striking woman had passed his own table and glanced, a fleeting attachment of the eyes. As a young man, Sprecht would have taken it as a sign of interest. Now, the first thought that had come to his head was that he might have a blob of butter on his chin. It was curious, he mused, how age crept up on you. You didn't just wake up one morning old and spent. It was gradual thing -- tapping on your shoulder, closing in from behind. It came with greater frequency each day, a coarse accretion of aching hips and holding menus at arm's length and turning your head to favor the good ear. Any part, on exclusive merits, no more than a nuisance. But collectively it gave one a certain sense of. .. urgency.

  Sprecht tipped the wine to his lips. A life companion was the one thing he had never found -- not really -- and he wanted very much to rectify this, to live his remaining years well and in the company of a woman who exhibited quality and refinement. But Sprecht knew what the good life required.

  He had spent the greater part o
f the day working in his rented office, organizing and making preparations. Much of what he would need was already there, but at least two of the procedures were beyond the normal scope of his landlord's practice. For these, accepted professional standards would normally dictate the use of a fully sterile operating room. Sprecht, of course, had no time for such nonsense. And in any event, as viewed by the prism of his dubious circumstances, the specter of postoperative infection was far down on his list of worries. He already had more serious complications.

  The upcoming job made him nervous, never a good thing for a surgeon. The other jobs had been relatively simple. Risks well taken. At first Sprecht had been encouraged -- happy being too strong a word -- to have acquired this new patient. But in the weeks since accepting the contract, he'd had second thoughts. He had been watching the news, reading the papers. Caliph was attacking the West. Caliph was attacking the world. Everyone wanted his head. And Hans Sprecht -- perhaps only Hans Sprecht -- knew exactly where to find it.