Critical Mass

by David Hagberg

  “Good thoughts or bad,” Marta asked, breaking him out of his morose thoughts.

  He focused on her. She was studying his face, a bemused expression on hers.

  “I think I’ll miss Paris.”

  “You’re leaving for good, aren’t you,” she said. “And somehow I don’t think you’ll be resettling in Lausanne.”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” he lied, and he managed a smile. “Besides, I don’t think your boss would be very happy having me on his turf again.”

  “Something could be arranged.”

  “Maybe I’d get called up.”

  She shook her head in irritation. “You’re getting too old for war games, Kirk. And you must have noticed by now that the Russians have gone home. The Wall is down, the Warsaw Pact has been dismantled—they’re holding free elections in Poland, for God’s sake—all the bad guys are in jail.”

  “No fool like an old fool.”

  “The CIA can’t afford you,” she said. “Maybe it never could.” She searched his eyes earnestly. “Didn’t Portugal teach you anything?”

  “How did you hear about that?”

  “I’m a cop, remember? I see things, I read things. People confide in me.”

  “Is that why you came to Paris, Mati? To save my life?”

  “And your soul.”

  “It’s not for sale. Maybe it never was.” Every spy has his own worst nightmare. Arkady Kurshin had been his. But the Russian was dead. He’d seen the man’s body just before it was lowered into a pauper’s grave outside of Lisbon seven months ago.

  “I love you, Kirk, doesn’t that count for something?”

  It had been his fault, of course, allowing her to set up housekeeping in his apartment. But the excuse he’d made to himself was that he was tired, gun-shy, rubbed raw, vulnerable, even, and he needed her warmth and comfort just then.

  “It counts for a lot, Mati. But maybe it would be best if I didn’t come to Lausanne after all. You’re right, I have no intention of staying there, or anywhere else in Europe, for that matter.”

  “You’re going home?”

  “For awhile.”

  Marta was silent for a moment. “But I thought you might want to come to Switzerland at least to visit your daughter. She’s still in school outside Bern, isn’t she?”

  “She’ll be home for Thanksgiving. I’ll see her then.”

  “What are you telling me now, Kirk? That you’re going back to your ex-wife? I thought she was going to marry her lawyer, the one who was always suing you.”

  “Stay out of it.”

  “She dumped you once because of the business. Are your hands any cleaner now?” An hysterical edge was beginning to creep into Marta’s voice. She’d changed over the past few years. She’d lost some of her old control.

  “Let it rest, Mati,” he said gently.

  “They why did you let me move in with you? To make a fool of myself?”

  “Could I have stopped you?”

  She started to reply, but the words died on her lips. He was right, and she suddenly knew it. Just as she knew that indeed it was over between them. He could see how the light and passion faded from her eyes, and she slumped back.

  “What will you do with yourself in Washington?” she asked after a couple of minutes.

  “Maybe I’ll open another bookstore. Maybe teach at a small university somewhere.”

  “You’ll get bored.”

  “All the bad guys are gone, remember?”

  She looked at him again. “Somehow I think you’ll manage to find some. Or they’ll find you.”

  “I’ll leave that to cops like you.”

  The cabbie pulled up at Orly’s Departing Passengers entrance for Swissair, and McGarvey helped Marta out with her single carryon bag. The day was warm and humid, and out here the air smelled of car and bus exhaust, and burned jet fuel.

  “I’ll leave you here, Mati. I hate long goodbyes.”

  Marta looked at her watch. It was past eight. “My plane leaves in fifteen minutes. You can give me that much time, can’t you? After all, it’ll probably be years before I see you again.”

  McGarvey shrugged. “Go ahead. I’ll pay the driver and catch up with you.”

  “Don’t stand me up.”

  “I’ll be right in,” McGarvey said, and he watched as she crossed the sidewalk and went into the terminal. He turned, and as he was paying the cabbie he noticed a brown Peugeot parked across the way. The diplomatic plates were of the series used by the U.S. Embassy. He’d had lunch with Tom Lynch, the Paris chief of station, last week, and Lynch had been driving a car with the same series.

  “Merci, monsieur,” the driver said, but McGarvey just nodded and went inside where he caught up with Marta. What the hell was the CIA doing out here this morning, he wondered?

  3

  AT 8:20 A.M., THE MAN WHOSE NAMETAG READ LÉON GOT OUT of the bogus Air Service van and studied the distant airport terminal through a set of powerful binoculars. The end of this morning’s active runway was a little more than a half mile to the east. The wind, light but steady, was coming almost directly out of the west. Swissair flight 145 would be taking off directly toward him.

  In the past eighteen minutes, five jet airliners had taken off or landed. Orly was busy this morning, as usual at this time of year. None of them had been the flight he was interested in. He knew that for a certainty because he could see the Swissair jetliner parked at its boarding gate in the distance.

  Leon was not his real name. In fact he was Karl Boorsch, who had been employed by STASI, the East German secret service, until late in 1989 when the Communist Party in Eastern Europe had begun to fall apart. He had managed to get out of the Horst Wessel Barracks in East Berlin just minutes before a crowd of angry demonstrators had broken in and started tearing up the place.

  Most of the others had been rounded up in the next few months, but Boorsch went to ground, not lifting his head even to sniff the air until the first call had come from Monaco in the form of a brief advertisement for H. W. to come home, all was forgiven.

  He smiled, recalling that day. Since then there had been plenty of work for all of them. Especially over the last year when they’d started the project.

  Old alliances, he thought, were the best. Or in this case certainly the most interesting and rewarding. And when the project was completed, there would be other work. A lot of work.

  He tossed the binoculars in on the seat of the van, then went around to the back and opened the door. Climbing in, he had to crawl over the second French cop, getting a little blood on the side of one of his boots. It didn’t bother him. He’d seen enough blood in his ten years with STASI, since his eighteenth birthday right out of Gymnasium, to be totally inured to it.

  Pushing the first cop’s body out of the way, he pulled the long metal case back to the open door. The box was heavy, and it took an effort to drag it that far.

  He jumped down and looked back the way he had come, and then toward the active runway. Nothing moved along the dirt access road, but what looked like a French Air Inter jetliner had pulled away from the terminal and was moving slowly along a taxiway. That would be flight seventeen. It and one other were scheduled for takeoff before the Swissair flight left for Geneva.

  Around front he studied the taxiing plane through binoculars to make sure he’d identified it correctly. He had. Next he got the secure walkie-talkie from beside the seat and keyed the READY TO TALK button.

  “One,” he said. He pressed the TRANSMIT button and his digitally recorded word was encrypted, compressed into a one-microsecond burst and transmitted. The on-air duration of the transmission was so short that even automatic recording equipment picked up nothing, not even a brief burst of static.

  “Clear,” the man watching the highway turnoff to the access road responded.

  “Two”.

  “In place,” the second man replied. He was somewhere within sight of the terminal’s front entrance.

  “Three.”


  “Quiet,” the third man answered. He was on the N7 somewhere between here and Paris, monitoring the French Police frequencies for any unusual traffic. There was none.

  Replacing the walkie-talkie, Boorsch again studied the jetliner, which had reached the end of the runway and was slowly turning. Seconds later the big aircraft seemed to lurch forward as if the pilot had suddenly let up on the brakes, and it started its takeoff roll.

  Boorsch watched a couple of seconds longer, then put the binoculars down and stood back as the American built DC-10 thundered directly at him, its nose finally rotating, its main landing gear lifting off the pavement, and suddenly the huge bird was passing directly overhead, the noise so loud rational thought was all but impossible.

  He thought he caught a glimpse of a few passengers looking down at him from the tiny windows, but then the plane was climbing, seemingly straight up into the blue, cloudless sky, the sounds from its engines fading in the distance.

  Already Air France flight 248 was bumping down the taxiway, the last before the Swissair flight.

  Boorsch watched as it reached the end of the runway, hesitate for a moment, and then turn, accelerating even before it was completely lined up.

  This was an A-320 Airbus, the same type of aircraft as Swissair 145, and Boorsch watched it with critical interest as it lumbered heavily down the runway toward him. Its nose gear rose from the pavement, and the big airliner seemed to hang there like that for a long time before the mains lifted off, and then it was roaring overhead and climbing.

  Boorsch turned and watched as its landing gear retracted, and when it was only a tiny speck in the sky he glanced back toward the distant terminal—the Swissair jetliner was still at the boarding gate—before he went to the rear of the van.

  Unlatching the lid on the long metal box he flipped it open. For a moment or two he just stared at what the case contained, but then he reached inside and ran his fingertips lovingly over the nearly four-foot-long Stinger ground-to-air missile, and smiled.

  4

  IN THE ORLY AIRPORT’S SECURITY OPERATIONS ROOM THE direct line from the control tower buzzed.

  Police Sergeant Marie-Lure Germain answered it. “Security, Germain.”

  “Ah, Marie-Lure, there’s an Air Service truck parked by the inner marker just off the end of zero-eight. What are you showing in your log?”

  “Just a moment, Raymond,” she said. Raymond Flammarion was the day shift tower supervisor. He was a stickler for detail. No one liked him but everyone respected his abilities.

  Nothing appeared on the situation board which showed activity in and around the airport. She turned back to her console. “Nothing here.”

  “Well, I am looking at the van through binoculars this very moment, ma cherie. The rear door is open, but I don’t see anybody out there. And you know, considering Interpol’s warning …”

  “I’ll check it out.”

  “Please do, and get back to me. There’s not an aircraft in or out today that is not completely full, if you catch my meaning.”

  “Give me a minute, Raymond. Somebody probably forgot to file.” Marie-Lure hung up, and punched up the number for the gate guard hut out there on her operations phone. The connection was made immediately and the number began to ring.

  At twenty-three, Marie-Lure was one of the youngest members of Orly’s security staff which, augmented as it was just now from the Police Contingency Pool out of Paris, numbered nearly one hundred people. But she was conscientious and professional. She’d been trained at the Academie de Police in Paris, and had graduated in the top five percent of her class.

  After five rings without answer, she broke the connection and redialed. Again there was no answer. It was possible the phone was out of order, and it was possible that both officers had stepped away from the hut. But just now it was bothersome.

  She put down the phone and beckoned the shift supervisor, Lieutenant Jacques Bellus, who ponderously got up from behind his desk on the raised dias and came over. He’d accepted an early retirement two years ago as a Chief Inspector with the Paris Police to take this job. It was much safer.

  “Have the bad people finally arrived?” he asked.

  “Flammarion has spotted an Air Service maintenance truck off the end of zero-eight. He wants to know what we have on it.”

  Bellus glanced up at the situation board.

  “We show nothing,” Marie-Lure said. “And now there is no answer from security out there.”

  “Who is on duty this morning?”

  Marie-Lure brought up the information on her computer. “Capretz and Gallimard.”

  Bellus grunted. “Have you called Air Service?”

  “I didn’t want to alarm anyone yet.”

  “Well, call them, and I’ll try the guard hut again,” Bellus said and he picked up the operations phone.

  Marie-Lure telephoned the Air Service Dispatch Office across the field at the Air France Service Hangar. The dispatcher answered on the first ring.

  “Air Service.”

  “This is Orly Security. What are your people doing out at the inner marker off zero-eight this morning? We’re showing nothing on our board.”

  “There shouldn’t be anyone there, so far as I know,” the young man replied. “Moment.”

  Marie-Lure could hear the shuffle of papers, and a couple of seconds later the dispatcher was back.

  “The work order is here. Apparently some mec stuck it in the wrong order. Looks like an unscheduled adjustment on the marker frequency. Sorry, but I didn’t know a thing about this. Someone will get the axe.”

  “Send a runner over with a copy of the work order, would you?”

  “As soon as possible. We’re busy this morning.”

  “Merci.” Marie-Lure hung up.

  Bellus shook his head and hung up. “Still no answer. What’d Air Service have to say for itself?”

  “The work order was apparently misplaced. They’ll send it over as soon as they can.”

  “Have we got anybody nearby this morning?”

  “I think Dubout might still be over by one-eight. He could get over the back way, but he’d have to cross the runway.”

  “Get him on the radio, and then get authorization from the tower.”

  “Do you want to delay air traffic for a few minutes?” she asked.

  Bellus pondered the suggestion for a moment, but then shook his head. “As long as it’s a legitimate Air Service order, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “Yes, sir,” Marie-Lure said, and she got on the airport security frequency to raise Sergeant Dubout.

  The passengers on Swissair 145 would be in the final boarding process by now. Boorsch stood out of sight from anyone who might be looking this way from the tower or the terminal, and studied the plane with the binoculars. The boarding tunnel was still in place, but the baggage compartment hatches in the belly of the Airbus had been closed, and the baggage handlers had withdrawn.

  The air was suddenly very still and thick with the odors of the airport and of Paris. French smells, somehow, that Boorsch found offensive. Frogs were filthy people, even worse than the sub-human Polaks or Kikes, although France itself was a pleasant enough country.

  Boorsch lowered the glasses, then raised them again to study the tower, and then the maintenance hangars across from the main terminal. Normal activity, so far as he could see. Nothing out of the ordinary. If any alarms had been sounded, they were not outwardly visible.

  Sooner or later, of course, airport security would realize that something might be wrong with their access road guards out here, though the presence of this van would cause no real questions. He’d personally taken care of that earlier this morning during the shift change at the Air Service Dispatch office.

  Someone would come out to investigate. That was why his timing had to be so tight. Only minutes now and he would be finished here and he could make his escape.

  Laying the glasses aside, Boorsch carefully removed the Stinger missile a
nd its handheld launcher from its metal container. The unit, which was about four feet long and a little less than four inches in diameter, weighed thirty-one pounds, including the reusable launcher and the rocket with its solid-fuel propellant, high-explosive warhead and infrared heat-seeking guidance system.

  In theory the missile was simple to use. Point it at a heat-emitting target. Uncage the firing circuits, and when the missile’s sensing circuitry locked on to a viable target a steady tone would sound in the operator’s ear. At that moment the user pushed the fire button, and the Stinger was away, accelerating almost immediately to a speed of one thousand feet a second, with an effective range of four thousand yards.

  In practice however, first-time users almost always missed even the easiest of targets. Like using a shotgun to shoot clay pigeons, the operator needed to lead the target … especially an accelerating target such as a jetliner taking off.

  Of the six ex-STASI comrades who’d trained with the Stinger in Libya, Boorsch had been the best, so when this emergency had developed, he’d been the natural choice for the assignment.

  “Don’t let us down, Karl,” he’d been instructed. “This is important to the project. Very important.”

  The walkie-talkie in the front of the van came to life. “Three,” the man patrolling the N7 transmitted.

  Carefully laying the missile down, Boorsch hurried around to the front, and snatched up the walkie-talkie. “Three, go,” he radioed.

  “Trouble on its way across the field from one-eight.”

  “ETA?”

  “Under five minutes.”

  “Understand,” Boorsch responded. “One?”

  “Clear.”

  “Two?”

  “Clear.”

  Boorsch laid the walkie-talkie down and went to the rear of the van where he grabbed the binoculars and scanned the field in the vicinity of the end of north-south runway. A jeep was just crossing the runway itself.