The flight attendant returned the papers to Faith. “The passengers are all seated. Take any seat you can find.”
Faith walked past her toward the open door of the cockpit.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?”
Faith ignored her and went onto the flight deck. “Permission to come aboard, Captain Ian?” She gave the captain a mock salute.
“Granted, my dear! Granted. I was starting to fear I’d have to leave without you. Take the jump seat.” Ian’s London accent was as strong as ever. Faith could never figure out how or why he became an American citizen, particularly since she didn’t think he’d ever lived in the States. He gestured toward the man in the right-hand seat. “Art Kivisto’s my first officer today. Frosty McGuire’s my flight engineer, best in the business. Gentlemen, this is—”
“Candace Adler. Pleased to meet you.” Faith bowed her head quickly.
Frosty shook Faith’s hand and spoke with a heavy southern drawl. “Heard a lot about you over the years. Listening to this guy, you’re almost a legend. Here, let me stow these for you.” Frosty wedged her plastic cooler and carry-on bag between his feet and a bulkhead.
Faith squeezed into the cramped jump seat behind the captain. She fumbled with the heavy shoulder straps of the seatbelt. The belts were wider and the metal clasp larger than those used for passengers. She fastened herself in and then released it to reassure herself she could get out. Time and painkillers had taken the edge off most of the ache, unless she moved in just the right way to send stabbing pain through her side. She wasn’t going to take any chances with the shoulder harness pressing too firmly on the wrong spot, so she loosened the belts. “Thanks for letting me join you up here. I always love the bird’s-eye view.”
“Think nothing of it, Candace.” Ian’s bad breath wafted over to her when he leaned toward her.
“With all due respect, sir, it’s a violation of FAA regs to have non-airline personnel traveling on the flight deck during operations,” the first officer said.
“Is that so? The tradition’s always been captain’s discretion with another pilot. She’s a Pan Am alum. Now flies interisland in Hawaii.”
Please, Ian, don’t do this to me again. “Somebody has to man the hardship outposts of the world,” Faith said.
“Art just rated on the 727. He’s been flying the little buggers for years for Pan Am Express.”
“So, you fly in Paradise? You weren’t the lady pilot who brought in that convertible Boeing, were you?” Kivisto said.
“As a matter of fact, she’s the very one.” Ian smiled, revealing his yellowed front teeth.
“You know I don’t like to talk about it.” Faith forced a smile when she really wanted to snarl at Ian.
“That’s not what Ian’s told me,” Frosty said with a conspiratorial grin.
The flight attendant stuck her head into the cockpit, much to Faith’s relief. “The final count is seventy-two and eighteen.” She glared at Faith. “And one non-revenue.”
“Almost a full house,” Ian said. “Let’s finish the checklist so we can get this bird in the air.”
“Bugs?” Frosty drew out the word, emphasizing his southern drawl.
“One-four-one and one-fifty-three,” the first officer said. He moved markers on one of the many indicators.
Ian repeated the settings.
“Pitot heat?” Frosty said.
“Pitot heat on.” First Officer Kivisto flipped two switches on the far right of the overhead panel.
They finished the checklist routine and within minutes the plane pushed back and taxied toward the runway. Ahead of them, an Air France Airbus lifted effortlessly into the sky. Faith noted that the first officer was flying the plane today. She would’ve preferred Ian and his years of experience. She was fascinated by aviation, but an uneasy passenger. She’d studied the numbers and she knew the odds were that she could fly every day for nineteen thousand years before being in a crash. Statistics aside, ever since she was a child, she’d known in her gut that it wasn’t going to take her that long to meet fate.
“Roger that. Clipper six-three-niner cleared for rolling takeoff eight-Romeo.” Ian repeated into his headset and then called out the increasing speed.
The first officer pulled back on the control column. Immediately after becoming airborne, the craft banked right and crossed the Wall into the East. Faith smiled at the West’s Cold War doggedness as the Pan Am Clipper asserted American rights to the skies over all of Berlin. An Allied flagship once again gave the Russians the bird as the jet banked high above the silver television tower at Alex. The plane climbed into the air corridor to cross the GDR to West Germany. Faith struggled to make out the last signs of the division, but the two Berlins blended into one.
“Berlin Centre, Clipper six-three-niner is out of nine thousand for ten,” Ian said into his headset.
The plane soon leveled out to cruising altitude for the corridor, and the first officer turned back toward Faith. “So tell me about that famous flight, Candace. It’s always fascinated me how someone could land that plane, the shape it was in.”
“That’s a beautiful dog.” Faith pointed to the picture of a chocolate Labrador stuck to the right of Frosty’s control panel.
“That’s old Clipper. He’s my best bud. I’d even take him over old Ian here—and that says a lot.”
“That was a 737-300 that lost its top, wasn’t it?” The first officer persisted.
You’ll pay for this, Ian. Faith racked her brains for everything she ever knew about the ill-fated flight. The photo of the open air cabin had etched itself into her mind and flashed into her consciousness every time she flew on an older plane, but the picture was about all she could remember. It happened last year, when she was in Burkina Faso, and the local media hadn’t given it much coverage. She looked at the flight engineer, her eyes pleading for help. He scribbled on his notepad and tipped it toward her. She strained to read the number. “No, it was a . . . 737-200.” She mouthed a thank-you to Frosty.
“What was your altitude when the decompression occurred?”
“Higher than I would’ve liked. Whoa!” The plane dropped several feet. Her stomach flipped, but she was grateful for the interruption. She stared at three vertical rows of five instruments each. The needles in each row moved in tandem with one another, but she had no idea what they meant. Everyone seemed calm, so she guessed they weren’t going down—yet.
“Sorry. Didn’t see the bump,” Ian said. “I’m afraid it’s going to be a bit choppy today through the corridor. You might want to keep yourself strapped in until we get to Western airspace and can climb out of it. Ten thousand feet doesn’t make sense now with pressurized cabins. The war’s been over for more than forty years. One would think they would have renegotiated a higher ceiling by now.”
“Come on, room to maneuver when we go over the Hartz mountains would take the sport out of it,” Frosty said.
Ian turned back toward Faith. “So, what’s your mother up to nowadays?” Ian exchanged his services as a Bible courier to Moscow for priceless icons Faith’s mother salvaged from rotting Soviet churches. Because Ian’s motivation was less than spiritual, Mama Whitney only used him as a last resort; she even suspected he might be Anglican.
“I have no idea what continent she’s weighing down at the moment. I haven’t had contact with her in years. You know better than to ask.”
“But I always do. She is your mother. She’s in Moscow arranging adoptions of orphans by Americans. I took in some CARE packages for the little ones a few days ago. Adorable little things—you want to take them all home with you.”
“I wonder what she’s really up to. She hates kids—believe me.”
“I don’t understand whatever happened between you.”
“Let’s just say it was one too many exorcisms for me—for her, one too few.”
“If we could only find a happy medium. If you do decide to look her up, it was Nadezhda orphanage somewhere near the Arb
at. She’s been running that place for years. You know, there was one curious thing, now that you mention it. I’d always heard about how few caretakers the children have in Russian orphanages, but in your mother’s place there were almost more adults than children. And as I think about it, they all seemed Levantine to me—definitely not Russian.”
“As in one of the Turkic tribes in Central Asia, or do you mean they were Semite?”
“One of those.”
“She’s definitely up to something. So what did she really have you bring in?”
Ian turned to the first officer. “Art, Candace and I are old flames. Would you mind giving us a few minutes alone? Frosty here has heard everything. Don’t mind if he stays.”
“Oh, oh, so sorry. I didn’t realize it. Of course, of course. I’ll go back and talk to the stewardesses. I was hoping to get a chance to go over emergency evacuation procedures with the redhead.” He unfolded himself from the chair and left the cockpit.
“Old flames? Ian, you old dog. Dream on.”
“It brought us some privacy, didn’t it, Candace? And I was friendly with a Candace once, for that matter.”
Frosty swiveled his seat around and extended his hand. “And you must be Faith—the resourceful lady I’ve heard so much about.” He shook her hand again, this time with more vigor.
Ian reported their position and altitude to air traffic control, then returned to the conversation. “I knew you were incognito when I reviewed the manifest and couldn’t find you. Don’t worry about Frosty here. We go all the way back to my Royal Navy days, when I was on a training exchange at White Sands. Now, what is it we’re moving today that warrants an anonymous trip?”
Faith placed her finger in front of her lips and whispered, “Cockpit voice recorder.”
“A cockpit voice recorder? You want to take a CVR to Moscow?”
“No. We’re being recorded.”
“Jeez,” Frosty said as he put a headset over one ear. “Ian wasn’t joking that you’ve spent too long behind the Iron Curtain—the rust is rubbing off.”
“Hey, paranoia’s a lifestyle for me,” Faith said.
“And for me,” Ian said. “Don’t mind the CVR. There are privacy workarounds. Not particularly legal, but effective nonetheless.”
Frosty grinned. “I call it the Bill North maneuver, after the guy who taught it to me back when I was flying out of Miami. The 727s have an erase button that only works when you’re on the ground with the parking brake set. But pull the parking brake latch lever in the air and the plane thinks it’s at the terminal. Push the erase button at the same time, and presto. Butt is covered.” Frosty chuckled.
“So what’s so hush-hush? Stasi making an arse of itself again?” Ian said.
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“You know, I once had a mechanical in Bucharest and had to overnight. Everywhere I went it was the same thing. Two men in the most horrendous leisure suits were attached to us like limpets.” Ian glanced at the instrument panels.
Faith ignored Ian and turned to Frosty. “All the spooks monitor who’s booked in and out of Berlin. The master here has taught me they don’t pay much attention to the comings and goings of airline personnel, so I used interline travel papers or whatever they’re called to get out of Dodge with as little of a trail as possible.”
“Why all of the cloak-and-dagger, my dear?” Ian said.
“I need you to do a rush delivery for me. It’s critical.”
“I gathered that when you rang me up yesterday. You were so out of breath, you sounded like you’d run a marathon. We both know that would never happen, now don’t we? So where are you headed?”
“I’ve been dreaming of a few days of R and R in Amsterdam.” She closed her eyes briefly and found herself admiring Van Gogh’s sunflowers, dodging bicycles, and gorging herself on nasi goreng.
“You had to slip out of Berlin posing as airline staff and you expect me to believe you did it to go on holiday?” Ian said.
“It’s never easy to get away, is it?”
Frosty spoke into his headset, “Roger that on the bogie, Berlin. Range twelve miles.” He turned toward the captain. “We got traffic, Ian. Five o’clock westbound. Coming up on our tail.”
“Take the right-hand seat and have a peek. I’m disengaging the autopilot. We won’t do anything unexpected. We’ll let him avoid us. He only wants to give us a cheap thrill—I hope.” Ian flipped a switch on the control yoke with his thumb.
Frosty slid into the co-pilot’s seat and leaned back to search the sky over the right wing while Ian searched port. “Got him. A MIG’s hanging off the starboard wing. Right at three o’clock.”
“Jesus.” Faith grabbed the seat and braced herself for a collision. No one spoke. A minute passed.
“Here he comes.”
A plump snubnosed fighter cut in front of them, rolled and flew straight up.
“Now let’s all wave at the commie.” Frosty gestured toward the window.
“I’d estimate the Faggot was within five hundred feet.”
“That was an awful close five hundred feet. I’d swear that guy needed a shave.” Frosty chuckled to himself.
“A faggot?” Faith eased herself back against the hard seat. Her palms were sweaty.
“MIG-15,” Ian said. “Faggot’s the NATO designation, I swear. I saw these all the time in Korea when I was flying the blockade. Dreadful buggers. We were in Sea Furies, piston-engine craft, and those jets would scream out of nowhere. Haven’t seen one of those in years. They must have taken it out of the mothballs for me.”
“This isn’t going to be like the Korean Air Lines over Sakhalin?”
“Nah, they’re just yanking our chain,” Frosty said.
“They’re not supposed to be in the corridors, but they do this all the time,” Ian said.
Suddenly the MIG reappeared ahead of them and flew a parallel course, slightly to their left. Faith guessed it was less than a thousand feet away. She strained to see over Ian’s shoulder. “Is it Russian?”
“Actually, I think that’s a Jerry. Can you tell, Frosty?”
“You know them commies all look the same to me.” He winked at Faith.
“The fifties, sixties, that’s when it was fun to fly this stretch of air. You never knew what was going to happen next. I was flying for BEA in those days—BAC one-elevens. A splendid plane. One time a MIG flew in front of me and all at once the sky filled with chaff and—”
“Isn’t this kind of dangerous?” Faith gasped as the MIG soared across their path to their starboard.
“Yes, extremely hazardous. As I was saying, I suppose the Russians were trying to block whatever dirty work they thought we were up to. They released the chaff and the entire sky filled with this glitter sparkling in the sun. Quite lovely, actually. Anyway, I radioed in to control, ‘Berlin Centre, Bealine six-eight-five—I can see the Iron Curtain!’ “
“Aren’t you worried about a midair?”
“Keenly. But without proper missiles, there isn’t much I can do, is there? Unless you prefer me hiding in the clouds. I’ll do that if he fires on us and misses, but until then I prefer we all stay in plain sight, where there’s less chance of bumping into one another. And the clouds only work if he hasn’t been retrofitted with modern equipment. Did I ever tell you the story about the Air France pilot flying the corridor in the fifties who really did have to take to the clouds after a MIG fired on him? Landed at Tempelhof with eighty-nine bullet holes in the fuselage.”
Faith was sure the gap between the two planes was narrowing.
In the main cabin, Vasily Resnick flipped through Clipper magazine, pausing to study an ad for Pan Am’s WorldPass frequent flyer program. He was pleased with himself that he figured out what FedEx was up to just in time to hop the same flight out of Berlin. He had contacted Titov from the gate. The general warned him that the Bonn residency knew about the shipment and was trying to find FedEx. Thus far he’d seen no signs of meddling from his former
Bonn colleagues. The only unusual development was that FedEx had something going on with the cockpit crew. She hadn’t left there since she boarded. At least he knew whatever she was carrying was either checked in the belly of the plane or safely with her up front.
He set down the magazine and took the blue plastic sandwich box from the stewardess. From the way her gaze fondled him, he knew she wanted him. Too bad he was on assignment. He pulled the rubber band off the boxed meal. Salad, sandwich, water and cake. The Americans sure knew how to treat passengers well. Aeroflot could learn from them. He squirted mayonnaise and mustard on the ham and bit into the sandwich.
Then he saw him.
The Bonn residency did have someone on board. Resnick immediately turned his head away and reached for an imaginary object on the floor. He stayed bent over until the agent passed. Resnick glanced back to check for any sign the man had noticed him. Kivisto stood in the back, oblivious to anything other than the redheaded stewardess he was hitting on.
Art Kivisto. Artur Kivisto—son of Estonian immigrants. His grandmother was an easily intimidated Soviet citizen still residing in Tallinn. Back before Titov had rescued Resnick from the incompetence of the drunk Voronin at the Bonn residency, Resnick had recruited Kivisto as an informant. An informant for the Bonn residency’s network. He had come from the cockpit, where FedEx was. Kivisto was the type of snitch who would pass along any information he thought he had a remote chance of getting paid for. He had undoubtedly seen enough out of the ordinary to file a report with the residency as soon as he got to Frankfurt.
The Bonn residency couldn’t be allowed to learn that FedEx was on this flight. The greedy fool Kivisto was probably already adding up his new bank balance. Resnick fingered the fountain pen in his shirt pocket, pleased that his escort duty was turning into an interesting trip.
Sunlight streamed through the many flight deck windows and Faith wished she’d brought along sunglasses. The sun gleamed off the shiny MIG hanging in the air just ahead of them. She held up her hand to block the glare and squinted. The Faggot rocked its wings from side to side.
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