The First Billion

by Christopher Reich

  The plane shuddered, as if hit from the side.

  “Jett!”

  “Hold on, sweetheart, just a little problem.”

  “What is it?”

  Gavallan’s heart was racing; a lump lodged high in his throat. The stick was bucking in his hand. He jerked it to the right, but there was no response. A high-pitched buzz saw whined in his earphones. He was losing control of the aircraft.

  This isn’t my plane, he protested silently. I haven’t trained in a Mig. A second check over his shoulder showed flames licking the wing. Immediately he hit the auxiliary extinguisher, and a gust of white puffed from beneath the wing. The flames flickered, then disappeared.

  And then the world turned upside down on him. The Mig rolled over and went nose down, spinning in a slow roll.

  “Jett, help us. Stop this. Oh, God . . . no, no!”

  Gavallan looked at Cate, her eyes wide with terror, her helmet pinned to the canopy.

  A voice inside him whispered, You were born to fly. So, relax and fly.

  “Just a little glitch,” he said, in the voice Grafton Byrnes had taught him that hot and sunny day in Alamagordo. “Not to worry.”

  Still inverted, he pulled back on the stick, depressed the ailerons to stop the spin, and pulled the nose through. Gently he goosed the port engine. The single turbine hummed confidently. It was working. The plane was responding to his touch. He was guiding the aircraft instead of allowing it to guide him. A well of confidence grew in his chest, warm and reassuring. It was the pilot’s bravado coming back. The certainty he could do anything, if by sheer force of will alone.

  And there, as he plummeted toward the earth at four hundred miles an hour, a dam burst in his mind. A clarity of thought, of memory, of action, came to him that he had not possessed for years.

  Priority One. Ring One.

  The words struck him like a lightning bolt.

  The attack on Abu Ghurayb. Saddam’s Presidential palace.

  He saw himself in the cockpit of the F-117—no, damn it, he is there . . . the stick between his legs, the joystick to his left, the infrared display screens. He is there. Inside Darling Lil, ten thousand feet above the Iraqi desert.

  He is at bombing altitude. A finger toggles a switch. Bomb armed. Eyes forward on the IR display. Target spotted. A stable of buildings silhouetted against the gray desert floor. His finger slews the crosshairs back and forth across the palace until he decides he has found the wing. Then, as if a mechanism itself, the thumb locks down. A yellow light flashes. Laser acquisition engaged. Red lights fire on the heads-up display. Target in range. Gavallan hits the pickle and the weapons bay door opens. Darling Lil shudders. He depresses the pickle again and the bomb falls from the aircraft. He feels the aircraft jerk upward, as if freed from its moorings.

  As the bomb falls, his eyes lock onto the IR screen and the delicate crosshairs positioned over the east wing of the Presidential palace. All external stimuli disappear. He is in a tunnel. At the far end rests his target. Thumb locked. The crosshairs do not move.

  “Thunder three-six. Red Leader One. Copy?”

  The bomb appears on the screen. A lethal black dot skimming across the ground at an impossible speed. A red light blinks. A fuel warning. Tanks low. Gavallan pays it no mind. It will wait.

  “Roger Red One. Come in.”

  “Friendlies in the area. We have friendlies on-site. Abort run. I repeat: Abort run.”

  At the sound of the word “friendlies,” Gavallan’s finger is already moving, skewing the crosshairs away from the palace, guiding the “smart bomb” away from the American troops.

  On the console, a second light blinks—yellow, urgent. It is the Allied Forces Locator warning him he has engaged friendly forces.

  “Abort run! Confirm, Thunder three-six!”

  But the pilot’s instincts have beaten the verbal command by a second, maybe two. An eternity in the electronic world that can be translated into two hundred fifty feet of fall time.

  Gavallan keeps his thumb pressed to the right, ordering the bomb to follow his instructions. But the bomb does not listen. She has been on her downward trajectory too long and it is as if she is too stubborn to alter her course.

  The desert flower blossoms. The IR screen blanches. A blizzard of white noise. The palace reappears. The east wing is no more, a bonfire of angles fallen in on itself. The heat signatures have disappeared, too, replaced by the blotchy, pulsing quasars that indicate fire.

  Inside the Mig, Gavallan lets the images fade away. He has seen enough. In an instant, the past has vanished. But it is a different past than the one he has known. A different reality than the one he has lived with these eleven years. No longer will he question his response, second-guess his reflexes. He knows now that he did everything he could, more even, to prevent the bomb from injuring American Marines. Governed by his instincts, he ordered the bomb off its course even before he himself had fully received the command. If his actions were not sufficient to save the lives of ten men, to prevent two others from being robbed of their ability to live full and decent lives, they were still all he could demand of himself. He was an accessory, yes, and for that he would always feel horror and revulsion. But he would no longer feel the guilt, the shame, the dishonor, no longer believe that it was his own poor reactions that had caused those tragic events.

  He would never be free of that night, but he was no longer its prisoner.

  Slowly, the nose righted itself and the wings found the horizon. The plane shuddered again and was still. They were gliding on a lake of ice.

  “Just a little engine problem,” he said to Cate. “All taken care of. Sit tight. I’ll have us down in a jif.”

  “Hurry, Jett . . . thank you . . . but hurry.”

  “Roger that.”

  Bringing the airspeed down to 250 miles an hour, Gavallan let go a long breath. The Mig flew straight on its course, a black eagle skipping across the European sky.

  Ramstein Tower, this is United States Air Force Captain John Gavallan, retired. Serial number 276-99-7200. I’ve got a Russian Mig under my butt that I’d like to put down at your place. You should have word about our arrival. Copy?”

  “Copy, Captain Gavallan. Sorry, but we have no word of your status. You are negative for a landing. Please exit secure airspace immediately.” There was a pause, and the communications link crackled with white noise. A new voice sounded in Gavallan’s earphones. “Captain Gavallan, this is Major Tompkins. You are roger for a landing. Please proceed to vector two seven four, descend to fifteen thousand feet. Welcome back to the Air Force.”

  “Roger that,” said Gavallan. Same old. Same old.

  At 10:07 local time, Gavallan brought the Mig to a perfect three-point touchdown on runway two-niner at Ramstein Air Force Base, thirty miles south of Frankfurt, Germany. A jeep waited at the end of the runway, blue siren flashing, to guide them to their parking spot. Gavallan followed at a distance, keeping his ground speed to a minimum. Finding his spot, he killed the engines. Airmen dashed beneath the Mig and threw blocks under his tires. Gavallan waited until they reappeared, flashing him the “thumbs-up,” before opening his canopy and unbuckling his seat harness.

  The twin, rounded hooks of a flight ladder coupled onto the fuselage and, reluctantly, he climbed out of the cockpit. He stopped at the bottom rung, not wanting his foot to touch the ground. The crackle of avionics still echoed in his ear. The “by the seat of your pants” rush that came with flying a jet lingered inside him like a melancholy phantom. For a few seconds he listened to the cry of the turbine engines winding down and sniffed at the burnt rubber and let the wind brush his cheek. Technically, he owned the plane, but he had no plans to fly it again. Jets belonged to his past, and he knew well enough not to look back.

  Jumping to the ground, he jogged around the nose of the aircraft to help Cate out of the cockpit. “Never again,” she said. “And you did that for a living?”

  “It’s not so bad once you get the hang of it.”


  A major in neatly pressed blues approached. “Captain Gavallan? I’m Calvin Tompkins, executive officer in charge of field security. Welcome to Ramstein.”

  Gavallan accepted the outstretched hand. “This is Miss Magnus.”

  “Evening, ma’am,” Tompkins said, offering a crisp nod of the head. “I understand you two are headed stateside.”

  “We need some transportation. The Mig’s got a lousy range—fifteen hundred miles max.”

  “If you’ll follow me, I’m sure we can accommodate you. We’ve got a Lear fueling up as we speak, courtesy of Mr. Howell Dodson of the FBI. I’m afraid it doesn’t have such wonderful range either. You’ll have to stop in Shannon, Ireland, to refuel, but it’ll have you to New York by morning. We had you scheduled for ten forty-five, but I’m afraid we’ve hit a bit of a glitch.”

  “A glitch?” asked Cate, her voice taut.

  “Just a solenoid that needs replacing,” said Tompkins. “Should have it changed out any sec.”

  Gavallan knew his luck had been too good. “So what’s the new departure time?”

  “Right now, we’re looking at a midnight ETD.”

  “Midnight?”

  “And you shouldn’t have to dally in Shannon long. An hour tops.”

  Gavallan scratched the back of his neck, rejiggering his math. Takeoff at midnight. Hit Shannon by two-thirty. Takeoff from Ireland at three-thirty. Setting the whole operation to New York time, they’d land at JFK around six o’clock. Enough time should everything go according to schedule.

  “Just one question, Captain Gavallan.”

  “Yeah?”

  Tompkins pointed to the Mig behind them. “What exactly do you want us to do with your plane?”

  63

  It was past midnight, and in room 818 of the Peninsula Hotel in New York City, Konstantin Kirov was sleeping. The telephone rang. Instantly, he was awake, knocking back the sheets, fumbling for the handset. “Da? Kirov.”

  “Wake up, younger brother. Trouble.”

  “What do you mean? I thought you were in Siberia.”

  “I am. But I had a few of my men keep tabs on the dacha. Gavallan has escaped. He took Katya and the other American with him.”

  “Impossible,” said Kirov, sitting up, grabbing at his wristwatch, squinting to read the time. “I assigned my best man to look after them. There were four guards with him.”

  “All dead,” said Leonid. “We found five bodies including Tatiana and, I imagine, your ‘best man.’ From what we pieced together, Gavallan had a dagger of sorts and used it to kill one of the guards and take his weapon. From there it’s anybody’s guess.”

  Kirov tried to imagine Boris and Tatiana and the others dead. A quick rage ignited inside him. He knew why Leonid was watching the dacha. He had posted his men there to make sure Kirov did not spare his daughter’s life. “If you were watching, why the hell did you let them drive away?”

  “An oversight on our part.” There was a pause. “We were able to track Gavallan to Moscow,” said Leonid finally. “I’m sorry to say we were unable to keep in contact with him afterward.”

  “You lost him?”

  “Regrettably,” said Leonid. “Have you heard anything from your contact at Black Jet?”

  “Not a word. I finished dinner with them an hour ago. The deal is going ahead as planned. As far as they are concerned Gavallan is missing in action. Some think he may be involved with the murders in Miami. Others don’t dare to think anything. The deal is simply too important for their company.”

  “Most probably he is still in Moscow with your daughter. Nonetheless, you may see fit to take precautions.”

  “Precautions?”

  “To eliminate any threats should they become localized. After all, Gavallan holds no concrete proof to stop the deal, does he?”

  “Concrete? No. But from what I understand he doesn’t need any. A call to the right parties will suffice.”

  “Perhaps we can assume Mr. Gavallan has decided to join with our side in this matter. From everything you’ve told me, he needs the deal as much as you.”

  “And if does not?”

  “There is no going back, Konstantin Romanovich,” came Leonid’s icy response. “Neither for you nor I. We will not embarrass the president. We will not disappoint the state. We will have our money.”

  Leonid hung up.

  Rubbing a hand over his face, Kirov wondered what else could go wrong. He knew he should be worried, but his sheer lack of options left him emboldened instead. He told himself that if Gavallan had wanted to cancel the deal he would have done it already. There had to be a reason he hadn’t contacted his partners, and that reason was that he wanted the deal to go through. He wanted his seventy million in fees. He wanted to keep control of his company. Kirov had always pegged him as a greedy one. Smooth, yes, silky smooth, but greedy, too. He was, after all, a banker.

  There was no going back.

  Repeating Leonid’s words, Kirov felt a steely resolve firm up inside him. Rising, he crossed to the desk and retrieved his electronic address book from his briefcase. He found the name he needed quickly. He dialed a Manhattan number and a Russian voice answered.

  “This is Kirov,” he said. “Get your boss on the line. Now.”

  Gavallan might be in Russia, but Kirov was not going to take any chances. If he could get away from Boris, he might be capable of any number of things. The American was more resourceful than he had anticipated.

  A familiar Russian voice came on the telephone and Kirov explained what he wanted. After haggling a few minutes they settled on a price. Satisfied, Kirov hung up, then punched the console for a new line. The hotel operator answered immediately.

  “Room 544,” he said.

  The phone rang three times, four. Finally, a groggy voice answered. “Yes?”

  “Some news concerning Mr. Gavallan. It seems he is no longer with my people in Moscow. Are you sure you haven’t had any word from him?”

  “Lord no. Not a whisper. You’re certain he’s gone?”

  “Still in Russia, no doubt, but out of my control.”

  “Damn it, Konstantin . . .”

  “Shut up. I’m calling to tell you to be prepared, that’s all. The offering will go through. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Hanging up the phone, Kirov turned off the lights and went back to bed. It wouldn’t do to look haggard on the most important day of his life. Sleep came easier than expected. It helped immensely to know that when he visited the New York Stock Exchange in the morning, he would have plenty of friends with him.

  Gavallan paced the tarmac at Shannon International Airport, tired, frustrated, and impatient. Salt and brine from the ocean laced the air, giving the predawn sky a welcome bite. He told himself he should be asleep in the plane like Cate, gathering his energy for the coming day. Lord knew, he was tired. But he was too keyed up to sleep.

  Delays. Delays.

  They had landed at two o’clock local time to top off their tanks before crossing the Atlantic. Three hours later, they were still there. A bulb in the starboard fuel gauge had burned out and the pilot had refused to take off until it had been replaced. Gavallan had tried to bribe him, but such was military operating procedure that the pilot would not consider the proposal for all the money in the world. The future tottered on the availability of a lousy ten-cent part. Gavallan wanted to scream.

  A mist was building over the grass that bordered the runways. Soon it would turn to fog and the airport would be socked in. He looked up briefly, catching the blinking lights of another plane flying high overhead. He couldn’t know it, but inside the plane a short, wiry man slept, a blanket pulled to his neck. He was traveling to America for the first time. In fact, it was the first time he had ever traveled anywhere outside of his country. A matter of some importance had forced a hasty and unplanned departure. A business arrangement that needed squaring.

  In his sleep, he was dreaming of the old country. Of the rough mountains
where he had grown up. Of the rocky soil and rushing streams. Of the impoverished villages and the indomitable people who inhabited them. Some called it the “bandit country,” and in truth it was a land that robbed its people of much. But out of nature’s cruelty, they had learned to rely on themselves. To count on one another. In these mountains, a man’s word was his most valuable asset. He gave it sparingly and with his fullest commitment. While nature was capricious, man had an obligation to be steadfast. To break one’s word, then, was to break with his fellow man. Nature could not be punished for its whimsy, but a man could. And the punishment would be awful.

  The man dreamt of such punishment.

  In his sleep, he smiled.

  Gavallan lowered his eyes from the sky. The twin beams of an airport jeep cut through the light fog, advancing rapidly on him. It was the pilot, and as he passed he held up a small cardboard box for his passenger’s inspection. “Five minutes and we’re out of here.”

  Finally, thought Gavallan, jogging toward the plane.

  64

  Grafton Byrnes passed through the revolving doors of the Banque Privé de Genève et Lausanne on the Quai Guisan in Geneva at precisely 10 A.M. Tuesday morning. Announcing himself to the receptionist, he was shown to a conference room on the fourth floor. The picture window offered a splendid view of Lake Geneva. Byrnes ticked off the sights, running left to right. The Wilson House, where the League of Nations had first met in 1919; the enormous gray stone monuments that housed the European seat of the United Nations; and farther on, past copses of oak trees and manicured lawns, the building where GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, was overseen.

  There was a soft knock on the door, and a hunched, portly figure clutching a pad of paper in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other hurried into the room. “Hello, Mr. Byrnes. I am Pierre Pillonel. Welcome to our bank.” He stared at his visitor through thick, owlish spectacles. His hair was mussed and his cheeks flushed and red-veined. If his demeanor was timid, his voice was anything but—a rolling, confident baritone that a politician would kill for. Setting down the paper and coffee, he extended a hand, pulling it back at the last moment. “Excuse me, I see you are injured.”