High Flight

by David Hagberg

  “That’s thin.”

  “By itself, yes. But our position on the stock market has become shaky, and there’ve been a couple of probing runs against us. If another of our airplanes went down now, we’d take a beating on the market.”

  “The Japanese would try to buy you out. But you could buy back your own stock. It’s been done before. And from what I read Guerin has had a couple of very good years. You’ve taken customers away from Boeing and Airbus.”

  “We don’t have the money. In fact we’re so heavily leveraged that we’re having trouble meeting our payroll. Eighty thousand paychecks every two weeks eats up a sizable amount of cash.”

  “Where did it go?”

  “Research.”

  “Which is what the Japanese are really after.”

  Kennedy nodded.

  “Research into what, Mr. Kennedy? What is Guerin working on that’s nearly bankrupting the company and that, according to you, a group of Japanese corporations wants so badly it’s willing to commit mass murder for it?”

  “A new airplane.”

  McGarvey stared at the ex-astronaut.

  “We’ve designated it the P/C2622. P for passenger, C for cargo, and the 2 for the twenty-first century. It’s what’s called ‘next generation equipment.’”

  “What’s different about this one?”

  “This one is hypersonic. Los Angeles to Tokyo in ninety minutes. But it’s nothing like the Concorde, which has been a dismal failure for a lot of reasons. Our airplane creates almost no air pollution because at altitude the engines burn hydrogen, the byproduct of which is water vapor. And almost no sonic boom footprint would reach the ground because ninety-eight percent of the pressure energy is directed upward, not down. There’ll be a lower passenger-per-mile cost than Boeing’s 747 at current fuel prices, but with the same payloads and the same runway requirements.”

  “Impressive,” McGarvey conceded. “But how many years will it be before your test flights begin?”

  “Four weeks, maybe six weeks.”

  “Your prototype is already built?” McGarvey was surprised.

  “All except for the hypersonic engines. Our first test flights will run to near Mach one with a cowling replacing the hydrogen engine. Rolls-Royce promises delivery within one year.” Kennedy studied McGarvey. “The bottom line is that this Japanese zaibatsu plans to do to the commercial airplane business what has been done to the automobile business and to the consumer electronics market. And they’ll stop at nothing to do it. Including the murders of a lot of innocent people. If they somehow bring down another of our airplanes, our stock will die, but so will several hundred men, women, and children. Just like 1990.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “We sincerely hope we are, Mr. McGarvey. That’s what we want to hire you to find out for us.”

  “And if you’re right?”

  “Then we’d like you to do whatever it takes to stop them.”

  “I see.” McGarvey turned and started back across the beach toward the parking lot. Kennedy fell in behind him.

  “Will you help us?”

  McGarvey looked at him. “Why don’t you sell the technology to Japan? Share it with them under license.”

  “We thought about it. Boeing works with the Japanese. There’s precedent.”

  “But you can’t forget 1990.”

  “That’s right,” Kennedy said.

  McGarvey stopped. “In 1983 Hitachi Corporation offered to build a major engine research facility in Japan that would be shared equally by any American commercial airplane manufacturer who wanted to participate. Hitachi would put up all the money, the Americans would bring their head start in research. Guerin turned them down.”

  “Our prerogative,” Kennedy said. “Chrysler was given the same offer before it built its billion-dollar design and research center. But laccoca said no: ‘Chrysler is simply not for sale to the Japanese for any price.’ Neither was Guerin.”

  Time to get out of the business for good? McGarvey wondered. He could understand Langley’s hesitation to go along with the airplane company. The direction had come from the White House. Just now we were walking softly around the Japanese who held a significant percentage of our five trillion dollars plus of debt. No one wanted to upset the apple cart. Maybe America was for sale after all.

  “How do I contact you, Mr. Kennedy?”

  “Will you help us?”

  “I’ll look into it. That’s all I’m saying for the moment. Do you have a secure number in Portland where I can reach you?”

  Kennedy pulled an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to McGarvey. “We have a scrambled phone system at our Gales Creek Computer Center. As long as you’re calling from a phone you know has not been tapped, your message will be secure.”

  McGarvey pocketed the envelope. “I’d like you to stay in Washington for the next few days. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you arrange a secure meeting place in the city? Not your hotel. Maybe an apartment?”

  “Dominique Kilbourne. She has an apartment in the Watergate complex. She’s a lobbyist for the Airplane Manufacturers and Airlines Association. Her brother Newton is our vice president in charge of prototype development and manufacture. And she’s a friend. A discreet friend.”

  “Are you sleeping with her?”

  Kennedy reared back, but before he could reply, McGarvey cautioned him.

  “Don’t ever lie to me. My life may, at some point, depend upon knowing the entire truth.”

  “We had an affair a few years ago. It was brief, and when it was over we parted friends. That’s the situation now.” Kennedy handed him a thick envelope. “This is some background reading.”

  McGarvey nodded. “I’ll be talking to you.” He headed toward the parking lot. This time Kennedy did not fall in beside him.

  CIA Deputy Director of Operations Phillip Carrara met McGarvey a few minutes before ten at the bar in the Four Seasons Hotel on the Georgetown side of Rock Creek. He was a barrel-chested man, with a square face, thick dark hair combed straight back, and an easy smile. As an Hispanic, he maintained that he had to work twice as hard as an Anglo to get any respect. No one in the Company took the man lightly. He was among the best.

  “Did you talk to David Kennedy?” he asked when his scotch rocks came. The bar was half full, but no one was paying them any attention.

  “This afternoon,” McGarvey said. “I was surprised that the general mentioned my name.”

  Carrara smiled wanly and shook his head. “It was Ryan’s suggestion actually.”

  “That bastard still has a hard-on for me?”

  “He’s got a long memory. He wants to see you dumped on your ass once and for all. Are you going to take it?”

  “What have you heard?”

  “Guerin’s in some financial trouble. It’s apparently overspent on research for the NASA space plane project, and it’s vulnerable right now. It wants protection.”

  “Anything from Tokyo?”

  “We’ve picked up nothing, Kirk. If there is a zaibatsu planning nefarious things, it’s deep.”

  “Would you query Tokyo Station for me?”

  Carrara chuckled. “Not a chance in hell, compar.”

  “If Guerin fails it would take a hell of a big bite out of U.S. exports.”

  “Guerin is only one out of three. And I don’t see Vasilanti or Kennedy camped out on the White House lawn. In the meantime if you’ll look around you’ll notice that this country is still in economic trouble. Japan holds nearly half our debt, its navy is negotiating with the Philippine government to buy our old base at Subic Bay—that by the way is privileged information—and the White House is trying to put together a package with teeth for the economic summit next month in Tokyo. Are you following me?”

  “Times are tough all around. But what about the Russians? Is Yemlin still the KGB’s rezident?”

  “It’s called the Foreign Intelligence Service—the SUR—these
days. But Yemlin hung on.”

  “Is the SUR still as active in Tokyo as the KGB was? They were running a top-grade network called Abunai, which was a hell of a lot better than anything we were fielding.”

  Carrara’s complexion darkened. “What’s your point, Mac?”

  “We’ve got a big problem between us and the Japanese, Phil. I’m not telling you anything new. And it’s not going away. Who knows, maybe this Guerin thing is only the opening shot.”

  “Of what?”

  McGarvey looked at his old friend. “I don’t know. I really don’t. Everything is different now. Everything has changed.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Maybe a war with Japan might wake everybody up.”

  “Don’t even think it, Mac,” Carrara said. “But what about Yemlin? You knew he was here in Washington all along, didn’t you?”

  “If I’d wanted I could have had him anytime during the last couple of years.”

  Carrara nodded. “If you were going to meet with him, where would it be?”

  “Is the FBI still watching him?”

  “Officially yes. In actuality it’s pretty loose now.”

  “Arlington National Cemetery. Tomorrow at noon at Kennedy’s Tomb if he’s clean.”

  “If not?”

  “Thursday at one, and then Friday at ten. After that we’ll have to try something else.”

  “Do you think he’ll help you?”

  McGarvey nodded. “He owes me.”

  Carrara smiled wanly. “And God help the poor bastard if he doesn’t see it that way.”

  Arlington National Cemetery sprawls over more than four hundred acres across the Potomac River from the city of Washington. Established in 1864 on the Custis and Lee estates, nearly one hundred thousand people are buried there, including John F. Kennedy. On the best of days the cemetery is a grim reminder of the only true constant in war: a lot of people die. McGarvey wondered if the unthinkable were starting again. This time the stakes would be much higher and the battles would be more fierce than fifty-five years ago, but the outcome would be the same: people would die needlessly. He felt as if he were surrounded by his nightmares.

  Viktor Pavlovich Yemlin stood in front of the flame at Kennedy’s tomb, his hat in hand, his wispy white hair ruffling in the slight but chilly breeze. The sky was overcast, and it felt as if it might rain or even snow. The Russian wore a long, dark overcoat and a light silk scarf. In appearance he could have been Eduard Shevard-nadze’s younger brother, except that his shoulders were hunched, and in the old days he had been involved with some very bad people, which lent him a dark aura.

  He turned as McGarvey approached, an oddly distant expression on his face, a frightened look, as if he were seeing a ghost and he was girding himself for the confrontation.

  “Hello, Kirk,” he said.

  “It’s been a long time, Viktor Pavlovich,” McGarvey said.

  First it had been Valentin Baranov who’d headed the KGB’s Department 8 of Directorate S—the Illegals Directorate—who had given the assassin Arkady Kurshin his charter. Next, after McGarvey had killed Baranov, came General Vasili Didenko, and finally Yemlin.

  Caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment, Yemlin had said. Fighting capitalism. Saving the Rodina. McGarvey had been allowed to read the transcripts of a National Security Agency satellite phone tap. Yemlin had been speaking with Boris Yeltsin himself, shortly after the August Kremlin coup in which Gorbachev had been arrested.

  There had been deaths. Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of millions if Stalin’s killed were included. Who was not guilty? Time now to go forward. Time to build on the ashes of the old.

  Expedient words, McGarvey had thought at the time. But then the business, by its very nature, bred and nourished expediency.

  “Are you here for revenge?” Yemlin asked. McGarvey could hear laughter, and for a moment he thought it was out of place here in a cemetery, but then he realized that he was remembering his sister as a young girl. She’d laughed often in those days. But afterward, after their parents died, neither of them laughed very much. Revenge, he asked himself. For what? There’d never been any hard evidence, nor did he believe the Russian was ready to offer any.

  “I’ve taken an assignment for Guerin Airplane Company.”

  “That’s what Phillip told me.” The Russian motioned for them to walk, and they headed down a broad path away from the flame. There were very few other people visiting the cemetery.

  “Guerin is concerned that a consortium of powerful Japanese corporations may be gearing up for a raid on their stock. From what I was told they’ve probably formed a zaibatsu with a lot of financial backing.”

  “Would Washington allow such a thing?”

  “I assume their NASA and military divisions would have to be split out of the deal. But just now no one wants to rock the boat.”

  “I understand,” Yemlin said. “But Guerin’s position is strong.”

  “The Japanese may try to sabotage Guerin’s airplanes. Blow them out of the sky, if need be. That’d knock hell out of the company’s stock value. A takeover would be easy.”

  “They would be acquiring an essentially worthless company in that case. Unless there was something else they wanted.”

  “There is something else, Viktor Pavlovich,” McGarvey said.

  Yemlin smiled. “Can you talk about it?”

  “They’ve been working on the next generation of commercial airplane. Just about everything flying transoceanic, or even transcontinental, will become obsolete.”

  “You’re talking about the NASA plane?”

  “They’re using that as a cover project, but the other has been buried. It’s one of the reasons they hired me. They think the Japanese are desperate to buy them out for that line of development alone.”

  “Which they would dismantle and transport back to Japan.”

  “Something like that.”

  Yemlin stopped. “Do you honestly believe they’re desperate enough to blow airplanes out of the sky? To become terrorists? To kill people? Think about it, Kirk. Japan is your country’s major trading partner. It would be stupid for them to do anything to jeopardize that position. It would be disastrous for them if they were exposed.”

  “We don’t believe the government is involved,” McGarvey said. “At least Guerin’s top people hope it’s not.”

  “Those are very big stakes,” Yemlin said.

  “The biggest.”

  “What would you have us do?”

  “If we can identify the individual companies that make up this consortium, and if we can get someone into a boardroom meeting, or possibly someone inside the Ministry of International Trade and Industry who could gather hard evidence that such a plan exists, Guerin’s people could take it to the President and pressure would be brought directly on Tokyo.”

  “I ask you again, Kirk, what would you have us do?”

  “Hand the project over to network Abunai.”

  A flicker of surprise crossed the Russian’s face. “What would Guerin do for us in exchange? Where is the quid pro quo?”

  McGarvey had thought that out on the way in to the city. Russia was having its own trouble with Japan over the Kuril Islands and others north of Hokkaido, so whatever he offered Yemlin would have to be something Russia needed. Something very important, such as foreign exchange. He and Kennedy had discussed the situation yesterday afternoon by phone.

  “It’s possible that Guerin would build and equip a subassembly factory outside of Moscow.”

  Yemlin’s eyebrows rose. “For which airplane?”

  “The new one.”

  “What about personnel?”

  “Some Russians that Guerin would train.”

  “Would our people be involved in the engineering?”

  “I don’t know, but I think something could be worked out.”

  Yemlin looked back the way they had come, the flame at Kennedy’s Tomb just visible, and McGarvey followed his gaze. The thirty-fou
r years since the President’s assassination had been nothing short of stunning.

  “It will take time,” Yemlin said.

  “The prototype is nearly ready to fly. If something is going to happen, we suspect it will happen very soon.”

  Another thought crossed Yemlin’s mind. “Would Guerin be willing to pay expenses in Tokyo?”

  “Within reason,” McGarvey replied. The Russians’ supply of hard currencies, which they needed to fund foreign intelligence operations, was very limited, and Japan was an expensive playing field.

  Yemlin smiled again. “Ironic, isn’t it? The SUR being hired as mercenaries for a former CIA spy?”

  “We’ll need action soon,” McGarvey said.

  “My book cable will go out this afternoon,” Yemlin promised. “But I am curious about something. If this goes through, will you come to Moscow to oversee the operation?”

  McGarvey shook his head. “I don’t think your people would want me.”

  “No,” Yemlin said softly. “I suppose not.”

  The Dassault SF-17 helicopter came in fast and low over the treetops of the Rambouillet Forest thirty miles southeast of Paris, the pilot, Pierre Gisgard, frantically searching for the field where he was supposed to land. But visibility in blowing snow was zero at times, and the gusty winds hitting forty knots buffeted the machine so violently that Gisgard thought it was going to come apart on him. He’d warned them about the weather at Mortier, but when the colonel got a feather up his ass nothing would hold him down.

  And this was the biggest feather of all. The French secret service, known as the Service de Documentation Exteriéure et de Contre-Espionage, or SDECE, had been chasing this group of East Germans ever since the two Germanies had been reunited. They called themselves the Berlin Hit League, and for six years the group of ex-Secret Service thugs and murderers had been terrorizing Europe: robbing banks to finance their operations, killing for hire, and sometimes to settle old scores, sabotaging bridges, power stations, radio and television transmitters, and assassinating policemen.

  Three years ago members of this group shot a Swissair jetliner out of the sky over Paris with a Stinger hand-held missile. Half the passengers aboard that flight had been French men, women, and children on holiday. No one in France could forget that tragedy.