High Flight

by David Hagberg

  “What services?”

  Murphy had expected the discussion to lead to this point. The problem was he didn’t know what to tell the President other than the truth.

  “He is … or was … an assassin.”

  “Well,” the President said. “I see.”

  “It shows how difficult Guerin believes the situation is.”

  “Do we have any control over Mr. McGarvey?”

  “He is an independent operator, Mr. President,” Murphy said. “But there’s never been any doubt that he is anything but a completely loyal American.”

  “There’d be hell to pay if this got loose on the Hill.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You say that the Japanese are spying on us?”

  “We’ve handed this to the Bureau. John Harding says that his counterespionage people have tracked an increasing number of industrial espionage reports, but this particular case was a new one for them.”

  “Will Guerin and McGarvey cooperate with, you?” the President asked Murphy.

  “I think so, Mr. President, if it’s handled correctly.”

  “Then do it,” the President said. “Now, what do we tell the Russians?”

  “Japan is our ally,” the Secretary of State answered. “We tell the Russians to back off. At the very least get their navy out of the strait until the situation cools off. As for the Japanese, we’ll tell them that the Russians are backing down, but that an apology will have to be made.”

  “All that’s reasonable,” the National Security Adviser agreed. “But it’ll put us on the down side when we get to Tokyo. If we force them to back off over this issue—which is, after all, important to them—they’ll want some extra consideration from us.”

  “Wrong,” Carter disagreed. “You’re forgetting something important. The Japanese will insist that this incident was a mistake. The government didn’t order the attack, and its Maritime Self Defense Force continues to maintain a nonconfrontational policy with the Russians in the region.”

  “The Russians will back down,” the President said. “Or else Guerin will never get the export licenses it needs to build its assembly plant in Moscow. But the rest of it I’ll save for Tokyo, unless the Japanese do something else just as stupid. Make sure Mr. McGarvey gets the word.”

  “Yes, sir,” Murphy said.

  “Good.” The President looked around the table. “Anything else?”

  “What about Guerin’s request that the Russians spy for it?” Murphy asked.

  “We’ll turn this over to the Attorney General. If anybody has broken the law, they’ll be prosecuted. Otherwise it’s something between the Russians and the Japanese. Something, if it comes up, I’ll tell them to work out on their own.” The President sat forward. “We’re in a tough position here between the Russians and the Japanese. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if we have to play rough, we will. But I’ll be damned if we’re going to sell out to the Japanese, or if we’re going to let the Russians start a shooting war over a goddamned island in the middle of nowhere.”

  They’d moved aboard the boat last night, and after a late dinner of lobster and white wine went to bed in the forepeak where they made love for nearly two hours before going to sleep. The stern of the boat was facing east, and this morning the sun blasted through the open hatch.

  “Another beautiful day in paradise,” Carol Moss said, padding barefoot into the main saloon.

  Liskey, who’d always been an early riser, stood in the hatchway drinking his first cup of coffee for the day. He looked back at her and grinned. “If your CO could see you now, the old bag would toss you in jail and throw away the key.”

  Carol smiled back at him. She wore only the bottom half of a very brief bikini and a gold ankle bracelet. “Not exactly Navy issue,” she said. “Anyone up and about?”

  “Not for another half-hour.”

  “Good. I’m going for a swim. And when I get back I’ll expect breakfast.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” Liskey said, moving aside so that she could get up into the cockpit. As she passed he reached out to grab her, but she nimbly avoided him, and in two quick steps was over the rail and into the water.

  “Nice,” she cried, breaking the surface.

  “Bacon and eggs in twenty minutes,” he called out to her, then went below. He switched the VHF radio to the weather channel, refilled his coffee, and started the bacon.

  The local and regional weather was broadcast twenty-four hours a day in English from the U.S. Navy Meteorological Station on Okinawa, which supplemented its local data with information from ships at sea, Japanese weather stations as far as Kyushu, and U.S. weather satellites. Winds over the entire region today would be southeast at ten to fifteen knots, producing waves of three to five feet in the East China Sea, increasing to fifteen to twenty knots tonight, with seas gradually increasing to five to eight feet. The high temperatures would range from near seventy-five in the south to forty-four in the north, under partly cloudy skies with a near-zero chance of rain in the south. Perfect conditions for them to set out. By tonight they would be anchored in a quiet, secluded cove somewhere twenty-five or thirty miles north of here where Carol wouldn’t have to wear so many clothes when she went in for a swim. He grinned and began to whistle the theme from Ravel’s Bolero.

  Louis Zerkel was aware that most of his co-workers and supervisors tolerated his conspiracy theories because his design and analysis work was nothing short of brilliant. Although he was unaware of his real worth, there were those in the San Francisco business office who figured he’d earned the company fifteen million dollars in excess of the salary and benefits he’d received over the years. When he spoke, people listened. You could never tell when a gem of design or application would pop out.

  His psychiatrist, Dr. Jeanne Shepard, listened too. In the five years he’d been seeing her for his debilitating bouts of fear and confusion, she had picked up a number of design secrets that she passed on to a friend in Washington, D.C., for considerations, sometimes as high as twenty-five thousand dollars, always in untraceable small bills. Her specialty was dealing with what she privately called “Silicon Valley nut cases.” Because of the stress that these highly brilliant men and women worked under, her office was always busy. In Zerkel’s case, his stress manifested itself in conspiracy theories. It was a form of paranoia that was relatively common among people with tunnel vision—engineers, mathematicians, and researchers.

  At their weekly sessions Dr. Shepard would skillfully steer his conversation back to his work. He was developing what he called a “real-time multiphasic head-up display director” for commercial jetliners. Her Washington friend was very excited about it and kept pressing her for more information.

  Sitting across from Zerkel, she could see that he was even more agitated than usual. He crossed and uncrossed his legs, fiddled with the pens and colored pencils in his pocket, and darted glances out the window at the overcast afternoon.

  “You’re stressed out today, Louis. Would you like to talk about it?” She was a mature, attractive woman. Her friends said she looked like Candice Bergen, and she had the same, deep-throated confident voice and manner as the actress.

  “There’s a lot of pressure at the lab,” Zerkel said. “We’ve hit a snag in the director. Nothing that can’t be worked out. But, you know, everybody takes orders, even San Francisco.

  “Who takes orders?”

  “Everybody. Me, you, everybody at InterTech, and I mean everybody. Maybe even the U.S. one of these days unless something is done.”

  This was something new, Dr. Shepard thought. She’d seen him excited before, and oftentimes so fearful that it was difficult for him to speak with any coherence. During those sessions she did most of the talking. Trying to soothe him, trying to calm his fears, trying to bring him back to reality. On days like that she sometimes scheduled a second hour for him in the same week so that she could maneuver him back on track. If he ever completely broke down, he would become usele
ss to her and she would have to cut him adrift. That was something she had no intention of allowing, even if she had to work with him every day. He was just too much of a gold mine to leave floundering.

  “It’s the Japanese, Dr. Shepard. They’re making their move.”

  “I don’t understand, Louis. What do you mean?”

  “I want you to read something, then you’ll see.” He pulled a copy of the Lamplighter newsletter out of his coat pocket and handed it to her. “Mr. Reid knows.”

  Still puzzled, Dr. Shepard quickly scanned Reid’s turgid prose, which, if she was catching the gist of it, seemed to suggest that a war between the United States and Japan was inevitable unless certain steps were taken immediately by a White House too unsure of itself to make the first move. It was Japanese bashing in a sophisticated forum. The newsletter’s masthead identified Edward R. Reid as a Washington insider and a former undersecretary of state. “An adviser to presidents, and now an adviser to you.”

  She looked up. “I still don’t understand. What does this have to do with you?”

  Zerkel took the newsletter, carefully folded it and put it back in his pocket. “Do you watch television, read the newspaper?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then you know that a Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force submarine sank a Russian Navy ship just north of the Japanese home islands.”

  “What’s your connection?”

  “The Japanese are also trying to take over Guerin Airplane Company, something you might not know about.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, look at it this way, Dr. Shepard. Say the Japanese do take over Guerin. Next maybe they’ll go after Boeing. Or maybe General Motors, or U.S. Steel. They’ve got the money.”

  “But what does this have to do with you?” Dr. Shepard asked. She’d never seen him quite like this before. He was agitated and frightened, but he also seemed happy. He had the bit in his teeth.

  “InterTech makes certain electronic assemblies for Guerin. But I found out that InterTech is being supplied, and maybe even being directed, by the Japanese. What do you think about that?”

  It was another of his conspiracy theories. “Many American electronics companies work with the Japanese.”

  “When that Guerin airliner went down out of Chicago it could have been caused by one of our subassemblies. We even had the NTSB poking around, but it didn’t find anything. Could have been sabotage though. I haven’t got that part figured out yet, but it’s there. What do you think about that?”

  “Why would they do that? What would they have to gain?”

  Zerkel smiled. “Maybe to bankrupt the company so they could take them over real cheaply, you know. Guerin is top dog right now on HSCT research. Didn’t you see the unveiling of its prototype the other day?” He leaned forward. “Listen to this, Dr. Shepard. It got me thinking, why would such an advanced-design airplane use the same engine heat-monitor assembly that we designed more than ten years ago? Only thing that’s never been changed is the in/out director module. What do you think about that?”

  “I don’t know, Louis,” Dr. Shepard said, and she meant it. There was something here, but she wasn’t sure what just yet. “Have you contacted Mr. Reid in Washington?”

  Zerkel reared back. “Of course not,” he said, and he glanced over his shoulder at the closed door to the reception room. “I’m not sure of this yet, and besides he knows what’s going on. When the time comes I’ll give him my help. But I don’t want to be killed. They do that, you know. It could be 1941 all over again. I need more details.”

  Dr. Shepard delayed her next appointment for ten minutes so she could place a call to Benjamin Tallerico, her Washington friend. He ran the Fund for International Development, which worked to match U.S. and Canadian venture capital with foreign projects. Tallerico, an ex-Mafia lieutenant from Chicago, used the money to open electronics sweat shops in Taiwan, Thailand, and most recently in northern Mexico where wages were less than a dollar per hour. The work was billed out to North American and European companies, who’d ordered the subcontracts, for several dollars per hour.

  Tallerico also dealt in industrial espionage, an endeavor that had grown tremendously over the past half-dozen years or so. It was he who had approached Dr. Shepard six years ago when her name came up in a conversation with a Silicon Valley technician who had information to sell. Besides telling Tallerico everything he knew about his research company’s secrets, the man babbled on and on about his psychiatrist, the one person in the world whom he trusted without reservation.

  “Does the name Edward R. Reid mean anything to you?” Dr. Shepard asked when she had Tallerico on his scrambled line.

  “Everybody in Washington knows him, sweetie. He puts out a financial newsletter that’s generally pretty close to the mark. What’s up?”

  “He’s going after the Japanese.”

  Tallerico chuckled. “Big time. From what I hear the State Department is on his ass, but he won’t budge.”

  “I’ve got somebody out here who thinks he’s right and might have some hard evidence for him. Something that might be worth a buck.”

  “What’ve you got?”

  “Has Reid got any money?”

  “He’s loaded.”

  “Good,” Jeanne Shepard said. “Tell him that we might have proof that the Japanese are trying to sabotage Guerin Airplane Company so it can be bought at fire-sale prices. Think he might be interested?”

  “Maybe. Who’s your source?”

  It was Dr. Shepard’s turn to chuckle. “Talk to him, Ben, then get back to me.”

  The black Cadillac limousine stopped momentarily at the White House east gate, a distance of one thousand feet as the crow flies from an upper-story window in the Hay Adams Hotel on H Street, then proceeded down the drive to the east portico.

  “Is it Zagorsky?” the slightly built man standing back from the window asked impatiently. The car pulled up at the White House east entryway. Someone jumped out of the front seat, ran around to the back, and opened the rear door on the passenger side.

  “I think so,” Toshiki Korekiyo answered. He watched through the one-thousand-millimeter camera lens set up on a tripod in the middle of the room. The license plate was of the diplomatic series used by the Russian embassy, but they had to be certain. There could be no mistakes.

  They’d monitored a greatly increased flow of communications traffic between Moscow and the Russian Embassy on 16th Street over the past forty-eight hours. It had peaked early this morning, then abruptly stopped.

  Russian Ambassador to the United States Yanis Yano-vich Zagorsky got out of the limousine at the same time Steven Nichols, the President’s appointments secretary, came out of the White House to greet him. Two Marine guards stood at ramrod attention at the door, but there was no one else. No media.

  “It’s him,” Korekiyo said, not looking up. Zagorsky seemed nervous, ill at ease, as well the bastard should be. Korekiyo, who worked for a special research unit of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry—MITI—didn’t know all the details. But he did know that Japan was no longer going to allow itself to be treated as an inferior nation. Its humiliating defeat a half-century ago had been paid for. Time now to go on. First would be the Russians, but there would be other targets.

  Zagorsky and Nichols shook hands, then went inside. Korekiyo looked up. “Definitely the Russian ambassador.”

  Yozo Hamagachi was already on the telephone waiting for his call to Arimoto Yamagata at the embassy on Massachusetts Avenue to go through. “Who met him?”

  “Nichols.”

  Hamagachi turned back to the telephone. “He has arrived,” he said, and a moment later he turned again to Korekiyo. “Was he carrying a briefcase? Anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Iie, he carried nothing.”

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” Ambassador Zagorsky said when he was ushered into the Oval Office. He crossed to the President’s desk. Secretary of State Carter an
d National Security Adviser Secor stood up, but the President remained seated.

  “Mr. Ambassador,” the President said coolly. “Mr. Carter and Mr. Secor will sit in on this.”

  “Of course,” Zagorsky said, clearly nervous. They all sat down.

  “You have something for me from your government?” the President asked.

  “Yes, Mr. President, but not in writing. It was thought in Moscow that I could open a dialogue with you in order that I might explain our difficult position.”

  “I’m listening.”

  There was no sign of any warmth or friendship among these three, Zagorsky thought. But he’d warned those idiots at the Kremlin that Yeltsin should have telephoned this President the moment they’d learned about the Tatar incident. They were not here in Washington, so they could not gauge the mood.

  “Simply put, something must be done about the Japanese incursion into our waters in the Tatar Strait, and the unprovoked attack on one of our naval vessels. All hands were lost. Many of them boys.”

  “From what we understand, your Navy fired the first shot, and that in international waters,” Harold Secor said.

  “Those waters are as sensitive to our security as the Gulf of Mexico is to yours,” Zagorsky replied calmly.

  “But one of your anti-submarine-warfare helicopters dropped a torpedo on that Japanese submarine before it initiated the attack,” Secor pressed.

  “The timing was critical. I have read transcripts of the radio messages and the helicopter.”

  “So have we,” the President said. “You fired first.”

  A lie? Zagorsky wondered. If not, the President had made a mistake admitting the U.S. had that level of technology in the area. “In response to the submarine’s torpedo doors opening preparatory to its attack.”

  Before the telephone call, Arimoto Yamagata had been thinking about his home in the mountains outside of Tokyo, and about the rock “future” and “hope.” He knew that under the circumstances the Western mind would consider such thinking frivolous, even silly, but it helped bring order to his thoughts. The problem his mentors had sent him to solve was so vast, and so far reaching in its implications, that it strained his abilities to contemplate. But he was truly a disciple of Mishima, and therefore capable of serenity under any condition.