High Flight

by David Hagberg

  It was past 9:00 P.M. as they waited outside a white stucco, two-story apartment building for someone downtown to show up with their search warrant. In the two hours they’d been watching, there’d been no lights in Zerkel’s windows, nor had there been any sign of the man. After Whitman’s warning about the East German, they were taking few chances.

  Earlier they’d checked Zerkel’s last known address, which had turned out to be a small house in Oakland. The current renters had never heard of him, nor did the rental agency in San Francisco have a forwarding address. One of the neighbors remembered Zerkel, but only vaguely, as an “odd duck.” The U.S. Post Office, Pacific Bell, and Pacific Gas & Electric had no present listing. Vehicle registration showed he owned a 1983 Chevrolet, but the address listed was for the Oakland house. It was the same at the credit bureau, and Social Security.

  San Francisco S-A-C—Special Agent in Charge—Charles Colberg was pissed off that he’d not been consulted before his turf had been invaded, but once he talked to Whitman in Washington he calmed down. The local Bureau file on Zerkel had no further information, nor was there anything of value on InterTech.

  By then they had run out of options, so they’d finally approached the man’s employer.

  “Let me get this straight,” Zerkel’s supervisor Bob Sutherland said, a cigar clenched in his mouth. “You’re FBI, you want to talk about Louis, but this is not a background investigation for a government job offer?”

  McLaren grinned. “You tell me, Mr. Sutherland, how many new government jobs have you heard about in the last couple of years? We’re just clearing out deadwood here. Louis Zerkel has a secret clearance—we’re checking it out. New program, going to save the taxpayers some money. You know how it is.”

  “So do a hundred other people here have clearances.”

  “We can only do this one at a time. Maybe if we could just take a peek at his personnel file, and then maybe have a chat with him?”

  Sutherland came to a decision after a second and handed Zerkel’s file over to McLaren. “You can take a look at this, but he’s not here now.”

  McLaren flipped open the file and turned directly to the personal data section. His address was an apartment right in Alameda. Rent probably included gas and electric, which was why his name hadn’t been listed with the utilities.

  “Is this his day off?” Joyce was asking.

  “He didn’t come in,” Sutherland said. “And he doesn’t answer his phone or his bulletin board.”

  McLaren looked up. “There’s no phone number listed here.”

  “The company provides phone lines for engineers of his level and above. The amount of data networking they do would drive their phone bills to astronomical levels.”

  “Does he miss work often?” Joyce asked.

  “Once in a while,” Sutherland said, shrugging. “Frankly I wasn’t getting worried until you showed up. Is this a criminal investigation?”

  “What would make you think that?” McLaren asked, his senses perking up.

  “We did our own background check, and we know about his brother Glen.”

  “Any contact between the two of them, that you know about?”

  Sutherland shook his head. “None.”

  Two unmarked cars and a dark blue van pulled up behind McLaren and Joyce. A dozen men and a few women jumped out. They all wore dark windbreakers and baseball caps with “FBI” stenciled on them, and they were all armed with semiautomatic pistols. Colberg’s number two, A-S-A-C Gordy Behrens, came up, a serious expression on his hound-dog face. “Any activity here?” he asked.

  “Nada,”McLaren said. “Did you bring the warrant?”

  Behrens nodded. “We’re going to do this my way.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Gordy, we just want to talk to the man.”

  “I talked to Whitman this afternoon,” Behrens said. “We’ll do this my way.”

  “So much for keeping our heads down,” Joyce said.

  “Just don’t shoot him before we can ask some questions,” McLaren told Behrens. “Okay?”

  The first part of the meeting went well—better than anyone thought it would. Not all the details of the deal had been worked out, but the substantive points had been agreed to one after the other with such a minimum of discussion that it caught everyone off guard.

  “Don’t expect miracles,” Soderstrom had warned them earlier. “The Russians have only had a few years to develop a capitalist mentality, so they have different expectations than we do.”

  Aviation Minister Matushin was anxious to see the deal go through, and it became obvious early on that someone above him was calling the shots. Authority or not, Kennedy got the definite impression that the man was on a very short leash. The wing factory was going to be built on Russian soil, and whatever it took to accomplish that goal would be done.

  At the break before lunch, Kennedy and Matushin stepped over to the tall windows overlooking the brooding pile of brick that housed the Kremlin arsenal.

  “The only problem that I can see is the continued stability of your government,” Kennedy said, bringing up Soderstrom’s concern as he promised he would if the opportunity arose.

  “A legitimate question, Mr. Kennedy. But frankly it’s one for which I have no satisfactory answer. Ten years ago we could not have had this conversation. It would have been unthinkable.”

  Kennedy had to smile. “We have an old saying: Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.”

  Matushin looked sharply at him. “Are you considering backing out of this deal?”

  “It’s not that. I meant that we in the West never really believed that the Soviet Union could fall apart in our lifetime, and we certainly never expected the economic impact it’s had on the world.”

  “Neither did we,” Matushin said distantly. “But no matter what happens we will never return to the old ways. There isn’t enough blood in all of Russia to drown the new order.”

  “A personally held belief, Mr. Minister?”

  “I’m not alone in thinking this, if that’s what you’re asking. But as you say, the cost is great.”

  “Then it’s up to us to get on with it, with as many safeguards for each other as possible,” Kennedy said.

  The Russians were offering two thousand acres adjacent to Domodedovo Airport on the Kashira Highway thirty miles southeast of Moscow. One of the largest airports in the world, Domodedovo handled the bulk of Russia’s internal flights and could handle any type of aircraft currently flying. A special rail line would link the wing-panel assembly hall with the airport so that the parts and raw materials could be flown in on modified P522s, and the finished wings could be returned to Portland the same way. The rail spur was already in place, as was a three-story building that could be used to house engineering and administration. Until ten years ago there’d been a tank factory on the site.

  Russian workers would put up the assembly hall to Guerin’s specifications—which would mean on-site American inspectors and supervisors—and would also supply the precision metal cutting, bending, and shaping equipment needed to build the wing components out of titanium. Most of the electrical and hydraulic parts would be U.S. designed and supplied, and Guerin would provide extensive on-the-job training for the Russian engineers and assembly workers. Within five years Guerin would be able to reduce its participation to fifty percent. Quality control would always remain strictly under Guerin’s supervision, however. As Kennedy explained across the table, “If a wing fails it’d be a Guerin airplane that goes down. We’ll make sure they’re built correctly.”

  “This will be a good thing for both of us,” Matushin said, lighting a cigarette. He was a chain smoker. “Admittedly your company is taking a chance by coming here, but it’s one that will pay off well for you.”

  “We think so,” Kennedy said carefully. So far there’d not been so much as a hint about the Japanese, but he wondered if that’s what the Russian was referring to now. “You’ll be sharing in the risk.”

&nb
sp; “When we begin exchanging dollar credits toward the purchase of airplanes from you.”

  “I meant that cooperating so closely with us might subject you to some criticism.”

  An odd, almost wistful, expression crossed Matushin’s features, and he shrugged. “I don’t believe I completely understand you, Mr. Kennedy. Perhaps we need the translators.”

  “I was merely talking about the hardliners still in your government. Maybe there is still some mistrust.”

  “Ah, I see what you mean,” Matushin said. He shook his head. “That is absolutely nothing to worry about. As I said, we will never go back to the old ways.”

  Kennedy watched the Russian’s eyes, but he could find nothing that might indicate something was being held back. Matushin was a professional bureaucrat, and probably very adept at saying whatever had to be said at the moment, but Kennedy prided himself on his ability to judge people. Unless he was way off the mark, he decided, the aviation minister probably knew nothing about the deal that McGarvey had cut with the SUR for information about the Japanese.

  “I would hope that we could begin construction in the spring,” Kennedy said. “It’ll take a year to build, and possibly that long afterward before the first wing panel is completed.”

  “Possibly longer,” Matushin replied. “Don’t forget our winters. They’ve defeated more than one intended conqueror.”

  “If we can enclose the building and get heat to it before the cold weather we’ll be all right. You’ll have to throw enough people into the project to get it done.”

  Matushin nodded thoughtfully. “Providing we come to final agreement here. There are still many details, some of them quite critical, left to be worked out.”

  “As you say, Mr. Minister, this will be a good thing for both of us. We will make it work.”

  The Russian glanced over to the long conference table where several of the negotiators were already back at it, then stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the broad windowsill.

  “There is still time before lunch,” he said. “Shall we return to the task?”

  Kennedy turned. “Delivery schedules are very important to us, crucial in some instances.”

  “Have you figured it out yet?” Reid asked. It was 9:00 A.M., and he felt like shit. He’d been up all night arranging for the electronic components and equipment that Zerkel had requested.

  The InterTech engineer was crouched over a series of schematic drawings spread out on the floor. “A relay of some type, I think. But I can tell you for sure that it doesn’t belong in the circuit.”

  “Could it have brought down that American Airlines flight in ’90?” Reid asked. Mueller had reported everything that Zerkel had talked about on the flight from San Francisco. The engineer’s conspiracy theory fit with Reid’s suspicions so perfectly that it was almost spooky.

  “This module refit was put in place before the crash. My guess is they tried one out; when it worked they modified all the boards.”

  “But you still have no proof?”

  Zerkel looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked as bad as Reid felt. But there was passion in them. He wasn’t fooling around here. He was dead serious.

  “Did you get my parts?”

  “Downstairs in the van. Your brother and Bruno will bring them up.” The van had been delivered to him at a supermarket parking lot in Arlington.

  “I’ll put together a breadboard transmitter that should fit the frequency range of that circuit, and then run my encoding program through it until we hit the right combination.”

  “You’re opening a lock?” Reid asked.

  Zerkel grinned. “Something like that, only it’s electronic, and I’m just guessing that there’s a circuit internal to the new module that makes up an encoded receiver. Input the correct sequence of digital pulses, and the module will spit a signal out the other end.”

  “A signal to do what?”

  “Trigger an explosive in the engine,” the engineer said. “Maybe confuse the heat sensors into believing the engines are running too cold. If the heat builds past a critical level the turbine could fail. Might swallow a blade, blow the engine apart.”

  “But would it bring down the plane?”

  Zerkel nodded.

  Reid thought it out, careful to keep his excitement off his face. “Once you get the transmitter built, how will you know it works?”

  “Simple. I’ll tie into InterTech’s circuit simulator and see what happens when I push the button. If the frequency is right, and I can hit the proper digital sequence, we’ll see an output.”

  “Then what?”

  “That’s up to you, Mr. Reid. But if it works, and if the Japanese have installed these modules in all the heat sensors Guerin got from us, you’ll be able to do the same thing the Japanese can do. And that’s to bring down Guerin airplanes. What do you think about that?”

  “We’ve got the bastard nailed,” Phillip Joyce said, coming back into the autopsy theater at San Francisco General. He and McLaren had stayed with Dr. Shepard’s body from the moment they’d found it on the houseboat.

  “Did you talk to ballistics?” McLaren asked. He was having a cup of coffee with one of the lab technicians. The autopsy was finished, and the body had been zippered up in plastic and put in a refrigerated drawer.

  “The bullet dug out of her skull was fired from the Beretta we found in Zerkel’s apartment. No doubt whatsoever.”

  McLaren nodded tiredly. The sun was just coming up. It had been a very long night, and the new day stretched ahead of them. “They found semen in her vagina, O-positive. Same as Zerkel’s blood type.”

  “He raped her, then killed her?”

  “No. He killed her first then raped the body,” the lab tech, an older man, said. “Couldn’t have been very pleasant, no lubrication.”

  “Ah, shit,” Joyce said, turning away in disgust.

  “We’ll put out an APB on him,” McLaren said. “But I’m wondering if this has anything to do with Tallerico’s murder.”

  “We’ll ask him,” Joyce snarled. Two years ago his fifteen-year-old daughter had been raped by her boyfriend. As a result, Joyce had developed a special aversion for that type of crime.

  Zerkel started by drawing the transmitter wiring diagram on layout paper. He took care to trace and retrace each element of the circuit to make absolutely certain there were no mistakes before transferring it onto a sheet of etch-resistant rub-on paper and then transferring that onto the copper side of a blank printed circuit board twenty inches on a side. He was a design engineer, not a technician, so he wasn’t used to working with his hands. But he understood the theory, and he forced himself to slow down, to take his time.

  Across the hall in the bathroom he’d set up a plastic dishpan in the bathtub for the etching solution of ammonium persulphate. The solution had to be kept at a temperature between 90 and 115 degrees Fahrenheit, so Zerkel rigged an ordinary heat lamp just above the pan. It took him a couple of hours before he got the height of the lamp just right to keep the etch bath at the proper temperature. Once that was done he added a small amount of mercuric chloride crystals, which served as an activator for the bath, and placed the circuit board into the solution, holding it with a set of long wooden tongs so that he could keep the board in continuous motion. Where the etch-resistant wax was laid down on the circuit board, the copper would be untouched by the chemical. Everywhere else on the board the copper would be eaten away, leaving behind a complicated web of interconnected copper strips that made up the wiring of the transmitter circuit.

  His brother was watching him. “How long do you have to keep that shit up?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Then what?”

  “Wash it with water, dry it off, and start wiring up the components.”

  “I can do this part,” Glen told his brother. “You’ve got other shit to do.”

  Louis nodded. “Thanks,” he said, and he went into the other room to begin assembling the parts. He hated
mindless, repetitive tasks and was grateful for his brother’s help. Maybe Glen wasn’t so bad after all.

  Darkness came early to Moscow at this time of year. Kennedy sat beneath the yellow glow of the chandelier listening to Soderstrom and Topper discuss purchase orders with Russian Federal Bank representative Ilya Lyukshin and Aeroflot Acquisitions Director Aleksei Voskoboy. They’d been at it for more than an hour but didn’t seem to be any closer to an agreement than they had at the start of the meeting. Part of the problem was the transfer of credits from Washington for the deal. Guerin would get a tax break at home, but in order for Aeroflot to acquire eighty P522s and thirty P/C2622s over the next eight years, the purchases would have to be backed by U.S. loan guarantees, something Soderstrom had cautioned could be a stumbling block.

  “Boeing and McDonnell Douglas could argue that Washington is subsidizing us. Could cause a glitch.”

  A possible way around the problem would be for the Russians to divert available Western credits from other needs to purchase the airplanes—or at least come up with the down payments that Guerin needed to survive—and get U.S. loan guarantees to replace them. The Russians were balking because if Washington decided not to go along with the loan guarantees it would create a problem for the Kremlin. Russia needed wheat, corn, and butter more than it needed high-tech jet airliners.

  Dominick Grant, Guerin’s tall, thin, patrician-looking government liaison, sat forward. “What if we get Washington’s approval beforehand?”

  Voskoboy started to say something, but Minister Matushin waved him off. “This would take time.”

  “Thirty-six hours,” Grant replied. He turned to Kennedy. “It’s a little before 9:00 A.M. in Washington. If I could get out of here tonight, I’d be at the State Department first thing tomorrow morning. Tom Bruce knows what’s going on. He’ll give us a reading as fast as humanly possible.”