High Flight

by David Hagberg

  One of the two men at the end of the bar left while the other sipped his coffee. They were nobody.

  Fallières came back from using the telephone in the tobacco shop next door. He sipped his white wine. “We have two teams on their way here for backup, a third on the way to see what secrets the old man may have stashed in his room, and the fourth to the telephone junction box beneath the street.”

  “Not bad for a seven,” Thiers replied. The German had looked over as Paul was leaving, and again just now when he’d returned. Was there an awareness there, or simply idle curiosity?

  “I got their attention because of Airbus Industrie. Louis says they’re practically shitting in their pants at the Elysee Palace. Any connection with those salaud Germans and they want to know all about it immediately.”

  “Who is this German, did they say?”

  “A BND general,” Fallières said. “But he is retired.”

  “Maybe not,” Thiers said absently. Something here, or were they chasing butterflies?

  Schey headed back to his hotel. The day was mild and the sun quite pleasant. Capet was a fool, but he had provided a valuable insight about the international commercial airplane industry that had never occurred to Schey. There were only four companies in the world that designed and built the big jets, and all of them were in one sort of trouble or another because the international airline industry was in trouble. It wasn’t as if the entire industry were going to fall apart tomorrow, but the correct nudge—it would not have to be a very big nudge—at the correct time could bring down even the largest of the players. If Reid were involved in such a scheme, Schey wanted to be a part of it. One last fling.

  They would have to move with care. Capet had provided another insight as well. The airplane industry was so big that entire national governments were heavily involved. Fighting Guerin would involve fighting Washington.

  Capet, who had risen so well within the Airbus Industrie based in part on intelligence that Schey had provided him, had been more than happy to cooperate. “Whatever you are involved with these days, my old friend, move with caution. My fellow Frenchmen are just now very wary of anything German.”

  Schey stopped in front of a small shop selling men’s accessories and peered in the window at a display of brightly colored neckties. The sidewalk and street behind him were reflected in the glass. The two men from the end of the bar were nowhere in sight. There was nothing behind him but normal traffic, and yet Schey was spooked. What the hell was it?

  Turning abruptly on his heel, he crossed to the other side of the street and continued at a brisk pace the last couple of blocks back toward the hotel. At the corner of the Rue De Castiglione, he stopped again and looked in a shop window. Still nothing seemed suspicious behind him.

  The hotel was barely a half-block away. Two gaudily uniformed doormen stood talking at the curb. A taxicab was pulled up in the front, and the street was partially blocked by a City Engineering truck. Hazard cones were placed around an open manhole cover. Sewer problems? Paris was famous for them.

  Schey hesitated a few moments longer, then turned, crossed the street, and entered a phone booth. He slid his credit card into the slot, and as he waited for the dial tone he watched the city truck. There were no workers in sight. They were probably beneath the street. Like moles burrowing into their tunnels. The French were basically nothing more than animals. Subhuman, at best.

  “He’s in the phone box across the street from you,” Louis Lebrun radioed. “Stand by for the locator code.”

  “He is not calling from the hotel,” Émile Pepin relayed the message to his fellow technician, Clement Deschanel. They were in the tunnel beneath the street. The hotel’s telephone junction box was open. “It’s the phone booth across the street.”

  “Shit,” Deschanel swore. “What’s the number?” He unscrewed the six fasteners that held the adjacent junction-box cover in place. Several hundred telephones connected to the trunk line from the one box.

  “Just a second, it’s coming,” Pepin said. He was a short, slightly built, nervous man. He looked like a ferret.

  Deschanel set the junction-box cover aside and moved his test set over from the hotel’s connector board. Leads connected the monitor set to a two-way radio that would send anything picked up to a tape recorder above in the truck.

  Pepin relayed the telephone box number. His partner quickly found the two terminals and connected his leads. Immediately they could hear telephone conversation between Schey and another man.

  “Who am I speaking with?” Schey asked.

  “I am a friend of Mr. R. Who are you?”

  “I am also a friend of Mr. Reid. When will he be available?”

  “How do I know who you are?”

  “The fact I know this number should be proof enough for you,” Schey said, obviously irritated. “Tell him an old Luger friend from Munich has called to ask about Bruno. Is he there with you?”

  The line was dead for several moments, and Deschanel pressed the earphones closer to his ears. He could still hear the hiss of the long-distance connection. The two men spoke English. He was betting Schey was talking with someone in the United States.

  “He’s not here. He left last night.”

  “I see,” Schey said. “Now tell me, please, when Mr. Reid will be available at this number?”

  “He’s in the city now, but he should be coming back out here tonight.”

  “Tell him …” Schey said, but then he stopped.

  Again Deschanel held the earphones closer, and he thought he was hearing the sounds of a computer printer in the background. Not above in the telephone box, but at the distant number.

  “Tell Mr. Reid that I will come there to see him. Tell him to make the usual arrangements.”

  “When are you coming?”

  “Soon, but I’m not sure. I may have picked up a tail.”

  “Don’t come here!” the younger man said. He was suddenly extremely agitated. “Don’t lead anyone here! Are you calling from a secure number?”

  “Yes,” Schey said. “And do not worry. I will lead no one to you. Talk to Mr. Reid. He will tell you.”

  “Jesus,” the younger man said. “What do you want?”

  “To help with … the project. It sounds to me as if you need help.”

  “Jesus,” the American said again, and the connection was broken.

  Action Service Colonel Phillipe Marquand met with Tom Lynch, chief of the Paris CIA station, shortly after 6:00 P.M. at a café on the Left Bank near the Sorbonne. Lynch was a much smaller, fairer man, who’d lived in Paris nearly four years yet could not speak decent French. Marquand didn’t have much respect for the man, only for his position.

  “We need some help from Langley, possibly from the FBI,” Marquand said.

  “Is this a formal request, Colonel?” Lynch asked. If so, why not go through proper channels?

  “Yes, it is. A German we have been following may be preparing to travel to Washington. He is, or was, in the business, and he may believe that his movements are being monitored.”

  “Who is this man?”

  “His name is Karl Schey. Until recently he worked for the West German Secret Service. But we have reason to believe that the man in actuality worked for the Stasi as an undercover agent.”

  Lynch glanced toward the front of the restaurant where his bodyguard was waiting. “Has this, by chance, anything to do with the incident last week at Chartres?”

  “There is a possible connection,” Marquand said. He passed a small package to the American. “We monitored a portion of a telephone call that Monsieur Schey made to the United States. As near as we were able to determine, the call was placed to a number somewhere in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. In the conversation he speaks two names. One is Mr. Reid, and the other is Bruno.”

  “Bruno Mueller?” Lynch asked.

  Marquand shrugged. “We do not know, but it is possible that Schey is somehow connected with Mueller. And now there may be a co
nnection between Mueller and Schey with Mr. Reid. Do you know this last name?”

  “No,” Lynch admitted. “But Schey could be innocent, and therefore his call harmless.”

  “I lost some good men at Chartres. If Mueller is in the United States working on a project, I can guarantee it will be big and splashy.”

  “Our FBI is on the ball, Colonel.”

  Marquand nodded. “Please pass along my request to your director of operations. It is our understanding that Monsieur Schey will be making his move soon.”

  “Why don’t you hand this over to your Washington bureau?”

  “We don’t spy in your country, Mr. Lynch.”

  Lynch picked up the package and pocketed it. “Is this a tape of the telephone conversation?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll see what we can do for you.”

  “Merci,” Marquand said. He watched as Lynch got up and left the café. The man was a buffoon. He hoped that whoever came over next would be better.

  THIRTEEN

  “The meeting is set for 5:00 this afternoon,” Dominique Kilbourne said on the telephone.

  “Where?” McGarvey asked. He was at his hotel across the street from the Watergate.

  “Japan Air Lines. On Connecticut Avenue, not far from my office.”

  “Who will I be meeting?”

  Dominique hesitated a moment. She was under a strain. McGarvey heard it in her voice. He’d telephoned Kennedy and warned the airline executive what he was going to do. Kennedy had not been happy, but he agreed to go along with whatever McGarvey asked. Since the crash everybody from Portland had become desperate for a solution. Any solution.

  “I spoke with David this morning,” she said. “He told me to give you anything you needed.”

  “But?”

  “It’s so goddamned futile.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened that night at your apartment, Dominique?” McGarvey said. “I could come over now. Or we could go someplace where we could talk.”

  “You’ll be meeting with Arimoto Yamagata, a special representative from the airline. He arrived from Tokyo a few days ago.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That you are a special assistant to Mr. Vasilanti, and that you wished to speak with someone in authority from JAL.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing else. I was put through to Mr. Yamagata. It almost seemed like he was expecting the call. He agreed without discussion.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Not a thing,” Dominique admitted. “I asked a few friends in the business, but all they could tell me is that he showed up at JAL sometime last week, apparently to open up new North American markets and discuss an equipment acquisition plan. No one at Guerin, or at Boeing or McDonnell Douglas, has heard from him so far.”

  “Who else will be at the meeting?”

  “His English sounded perfect, so I’m not expecting a translator. But it’s anyone’s guess. After what’s been happening in Tokyo this week, and the Prime Minister’s announcement, the Japanese have become even more difficult to read than they usually are.”

  “I’d like to see you afterward,” McGarvey said.

  “I’ll see you at the meeting.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s part of the deal. Yamagata is expecting me. If I don’t show up he’ll want to know why.”

  “He would be too polite to ask.”

  “But he would want to know why.”

  She had developed a real case for the Japanese, and she was putting herself into the middle of something she could not fully understand. He decided that it was coming time to get her out of the way.

  “Guerin has a great security setup, Mr. R.,” Glen Zerkel said. “But with eighty thousand employees in a half-dozen sites, even the best security is loose.”

  “Can you get in without detection?” Reid asked.

  “No problem. I can think of several ways of doing it. I could apply for a job, and there’s a good chance I’d get one. Word is out that they’re hiring. Or I could have a plant security badge made up. Or, hell, I could sneak under the fence practically day or night.”

  “What’s your question?”

  Zerkel shrugged his narrow shoulders. His hair was getting long already, and his moustache was coming back. Reid thought he looked like a street bum, or like a goddamned hippie.

  “I understand what Louis is doing, and what you want Bruno to do for us, but what I don’t understand is why I’m screwing around Portland. Every day I’m out there means I’m a day closer to arrest. You gotta know, man, that sooner or later my luck is going to run out. Mr. R., I’ve been a damned good soldier. Don’t use me as cannon fodder. Tell me what you want, and I’ll figure out a way of doing it.”

  “Are you losing your nerve?”

  Zerkel smiled wanly. “No, Mr. R., the reason I came back is because I wanted to get from you what I’m supposed to be doing. Mueller is a pro, but I can’t get inside his skull. I don’t know where he’s coming from. He’s not … American, do you know what I mean?”

  “Of course I do, Glen. And it’s my fault that you’re not clear on what your role is. And it’s important. We could not hope to have any success without you.”

  “Don’t stroke me.”

  Reid looked over the rim of his glass at the younger man. The past twenty-four hours had been difficult. First Mueller’s unexpected appearance at the Georgetown house, then Glen’s return, and finally Karl’s enigmatic telephone call from Paris had all served to put him off balance. It was far too late for second thoughts, but despite his excitement about what the Japanese were doing to themselves, he was frightened.

  “I want you to return to Portland.”

  “To do what?”

  “We’ll need photographs of Guerin’s installations. All of them, including their Gales Creek Research Facility. We’re going to need maps, floor plans if you can come up with them safely, and shift-change schedules, security measures, vendor deliveries … all of it: Do you understand what we’re after?”

  “Knowledge,” Zerkel said.

  “That’s right. The more we know about them, the easier it’ll be for us to strike if my first plan doesn’t work out.”

  “And get away,” Zerkel said. “Let’s not forget that part, Mr. R.”

  San Francisco held the key to unlocking the connection between the Japanese group targeting Guerin and the technical device that they’d designed to do the job. But San Francisco was also at the center of the search for the murderer of Dr. Jeanne Shepard. Mueller’s plan was to move with extreme caution, as far as this was possible traveling with Louis, by minimizing their exposure to the city. Louis needed information, and Mueller was going to get it for him as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

  They’d flown to Reno via Denver where Mueller rented a Ford Thunderbird. He traveled under the Michael Larsen identification Reid had supplied. Louis used papers his brother gave him under the name David Wolff. With his hair cut and bleached, glasses perched on the end of his nose, and a sport coat and properly knotted tie, Zerkel was a new man—unrecognizable. Mueller could almost forget the man’s eccentricities. On the flight west, and then the two-hundred-mile drive up to San Francisco, Zerkel was mostly silent, either dozing or watching out the window or reading the more than a dozen magazines and newsletters he’d brought along.

  Mueller took Interstate 880 into Oakland, exiting a few blocks from the Convention Center, and drove back to a Holiday Inn near the airport. He rented one of the suites for seven days, paying for it with a Michael Larsen Visa card. The hotel was exactly what he wanted: plastic, modern, indifferent, thoroughly American, and therefore anonymous. They were a pair of businessmen from out of town who enjoyed their privacy in a bit of modest luxury. No one paid them the slightest attention.

  “We’re about fifteen miles from the Alameda office,” Zerkel told Mueller when they got up to their room.

  “When can
you get into the computer?”

  “Soon as I’m set up. But I’m going to have to take it slow. There’ll be alarms now.”

  “Alarms?”

  Zerkel looked up, an odd, resigned expression on his face. “Yeah.” He snatched a copy of Newsweek from his briefcase and tossed it over. “Page thirty-eight,” he said, and he turned back to his laptop computer, his fingers flying over the keyboard.

  The article about Dr. Jeanne Shepard’s brutal rape and murder was included in a series of brief news clips under the heading “The Nation.” Police were searching for Louis Zerkel, who was described as a troubled computer genius. Photographs of Dr. Shepard and Zerkel ran side by side.

  “The doctor’s elimination was necessary,” Mueller said indifferently. It didn’t make much difference to him. If Zerkel continued to work out, he would live. If he did not, his body would be found in the morning.

  “You have my cooperation, Herr Mueller,” Zerkel said. “But you are crude. Killing me won’t be quite so easy, you know. What do you think about that?”

  “Nobody has any intention of killing you. We need your services.”

  “Yes, you do. Even more than you think.”

  “You have a built-in safeguard somewhere?”

  Zerkel smiled. “Of course. Don’t you?” Zerkel went back to his computer.

  Mueller wasn’t surprised, though he supposed he should warn Reid. But whatever Zerkel had set up could only harm the others. They had everything to lose, whereas he had nothing. He could contemplate his own death with almost as much indifference as he could another’s. That fatalism had always been his main strength, which, combined with his tradecraft, made him very good.

  If this project could be taken to a successful conclusion, and if Reid made good on his promise, then retirement was possible, perhaps in the South Pacific. If not, he would see just how far it could play. The thought of many airplanes, each carrying dozens, perhaps hundreds of innocent passengers going down on the same day stirred the edge of his emotions with an erotic promise.