“Nobody’s fired any shots yet, I hope.”
“No. But Mike is blocking the entrance to the strait, and the Samisho is on the way up.”
They went down into the pit together where Seventh played its war games, and where search-and-rescue operations were conducted. Byrne had brought in some of his staffers, and by the looks on their faces they were dug in for the duration. The activity was centered on the area south of the Japanese rocket-launching facility on Tanegashima Island. Sensitive waters. But nothing on the display indicated that the MSDF or the Japanese Air Self Defense Force was involved in the unfolding drama. That didn’t make sense to Ryland. If somebody were screwing around off Florida’s Cape Kennedy, the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard would sure as hell be interested.
“Get me Hanrahan on the phone,” Ryland said. He took off his coat and traded it to one of the ratings for a cup of strong, black coffee. Ships at sea ran on nuclear fuel or bunker oil. Admirals ran on coffee.
A half-minute later Byrne handed him the phone.
“Mike, this is Al Ryland. How’s it looking down there?”
“Admiral, you know that we’ve been following Chrysanthemum, and now it looks as if she wants to get through the strait. I’m blocking the deep-water passage, and she’s on the way up.”
“Has she flooded her tubes?”
“We’ve been pinging her continuously to let her know what we’re doing, but my chief sonarman thinks he might have heard flooding noises. Hard to tell for certain, sir.”
“If you are fired upon, you can defend yourself, Mike. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In the meantime I’m going to see if I can get you some relief down there. But Mike, whatever happens I want you to stick with that sub until you’re told otherwise.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
Ryland looked at the situation board. It just didn’t make sense. “Get me Vice Admiral Shimakaze. Tell him it’s urgent.”
“Yes, sir,” Byrne said. Ikuro Shimakaze was CINC of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force fleet.
Glen Zerkel stood on the floor of Prototype Assembly Hangar One at Guerin’s Gales Creek facility, his mouth open. He was hidden in the shadows beneath a gallery of offices that ran the width of the huge building. Filling the vast hangar was the most fantastic airplane he’d ever seen. The word America was painted on her fuselage, and the American flag appeared on both of her two vertical stabilizers that towered a hundred feet off the floor. She was brightly lit by dozens of spotlights from above and below and from all sides. Scaffolding rose around both swept-back wings, where the cowlings had been removed from her engines. Even sitting like that, parts of her missing, parts of her imprisoned inside cages, the hypersonic airliner looked as if she were flying. As if she were climbing straight up into a blue-black sky, stars faintly visible even though it was bright daylight. She was Star Trek’s Enterprise, only more sexy and fantastic because she was real.
Getting into Guerin’s facilities, including this one, had been easy. The company was so vast that tight security was nearly impossible to maintain. It was simply too expensive. The Pantex nuclear assembly plant in Texas, for instance, was much smaller yet spent millions each year on security. Zerkel had penetrated that facility’s outer perimeter several years ago but had to get out when he’d stupidly tripped an alarm. This place was much easier. He just didn’t want to get careless. Too much was at stake. If he screwed it up he had no doubt that Mueller would kill him.
Zerkel took several photographs of the fantastic airplane. He wanted to show his brother what they were working on out here. He’d already seen Guerin’s warehousing and parts distribution system, which included a vast depot that accommodated incoming shipments to Guerin by air, by truck, by rail, and even by sea. Tomorrow he would tackle Guerin’s headquarters and main engineering facility at Portland’s airport.
“Just who the hell are you?” someone demanded from behind him.
Zerkel pocketed his miniature camera and turned around calmly, although his heart was hammering wildly. He’d been in situations like this one before. Panic and you got busted. The guard was a man in his late forties or early fifties. He was armed with a pistol, but he’d not drawn it.
“I had to come down and sneak a look,” Zerkel said. He turned back to the airplane. “She’s beautiful.”
“She sure is something,” the guard agreed. “Now don’t tell me that you left your badge upstairs. Let me see some ID.”
“I got my wallet,” Zerkel said, turning back.
The guard came within arm’s reach. “You engineers are all alike …”
Zerkel grabbed the man’s jacket front in both hands and yanked him sharply forward, driving his forehead into the guard’s forehead. The man went limp, and Zerkel eased him to the floor.
It was bad luck. Zerkel hesitated for a second or two before he stomped on the guard’s throat with the heel of his shoe, crushing the man’s windpipe. He stomped a second time and then a third, the guard’s face puffing up and turning purple. After a few moments the guard’s body went completely limp. He was dead.
Bad luck, Zerkel told himself. The guard had seen his face.
Karl Schey showed up at the Sterling, Virginia, farmhouse around 10:00 P.M. He’d been picked up from his New York hotel and driven up to the airport at Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he’d been flown by private plane to Washington’s National Airport. A Lamplighter staffer picked him up and drove him out.
“I approve of the precautions,” he told Reid in the stair hall.
Mueller watched from the darkness in the dining room as the two men embraced.
“You look tired, my old friend,” Reid said. “The journey must have been long. I assume you took care not to be followed.”
“Yes, I am tired. And no, I was not followed. Of that you can rest assured, Edward. But what about you and your fantastic plans? Did Bruno arrive? Have you put him to work?”
“Yes, to your last two questions. And as for my fantastic plans, well, I’m glad that you’re here to share them with me, Karl. We’ll talk. But would you like to go up to your room to rest? We can talk in the morning.”
“I’m too keyed up to sleep now. Perhaps I can have a glass of cognac and we can sit by the fire. It’s good to be here.”
Reid hung the older man’s coat in the hall closet, and they went into the living room where he poured them both a drink. Once they were seated in front of the fireplace, their backs to the door, Mueller slipped out of the dining room and silently searched Schey’s coat and his leather bag at the foot of the stairs. There were no weapons, only clothing, toiletries, and an envelope containing several thousand American dollars. If he’d left Germany for good, he’d left light and apparently in a hurry. A man like Schey, however, would certainly have secure access to a considerable amount of money. Enough so that no matter what happened, he could insulate himself from arrest.
Mueller turned and looked up. Louis Zerkel stood at the head of the stairs watching him. He held a batch of computer printouts, and he’d evidently been on his way down to talk to Reid about something. Mueller waved him back. The younger man stood his ground, but finally he turned and disappeared down the hall.
Reid and Schey were talking in low tones when Mueller went to the door. He could just make out what they were saying, but if there was any desperation in Schey’s sudden appearance here it was not evident in his voice. He was the Karl Schey that Mueller had always known: strong, certain, and definitely in control.
“It is an ambitious undertaking, my friend,” he said. “But will it work, and will you be able to extricate yourself when the time comes?”
“Nothing is foolproof, but just now the Japanese seem to be cooperating with us, and I do have some capable men working for me.”
“Bruno is unstable, you know. But he can be useful this one last time. Never again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Interpol knows his name and face, and
it’s possible they know or suspect that he is here in the United States. Which means the FBI has been alerted. Once you are finished with him I would suggest that he be eliminated.”
“Thank you for the suggestion.”
“We have worked well together for a great many years,” Schey said conversationally. “In all that time I have found you to be an engaging, enterprising man. Our little projects have always been interesting, and certainly profitable for both of us.”
“Beginning with those pistols.”
Schey chuckled, the sound dry in his throat. “Yes, the Lugers. They wound up in Moscow, you know. The Russians paid very well. No telling how many pompous old men showed their subordinates a Luger and told how the pistol was taken from an unwilling Nazi in the Great Patriotic War.”
“I think you sold them for more than a hundred dollars each.”
Again Schey chuckled. “Of course. I did all the work, took all the risks.”
“The Stasi would have bailed you out had you been caught,” Reid said evenly.
Schey hesitated for a beat. “How long have you known?” he asked cautiously.
“I’ve suspected for a long time that you were a double agent. Bruno confirmed it for me.”
“Is he here now?”
“I don’t know exactly where he is, Karl. He is a difficult man to control. He was concerned that you were in some sort of trouble in Germany, so you were coming here to escape. You’ve left much behind.”
“Is that why you went to such extraordinary lengths to cover my tracks to this place?”
“Yes, it was,” Reid admitted. “Are you in trouble in Europe? Are the police searching for you?”
“No one is looking for me, Edward. I swear it. But if they were this would be the last place I would come. At this moment I would be enjoying the summer sun on a certain island where I am well known—by another name of course—and well respected.”
Reid looked up as Mueller silently entered the living room and came up behind Schey.
“Maybe you should have gone to your island after all, Karl.”
Schey, sensing at the last moment that he might be in mortal danger, started to turn around, but he was too late. Mueller clamped his powerful hands around the old man’s throat and squeezed. Schey came half up out of the chair, thrashing and fighting with every ounce of his strength, but it was no use, and in under a minute and a half he was unconscious, and four minutes later his heart stopped.
“You can bury his body in the garbage pit behind the barn,” Reid said, shakily.
Louis Zerkel stood in the relative darkness of the stair hall. He’d seen and heard everything, and whatever lingering doubts he might have had about Reid’s plans for him and his brother were dispelled. At the end everyone would be eliminated except for Reid.
He backed away, and stopped at the foot of the stairs as he tried to catch his breath, slow his heart. Glen would have to be warned. In the past days working together he had come to appreciate his brother. It was blood. Even though they had different mothers, they shared their father’s genes.
There was no safe way for them to get out of this project now, he told himself as he went silently up the stairs. But there could be a way for them to come out on top. To profit by it, while at the same time saving their own lives.
For the first time in many years, he felt as if he did not need Dr. Shepard. He was free.
“What do you think about that?” he muttered.
SIXTEEN
Reid knew that his rationalizing was over. He could put the murders of hundreds or thousands of people in the airliners he would cause to crash in a compartment of his mind where his ideals lived. It was a war he was waging. In war a lot of people got killed. But in war grand issues were at the center of the struggle. Freedom from oppression. The saving of a nation or a religion or a way of life. In this case the saving of the United States from the Japanese. He could also put the murders of Tallerico and Dr. Shepard at the back of his mind because he never really knew either of them. In any event they had been soldiers as well. But the killing of Karl Schey was completely different. He had known and worked with the man for more than fifty years. In a strange way he had trusted the German through all those years, because Schey had it within his power to bring Reid’s career crashing down. Now the man was dead, and his body would be buried here. There was no way of rationalizing himself out of that simple fact.
“I’ll take his body out now,” Mueller said. “You can bring his coat and overnight bag.”
“No.” Reid stood by the fireplace, looking at Schey’s body.
“Why not?”
“We go back too many years together, Karl and I.”
“Alive he would have created problems for us. It is better that he is dead. Do you see this?”
Reid nodded. “He should have stayed in Germany, or gone to his southern island to enjoy his retirement. He could have died at peace.”
“Do not grieve for this one, Reid. In his long, distinguished service, he was the direct cause of a great many deaths.”
“So were you.”
Mueller smiled faintly. “It’s what I do. What he did.”
“Get rid of his body,” Reid ordered. “Bury it deep.”
“I’ll take care of it. But check with the FBI or Interpol. If he was traced here to this country, then we will have to take measures to further mask his coming to this house.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Reid said.
Mueller gathered up the old man’s body as if it were nothing more than a bundle of clothes. “I told you that if I were to be cornered I would take out a lot of people. You included. I’m here to do a job for you. See that you hold up your end of the operation.”
Reid said nothing. He felt flushed.
“In the meantime, our strange friend upstairs has something for you, I think. See what he wants.”
Reid waited until Mueller was gone and then went upstairs. Zerkel was seated at one of the computer terminals, his fingers flying over the keys, a dense stream of binary figures scrolling in broad columns up the orange-lit screen.
“Do you have something to tell me, Louis?” Reid asked from the doorway.
Zerkel looked up guiltily, then plucked a few sheets of computer printout from the table. “I need these parts for the repeaters.”
“Anything difficult?” Reid asked, taking the sheets.
“No,” Zerkel said. He typed something else, looked up again at Reid, this time with a sly grin, and hit ENTER, then the print command. The big laser printer began spewing out copy.
Reid watched. Something about Zerkel was different, disturbing. “Is it something more for me?”
“As soon as it finishes printing out,” Zerkel said. He nodded toward the door. “Is Bruno burying your friend’s body?”
Reid was taken aback. “You saw …”
“And heard everything.”
“What have you done, you fool?” Reid demanded. He went to the laser printer and pulled the first section of printout from the tray. “What is this?”
“Insurance,” Zerkel said. “Names, dates, places, murders, plans … everything.”
Reid looked up hardly believing what he was reading, what he was being told.
“All of it is buried now inside the FBI’s computerized fingerprint records. It’ll pop up in the clear all over the place unless I feed it a code word every twelve hours.” Zerkel smiled smugly. “What do you think about that?”
“Report tubes one, two, three, and four are flooded,” the growler in the Samisho’s attack center rattled.
“Confirm visually,” Minori ordered.
A few moments later the forward torpedo room watch officer came back. “Visuals of one, two, three, and four confirm weapons in place and tubes flooded.”
Captain Kiyoda stood at the periscope ready to raise it the moment they came to depth. He looked across at his weapons control officer, Lieutenant Takasaki. “No mistakes, Shuichiyo. Only on my orders will you open all
four doors. And you will do it smartly.”
“Hai, kan-cho.”
“And only on my orders will there be a weapons launch. Is that clear?”
“Hai,” Takasaki replied crisply.
Minori was bringing the boat up slowly, so as not to spook the captain of the American destroyer into doing something rash. If the confrontation were going to come here—which Kiyoda did not think it would—then so be it. But he preferred to push the Americans a little farther if possible. Into the East China Sea, and hopefully to within spitting distance of Okinawa.
After the destroyer was sent to the bottom there would be other American sub-hunters in the vicinity, which would make for interesting targets.
Kiyoda closed his eyes for a moment, and a billion fireflies fluttered in front of him. He had met with Kamiya-san several years ago at a house in the peaceful mountains outside Tokyo. They’d sat on tatamis on the veranda listening to the gurgle of water and the tinkling of a windchime. It was not Kamiya’s house, but, as the old man explained, it was an oasis of peace and hope in a world that had somehow gone terribly mad.
It was then that Kamiya-san had assigned Captain Kiyoda a sensei to begin his instructions. Since then Kiyoda had barely been able to contain himself waiting for this day. One year ago the fireflies had come to him, and at first he had been disturbed. But his sensei explained that what Kiyoda was seeing was in fact a window into the universe. Fireflies or stars, they were of no consequence except that they represented the correct path. They were, in effect, guiding lights.
Kiyoda opened his eyes. His XO was looking at him.
“Our depth is twenty meters, kan-cho.”
“Up periscope,” Kiyoda ordered. “Stand by weapons control.”
“Hai,” Takasaki responded eagerly.
High Flight Page 36