High Flight

by David Hagberg

  “I know what that fool has said,” Kamiya interrupted. “But I will ask you again, Deputy Director General, you need time for what? For this so-called free trade nonsense to be put into effect? For the so-called economic summit next month? Is that what you fools honestly expect me to help you with?”

  Ota was a diminutive man with sharp features, obsidian eyes, and very thick black hair. He was not unlike many Japanese men. Like rabbits, Kamiya thought. The spirit had been eroded in men such as Ota. No bushido here.

  “We will uncover the connection between you and the group that calls itself Rising Sun, be assured of that, Kamiya-san.”

  “That is not possible, because no connection exists.”

  “Just as we will uncover your direct links with MITI, which has allowed you to use the ministry as your personal tool of aggression.”

  “Get to the point, you fool.”

  Ota took a couple of steps closer. “And we shall ultimately discover the true meaning of Morning Star, and stop it before the foul stench of your corruption spreads contagiously out of control.”

  Kamiya made a supreme effort to keep his emotions in check, to keep his body expression loose, and his voice even. “If there were such a thing as Morning Star, and if I were in some way knowledgeable of it or connected with it you would not leave this room alive, Ota-san.”

  The Deputy Director General was taken aback. “What is this?”

  “Let us talk about treason, Ota-san. Fifty years of treason, and I will tell you about my vision for Nippon.”

  FBI Director John Harding met CIA Director Roland Murphy in the corridor outside the White House cabinet room a few minutes before 9:00 A.M. Justice’s breakfast meeting with the President had run over, and Murphy had shown up early for his daily brief.

  “Glad you’re here, General, if you have a moment I’d like a word with you,” Harding said.

  “I was just on my way in, but it’ll be a few minutes before he’s ready for me,” Murphy agreed. They went down the corridor and sat on a padded bench against the wall. A number of people nodded their greetings in passing.

  “How has the world treated us overnight, Roland? Are you going to give the President heartburn?”

  “A few hot spots. But nothing like the old days. How about your shop? Anything new?”

  “Frankly we’re in the middle of an investigation that seems to be spreading all over the place. My people tell me it might involve one of your former field officers. Could be coincidental, but his name does keep turning up.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “Ken Wood seems to think so. And it might tie into a request that the French made to us initially through your Paris Station.”

  Murphy gave him a hard look. “This have anything to do with Guerin Airplane Company and Kirk McGarvey?”

  “Yes, it does, General. But we’ve temporarily lost track of him in Portland. We’d like some help with his background.”

  Steve Nichols came down the hall. “The President will see you now, General.”

  “On my way,” Murphy said, getting up. “I’ll send a courier over with McGarvey’s file later this morning,” he told Harding. “Has this anything to do even remotely with Japan?”

  Harding looked up at the DCI. “There’s nothing remote about the connection.”

  “I see,” Murphy replied heavily. “I believe I will be giving the President heartburn after all.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Newton Kilbourne grudgingly admitted that his sister was holed up at his house in Grosse Pointe Shores, an exclusive Detroit suburb on Lake St. Clair. But he cautioned McGarvey against trying to see her. He didn’t want her to get hurt again. And riding over from the airport McGarvey couldn’t blame the man for trying to protect her. They had nobody except each other; he was the older brother, and she was sometimes impulsive and headstrong.

  “She asked about you,” Kilbourne had said bleakly. “When I told her that you would be heading for Tokyo, she said ‘good,’ like she meant something. Like she was trying to tell me something without saying it. Good. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I have an idea,” McGarvey told him. “Will she remain in Detroit? Can you make her stay put?”

  “I don’t think so. She said she wanted to talk to you. I told her you were already gone, but she called me a liar. Told me to get a message to you.” Kilbourne shook his head. “Christ, what a mess. I tried to call back, but she won’t answer the goddamned phone.”

  “Is she gone already?”

  “She’s still there. I hired a detective agency to watch over her. But if she wants to hop a plane and return to Washington, there’s nothing I can do to stop her. What’s going on?” Kilbourne demanded dangerously.

  “Call the detective agency and tell them I’ll be showing up.”

  McGarvey had tried to telephone her from the Northwest flight he’d taken, and again from Detroit Metro without luck. Despite her brother’s assurances that the detective agency watching her was among the best in Detroit, he worried that something had gone wrong. A couple of civilians were no match for a team of trained, dedicated professionals. If someone wanted to get to Dominique it would happen.

  Kilbourne maintained his Grosse Pointe house because he still had a lot of ties there, and because he would retire on the lake shore. It was home to him and to Dominique.

  Pulling up at the gate McGarvey could pick out the house at the end of a long, curving driveway through thick trees, many of them evergreens. All the houses were near the water’s edge on lots of an acre or more and were owned by automobile executives. The country club was a half-mile away, and even though it was midwinter, the streets and sidewalks were devoid of snow and looked freshly scrubbed.

  A plain blue Dodge van was parked across the street. A tall man in a dark leather jacket got out of the van and came across the street as McGarvey climbed out of the cab.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” the man said. He had the cynical expression of a cop or ex-cop.

  The driver of the van rolled down his window and watched them. His left arm and hand were in view, but his right was not. He was probably holding a gun. So far as it went they seemed to know what they were doing.

  “You’re expecting me,” McGarvey said.

  “Depends on who you are.”

  “Kirk McGarvey.”

  “Let’s see some ID.”

  McGarvey reached for his wallet, and the detective’s hand went into his jacket. “I’m unarmed.”

  “Easy.”

  McGarvey pulled out his wallet and flipped it open for the detective to see. The cabby watched them nervously.

  “Miss Kilbourne is expecting you.”

  “She knows you’re down here?” McGarvey asked. “You’ve talked with her?”

  “She made us the second day. Came down and said if we didn’t get in her way, she wouldn’t get in ours.”

  “She doesn’t answer her phone.”

  “No.”

  “She get many calls?”

  “A few.”

  “I’d like to have a list of the backtraces,” McGarvey said. “In the meantime do I climb over the fence?”

  “Squawk her on the intercom. She’ll let you in. Will you be staying long?”

  “I have a flight at six.”

  “I’ll have that list for you by then.”

  McGarvey buzzed the intercom and identified himself. Dominique didn’t answer, but after a second the gate swung open and McGarvey took the cab up to the house.

  “You a cop or something?” the cabby asked.

  “Or something,” McGarvey replied. “Can you come back for me at 4:30?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  The front door was not locked, and Dominique, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, was waiting for him in the large stair hall. Her hair was cut boyishly short, and she wore very little makeup.

  “Your brother is worried about you,” McGarvey said. “How are you?”

 
“Newton said you were going to Tokyo. Yamagata went for your proposal?”

  “It looks like it. Have you talked to anyone else since you left Washington?”

  “My office. There were some things that had to be dealt with. But they won’t tell anyone where I am because they don’t know.”

  “There’ve been a number of calls here.”

  “Other than you, my brother, and my watchdogs, nobody knows I’m here.”

  “The calls are being traced. If I want to talk to you, I’ll ring three times, hang up, and immediately call again. Have you got that?”

  She nodded.

  “If I want you to get out of here, I’ll ring once, hang up and immediately call again letting it ring only once again. If that happens grab your coat and leave immediately. Go to your brother in Portland.”

  “You’re expecting trouble?”

  “I want you to be ready for it.”

  She wet her lips. “When are you leaving for Tokyo?”

  “In a couple of hours.”

  “Are you flying Guerin equipment?”

  “Commercial.”

  “JAL?”

  “No,” McGarvey said.

  The early afternoon winter light streaming through the cut-glass windows flanking the door and down from the clerestory windows above the landing at the head of the stairs softened the planes and angles of her face. For a brief moment she looked like an innocent, the kind of person totally free of guilt whom McGarvey, in his heart-of-hearts, did not believe existed. It was a fault of his own, a personality defect that did not allow him to see only the good in a person. Lurking around every shadowy corner something hurtful was waiting to pounce. Some word or deed that when uttered or accomplished would destroy him. Nor could he forget. In some ways that was an even greater fault—his inability to forget. He remembered every wrong that had ever been done to him, and every wrong he’d committed. He remembered every harsh word, every slur, every slap in the face, and every death that he had caused either directly or indirectly. God knows the number was legion, balanced only by the one life he had created.

  He remembered that as a boy he’d looked up to his parents with a love that bordered on blind adoration. His father was everything that a man should or could be: kind, gentle, intelligent, wise, all-knowing, all-seeing, patient, loving, caring. His mother was the epitome of womanhood: beautiful, strong, loving, intelligent, and caring, just like her husband, only in a different way, in a nurturing way.

  When their mangled bodies were pried out of the wreckage of their automobile, McGarvey thought his grasp on the real world, on anything and everything that was good and right, had slipped away and he might never regain it. Especially when the investigating officers thought for a short while that the car might have been tampered with to make it crash. But only afterward, after he’d buried them, and after he’d done his eldest-son duty of straightening out their final affairs did he know for certain that he would never regain his grasp of what was good. At that moment, looking over what he’d inadvertently discovered about his parents and understanding its full meaning, he knew that he would always be able to see the end of his life. He was headed for death, as everyone was, only he would never have the slightest illusion about his own mortality.

  It was damned cold being that alone, and he didn’t know if he could change. He just knew, looking at Dominique, that for the first time in a long while he wanted to try.

  “It’s starting, isn’t it?”

  “Soon.”

  “I read the newspapers,” she said impatiently. “Newton didn’t say anything about the murder at Gales Creek. What’d they want?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Was it the Japanese?”

  “We just don’t know, Dominique.”

  Color had come to her cheeks and forehead. “At first I thought David was crazy or desperate for dealing with you. But I was wrong.”

  “I want to save lives.”

  “You’re a killer,” she said simply. “It’s what you do, and sometimes you’re necessary. I can see that now.”

  She had pulled out his heart, but he couldn’t blame her. Not really. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he started to turn away.

  “Look at this place, look at me. It’s a mausoleum, and I’m in hiding.”

  “You’ll be safe here for a little while longer.”

  “I want to go back to my office in Washington. There are people who depend on me.”

  “You will, I promise you.”

  She shook her head. “Now.”

  “A few days, maybe. Dominique, listen to me.”

  “I hate you,” she said softly.

  “Do you want to go to your brother?”

  She raised her eyes and looked at him. She was torn by emotion, but beyond that her face was unreadable to McGarvey. She was in pain, and he didn’t know what to do to help her.

  “Dominique, I’ll end it as soon as I can.”

  “Go, then. Do it,” she said. “And leave me alone.”

  Marine Lieutenant Colonel Robert Blisk was waiting on the ramp at Camp Foster as Captain Don Moody climbed down from the Gulfstream VC-10 on which he’d hitched a ride from Yokosuka. The weather over Okinawa was decidedly better than over the Japanese main island. The sun was shining, and Moody was glad of it.

  “I see that you’ve finally wised up and started to moonlight as a cabby.”

  “Can’t make ends meet on what the Corps pays me.”

  “Which is a hell of a lot more than you’re worth.”

  Blisk chuckled as they got into his HumVee and headed to headquarters on the other side of the base. As chief of First Marine Air Wing Intelligence on Okinawa he did the same thing for First Wing that Moody did for Seventh Fleet. They’d crossed paths a number of times in their careers and had developed a solid working relationship. They trusted each other’s judgment.

  “How’s life been treating you down here, Bob? You’re getting set to rotate back home, aren’t you?”

  “We’ll be back in D.C. in six months. But Keiri’s not overly excited about the move. She’s in Nagasaki now with her mother, and every damned time she goes they try to talk her into staying.”

  Moody smiled. “Twenty years and they’re still working on her? Tenacious people.”

  “Yes, they are,” Blisk said, glancing at Moody. “You’ve got your hands full at Yokosuka.”

  “I think the writing’s on the wall, and everybody can see it, but nobody’s saying much. We’ve got a couple more years here before we’re eased out.”

  “Subic Bay sure as hell isn’t making anybody happy.”

  “It’s their ocean, Bob. Hell, they’re the allies now, and it’s up to us to do everything possible to help them. We owe them, remember?”

  “You ought to see Keiri’s mother when she does her thing. Pulls off her wig so everyone can see her bald head and wrings her hands and cries about cancer and liver damage and genetic imbalances. Problem is, everyone sympathizes with her even though she was seventy-five miles away from Nagasaki when we dropped the bomb on them.”

  “And that was over fifty years ago. Like I say, they’re a tenacious people.”

  Of the 34,000 U.S. personnel stationed on Okinawa, two-thirds of them were Marines. Anything happened on the island, Blisk knew about it. Even Air Force Intelligence on adjacent Kadena Air Force Base fed into Blisk’s operation. The usual division of labor made no sense out here.

  “There’s a potentially no-win situation heading your way, and Al Ryland asked me to come down to fill you in,” Moody said when they reached Blisk’s office.

  “You’re talking about the MSDF submarine that bulled its way through the Takara Strait.”

  “Mike Hanrahan’s a good man, but there wasn’t much he could have done, short of taking a shot.”

  A sergeant came in with coffee, and Blisk held off making a comment until the aide was gone and the door closed.

  “It’s that bad?”

  “The sub is the Samisho,
same one that sank the Russian frigate up north. Nobody at the MSDF is talking to us, so Ryland has bounced it back to Washington. In the meantime, Hanrahan is going to stick with it as long as he can.”

  “The Samisho is heading this way?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “At the risk of sounding flippant, so what? It’s their ocean, as you say, Okinawa belongs to them, and I’m a ground-pounder, not a sub-hunter. Seems to me if you force that sub-driver into a corner he’ll shoot.”

  “Technically speaking, we’re still a force of occupation.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Moody had to smile. “That’s a good word, Bob. Use it all the time myself. But there’s more to the situation than we’re publicizing. When’s the last time you had this place swept?”

  “We’re clean. And there are no Japanese nationals on this floor, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I do,” Moody said. He took a half-dozen large, oddly tinted photographs from his briefcase and handed them to Blisk. “The first five are computer-enhanced night shots courtesy of the National Reconnaissance Office. They came through this morning. Atsugi, Iwakuni, Komatsujima, Shimofusa, and Hachinowe. All of them naval air installations.”

  “Tokyo doesn’t know we have this capability?”

  “We don’t think so. Only reason I got these is because of a friend.”

  Blisk studied the first photographs. “If I didn’t know better I’d say they were starting to mobilize and trying to keep it under wraps. This come out of the blue, or did you go fishing?”

  “I had a hunch,” Moody said. “The sixth shot is of the Air Self Defense Force base on Tanegashima. They’re doing the same thing.”

  Blisk looked at the last photograph. “Readiness drills. They do it all the time.”

  “This one wasn’t published.”

  “We weren’t invited to the show, and someone’s getting nervous.”

  “The Samisho’s skipper was under arrest pending an investigation into the incident in the Tatar Strait. MSDF was talking a charge of treason, but they never locked him up. Had him under house arrest, and somehow he managed to get to his fully provisioned, fully armed, and fully crewed boat, which had been under continuous guard, and drive out of the harbor. Nobody tried to stop him. The MSDF didn’t scramble its sub-hunters, nor were we notified. And that always happens, Bob. The MSDF moves a ship, and we get the message. SOP. Standard Operating Procedure.”