Phoenix Rising

by Nance, John J. ;

  The sound of the man’s head hitting the concrete below was sickening. Brian climbed down the ladder on the outside of the truck and rushed to the body. The shocked caterers called for an ambulance. He found no pulse. The cranial damage was obviously extensive. Brian unzipped the top of the man’s coveralls, revealing, as he expected, the shirt and tie he had seen him wearing earlier. As sirens approached, he located the man’s billfold and looked inside. He found a Washington driver’s license with the saboteur’s picture, except that in the picture he had a mustache. His name was listed as Bart A. Richardson.

  Several Pan Am mechanics had run to the scene. Brian turned to one of them now, his captain’s uniform commanding attention.

  “We’ve got a bomb on board, in the rear galley area! Clear the airplane immediately and call the bomb squad. Have them report to me!”

  The mechanic nodded and pulled out his hand-held radio to relay the information as the paramedics arrived and began checking the body for vital signs. Brian continued to search through the man’s suitcoat pockets for any additional clues. He was about to give up when his fingers contacted a plastic bag in one of the pockets. He removed it and found himself staring at a small piece of molded latex that was rounded and slightly ridged. At first it looked like a scrap, until he pulled it from the clear plastic bag and examined the rounded side of it, finding a perfect replica of a single fingerprint.

  Brian slipped it in his pocket and stood up. He used his cellular phone to call Loren Miller, the FBI agent in Seattle. Brian hurriedly described the situation in New York and the name of the dead man before getting to the reason for his call.

  “Loren, it’s very important that the FBI sit on New York authorities not to release any information on this situation, the man, his alleged name, or the incident. Trust me, but don’t ask me why yet. I’ll be in late tonight, and I’d like you to meet me at the airport.”

  “I can’t ask why?” Miller replied with a chuckle.

  “No. I’ll tell you tonight. I’ll call you back with the time of the inbound flight. Trust me, Loren. This is important.”

  “You got it, Captain.”

  Monday, March 27, 3:30 P.M.

  New York City

  The receptionist at Jamison, Reed, Owen, and Phillips wasn’t sure what to make of the disheveled man in the stained and dirty gray overcoat looming over her desk. His name had a familiar ring to it, so she called Bill Phillips on the intercom.

  Phillips shot out of his chair. “Jacob Voorster is here?”

  Phillips appeared within seconds, pumping Voorster’s hand and assuring him he had found the right place at last. Jacob told him of escaping the tunnel and finding a taxi several blocks west of the terminal.

  “Those men are still looking for me,” he said.

  “They’re both dead, Mr. Voorster.” Phillips filled him in as he walked him back to his office.

  Elizabeth’s cellular phone suddenly rang in the middle of Grand Central. She quickly relayed the news to Creighton that Jacob Voorster—and his briefcase—had surfaced. Creighton pointed out that they had less than ninety minutes to halt the seizure of Pan Am aircraft worldwide, including Ship 609, the round-the-world inaugural 747 currently being swarmed over by a bomb squad at Kennedy Airport.

  Elizabeth and Creighton dashed by cab to Phillips’s office, while Bill Phillips requested a hearing before the three-judge panel at 4:15 P.M. Other members of his firm now labored to prepare new court orders for Judge Hayes to sign. When they arrived at Phillips’s office, they were quickly filled in after a brief introduction of Jacob Voorster. Jack Rawly gave them a capsule account of how the hearing would be handled.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. Intertrust, the holder of the revolving loan, is still prevented from declaring a default because Judge Hayes’s temporary restraining order is still in effect. Intertrust took us to court this morning to kill the TRO and, as you know, we were given until five P.M. to find new evidence, or the appeals court would sweep the TRO away. Thanks to our new-found best friend here, Jacob Voorster, we now have that new evidence. I expect the appeals court to deny Intertrust’s motion. The problem is, the airplanes themselves are owned by Empire Leasing, not by Intertrust. To stop them from any cowboyish repossessions, we need Judge Hayes to slap an additional TRO on them. Judge Hayes has agreed by phone to do this for us immediately, but we have a major problem. Someone in authority is going to have to deliver the order in person at the gate at Kennedy while we do the appeals hearing. I don’t see how anyone can get out there in time.”

  “You can’t fax the court order?”

  Jack Rawly had a disgusted look on his face. “Empire Leasing was so convinced they’d have the right to seize our 747 at five-oh-one P.M. that they briefed their man out at Kennedy to take no phone calls or faxes. We can’t even communicate with him. It’s obvious he’s been programmed to think the formal notice of default is going to take effect automatically. He plans to hand our station manager the repossession papers at that precise moment, and refuse any further access to the aircraft.”

  “Good heavens, Jack, is that the case everywhere Pan Am has airplanes?” Creighton asked.

  “No. Everywhere else, the Empire representatives seem to be agreeing that they won’t attempt any repossessions unless they get positive word the TRO has been thrown out—which it won’t be.”

  “But at Kennedy—” Creighton continued.

  “Well, at Kennedy,” Jack replied, “the jerk representing Empire apparently has orders to disrupt the inaugural ceremony any way he can.”

  “Let’s call the sheriff,” Elizabeth said.

  “We already have. That’s who I was talking to, the Queens County Sheriff—or one of his deputies. Unless we place a court order in his hands before five-oh-one P.M. ordering Empire to stand down, the sheriff will be helping Empire take the plane and destroy the inaugural. If that happens, all the public relations and advertising investment in this round-the-world kickoff—three months and fifteen million in expenses—will have been wasted. That flight has to go on schedule and in front of the cameras, or the damage to public confidence will probably be irrecoverable.”

  Elizabeth sighed, got up, and headed for the phone on an adjacent desk.

  “I’ve got an idea,” she said. “Give me a second.”

  A limousine had been ordered, and the receptionist reported that it was standing by now in front of the building. Within two minutes, Elizabeth was back with a strained smile.

  “Okay. Creighton, you’ll need to be at the hearing. But I don’t have to be there, so I guess I’m elected to be the ‘person in authority’ to deliver the TRO. My former partner, Eric Knox, is going to fly me out in his helicopter.”

  “To Kennedy?” Creighton asked. “On this short notice?”

  “His chopper’s at the Wall Street Heliport, and he’s already in motion. If you knew Eric, you’d know this isn’t unusual. He loves last-minute challenges.”

  Jack Rawly looked greatly relieved. “That’s great! I had no idea how we were going to make it.”

  They gathered Jacob and began moving to the elevator rapidly as Elizabeth turned to Jack Rawly. “Are the press already there?”

  “They’re hovering like vultures, though they’re invited vultures. I talked with Ralph Basanji earlier. We expected good local and national coverage, but with all that’s been happening, he’s gambled big-time. This five-o’clock deadline will be played out before a live CNN audience. Several of the other networks may be there, too.”

  Monday, March 27, 4:15 P.M.

  Foley Square, Manhattan

  Judge Walter Hayes had been monitoring the progress of events closely. He had listened carefully to Jack Rawly’s update and request on the phone. He ushered the team in immediately, questioned Jacob Voorster for less than five minutes, and glanced over the report that had so disturbed Sol Moscowitz several hours earlier in the Pan Am Building.

  “I knew my faith in your conclusions was well placed, but this is over
kill. Where’s the order?”

  Jack Rawly slipped two court orders across the desk. One extended the TRO against a declaration of default by the revolving-loan lenders headed by Intertrust. The other ordered Empire Leasing not to repossess any Pan Am aircraft until the entire matter could be brought to a formal injunctive hearing.

  As the judge’s pen scratched along the signature line and a clerk stood by to emboss it with the court seal, Jacob Voorster’s voice reached their ears.

  “I left one thing out, sir.”

  Judge Hayes looked up. “Yes?”

  Jacob turned to Jack. “Mr.… Rawly, is it?”

  “Yes. Jack Rawly.”

  “Mr. Rawly here mentioned the name Empire Leasing just now. You may not be aware—I may not have mentioned this in all the confusion—but I know that company. It is owned by Bermuda Investments, Limited, which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of VZV. I didn’t realize they owned Pan Am’s aircraft. I just knew that we owned them, and that was a VZV secret, of course.”

  Judge Hayes shook his head and took a deep breath before looking at Jack again. “You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you, Counselor. Civil and criminal and multijurisdictional, I would think. You’ve got so many targets to sue, it boggles the mind. This is going to be a political thunderclap as well, if it turns out the motive of this Dutch company is what you think it is.”

  “Excuse me, Your Honor, I don’t understand,” Jacob said.

  Judge Hayes cocked his head and looked at Voorster.

  “What I was referring to is Mr. Rawly’s theory that your former employer has somehow secretly bought illicit majority interests in the big three airlines in North America, and manipulated their secretly controlled voting stock to decrease competition among them and produce ever higher profits. It’s what we call over here ‘combination in restraint of trade’—if, in fact, that’s what has happened.”

  “Oh, I assure you, Judge, that is exactly what’s happened,” Jacob said quietly and in a manner Judge Hayes couldn’t ignore. Hayes looked the Dutchman in the eye and studied his expression.

  “How can you be sure, Mr. Voorster?”

  Jacob Voorster reached out and gently placed the fingertips of his right hand on the judge’s desk as he looked down, and then back up at the judge.

  “Because, Your Honor, you are speaking with the architect of that plan. I spent the last five years putting it together very quietly from Amsterdam: setting up the intermediary corporations all over the world, transferring the money with great stealth from VZV to those holding corporations, and then arranging for them to buy the airline stock they were created to hold. Our lawyers found ways that were considered legal to circumvent the barriers against what we wanted to do. At the same time, others at VZV worked to hire board members who would serve our interests, without realizing in each case that the intermediary corporation they thought they were representing was owned in turn by a single, larger company overseas. It was never direct control in violation of U.S. laws, but it gave us effective control, and it was working. In a few years the profits would have been unbelievable—that is, if our managing director had not panicked and used criminal means to try to destroy a competitor.”

  The judge’s chambers were electrified by this admission, which fully explained why a corporation such as VZV would want this man dead. But the distinction between what he had done and what his managing director had done—although presented by Jacob Voorster as a contrast of right against wrong—staggered them all. There was no time to consider the implications. That would come later, as they tried to help him in return for the cornucopia of damning information he had brought.

  Judge Hayes broke the spell first. “I’m staggered, Mr. Voorster. But”—he turned to Elizabeth and inclined his head—“you’ve got a helicopter to catch, young lady.” The clerk had finished stamping copies of both orders, and handed them to Elizabeth. She thanked him and flashed a smile at everyone, her eyes locking for a moment on Creighton’s before she raced out the door.

  Eric was waiting when she reached the East Side Heliport at Thirty-fourth Street, by the East River. As soon as her door was closed, he lifted the turbine-powered helicopter into the air and headed for Kennedy.

  “I’ve already arranged clearance to land right next to your 747 at the gate, Elizabeth. They think it’s part of the celebration.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “Friend of mine in the FAA owes me. I called the favor, and he pulled the strings.”

  “In less than an hour? I’m impressed, as usual.”

  “We’ll make it before five P.M., Elizabeth, but then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can Pan Am really make it?”

  “Eric, the airline is a success, except for this incredible campaign against us, and we’re about to blow that apart. You won’t believe what we just heard! The fallout from this is going to shake Washington. And not just Washington—it’s going to shake up the entire airline world.”

  She filled him in briefly on the saga of the previous two weeks and the revelations Jacob Voorster had brought with him. She was startled to see him glance at her, wide-eyed.

  “VZV? You’re kidding! I know they’re powerful, but they did all that?”

  She was nodding her head. “They paid for a sabotage campaign run by Nick Costas and Irwin Fairchild, seduced the idiot who was Pan Am’s CFO before me to replace the loans and sell the airplanes, manipulated our stock, probably sabotaged our computers, and in Brian’s opinion, they may have been responsible for the two near-fatal accidents we had.”

  “Really? He thinks Costas could have attempted mass murder?”

  She nodded again. “We can’t prove it yet, but he’s working on it. The thing is, as much as Jacob Voorster knew about the operations of VZV, he knew nothing about any sabotage of airplanes or even computers, so there are still some missing links and unanswered questions.”

  John F. Kennedy Airport appeared in the distance as Elizabeth checked her watch. It was 4:46 P.M. Eric was already talking to Kennedy Tower, getting clearance into the terminal control area.

  The radio quieted and Eric turned to Elizabeth again.

  “You don’t know any of the names of those dummy corporations, do you?”

  She thought for a moment. The report Voorster had brought had a list of names. She could almost see a few of them in her mind’s eye.

  “I think I can remember two or three. Let’s see, Great Circle Investments, Limited, and something called Condor Corporation, and one with a name that struck me as funny because I’ve always loved Groucho Marx, Marx Investments.”

  She felt the helicopter bobble for a second and assumed they had transited a bit of turbulence. She saw Eric looking at her again in surprise.

  “Marx Investments? Of Tampa?”

  “I think so. I only had a glance.”

  “Good Lord, I hope not!”

  “Why, Eric? You know them?”

  He was nodding and laughing and shaking his head from side to side all at the same time.

  “Elizabeth, you may not remember, but you and I put together the deal that financed their purchase of fifteen percent of a certain American aviation concern called”—he looked at her—“AMR Corporation, otherwise known as American Airlines. Bob Crandal’s airline! In 1990.”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Innocently, of course!”

  Pan Am’s station manager had hurried the TV crews to the departure lounge in time to catch Elizabeth’s arrival as part of their coverage. With the bomb search of Pan Am Flight One now successfully completed, the cameramen focused on the Jet Ranger as Eric brought it delicately to the ground aft of the right wing of the giant Boeing.

  Brian was there to open the right-hand door of the chopper to help Elizabeth out.

  A grim-looking contingent of men stood adjacent to a large aircraft tow tractor while watching the proceedings. Brian gestured toward them now.

  “If you’ve ever wanted to
put a face on the grim reaper, there he is—along with his hired rent-a-cops.”

  “Empire’s men?”

  Brian nodded. “The station manager’s already told them it’s over. I’ve told them it’s over, but they refuse to leave. They think they’re going to hook up that tractor and tow our bird away in a few minutes.”

  Elizabeth smiled and showed Brian the court orders as he briefed her on the successful search for the bomb. They had talked earlier by cellular phone while she was headed to the courthouse. The incident at the aircraft still seemed surreal. She wasn’t at all sure what it meant.

  “It wasn’t a bomb at all the guy planted. It was a firestarter—an incendiary device designed to catch the galley on fire in a hurry and cancel the flight. The man threw it in the wastebasket in the aft galley when I first confronted him.”

  The ringing of her cellular phone interrupted them. It was Jack Rawly, calling from the hallway outside the appeals court.

  “All done, Elizabeth. The appeals judges dismissed the action, and you should have seen Sol Moscowitz. He hardly said anything. He had his jaw clamped down so tight I thought he was going to break a tooth. He hardly spoke to his client. And then he was asked outside the courtroom by a New York Times reporter if they might try again. He said, ‘Ask someone else. I’m withdrawing as attorney of record for this client.’”

  “Fascinating! And he didn’t fight it?”

  “Not at all. The TROs are as good as gold. How’re you doing?”

  She looked at her watch. Five minutes remained.

  “I’m on the ramp by the airplane, Jack, about to stuff a turkey with a court order.”

  “Oh, by the way, Creighton’s headed out there for the ceremony. He’s going to be heading back to London tonight.”

  With Brian standing beside her, that news had to be stored, not absorbed, and she thanked Jack and rang off.

  Brian briefed her as they walked slowly toward the small contingent from Empire Leasing.

  “The man in the gray suit is Arthur Collins, executive vice-president of Empire. He’s about as unfriendly as they come. Judy Schimmel, our station manager, had to ask him to leave the boarding lounge because he was talking to the passengers. He told them we were finished and they should go find alternate transportation.”