High Flight Page 10

  The other passengers were held in their seats until McGarvey and Yemlin donned their coats, got their bags from the overhead, and went down the boarding steps to the apron.

  “The man waiting for us by the car is my boss, Colonel Amosovich Lyalin,” Yemlin said at McGarvey’s side. “He’s a good man, Kirk, but you will have to play straight with him if you want our help.”

  “If he’s the highest-ranking authority I’m going to be allowed to speak to, we might as well turn around and go back to Washington,” McGarvey answered.

  “Not the highest, just the first.”

  They hurried across the apron to Colonel Lyalin, and Yemlin made the introductions.

  “I can’t say that it’s good to be here, Colonel,” McGarvey said, shaking the man’s hand. “I thought I would start with General Polunin.”

  Lyalin’s left eyebrow rose. “You and I have some things to clear up first.”

  McGarvey stepped closer and switched to Russian. “We’re talking about a one billion dollar airplane factory, plus a long-term relationship that will generate a lot of American dollars for your economy. Lean on me, and you’ll fuck the entire deal, Colonel.”

  Lyalin showed no reaction. It was bitterly cold, but he made no move to invite them into the warmth of the car. “How did you find out about the Japanese attack?” he asked.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “This is important to us, Kirk,” Yemlin said. “No matter what we do, the international repercussions could be damaging.”

  It was a rare admission on the part of a Russian, even these days, and it told McGarvey just how worried they were about the Japanese.

  “It was an old friend, but I can’t say anything beyond that, except that I’m here representing Guerin Airplane Company, not my government.”

  “You want us to spy on the Japanese for your company, Mr. McGarvey,” Lyalin said patiently. “Coincident with your request, the Japanese sank one of our navy ships. All hands were lost. That’s two hundred twenty men and officers … boys, many of them. You can understand why we are so … anxious to find out what you know.”

  “That’s why I’m here. To tell you what we know and what we suspect and ask for your help to find out more, in exchange for a long-term financial investment.”

  “Perhaps you have come to the wrong people, Mr. McGarvey,” Lyalin said after a long measure.

  “If it’s any consolation, Colonel, I don’t think the attacks on our company, or the attack on your ship, were directed by the Japanese government. I think private interests are at work here.”

  “You claim not to speak for your government?”

  “That’s right,” McGarvey said.

  “Do they know that you are here?”

  “By now, yes, assuming that the FBI still keeps track of who comes and goes aboard your aircraft.”

  Lyalin glanced at Yemlin, then nodded. “Let’s not keep the general waiting.”

  The interior of the limousine was overheated, and wedged between Lyalin and Yemlin, McGarvey was sweating heavily by the time they had cleared the airport gate and were speeding toward the city at nearly one hundred, miles per hour. There were only two speeds in all of Russia: very slow for ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the people, or very fast for the elite or the frightened.

  The birch forests at the side of the road passed in a blur, the landscape gradually opening to farm fields, fallow for the winter, and factories broken down and closed because of the economy.

  In 1972 the KGB constructed its new headquarters building off the circumferential highway, Outer Ring Road, that circled Moscow. Copied almost line for line after the CIA’s headquarters at Langley, the seven-story structure housed the KGB’s, now the SUR’s, First Chief Directorate, which was responsible for all foreign operations. It was from here that the spies, the agent provocateurs, the assassins, and the terrorists trained and funded by the Soviet Union had been directed. And still were, McGarvey had no doubt. The spy business had not ended with the Cold War and the breakup of the old Soviet Union, it had merely changed. New masters perhaps, but the targets were essentially the same as they’d always been. The world, after all, was a finite place with only so many nations, armies, and intelligence agencies.

  Armed guards at the gate passed them through without checking their credentials, and Colonel Lyalin led them to the seventh floor, which was the carbon of the seventh floor at Langley except that like the airplane this place was in desperate need of paint and repairs. The way everyone acted and talked, however, McGarvey didn’t think any of them saw the shabbiness. It was taken for granted.

  The colonel left them in an anteroom with a tall, large man who was armed, by the look of the bulge under his suit coat. His eyes never left them until Lyalin came back two minutes later and ushered them into a nicely furnished office.

  General Leonty Dmitrevich Polunin, an even larger man, with thick black eyebrows and huge ears, came from behind a massive desk, his face a study in intrigue and mystery. McGarvey found himself thanking whatever gods there were that this one wasn’t the director of the entire SUR, or worse, the President of the country. General Polunin, from what McGarvey knew of the man, had been Yeltsin’s choice to head the Komitet, but something had gone wrong, and this was as far as he was going to rise in the hierarchy. He wore a well-cut dark gray suit and tie, with no medals or other adornment, yet it was obvious by his bearing that he had a military background and would be accustomed to being obeyed without question. The thought of Polunin facing off with Lawrence Danielle or Phil Carrara was ludicrous. The Russian would have their asses on a platter in nothing flat.

  “General, this is Kirk McGarvey,” Lyalin said.

  “You’re certainly something of a surprise, Mr. McGarvey,” the general said.

  McGarvey shook his hand, the general’s grip firm but not crushing. “This isn’t a pleasure trip.”

  “Nobody suspected that you would think so, not even after all these years.” Polunin motioned them to a sofa and chairs across the room. “Coffee or tea?”

  “Not for me,” McGarvey said.

  “You are presenting yourself as a man of business this time, very well.”

  “Within forty-eight hours a team of Guerin engineers, designers, and financial planners could be here to work with whoever will be assigned to the project, General,” McGarvey said.

  “I’m not a Baranov or a Didenko, but I have read your file. The complete file, including Kansas.”

  “My father loved his country, and he fought for what he believed.” McGarvey looked directly into the general’s eyes. “He died for his beliefs.”

  “We didn’t kill him.”

  A hand clutched at McGarvey’s heart. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Then why are you here, Mr. McGarvey? Didn’t your experiences at Volodga teach you anything?”

  “I don’t work for the CIA.”

  “No?”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t be here making such an offer, General.”

  “Was it Phillip Carrara who told you about the Japanese attack?”

  “No, but he made the initial contact with Viktor Pavlovich.”

  “Why?” Polunin shot back, his eyes narrowed.

  “Perhaps because he’s just as concerned about the Japanese as we are.”

  “We?”

  “Guerin Airplane Company.”

  “Are you saying that it’s not a view shared by Mr. Danielle or General Murphy?”

  “I haven’t spoken to the Director about it, but Mr. Danielle apparently does not share our concern. At least he didn’t on the day before the submarine attack.”

  “Has he changed his mind?”

  “I don’t know, General, but it’s certainly possible.”

  “Then who was it told you about the attack, Mr. McGarvey?” Polunin demanded. “We won’t go any further until that mystery is cleared up.”

  It suddenly occurred to McGarvey that General Polunin and the others were frightened. The
entire country had its collective back to the wall, and the attitudes of these three men reflected it.

  “An airplane factory in what used to be East Germany would be welcomed,” he said. “I think the BND might be persuaded to go along with us. I have a few friends in Munich.”

  The general flared. “We didn’t bring you here to bargain with you like Jews.”

  “Nor did I come here to be threatened,” McGarvey. said, stiffening. “This country is no longer the superpower it once was, but the SUR has something that may be of commercial use to the company I represent. If you help us, we’ll help you.”

  Polunin exchanged glances with Yemlin, then nodded. “Something can be worked out. It will be up to the negotiating team.”

  McGarvey sat back, surprised by the suddenness of Polunin’s flip-flop in position. “I’ll send word to Portland.”

  “The Director wishes to speak with you.”

  “All right,” McGarvey said cautiously.

  Polunin smiled wanly. “I think our relationship this time will be mutually advantageous, Mr. McGarvey. Don’t you agree?”

  For a secret to be kept in Washington more than twenty-four hours a miracle had to happen. But it had been more than thirty-six hours since the incident in the Tatar Strait, and by a stroke of good fortune the media was still in the dark, although there’d been a few rumblings in the Washington Post about strained relations between Japan and Russia. There’d also been quite a few queries to the White House about what was going on in Tokyo, which the President’s press secretary, Michael Harding, had stonewalled. It would not last, of course. Sooner or later someone would leak the story, and once the floodgates were open nothing would stop the flow.

  General Roland Murphy (retired) had been director of the Central Intelligence Agency for nine years, his appointment coming on the heels of the 1988 presidential election. In the old days the usual morning intelligence briefing was conducted by Agency officers for the National Security Adviser to the President. Now Murphy briefed the new President himself every weekday morning at nine sharp. Only on weekends were the summaries presented to the President’s staff. Murphy liked the new arrangement because he felt it gave him much better control of the situation. If there were any nuances to be passed along to the President, they would be his, not those of his subordinates.

  It was a few minutes before 9:00 A.M. when the general’s chauffeured limousine pulled up at the White House’s west portico and his bodyguard Ken Chapin followed him inside. Murphy was a heavyset man, with thick shoulders and surprisingly long and delicate fingers. His were the hands of a pianist. He spent as much time outdoors as he possibly could, sailing his forty-two-foot sloop on Chesapeake Bay or hunting wild boar in eastern Tennessee, so his square face was lined and tanned in fine contrast to his thick white hair. He’d been called “Bulldog” commanding a regiment in Vietnam with the same iron fist he’d brought to the joint chiefs and to Langley, but he also played classical piano and was quite good.

  They were passed directly up to the second floor where the President’s appointments secretary, Steve Nichols, was just coming out of the Oval Office. Chapin went down the corridor to one of the waiting rooms used by the Secret Service.

  “Good morning, General,” Nichols said. “Go right in, he’s expecting you.”

  Murphy nodded curtly and entered the President’s study, no longer as surprised as he’d been the first time here at how small the room was. On television it looked so much bigger, more regal, more powerful. But the design woven into the dark blue carpet was the presidential seal, and coming here never ceased to impress him. The line of presidential succession went back more than two hundred years. The Soviet Union had only lasted seventy.

  The President was seated in his padded rocking chair next to his National Security Adviser, Harold Secor, on the couch. The two men were a study in contrasts. The President was tall and lanky—“Lincolnesque,” the media called him—while Secor, a former professor of history and political science at Harvard, looked exactly like a professor of history: tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows, thin pinched face and sallow complexion, wire-rimmed glasses, and a pipe-smoker’s overbite and stained forefinger. Both men were brilliant. “Among the most intellectual men to hold court in the White House since Woodrow Wilson’s administration,” the Post maintained. Murphy agreed wholeheartedly, although in the first year of the President’s second term, the public did not. The U.S. economy was still a mess, and everyone blamed the President, which wasn’t fair considering the Congress he had to work with.

  “Good morning, Roland,” the President said, looking up. “Good news or bad?”

  “Good morning, Mr. President. I’d say neutral for the moment,” Murphy replied. He extracted a leather-bound folder from his briefcase and handed it over, then placed the briefcase on the floor beside the chair across from the President and Secor.

  “That’s something at least,” the National Security Adviser said. “The Russians are still mum, but Tokyo has finally come out with a statement.”

  “What are they saying?” the DCI asked with interest. No matter what happened the Japanese government was the key player in this instance. Current thinking was that they would have to be appeased, even if the costs were large.

  “They regret the incident and they’re studying it,” the President said, opening the intelligence report. “Get yourself some coffee while I take a look at this.”

  Murphy poured a cup from the service on a cart beside the President’s desk and came back and sat down. The intelligence report ran to around ten thousand words, but the President was a speed reader and would skim through it in three or four minutes. In the meantime, Secor handed over the message they’d received from Tokyo through our embassy.

  Beyond the usual diplomatic verbiage, the essence of the message was contained in one paragraph.

  The government of Japan deeply regrets the recent incident in the Tatar Strait off the island of Karafuto allegedly involving a vessel of Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force and one of the Russian Federal Navy in which there may have been a loss of lives and property. Every effort is being made to quickly and fully investigate the matter to determine culpability.

  “I wonder if they used that name for Sakhalin Island in their reply to Moscow,” Murphy said.

  Secor shrugged. “We don’t even know if they’ve exchanged messages, official or otherwise. But I don’t think the Russians are about to give up the island.”

  “They’d be better off offering it for sale.”

  Secor’s eyebrows rose. “Would the Japanese consider such a proposal?”

  “I don’t know, Harold, but with the assets the Russians have brought to bear in those waters in the last twenty-four hours it’s a safe bet the Japanese won’t take the island by force.” Murphy handed back the message. “Or carry the dispute over those waters any further.”

  The President closed the leather-bound folder. “That’s the way I read this, Roland. The Japanese are simply disputing Russia’s claim that all the waters of the Tatar Strait belong to them, even past the twelve-mile limit from the mainland and the island. Still leaves a lot of open water in between.”

  “Apparently the Russians fired first. An underwater explosion of a type consistent with a helicopter-delivered torpedo came before the missile hit.”

  “Moscow is going to claim that they were provoked into shooting because a Japanese submarine was operating in their waters,” the President said. “But the Japanese are going to protest that they were within international waters. They were outside the twelve-mile limit, weren’t they?”

  “Yes, they were,” Murphy said. “But we don’t think Tokyo will go that route. So far as we can determine, no orders have ever been issued to test those waters. In fact standing orders are for the MSDF to stay the hell away from the strait, and to avoid any kind of confrontation at all costs.”

  “What are you talking about, General?” Secor asked. “Are you suggesting a renegade su
bmarine skipper?”

  “Some of my people are thinking along that line. But they pick their sub-drivers just as carefully as we do ours. It’s possible that a fleet commander, or even the C-in-C of submarine operations, gave the order. Tokyo would be insulated.”

  The President was troubled, and it showed on his face. “What would they have to gain?”

  “I don’t know for sure, Mr. President, but I’d say prestige. And they’d be setting a precedent to justify an expansion out of their home waters.”

  “You’re talking about Subic Bay?”

  “Yes. The Japanese may be coming to the conclusion that we no longer have their best interests at heart. Witness what happened in the strait. We weren’t there, so they had to defend themselves. Could be endemic, so they’ve got to begin looking out for themselves.”

  “We’ve picked up nothing like that,” the President said, glancing at his National Security Adviser. Secor shook his head.

  “At this point, Mr. President, it’s only speculation. But we’re working on it. That submarine driver will probably be fired and a very carefully worded apology will be sent to Moscow.”

  “Reparations?” Secor asked.

  “Not likely. Tokyo will claim that although its submarine was poking its nose where it shouldn’t have, its intentions were friendly. The Russian navy fired the first shot, and in the heat of the moment the submarine driver defended himself.”

  “So we continue to support the Japanese, while slapping the Russians on the wrist. Is that what you’re suggesting?” the President asked.

  “For now, until we get more information.”

  “At the moment there are no Japanese navy ships in the strait?”

  “Not so far as we can determine.”