Skyhook

FORTY NINE WEDNESDAY, DAY 10 WASHINGTON, D.C. NOON

At first, Bernie Ashad’s voice failed to register. Gracie pushed her cell phone closer to her ear as she followed April and Ben out of the federal courthouse into the roar of Washington midday traffic.

“Excuse me, who is this again?” she asked, hunching over. April noticed and caught Ben’s elbow, and both of them turned to wait for her.

“This is your client, Ms. O’Brien,” the voice said. “Bernie Ashad. Remember me? The guy with the ships.” There was a chuckle in the voice she could hear over the background noise.

Gracie snapped to full alert. She could see the scowling face of Ben Janssen in her mind as she raced to think of an appropriate — and safe — response.

“Mr. Ashad, I believe the firm has handed your… affairs off to one of the partners.”

There was laughter on the other end. “Yes, I’m well aware that Ben is telling wild stories about my defiling all of the women at Janssen and Pruzan, and I can tell you it’s all nonsense. But, if I in any way made you feel uncomfortable, Miss O’Brien, when I proposed a dinner, I humbly apologize.”

“None required, sir.”

“Your senior partner thinks he’s a guardian uncle and monk rolled into one.”

“Well, it was gracious of you to call—”

“Wait, Ms. O’Brien. We do have some unfinished personal business.”

Oh no! He’s going to proposition me anyway. Gracie felt the adrenaline pumping into her bloodstream.

“Your friend’s airplane that crashed in Alaska. You wanted me to try to get one of my ships involved.”

Relief chased the adrenaline. “Oh, yes! Of course. I really appreciate your considering that, Mr. Ashad, and I apologize to you for making an inappropriate request of a client.”

“Nonsense. But now that we’ve been successful, we need an address.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I must apologize for being slow to call you. Actually, I called several days ago to talk to Ben Janssen about another matter and he handed me my head over the idea that I had carnal designs on my female lawyer. So, I put the whole thing out of my mind and forgot to check with my captain about it, and I didn’t realize until this morning that he’d been successful.”

“Successful? I don’t understand.”

“We recovered the wreckage of your friend’s airplane, Miss O’Brien, and I need to know where to send it after my captain puts it on a barge, or ashore.”

“You recovered it?”

“Yes. Isn’t that what you requested?”

Gracie straightened up in confusion and glanced at April with wide eyes, gesturing silently to the phone.

“Yes… yes, it is. I had no idea that was going to be possible.”

“It was very little trouble. Our ship loitered for about an hour, I think, to grapple it aboard, then sailed right on as scheduled. Not a problem. But now he’s in port in Tacoma and needs to get it off the deck.”

“May I have your number and call you back in ten minutes?”

He recited the same number clearly displayed on Gracie’s phone, and she thanked him and disconnected.

She leaned against the wall of the adjacent building to catch her breath. April moved toward her in alarm.

“What? What is it?”

“They were telling the truth, April.”

“Who?”

“The government. Our government. I hauled them halfway to the Supreme Court and they were innocent all along.”

“What are you talking about, Gracie?” April asked, holding her forearms.

“It was one of Bernie Ashad’s ships that fished your dad’s Albatross out of the Gulf of Alaska.”

“What?”

Gracie was nodding. “The U.S. government never touched it.”

Arlie Rosen’s voice on the other end of Gracie’s cell phone was a wonderful sound.

“I got your message, Gracie. It’s truly over?”

“We won! The FAA is withdrawing their allegations.”

“How?”

“I can’t tell you for certain,” she said, carefully composing her words. “But I think they simply got scared at a high level of how this would look if they were wrong and we got a major court decision out of it.”

There was a tired sigh on the other end. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

“Where are you, Captain?”

There was a hesitation. “Up in Canada. On the west coast of Vancouver Island. Someone was chasing us.”

“I heard. That will stop now, too, whatever it was about.”

“Are you sure, Gracie?”

“Yes. Absolutely. Highest authority.”

“Because we’re armed and safe up here.”

“You’re armed?”

“Yes.”

“In Canada?”

“Yes.”

“Captain, get the hell out of there! Fly back immediately. Unless you somehow cleared a hunting rifle with customs, you can’t have guns up there and I don’t want to have to bail you out of a provincial jail.”

Gracie knew better than to read too much into Ben Janssen’s voice, but it was hopeful that her call for an appointment on return to Seattle had been so cheerfully received.

She used the circular stairway from her floor to the top floor and rounded the corner to Janssen’s huge office, wondering how closely Ben Janssen might have read the e-mail memo she’d sent from Washington reporting the call from Bernie Ashad in excruciating detail.

“Well, well, Gracie!” Janssen said. “Come on in. Home from the wars, I see.”

“Yes, sir.”

Janssen had left his desk to greet her with a handshake and a pat on the shoulder. He motioned her to a dark burgundy leather divan, and settled into an adjacent matching chair around a low coffee table.

“Tell me what transpired in your case for Rosen,” he said, smiling at her, his demeanor one of ease as he sat back, hands behind his head, and waited for her to chronicle the sequence of events. When she was through, she added the fact that the wreckage had never been in Navy possession, and Janssen nodded, dropping his hands to his lap as he leaned forward.

“Did you feel a little silly?” he asked, nailing her emotions.

“Yes.”

“Don’t. We do the best with the facts we’ve got, and I would have arrived at the same conclusion.”

“I appreciate that, sir.”

“I know a bit more than you think about this,” he added, his smile triggering the unsettling thought that somehow her body language had transmitted a state secret learned in the Oval Office.

“You do?”

“Well, I do have a few friends in both low and high places, and one of them called me the other day to say that a particular lawyer from my office had suddenly appeared before him like a sort of feminine cloudburst. Fact is, he said you’d chased him down at a formal dinner, gently but effectively twisted his arm, gained the unprecedented honor of being added to an appellate argument schedule at the last minute, something even solicitor generals can’t do, and filed a well-reasoned brief.”

“Judge Williamson?”

“Exactly. Sander Williamson. I went to law school with the old reprobate.”

“So, he called you?” she asked in stunned affirmation.

Ben Janssen was enjoying the moment and nodding. Either a good sign or one of impending execution, meaning she had no idea why he was in such a good mood.

“Yes, he called me, all right. He said one Gracie O’Brien presented herself at argument well groomed, well prepared, poised, fearless, and factual, all attributes he admires. And, he says you virtually stood the court on its head by reminding them of something all three judges had apparently forgotten for years, that not only do they, in fact, possess primary equity jurisdiction concurrent with their appellate role, but they can hear something as obscure as a plea for interlocutory decree even in the matter of a temporary restraining order.”

“They were surprised?”

“‘Stunned’ would be a better word. Sander called your use of the argument as nothing short of brilliant. He was very impressed, and convinced.”

“He understood we had settled with the FAA conditioned entirely on reinstatement of Captain Rosen’s license?”

Janssen smiled again. “Well, let’s just say he understood that would be the only reason you’d back off and move to dismiss.”

“Good.”

“Which was very fortunate for you and your client.”

“The settlement? Yes. It was.”

“No, actually, Gracie, I mean the fact that you were able to move for dismissal was very fortunate on a separate plane.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, you panicked the government into settling because they were convinced you were going to win and embarrass them. That’s very clear. But although Sander Williamson was convinced, and the government lawyers and the FAA were convinced, the other two judges up there held the trump card. According to Sander, they agreed they had the power to consider your petition and issue an interlocutory order, but they weren’t convinced the case justified it. In other words, Gracie, you would have lost.”

She felt suddenly very cold inside as Ben Janssen continued.

“But, what I’m most delighted to hear is that one of my team did such a great job of thinking on her feet in the face of extreme intimidation and with little experience. Well done.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Oh, one more thing.” He got up and moved with suprising agility to his desk to retrieve a thin manila folder, which he laid in Gracie’s lap before sitting again.

“What’s this, sir?”

“A pathology report. You never did get the matter of drinking and flying resolved for Captain Rosen, did you?”

She shook her head.

“And I imagine that’s still rattling around in your head, and perhaps shading your formerly pristine view of the man with latent suspicion?”

“Oh, I know he wasn’t drinking. That’s not like him.”

“Bullshit, Gracie. You’re talking to a recovering alcoholic. The propensity is always there.”

She looked at her senior partner in silence for a few moments, her heart sinking. There was something in the folder that she didn’t know about Arlie Rosen, and she hadn’t processed the small bomb he’d already tossed.

Janssen shifted in his chair and leaned toward her. “Gracie, I know how much this fellow means to you, so I had one of our investigators take a look. He found Rosen had suffered a few deep cuts the night of his crash, and there was considerable blood left in his exposure suit. The Coast Guard had retained them both. There’s a sophisticated little test that can be run in certain cases to get a snapshot of the alcohol content of spilled blood at the time it was spilled.”

“You… he ran the test? He found enough blood?”

“Read,” Ben Janssen directed. Gracie opened the folder and forced her eyes to focus. The blood-alcohol percentage of Arlie Rosen’s blood within a few minutes after the accident was precisely zero, and she was losing the struggle to hold back tears.

“Have you made your decision?” Ben Janssen added suddenly.

“I’m sorry? Oh! Yes. I dearly want to stay.”

“Wonderful, because we dearly want to keep you.”

“But… I have one request. You gave me three weeks off, and I’d like to take one more and make it a total of four. I… really need to spend some time with friends and decompress, and then come back and hit the deck running. I understand that none of the time will be paid.”

He stared at her in silence for a few seconds before laughing and shaking his head. “You’re a born litigator, Gracie. Just like me. You’d negotiate with God for a better deal at the very moment he was holding open the pearly gates for you.”

“Then, I can have the time?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No, sir.”

“Then go. See you back here at the end of four weeks.”

She stood and shook his hand. “And… I assume you’ll have the velvet handcuffs waiting?”

“Absolutely. You just think you’re ever leaving these offices again.”

General Mac MacAdams settled into one of the huge, leather wingback chairs facing each other in front of a roaring fire in his den and lit the cigar he’d just selected from a small humidor. A snifter of his best cognac sat on a side table. He glanced around at the warmth he knew was reflected throughout the stately home built as the commanding general’s quarters by the Army Air Corps at Elmendorf Air Force Base a half century before, and sat back, enjoying the aroma of the Indian Tabac Churchill.

“This is a fine cigar, even if it does have a somewhat politically suspect cigar band,” a male voice intoned from the recesses of the other wingback chair.

Mac turned to the visitor. “You know, don’t you, that I’m going to need your services for at least another year or two?”

“I expected that,” the other man replied. “What with all the civilian airliner installations you have to complete, as well as those in the military fleet. I figure you’ll have to ride herd on Uniwave for some time. The little mafia-style muscle they put on Captain Rosen is just a small example. Chairman Martin is a loose cannon on a rolling deck.”

“A bit harsh,” Mac replied. “What was the final word on that, by the way?”

There was a laugh from the other chair. “Frustrated ex-CIA covert-ops guy named Todd Jenkins decided to solve our problem by threatening Captain Rosen. Even put a bullet through his car for emphasis.”

“Martin ordered that?” Mac asked.

“No, no! It’s the Thomas Beckett syndrome. Jenkins knew that Will Martin was upset by the Rosens’ trying to defend themselves, so he figured that’s what the king wanted. He’s now enjoying an early retirement.”

Mac remained silent and took another long puff on his cigar and turned his head toward the man. “You need a light for that cigar, Colonel, or are you just wanting to get acquainted with it better?”

“Would it offend you if I smoked it later out by the lake?”

“Which lake?”

“Any lake. We have a bunch up here.”

“Of course not. You’re welcome to take it with you.”

The other man raised his glass and drained the last drops of the cognac, a broad smile on his face. “Top quality, Mac. I’m thankful I never fell into alcoholism. I’d hate to miss such a smooth, silky taste.”

“You know, I could still try to get you on a fast track to brigadier general,” Mac said.

The Air Force colonel chuckled, shaking his head. “Please, not that! They forced me to be a full colonel, Mac, even though I’ve spent my entire career hiding out in the intelligence community so I wouldn’t have to wear a uniform. I don’t want to wear stars. I just want to be where I can see them at night. Which is right here in Alaska.”

“You said you were going to take a month or two off. You taking a vacation?”

“No. Going home. There’s someone I need to see, and she’s been without me for too long, although she may not share that opinion.”

“Where is she?” Mac asked. “In Fairbanks? Seattle?”

There was the sound of rustling leather to the side of Mac’s chair, as the visitor rose to his feet and turned toward Mac.

“No, Mac. Kotzebue. She’s gone back to our home village to teach.”

“Way up there?”

“You forget, General. Underneath this covert-ops exterior, I’m also a stealth Inupiat.” Nelson Oolokvit smiled broadly as he shook Mac’s hand. “Thanks again for the dinner and the hospitality.”

When the front door to the MacAdams’s base home had closed behind him, Nelson walked to his car and paused to look up, immensely pleased to see a blazing canopy of stars twinkling overhead in the crisp air of a crystal-clear night. He checked his watch. In a few hours, Ben Cole would be arriving home on a late-night Alaska flight from a week-long cruise vacation. Nelson had agreed to meet him curbside, bringing along with him a large, bossy, and sometimes irritable feline named Schroedinger, who’d been his houseguest while Ben was gone.

And Old Man Schroedinger would be looking for his dinner.