Critical Mass

Chapter 1

Police Sergeants Pierre Capretz and Eugene Gallimard watched as the Air Service panel truck bumped toward them along the dusty ILS access road. In the distance to the east, runway 08 was flattened in perspective because of a slight rise in the ground level, and because of the thin haze that had hung over Paris and her environs for the past two days. Farther in the distance, windows in the Orly Airport terminal building glinted and sparkled in the morning sun.

The stink of burned Kerojet was on the breeze because an Air Inter L-1011 had just taken off for Montpellier with a tremendous roar that rattled the windows of the maintenance gate guard hut. The silence in the aftermath was so deafening that Capretz had to shout.

“He’s not on the schedule.”

Gallimard shrugged, but as he watched the van through narrowed eyes his left hand went to the strap of the Uzi slung over his shoulder. A driver, but no one else so far as he could see. The van was familiar, or at least the logo on its side was, but they’d been warned about a possible terrorist attack on a European airport within the next ten to twelve days, and he was nervous.

“Call Central,” he said.

“Right,” Capretz replied, but for a moment he stood where he was watching the approaching van.

“Pierre,” Gallimard prompted.

“Mais out,”

Capretz said. He turned and went into the hut, where he laid his submachine gun down on the desk. He picked up the phone and dialed 0113 as the van pulled up to the gate and stopped.

Gallimard stepped around the barrier and approached the driver’s side of the van.

The driver seemed young, probably in his mid-to late-twenties. He had thick blond hair, high cheekbones, and a pleasant, almost innocent smile. His white coveralls were immaculate. He was practically un enfant, and Gallimard began to relax.

“Bonjour. Salut,” the young man said, grinning. There was something wrong with his accent. He was definitely not a Frenchman, though the nametag on his coveralls read: Leon.

“Let me see your security pass.”

“Yes, of course,” Leon said pleasantly. He reached up and unclipped his badge from the sun visor and handed it out. “You need to see the work order?”

“Yes,” Gallimard said, studying the plastic security badge. It seemed authentic, and the photograph was good, yet something bothered him. He glanced back at the hut.

Capretz had his back to the window, the phone to his ear.

Leon handed out the work order for an unscheduled maintenance check on one of the ILS transmitters. The inner marker. The document also seemed authentic.

“Problems?”

“You were not on our schedule,” Gallimard said. “And we have been warned about a possible terrorist attack.”

Leon laughed. “What, here? Maybe I’ve got a bomb in the back and I mean to blow up some runway lights.”

“Maybe I’ll just take a look in the back, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t care. I get paid by the hour.”

Gallimard stepped back as Leon got out of the van, and together they went around back where the young man opened the rear door.

“Take a look.”

Gallimard came closer and peered inside the van. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Tools, some electronic equipment, and what appeared to be bins and boxes of parts.

A metal case about five feet long and eighteen inches on a side caught his eye. “What’s in the big box?”

“A VHF antenna and fittings.”

Gallimard looked at him. “I’ll open it.”

Leon shrugged.

Gallimard climbed into the van and started to unlatch the two heavy clasps on the box when a movement behind him distracted him. He looked over his shoulder, as Leon raised what looked to be a large caliber handgun with a bulky silencer screwed to its barrel.

“Salopard…””

Gallimard swore as the first shot hit him in the left side of his chest, pushing him backward, surprisingly without pain. And the second shot exploded like a billion stars in his head.

Leon ducked around the side of the van and looked over to where the other security guard was still trying to get through on the phone. He’d apparently seen or heard nothing. Concealing the nine-millimeter Sig-Sauer behind his leg he started waving and jumping up and down.

“Hey, you! Inside there! Help!”

Capretz turned around.

“Help me!” Leon shouted.

Capretz came to the door, a puzzled look on his face that turned to concern when he didn’t see Gallimard.

“It’s your partner. He’s down. I think he’s had a heart attack.”

The Orly terminal was a madhouse. July and August were the traditional months when Parisians took their vacations, and they streamed out of the city in hordes.

No one paid any particular attention to the three men who entered the main departures hall and went up to the offices on the mezzanine level. Two of them, Bob Roningen and Don Cladstrup, were field officers from the CIA’s Paris Station. Beyond the fact they were both bulky, well-built men in their mid-forties, there was very little to distinguish them from the average businessman. Nor, apparently, was anything bothering them at the moment. They were doing something totally routine.

The third man, however, was extremely nervous, glancing over his shoulder from time to time as if he suspected someone was following them. He was Jean-Luc DuVerlie, an electro-mechanical engineer for the Swiss firm of ModTec, GmbH, and he was frightened that the information he’d come to Paris to give the CIA would cost him his life.

He was having second thoughts about it.

They went down a short corridor, and at the far end Cladstrup knocked at the unmarked door.

DuVerlie looked back the way they had come, and Roningen shook his head.

“There’s no one back there. We came in clean.”

“But it is not your life at risk,” the Swiss engineer said, his English good, but heavily accented. He was barrel-chested with a square face and extremely deep-set eyes beneath thick, bushy eyebrows. He looked like a criminal, or an ex-boxer who’d been beaten too many times in the ring.

“You came to us, remember?” Cladstrup said evenly.

DuVerlie nodded. “Maybe this was a mistake.”

“Fine,” Roningen said, holding out his hands. “Why don’t we just call it quits here and now? You go your way and we go ours.”

“They would kill me. Within twenty-four hours I would be a dead man. I have explained this. You don’t know these people.”

“Neither do you.”

“I know what they are capable of doing. I told you, I saw it with my own eyes.”

“When you show us, we’ll go from there,” Cladstrup said, as the door was buzzed open.

They went inside where they turned over their plane tickets and passports to the French passport control officer behind a desk. A second policeman, armed, stood to one side.

“You’re booked on flight 145 for Geneva, is that correct?” the passport officer asked stamping the exit visas.

“That’s right,” Roningen said.

The cop looked up at DuVerlie with mild interest, then handed back their documents.

“It leaves in thirty minutes. There is coffee and tea in the waiting area. Maurice will show you the way and he will stay with you until it is time to board. You will be the last on the aircraft. And please do not try to leave the waiting area until you are told. Comprenez-vous? Do you understand?”

“Yes, thank you,” Roningen said, and they followed the second officer out where they took another corridor nearly the length of the terminal building to a small but pleasantly furnished VIP lounge. The windows overlooked the flight line where the plane they would board would be pulling up momentarily. No one else was using the lounge this morning.

A telephone on the wall buzzed, and the cop answered it.

“After you have seen their weapons cache, as I have, then you will have to believe me,” DuVerlie said.

“It’ll be a start,” Roningen said. “And the body.”

“It’s there unless the police have discovered it. Leitner was an important engineer.

Perhaps the best at ModTec.”

“What was he giving those people?” Cladstrup asked, looking over toward the cop who was still talking on the phone.

“First I will prove to you that they mean business. And then we will discuss what you will do for me.”

“We’ll see.”

“You know they killed him because he was stupid. He threatened to go to the police unless they gave him more money. But the police couldn’t help him.”

“So he told you instead.”

“We were friends,” DuVerlie said. “I was supposed to be his insurance.”

“Right,” Roningen said wearily. Already he was getting tired of the man, but Langley thought DuVerlie’s story was interesting enough for at least a preliminary follow-up.

Depending on what they found or didn’t find in Lausanne, they would decide what to do next. But the Swiss engineering firm built, among other things, electronic triggers for nuclear weapons.

Capretz had the presence of mind to grab his weapon from the desk before he rushed across to the van. Something was drastically wrong 15 but he couldn’t put it together. The phone was out of order; no matter what number he dialed he was connected to a recording asking him to wait. And now this.

Thumbing the Uzi’s safety to the off position he came around to the open door at the rear of the van. Leon was a couple of yards off to his right.

Gallimard was down and not moving inside the van. Something was definitely wrong.

“Eugene,” Capretz called out. He didn’t know what to do.

“Something happened to him and he just collapsed,” Leon said, excitedly. “Maybe it’s his heart. Do you know CPR?”

“He has nothing the matter with his heart.”

“Well, I don’t know. He didn’t say anything. He just fell down.”

“Eugene,” Capretz called and stepped closer. There was something on the side of Gallimard’s head, but the interior of the van was in relative darkness and Capretz couldn’t make it out. But he understood that he was going to have to call for help somehow.

He turned to ask the Air Service man if there was a two-way radio in the van in time to see a large pistol suddenly materialize in the man’s hand. The first shot hit him in the right arm, driving him nearly off his feet. He started to bring the Uzi around, when a thunderclap burst in his head.

Shoving the pistol in the belt of his coveralls, Leon safetied the Uzi, laid it in the back of the van and then hefted the security guard’s body in the back as well.

Closing the door, he scuffed dirt over the bloodstains on the road so that if anyone came along they would not notice that anything had happened here.

Around front he raised the road barrier, then went into the hut where he took the phone off the hook, listened, then replaced it. He wore thin leather gloves so that he would leave no fingerprints, and the patterns in the soles of his boots were common.

He’d purchased the boots at Prisunic, a discount store in Paris, five days ago. They were untraceable, as was the van which was nevertheless legitimately registered to Air Service here at the airport, though the company did not own it.

He drove beyond the barrier, then went back and lowered it.

Behind the wheel he checked his watch before he headed the rest of the way to the ILS installation just off the end of the main east-west runway. He had twenty-eight minutes to go.

Chapter 2

Kirk Cullough McGarvey had always had bad luck with women, especially saying goodbye to them. This instance was no different, except that it was the second time he was saying goodbye to Marta Fredricks.

“I don’t understand why you don’t just come back to Lausanne with me now,” she said.

They sat together in the back seat of a taxi heading out of Paris to Orly Airport.

She was tall, athletically thin and wore her dark hair long, nearly to the center of her back.

“I have a few more things to take care of here first,” he said. “And I think it’ll be better all the way around if you pave the way.”

She looked into his eyes and smiled. “You’re probably right. And then?”

They’d avoided that subject for the week she’d been with him in Paris. And then what, he asked himself. He was quitting Europe, and returning to his ex-wife Kathleen in Washington, D.C. Or at least he and she were going to give it a try.

Tall and husky, McGarvey was a good-looking man with wide, honest eyes that sometimes were green and other times gray. He was in his mid-forties and had lived in Europe for a number of years, including a time in Lausanne where he’d run a small bookshop as a cover. He’d been in hiding then, as he supposed he still was. Once a spy, always a spy.

He’d been a loner for the most part, though in Switzerland he 17 and Marta had lived together. Ex-CIA assassins made the Swiss nervous, and Marta, who worked for the Swiss Federal Bureau of Police, had been assigned to watch him.

“Watch you, not fall in love with you,” she told him once. “That I did all on my own.”

She was looking at the passing scenery, and he studied her profile. A blood vessel was throbbing in the side of her long, delicate neck. She’d come as a complete surprise, showing up on his doorstep last week.

“I heard you were in Paris. Thought I’d drop by to say hello while I was in town.”

She’d moved in with him, of course. They’d had no discussion about that, because she was still in love with him.

But she had brought, besides her presence, a flood of memories for him. Some of them good, or at least tolerable, but most of them difficult. What spy looks back on his past with any joy? Or what soldier, for that matter, looks back at past battles with any fondness? They had been at war. And he had killed in the fight. Not a day went by without some thought for the people whose lives he’d ended. Sometimes he’d been close enough to see the expressions on their faces when they realized they were dying.

Pain and fear, of course, but most often their last emotion had been surprise.

He especially remembered the face of the general he’d been sent to kill in Santiago, Chile. The man had been responsible for thousands of deaths, and the only solution was his elimination. But McGarvey’s orders had been changed in midstream without him knowing about it. He returned to Langley not a hero but a pariah, and the CIA had released him from his contract.

Switzerland had come next, and then Paris when the Agency had called him out of retirement for a “job of work” as his old friend John Lyman Trotter, Jr., had once called an assignment.

More death, more destruction, more pain and heartache. He’d lost a kidney in the war. He’d nearly lost his life. He’d lost his wife, and the loneliness, that at times was nearly crushing, rode on his shoulder like the world on Atlas’s. He figured he could write the book on the subject.

“Good thoughts or bad,” Marta asked, breaking him out of his morose thoughts.

He focused on her. She was studying his face, a bemused expression on her’s.

“I think I’ll miss Paris.”

“You’re leaving for good, aren’t you,” she said. “And somehow I don’t think you’ll be resettling in Lausanne.”

“I haven’t decided yet,” he lied, and he managed a smile. “Besides, I don’t think your boss would be very happy having me on his turf again.”

“Something could be arranged.”

“Maybe I’d get called up.”

She shook her head in irritation. “You’re getting too old for war games, Kirk. And you must have noticed by now that the Russians have gone home. The Wall is down, the Warsaw Pact has been dismantled-they’re holding free elections in

Poland, for God’s sake-and all the bad guys are in jail.”

“No fool like an old fool.”

“The CIA can’t afford you,” she said. “Maybe it never could.” She searched his eyes earnestly. “Didn’t Portugal teach you anything?”

“How did you hear about that?”

“I’m a cop, remember? I see things, I read things. People confide in me.”

“Is that why you came to Paris, Mati? To save my life?”

“And your soul.”

“It’s not for sale. Maybe it never was.” Every spy has his own worse nightmare. Arkady Kurshin had been his. But the Russian was dead. He’d seen the man’s body just before it was lowered into a pauper’s grave outside of Lisbon seven months ago.

“I love you, Kirk, doesn’t that count for something?”

It had been his fault, of course, allowing her to set up housekeeping in his apartment.

But the excuse he’d made to himself was that he was tired, gun-shy, rubbed raw, vulnerable, even, and he needed her warmth and comfort just then.

“It counts for a lot, Mati. But maybe it would be best if I didn’t come to Lausanne after all. You’re right, I have no intention of staying there, or anywhere else in Europe, for that matter.”

“You’re going home?”

“For awhile.”

Marta was silent for a moment. “But I thought you might want to come to Switzerland at least to visit your daughter. She’s still in school outside Bern, isn’t she?”

“She’ll be home for Thanksgiving. I’ll see her then.”

“What are you telling me now, Kirk? That you’re going back to your ex-wife? I thought she was going to marry her lawyer, the one who was always suing you.”

“Stay out of it.”

“She dumped you once because of the business. Are your-hands any cleaner now?” An hysterical edge was beginning to creep into Marta’s voice. She’d changed over the past few years. She’d lost some of her old control.

“Let it rest, Mati,” he said gently.

“Then why did you let me move in with you? To make a fool of myself?”

“Could I have stopped you?”

She started to reply, but the words died on her lips. He was right, and she suddenly knew it. Just as she knew that indeed it was over between them. He could see how the light and passion faded from her eyes, and she slumped back.

“What will you do with yourself in Washington?” she asked after a couple of minutes.

“Maybe I’ll open another bookstore. Maybe teach at a small university somewhere.”

“You’ll get bored.”

“All the bad guys are gone, remember?”

She looked at him again. “Somehow I think you’ll manage to find some. Or they’ll find you.”

“I’ll leave that to cops like you.”

The cabbie pulled up at Orly’s Departing Passengers entrance for Swissair, and McGarvey helped Marta out with her single carryon bag. The day was warm and humid, and out here the air smelled of car and bus exhaust, and burned jet fuel.

“I’ll leave you here, Mati. I hate long goodbyes.”

Marta looked at her watch. It was past eight. “My plane leaves in fifteen minutes.

You can give me that much time, can’t you? After all, it’ll probably be years before I see you again.”

McGarvey shrugged. “Go ahead. I’ll pay the driver and catch up with you.”

“Don’t stand me up.”

“I’ll be right in,” McGarvey said, and he watched as she crossed the sidewalk and went into the terminal. He turned, and as he was paying the cabbie he noticed a brown Peugeot parked across the way. The diplomatic plates were of the series used by the U.S. Embassy. He’d had lunch with Tom Lynch, the Paris chief of station, last week, and Lynch had been driving a car with the same series.

“Merci, monsieur,” the driver said, but McGarvey just nodded and went inside where he caught up with Marta. What the hell was the CIA doing out here this morning, he wondered?

Chapter 3

At 8:20 a.m., the man whose nametag read Leon got out of the bogus Air Service van and studied the distant airport terminal through a set of powerful binoculars. The end of this morning’s active runway was a little more than a half mile to the east. The wind, light but steady, was coming almost directly out of the west. Swissair flight 145 would be taking off directly toward him.

In the past eighteen minutes, five jet airliners had taken off or landed. Orly was busy this morning, as usual at this time of year. None of them had been the flight he was interested in. He knew that for a certainty because he could see the Swissair jetliner parked at its boarding gate in the distance.

Leon was not his real name. In fact he was Karl Boorsch, who had been employed by STASI, the East German secret service, until late in 1989 when the Communist Party in Eastern Europe had begun to fall apart. He had managed to get out of the Horst Wessel Barracks in East Berlin just minutes before a crowd of angry demonstrators had broken in and started tearing up the place.

Most of the others had been rounded up in the next few months, but Boorsch went to ground, not lifting his head even to sniff the air until the first call had come from Monaco in the form of a brief advertisement for H.W. to come home, all was forgiven.

He smiled, recalling that day. Since then there had been plenty of work for all of them. Especially over the last year when they’d started the project.

Old alliances, he thought, were the best. Or in this case certainly the most interesting and rewarding. And when the project was completed, there would be other work. A lot of work.

He tossed the binoculars in on the seat of the van, then went around to the back and opened the door. Climbing in, he had to crawl over the second French cop, getting a little blood on the side of one of his boots. It didn’t bother him. He’d seen enough blood in his ten years with STASI, since his eighteenth birthday right out of Gymnasium, to be totally inured to it.

Pushing the first cop’s body out of the way, he pulled the long metal case back to the open door. The box was heavy, and it took an effort to drag it that far.

He jumped down and looked back the way he had come, and then toward the active runway.

Nothing moved along the dirt access road, but what looked like a French Air Inter jetliner had pulled away from the terminal and was moving slowly along a taxiway.

That would be flight seventeen. It and one other were scheduled for takeoff before the Swissair flight left for Geneva.

Around front he studied the taxiing plane through binoculars to make sure he’d identified it correctly. He had. Next he got the secure walkie-talkie from beside the seat and keyed the READY TO TALK button.

“One,” he said. He pressed the TRANSMIT button and his digitally recorded word was encrypted, compressed into a one-microsecond burst and transmitted. The on-air duration of the transmission was so short that even automatic recording equipment picked up nothing, not even a brief burst of static.

“Clear,” the man watching the highway turnoff to the access road responded.

“Two.”

“In place,” the second man replied. He was somewhere within sight of the terminal’s front entrance.

“Three.”

“Quiet,” the third man answered. He was on the N7 somewhere between here and Paris, monitoring the French Police frequencies for any unusual traffic. There was none.

Replacing the walkie-talkie, Boorsch again studied the jetliner, which had reached the end of the runway and was slowly turning. Seconds later the big aircraft seemed to lurch forward as if the pilot had suddenly let up on the brakes, and it started its takeoff roll.

Boorsch watched a couple of seconds longer, then put the binoculars down and stood back as the American built DC-10 thundered directly at him, its nose finally rotating, its main landing gear lifting off the pavement, and suddenly the huge bird was passing directly overhead, the noise so loud rational thought was all but impossible.

He thought he caught a glimpse of a few passengers looking down at him from the tiny windows, but then the plane was climbing, seemingly straight up into the blue, cloudless sky, the sounds from its engines fading in the distance.

Already Air France flight 248 was bumping down the taxiway, the last before the Swissair flight.

Boorsch watched as it reached the end of the runway, hesitate for a moment, and then turn, accelerating even before it was completely lined up.

This was an A-320 Airbus, the same type of aircraft as Swissair 145, and Boorsch watched it with critical interest as it lumbered heavily down the runway toward him.

Its nose gear rose from the pavement, and the big airliner seemed to hang there like that for a long time before the mains lifted off, and then it was roaring overhead and climbing.

Boorsch turned and watched as its landing gear retracted, and when it was only a tiny speck in the sky he glanced back toward the distant terminal-the Swissair jetliner was still at the boarding gate-before he went to the rear of the van.

Unlatching the lid on the long metal box he flipped it open. For a moment or two he just stared at what the case contained, but then he reached inside and ran his fingertips lovingly over the nearly four-foot-long Stinger ground-to-air missile, and smiled.

Chapter 4

In the Orly Airport’s Security Operations room the direct line from the control tower buzzed.

Police Sergeant Marie-Lure Germain answered it. “Security, Germain.”

“Ah, Marie-Lure, there’s an Air Service truck parked by the inner marker just off the end of zero-eight. What are you showing in your log?”

“Just a moment, Raymond,” she said. Raymond Flammarion was the day shift tower supervisor.

He was a stickler for detail. No one liked him but everyone respected his abilities.

Nothing appeared on the situation board which showed activity in and around the airport.

She turned back to her console. “Nothing here.”

“Well, I am looking at the van through binoculars this very moment, ma cherie. The rear door is open, but I don’t see anybody out there. And you know, considering Interpol’s warning…“”

“I’ll check it out.”

“Please do, and get back to me. There’s not an aircraft in or out today that is not completely full, if you catch my meaning.”

“Give me a minute, Raymond. Somebody probably forgot to file.” Marie-Lure hung up, and punched up the number for the gate guard hut out there on her operations phone.

The connection was made immediately and the number began to ring.

At twenty-three, Marie-Lure was one of the youngest members of Orly’s security staff which, augmented as it was just now from the Police Contingency Pool out of Paris, numbered nearly one hundred people. But she was conscientious and professional. She’d been trained at the Academie de Police in Paris, and had graduated in the top five percent of her class.

After five rings without answer, she broke the connection and redialed. Again there was no answer. It was possible the phone was out of order, and it was possible that both officers had stepped away from the hut. But just now it was bothersome.

She put down the phone and beckoned the shift supervisor, Lieutenant Jacques Bellus, who ponderously got up from behind his desk on the raised dias and came over. He’d accepted an early retirement two years ago as a Chief Inspector with the Paris Police to take this job. It was much safer.

“Have the bad people finally arrived?” he asked.

“Flammarion has spotted an Air Service maintenance truck off the end of zero-eight.

He wants to know what we have on it.”

Bellus glanced up at the situation board.

“We show nothing,” Marie-Lure said. “And now there is no answer from security out there.”

“Who is on duty this morning?”

Marie-Lure brought up the information on her computer. “Capretz and Gallimard.”

Bellus grunted. “Have you called Air Service?”

“I didn’t want to alarm anyone yet.”

“Well, call them, and I’ll try the guard hut again,” Bellus said and he picked up the operations phone.

Marie-Lure telephoned the Air Service Dispatch Office across the field at the Air France Service Hangar. The dispatcher answered on the first ring.

“Air Service.”

“This is Orly Security. What are your people doing out at the inner marker off zero-eight this morning? We’re showing nothing on our board.”

“There shouldn’t be anyone there, so far as I know,” the young man replied. “Moment.”

Marie-Lure could hear the shuffle of papers, and a couple of seconds later the dispatcher was back.

“The work order is here. Apparently some mec

stuck it in the wrong order. Looks like an unscheduled adjustment on the marker frequency.

Sorry, but I didn’t know a thing about this. Someone will get the axe.”

“Send a runner over with a copy of the work order, would you?”

“As soon as possible. We’re busy this morning.”

“Merci.” Marie-Lure hung up.

Bellus shook his head and hung up. “Still no answer. What’d Air Service have to say for itself?”

“The work order was apparently misplaced. They’ll send it over as soon as they can.”

“Have we got anybody nearby this morning?”

“I think Dubout might still be over by one-eight. He could get over the back way, but he’d have to cross the runway.”

“Get him on the radio, and then get authorization from the tower.”

“Do you want to delay air traffic for a few minutes?” she asked.

Bellus pondered the suggestion for a moment, but then shook his head. “As long as it’s a legitimate Air Service order, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Yes, sir,” Marie-Lure said, and she got on the airport security frequency to raise Sergeant Dubout.

The passengers on Swissair 145 would be in the final boarding process by now. Boorsch stood out of sight from anyone who might be looking this way from the tower or the terminal, and studied the plane with the binoculars. The boarding tunnel was still in place, but the baggage compartment hatches in the belly of the Airbus had been closed, and the baggage handlers had withdrawn.

The air was suddenly very still and thick with the odors of the airport and of Paris.

French smells, somehow, that Boorsch found offensive. Frogs were filthy people, even worse than the sub-human Polaks or Kikes, although France itself was a pleasant enough country.

Boorsch lowered the glasses, then raised them again to study the tower, and then the maintenance hangars across from the main terminal. Normal activity, so far as he could see. Nothing out of the ordinary. If any alarms had been sounded, they were not outwardly visible.

Sooner or later, of course, airport security would realize that something might be wrong with their access road guards out here, though the presence of this van would cause no real questions. He’d personally taken care of that earlier this morning during the shift change at the Air Service Dispatch office.

Someone would come out to investigate. That was why his timing had to be so tight.

Only minutes now and he would be finished here and he could make his escape.

Laying the glasses aside, Boorsch carefully removed the Stinger missile and its handheld launcher from its metal container. The unit, which was about four feet long and a little less than four inches in diameter, weighed thirty-one pounds, including the reusable launcher and the rocket with its solid-fuel propellant, high-explosive warhead and infrared heat-seeking guidance system.

In theory the missile was simple to use. Point it at a heat-emitting target. Uncage the firing circuits, and when the missile’s sensing circuitry locked on to a viable target a steady tone would sound in the operator’s ear. At that moment the user pushed the fire button, and the Stinger was away, accelerating almost immediately to a speed of one thousand feet a second, with an effective range of four thousand yards.

In practice however, first-time users almost always missed even the easiest of targets.

Like using a shotgun to shoot clay pigeons, the operator needed to lead the target … especially an accelerating target such as a jetliner taking off.

Of the six ex-STASI comrades who’d trained with the Stinger in Libya, Boorsch had been the best, so when this emergency had developed, he’d been the natural choice for the assignment.

“Don’t let us down, Karl,” he’d been instructed. “This is important to the project.

Very important.”

The walkie-talkie in the front of the van came to life. “Three,” the man patrolling the N7 transmitted.

Carefully laying the missile down, Boorsch hurried around to the front, and snatched up the walkie-talkie. “Three, go,” he radioed.

“Trouble on its way across the field from one-eight.”

“ETA?”

“Under five minutes.”

“Understand,” Boorsch responded. “One?”

“Clear.”

“Two?”

“Clear.”

Boorsch laid the walkie-talkie down and went to the rear of the van where he grabbed the binoculars and scanned the field in the vicinity of the end of north-south runway.

A jeep was just crossing the runway itself.

He turned the glasses toward the Swissair flight. The boarding tunnel had still not been withdrawn. There was time. But not much of it, he thought as he laid the binoculars down and pulled out his pistol.

Chapter 5

McGarvey had to show his passport to follow Marta through security to the boarding gate, and it struck him that everyone out here seemed a little tense. It was probably another terrorist threat. The French took such things very seriously.

Most of the passengers for the Swissair flight had already boarded, leaving the waiting area empty except for one flight attendant and two boarding gate personnel, one of whom was making the boarding announcement over the terminal’s public address system.

“Ladies and gentlemen. All passengers holding confirmed seats for Swissair flight 145, non-stop service to Geneva, please board now. Flight 145 is in the final boarding process.

Mesdames et messieurs…“

“I don’t want to go like this, Kirk,” Marta said, looking up into his eyes. “I have a feeling I’ll never see you again.”

“I’m not what you think I am, Mati. I never was.”

“I knew what you were from the beginning,” she said earnestly. “And I love you despite it.”

McGarvey had to smile. “Not a very good basis for a relationship.”

The flight attendant was looking pointedly at them as the gate person finished the final boarding call in German.

“I’m not proud. I’ll take you any way I can get you.”

Something was wrong. Some internal warning system was ringing bells at the back of McGarvey’s head. It was the CIA car outside, he couldn’t put it out of his mind.

What were they doing here now? Watching him?

“Listen, Mati, do me a favor and wait right here. I don’t want you getting aboard that plane for a minute. I need to make a call first.”

Marta glanced over at the attendant by the open door to the boarding tunnel. “What is it?”

“Probably nothing,” McGarvey said. “Just hang on.” He went over to the counter. “May I use your house phone?” he asked the attendant who’d just finished making the boarding announcement.

“The lady must get aboard now, sir, or she will miss her flight,” the young man said.

“May I use your house phone? It’s very important.”

The attendant hesitated a moment, but then sighed and handed over the handset. “What number would you like, sir?”

“The airport security duty officer.”

A look of alarm crossed the attendant’s face. “Sir, is something wrong?”

“I don’t know. Get me the number, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

A moment later the call went through. “Security, Bellus.”

“Monsieur Bellus, my name is Kirk McGarvey. I am an American. “

“Oui, monsieur, what can I do for you?”

“One or more of my countrymen, from my embassy… security officers…

are presently somewhere here at the airport. It is imperative that I talk with them.

Immediately.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Monsieur McGarvey, but I am very busy…“

“You do know. Call them, and give them my name. Please, this is important.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Boarding gate E17.”

“Swissair?”

“Yes, please hurry.”

“I will require an explanation.”

“Yes, of course.”

The line went silent. Everyone was looking at him. Marta came over.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He shook his head. The flight attendant had come over from the boarding tunnel door and was watching.

Bellus was back a minute later. “Monsieur McGarvey. The answer is that unless your message is extremely urgent, they’d ask you to contact the appropriate… office at your embassy.”

“I see.”

“Is it extremely urgent?”

McGarvey looked out at the Swissair jetliner. “No. I thought they were friends and I just wanted to say hello.”

“Pardon me, monsieur if I find that odd, since you will be flying to Geneva aboard the same aircraft. You are at E17?”

“Yes,” McGarvey said. “Actually I didn’t know if they’d arrived. I’m terribly sorry to have bothered you.”

“Are you a resident of Paris, Monsieur McGarvey?”

“Yes,” McGarvey said. He gave the cop the number of his apartment on the rue Lafayette in the tenth Arrondissement.

“And you are known at this address, and by your embassy?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I will verify this, Monsieur. Have a good flight.”

“Oui, merci.” McGarvey hung up.

“Well?” Marta asked.

“It was nothing,” he said and he kissed her. “Goodbye, Mati.”

“Just like that?” she asked, her eyes filling again.

He nodded. “Have a good flight.” He turned and walked off without looking back.

“What was that all about?” Cladstrup asked as Roningen came back from the telephone.

DuVerlie was across the room out of earshot if they talked softly.

“Does the name Kirk McGarvey ring any bells?”

Cladstrup had to laugh. “You’d better believe it. I was just coming into the Company when he was being booted out. Late seventies. Something to do with Chile, I think.

He screwed up.”

“He’s living here in Paris, and he was involved with that incident at our embassy this winter.”

“That’s what I heard.”

“Well, he’s apparently here at the airport, and he called security and asked to speak to us.”

“By name?” Cladstrup asked.

“I guess not, but I told Bellus that I’d speak to him if he had something urgent for us. Apparently he didn’t, because he backed off. But get this: Bellus thinks he might be on this flight. He called from E17 next door.”

“Is his name on the manifest?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“What the hell?” Cladstrup glanced over toward DuVerlie. “Do you suppose there’s any connection?”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him?”

“I could pick him out of a crowd.”

“Go see if he’s aboard, and I’ll call Lynch and find out if he knows what’s going on.”

DuVerlie jumped up from where he was seated, but Cladstrup 30

waved him back. “It’ll be just a minute,” he told him, going over to the French cop at the door to the boarding tunnel. “I’m going to check out the plane before we board.”

“As you wish,” the cop said, stepping aside.

Cladstrup entered the boarding tunnel and hurried out to the plane, where he showed their tickets and his identification to the stews. “We’ll be just a minute,” he said.

“Is everyone else aboard?”

“Yes, sir. I believe so,” one of the women said. “The preliminary headcount tallies except for you and the other two gentlemen with you. You’ll be the only three in first class.”

“Every other seat is taken?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mind if I look?”

The captain was watching from the cockpit. “Have we got a problem?” he asked.

“Not at all, Captain. There’s a possibility someone we know may be aboard. I’d like to check it out.”

“Make it snappy, I want to get out of here on time.”

“Will do,” Cladstrup said, and he turned and made a quick walkthrough. McGarvey was not among the passengers.

“Is your friend aboard?” the head stew asked.

“No,” Cladstrup said. “I’ll be right back.” He hurried back up the boarding tunnel to the VIP lounge. Roningen was just getting off the phone.

“He’s not aboard,” Cladstrup said. “What’d Lynch have to say?”

“He hasn’t heard anything either, but he’ll check it out.”

“In the meantime?”

“We go to Geneva. What else?”

The American-designed but French-built jeep bumped along the dusty road just off the end of the active runway. From where Boorsch watched from the back of the van, he could only see the one man behind the wheel, and no one else.

This one was probably a supervisor and had been sent out to check on the gate guards.

There’d be no reason for him to bother with a maintenance man on an apparently legitimate call.

But the cop would have to pass right by the van, which was exactly what Boorsch wanted.

He couldn’t afford to have a cop at his back, cutting off his escape route.

When the jeep was about twenty yards away, Boorsch stepped out from behind the van, and waved. The jeep slowed almost immediately.

He knew that he was in plain sight now of anyone with a good set of binoculars who might be watching from the tower, but it could not be helped. He could see with the naked eye that the Swissair jetliner had been backed away from the boarding gate and was now turning out toward the taxiway. Time was running short.

Boorsch walked up onto the road as the jeep pulled up. “Hello. Good morning.”

“Good morning,” the cop said. His name tag read Dubout. “How is it going out here?”

“I have a little problem. I’m happy that you came along. I need a second set of hands for just a moment. It’s that damn antenna assembly.”

“It’ll have to wait. First I have to check on my people.”

Boorsch glanced back in the direction of the guard hut about two miles away. “What, you mean those two at the gate? I don’t think it’s their fault.”

Dubout’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You saw them?”

“Of course. How’d you suppose I got out here?”

“What did you mean: Their fault?”

“The phone, that’s why you’re out here, isn’t it? Their phone is out of order. They asked me to have a look, but I think it’s something wrong with the line. Probably at the box out on the highway.”

“I’ll check it out.”

“Could I just get you to lend me a hand here? It’ll only take a minute. Maybe less.

I need someone to hold a pair of pliers while I tighten a bolt from the other side of the antenna case.”

Dubout hesitated a moment.

“It won’t take any time at all.”

“All right,” Dubout said, setting the parking brake and getting out.

“It’s in the back of my van,” Boorsch said. “Only take a few seconds.”

“Well, let’s get on with it.”

“Sure,” Boorsch said, letting the French cop come around the back of the van first.

He pulled out his pistol at the same time Dubout reared back.

“Mon Dieu.”

Boorsch shoved him forward with his left hand so that they would both be out of sight of anyone watching from the control tower, and shot the man three times in the back of the head.

Dubout fell forward onto the missile’s carrying case. Pocketing his gun, Boorsch shoved the man’s body the rest of the way into the van.

He grabbed the binoculars and studied the far end of the runway. The Airbus had nearly reached the end of the taxiway. It would be taking off within the next sixty to ninety seconds.

Laying down the glasses he snatched up the walkie-talkie. Ordinarily he was calm under pressure, but he’d never had a chance to shoot down an airliner filled with people before. He was getting excited, and nervous.

“One,” he keyed the transmitter.

“Clear.”

“Two.”

“Clear.”

“Three.”

“Clear. What about you?”

“It’s good here,” Boorsch said. The Airbus had turned onto the runway. “Stand by.”

Chapter 6

“Swissair one-four-five, you are cleared for immediate takeoff, runway two-six. Wind two-eight-zero at eight. Barometer two-niner-niner-seven. Switch to departure control at one-two-niner-point-zero-niner out of the pattern. Have a good day.”

“Roger, tower, thank you,” Captain Josef Elver said, advancing the throttles so that the big jetliner could make the turn onto the runway.

“The numbers are green,” his first officer, Claude Piaget, said.

“Roger,” Elver responded as the bird came around onto the runway’s centerline. “Here we go.” He advanced the throttles to the first position.

“Rolling,” Elver said as the A-320 started down the runway, ponderously at first, like a lumbering ox. Ridiculous to think that anything so huge, that weighed so much, could possibly fly.

“On the numbers,” Piaget said calmly.

The runway marker lights began to flash past them in a blur. Captain Elver quickly scanned the flight instruments in front of him, taking his eyes off the view outside the windscreen for only a moment.

“Vee-one,” Piaget warned to his right.

The Airbus was gathering speed rapidly now, and instead of sluggishly responding to his touch the rudder pedals and side-stick controller had come alive. They were flying, almost.

“Vee-R,” Piaget said.

“Rotate.” Elver eased back on the jet fighter-type stick to his left, and the jetliner’s nose came smoothly off the surface of the runway. With his right hand, he maintained the throttles all the way to their stops, and the plane seemed to surge forward.

“My numbers are green,” Piaget said.

The jetliner’s speed was approaching one hundred sixty knots, well into the partial flaps-down flying speed envelope for their weight. The runway markers were a complete blur.

“Vee-two,” Piaget announced.

“Lifting off,” Elver said, easing the stick back and the Airbus came off the runway, almost by itself, the bumpy ride instantly disappearing.

“On the numbers,” the first officer advised.

“Begin reducing flaps,” Elver ordered, and Piaget began retracting them. Their speed immediately started to increase and Elver eased the stick farther back, the plane barreling up into the cloudless sky.

Once out of the pattern, flaps up and landing gear retracted, Elver planned on turning over control to Piaget so that he could go back to the head. He was picking up a bug of some kind, and frankly, he felt like hell.

Boorsch’s stomach was tied in knots. He’d known excitement in his life, and he had been anticipating this moment ever since he’d gotten the call forty-eight hours ago.

But he’d never expected anything could give him such a lift, such intense pleasure as this.

The Stinger missile and launcher were comfortably heavy on his right shoulder where he stood behind the Air Service van. He could hear the roar of the huge Airbus, and he knew that it was off the ground now.

It was time.

Stepping away from the rear of the van, he raised the Stinger, finding and centering the jetliner’s bulk in the launcher’s sights. The plane was climbing directly toward him, impossibly loud and impossibly huge.

He no longer cared if he was visible from the tower. At this point no power on earth could prevent what was about to happen.

He lost the aircraft in the Stinger’s sights, but then got it again, centering the engine on the portside wing in the inner ring.

With his cheek on the conductance bar, he thumbed the missile’s activation switch and the launcher began to warble.

“A miss almost always comes from too early a shot,” the words of their instructor echoed in his ears. “In this business one must have the patience of Allah.”

Allah had nothing to do with it, but Boorsch did understand timing. The Stinger was a fine weapon, but it could not produce miracles.

“Give it a chance and it will perform for you as you wish.”

The jetliner was climbing now at an increasingly steep angle, its engines producing their maximum thrust and therefore their maximum heat.

He pushed the forward button, uncaging the missile’s infrared seeker head. Almost instantly the tone in his ear changed, rising to a high-pitched scream as the missile locked on to its target.

Still Boorsch waited, certain that by now someone in the tower must have spotted him and called security. Soon the airport and surrounding highways would be crawling with cops.

The Airbus passed directly overhead, and Boorsch led it perfectly.

At the last moment he raised the sights slightly, pulled the trigger, and the missile was off, the launcher bucking against his shoulder no harder than a 20-gauge shotgun.

Chapter 7

“Mori Dieul Raymond,” one of the tower operators shouted in alarm.

The moment they had spotted the lone figure emerging from behind the Air Service van, with what even at this distance was clearly recognizable as some sort of a missile, Flammarion had gotten on the phone to security with one hand and on the radio to flight 145 with the other.

The Swissair copilot came back first. “Swissair one-four-five.”

For an instant Flammarion stood with his mouth open, hardly believing what he was seeing with his own eyes. The missile had been fired.

“Abort! Abort!” he screamed into the microphone.

“Security, Bellus,” a voice on the telephone answered.

“Say again, tower?” the Swissair copilot answered calmly.

The missile’s exhaust trail was clearly visible in contrast against the perfectly blue sky. About one hundred feet above the ground it made a slight loop before it began its graceful curve up and to the west directly behind the departing jetliner.

In that short instant it struck Flammarion that the weapon was a live thing; a wild animal stalking its prey, which in effect it was.

But it was so incredibly fast.

“Abort!” he shouted as the missile suddenly disappeared.

For a split second Flammarion’s breath was caught in his throat. Something had happened.

The missile had malfunctioned. It had destroyed itself in mid-air. It had simply disintegrated, the pieces falling to earth much too small to be seen from this distance.

A fireball began to blossom around the engine on the left wing. Suddenly it grew to tremendous proportions, and pieces of the jetliner-these big enough to easily be distinguished from this distance-began flying everywhere.

Something had struck them on the port side, and the Airbus began to sag in that direction, slowly at first, but with a sickeningly increasing acceleration.

Alarms were flashing and buzzing all over the place, and Elver’s panel was lit in red.

“We’ve lost our portside engine,” Piaget shouted.

“I can’t hold it,” Elver shouted. “She’s going over!” He had the stick and right rudder pedal all the way to their stops, but still the jetliner continued to dive as she rolled over to port.

He thought it was almost as if they had lost their left wing. The entire wing!

His copilot, Piaget, who had been on the radio with the tower, was speaking loudly but calmly into the microphone. “Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is Swissair one-four-five, just off the end of runway two-six. We’ve lost control. We’re going in. We’re going in. Mayday, mayday, mayday!”

Elver reached out and chopped all power to the starboard engine. The powerful thrust on that wing was helping to push them over.

Piaget should be given a commendation for his coolness and dedication under pressure.

It was just a fleeting thought, replaced by the certainty that none of them were likely to survive beyond the next fifteen or twenty seconds.

The reduced thrust on the starboard wing seemed to have the effect of slowing their port roll, but only for a moment or two. Then they continued over.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday…!” Piaget was shouting into the microphone.

The ground was very close now. Looking out the windshield Elver estimated their altitude at less than one hundred feet.

He could hear people screaming in utter terror and hopelessness back in the passenger compartment, but a moment of calmness came over him now that he knew for sure he was going to die.

It was happening too fast, Elver thought. And much sooner than he’d ever expected.

The moment before impact he reached out for the master electrical switches.

“Putain,” the cabbie swore, and he suddenly jammed on the brakes and hauled the taxi over to the side of the highway.

McGarvey, seated in the back, had been thinking about the last time he and Marta had parted. That had been Lausanne, several years ago. She’d been sitting in their kitchen, and on his way out with his suitcase, he looked back in at her. A pistol lay on the table, but she made no move to reach for it.

He wondered what he would have done had she picked it up and pointed it at him. He supposed he would have done exactly as he had done.

He was shoved violently forward. At first he thought they’d hit something. The driver was looking back the way they had come even before he’d brought the taxi to a complete halt.

“Qu-est qu’il-y-a?” McGarvey shouted, irritated, but then he turned and looked in the same direction as the driver, and his gut instantly tightened.

An airliner was down. A huge ball of fire and smoke billowed up into the clear sky to the southwest. He’d heard no noise, partly because of the distance, partly because of the traffic noises, and partly because the cabbie had been playing the radio very loud.

Traffic on the N7 was coming to a standstill as McGarvey jumped out of the cab. It was definitely a downed airliner, and he knew in his heart of hearts that it was the Swissair flight he’d just put Marta on.

The cabbie got out of the taxi and crossed himself. “They are all dead,” he muttered half under his breath.

A big puff of black, oily smoke was slowly dissipating in the air not too far to the east, about where McGarvey figured the main east-west runway ended. Below that, and a little farther east, the faint traces of what appeared to be a small jet contrail also hung in the air.

The trail was distorting on the very slight breeze, but it was still identifiable.

McGarvey stared at it for a full second or more, willing himself not to come to the conclusion that had formed almost instantly in his mind. But it was inevitable.

The Swissair flight was down because someone standing near the end of the runway had shot it down with a handheld ground-to-air missile.

Either a Russian-made SA-7 Strela, or the American Stinger. Both were readily available on the market for a couple of thousand dollars each. And either would be effective in bringing down a jetliner.

In the next minutes all efforts would be concentrated on the crash site in a desperate effort to rescue anyone who might have survived the crash. Allowing the man or men who had fired the missile a chance to escape in the confusion.

Not if he could help it.

McGarvey shoved the cabbie aside, jumped behind the wheel and took off, back toward the airport, the wrong way down the highway.

Chapter 8

Lieutenant Bellus finally made some sense of what Flammarion was screaming, and his blood went cold.

“It’s crashed! It’s down! Oh, God, there’s fire everywhere! It’s horrible!”

“Scramble the crash units,” Bellus shouted.

“They’re on their way! But I tell you no one can survive down there. Don’t you see, the wing was off. It was gone, in pieces. They didn’t have a chance.”

“Calm yourself, Raymond, and tell me what happened,” Bellus shouted.

Marie-Lure was taking a call, and her console was lit up like a Christmas tree, but she was staring at the shift supervisor.

“Oh, it’s horrible! Horrible!”

“What happened to that airplane?” Bellus demanded. “Raymond, pull yourself together.

Other lives may depend on this. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I see,” Flammarion responded, calming down a little. “The fire units are halfway across the field. We’re diverting all traffic to De Gaulle and Le Bourget.”

“Very good. Now, exactly what happened?”

“It was a rocket, I think.”

“What do you mean, a rocket? Was it a warplane? What?”

“No, from that Air Service van. I saw it with my own eyes, Jacques. He held it on his shoulder, and fired it when one-four-five took off. Just after she lifted off.”

“The Swissair flight?”

“Yes, yes. I thought it would be all right… but then there was a flash and the wing started to come off. They didn’t have so much as a chance, Jacques.”

Bellus held a hand over the telephone mouthpiece. “Is there any word from Capretz or Gallimard?” he asked Marie-Lure.

“Nothing yet.”

“What about Dubout? He should be out there by now.”

“He doesn’t answer his radio.”

“Who else is on the apron?”

“Peguy, Bourgois and Queneau.”

“Tell them I want that Air Service maintenance man picked up. But tell them to be careful, he’ll be dangerous.”

“Sir?”

“He shot down the Airbus, and it’s got something to do with the Americans.”

“My God.”

Bellus turned back to the phone. Flammarion was babbling something. He had gone to pieces again.

“Listen to me, Raymond,” Bellus said. “Listen. Can you still see that Air Service van out there?”

“What… the van? Yes, it’s still there. I’m looking at it now. But your jeep is gone.”

“Jeep? What jeep?”

“Your office asked permission for it to cross one-eight.”

It was Dubout. “You say the van is still there. Do you see anybody there? Anybody nearby?”

“No, there’s nobody.”

“Do you see any bodies, Raymond. Any bodies in the vicinity of the van?”

“No.”

“Anything lying on the ground?”

“Nothing.”

“All right, Raymond. Now look around out there. Is there anything moving? Any sign of that jeep?”

“Are you crazy? Of course there’s movement. Jeeps, ambulances, fire trucks.”

“All going toward the crash. But look now, Raymond. Is there anybody leaving the scene? Is there anybody going in the opposite direction?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look,” Bellus shouted. “This is important if we want to catch the bastard who did this.”

“There are people dying out there. Burning to death.”

“That’s right. Now, can you see any movement away from the airport? That jeep?”

“Wait.”

“Hurry, Raymond. There may not be much time,” Bellus said, and he held his hand over the telephone’s mouthpiece again.

Marie-Lure looked over. “They’re on their way.”

“Bon. Get my helicopter here on the double. Have Olivier pick me up just outside.

Then get your weapon, you’re coming with me. Marc can take over here.”

“There it is,” Flammarion shouted excitedly.

“Is it the jeep, Raymond?” Bellus asked.

“Yes, it’s just beyond the crash. South.”

Bellus looked up at the situation map on the wall, and visualized where the Airbus had gone down, and therefore where Flammarion was telling him the jeep was headed.

“He’s headed toward the highway. The N7. Can you see that far?”

“No. He’s gone. The fire and smoke. He’s on the other side now.”

“All right, Raymond, thank you very much, you have done a fine job. Go back to your duties now,” Bellus said, and before Flammarion could reply he broke the connection.

“Three-minutes,” Marie-Lure said.

“Go out and hold it, I’ll be right there,” Bellus said, and he punched up an outside line and dialed the confidential emergency number he and all French security people were supplied with for the American embassy in Paris. He had such a number for every embassy. The number was answered on the first ring. “Seven-eight-one-one.”

“This is Orly Airport Police Lieutenant Jacques Bellus. Swissair flight one-four-five has crashed. I believe two or more of your people may have been aboard.”

“One moment please,” the woman said.

Two seconds later a man was on the line. “Lieutenant, my name is Tom Lynch. I’m a special assistant to the ambassador. What’s this about Swissair one-four-five?”

“It has crashed, monsieur. Did you have people aboard? Messieurs Cladstrup and Roningen, along with a third, unidentified gentleman?”

“Yes,” Lynch said heavily. “What has happened?”

“Apparently someone shot that airplane out of the sky on takeoff.”

“Shot…? What the hell are you talking about?”

“With a missile.”

“I’m on my way out.”

“Yes, monsieur, your presence will be most helpful. There will be some questions, among them the name of another man who may have been aboard that airplane.”

“We’ll discuss that third man later…”

“No, monsieur, this is a fourth man. Kirk McGarvey.”

Lynch said nothing.

“Is this name familiar to you?”

“Yes,” Lynch said. “I’m on my way.” The connection was broken.

As McGarvey raced back toward the airport, dodging traffic the wrong way on the divided highway, he tried to work out how the terrorist or terrorists had gotten through Orly’s tight security, and then how the shooter expected to get away.

Another part of him forcefully held off any thought about Marta and the other people aboard the downed airliner, except for the CIA officers aboard. He didn’t believe it was a coincidence. The shooter wanted those officers dead. Why?

The N7 throughroute ran south directly to the airport, with on-off ramps leading up to the terminal, before it plunged under the airport itself for 1400 yards, coming out on the opposite side of the east-west runways.

Traffic had come mostly to a standstill by now, but several accidents had occurred and he had to drive around the wrecks. In one case a large articulated truck had jackknifed across the highway apparently in an effort to avoid slamming into the rear end of a car that had stopped short. The truck had tipped over and blocked almost the entire width of the highway. No police were on the scene yet, but as McGarvey passed, the driver was crawling out of the cab. He looked unhurt.

The shooter had been positioned somewhere near the end of the active runway, which meant he’d been in plain sight of anyone in the tower.

But apparently no alarm had been raised, which meant the shooter must have been disguised to look as if he belonged there. Airport security, most likely. Or as a runway inspector, or a maintenance person working on one of the approach systems.

Afterward he would have simply driven off. Possible to a rendezvous point where he would transfer to another vehicle for his escape.

Check that, McGarvey thought.

If he had been in plain view of the tower before the shot, then he would have remained in plain view afterward. Only then he’d be known for what he was.

In addition, any movement at that end of the field away from the downed airliner would come under immediate suspicion.

Approaching the terminal ramp leading off the N7, McGarvey turned that last thought over. Something was there. Something he was missing.

He visualized what the situation had to be like across the field. The shooter brought the Airbus down. Then he got into his vehicle and went… where?

Toward the crash, of course. Where he would merge with other rescue units.

Or, if he had put the burning wreckage between himself and the tower, he would have disappeared for all practical purposes.

Long enough for… what?

To drive down to the N7, and come back this way, beneath the airport, back to Paris where he could easily meld into the background.

The logic was thin, McGarvey had to admit to himself, passing the terminal ramp.

The highway dipped into the tunnel, no traffic whatsoever now. All of it must have been stopped on the other side of the crash site. But if the shooter had done anything else, if he had gone in the opposite direction, there’d be nothing McGarvey could do.

An Orly Security Police jeep with blue and white markings came directly toward him at a high rate of speed, its lights flashing, its siren blaring.

McGarvey had to swerve sharply to avoid a head-on collision, and as the jeep passed he got the distinct impression that the lone man behind the wheel wasn’t dressed as a cop. He’d been dressed in white coveralls.

Definitely not a police uniform.

McGarvey slammed on the brakes, hauled the Citroen taxi around in a tight U-turn and accelerated after the jeep.

Chapter 9

“It’s gone now,” Marie-Lure said as their Dassault helicopter broke through the thick cloud of greasy black smoke.

“Did it go into the tunnel?” Bellus demanded, angrily. They had spotted what they took to be the jeep heading down onto the N7, and Olivier Rambaud had cut through the dense smoke on the security chief’s orders. He’d expected the terrorist to head south-away from the airport.

“It must have,” Marie-Lure answered. She was studying the southbound lanes of the N7. “There’s no sign of it now.”

“Where the hell does he think he’s going?”

“Paris?” Marie-Lure suggested.

“He wouldn’t get far in that jeep.”

“Maybe it wasn’t him.”

“Who else?” Bellus asked. He leaned forward and shouted to their pilot. “Cross the field … I want to get to the front of the terminal… the jeep is in the tunnel.”

The pilot nodded and they peeled off to the north as he contacted the tower and told them his intentions. Nothing commercial was taking off or landing at Orly, but other helicopters were streaming toward the crash site from city hospitals and morgues.

The tower was directing their movements to avoid any further tragedies.

“Lieutenant Bellus, are you there?”

Bellus wore a headset connected to the police frequency radio. He keyed the mike.

“Here.”

“They’re dead, Jacques. All three of them.” It was Queneau. The man sounded shook up.

“Where are you?”

“We’re at the end of zero-eight. They’re all in the back of the Air Service Van.

They’ve been shot to death.”

“Who are you talking about?” Bellus shouted, although he knew exactly who was in the back of that van.

“Capretz and Gallimard… and Christian. Merde. He was shot in the back of the head.”

Bellus forced himself to calm down. “Is there anything else there, Phillipe? Anything we can use?”

Queneau didn’t answer.

“Phillipe!”

“The missile launcher is in the back of the truck as well. The American Stinger.”

“Secure the area,” Bellus ordered. “No one is to touch anything. Anything at all, until the evidence team gets there. Do you understand?”

“Oui,” Queneau said.

“Don’t worry, Phillipe, we’ll get the bastard!” Bellus said, and he pulled off the headset. Marie-Lure was watching out the windows, but her complexion had paled.

“We’re taking no chances,” Bellus told her.

She looked up.

“He is a killer. So we will shoot to kill if necessary.”

She nodded, and looked back out the windows as they came over the top of the big terminal building just above where the N7 emerged from the tunnel. She stiffened.

“There!”

Bellus followed her gaze. The jeep, its blue lights still flashing, was pulled up in front of the departing passenger entrances into the terminal. So far as he could tell it had been abandoned. The terrorist was either inside the terminal or someone had picked him up in front.

“Down there,” he ordered the pilot, and as they descended he got back on the radio.

“Security Central, Bellus.”

“Security Central,” his dispatcher answered.

“The bastard may be inside the terminal. I want it sealed. Now!”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Marc, did you hear Queneau?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Spread the word.”

A Citroen taxicab pulled up behind the jeep, and a man jumped out, glanced up at their helicopter, and then raced across the sidewalk and entered the terminal.

“Who the hell was that?” Bellus swore.

Boorsch knew that he was being followed, so he’d decided at the last moment to lose himself in the confusion in the terminal instead of trying to make his rendezvous outside Paris.

It was the taxicab in the tunnel, in the wrong lane. The cabbie had made a U-turn and had come after him. So far as he’d been able to tell, there’d been just the driver, no passenger in the back seat. But he couldn’t be sure.

He’d peeled off his coveralls. He was dressed in tan slacks and a light sweater, but he was conspicuous in the terminal for his lack of luggage, even a briefcase or small bag. And the big Sig-Sauer stuffed in the waistband of his trousers made a telltale bulge beneath his sweater, which he had to cover with one hand.

Steeling himself to act normally, as if he was not on the run, as if he belonged here, Boorsch calmly made his way across the main passenger hall, past the ticket and checkin counters to the escalators leading up to the mezzanine level where the shops, restaurants, lounges and money changing booths were located. There were a lot of people in the terminal, and there seemed to be a general movement toward the windows that faced south, where the Airbus had gone down. The paging system was abnormally silent, and there was a muted hum of tense, and in some cases nearly hysterical conversations.

On the escalator Boorsch watched the front doors. A well-built man dressed in dark slacks and a tweed sportcoat entered the terminal, stepped to one side and waited, apparently studying the crowded arrivals hall.

The same one from the taxi? Boorsch hadn’t got a clear look, but whoever this one was he was a professional, and he had cop written all over him. Boorsch could almost smell it from here.

Just before Boorsch stepped off the escalator, the man looked his way, hesitated for just a moment, and then started forward.

Boorsch knew he’d been made. The bastard was definitely a cop. Either that or CIA.

He hurried left, along the broad concourse, immediately losing himself in the crowds.

When he was certain that he was out of sight of anyone down on the main floor, or coming up on the escalator, he sprinted around the corner down a corridor to the public restrooms and a bank of coin-operated storage lockers.

The blond hair and light blue sweater were unmistakable. McGarvey had got only one brief glimpse of the man’s shoulders and head as he’d started to take off his white coveralls in the tunnel, but it was enough.

But the bastard had been sharp enough to put himself in a position to spot anyone coming after him.

He was armed, no doubt, while McGarvey was weaponless. The balance of power here had definitely shifted. If the terrorist had the presence of mind to stage an ambush somewhere above, or if he had help, McGarvey wouldn’t have one chance in ten of surviving the encounter.

But Mati had been on the flight that the son of a bitch had shot down. There was little doubt she was dead. All of them were probably dead. It wasn’t likely anyone could have survived the kind of fire that had produced that much smoke.

The bastard’s target had been the CIA. But he’d been too much of a coward to face them one-on-one. Instead he’d opted for the methods of the terrorists. Mindless violence against mostly innocent people. McGarvey’s jaws tightened with the thought of it.

He reached the escalator, and raced up the moving stairs, taking them two at a time, shoving people out of the way. At the top he darted across the broad concourse, out of any possible line of fire.

Pulling up just within a nearly empty cocktail lounge he scanned both ways, but there was no sign of the man nor any indication which way he had gone.

The bartender had come out from behind the bar. “What is it? What is happening?”

“Did you see the blond man wearing the blue sweater get off the escalator just a moment ago?” McGarvey demanded.

The bartender, an older man with long handlebar moustaches, shrugged. “Who are you?

What is going on?”

“I’m an American policeman. There has been a plane crash, and the blond man may have had something to do with it. Did you see which way he went?”

“Mon Dieu,” the barkeep shouted throwing up his hands. “He was holding his stomach, as if he were about to be ill.”

“Which way did he go?”

“A droite. To the right, with everyone else.”

“Merci,” McGarvey said, then stepped back out onto the concourse and headed toward the right.

A large crowd had gathered along the broad expanse of windows about one hundred feet farther down the corridor. The windows looked south, toward where the Airbus had gone down.

It was possible the terrorist had merged with that crowd, or was trying to do so now. All he needed was a little time. To do what? Go where?

The man knew that he was being followed. He’d been looking directly down at McGarvey, and for a moment their eyes had locked before he’d disappeared onto the concourse.

The question was, had he spotted McGarvey in the cab, or the police helicopter overhead and run here to the terminal in blind panic, or had this been planned? Did he have a bolt-hole, or perhaps help standing by? There were a thousand places to hide here, and as many escape routes.

A slightly built man wearing a cap and jacket, its collar turned up to cover the back of his neck, emerged from a corridor fifty feet away and without looking back headed immediately toward the crowd in front of the windows. He carried a small overnight bag slung over his shoulder.

The same man? There was no way of making sure, short of catching up with him and pulling the cap off his head. But if he was armed, he would probably not hesitate to open fire. More people would be hurt or killed.

McGarvey pushed his way through the people and hurried into the corridor the man had just come out of. A bank of coin-operated lockers and public telephones lined one wall, while on the other side were the doors to the men’s and women’s restrooms.

No one was around. Everyone was rushing to the nearest windows to catch a glimpse of the crash.

Shoving open the men’s room door, McGarvey stepped inside.

There was no one there, and he was starting to back out when he spotted something on the floor in front of the last toilet stall at the end, and he went back in.

It was blood, he could see that as he approached. The lock on the stall door had been forced, as if someone had put his shoulder to it.

Pushing the door open, McGarvey looked inside. The man seated on the toilet, his trousers and shorts down around his ankles, had been shot in the middle of the forehead at close range. The bullet had exited the back of his head, and a good deal of blood had run down the tiled wall and across the floor.

It was him! The green jacket and black overnight bag to help him blend in, and the cap to hide his blond hair. He’d come in here, taken the man’s things and killed him.

McGarvey raced back up the corridor to the still-crowded concourse, and, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, worked his way to the big knot of people gathered in front of the line of windows.

The fire was almost out and the smoke was clearing, leaving behind a long line of debris in the distance at the far end of the airport. The tail section from the Airbus jutted up in silhouette on the horizon, and seemingly everywhere there were hovering helicopters, fire trucks, ambulances, police units, and hundreds upon f hundreds of people.

McGarvey just caught a glimpse of the scene and he was brought up short. No one could have survived, as he had feared. But the thought that Marta’s body was down there, possibly burned beyond recognition, or damaged so massively that a positive identification might never be made, made him shiver.

He stepped back a pace as an older man, dressed in a three-piece gray suit, suddenly stumbled and fell down.

For an instant McGarvey thought the man might have suffered a heart attack or a stroke, but then he saw the line of blood down the side of his face, and he reared to the left in time to see the man in the cap and green jacket disappear around the corner at the far end of the concourse.

Chapter 10

The shot had been fired from a silenced pistol, and there was enough background noise on the concourse so that only a handful of people nearest the downed man had any idea that something was happening.

“Someone call a doctor,” McGarvey ordered and he pushed his way through the crowd and started after the gunman. He was not familiar enough with Orly’s terminal to know exactly what was back here, except that the boarding gates were off to the right somewhere.

Possibly offices, no doubt with a rear exit or exits from the terminal down to the employee parking area. But how did the man expect to get clear from the airport?

He had to know that by now security would have sealed the entire area.

Unless, of course, he did have help. Someone waiting for him, in which case McGarvey, unarmed, would be rushing into a definite no-win situation.

He pulled up short at the end of the concourse, and eased around the corner in time to see the shooter disappear down a corridor about fifty feet away without looking back. The man definitely knew where he was going.

McGarvey sprinted after him, running up on the balls of his feet, careful to make as little noise as possible. Out here in the open corridors like this he’d have no chance against an armed man or men, whose shots would be framed by the walls, just like a shooting gallery. But if he could get the man in a situation where a clear shot was difficult or impossible, there might be a chance of stopping him.

He pulled up again at the corridor the shooter had gone down and took a quick look around the corner. The man had reached the far end where he was knocking on a door.

Another door halfway up the corridor opened and a woman stepped out.

“Get back,” McGarvey shouted to her.

The gunman half-turned and fired at McGarvey, the shot smacking into the wall at head height just as McGarvey ducked back out of sight.

He heard a second shot, what sounded like the woman, grunting or crying something, and then a buzz. For a split second McGarvey couldn’t identify the sound, but suddenly he understood that the gunman had knocked at a security door, which was being buzzed open for him.

“ArreterV McGarvey shouted, looking around the corner again.

A man had come out of one of the offices and was kneeling down over the woman, at the same moment the gunman fired three shots through the open doorway at the end of the corridor and then disappeared inside, the door closing behind him.

McGarvey rushed down the corridor and the man kneeling over the woman looked up and then reared back in alarm.

“She’s been shot!”

“Call an ambulance,” McGarvey shouted, racing past him, to the end of the corridor.

The door the shooter had gone through was of heavy steel construction, with an electric lock operated from inside. He put his shoulder to it only once, realizing immediately that there was no way for him to break it down.

Another man wearing a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, his tie loose, had come out of the same office as the woman.

“What’s behind that door?” McGarvey shouted hurrying back to them.

Both men moved back as if they thought they were going to be the next victim.

“Where does it lead?”

“It is security,” the man standing stammered.

“Security for what? Where does it lead?”

“The VIP boarding lounge.”

“How do they get out there? Is there a service corridor?”

“Ghislane is dead,” the kneeling man cried.

“Oui. Yes, there is a service corridor at the rear.”

“Is there another way of getting back to it? Without going through security?”

The man was shaking his head, but then he notlded. “Yes, yes, from Armand’s office.

He is our public relations Chef de Service.”

“Show me!” McGarvey demanded. Precious seconds had passed and by now the killer could be long gone.

“She’s dead,” the man on the floor cried again. “Why? Why has this happened?”

McGarvey followed the second man into a large office furnished with a half-dozen desks. Two women were huddled together in the corner behind a few filing cabinets.

“Just here,” the Frenchman said opening a door at the rear. A plaque read: M. Coteau.

Chefde Service. Publicite.

The office was fairly small but very well appointed. A middle-aged man with graying hair was seated at his desk, speaking on the telephone. He looked up in surprise.

“Armand, there has been a shooting,” the Frenchman who’d led McGarvey in, sputtered excitedly. “It’s Ghislane.”

McGarvey went directly across to a door at the rear of the Chef de Service’s office, and just eased it open so that he could look out into the long corridor. A door to the right, at the far end of the corridor, one hundred fifty feet or more away, slammed shut.

McGarvey looked back. “Which boarding gate does the door at the end serve?”

“E17…” Coteau said, suddenly realizing the significance. “My God… the Swissair flight.”

“Call Security. Tell them that the man who shot down that flight just entered the VIP lounge down there. He’s blond, but he’s wearing a dark cap and green jacket. Hurry.”

McGarvey stepped into the corridor and raced down to the far end, aware that once again he was presenting himself as a perfect target. By now the gunman would have to suspect that his pursuer was not armed. McGarvey only hoped that the man would be so intent on making his escape that he wouldn’t take the time to wait in ambush.

It was also possible that he didn’t know that there was an alternate way into this service corridor, other than through security. He might not be expecting company this soon.

At the end of the corridor McGarvey hesitated only long enough to listen at the door.

There were no clear sounds from within.

Stepping to one side, out of the line of fire, he turned the knob and carefully opened the door.

He got a brief glimpse of the gunman, his green jacket off, holding his pistol on a policeman who was taking off his uniform. The cop looked up in surprise, and the terrorist turned and snapped off a shot as McGarvey ducked back.

Someone shouted something, and there was a crash and another silenced pistol shot.

McGarvey looked through the door again as the cop, his arms wrapped around the gunman, blood streaming down his face, started to fall backward.

Someone was coming down the corridor in a great rush behind McGarvey as he leaped into the room.

The terrorist, knowing what was about to happen, was desperately trying to free himself from the already dead cop when McGarvey reached him, batted the pistol out of his hand, and hauled him off his feet, slamming him against the wall.

Boorsch. Karl Boorsch. McGarvey knew the man! Until a few years ago he’d worked in East Berlin as a STASI hitman. McGarvey had had a brief encounter with him about eight years ago. It had been a situation in which neither of them had had a clear shot, but McGarvey never forgot a face.

Boorsch whipped out a switchblade knife, flicked the blade open and lunged. McGarvey managed to sidestep the thrust, but the ex-STASI triggerman was younger and faster, and ducked McGarvey’s swing.

Suddenly recognition dawned in his eyes. “You,” he said, and an instant later a man in civilian clothes a big pistol in his hand appeared in the doorway.

“Put it down!” he shouted.

Boorsch stepped back and started to toss the knife underhanded, when Bellus fired three times, all three shots catching the East German in the chest, destroying his heart and left lung.

McGarvey stood perfectly still. His back was toward the door so he could not see what was going on in the corridor, but there were definitely several people out there now. Undoubtedly airport security; all of them armed, all of them jumpy because of what was happening. He wanted no mistakes.

“Are you carrying a weapon, Monsieur?” the cop in the doorway asked.

McGarvey recognized his voice from the telephone before Marta had boarded the plane.

“No, I am not, Monsieur Bellus.”

“Who are you?”

“Kirk McGarvey. We spoke on the telephone earlier.”

“Search him,” Bellus ordered. “And get the medics in here to see to Allain.”

McGarvey moved his arms away from his body as a uniformed cop came up behind him and quickly patted him down.

“Nothing,” the cop said.

Another uniformed cop came over and was feeling for a pulse at the downed cop’s neck.

But it was clear that the man was either already dead or soon would be. His head wound from the large-caliber pistol Boorsch had used was massive.

“You may put your arms down,” Bellus said coming the rest of the way into the lounge.

McGarvey turned to him. “This is the one who shot down that plane, I think.”

“You led me to believe that you were on the flight.”

“No,” McGarvey said. “I came to see a friend off.”

“Who?”

“A Swiss Federal Police officer named Marta Fredricks.”

“Did she board?”

McGarvey nodded.

“Then I am truly sorry. You must know that there is little possibility of any survivors.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“What are you doing here, Monsieur? Exactly?”

McGarvey told the security supervisor everything from the moment the cabbie had suddenly pulled over to the side of the highway, until now, leaving nothing out except the fact he’d recognized Boorsch.

“Are you a police officer?” Bellus asked. A young, attractive woman in a police uniform stood at his elbow taking everything in with wide eyes.

“No.”

“American Central Intelligence Agency?”

McGarvey shook his head.

“Do not toy with me, Monsieur. A great many people have died this morning. I will not play a guessing game here. You telephoned asking about two men who worked for the Agency, and minutes later the flight they boarded was shot out of the sky.”

“I used to work for the Agency,” McGarvey said. “Some years ago.”

“Yes?” Bellus prompted.

“I spotted their car out front and I wanted to speak to them.”

“About what?”

“Why they were here at the airport.”

Bellus looked at him through lidded eyes. “A curious question from a man who no longer is in their employ.”

“He is dead,” the doctor said looking up.

Bellus nodded. “What about the other one?”

“Also.”

“Then there is nothing here for you,” Bellus said. “Go back out on the field. Maybe there will be a miracle today after all.”

The doctor left.

“I was asking a question, Monsieur McGarvey.”

“One which I don’t think I could ever adequately answer for you.”

“But you will try.”

McGarvey hesitated, looked down at Boorsch and the French cop who had died fighting…

what? The Cold War was over. The two Germanies were reunited. The STASI had been completely dismantled. What the hell was this one doing here?

He looked back up at Bellus and the young girl at his side. “Old habits die hard,” he said.

“That’s no answer,” Bellus countered.

“I didn’t think you’d believe it was.”

It was noon before the French authorities allowed McGarvey to speak with a representative from the U.S. Embassy. A special investigative team from La Surete had taken over the opening moves, and they had been anything but friendly or gentle.

They cleared out from the small room adjacent to the airport’s Security Operations center where McGarvey had been held, and an older, balding man in a well-cut suit came in. He had career diplomat written all over him.

“I’m Greer Adams, Mr. McGarvey. Deputy consular officer from the embassy.”

They shook hands. “Can you get me out of here, Mr. Adams?”

“Yes, of course. You merely have to sign two statements for the French authorities.

The first is your sworn statement that you had no involvement nor any prior knowledge of the terrorist attack on Swissair flight 145. And the second is that you promise to show up at a preliminary hearing in Paris at a time and place to be announced.”

“No problem,” McGarvey said. “I’ll need a ride back to my apartment.”

“We have a car waiting just outside,” Adams said, producing the two French documents.

McGarvey signed them both, then followed Adams through security and outside. No one even bothered to look up as he left.

Tom Lynch was waiting in the back seat of the car. “Trouble seems to have a habit of following you around, McGarvey,” he said.

“So it would seem,” McGarvey replied, getting in.

“Who was the shooter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Somebody said he recognized you just before Bellus shot him to death.”

McGarvey looked at the CIA chief of Paris station with a straight face, but said nothing.

Chapter 11

It was a few minutes before eight in the morning, Washington time, when CIA Deputy Director of Operations Phillip Carrara answered the phone on his desk.

“Yes,” he said sharply. It had been a long night.

“He’s here, are you ready?” Lawrence Danielle asked in his soft voice. Danielle was the deputy director of the CIA.

“No, but I’ll be right up, Larry. How’s his mood?”

“What do you think?”

“I’ll be right up.”

Carrara replaced his phone, and cinching up his tie went to the door. His secretary Mildred Anderson was at the copy machine. “Are you about finished, Millie?”

“By the time you roll down your sleeves and put on your coat, I will be,” she said without turning around.

She’d been here since 4:00 a.m.

in response to the emergency call, and would probably be here until midnight, as would most of the others on the European desk. Gathering a crisis management team had never been a problem for Carrara. He was a well-liked DDO, despite the fact he was tough. “An Hispanic has to work three times as hard as a WASP to achieve the same rate of advancement. And that’s a fact of life you cannot sidestep.” He would tell that to anyone who asked, though he was not a proselytizer, nor was he bitter.

He was, however, diligent, and he expected nothing less from his staff.

Cuffs buttoned and coat on, Carrara took the half-dozen copies of the hastily prepared report his secretary had readied up to the seventh floor where he was immediately ushered into the director’s large, well-appointed office. Big windows looked out onto the rolling Virginia countryside.

The DCI, Roland Murphy, was seated behind his desk watching the morning news programs from the three major U.S. networks plus CNN on a bank of monitors to his left. A retired Army major general, he was a large man, with a bull neck, hamhock arms, and thick Brezhnev eyebrows over deep-set eyes. He was one of the toughest, most decisive men to have sat behind that desk since Dulles. And when the general barked, his people jumped.

With him were the Company’s general counsel Howard Ryan and the Deputy Director of Intelligence Thomas Doyle as well as Danielle.

Danielle was a small, pinched man, just the opposite of Murphy. He’d been with the Company for twenty-five years, and had even served briefly as interim DCI a few years ago. Ryan, who had come over from the National Security Agency at Murphy’s request a couple of years ago, was a precise man whose father ran one of New York’s top law firms. No one in the Agency had ever seen him dressed in anything but three-piece suits. Doyle, on the other hand, looked like a rumpled bed, but he was probably the smartest man in the room. He and Carrara, who’d also never paid much attention to his clothing, were good friends.

Murphy and the others looked up when Carrara came in. All four television monitors were showing pictures of the downed Airbus.

“I hope you know more than these jokers,” Murphy said sharply. “Because no two of them can even agree on the number of people killed.”

“One hundred fifty-seven,” Carrara said. “Including six French security officers-three on the field and three in the terminal-a female employee in the Orly Public Relations department, and two other innocent civilians-one in the men’s room at the airport, and the other standing in a crowd on the mezzanine level. Plus, of course, the terrorist himself.”

Carrara handed the copies of his report around, then poured himself a cup of coffee from the sideboard before he took his seat across from the DCI.

As they were reading, Carrara’s eyes strayed to the CNN monitor. He’d been working with Tom Lynch and their people in Paris since early this morning, but this was the first opportunity he’d had to see actual pictures of the crashed airliner. He didn’t like to fly, and seeing the news reports live and in color did nothing to dispel his fears.

Ryan looked up sharply from his reading, and moments later Murphy did the same, slamming his open palm on the desk top. “McGarvey?” he roared.

“At this point it looks as if his presence at Orly was purely coincidental,” Carrara said, expecting the reaction. Neither the DCI nor Ryan had any love lost for McGarvey, though for completely different reasons. “But if you will read on, General, you’ll learn that he was instrumental in catching up with one of the terrorists.”

“Who is dead, no doubt,” Ryan said.

Carrara nodded, but before he could continue Ryan turned to the DCI.

“Our Mr. McGarvey strikes again, conveniently eliminating everyone in his path. But I’m willing to bet that it was no coincidence, his being there.”

“I’m sorry, Howard, but I disagree. Carrara cut in. McGarvey was apparently saying goodbye to an old friend of his.”

“Who?”

“A woman by the name of Marta Fredricks.”

Danielle looked up from his reading. “Wasn’t she the Swiss cop who lived with him in Lausanne a few years back?”

“Yes…“ Carrara said, but again Ryan interrupted.

“Need more be said?”

“That’s a little pat, don’t you think?” Danielle asked.

“On the surface, yes,” Carrara admitted. “But McGarvey did not kill the terrorist, the chief of Orly security did that. And at this point he seems willing to cooperate with us and the French authorities.”

“I mean about Lausanne, that connection. It’s where DuVerlie was leading us. Same city, same flight.” Danielle glanced at the report. “And you say here that minutes before the flight McGarvey telephoned Orly security to ask about our people. On the surface, as you put it, Phil, couldn’t it be construed that McGarvey wanted to make sure they were actually aboard one-four-five?”

“He’s gun-shy,” Carrara said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ryan asked.

“It means that everytime he spots our people hanging around we come to him with one of our dirty little insoluble problems. And each time he agrees to help, it nearly costs him his life. He wanted to find out what was going on. In his mind our people being there was the coincidence.”

“What do the Swiss authorities say?” Danielle asked.

“They haven’t replied to our query about Miss Fredricks, except to confirm that she is a Federal Police officer.”

“On assignment to Paris?”

“Unknown at this point,” Carrara said.

“Which brings us back to our original problem,” Murphy said. “DuVerlie’s fantastic story.”

“It would seem that he was telling the truth after all,” Danielle put in.

“Have the French identified the terrorist?”

“Not yet,” Carrara said. “But they’re working on it. He was carrying no identification.”

“What about the rocket he used to bring down the airliner?”

“One of ours, a Stinger. I just received the serial number of the launching device.

My people are checking it out, but I don’t think it’ll get us much. The Stinger is a fairly common item on the open market. But we might have another lead. Orly security found some kind of a walkie-talkie in the back of the van the terrorist used to get out to the end of the runway. Which means he may have been communicating with someone.”

“So?” Ryan asked. “We didn’t think this would turn out to be a one-man operation.”

“It may not be so simple,” Carrara said. “The French have invited us to take a look.

The walkie-talkie is evidently special, its signal not monitorable by normal means.

They weren’t clear on that point, probably because they didn’t have it figured out themselves. But there are no manufacturer’s labels or markings on the device. No way of determining its origin.”

“So they used a high-tech toy,” Danielle said. “The French are cooperating with us, that’s the main thing.”

“Another piece out of our French operations,” Ryan said. “We might as well take out a newspaper ad announcing our presence.”

“How about DuVerlie’s story?” Murphy asked, bringing them back on track. It was clear that he was not happy.

“Tom Lynch thinks he might be able to put an asset into ModTec within thirty days.

It’s possible that Leitner talked to someone else. Or DuVerlie might have said something.

He was nervous enough.”

“What about the Swiss authorities?” Ryan asked. It was his job to keep the Agency out of legal trouble, so far as that was possible. He was an expert on international law, and certified to practice before the International Court at The Hague.

“I suggest we keep them out of this for the moment,” Carrara said. “They would only slow us down.”

“We’re treading on dangerous ground here, General,” Ryan warned, turning again to Murphy.

“Until today I might have agreed with you,” Murphy replied. “But shooting down that airliner was no random act of terrorism, and I don’t think we need to discuss that possibility. Which means DuVerlie was telling us the truth … at least that part about their ruthlessness and apparent organization.”

“There weren’t many people who knew that DuVerlie was going to be aboard one-four-five,” Carrara said.

“No. Which means we’re dealing with professionals. Well disciplined, and well financed.

And when someone like that goes after a key component for a nuclear weapon, it makes me nervous. Extremely nervous.”

“Takes more than an electronic switch to make a bomb,” Danielle pointed out. “Even if they’ve already got the device, which we’re not sure about, they’ll need a sufficient quantity of fissionable material.”

“Eighty pounds of plutonium would be enough,” Doyle said, speaking for the first time. “Along with a component called an initiator, to get the chain reaction going once the critical mass was achieved.”

“Yes,” Murphy said. “But we’ll assume for the moment that if they’re after the switch, they’re after the rest.”

“I’ll give Lynch the go-ahead,” Carrara said.

“I want you directly involved with this, Phil. Tom Lynch is to have every resource available to him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What about McGarvey?” Ryan asked, his hate obvious.

“As soon as the French are through with him, bring him here to Washington,” Murphy said.

“He may not want to return,” Carrara said.

“That wasn’t under discussion. As soon as he’s free, bring him here.”

Chapter 12

The evening was warm and exceedingly humid, and as usual traffic throughout the gigantic city of Tokyo was horrendous. People seemed to be everywhere; omnipresent in crushing numbers; endless streams of bodies scurrying back and forth almost as if they were ants intent on some mysterious, unknowable purpose.

Within a twenty-mile radius of downtown lived thirty million people crammed into twenty-three wards, twenty-six small cities, seven towns, and eight villages. Stretching fifty-five miles east to west, but only fifteen miles north to south, everything about the megalopolis was outrageous and contradictory. Prices were astronomical while average salaries were low; space which was at a premium was squandered-land was sold by the square yard, yet the Japanese preferred to build outward, rather than upward; the culture of the people was stylish and elegant, yet the city on the whole was ugly, a monstrosity by Western standards.

A tall, well-built American got out of a taxi in front of the Roppongi Prince Hotel about a mile and a half from the Imperial Palace and paid off his driver. He wore a well-cut dark business suit, and as usual for meetings such as the one he’d arranged for this evening he wore a wire.

His name was James Shirley, and he worked as chief of station for CIA activities in Japan, a post he’d held for nearly five years. Both he and his wife (they had no children) loved the country, and had no intention of ever returning to Washington, no matter what the Company desired. If and when his reassignment came, he’d decided to resign rather than accept it. He was nearly fluent in Japanese, so he didn’t think he would have much trouble finding a well-paying job with a large Japanese corporation that did business in the West.

He waited just within the main doors into the lobby for several minutes after his cab left, making certain that he’d not been followed. He’d taken great pains with his tradecraft to get here tonight.

Satisfied at length, he crossed the lobby and went out to the courtyard where on a lower level tables were placed around the acrylic swimming pool, the sides of which were transparent so that the swimmers looked like fish in an aquarium. The man he’d come to meet was seated alone at a small table, his alligator-hide attache case open in front of him, his dark horn-rimmed glasses pushed up on top of his head.

Shirley went directly across to him. “Monsieur Dunee? Armand Dunee?”

The short, swarthy Belgian looked up with a scowl. “Who is it wishes to disturb me?

Are you English, or American?”

“American,” Shirley said. “I believe we met last year in Brussels.”

Dunee nodded toward the empty chair opposite. “Anything is possible.”

Shirley sat down, and a waiter came over immediately. He ordered saki, cool.

“You were not followed?” Dunee asked when they were alone.

“No. Did you bring it?”

“Yes, but I’m not going to hand it over here. I think I may have been followed.”

Shirley stiffened slightly, but then smiled. “By whom?”

“I don’t know for sure. It was the same two cars behind me all the way across town.”

“Japanese?”

“I think so.”

“Are they here at the hotel?”

“I don’t know. I doubled back on the subway, then walked a half-dozen blocks before I caught a cab here. But I’m no spy.”

Shirley glanced across the room. Two other men had come in behind him, but neither of them seemed suspicious. He kept talking.

“It sounds as if you did all right. But the next time I’ll want you to abort the meeting if you think you’re being watched. I’ll explain how to make the proper signal.”

Dunee seemed concerned, but so far as Shirley could tell the man was holding together.

It was a good sign this early into the recruitment-although Dunee had come to him, not the other way around.

The Belgian worked for a consortium of seven Japanese companies that did extensive business in the West. His job was to act as liaison between them and banks in Europe and the U.S. In actuality he claimed to work for the Banque Du Credit Belgique as an undercover man here in Tokyo. His real employers, he claimed, were concerned that these Japanese companies were planning a series of currency manipulation raids on the West-a theory that just now was getting a lot of play in Washington.

He was a spy after all, but of a different type than Shirley.

They had arranged to meet this evening so that Dunee could hand over a series of documents that outlined the consortium’s plans concerning eighteen U.S. savings and loan institutions. He said he’d not told his Japanese or his Belgian employers about his contact with the Americans, and he had refused up to this point to tell Shirley what he wanted in exchange. But that would come tonight, at or just before the handover.

What would happen afterwards remained to be seen so far as Shirley was concerned.

Japan was his home now, and he wasn’t about to do anything anti-Japanese unless the Belgian’s charges were very serious, and completely substantiated. Shirley was not a traitor, merely cautious.

The waiter returned with the saki, and Shirley paid him. “You leave first,” he told Dunee. “I’ll be one minute behind you.”

“Where shall I go?”

“Out front. If it looks clear we’ll get a cab together.”

“How will you know?”

“Leave that to me,” Shirley said, and after a hesitation Dunee closed his attache case, and left without looking back.

Shirley remained seated, sipping his rice wine. No one had seemed particularly interested in them, or in Dunee’s departure. In all likelihood the Belgian had managed to lose his tail, if there’d even been one in the first place.

After one minute, Shirley followed the man outside. Two taxis were waiting in the long driveway. One of the drivers had gotten out and was speaking with the doorman and a bellman. Just ahead of the first cab, two workmen in white coveralls, hard hats on their heads and paper air filters covering their faces, were unloading five-gallon paint cans from the back of a small, open truck. No one else was around at that moment, except for Dunee, who stood to one side a few yards from the lead cab. Shirley went down to him.

“Let’s go.”

“It’s them, I think,” Dunee said excitedly. “Below, on the street.”

Shirley stepped around the Belgian to get a better look, and he stupidly tripped over the man’s feet and went down heavily, a sharp pain stabbing at his right ankle.

For a dazed moment or two he didn’t understand what had happened, except that he’d probably broken his leg. He looked up as Dunee walked back into the hotel, and a second later he was completely doused from behind with something very cold and wet.

Gasoline, the horrifying thought crystalized in his brain. Burned like acid.

He turned around in time to see one of the men from the open truck lighting a book of matches.

“No!” Shirley shouted at the same moment the workman tossed the burning matches.

“No!”

The gasoline and fumes ignited instantly with an explosive thump. Shirley reflexively took a deep breath as the first massive pain struck him, drawing burning fumes deeply into his lungs. Mercifully a red haze began to blot out his vision, his hearing and his other senses, and his last thought was that he was too ridiculously young to be dying.

Chapter 13

CIA operations had been moved to the U.S. Consulate until a new embassy could be built a couple of blocks away on the Avenue Gabriel. Just around the corner from the Tuileries Gardens, the building was old and very French with slow iron cage elevators, creaking wooden floors and terrible plumbing.

It was past lunch by the time McGarvey arrived with Tom Lynch, and they went immediately up to a small conference room on the fourth floor. The Station had been on emergency footing all morning because of the air crash, and its effects could be seen on the faces of everyone they met. This was the second serious attack on the CIA’s French operation in seven months.

The French were starting to ask some tough questions, for which there were no answers that were satisfactory to either side. It was a common understanding that the CIA operated within the country, as did the SDECE-the French secret service-in the U.S.

But as long as neither side attracted too much attention to itself, the status quo could be maintained.

McGarvey, however, was a common denominator between this attack and the one that had destroyed the embassy seven months ago. A lot of French citizens had died in each event, and now the Surete National, which headed the French Police, had taken notice.

“It’s only a matter of time before the SDECE takes an interest in you… an official interest,” Lynch told him on the way back from the airport. The chief of station was a slender man with light brown hair and delicate, almost English features. He’d been with the Company for nearly ten years, and was one of the rising stars. He was a corporate man; a team player.

“It had nothing to do with me, Tom, and you know it,” McGarvey said. “They were after your people.”

“Possibly. But why the hell did you call airport security about them?”

“Because everytime I look over my shoulder it seems like one of your people is back there. And I’m starting to get tired of it.”

“Then go back home, McGarvey. Nobody wants you over here. You make people nervous.

You make me nervous.”

“As soon as the French are done with me, I’ll leave Paris.”

“Good,” Lynch had said, and they’d driven the rest of the way back to the city in silence.

McGarvey went to the windows which overlooked a courtyard. Two women were seated on a bench, the remains of a late lunch spread out beside them. He and Marta had often brownbagged it in the parks of Lausanne. It was an American custom she’d found particularly charming.

“Wait here,” Lynch said. “I’ll be back in a minute and we can get started with your debriefing.”

McGarvey didn’t bother to reply, staying instead with his thoughts about Marta. There was no reason for her or the others aboard 145 to have been killed. And there especially was no reason for an ex-STASI hitman to have committed such an act of terrorism.

But it had happened, and like the crash a few years ago at Lockerbie, the official investigation might drag on for a very long time before producing any results. Most likely the real reason for the attack would never be known for sure, because any official investigation was of necessity ponderous, allowing the terrorists ample time to sidestep any move made against them.

It was one of the reasons he’d not told anyone about Boorsch. The French had his body. If they identified him, well and good, but in the meantime McGarvey would have some autonomy of movement as soon as he was finished with his testimony.

His other reason, of course, was Marta. She’d wanted to stay with him in Paris for a couple of days longer, but he had insisted she leave. He’d forced her on that flight, and it had cost her her life. He owed her something, and it was a debt he meant to repay.

His starting point would be Boorsch. It was unlikely that the man had worked alone.

STASI, as a secret police organization, had been dismantled when the East German government fell. But not all of its officers had been caught. It was possible they had linked up with each other to do… what?

Lynch came back a couple of minutes later with an attractive woman in her early to mid-forties whom he introduced as Lillian Tyson, a special assistant to the ambassador.

“Are you with the Company?” McGarvey asked her.

“Actually she’s in charge of legal affairs here,” Lynch said. “For all American interests in France.”

“I’m going to try to keep you out of jail, Mr. McGarvey, if that’s all right with you,” she said. Her voice and manner were sharp and self-assured, as was the smartly tailored gray suit she wore over a ruffled silk blouse and textured nylons.

“Los Angeles?” McGarvey asked.

“Chicago,” she said, taking a small cassette recorder out of her purse and laying it on the table. “Please sit down, Mr. McGarvey. I want you to give us your statement, and afterwards we’ll see just what we’ll want you to tell the French authorities when they question you on Monday.”

“Who will it be, the Surete National?”

“No,” Lillian Tyson said. “The SDECE wants to interview you at Mortier.”

The compound just off the Boulevard Mortier on the northeast side of Paris housed the SDECE’s Service 5, known simply as Action.

It was the counterespionage branch of the agency.

“The bully boys,” Lillian Tyson said. “They’re particularly interested in you.” She turned to Lynch. “What was it Colonel Marquand asked? “Why is it this bastard’s name keeps cropping up?” She turned back. “Pay attention and you’ll come out of this in one piece.”

“Why are they involved?” McGarvey directed his question to the station chief.

“The attackers weren’t French.”

“Do they have an ID already?”

“I only know what was waiting on my desk for me, and what Lillian told me.”

“They went directly to the ambassador about you, Mr. McGarvey, which is why I’m here.”

“You said attackers, Tom. Plural.”

“They apparently found a walkie-talkie.”

“May we get started now?” Lillian Tyson asked.

McGarvey ignored her. “What were they after? Who did we have on that plane?”

“I can’t tell you, but I’m sure you’ll be told something in Washington. The message was on my desk. You’re wanted as soon as the French are finished with you.”

“Sit down,” Lillian Tyson said sharply.

“I don’t think so, counselor,” McGarvey replied. “Not unless you and Tom would like to answer some questions as well. I had a friend on that flight.”

“Yes, we know, and we’d like to ask you about her, as well.”

“Tell Murphy, not this time,” McGarvey said to Lynch, and he started for the door.

“Hold it right there, mister,” Lillian Tyson shouted.

“Am I under arrest?”

“Not yet,” Lynch said. “But I’m sure the general will order it if you refuse to help out.”

“Step out that door, McGarvey, and I’ll turn you over to the French authorities,” Lillian Tyson warned.

“Then I’d have to tell them everything I know, counselor. Everything. I’d suggest you talk that over with your boss.”

McGarvey opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.

“Goddamn you…” Lillian Tyson swore.

“I’ll be in touch, Tom,” McGarvey said, and he left.

“Who in the hell does that son of a bitch think he is?” Lillian Tyson asked.

Lynch was shaking his head. What little he personally knew, plus what he’d been told and had read about the man, all added up to the same thing. He looked at the woman.

“I don’t believe you’d really want to know that.”

McGarvey’s apartment was in a pleasantly quiet neighborhood just off the rue Lafayette a few blocks from the Gare du Nord. He paid off his taxi at the corner and out of old habit, went the rest of the way on foot, watching for the out-of-place car or van, the odd man or woman lingering in a doorway, the telltale flash of sunlight off a camera lens in an upper-story window.

There was nothing this time, though the feeling that the business was starting all over again for him was strong. No doubt Murphy was convinced that McGarvey’s presence at Orly this morning had been no coincidence. And the fact that the general had taken a personal interest meant the presence of the CIA officers aboard that flight had been very important.

But the Cold War was over. It was a line he’d told himself over and over for the past seven months since he’d killed the Russian, Kurshin, in Portugal. He’d been a soldier, but all the battles were done. He was retired.

It was time now for him to return to his ex-wife Kathleen in Washington and try to pick up the threads of his former life before he’d joined the Company. Before he’d become… what?

He stopped across the narrow street from his building. He had killed, therefore he’d become a killer. He’d killed silently, and from a distance, on occasion, which meant he’d become an assassin. Ugly, but the business had been necessary.

No night went by without the memories of the people he’d killed parading through his sleep, like macabre sheep to be counted before he could rest. Those memories would never stop haunting him until he was dead. It was one of the prices he’d paid for becoming what he’d become.

The other price he’d paid, and continued to pay besides the estrangement of his wife and daughter, was the enmity of his own government. The general had called him a “necessary evil” and despised him. Yet when there’d been trouble, of a nature that the CIA couldn’t or wouldn’t handle itself, McGarvey was pushed into the corner in such a way that he could not refuse to help.

Complicated, he thought. His life had never been easy, on the contrary, it had been complicated.

Waiting for a small Renault to pass, McGarvey crossed the street and entered his building. The concierge’s window was closed, so he went directly up to his third-floor apartment. If there was mail he would get it later.

For now he wanted to finish packing. Most of his things would go into temporary storage here in Paris until he knew for certain where he was going to end up, while the rest, except for an overnight bag, he was sending ahead to Washington.

His apartment door was wide open. Two uniformed French policemen were in the corridor talking with a broad-shouldered man in civilian clothes. There seemed to be a lot of activity inside.

The civilian turned around as McGarvey came up. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“My name is McGarvey, this is my apartment. Now who the hell are you and what do you think you’re doing?”

A short, very dark, extremely dangerous-looking man, also dressed in civilian clothes, appeared in the doorway. “Searching your apartment, Monsieur McGarvey. Do you have any objections?”

“You’re damned right I do.”

“Then come in please, and we will discuss them. I’m sure something can be worked out.”

“First of all, who are you?”

“Phillipe Marquand,” the swarthy man said. He was built like a Sherman tank. “Are you presently carrying a weapon?”

“No,” McGarvey said. Marquand was with the SDECE.

“Then it is only the one automatic pistol which we have found in your apartment-for which you apparently have no French permit to carry-that you own. Is that correct?”

“I would like to speak to Tom Lynch at my embassy.”

“In due time, Monsieur. First you and I will have a little chat.”

“Monday…“

“Now. By Monday you will be out of France in good health, I assure you. That is, if you cooperate.”

“There’s nothing I can tell you, Colonel. If you know who Tom Lynch is, and what I was, then you will understand.”

“Ah, but you have it wrong,” the SDECE colonel said. “I don’t have many questions for you, rather it is I who am going to answer your questions.”

McGarvey’s eyes narrowed, and Marquand smiled.

“The man’s name was Karl Boorsch, and he had been a field officer for the East German Secret Service. Both facts you know, of course.

But what you may not know is that Boorsch had help, a great deal of help, and a great deal of money.”

“What do you want from me?” McGarvey asked.

“Your help in tracking them down and eliminating them, of course.”