Fly by Wire

Chapter TWENTY-TWO

The bar menu had a decidedly European tilt. Davis and Sorensen both skipped the special of the day, seaweed and oyster tartare, and neither gave a thought to ordering snails. He went with the salmon bagel, while she settled on onion soup.

"So that file you have on me," Davis asked, "what's in it?"

Sorensen dipped a crusty piece of bread into her soup. "It said you put your fist through a wall at an officer's club."

"That was in there?" He shrugged it off.

Sorensen gave him a look that asked for more. Perhaps a reasonable explanation.

"I was at a dining in," he said.

"A dining in?"

"It's a formal military banquet where the whole fighter wing gets dressed up in our best uniforms. We do guy stuff — eat meat, drink bourbon, smoke cigars. On the night in question, some of my squadron buddies and I were having a stud-finding contest. I lost."

Sorensen took the bait. "Okay — and what does the winner get in this event?"

"A broken hand."

She paused, but then moved on without comment. "The file said you spent three years in the Marines, then got an appointment to the Air Force Academy. Why did you switch services?"

"The Marine Corps is a great organization, but I wanted to fly jets. The Air Force seemed the most likely place. Plus I was a little tired of living in dusty tents and eating MFJEs."

"And you shot down a MiG in the first Gulf War?"

"Yeah, I was flying F-15s at the time. My wingman and I tracked down a MiG-23 that was headed for Iran. Saddam thought his jets would be safer there."

"I guess you proved him wrong."

"I guess."

"So it was a dogfight? Just like in the old movies?"

"You mean like with the wind snapping at my scarf, maybe shaking my fist at the other guy? No. The real thing is very clinical, very quick. And usually very one-sided. The Iraqi pilot had been ordered up on what was basically a suicide mission — his commander told him to fly a jet to Iran before we blew it out of its bunker. He got airborne and was running away at six hundred knots. I chased him down doing six-eighty, put a heater up the poor bastard's tailpipe. Bottom line, we both had jobs to do and gave it our best — but my airplane, missiles, and information were a lot better. So I killed a guy in a fight that wasn't fair."

"In combat I suppose that's how you want all your fights," she said.

He shrugged.

She said, "I remember reading a report a few years back — it said a lot of those Iraqi pilots who actually made it across the border were never heard from again."

"Which means what? That I gave his family a little… closure or something?"

Sorensen said nothing.

Davis spread mustard on his bagel. He had an urge to change the subject. "So tell me what you found out about our Egyptian friend."

"Dr. Jaber? Nothing troublesome. At least not yet. He's a career engineer, sort of a vagabond. He's worked for a number of the big aerospace companies. There's no evidence of any fringe politics, no family members in the Islamic Brotherhood. Jaber has a wife and two kids back in Cairo."

After a pause, Davis said, "And that's it?"

"Langley says they're still working on it."

Davis was putting the finishing touches on a clever reply when the phone in his pocket buzzed. "Excuse me." He wedged it open with a thumb and saw a message from Jen: aunt l can chaperone at dance, please! please.1 kisses, j.

Davis weighed a reply, maybe something like: GO DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Sure. That would score points. Davis put the phone away and frowned. He rubbed a hand over his face, top to bottom, and let out a long, controlled sigh.

"Your daughter?"

He nodded.

"Can I help?"

"You don't even know her."

"I'm a girl."

Davis gave her a hard look that said, No shit. He turned his beer mug by the handle. "Jen is fifteen years old. It'll get easier, right?"

"My mom used to say that kids are the reverse of anchors — the more they weigh, the less they hold you down."

He didn't reply.

"Jammer… what happened to your wife?"

The question caught him off guard. He replied in a smartass tone, "Wasn't that in the file?"

This time Sorensen went silent.

"Sorry," he said, "you didn't deserve that."

Davis had told the story more times than he could count. But not lately. Family and friends all knew what had happened, which meant he only had to deal with fresh acquaintances now. People like Sorensen, Jen's teachers every year, the occasional new neighbor moving in. Someday, he figured, time would do its thing. People would stop asking altogether. Davis wasn't sure if he'd like that or not.

"Diane was killed in a car crash. It was almost two years ago now. She was on her way home from a night class, some kind of healthy-living nutrition class. A big delivery truck — not a semi, but the next size down — blasted right through a stop sign and hit her Honda square in the drivers-side door."

"God, how awful. For you and your daughter. I can't imagine dealing with something like that."

"I'll tell you what really made it hard. It was just an accident. The truck driver was an old Guatemalan guy, barely spoke English. But he was here legally. He'd been working a thirteen-hour shift. That's legal too."

After a pause, Sorensen said, "So there was nobody to blame."

"Exactly. If he'd been drunk, I could have kicked his ass. Maybe I'd have stopped drinking myself and joined MADD, or DADD, or whatever the hell. Or if she'd died from colon cancer I could run a race, wear the right color ribbon, eat cruciferous vegetables the rest of my life. But the way it is—"

"No reason," she said, finishing the thought. "Just random chance."

"But doing what I do, Honeywell, investigating accidents — if it's taught me anything, it's that there's never just one single cause for any disaster. There's always a chain, a series of things that go wrong."

"Even with what happened to your wife? One guy running a stop sign?"

"That night I had thought about calling her on her cell. If I'd gotten through when she was walking out of class it would have slowed her down. Maybe she wouldn't have been at the intersection at that one precise moment. Maybe the truck would have just clipped her. And when she bought that car I tried to talk her into something bigger, something with a little more iron. But Diane insisted on doing the right thing for the goddamn environment. And—" Davis stopped abruptly.

She eyed him with concern. "Jammer — you can't blame yourself."

He stretched, trying to force the tension from his shoulders. "That's what I do for a living, isn't it? Find blame. Sometimes I don't like the answers, don't like what I find. But it's there all the same."

She thought about this, then said, "My job can be a challenge sometimes too. You know — the evasion, the lies."

"Like you did to me?"

"Yes," she said squarely. "Like I did to you."

Davis nodded, took it as an apology. He worked some more on his bagel, then asked, "What about you, Honeywell? Husband, kids, tragedy, scars?"

She looked skyward in mock contemplation. "Almost but no, no, yes, and—"she lifted the sleeve of her dress to reveal a three-inch scar on one shoulder.

"Rotator cuff?" he asked.

"And then some."

"What was the tragedy?"

"Not a big deal, but you'll have to get me much drunker to hear about it."

He nodded. "It's a date."

Davis grabbed the bill and stood. "But in the meantime, confessional's over. I spent some time in the hangar this afternoon — a good part of the wreckage has made its way there. Let's head over, there's something I want to show you."

Seared scallops and mushrooms in a basil reduction. Or braised veal cheek served with semolina gnocchi. For Dr. Hans Sprecht, it had been an exquisite dilemma.

The place was called Il Lago, a transcendent sliver of Italy that had found its way to central Geneva. The decor was sublime, the walls a sweeping array of hand-painted murals in a room divided by gilt French doors. Accenting brocades and crystal chandeliers gave the place a positively palatial feel.

Sprecht chased the last scallop around his plate, allowing it to baste fully in the superb sauce. He had surely made the right choice. The waiter appeared, prompt and efficient — as all good waiters were — and took away Sprecht's empty plate. The man was immediately replaced by a wine steward who had already been most attentive. Sprecht hesitated, but then signaled the fellow one last time, curling three fingers. His glass came full.

The dinner flow was at its peak, and he watched the diners as they changed shift, early birds leaving and late comers finding seats. Waiters and busboys circulated at speed, maintaining the establishment's epicurean lifeblood. On top of the wine, it all made Sprecht's head spin.

An elegantly dressed man roughly Sprecht's age was walking smoothly up the main aisle, an attractive woman on his arm. She was not young, not old. Her dress was expensive, and there was jewelry around her wrist and neck — only a few pieces, but there again, quality. When the man whispered into her ear she laughed on cue. Hans Sprecht sighed.

Earlier, a striking woman had passed his own table and glanced, a fleeting attachment of the eyes. As a young man, Sprecht would have taken it as a sign of interest. Now, the first thought that had come to his head was that he might have a blob of butter on his chin. It was curious, he mused, how age crept up on you. You didn't just wake up one morning old and spent. It was gradual thing — tapping on your shoulder, closing in from behind. It came with greater frequency each day, a coarse accretion of aching hips and holding menus at arm's length and turning your head to favor the good ear. Any part, on exclusive merits, no more than a nuisance. But collectively it gave one a certain sense of.. urgency.

Sprecht tipped the wine to his lips. A life companion was the one thing he had never found — not really — and he wanted very much to rectify this, to live his remaining years well and in the company of a woman who exhibited quality and refinement. But Sprecht knew what the good life required.

He had spent the greater part of the day working in his rented office, organizing and making preparations. Much of what he would need was already there, but at least two of the procedures were beyond the normal scope of his landlord's practice. For these, accepted professional standards would normally dictate the use of a fully sterile operating room. Sprecht, of course, had no time for such nonsense. And in any event, as viewed by the prism of his dubious circumstances, the specter of postoperative infection was far down on his list of worries. He already had more serious complications.

The upcoming job made him nervous, never a good thing for a surgeon. The other jobs had been relatively simple. Risks well taken. At first Sprecht had been encouraged — happy being too strong a word — to have acquired this new patient. But in the weeks since accepting the contract, he'd had second thoughts. He had been watching the news, reading the papers. Caliph was attacking the West. Caliph was attacking the world. Everyone wanted his head. And Hans Sprecht — perhaps only Hans Sprecht — knew exactly where to find it.

He finished his wine and settled his bill, the latter causing him to think more positively — his Cayman account was flush, and would be more so in a few day's time. At the entrance, Sprecht donned his overcoat and dipped a hand briefly into the right front pocket. His insurance policy was still there, cool and smooth and round. He wasn't sure why he'd even brought the thing. It had been reckless, in a sense. But the comfort was undeniable, because in some way — Sprecht wasn't sure how — he knew it would be his salvation.

Sprecht headed out into the crisp night air. He breathed deeply to clear his head. The crowds on the sidewalks were light, as was the traffic in the streets. Geneva didn't hold the bustle of some big cities. Even during rush hour, things flowed smoothly here, as precise and predictable as the clocks on every corner. The buildings were square and efficient, the streets freshly paved, and the sidewalks clean. It was all so very — Swiss. A Berliner by birth, this was where Sprecht felt most at home, where he belonged. His visions of setting up a practice in some sunny, faraway paradise were exactly that — daydreams, idle thoughts never to be realized.

He turned into an alley. It was a shortcut to the room he had led for two months, a modest but well-appointed base of operations that Sprecht would abandon as soon as this last job was complete. And this would be his last job. He left the crowds behind on the quai des Bergues and quickened his pace. Fifty steps into the alley, however, Sprecht had a strange sensation. He stopped, fell completely still, then heard it distinctly. Footsteps behind him.

Fighting an urge to turn and look, he began moving quickly. His apartment was still two blocks away, so he made a right turn into another alley that he hoped would lead to a busier street. As he turned the corner, Sprecht cast a glance back and spotted his follower twenty paces behind — a man moving with equal speed, his outline large but ill-defined in a heavy, shapeless overcoat. Sprecht dashed ahead momentarily, but then skidded to a stop as he realized his error. The alley was a dead end.

Sprecht panicked.

He saw two doors at the top of the pathway, but one was blocked by trash and the other secured by a metal bar and padlock. He spun to face the mouth of the alley — just in time to see the large man stop and stare directly at him. Sprecht tensed and his hands began to shake. The face he saw was covered in a dark beard, and two eyes, coal black in the dim light, locked on him intensely. Sprecht could try to fight, but what good would it do? He knew nothing about such things, and the other man was far bigger, far younger.

The stranger stepped closer. Sprecht was at least proud that he stood his ground, no shrinking to a corner to delay the inevitable. Two paces away, the man stopped and put a hand in his pocket.

Sprecht went rigid, immobile. Then he heard, "Can you tell me where this club is?"

The words had come in German. More oddly, they'd come in a high-pitched, almost feminine voice. The man held out a business card, turned it at an angle to catch a stray shaft of light. Sprecht saw the name Club Bleu on the card. He had heard of the place, and knew it was a club for homosexuals. Sprecht had no earthly idea where to find it.

"Back to the river," he said quickly. "Turn left and go two blocks to quai du Mont Blanc. You'll find it just off to the right."

The man smiled, withdrew the card. He turned and began to amble back toward the river. But then he paused. "Hey, you want to come?

Sprecht stood taller, lifted his chin. He wanted to say something derogatory. What came out was, "No, thank you. Not tonight."

The man shrugged and walked off.

Sprecht entered his flat ten minutes later.

He locked the door and leaned into it with a shoulder, his chest heaving as if he'd just run a marathon. Underneath his clothing he was drenched in sweat, notwithstanding the cold, dry night air. Then and there, Hans Sprecht decided he could not go on. He was a man of order and precision, yet the path he had chosen seemed more perilous at every turn, fraught with disarray and uncertainty. But what could he do?

Sprecht put a hand into his pocket and withdrew the vial of blood. Rolling it gently between two fingers, he studied the dark purple color. Hans Sprecht went to a writing desk and put down the glass tube. He sat, pulled out a pen and paper, and began to compose a letter.