The Ghost of Flight 666

CHAPTER 13: Georgetown

Slade loved the opera almost as much as Helen did. It gave them a chance to dress to the nines, have a fancy dinner and listen to music — it was a date night — they looked forward to it.

Tonight it was Don Giovanni. As the last haunting lines of Mozart’s damnation faded to applause, Slade and Helen joined in the ovation and took their time exiting the opera house. As usual it had been a pleasant, relaxing night; they both looked forward to the next night out — another three months away.

“Thank you for taking me Jeremiah,” Helen told him, latching onto his arm. “It’s very sweet of you.”

“It’s all about my ego dear,” he replied. “I love to be seen with the most beautiful woman in the theater on my arm.”

“We make a good looking couple,” she smiled.

“My sister told us that twenty-something years ago after we went skinny dipping,” he teased.

She colored, slapping his arm playfully. Then she sighed.

“What is it?”

They were stepping into the elevator with a lot of people. Everyone else was talking about the opera. Helen waited, hugging his arm closer.

A couple twenty years their senior looked at them and smiled. They must have assumed Slade and Helen were married; they both wore rings. The lady ventured, “Out for an evening without the kids?”

“Yes,” Helen smiled.

“How many dear?”

“Six.”

“Six, oh my you do need a break,” she laughed. “I was done after four!”

The elevator door opened. She touched Helen’s arm as they exited first, “You’re such a sweet couple. Maybe we’ll see you at the next opera. Good night!”

Helen and Slade walked to the Jaguar in slow measured steps. She finally answered his question. “We’re not a couple Jeremiah.”

“That bothers you?”

“It should bother you,” she said.

“Why?” he replied.

“Because you’re still young,” she said. “My life is my children. You still have the possibility of marriage and your own family.”

“So what are you and the kids?”

“I’m your cousin and they are my children,” she said heavily. “We can’t change that fact as much as I want to.”

“You’re determined to ruin our evening,” he told her stoically, opening the car door for her. She got in, and Slade went around to the other side. After he was in, closing the Jag’s door with a satisfactory thump, he put his hand on her knee. She covered his hand with her own.

“Helen, my dear, you are as loving to me as any wife. The kids treat me as their father. For God’s sake the youngest three don’t even remember any other father. What more could I want?”

He started the car and pulled into line to exit the parking garage. She patted his hand, but said, “You are a man who has always followed the rules, except when it came to me.”

“I did what was right. That was more important.”

“You did the chivalrous thing and rescued the damsel in distress and all of her baggage,” she admitted.

“I hope you don’t consider the kids baggage; I certainly don’t,” he said seriously.

“Of course not, and I love you for how you treat the kids. I just wonder, I’m concerned that it’s not enough for you. Jeremiah, you deserve a woman you can call your wife.”

He squeezed her knee, then he turned his hand and held hers. Gently he picked her hand up and put it to his lips, a gentle gesture from someone everyone else called cold.

“Oh Jeremiah!” she sighed.

The phone rang.

“That’s the office,” Jeremiah growled, instantly losing his warmth. It was reflected in his voice, but he didn’t hesitate to answer. “Slade here!”

It was Director Gann himself. “Agent Slade, something’s come up,” the director said in a deadly serious.

“Yes sir?” Slade didn’t deal with the director except on very rare occasions. This was unusual, but not as unusual as the director’s request.

“You’re downtown D.C. by the JFK Center — good! I’m just leaving the White House. Meet me at 1510 26th Street Northwest in Georgetown — got it?”

“Sir, I’m just leaving the opera with my date,” Slade objected.

“You date?” the director started. “Your pretty cousin Helen won’t like that; don’t go Don Giovanni on me Slade.”

“No sir, it is Helen,” he answered.

“Then bring her along. I’ll see you there in about five minutes.”

“Yes sir,” he said and the line went dead. Slade let out a deep breath. Helen was looking at him.

“Well what is it? What’s up at work that they need you at midnight?”

He turned onto Potomac Parkway heading north. “That was my boss; you’re about to meet him.”

“Is that a big deal, they’re just bureaucrats,” Helen said testily, obviously unhappy that their conversation was interrupted.

Slade understood. Helen had been trying to talk seriously about the subject for years — literally. He always avoided it. Something always, always came up. Now there was this. “My boss is a bit higher up than that. He’s quite high up in fact.”

“Well who is he?”

“Why are you so sure he’s a he; he could be a she?” Slade chastised her. “Your lady friends aren’t going to be very happy with your assuming my boss is a man.”

“Jeremiah Milton Slade, you’re avoiding the question!”

Slade pulled in front of a white nice white brick house with black shutters and a black front door. He got out of the Jag and walked around to open her door. Holding out his hand, Helen took it but not without some consternation. As he closed the door she whispered harshly in his ear.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Helen, dear, there’s no time to explain. We’ll have a nice talk afterwards. I promise you a nice long back rub.”

“You’ll be honest — about everything?”

He let out a deep breath. “Yes — everything.”

They started to the door, but Helen stopped. “I’m not about to meet your secret family am I; there’s not another wife and kids on the side?”

“No, I am quite fulfilled with you my dear cousin!” he told her, leading her to the front door.

It opened for them. A large man met them. He was wearing a black suit and tie. “Agent Slade, Ma’am, the director is waiting for you. Please come in.”

“The director?” Helen whispered. “So it’s not the Secretary of State?”

“No,” Slade said, nodding to the man. “Thank you!”

Director Gann was waiting in the living room with a tall distinguished looking woman; his wife Gwen. She was as much a Washington insider as he, she had to be. This was D.C. Gann smiled stiffly when he saw Slade and apologized.

“Slade, I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, and you Ms. Sanders. As I’m sure Slade has told you, I am Jacob Gann and this is my wife Gwen.”

They exchanged greetings and Director Gann immediately invited Slade into his office. Gwen took charge of Helen, “Would you care to sit outside in the garden dear, it’s a lovely night?”

Helen accepted, not knowing what else to do. She followed Gwen out through the white rooms through a pair of French doors to the back garden, a narrow but lovely place of flagstones and green areas. She motioned to some outdoor furniture. “Have a seat dear, can I get you anything to drink?”

“No thank you, I had some champagne at the opera.”

“How was the performance?”

“I loved it; I always love the opera and the symphony,” she said.

“So do I, maybe we can see a performance one of these days. Jacob speaks very highly of your husband, but then in their line of work you have to be careful mixing business and pleasure.”

“I’m sorry Gwen but we’re not married,” Helen corrected her, embarrassed.

“Oh that’s right, you’re his cousin,” Gwen smiled, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry. I forgot. That’s right, Slade took you and your children in. That was very gallant of him; there aren’t many men these days who would do that. But then you are a very sweet thing and so very helpful. I know that Slade appreciates it.”

“I’m sorry Gwen, I don’t mean to seem rude, but how do you know so much about me and my family?”

“Gracious me, dear, that’s what we do,” she smiled.

“I’m sorry I don’t understand,” Helen said, now completely confused. “What does the State Department need to know about Jeremiah’s home life? Is he in some sort of sensitive position?”

“The State Department?” Gwen laughed. “Dear me, do you mean to tell me that Jeremiah Slade hasn’t let you in on his little secret?”

“What secret?”

Gwen leaned close to Helen and whispered with great pleasure, “He’s a spy dear. My husband is the Director of the CIA. Jeremiah works for him. He’s one of the very best agents we have.”

Helen looked at Gwen with shock, but finally said, “That explains a lot. I was afraid he had another family somewhere.”

Gwen patted her hand, “You know, you’re taking the news a lot better than I did when I found out.”

“You mean Jacob didn’t tell you?”

“My dear, men never tell you anything until they get caught at it,” she laughed. “We were married fifteen years before I found out; I missed all the excitement!”

Director Gann’s office was a large modern room with an electronic fireplace and one wall devoted to half a dozen large flat screen panels. He got straight to the point.

“You did a nice job in Iraq Slade, but unfortunately it’s come back to bite us.” He put up a picture of the meeting.

“I left Khallida and Nikahd alone sir, just as ordered, though I still don’t know why. They would have been my first two marks.”

“Mine as well,” he said, circling another man standing next to Nikahd. “That was the order, however, and you carried it out. We think Nikahd can be useful. Khallida is someone we want to track. That leaves us this man — do you know him?”

“No sir.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely — who is he?”

“He is the man who is trying to ruin your career, maybe your life Slade.”

“He’s dead sir. I splashed his brains all over Nikahd.”

“That’s the point,” Gann sighed. “That man is, was, Turgut Ataturk. He’s the nephew of President Ataturk of Turkey; President Oetari’s fishing buddy.”

“He was with ISIS and Al Qaeda sir,” Slade said steadily. “I didn’t have a chance to interview all the attendees of the meeting to see whether they or not I should shoot them.”

“I understand that, but the president does not,” Gann told him. “Therefore, the president wants you off the Cobra missions and on this.” He activated a display showing a Malaysian A380.

“You want me to look for the missing jet?” Slade shook his head. “Isn’t that Agent Wolfe’s territory sir? I mean, he’s an airline pilot. It’s a perfect reason to use him.”

“The president personally suspended Flint Wolfe, who is, as you are, far too efficient in his work. Of course, Wolfe goes off the reservation on occasion, he did this occasion big time, so I couldn’t protect him.” Gann poured himself a drink, as if the mere mention of the Company’s most notorious agent necessitated such a remedy. “If there’s one agent the president loves to hate it is Wolfe. Flint keeps killing his buddies.

“We’re trying to avoid getting you in the same cauldron of boiling water. Truth is, the president wants to give you a dead end assignment. Strangely enough, he may have unwittingly put you right in the middle of something important.”

He activated the rest of his displays, shaking his head in obvious consternation. “The president didn’t want to hear any of this. He is a political animal with his eye on a different prize. A missing airplane and its five hundred passengers are not on his radar. However, there’s something about this A380 that has me concerned.

“The transcript of the meeting — the meeting you interdicted — details discussions for Al Qaeda-Iran-ISIS cooperation. One specific subject of the meeting that caught our attention was the collection of radioactive medical waste, obviously for use in dirty bombs. ISIS thereafter captured Mosul, the fourth largest city in Iraq, and one of the first things they did was to clear out all the radioactive material in the hospitals.”

“So they are planning on making dirty bombs with medical waste; how do they plan on transporting it and what is the target?”

“That’s what I want to know. It may all be connected.” Gann pointed to the second picture and then the third. “This picture was taken in Tehran several weeks before the meeting: it shows Colonel Nikahd in the company of two Republican Guardsmen, the same two Iranians who boarded Malaysian 666 with stolen passports. The other photo is of Khallida at a café in Kuala Lumpur. The man sitting at the table with him is Abdullereda Hussein, the captain of Malaysian 666; the other man masqueraded as a deadheading pilot on that flight.”

Slade frowned. “So the jet was hijacked with the cooperation of the captain. They would have to land somewhere after they hijacked it. The people would have had to be quartered. It’s one thing to hide a few hostages but almost five hundred people?”

“Unfortunately, we think the passengers are dead,” Gann said heavily. “The flight path clearly shows Malaysian 666 climbing up to forty-one thousand feet and staying there for a prolonged period of time. That was not their flight plan. There was no reason to go that high, especially if all they wanted to do was evade the radar and disappear.”

“So they climbed that high to kill the passengers.”

“Their supplemental Oxygen would have lasted twelve minutes for the passengers and twenty for the flight attendants with walk-around bottles. During that time it would be impossible to even attempt to storm the cockpit. They would be tied to their Oxygen masks until the generators ran dry. Asphyxia would have happened quickly at that altitude.”

“That leaves us to find where they landed. Is it on some remote atoll in the Indian Ocean? If it didn’t crash where do we start looking?”

“Sir, why does it have to be somewhere remote? Why not Singapore or Jakarta?”

“Go on Slade,” the director said, bringing up a map of the region with all the principal airports. Superimposed was the last known flight path of Malaysian 666 and the radius of its fuel range.

“Sir, the region is predominantly Muslim and has a large number of active Al Qaeda cells. Every institution in the country is infiltrated with active members and sympathizers. Even if the air traffic controllers or control towers staff were not sympathizers it would have been easy for the Al Qaeda operatives to intimidate them into staying quiet.”

Gann nodded. “We have unfortunately seen their brutality all too often recently. We’re talking about maintenance people, tower controllers and radar operators — normal folks — when threatened with the rape and beheading of their families I can see why no one would have said a thing. Al Qaeda is an unfortunate everyday reality to those people.”

He walked up to the map and tapped two airports. “Singapore and Jakarta are both controlled by Soekarno, the most powerful industrialist in the world. He controls a network of cooperative enterprises, a cabal if you will, otherwise known as the “Magnificent Thirteen.” Together they control thirty-three percent of the world’s economic activity.”

Gann turned away from the screen and approached Slade. “Up until now, Soekarno has not undertaken any agreements or activities with known terrorist groups. This may constitute a change. I want you to go to Paris.

“Why Paris sir?”

“There are three things involving this mission in Paris right now: Airbus Industries headquarters. I want you to go get a briefing on the aircraft. Fly the simulator, get to know the specs; you know the drill. The second thing is Khallida and Nikahd. They’re in Paris right now. Find out what they’re up to.”

“The third thing?”

Gann put a picture of the Malaysian captain posing with his family. He pointed to the young man standing in front of his father, smiling. “That is Abdulla Hussein, the son of Abdullereda Hussein our captain. The father became a drunken whoremonger, disgracing the family, and that may have been how Khallida lured him into the plot. His son left home to win back the honor of the family name. He joined the jihad. He’s in Paris now as well.”

“Do I have a contact in Paris sir?”

“I’ve alerted the bureau chief there. She knows you’re coming. As far as the French are concerned you’ll have to tread lightly. They have a huge Muslim problem there already. Jean Brueget works for INTERPOL. He’s been our closest contact there since Nine-Eleven. If you need anything he’s the man to deal with.”

“Yes sir, I’ll head out as soon as possible.”

“Slade, one more thing,” the director said, stopping him. Gann seemed uneasy, and Slade waited patiently. “I shouldn’t be concerned, but I am. The president is taking a personal interest in you; a very personal interest. After the assassination of Turgut Ataturk that makes me very uneasy. You remember what happened to SEAL Team Six?”

“Their chopper was shot down,” Slade nodded. “Someone leaked their presence to the Taliban and put them in an old Chinook with no countermeasure protection.”

“There was no investigation,” Gann said. “Even Mertzl couldn’t get an investigation started. The IG is Oetari’s man.” He paused before adding, “Slade, you need to watch your back.”

“I’ll do that sir.”

The director walked him out. Exiting the office they saw the two women talking out back in the garden. “So, any plans to marry her? You make a good looking couple. You’re going to Paris after all.”

“She’s my cousin sir,” Slade replied.

“Right, you might have to go to Kentucky to get a license.” He patted Slade on the back. “Good luck. Report to me directly on this, do you understand? The fewer ears on this outside the Company the better; and I don’t trust all the ears in the Company either. There are too many people gunning for my job.”

“Yes sir.”

The girls rejoined them. Gann said politely, “Well, we’re done. Did you have a nice chat in the garden?”

“I filled Helen in,” Gwen said.

“Oh!” Director Gann exclaimed. He took a long drink from his glass. Helen walked up and took Slade’s arm, a knowing expression on her face.

“We have a lot to talk about Jeremiah,” she said to Slade.

He looked confused.

“Sorry about that Slade,” Gann shrugged. “They always find out. Good night!”

A few hours later in the hot tub, Slade was rubbing Helen’s shoulders. She hadn’t said much after they drove back home, so he hadn’t asked. After years of cohabitation Slade knew enough about his cousin to no force anything out of her. She’d talk when she was ready.

She sighed, “If we were married, really married, I would be very upset with you right now.”

“What makes this different?” he asked, not stopping his massage.

“Jeremiah, I don’t have the right do be angry at anything you keep to yourself,” she said, stopping only when he made a clear exclamation of contempt.

“You have every right; you always have!” he said. “Don’t get into this rescue crap again. You rescued me as much as I rescued you. What makes you feel so guilty about that?”

“I’ve always regretted that because of me, because of the kids, you didn’t get to have a real life.”

“What, you think I wanted to go play the field?”

“Didn’t you?” she replied. She turned her head to look at him out of the corner of her eye. “You’re a spy. You could be in the hot tub with three twenty-something’s with plastic boobs instead of a nearly forty-something with Caesarian scars and a hysterectomy.”

“I wouldn’t trade you for the Swedish Bikini Team,” he told her.

She patted his hand, and said, “Really that’s sweet, but you’re a strong virile man Jeremiah. You don’t have to be true to me. There’s no reason you should be.”

“I have every reason to be true to you,” he told her.

“Why?”

“You make me happy; I couldn’t imagine my life without you or the kids,” he told her with that specific inflection unique to Slade. She knew how serious he was. “Did it ever occur to you that you and the kids are the balance to my life? The only balance I have to my life?”

“Aren’t there other things you want; other things you need Jeremiah?”

“Helen,” he said, hugging her close and kissing her neck. “There’s nothing I need that you can’t satisfy.”