“Have you got everything you need?”
“No,” Zerkel said. He turned and plucked a half-dozen sheets of computer printout from atop one of the machines and handed them to Reid. “I'm going to start with the transmitter. It's that replacement chip I don't understand. I need to make an experiment.”
Listed on the printouts were hundreds of electronic components, by name, function, rate value, and tolerance, along with test equipment and dozens of tools.
“Whoever got this stuff for you knows what they're doing. It's not bad. Have them pick up that shit too.”
“Anything else?”
“No,” Zerkel said. “Not for now.” He turned back to the terminal, brought something up on screen, and was immediately lost in some incomprehensible diagram.
Â
Finding Louis Zerkel was more difficult than McLaren or Joyce thought it would be. They wanted to keep their investigation low key in case they stumbled upon something unexpected. More than one line of inquiry had unraveled because some ham-fisted agent had unknowingly flushed the partridge or had ruined the case because of faulty evidentiary procedures. As a result it had taken them all day.
It was past 9:00 P.M. as they waited outside a white stucco, two-story apartment building for someone downtown to show up with their search warrant. In the two hours they'd been watching, there'd been no lights in Zerkel's windows, nor had there been any sign of the man. After Whitman's warning about the East German, they were taking few chances.
Earlier they'd checked Zerkel's last known address, which had turned out to be a small house in Oakland. The current renters had never heard of him, nor did the rental agency in San Francisco have a forwarding address. One of the neighbors remembered Zerkel, but only vaguely, as an “odd duck.” The U.S. Post Office, Pacific Bell, and Pacific Gas & Electric had no present listing. Vehicle registration showed he owned a 1983 Chevrolet, but the address listed was for the Oakland house. It was the same at the credit bureau, and Social Security.
San Francisco S-A-CâSpecial Agent in ChargeâCharles Colberg was pissed off that he'd not been consulted before his turf had been invaded, but once he talked to Whitman in Washington he calmed down. The local Bureau file on Zerkel had no further information, nor was there anything of value on InterTech.
By then they had run out of options, so they'd finally approached the man's employer.
“Let me get this straight,” Zerkel's supervisor Bob Sutherland said, a cigar clenched in his mouth. “You're FBI, you want to talk about Louis, but this is
not
a background investigation for a government job offer?”
McLaren grinned. “You tell me, Mr. Sutherland, how many new government jobs have you heard about in the last couple of years? We're just clearing out deadwood here. Louis Zerkel has a secret clearanceâwe're checking it out. New program, going to save the taxpayers some money. You know how it is.”
“So do a hundred other people here have clearances.”
“We can only do this one at a time. Maybe if we could just take a peek at his personnel file, and then maybe have a chat with him?”
Sutherland came to a decision after a second and handed Zerkel's file over to McLaren. “You can take a look at this, but he's not here now.”
McLaren flipped open the file and turned directly to the personal data section. His address was an apartment right in Alameda. Rent probably included gas and electric, which was why his name hadn't been listed with the utilities.
“Is this his day off?” Joyce was asking.
“He didn't come in,” Sutherland said. “And he doesn't answer his phone or his bulletin board.”
McLaren looked up. “There's no phone number listed here.”
“The company provides phone lines for engineers of his level and above. The amount of data networking they do would drive their phone bills to astronomical levels.”
“Does he miss work often?” Joyce asked.
“Once in a while,” Sutherland said, shrugging. “Frankly I wasn't getting worried until you showed up. Is this a criminal investigation?”
“What would make you think that?” McLaren asked, his senses perking up.
“We did our own background check, and we know about his brother Glen.”
“Any contact between the two of them, that you know about?”
Sutherland shook his head. “None.”
Two unmarked cars and a dark blue van pulled up behind McLaren and Joyce. A dozen men and a few women jumped out. They all wore dark windbreakers and baseball caps with “FBI” stenciled on them, and they were all armed with semiautomatic pistols. Colberg's number two, A-S-A-C Gordy Behrens, came up, a serious expression on his hound-dog face. “Any activity here?” he asked.
“Nada,
”McLaren said. “Did you bring the warrant?”
Behrens nodded. “We're going to do this my way.”
“For Christ's sake, Gordy, we just want to talk to the man.”
“I talked to Whitman this afternoon,” Behrens said. “We'll do this my way.”
“So much for keeping our heads down,” Joyce said.
“Just don't shoot him before we can ask some questions,” McLaren told Behrens. “Okay?”
Â
The first part of the meeting went wellâbetter than anyone thought it would. Not all the details of the deal had been worked out, but the substantive points had been agreed to one after the other with such a minimum of discussion that it caught everyone off guard.
“Don't expect miracles,” Soderstrom had warned them earlier. “The Russians have only had a few years to develop a capitalist mentality, so they have different expectations than we do.”
Aviation Minister Matushin was anxious to see the deal go through, and it became obvious early on that someone above him was calling the shots. Authority or not, Kennedy got the definite impression that the man was on a very short leash. The wing factory was going to be built on Russian soil, and whatever it took to accomplish that goal would be done.
At the break before lunch, Kennedy and Matushin stepped over to the tall windows overlooking the brooding pile of brick that housed the Kremlin arsenal.
“The only problem that I can see is the continued stability of your government,” Kennedy said, bringing up Soderstrom's concern as he promised he would if the opportunity arose.
“A legitimate question, Mr. Kennedy. But frankly it's one for which I have no satisfactory answer. Ten years ago we could not have had this conversation. It would have been unthinkable.”
Kennedy had to smile. “We have an old saying: Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.”
Matushin looked sharply at him. “Are you considering backing out of this deal?”
“It's not that. I meant that we in the West never really believed that the Soviet Union could fall apart in our
lifetime, and we certainly never expected the economic impact it's had on the world.”
“Neither did we,” Matushin said distantly. “But no matter what happens we will never return to the old ways. There isn't enough blood in all of Russia to drown the new order.”
“A personally held belief, Mr. Minister?”
“I'm not alone in thinking this, if that's what you're asking. But as you say, the cost is great.”
“Then it's up to us to get on with it, with as many safeguards for each other as possible,” Kennedy said.
The Russians were offering two thousand acres adjacent to Domodedovo Airport on the Kashira Highway thirty miles southeast of Moscow. One of the largest airports in the world, Domodedovo handled the bulk of Russia's internal flights and could handle any type of aircraft currently flying. A special rail line would link the wing-panel assembly hall with the airport so that the parts and raw materials could be flown in on modified P522s, and the finished wings could be returned to Portland the same way. The rail spur was already in place, as was a three-story building that could be used to house engineering and administration. Until ten years ago there'd been a tank factory on the site.
Russian workers would put up the assembly hall to Guerin's specificationsâwhich would mean on-site American inspectors and supervisorsâand would also supply the precision metal cutting, bending, and shaping equipment needed to build the wing components out of titanium. Most of the electrical and hydraulic parts would be U.S. designed and supplied, and Guerin would provide extensive on-the-job training for the Russian engineers and assembly workers. Within five years Guerin would be able to reduce its participation to fifty percent. Quality control would always remain strictly under Guerin's supervision, however. As Kennedy explained across the table, “If a wing fails it'd be a Guerin airplane that goes down. We'll make sure they're built correctly.”
“This will be a good thing for both of us,” Matushin said, lighting a cigarette. He was a chain smoker. “Admittedly your company is taking a chance by coming here, but it's one that will pay off well for you.”
“We think so,” Kennedy said carefully. So far there'd not been so much as a hint about the Japanese, but he wondered if that's what the Russian was referring to now. “You'll be sharing in the risk.”
“When we begin exchanging dollar credits toward the purchase of airplanes from you.”
“I meant that cooperating so closely with us might subject you to some criticism.”
An odd, almost wistful, expression crossed Matushin's features, and he shrugged. “I don't believe I completely understand you, Mr. Kennedy. Perhaps we need the translators.”
“I was merely talking about the hardliners still in your government. Maybe there is still some mistrust.”
“Ah, I see what you mean,” Matushin said. He shook his head. “That is absolutely nothing to worry about. As I said, we will never go back to the old ways.”
Kennedy watched the Russian's eyes, but he could find nothing that might indicate something was being held back. Matushin was a professional bureaucrat, and probably very adept at saying whatever had to be said at the moment, but Kennedy prided himself on his ability to judge people. Unless he was way off the mark, he decided, the aviation minister probably knew nothing about the deal that McGarvey had cut with the SUR for information about the Japanese.
“I would hope that we could begin construction in the spring,” Kennedy said. “It'll take a year to build, and possibly that long afterward before the first wing panel is completed.”
“Possibly longer,” Matushin replied. “Don't forget our winters. They've defeated more than one intended conqueror.”
“If we can enclose the building and get heat to it before the cold weather we'll be all right. You'll have to throw enough people into the project to get it done.”
Matushin nodded thoughtfully. “Providing we come to final agreement here. There are still many details, some of them quite critical, left to be worked out.”
“As you say, Mr. Minister, this will be a good thing for both of us. We will make it work.”
The Russian glanced over to the long conference table where several of the negotiators were already back at it, then stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the broad windowsill.
“There is still time before lunch,” he said. “Shall we return to the task?”
Kennedy turned. “Delivery schedules are very important to us, crucial in some instances.”
Â
“Have you figured it out yet?” Reid asked. It was 9:00 A.M., and he felt like shit. He'd been up all night arranging for the electronic components and equipment that Zerkel had requested.
The InterTech engineer was crouched over a series of schematic drawings spread out on the floor. “A relay of some type, I think. But I can tell you for sure that it doesn't belong in the circuit.”
“Could it have brought down that American Airlines flight in '90?” Reid asked. Mueller had reported everything that Zerkel had talked about on the flight from San Francisco. The engineer's conspiracy theory fit with Reid's suspicions so perfectly that it was almost spooky.
“This module refit was put in place before the crash. My guess is they tried one out; when it worked they modified all the boards.”
“But you still have no proof?”
Zerkel looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked as bad as Reid felt. But there was passion in them. He wasn't fooling around here. He was dead serious.
“Did you get my parts?”
“Downstairs in the van. Your brother and Bruno will bring them up.” The van had been delivered to him at a supermarket parking lot in Arlington.
“I'll put together a breadboard transmitter that should
fit the frequency range of that circuit, and then run my encoding program through it until we hit the right combination.”