“Guerin is concerned that a consortium of powerful Japanese corporations may be gearing up for a raid on their stock. From what I was told they've probably formed a
zaibatsu
with a lot of financial backing.”
“Would Washington allow such a thing?”
“I assume their NASA and military divisions would have to be split out of the deal. But just now no one wants to rock the boat.”
“I understand,” Yemlin said. “But Guerin's position is strong.”
“The Japanese may try to sabotage Guerin's airplanes. Blow them out of the sky, if need be. That'd knock hell out of the company's stock value. A takeover would be easy.”
“They would be acquiring an essentially worthless company in that case. Unless there was something else they wanted.”
“There is something else, Viktor Pavlovich,” McGarvey said.
Yemlin smiled. “Can you talk about it?”
“They've been working on the next generation of commercial airplane. Just about everything flying transoceanic, or even transcontinental, will become obsolete.”
“You're talking about the NASA plane?”
“They're using that as a cover project, but the other has been buried. It's one of the reasons they hired me.
They think the Japanese are desperate to buy them out for that line of development alone.”
“Which they would dismantle and transport back to Japan.”
“Something like that.”
Yemlin stopped. “Do you honestly believe they're desperate enough to blow airplanes out of the sky? To become terrorists? To kill people? Think about it, Kirk. Japan is your country's major trading partner. It would be stupid for them to do anything to jeopardize that position. It would be disastrous for them if they were exposed.”
“We don't believe the government is involved,” McGarvey said. “At least Guerin's top people hope it's not.”
“Those are very big stakes,” Yemlin said.
“The biggest.”
“What would you have us do?”
“If we can identify the individual companies that make up this consortium, and if we can get someone into a boardroom meeting, or possibly someone inside the Ministry of International Trade and Industry who could gather hard evidence that such a plan exists, Guerin's people could take it to the President and pressure would be brought directly on Tokyo.”
“I ask you again, Kirk, what would you have us do?”
“Hand the project over to network
Abunai.
”
A flicker of surprise crossed the Russian's face. “What would Guerin do for us in exchange? Where is the quid pro quo?”
McGarvey had thought that out on the way in to the city. Russia was having its own trouble with Japan over the Kuril Islands and others north of Hokkaido, so whatever he offered Yemlin would have to be something Russia needed. Something very important, such as foreign exchange. He and Kennedy had discussed the situation yesterday afternoon by phone.
“It's possible that Guerin would build and equip a subassembly factory outside of Moscow.”
Yemlin's eyebrows rose. “For which airplane?”
“The new one.”
“What about personnel?”
“Some Russians that Guerin would train.”
“Would our people be involved in the engineering?”
“I don't know, but I think something could be worked out.”
Yemlin looked back the way they had come, the flame at Kennedy's Tomb just visible, and McGarvey followed his gaze. The thirty-four years since the President's assassination had been nothing short of stunning.
“It will take time,” Yemlin said.
“The prototype is nearly ready to fly. If something is going to happen, we suspect it will happen very soon.”
Another thought crossed Yemlin's mind. “Would Guerin be willing to pay expenses in Tokyo?”
“Within reason,” McGarvey replied. The Russians' supply of hard currencies, which they needed to fund foreign intelligence operations, was very limited, and Japan was an expensive playing field.
Yemlin smiled again. “Ironic, isn't it? The SUR being hired as mercenaries for a former CIA spy?”
“We'll need action soon,” McGarvey said.
“My book cable will go out this afternoon,” Yemlin promised. “But I am curious about something. If this goes through, will you come to Moscow to oversee the operation?”
McGarvey shook his head. “I don't think your people would want me.”
“No,” Yemlin said softly. “I suppose not.”
Â
The Dassault SF-17 helicopter came in fast and low over the treetops of the Rambouillet Forest thirty miles southeast of Paris, the pilot, Pierre Gisgard, frantically searching for the field where he was supposed to land. But visibility in blowing snow was zero at times, and the gusty winds hitting forty knots buffeted the machine so violently that Gisgard thought it was going to come apart on him. He'd warned them about the weather at
Mortier, but when the colonel got a feather up his ass nothing would hold him down.
And this was the biggest feather of all. The French secret service, known as the
Service de Documentation Exteriéure et de Contre-Espionage,
or SDECE, had been chasing this group of East Germans ever since the two Germanies had been reunited. They called themselves the Berlin Hit League, and for six years the group of ex-Secret Service thugs and murderers had been terrorizing Europe: robbing banks to finance their operations, killing for hire, and sometimes to settle old scores, sabotaging bridges, power stations, radio and television transmitters, and assassinating policemen.
Three years ago members of this group shot a Swissair jetliner out of the sky over Paris with a Stinger hand-held missile. Half the passengers aboard that flight had been French men, women, and children on holiday. No one in France could forget that tragedy.
Colonel Philippe Marquand, chief of the service's Anti-Terrorism Unit, had been given a literal carte blanche by the government to run them into the ground, a task which he had undertaken with zeal. Most of them were either dead or in jail now, and the last remnants of the gangâthree men and one womanâhad made the mistake of coming back to France and robbing the bank this afternoon at Chartres.
The local police had responded to the silent alarm not suspecting they would run into a hornet's nest. The first two officers on the scene were shot to death as they got out of their radio unit. Two other officers died when their radio unit took a direct hit from a LAW rocket.
By then the firefight had moved from the downtown bank to a roadblock on the N154 north of the city. A Chartres lieutenant of police recognized at least one of the bank robbers as a Berlin Hit League gunman by the name of Bruno Mueller. The former Stasi lieutenant colonel, whose specialties were murder and sabotage, was on France's top-ten most-wanted criminals list, his name flagged for immediate attention of the Action Service. The call had been put through to Paris as the
gun battle continued up into the Rambouillet. Less than one hour earlier the bank robbers had pulled up to a stone farmhouse where apparently they were going to make their stand.
A strong gust of wind caught the chopper broadside, slewing it sharply to the left, its landing gear tangling momentarily in the tops of some trees before it went over on its side. Gisgard pulled the collective and the cyclic, hauled the stick far right, and kicked the rudder pedal hard. The machine shuddered to an upright attitude, every weld in its frame strained to the limit, and he set it down hard, chopping all power immediately.
“Nice landing, Pierre,” Colonel Marquand shouted from the back.
“Yes, sir,” Gisgard replied as the rear hatch was opened and Marquand and the ten men he'd brought down with him scrambled out into the snowstorm.
Colonel Marquand was a short, dark, dangerous-looking man who'd once been described as a Sherman tank with an attitude. Squinting his jet-black eyes against the driving snow, he could make out the stone farmhouse at the end of a narrow track that emerged from the woods and ran across a long, narrow field. A dozen radio units and Bureau of Criminal Investigation vans were deployed in a semicircle in front of the house. He'd been assured that the entire perimeter was secure. It meant that there would be some lost police officers wandering around in the storm, fingers on the triggers of their weapons.
“I want a scope on that house and on the woods behind it right now, Rene,” he told his number two as they headed toward the communications truck parked just off the track. “Place your shooters no more than fifty meters from the front, left, and right.”
“What about the rear?” Captain Rene Belleau asked, as he motioned for his people to move out. Both he and Marquand were part Corsican, and they commanded a lot of respect.
“That Chartres lieutenant has got officers back there.”
“Stationary?”
“One would hope so,” Marquand said. “I'll see if I can establish communications with them.”
“And hostages?” Belleau said grimly. “It looks like a working farm,
hein?”
“Just our luck,” Marquand replied heavily, as they reached the comms truck. He banged on the rear door and hauled it open, as Belleau, dressed in white army camos, disappeared into the storm, a walkie-talkie to his lips.
The interior of the truck was bathed in soft red light. Three young officers were seated to the left at a long radio console, and to the right a police lieutenant and a sergeant looked up from a map spread out on a wide table.
“Lieutenant Regis?” Marquand asked, climbing up into the truck, and pulling the door closed.
“You from Paris?” the lieutenant asked. He was about forty, and looked competent.
“Marquand, Action Service.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Regis said, holding out his hand.
Marquand ignored it, and shouldered the sergeant aside so that he could get a better look at the map. He pulled off his gloves. On this larger-scale chart he could see that the river was within twenty meters of the rear of the farmhouse, and that there were no locks or dams between here and where it joined with the much larger River Eure. From there it would be possible to take a boat all the way to Le Havre.
“What are you doing to protect the people you have deployed in front of the house?” he asked.
“Protect?” Regis asked, surprised. “I have twenty-three men, all of them heavily armed ⦔
“How many have you lost so far?”
“I ⦔
“Yes?”
“Seven dead, five wounded,” the lieutenant said.
“Sergeant, I want all of those men out of their vehicles and on the ground. Pull any of them not dressed for the weather out of there.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant snapped, and he turned to the radio operators.
“Now, what about your people at the rear of the farmhouse? Are they on this side of the river, or the other?”
“The far side. We have fourteen back there, and they
are
equipped for this weather.”
“I'll put four of my people with them. Radio your men and tell them what to expect.”
The sergeant looked around. “We're momentarily out of communication with three of our people.”
“Why is this?”
“We don't know yet.”
“Sergeant, locate them as soon as possible,” Marquand said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Is the river frozen over?”
Régis looked surprised. “I don't know,” he admitted.
“Find out,” Marquand said.
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant answered for him.
“Do they have any hostages in the house? Did they take any from the bank?”
“None from the bank, colonel, but we believe there are two civilians in the farmhouse. The man and the wife.”
“Is the house equipped with a telephone?”
The lieutenant hesitated.
Marquand pulled out his walkie-talkie and keyed it. “René, phone line?”
“Oui.
It has tone.”
“Bon.
Any movement in the house?”
“A few shadows, but no clear targets. What about the rear?”
“Looks as if there may be three friendlies without communications. We'll do
orange
on my signal.”
“Right,” Belleau radioed tersely.
“I want a link to that phone line. Send Henri over on the double.”
“What about the local officers?”
“Stand by only. I didn't spot any medical units out there.”