Dragonfly

watched the city, the countryside, and then the clouds fall away from him.

“Suppose you'd been a German during the Second World War, someone who had the opportunity to get close to Hitler with a gun. Would you have shot him?”

“Gee, Dad, I thought you didn't want to talk about this sort of thing any more.”

“Would you have shot Hitler?”

“This is stupid. Hitler was dead before I was born.”

“Would you have shot him?”

“Would you have shot Genghis Khan?”

“You have two possible answers, Mike. Say yes, and you'd be admitting that given the right conditions, you could kill a man. Say no, and you'd be implying that you have no duty to protect the lives of innocent people whom you might have saved.”

“I don't get your point.”

“Of course you do.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“The right thing would have been to kill Hitler and save the millions of people who died because of him. Yet, in shooting him, you'd still be a murderer. In other words, a moral act is often a compromise between the ideal and the practical.”

Mike said nothing.

“It seems to me that morality and expediency are two sides of the same coin, a very thick coin that more often than not lands with both faces showing.”

“Do you feel very moral when you kill?”

“We're not talking about me or—”

“Oh, this is still 'theoretical,' is it?”

“Mike—”

“Hitler was one of a kind, Dad. A man as dangerous and crazy as he was, a man who needs killing as badly as he needed it, comes along once in a century. You're trying to take a unique case like Hitler and generalize from it.”

“But he wasn't unique. The world's full of Hitlers— but few of them ever make it to the top.”

“Thanks to men like you, I suppose.”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you feel heroic when you kill one of your little Hitlers?”

“No.”

“I'll bet you do.”

“I'm… surprised. Shocked. I'm just beginning to see how much you … hate me.”

“I don't hate you, Dad. I just don't feel much of anything at all where you're concerned, not anything, not one way or the other.”

An hour into the flight, Canning gave his forged State Department credentials to a stewardess and requested that she pass them along to the pilot. “I'd like to speak with him when he has a few minutes to spare.”

Five minutes later the stewardess returned. “He'll see you now, Mr. Otley.”

Canning followed her up front to the serving galley. The galley — now that the flight attendants were dispensing before-dinner drinks from a bar cart in the aisle — was reasonably quiet.

The pilot was a tall, paunchy, balding man who said his name was Giffords. He returned Canning's papers, and they shook hands. “What can I do for you, Mr. Otley?”

“If I read the departures board correctly back at National, this flight goes all the way to Honolulu.”

“That's right,” Giffords said. “We let off a few passengers in L.A., take on a few others, and refuel.”

“How long is the layover?”

“One hour.”

“Are you booked solid for Honolulu?”

“We're usually overbooked. And there's a waiting list for the cancellations. We hardly ever have an empty seat on the Hawaiian run.”

“I'd like you to make an empty seat for me.”

“You want to bump someone?”

“If that's the only way, yes.”

“Why is this so urgent?”

“I'm sorry, Captain Giffords, but I can't say. This is highly classified State Department business.”

“That's not good enough.”

Canning thought for a moment. Then: “I'm carrying an extremely important message to a man in China. It can't be delivered by phone, mail, or telegram. It can't go in the scheduled weekly diplomatic pouch. I didn't use a government plane because it was easier to keep the mission a secret if I flew on civil airlines. Somehow the wrong people learned I was the messenger, and they want to stop me at any cost. An attempt was made on my life just before I left Washington. It failed only because they didn't have time to set it up properly. But if I change planes in L.A., as planned—”

“They will have had time to set it up there, and they'll nail you,” Giffords said.

“Exactly.”

“This is pretty wild stuff for me,” Giffords said.

“Believe me, I don't find it routine either.”

“Okay. You'll have a seat to Hawaii.”

“Two other things.”

Giffords grimaced. “I was afraid of that.”

“First of all, I have two suitcases in the baggage compartment. They're tagged for Los Angeles.”

“I'll instruct the baggage handlers to retag them and put them aboard again.”

“No. I want to get off for them and bring them back to the check-in counter myself.”

“Why?”

“I've got to try to mislead the men who're waiting for me. If they know I'm continuing on to Hawaii, they'll just set up something in Honolulu.”

Giffords nodded. “Okay. What's the other thing?”

“When we land, get in touch with the airport security office and tell them there's a damned good chance that the next Pan Am flight to Tokyo will have a bomb aboard.”

Giffords stiffened. “Are you serious?”

“That's the flight I'm supposed to take out of L.A.”

“And these people, whoever wants to stop you, would kill a planeload of innocent people? Just to get you?”

“Without hesitation.”

Watching Canning closely, Giffords frowned. He wiped one hand across his face. But he failed to wipe the frown away. “Let me see your papers again.”

Canning gave him the State Department documents.

After he had looked those over, Giffords said, “You have a passport, Mr. Otley?”

Canning gave him that.

Once he'd paged slowly through the passport, Giffords handed it back and said, “I'll do what you want.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“I hope you realize how far out my neck is stuck.”

“You won't get it chopped off,” Canning said. “I've been straight with you.”

“Good luck, Mr. Otley.”

“If I have to rely on luck, I'm dead.”

He was the last one off the plane. He took his time strolling the length of the debarkation corridor, and he