middle to guide civil aircraft.”
“It could go out.”
“Hardly think that’s—”
“Well, it did. During the eighty-eight Olympics. ‘Course,” she continued, “that’d be before your time.”
“I’m not
“Behind a cloud,” she said. “Remember double oh seven?”
The man was nonplussed. “James Bond?”
“James nothing,” the woman said irritably. “Korean Airlines double oh seven. Shot down by the Russians in eighty-three. You can’t trust any of ‘em. Especially Pyongyang.”
The Texan moved uncomfortably in his seat. Pyon — it sounded familiar to him. Some Communist leader.
“North Korea,” she explained.
“Oh.”
“You a businessman?”
He was glad of the change of subject. “Yes. And you — on vacation?”
“Of sorts. Daughter-in-law lives in Shanghai. Works for La Roche Chemicals. Husband owns it.”
“
“Yes,” said the woman. “He’s a fool.”
“Oh-?”
“All think they’ll make a fortune in China. A billion people. A billion customers, that’s the way Jay looks at it.” She shook her head. “Won’t get anywhere in China. I told him — they’ll have to get their distribution system organized first. Lord — you ever fly China Air?”
“No,” answered the Texan.
“Well, don’t,” said Mrs. La Roche. “Love ‘em, but Lord, are they disorganized. That’s their problem, y’see.”
“Sounds like you know a lot about them.”
She turned toward him. “Henry — my late husband — and I lived in Hong Kong before the Communists took it over. Moved back to the States when the British left. That’s where Jay met the Brentwood girl. She’d been doing some courses in college— to be a nurse. Gave that up and went back to China with Jay. She has a brother out here in the navy — another one in the Atlantic. Don’t think it’ll work.”
The Texan wasn’t sure what wouldn’t work: the navy for the Brentwood brothers or her son’s marriage to the Brentwood girl.
“Lovely girl,” continued Mrs. La Roche, “but oh my. Can’t sit still. Neurotic as all get out. Low self-esteem.” She was glancing out at the clouds again. “Course, Jay loves that. Ego.” She turned to the Texan. “You remember that Donald Trump?”
“Sure.”
“Compared to Jay’s ego, Trump’s Mother Teresa. Good boy, Jay, but too big for his britches. Don’t know where he got it from. Too much money. Wants to own the world, Jay does.”
“Well,” smiled the Texan, holding his hand up for another double, “he’s well on the way.”
“You got family?”
“Yes, ma’m. My son, Walter. With the air force.”
“Uh-huh. Where’s he stationed?”
“Germany. You been there?”
Mrs. La Roche didn’t answer, still peering suspiciously at the cumulus towering thousands of feet above them, its ice white turning creamy in the fading light. “No use fretting, I suppose,” she said. “It’s a dangerous world wherever you go.” She paused and sat back. “I’d worry if I had young ‘uns though.” She turned to the Texan. “Especially now. Everyone’s getting jittery. Lana’s folks — that’s my daughter-in-law — want her and Jay to go back to the States. Nice people. Navy man, too.”
“Uh-huh,” said the Texan uninterestedly. Why was it that people told you things on planes they’d never dare bore you with anywhere else? A captive audience, or maybe they thought they’d never see you again. Which was true. He was getting impatient for the double Scotch.
“I told them,” she kept on. “Use your brains. It was Gorbachev this, Gorbachev that. Lord — worst thing could’ve happened.”
“Why’s that?” queried the Texan, the trolley edging closer.
“Raises expectations,” said Mrs. La Roche. “Biggest bully in Europe for sixty years suddenly smiles and we go ape. And everyone in the Eastern bloc starts agitating for independence. You just knew there was going to be trouble. Think about it, I told Henry — think about it. You really want the Poles and Hungarians to start trouble? Drag us into it? Yugoslavs are just as bad. Coming apart at the seams, that country is. Gorbachev encouraged them, too — everybody’ll have more freedom. Pretty soon someone’s going to try taking a bit more than they’re allowed. Ukranians, Georgians, Armenians, Tuvans, Buryats. You name it. Least with those bullies, Andropov, Brezhnev, we knew where we stood. East was East and West was West. Stay off the grass.” She glanced up at the trolley attendant. “I’ll have a brandy, dear.” As she took the drink neat and sat back, the Texan saw a glint of silver coming out from the boiling mass of cumulonimbus.
As they came in over the East China Sea, the serpentine curve of the Huangpu was a river of burning gold.
The Texan held back to let the rush of eager tourists go before him. As he passed the young attendant whom Mrs. La Roche had first spoken to, he thanked her for the flight and asked whether she’d found out anything about the other plane.
“Yes,” she said. “The captain saw it.”
“Whose was it?”
“South Korean,” the chief steward put in hurriedly.
“Hmm. They fly that close.” It was said more as a comment than a question, but the steward got right onto it. “Actually, they’re always much further away than you think. Air distances are very deceptive.”
The Texan saw Mrs. La Roche walking down the concourse past the glass display cases of China dolls, foreign cigarettes, and battery-operated panda bears that moved if you clapped.
In the waiting crowd beyond customs, the Texan could also see a beautiful brunette in a black and white silk dress, a sloppy-looking chauffeur in gray beside her. She was looking eagerly around, as a bored member of the People’s Liberation Army stared at her from the customs exit. When she saw Mrs. La Roche she waved excitedly and pointed her out to the chauffeur, and the Texan knew it must be Lana La Roche.
Damn, he thought, wishing he’d gone out with the old lady after all and wrangled an introduction. You never knew where these things could lead. He tried to hurry — nothing to declare at customs — but by the time he passed through, the swarming mass of people engulfed him, bodies so close together that all he could think of was escape. Surrounded, wall to wall, by Chinese, he found the push of bodies frightening, the noise deafening, and he began to panic. He was so far from home, the crowd so huge, so oppressive, unstoppable — like a world going mad — and for a terrifying moment he feared he might never get out, might never see his son or America again.
At 0400, the moon behind them, coming from the east toward the Rhineland’s Eifel Mountains and picked up on one of the NADGE — Nato Air Defense Ground Environment — radars, the four East German fighters, Russian- made Sukhoi-15 Flagons, came straight for the American patrol of four F-16B Falcons out of Hahn, each Falcon’s Avgas receptacle open, ready for the refueling exercise with a KC-135 tanker. USAF Col. Walter Delcorte, leader of the patrol from the Tenth U.S. Tactical Fighter Squadron at Hahn, ordered the wing to close refueling vents and drop to five thousand, breaking off west, well away from the “trace,” the ten-meter-wide border strip that, despite what had happened to the Wall, still ran for five hundred kilometers between the two Germanys along NATO’s Central Front. The Falcons broke as ordered, the moon-bathed quilt of German farms sliding away beneath them at
