Reamde

“Say more.”

“Some places, there is no FBO—”

“Come again?”

“Fixed base operator. Special terminal for private jets.”

“Ah, thank you for the clarification.”

“If is no FBO, you stand in line with everyone else at emigration.”

“And if there is an FBO?”

“Then many times it is handled on plane. You go direct to FBO. Get on plane. Wait for official. Official comes on plane. Counts passengers. Checks against manifest. Stamps passports. Goes away. Plane takes off.”

“Is this one of those places that has an FBO?”

“Of course, our plane is parked at FBO since three days.”

“How did you get into the country in the first place? Did all of you have visas?”

“No,” Pavel said.

Zula provided a brief explanation of how they had done it.

Jones considered it. “What if you filed a flight plan for some city in China and then flew to Islamabad instead?”

“Some places it would be noticed. Other places—” Another shrug.

“All right then. What’s out there in the general direction of Islamabad?”

“Dushanbe?”

“I’m talking about airports in China—so that there’d be no need for an international flight plan.”

“I see.”

“Do correct me if I’m wrong. But I think you just got done telling me that, if you file a flight plan for another city in China, the immigration officials need not come on board to stamp passports.”

“Generally correct.”

“So where would that be?”

“Urumqi?” Pavel guessed.

“How about Kashgar?”

“Yes, of course, Kashgar.”

“Never been there,” Jones admitted, “but I’ve been close to it, on the Tajikistan side.”

Pavel waited.

Jones smiled. “I daresay that if we file a flight plan to Kashgar, and then overshoot it, and dogleg down to Islamabad, no one will notice. Or if they do, it’ll be too late for them to take any action.”

“It is only few hundred kilometers from western border of China,” Pavel allowed.

“Then I suggest that you get out your laptop, or whatever it is that you use, and make it happen,” Jones said.

“Departure when?”

Jones looked at Pavel as if he were a blithering idiot. “Departure now. We are driving directly to the airport from here.”

“Is not possible.”

“What do you mean is not possible?”

“Rules in China are that flight plan must be filed six hours in advance.”

“Hmm.”

“Used to be three to six days, is much easier now.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes as Jones considered it. Then, just as Zula was beginning to wonder if he had nodded off, he spoke up again: “You were sitting in your hotel waiting for Ivanov.”

“Yes,” Pavel said.

“If Ivanov had come to the hotel, as planned, today, and picked you up, you’d have gone to the FBO and boarded the jet and then what?”

“We would have flown to Calgary.”

“What’s in Calgary?”

“Fuel.”

“So you’re saying Calgary would be a mere refueling stop.”

“Yes.”

“What would the final destination be?”

“Toronto. Where we started.”

“Why not fly directly to Toronto, then?”

“Great circles.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Pavel sighed, then held his hands out in front of him as if gripping a globe about the size of a pumpkin. “You see—”

Jones interrupted: “I know what a bloody great circle route is.”

“Okay, good. Is much easier to explain then.”

“Then explain it.”

“If you draw a great circle from here to Calgary, it passes up along the coast of China. South Korea. Sakhalin Island. Kamchatka. Then along the coast of Alaska and British Columbia for some distance. Then it cuts across the mountains and down into Calgary. All of this is a very commonly used air travel corridor, you understand? All of the jets between Asia and North America follow such a route. It does not pass over any sensitive areas. However. If you draw a great circle from here to Toronto, is totally different. It goes up across China. Then North Korea—very bad. Then a large part of Siberia that is definitely not a normal air traffic corridor. To get approval for such a flight plan is impossible. So we must follow the normal corridor until we are over western Canada. From there things get easier. But then we are so far from following a great circle route that it becomes necessary to refuel. Most efficient place to refuel is Calgary. That is where we filed the flight plan.”

“You say it has already been filed?”

“Of course.”

“You say ‘of course,’ ” Jones said, working it out, “because of that six-hour delay you mentioned. Ivanov was a man in a hurry. He wanted to be ready to get out of here at a moment’s notice. Which is a difficult thing for you to reconcile with the six-hour delay mandated by the Chinese government. So you had a flight plan all set up and ready to go in advance.”

“This is what I do,” Pavel said, “when I am waiting in hotel. My job.”

“So it would be possible for you to go directly to the airport now and get on that plane and start flying in the general direction of Calgary immediately.”

“Not in general direction. Exact direction. But yes. No problem for us to get clearance for this.”

“But that is obviously an international flight.”

“Yes.”

“So the immigration officials will want to come on board and stamp passports.”

“Yes.”

“Did you say something about a passenger manifest before?”

“Yes. We supply such document to officials.”

Jones winced. “I’ll bet it has the names of a lot of Russians on it. That would be unfortunate, since all those Russians except for one are now dead.”

“Not a problem,” Pavel said. “Passenger manifest is separate document from flight plan. Goes to different officials. Does not have to be filed in advance. You see, manifest changes all the time. Someone changes plans at last minute, decides not to fly, or someone is added. We file manifest immediately before departure.”

“All right,” Jones said, “so the worst case is that by playing some games with the manifest we might be able to take off and head in the direction of Canada.”

“Maybe. Depends on officials and passports.”

Jones waved this off. “We’ll worry about that later. Right now I want to talk about flight plans.”

Another long period of him thinking.

“I would really like to make a stopover in Islamabad,” he concluded. “Let’s go over