relations.'
'I will tell my President that.'
'Your country, too, has endured much sorrow of late. I wish him the strength to heal your nation's wounds.'
'Thank you.' Both men stood. Handshakes were exchanged again, and Daryaei conducted Adler to the door.
CLARK NOTED THE way the office staff jumped to their feet. Daryaei conveyed Adler to the outer door, took his hand one more time, and let the man leave with his escorts. Two minutes later, they were in their official cars and on the way directly to the airport.
'I wonder how that went?' John asked nobody in particular. Everyone else wondered the same thing, but not another word was spoken. Thirty minutes later, aided by their official escort, the cars were back at Mehrabad International, and pulling up to the air force part of the facility, where their French jet was waiting.
There had to be a departure ceremony, too. The French ambassador talked with Adler for several minutes, all the while holding his hand in an extended farewell shake. With ample UIR-ian security, there was nothing for Clark and Chavez to do but look around, as they were supposed to do. In plain view were six fighter aircraft, with maintenance people working on them. The mechanics walked in and out of a large hangar that had doubtless been built under the Shah. Ding looked inside, and nobody made a fuss about it. Another airplane was in there, seemingly half disassembled. An engine was sitting on a cart, with another team of people tinkering with it.
'Chicken coops, you believe it?' Chavez asked.
'What's that?' Clark said, looking the other way.
'Check it out, Mr. C.'
John turned. Stacked against the far wall of the hangar were rows of wire cages, about the size of those used for moving poultry. Hundreds of them. Funny thing for an air force base, he thought.
ON THE OTHER side of the airport, the Movie Star watched the last of his team board a flight to Vienna. He happened to gaze across the expansive vista to see the private jets on the far side, with some people and cars close to one of them. He wondered briefly what that was about. Probably some government function. So was what he had planned, of course, but one that would never be acknowledged. The Austrian Airlines flight pulled away from the gate on time, and would head off just behind the business jet, or whatever it was. Then he walked to another gate to board his own flight.
40 OPENINGS
MOST AMERICANS WOKE up to learn what their President already knew. Eleven American citizens were dead, with three more unaccounted for, in an airliner disaster on the opposite side of the world. A local TV crew had made it to the airport just in time, having learned of the emergency from a helpful source at the terminal. Their video showed little more than a distant fireball erupting into the sky, followed by some closer shots that were so typical that they, too, might have come from anywhere. Ten fire trucks surrounded the burning wreckage, blasting it with foam and water, both too late to save anyone. Ambulances scurried about. Some people, obvious survivors, wandered in the haze of shock and disorientation. Others, their faces blackened, staggered into the arms of rescue personnel. There were wives without husbands, parents without children, and the sort of chaos that always appeared dramatic but which passed on nothing in the way of explanation, even as it cried out for action of some kind.
The Republic of China's government issued a blistering statement about air piracy, then requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. Beijing issued its own statement minutes later, stating that its aircraft, on a peaceful training exercise, had been attacked entirely without provocation, then returned fire in self- defense. Beijing totally disavowed any involvement in the damage to the airliner, and blamed the entire episode on their rebellious province.
'So, what else have we turned up?' Ryan asked Admiral Jackson at seven-thirty.
'We went over both tapes for about two hours. I brought in a few fighter pilots I've worked with, and a pair of Air Force guys, and we kicked it around some. Number one, the ChiComs—'
'Not supposed to call them that, Robby,' the President observed.
'Old habit, sorry. The gentlemen of the PRC—hey, they knew we had ships there. The electronic signature of an Aegis ship is like Mount St. Helens with an attitude, okay? And the capabilities of the ships ain't exactly a secret. They've been in service for almost twenty years. So they knew we were watching, and they knew we'd see everything. Let's keep that one in mind.'
'Keep going,' Jack told his friend.
'Number two, we have a spook team on the Chandler, listening in on radio chatter. We have translated the voice transmissions of the Chinese fighter pilots. Quoting now— this is thirty seconds into the engagement—'I have him, I have him, taking the shot. Okay, the time stamp on that is exactly the same as the heat-seeker launch on the airliner.
'Number three, every driver I talked to said the same as I did—why shoot at an airliner on the edge of your missile range when you have fighters in your face? Jack, this one smells—real bad, man.
'Unfortunately, we can't prove the voice transmission came from the fighter that launched on the Airbus, but it is my opinion, and that of my pals across the river, that this was a deliberate act. They tried to splash that airliner on purpose,' the Pentagon's director of operations concluded. 'We're lucky anybody got off at all.'
'Admiral,' Arnie van Damm asked, 'could you take that into a court of law?'
'Sir, I'm not a lawyer. I'm an airplane driver. I don't have to prove things for a living, but I'm telling you, it's a hundred-to-one against that we're wrong on this.'
'I can't say this in front of the cameras, though,' Ryan said, checking his watch. He'd have to do makeup in a few minutes. 'If they did it on purpose—'
'No 'if, Jack, okay?'
'Damn it, Robby, I heard you the first time!' Ryan snapped. He paused and took a breath. 'I can't accuse a sovereign country of an act of war without absolute proof. Next, okay, fine, they did do it on purpose, and they did it with the knowledge that we'd know they did. What's that mean?'
Jack's national security team had had a long night. Goodley took the lead. 'Hard to say, Mr. President.'
'Are they making a move on Taiwan?' the President asked.
'They can't,' Jackson said, shaking off his Commander-in-Chief s tantrum. 'They do not have the physical ability to invade. There is no sign of unusual activity in their ground forces in this area, just the stuff they've been doing in the northwest that has the Russians so annoyed. So from a military point of view the answer is no.'
'Airborne invasion?' Ed Foley asked. Robby shook his head.
'They don't have the airlift capacity, and even if they tried, the ROC has enough air-defense assets to turn it into early duck season. They could stage an air-sea battle like I told you last night, but it'll cost them ships and planes— for what purpose?' the J-3 asked.
'So did they splash an airliner to test us?' POTUS wondered. 'That doesn't make sense, either.'
'If you say 'me' instead of'us, that's a possibility,' the DCI said quietly.
'Come on, Director,' Goodley objected. 'There were two hundred people on that plane, and they must have thought they'd kill them all.'
'Let's not be too naive, Ben,' Foley observed tolerantly. 'They don't share our sentimentality for human life over there, do they?'
'No, but—'
Ryan interrupted: 'Okay, hold it. We think this was a deliberate act, but we don't have positive proof, and we have no idea what its purpose might have been—and if we don't, I can't call it a deliberate act, right?' There were nods. 'Fine, now in fifteen minutes I have to go down to the Press Room and deliver this statement and then the reporters will ask me questions, and the only answers I can give them will be lies.'
'That about sums it up, Mr. President,' van Damm confirmed.
'Well, isn't that just great,' Jack snarled. 'And Beijing will know, or at least suspect, that I'm lying.'
'Possible, but not certain on that,' Ed Foley observed.
