Final Approach (22 page)

He began to answer, a hundred well-phrased arguments rushing forward at once, but she raised her hand and gently put a finger on his mouth.

“No, don't. Not words. It's something I have to see, and decide. This is not something you can lobby. I need time.”

“I've changed, Cindy. Friday night's reaction was not me to begin with, but if my priorities were screwed up, they aren't now. Not after that—after this weekend, after a taste of what losing you would mean.”

“Those are pretty words, Kell, and you're good with pretty words. I need to watch you for a while …”

“And I need to marry you.”

“Which is a strange way to ask a girl.” She glanced at him, half-amused.

“Okay.
Will
you marry me?” he corrected.

“I probably will, when marrying you will not result in charges of bigamy.”

“Cindy, the marriage is over. You know that! Julie and I don't even talk anymore.”

“She came by last month. To the office, to see you. It broke my heart, she looked so miserable.”

He looked at her quietly for a moment. “It was Julie's idea, Cindy. She wanted the divorce, and it'll be final in January. In practical terms it's final now! I'll always care for her, but I'm not constrained anymore. I am out of her life.” He hesitated, looking uncomfortable.

“When it's final, we'll talk.” Her look was unyielding, and that scared him.

“Can we still … I mean …”

Cindy looked up and smiled slightly. “Meaningless sex, you mean?”

“Well, that's not—”

“You don't handle celibacy well, do you, Senator? Tell you what. I'll be back in the office tomorrow, and …”

“In the office? Won't that be indiscreet?”

“Cut it out. As I said, I'll be back tomorrow, and tomorrow night, if you want, you can come to my place.”

She looked away with a sly smile, but Kell saw it and it buoyed him, wiping away for the moment the apprehension that she might exit stage left from his life, but leaving the spotlight on the more pressing problem.

Just as quickly her expression changed. “I've got to put on my administrative assistant hat now, Kell. We're in big trouble.”

“What do you mean?” How had she found out about the license? he wondered. That had to be it.

“You know Larry Wilkins died right in front of you, right?”

“Yes, but that has nothing to do with me.”

“Who comes to everyone's mind around here when the ‘Most Opposed to Congressman Wilkins' category comes up?”

So that was it. The Wilkins thing had spooked her. “Okay, me. But I still don't …”

“You also know, don't you, that there's a serious possibility that the flight was sabotaged?”

“I heard, but I don't know that it's a credible rumor.”

“And who just happens to be sitting there waiting for it but Wilkins's archenemy! How is that going to look? Waiting for your bimbo is one thing, a whiff of assassination is entirely different.”

Kell looked like he'd been scalded.
“Assassination?”

“Kell, I'm not kidding, we need to figure out what to do and say if somehow it's discovered you were there. Does anyone know?”

He all but hung his head with a sigh, and her heart sank.

“Oh God. How?”

Kell told her the details, and the news reports of a videotape showing a luxury car with blurred plates. “I don't have any reason to believe they can get the license number.”

“You don't have any reason to believe they won't, either. Kell,
we
know the mystery car is yours. If people find out before you tell them voluntarily, it could be a disaster. It may be anyway. Let's figure out what you should say, but we've got to get to it before they do.”

“I can't call a press conference on this!”

She fell silent, watching the worried look on his face. “Okay, Kell. Let's think about it the rest of today and be ready to formulate a plan tomorrow. We can't hide from this.”

They said good-bye quickly, and Kell headed for the Pentagon, negotiating his way through the military labyrinth like a veteran to the office of Air Force Lieutenant General Frank Roach, who was spearheading the “Brilliant Pebbles” research effort. The three-star was in, surprised and off balance as Kell pulled senatorial rank to sail past the secretary, angrily relating the essence of Senator Whitney's complaint.

“Senator, that's not true.” General Roach sat back slightly in his chair, still off guard and wary, unprepared for a broadside from one of his program's staunchest supporters on the Hill. Kell watched his eyes as he spoke, noting with alarm that the general was not looking at him.

“I want to hear this from you, eyeball to eyeball, Frank. Are you or are you not attempting to sneak around the agreement?”

The general fixed Kell with a steady look, straight in the eye at last. “You have my word, Senator, that we are neither testing, nor preparing to test. If anything was really moved outside the area, Senator Whitney's sources are misinterpreting the reason.”

“I need to know, fast. I can't hold this together, safeguard your funding without a major floor fight, or keep this off the Security Council agenda if I don't have immediate, reliable information.”

“I know that, Senator. You'll have it in a few hours. You may be sure I'm about to pull the fire alarm.”

Kell got up to leave, shaking the general's hand, then hesitating in the doorway. “Frank, just moving some key piece of equipment could already have destabilized everything. You know that, don't you?”

The Air Force general drummed his fingers on his blotter and nodded his head, silently. “We're not testing, sir. That I can tell you. If anything was moved, it was for an honest purpose.”

Kell returned to his office in a heightened state of agitation, convinced he was being misled. The drive back from the western side of the Potomac was barely remembered. He had spent the entire trip trying to think of ways to defuse the explosion of indignation Lew Whitney would unleash if Kell couldn't hand him a compartmentalized explanation, and fast. The incoming call from Whitney's administrative assistant, Hugh Walton, came at exactly the right moment, as Kell sat down at his desk.

“This guy got me out of bed, Senator, on Saturday. I promised to keep his name out of it, but he's one of the project directors for the particle-beam research going on at Lawrence Livermore in California. The man has toured most of the Pebbles installations, and he knows the hardware. He agrees with us that at best your system is a stepping-stone to ours, but the point is this: he was flying home from a conference, and at an intermediate stop on Friday he looks out the window of the airplane and sees the Air Force loading this mammoth self-propelled machine into a MAC transport.”

“Do you know what it looks like, Hugh?”

“If I understood him right, it's like one of those big missile carriers, with a driver's compartment up front and a huge, rectangular body behind. You can get it down the highway, but only with pilot cars. You move something like that straight from the factory to the nearest airport in late evening or overnight.”

“Sounds like the transporter for the Midgetman missile.”

“Yeah, it does, a bit.”

“What's in it? Any idea? Or can we talk about that?”

“Tracking test equipment. Acquisition and targeting and command-tracking stuff—very powerful, very secret technology.”

“Hugh, are you sure the man saw what he thought he saw? I mean, at night, across an airport, and through the window of a commercial airplane, how'd he know what he was looking at?”

“Three reasons, Senator, and they're good ones. First, the size and shape are unique. He made a point of that. Second, it's from the Leavenworth, Kansas, facility. Third, the guy who saw it and reported it is a former member of the team that designed it several years back.”

“Pretty convincing.” Kell's pen had been scribbling a steady stream of notes onto the yellow paper of his legal pad as the man talked. He added the location of Leavenworth, Kansas, then stopped, inscribing a small question mark.

“Wait a minute.” Kell Martinson sat up in his chair, the sudden image of an Air Force C-5B in the process of loading a large container triggering in his memory, the plane surrounded by security men he hoped had not observed his presence. “Where was he, Hugh, when he saw the container? Which airport?”

“I didn't tell you? That was the topper, why there was no doubt it came from the Leavenworth facility. They brought it to the closest airport that can handle a big MAC transport, Kansas City International Airport, last Friday night. You know, Senator, the night of that terrible airline crash.”

The office of the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board contained a desk, a rug, a set of leather chairs, a couch, and several windows overlooking Independence Avenue, and by 2
P.M.
Monday afternoon it also contained an agitated chairman pacing around with a telephone receiver that had been on hold for nearly ten minutes. On the other end of the line was the office of the White House chief of staff.

“Goddamn it!” Dean Farris's upset voice boomed through the door to the ears of his secretary, who ignored it. Farris was easily frustrated.

The assistant to the chief of staff had gone off somewhere to check on just what the common wisdom of the administration was regarding the Larry Wilkins affair. Farris had worried his way through the weekend over how to play it. Should anything more be done by Joe Wallingford to counter the media impression that the NTSB was not paying serious attention to the possibility of sabotage? Was the President concerned about a political backlash? He knew very well that such concerns were not binding on the independent board or its chairman, but he also knew this was sensitive, and intergovernmental cooperation seemed important at such a moment.

Suddenly the man was back. “Uh, Dean? You there?”

Farris pressed the phone back to his ear. “Yes.”

“I think the general wisdom here is that whatever happened—and of course the determination of cause is entirely your bailiwick—we wouldn't want anyone thinking we were a party to some sort of celebration of Congressman Wilkins's demise. We also wouldn't want anyone thinking we are interfering with your investigation of sabotage. By the same token, this isn't exactly the death of a President. No one here is terribly broken up.”

“If we find it's
not
sabotage, and there was something badly wrong with the aircraft's design or black boxes, does anyone there have any concerns that I ought to keep in mind about Airbus?”

The reply carried a puzzled tone. “Why?”

“Well, I mean, that plane is the pride of France. Should I check with someone at State?”

There was a long pause at the other end as the assistant chief of staff thought out his response and phrased it with extraordinary care. “Dean, the only concern for any of us in the executive branch, or in an independent agency such as yours, should be normal diplomacy. Even if the Airbus is a problem, no one here is going to suggest you pull whatever punches you think appropriate. I would say, however, that it might raise more questions and problems to go phoning around State asking how they feel than by just playing it the way you see it. As long as you don't announce that the Airbus is a dangerous flop, and the French are homicidal maniacs for building it, or some such nonsense, I can't imagine how you could create a diplomatic incident.”

“Okay. I understand you. I just wanted to make sure I understood all the balance points.”

“No problem.”

“Tell the President we'll handle it.”

“You bet,” the man said, pleasantly, as he hung up the phone and stared at it, shaking his head. Tell the President indeed. What else was the NTSB supposed to do but handle it?

Dean Farris had often thought about getting a lightweight telephone headset since he spent so much time on the phone, but it seemed unchairmanlike. Instead, he contented himself with a practiced balancing act, the telephone handset rocking precariously on his bony shoulder as he punched up another line and entered the number of Susan Kelly's hand-held phone in Kansas City. A series of clicks and the sound of electronic ringing preceded Susan's voice.

“Hello?”

“Susan? Dean back in D.C. What's the status this morning?”

“Hello Dean.” Her voice was flat and unenthusiastic, but Farris did not notice. “Well, where do I start. Barbara Rawlson will be out of the hospital on Thursday, and she should have no permanent damage. We still have no clue where the cockpit voice recorder is, and Joe Wallingford tells me he's on the verge of concluding it was stolen. It's driving the systems group crazy.”

“What do you think of the flight-recorder data?”

Susan hesitated, figuring out his meaning. “Is it out here yet? I haven't seen it, Dean.”

“Ah. Well, get Joe to go over it with you. I have a copy but haven't studied it yet.”

And neither of us could probably interpret it by ourselves, she thought to herself.

“Are you keeping Joe out of trouble?” Farris asked.

There was a pause on the Kansas City end. “Is that what this call is about? Dean, please remember what I told you Saturday. I'm not here to baby-sit the staff, and I'm certainly not going to try to ride herd on Joe Wallingford. If you have a problem with what he's doing,
you
call him. I think he's doing just fine.”

“Well, at least keep me informed of anything startling.”

Dean Farris ended the conversation with a few empty pleasantries, and immediately punched in the number of Gary Seal, the investigator heading the operations group. Farris had no way of knowing where Seal was at the moment his portable telephone began chirping in the hallway of the hotel, nor could he see Susan's expression of disgust as she heard it several steps behind her. There was no question in Susan Kelly's mind, however, who was on the other end.