Total Control (6 page)

No survivors." He looked at her, his white, bushy eyebrows twitching like a cat's tail.

For an instant, Sidney's major organs collectively seemed to cease all functioning. "Where?"

Beard shook his head. "I didn't hear that part. It was a jet, though, a pretty big one, I gathered. Fell right out of the sky, apparently.

I guess that's why those fellows were so nervous. I mean, not knowing why is just as bad, right?"

"Do you know what airline?"

He shook his head again. "Guess we'll know soon enough. It'll be on the TV when we get to New York, I would bet. I already called my wife from the airport, told her I was okay. Hell, of course she hadn't even heard about it yet, but I didn't want her to start worrying if she saw it on the TV or something."

Sidney looked at his bright red tie. It suddenly took on the image of a large, fresh wound gaping at his throat. The odds--it couldn't be possible. She shook her head and then stared straight ahead. Looking back at her was a quick resolution to her worry. She inserted her credit card in the slot in the seat in front of her, grabbed the plane phone from its niche and a moment later she was dialing Jason's SkyWord pager. She didn't have his new cell phone number; in any event, he normally turned his phone off during flights. He had been reprimanded twice by airline personnel for receiving cell calls during flights. She hoped to God he had remembered to bring the pager. She checked her watch. He would be above the Midwest right about now, but bouncing its signals off a satellite, the pager was easily capable of receiving pages on planes. However, he couldn't call her back on the plane phone; the 737 she was on was not equipped with that technology yet. So she left her office number at the prompt. She would wait ten minutes and call in to her secretary.

Ten minutes passed and she called her office. Her secretary picked up on the second ring. No, her husband hadn't called. At Sidney's urging, her secretary checked Sidney's voice mail. Nothing there either.

Her secretary had heard of no plane accident. Sidney began to wonder if George Beard had misunderstood the pilots' conversation.

He probably sat around imagining every possible catastrophe, but she had to be sure. She frantically searched her memory for the airline her husband was on. She called information and got the number for United Airlines. She finally got through to a human being and was told that the airline did have an early morning flight to L.A. from Dulles but there had been no reports of any airline crash. The woman seemed reluctant to discuss the subject over the telephone and Sidney hung up with fresh doubts. Next she called American and, after that, Western Airlines. She could not get through to an actual person at either airline. The lines seemed to be jammed with calls. She tried again, with the same result. A numbness slowly coursed through her body. George Beard touched her arm again.

"Sidney... ma'am, is everything okay?" Sidney didn't answer. She continued to stare ahead, oblivious to everything except the certainty that she would race off the plane as soon as it landed.

CHAPTER SIX

Jason Archer looked at the SkyWord pager and the number etched 'across its tiny screen. He rubbed at his chin and then took off his glasses and wiped them on his lunch napkin. This was his wife's direct office number. Like his wife's plane the DC-10 he was flying on also had cellular phones recessed into the backs of every other seat.

He had started to reach for the phone and then stopped. He knew Sidney was in her firm's New York office today, which was why the leaving of her D.C. office number puzzled him. For a terrifying instant, he thought something might be wrong with Amy. He checked his SkyWord pager again. The call had come in at nine-thirty ^.M. EST. He shook his head. His wife would have been on a plane halfway to New York at that time. It wouldn't have had anything to do with Amy. Their daughter would have been at day care before eight. Was she calling to apologize for hanging up on him earlier?

That, he concluded, was far from likely. That exchange didn't even qualify for minor spat status. It didn't make any sense. Why on earth would she be calling him from a plane and leaving the number of an office at which he knew she would not be?

His face suddenly went pale. Unless it was not his wife who had called. Given the bizarre circumstances, Jason concluded that it was probably not his wife who had placed that call. He instinctively scanned the cabin. The in-flight movie droned on from the pull-down screen.

He sat back in his seat and stirred the remains of his coffee with a plastic spoon. The flight attendants were clearing away meal plates and offering pillows and blankets. Jason's hand curled protectively around the handle of the leather briefcase. He glanced at the case containing his laptop where it was stowed under the seat in front of him. Maybe her trip had been canceled; however, Gamble was already in New York and nobody canceled on Nathan Gamble, Jason knew that. Besides, the CyberCom deal was at a critical stage.

He leaned back farther in his seat, his hand fingering the Sky-Word pager like a ball of putty. If he placed the call to his wife's of-rice, what then? Would he be relayed to New York? Should he call home to check messages? Any communication option at this juncture required him to use a cellular phone. He was carrying a new, sophisticated model in his briefcase, one with the latest security and scrambler capabilities; however, he was prohibited by airline regulations from using it. He would have to use the one supplied by the airline, in which case he would also have to use a credit or phone card. And it was not a secure line. That would allow opportunities, however remote, for his location to be ascertained. At the bare minimum, there would be a discernible trail. He was supposed to be heading to L.A.; instead he was thirty-one thousand feet above Denver, Colorado, on his way to the Pacific Northwest. This unexpected bump was acutely disturbing after all the careful planning. He hoped it was not a precursor of things to come.

Jason looked at the pager again. The SkyWord pager had a headline news service and late-breaking stories came across its screen several times a day. The political and financial data treading across the pager screen did not interest him at the moment. He turned the matter of the supposed page from his wife over in his mind for a few minutes more and then he deleted the page message and put the audio earphones back on. However, his mind was far away from the images drifting across the movie screen.

Sidney darted through the crowded terminal at La Guardia, her two bags clunking against her nylon-stockinged legs. She did not see the young man until he almost collided with her.

"Sidney Archer?" He was in his twenties and dressed in a black suit and tie, a chauffeur's hat perched on top of brown curly hair. She stopped and looked dully at him, fear thudding through her body as she waited for him to deliver his terrible message. Then she noticed the placard in his hand with her name on it and her entire body deflated in relief. Her firm had sent a car to take her to the Manhattan office. She had forgotten. She nodded slowly, her blood beginning to circulate again.

The young man took one of her bags and led her toward the exit.

"I got a description of you from your office. Like to do that in case people don't see the sign. Everybody moves fast around here, preoccupied, y'know. You need a good backup system. Car's right outside.

You might want to button your coat up, though, it's freezing out there."

As they passed the check-in counter, Sidney hesitated. Long lines streamed out from the busy airline counters as overwrought travelers tried valiantly to keep one step ahead of the demands of a world that seemed more and more to exceed human capacities. She quickly scanned the terminal for anyone who looked like an idle airline employee. All she saw were the skycaps calmly trucking luggage around amid the hysteria of panicked travelers. It was chaotic, but it was the normal chaos. That was good, wasn't it?

The driver looked at her. "Everything okay, Ms. Archer? You not feeling well?" She had grown even paler in the last few seconds. "I've got some Tylenol in the limo. Perk you right up. Those planes make me sick too. All that recirculated air. I tell you what, though, you get some fresh air, you'll be A-OK. That is if you can call the air in New York City fresh." He smiled.

His smile suddenly vanished as Sidney abruptly bolted away.

"Ms. Archer?" He sped after her.

Sidney caught up with the uniformed woman whose identifying badges and insignias stamped her as an employee of American Air lines. Sidney took a few seconds to get her question out. The young woman's eyes grew large.

"I haven't heard anything like that." The woman spoke in a low voice so as not to alarm passersby. "Where did you hear that?" When Sidney answered, the woman smiled. By that time, the driver had joined them. "I just got out of a briefing, ma'am. If something like that happened to one of our aircraft, we would've heard. Trust me."

"But if it had just happened? I mean--" Sidney's voice was rising.

"Ma'am, it's all right, okay? Really. There's nothing to be concerned about. It's by far the safest way to travel." The woman took one of Sidney's hands in a firm grip, looked at the driver with a reassuring smile and then turned and walked away.

Sidney stood there a few moments longer, staring after the woman. Then she took a deep breath, looked around and shook her head in dismay. She started to walk toward the exits again and looked across at the driver as if noticing him for the first time.

"What's your name?"

"Tom, Tom Richards. People call me Tommy."

"Tommy, have you been at the airport long this morning?"

"Oh, 'bout a half hour. Like to get here early. Transportation headaches are not what businessmen--um, people need, y'know."

They reached the exit doors and the stiff, punishing wind hit Sidney flush in the face. She staggered for a moment and Tommy grabbed one of her arms to steady her.

"Ma'am, you don't look so good. You want I should drive you to a doctor or something?"

Sidney regained her balance. "I'm fine. Let's just get to the car."

He shrugged and she followed him to a gleaming black Lincoln Town Car. He held the door for her.

She lay back against the seat cushions and took several deep breaths. Tommy climbed in the driver's seat and started the engine.

He looked in the rearview mirror. "Look, I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but you sure you're okay?"

She nodded and managed a brief smile. "I'm fine, thank you." She took another deep breath, unbuttoned her coat, smoothed out her dress and crossed her legs. The interior of the car was very warm and after the cold burst she had just encountered she actually wasn't feeling all that well. She looked at the back of the driver's head.

"Tommy, did you hear anything about an airplane crash today?

While you were at the airport, or on the news?"

Tommy's eyebrows went up. "Crash? Not me, I ain't heard nothing like that. And I been listening to the twenty-four-hour news radio all morning. Who says a plane crashed? That's crazy. I got friends at most of the airlines. They would've told me." He looked at her warily, as if he were suddenly unsure of her mental state.

Sidney didn't answer but lay back against the seat. She took the cellular phone supplied by the car company out of its receptacle and dialed Tyler, Stone's New York office. She silently cursed George Beard. She knew the odds were billions to one that her husband had been in a plane crash, a purported crash that, so far, only an old, terrified man seemed to know about. She shook her head and finally smiled. The whole thing was absurd. Jason was hard at work on his laptop having a snack and a second cup of coffee or, more likely, settling in to watch the in-flight movie. Her husband's pager was probably gathering dust on his. nightstand. She would give him hell about it when he got back. Jason would laugh at her when she told him this story. But that was okay. Right now she very much wanted to hear that laugh.

She spoke into the phone. "It's Sidney. Tell Paul and Harold that I'm on my way." She looked out the window at the smooth-flowing traffic. "Thirty-five minutes tops."

She replaced the phone and again stared out the window. The thick clouds were heavy with moisture and even the stout Lincoln was buffeted by powerful winds when they took the bridge over the East River on their way into Manhattan. Tommy again looked at her in the rearview mirror.

"They're calling for snow today. A lot of it. Me, I say they're blowing smoke. I can't remember the last time the weather guys got anything right. But if they do, you might have a problem getting out, ma'am. They shut La Guardia down at the drop of a hat these days."

Sidney continued to look out the tinted windows, where the army of familiar skyscrapers making up the world-famous Manhattan skyline filled the horizon. The solid and imposing buildings reaching to the sky seemed to holster her spirit. In the foreground of her mind Sidney could see that white pine Christmas tree holding court in one corner of the living room, the warmth of a cozy fire radiating outward, the touch of her husband's arm around her, his head against her shoulder. And, best of all, the shiny, enchanted eyes of their two-year-old.

Poor old George Beard. He should retire from those boards. It was clearly all becoming too much for him. She told herself he wouldn't even have gotten close with his preposterous story if her husband hadn't been flying today.

She looked toward the front of the Lincoln and allowed herself to relax a little. "Actually, Tommy, I'm thinking of taking the train back."

CHAPTER SEVEN

In the main conference room of Tyler, Stone's New York office in midtown Manhattan, the video presentation outlining the latest business terms and legal strategies for the CyberCom deal had just ended. Sidney stopped the video and the screen returned to a pleasant blue. She scanned the large room where fifteen heads, mostly white males in their early to mid-forties, stared anxiously at one man sitting at the head of the table. The group had been sequestered in the tension-filled room for hours.