Firebreak (17 page)

“Are we reading the signals wrong?” Pontowski finally asked.

“There is always that possibility, Mr. President,” the DCI answered. “But it correlates with too many other items coming out of the Kremlin. And we haven’t seen or heard from the general secretary for over three weeks.”

“They haven’t come close to solving their economic problems,” Cagliari added. “There is growing unrest, mostly in the Ukraine, Moldavia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. Even the Baltic States are joining in. Which, considering the way the Soviet Army has been setting on them since they declared their independence, is an indication of how bad things are.”

“Terry, what do you see?” Pontowski asked.

Admiral Scovill leaned forward. “We are monitoring a great deal of movement on the part of the Soviet Army. But it is all internal and toward the hot spots Mike just mentioned. None of it can be considered threatening to NATO or Western Europe. One other thing, Mr. President, they are being very obvious about it. The Soviets want us to know they are not threatening NATO.”

Pontowski nodded and leaned back in his chair, glad that he had brought the three men over from the previous administration. They were turning out to be his best advisers, despite the serious misgivings Fraser had voiced at first. “So, it looks like Viktor Rokossovsky is about to lose his job as the general secretary of the Communist party.”

“That in itself,” Cagliari said, “isn’t too much to worry about. It’s how they are doing it. We had thought the Soviets had solved the succession-of-power problem and could do it peacefully. This is shaping up like an old-fashioned
putsch.
They’re going to do this one with tanks and guns.”

“It gets complicated,” Burke said, “because we don’t know whose side the army is on. Right now, we assume the generals are stirring the pot.”

“So what do you recommend we do?” Pontowski asked. He wanted their honest opinions. He would make up his mind later after listening to his secretary of state.

Cagliari spoke first. “Right now, nothing. We must not do a thing the Russians could interpret as a threat or an attempt to mix in their internal affairs. We’ve got to keep things quiet.”

Scovill and Burke agreed with him.

“Okay, gentlemen, that’s it for now.” The four men rose and started to leave. “Tom, hold on for a moment.” Fraser held back until the men had left. “Well, what do you think?”

Fraser hesitated. It wasn’t often that Pontowski asked his advice on foreign affairs. He knew he had to give it his best shot. “I agree with Mike, we’ve got to keep things quiet until die Russians get their problems sorted out.”

“Is that all?”

Fraser shook his head. “The Middle East. I see problems there that could spill over and frighten the Russians. That’s not good when they are having internal problems. They used our response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait as an excuse to crack down. I don’t know what they would do if the Middle East became destabilized again.”

“What kind of destabilization would drive them over the edge?”

“I’m really the wrong man to ask that question. Why don’t I call in Cox or that whiz kid Carroll?”

Pontowski smiled. “Tom, I got the impression that you don’t agree with them.”

Fraser was stunned. How had Pontowski cottoned on to that? “Well,” he stammered, “I don’t. I’m for a balance approach in the Mideast and I think Cox and Carroll are too pro-Israeli. We need friends on both sides of that fence. But that isn’t my job so I shut up.”

“What is your job?”

“To keep facts, options, ideas, opinions flowing to you.” He paused and smiled. “And to take care of all the damn paperwork.”

“Keep it up, Tom. Keep it up.”

Fraser knew he was dismissed and beat a hasty retreat to his office. Was the President sending him a message?

“Mr. Fraser,” Melissa called when he passed by her desk. “B. J. Allison called.”

He decided to ignore the message.

Discretion is a relative thing, especially in Washington, D.C., where almost everyone practices it to some extent, and the higher the orbit of the power circle a person whirls around on, the more vital it becomes to the survival of the practitioner. Thomas Patrick Fraser instinctively understood this and had become a master at the game. He relied on a pleasant, Irish-bred manner to charm people and a quick intelligence to stay at least two jumps ahead of any potential indiscretion. Normally, it worked well and to his advantage, covering up his sharklike nature.

But when Thomas Fraser lost his temper, his rough South Boston heritage broke through and he was anything but discrete with those who occupied a power circle below his. They received the full blast of his anger. But since Fraser was anything but suicidal, he never let those spinning above him see this side of his personality. And Barbara Jo Allison’s constellation was well above his.

“Really, Tom,” B.J. said, peering at him over her teacup, “I do not believe the President is honoring his commitment to me. After all, I did make substantial funds available to you during the last election.” Her anger at having to summon him a second time when he did not respond to her first call was apparent in the acid tone of her voice.

“B.J., you knew at the time that I had to launder that money and that Pontowski didn’t know a thing about it.”

The petite woman took a sip of the herbal tea she drank before going to bed. “You led me to believe that you would be my friend at court.”

Fraser used the break to drain his coffee cup. The summoning phone call from Allison had wakened him out of a sound sleep at three in the morning and he was still not fully awake. You bitch! he mentally cursed. How do you expect a man to think so early in the morning. “If he ever finds out,” Fraser cautioned, “he’ll appoint a special prosecutor and launch a full-scale investigation. I’ll be the first casualty.”

“And the scandal will rival Watergate.” Allison smiled. “It will be the end of his administration.” She had enough representatives in her pocket to guarantee that the House would at least convene a committee to consider impeachment.

Fraser fought down the urge to argue and tell her that Pontowski was a skilled and ethical politician. “Don’t underestimate him.”

“Come, Tom. We’ve been friends too long to fight over this.” Now she was using her soft southern accent to charm. She was offering him a reprieve—if he chose to take it. She reached out a liver-splotched hand and touched his wrist. “I only want this silly talk about an excess profits tax on oil stopped. And the very idea of national emergency controls over all the oil corporations if there is another Arab oil embargo is too painful to think about. Why, you would think
we
did not have the best interests of our very own country at heart.”

Fraser knew exactly what B.J. had at heart—profits. Even he would have a hard time unraveling the creative bookkeeping her accountants indulged in, but his personal estimate was that B.J. doubled her profits any time there was a significant upward shift in world oil prices. What he didn’t realize was that she could do even better if she knew a decline in prices was in the making. B.J.'s main problem was public relations. Public scrutiny of her business methods would probably raise such an outcry that the government would be forced by an irate electorate to nationalize the oil industry.

“I can only do so much,” Fraser said. He wanted to quiz her about her sources. Highly accurate and confidential information was being leaked to her. “My value to Pontowski is how well I run the Office of the Presidency for him. I am really an administrator, not a policymaker. He sent me a strong signal the other day.”

“Tom!” Allison had popped to her feet. The vitality in the old woman surprised him.
“You”—
she stressed the word—“are not listening. I made an investment in
you
and
that
man. Now I want a return on the money I spent.”

Fraser fought down his anger. Normally, he would have ruined anyone that spoke to him that way. But this old woman was too rich, too powerful. “Please, you must look at the problem from the President’s point of view. He sees an oil crisis if the Arab-Israeli war breaks out again.”

“Then the answer is simple, isn’t it?”

“I don’t see an easy solution,” Fraser replied.

“Oh, you men can be so difficult at times. Stop the war from starting. Any woman can see that.”

“Much easier said than done.”

“Yes, it is easy,” Allison snapped, her voice hard and raspy. “We only have to support our Arab friends and stop letting the Israelis determine our foreign policy. After all, how much oil do the Jews control?” Now her voice became soft and wheedling again. “Please, help an old friend who needs to go to bed and rest.”

Fraser stood, glad that she was dismissing him. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Yes, do that.” The threat was obvious.

Melissa was sorting through a pile of documents and messages when Fraser stormed into his office. “Why the hell isn’t my desk ready?” he barked.

“Sorry, sir,” she answered and glanced at her watch. “I didn’t know you were coming in this early.”

“Goddamn it, it’s your job to know. Look, lady, if you can’t do this job right, I’ll get someone who can.” He ripped off his suit coat and tie and threw them on the floor. “Get me another suit and a clean shirt.” He stepped into his private bathroom. “Get the fuckin’ lead out!” he shouted.

“My, you are being a bastard this morning,” Melissa said to herself. “Well, go right ahead and press the fire-the-secretary button. We’ll see who wins that one.” She deliberately chose the wrong color tie to go with the dark brown plaid suit she pulled from his closet. She passed them through to the bathroom and then walked down the hall to a deserted office. She found a private phone line, called the White House garage, and asked to speak to Fraser’s driver.

“Hey,” the young engineer said, “come take a look at this. It’s the third time I’ve modeled it. The results are all the same.” The senior engineer who had been working on the F-15 crash at RAF Stonewood bent over McDonnell Aircraft Company’s most advanced design computer and studied the results of the junior man’s work.

“Change the impact angle ten degrees and run it again,” the senior engineer said. This was the eighth F-15 crash he had investigated and he had a strong suspicion what had caused the fetal midair collision involving lieutenant Colonel Locke and Captain Pontowski.

“The results aren’t going to change,” the junior man said. He ran the program again and the results stayed the same. “Only one way to get a shear angle like that on Pontowski’s wing—Locke’s aircraft had to strike it while in a downward rolling maneuver.”

“Okay,” the senior engineer said, “time to get flight test involved.”

The two engineers picked up their computer printouts and the VCR tape from Matt’s aircraft that had survived the crash and walked over to McDonnell’s flight test section. The test pilot they talked to could have been a computer programmer working for IBM. There was none of the flash, the dash, the straight teeth and crooked smile that went with the popular image of men who risked their lives advancing man’s knowledge of the flight envelope. He was a thoughtful and highly intelligent engineer who also happened to be a superb fighter pilot at one time in his career. He also had every intention of dying in bed. He listened to the engineers and watched the VCR before he said a thing. “The last transmission from Locke’s aircraft … I can hear two ‘Knock it off’ calls. We need to break them out.”

The test pilot joined them as they drove over to another building with a sound lab. The engineer there listened to the tape and put it through his computer, splitting one voice from the other. Now they could clearly hear Locke’s voice say, “Knock it off.”

“No stress there,” the test pilot said.

“Listen to the other voice,” the sound engineer said. This time the rapid voice of Colonel Roger “Ramjet” Raider could be heard alone.

“That guy panicked,” the test pilot said.

The four men looked at each other. “I guess this means the ‘Gruesome Twosome,’ “ the senior engineer said. Now all four—the sound engineer was very interested and not about to be left out—piled into a car and drove to the flight simulator. The simulator McDonnell had built was a far cry from a normal trainer. The mock-up of the cockpit was suspended in the middle of a planetarium and a computer-generated picture was projected on the inside of the dome. The picture, not the cockpit, moved to commands from the pilot. It was unbelievably realistic.

Inside, they found the to young computer experts McDonnell had hired to run the system plotting some new dirty trick. They could perform magic in the simulator and took a great deal of relish in defeating budding F-15 pilots who tried to fly air-to-air combat in the sim against them. Larry Stigler was the oldest at twenty-eight, and looked eighteen. Stigler seldom said a word and resembled a stork. His junior partner, Dennis Leander, was twenty-three and looked like a very short overfed elf. But he had the personality of a gremlin. Around the company, they were known as the Gruesome Twosome.

The six men sat around the table and reconstructed the accident, going over every detail. Stigler raised an eyebrow in the general direction of Leander. “Colonel Raider came through here about a year ago,” he said, “and spent about an hour in the sim.”

“He crashed three times,” Leander added. “He was ten miles behind the aircraft with his head up his ass.” He let that sink in. It was a confidence he would never voice outside the company. “I think we can reconstruct the midair with no trouble.”

The test pilot crawled into the front seat of the cockpit while the senior engineer played backseater. The junior engineer stood on the narrow platform that surrounded the cockpit. He was ten feet in the air. The three men could hear talking coming from the control console until Stigler closed the door, sealing them into the dome. The picture on the wall showed them sitting at the end of a runway, ready to take off. The pilot cranked engines and started his takeoff roll. The runway flashed past them and then they were climbing out at a steep angle. The pilot commanded a roll and the picture moved around them. They heard a loud thump as the junior engineer fell down onto the platform.

“Damn,” he said, “I’ve got vertigo. Better get out before I toss my cookies.” Leander froze the sim, suspending them just above a cloud deck. The door at the back flew open and Stigler helped the sick engineer out.

Then they were “free” and “flying” again. The test pilot flew two engagements, once as Locke then as Pontowski. Leander played the opposite aircraft from the control console and the image of his jet would flash past them on the walls of the dome, exactly as it really happened. “Okay, freeze the sim,” the test pilot ordered. “Can one of you two fly this puppy? I want to see it from Raider’s position.”

The sim froze again, the door opened, and a grinning Stigler crawled into the front cockpit while the test pilot took Raider’s position in the backseat. The test pilot was amazed at how well Stigler could fly the simulator and wondered what he would do in the real thing. On the first setup, the suspicion came to him. “Stig,” he said, “we need to switch cockpits.” After they were repositioned, the pilot continued. “When you hear me say ‘Knock it off,’ I want you to vote on the stick and push it forward, hard. The idea is that you want to lower the nose to see Pontowski’s jet.”

Again, they went through the setup and entered a scissors. Again, the angle of attack increased as their airspeed bled off. Finally, the exact position of the two jets was re-created. “Knock it off,” the pilot said. Stigler did as he had been told and pushed the stick in the rear cockpit forward with both hands, palms open. But the pilot instinctively tried to hold on to the stick. The contrary resistance sent the stick sideways out of his grasp. The simulator rolled under and downward to the left, creating the same angles that had puzzled the junior engineer. The test pilot had learned what had happened. “Okay,” he said. “That’s enough.”

Outside, the six men gathered around the table. The test pilot looked at them, a sad expression on his face. “From the backseat it looks hairy. They were flying at a low airspeed and a high angle of attack, but still had lots of control. They were not even close to departing controlled flight. The pilots had no trouble seeing each other but Raider would have lost sight of Pontowski’s jet under the nose. For an experienced wizzo, no problem. But now listen to the VCR tape just before impact.” He played the tape. “Just when Locke radioed for them to disengage with a ‘Knock it off’ call, Raider yelled the same thing. You can hear the panic in his voice. Then he voted on the stick, momentarily overriding Locke’s control, and crashed them into Pontowski’s wing.” The test pilot paused. “The only other explanation is that Locke committed suicide.”

“Is that a possibility?” Leander asked.

“No way,” the test pilot said. “I flew out of Ras Assanya with him when he brought the Forty-fifth home from the Persian Gulf. I knew him.”

The envelope was addressed to M. Courtney-Smith and waiting for her in the mailbox when she got home. Melissa checked the return address—it was the one she had been waiting for. Thanks, Joannie, she thought. An old friend, another secretary who had devoted her life to public service, had called from her office in the Pentagon and told her about the final report on Matt’s accident. Melissa had asked her to mail it to her and bypass the normal six or seven bureaucratic layers that would edit and change the report before it was judged to be sent to the White House.

Inside her apartment, she made a cup of tea and settled down to wade through the document. Her cat, Caesar, jumped into her lap and purred. Outside of her work, Melissa was a very lonely person. She was amazed at the clear and lucid way the report was written. The conclusions were hard and unyielding. “No wonder the milicrats in the Air Force won’t let these things go public,” she told the cat. Instinctively, she knew that the report would step on too many toes and raise some hard questions about how the Inspector General system selected the officers who conducted inspections.