LACKING VIRTUES (58 page)

When the fueling was done, Steven climbed into the cockpit. Warner took hold of the prop and heaved.

Nothing.

He did it again and again. On the sixth or seventh try, she saw smoke belch from the engine. Several tries later the engine coughed and sputtered to life.

Steven climbed down and shook Warner’s hand. She was smiling and waving at them when an unshaven man with a scythe stepped out of the woods. The man stopped in front of her, staring with small suspicious eyes.

“What’s going on over there at Bonier’s hangar,” he growled.

“You know those guys?” 

“Yes, I do. I am with them.” She was frightened, but this time she was determined not to fold in the face of danger. She looked him over as if
he
were the intruder.

“Well, what in the hell are they doing?” the man snapped.

“Do you work for Monsieur Bonier?” Nicole asked.

“No, I don’t work for him. I look after his property when he is in Paris.”

“Oh, I see. Then he must certainly have told you about the service on his crop duster.”

“What?”

“Monsieur Bonier hired Churchill Aviation, an English firm that specializes in aging planes, to take over the maintenance and service.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m surprised you don’t know. Monsieur Bonier is adamant that the repairs be done right this time. His airplane might have to be flown to England if it can’t be fixed here. Those are his instructions.”

“Oh, really?”  The man scowled, then turned and disappeared into the forest as swiftly as he had come.

Nicole drove to the barn and reported the incident.

“He’ll be back,” Warner said from the wing. “Let’s pick up the pace. You two start transferring things we need from the car to the plane – maps, blankets, four liters of oil, the minimum. Weight is a problem. I’m going to drain some fuel. When you finish, pull the car into the barn and drape the lock over the hasp. Let’s move!”

***

After his surprise encounter with Sophie Marx, Claussen drove toward Grenoble. It took him less than an hour on the car phone, arm-twisting former members of his Cold War network in Washington and the airline industry, to reach the conclusion that Frank Warner was the source of the CVR. Warner’s involvement, together with the knowledge Sophie had managed to dig up, meant that his adversaries were more numerous, and in higher positions, than he had believed.

When a call to Delors produced the shocking news that Nicole Michelet was no longer at her aunt’s, Claussen decided the hour had struck to end his association with his partners and slip off to his second home in Bolivia.

He faced only one obstacle: French Intelligence Services, if they happened to stumble on to his intentions before he made it out of Europe.

To feign his continued active participation in defense of the conspiracy, he fed Delors his information on Sophie Marx’s murder and Warner’s arrival in France. To create the appearance of his continuing commitment, he came up with a fictional scenario even Haussmann seemed to like: the French police would attribute both the murder of the journalist and the disappearance of Mademoiselle Michelet to Steven LeConte, an American drifter.

Claussen was certain his fugitives would use Warner’s rental car when they made their break. They wouldn’t get far with the entire European law enforcement establishment looking for them. They would soon be arrested and taken into custody, either in France or another EC in country. Once that happened, Delors and the SDECE would know how to deal with them, how to make things look “right.”

“And you, Walter?” Delors asked. “What are your intentions?”

Claussen was approaching the
autoroute
intersection at Beaune. Instead of continuing south toward Grenoble, he turned east on A36 and headed for Switzerland. “I shall continue to supplement the work of your forces. Quietly, of course. This LeConte character seems to be a careless type. His address book reads like a road map to his circle of acquaintances in Europe. If he and the others should somehow manage to slip through your net, which I doubt possible, rest assured they won’t slip through mine.”

Delors said, “We can still pull this off successfully, can’t we, Walter?”

“Absolutely. Judging from what I’ve been able to learn in the States, no one suspects the real reason Warner is here. He told his staff at the NTSB he was in need of a brief vacation. I’m sure that’s what he’s told everyone else. As for the American government, all they care about is an excuse to fight the last war with Iraq again.” Claussen smiled to himself and pushed his foot a little deeper into the accelerator. “They need a scapegoat, Paul. The couldn’t care less about the truth.”

“And Sophie Marx? She can’t have been working on this alone?”

“No, but the reason she was using a bum like LeConte was to keep every aspect of her story under wraps. An experienced news person might well have betrayed her.  Now she’s taken that story to the grave, leaving only one person with an inkling of the truth. That person’s hours on this earth are numbered.”

“I still feel uneasy. I want you to keep on searching for anyone else who might possibly know or suspect – and take appropriate action.”

“Of course, Paul. Remember. Disclosure would hurt me as badly as you. Now, let me tell you something that will help you relax. I was speaking of the American obsession with Iraq.  It gets better. The US is planning to devastate the country before dawn Monday, promoting itself from the only nation to have ever used nuclear arms on women and children to the only nation to have done so
twice
. Once they’ve killed a few hundred thousand civilians while the Arab world looked on, they’ll be our best allies in making sure the truth is never known. Never.

“Now, Paul, go to work. Turn your dogs loose. Have every border crossing sealed. Have every airport, railroad station and ferry dock watched. Have every road patrolled. Alert Interpol – and don’t neglect to actively involve your citizenry. Get descriptions of the fugitives and their car on every media outlet. Saturate the airwaves with bulletins and photographs. Depict this as a truly revolting crime perpetrated by an American derelict, the type of person who poses a danger to everything decent – everything French. If you do that you’ll have very little to worry about.”

“Perhaps, Walter. I must say one more thing before we end this conversation. I’m still a little stunned by the incompetence of Michelet. His daughter was an obvious risk. Neither Albert nor I can fathom how he let it come to this.”

“Nor can I, Paul. But first things first. We’ll have time to deal with him later.”

“Good night, Walter.”

“Good night, Paul, and good luck.”

Claussen deactivated his cellular car phone. He crossed the Swiss border at Basel before stopping for gas and food. He looked at the night sky while the attendant was filling up the large Mercedes tank.

High pressure had moved in behind the cold front. He could feel it in the dry crisp air, and see it in the stars blinking hard and cold as diamonds. The day would break clear, the driving would remain good, while he attended to money and automobile business in Switzerland.

He forced himself to eat, as he always did during periods of peak stress, then got back in his car, selected a classical station and proceeded toward Zürich.

As the night wore on and the driving became monotonous, he let himself fantasize about the future. Sometime tomorrow evening he would pick up his memoirs and the boxes of records from old KGB and Stasi files, all of which he kept at his home near Altenhagen. He would then travel as Reinhart Schmidt from Berlin to La Paz, taking a backwards route over Asia just in case they were on the lookout for him in the West.

Once he reached Bolivia, the good life would begin. He had set up a second identity in an elegant suburb outside of La Paz at the beginning of Operation Litvyak, a safety valve in case he ever had to flee. He owned a villa, kept a small permanent staff, and had deeply indebted friends in the government, police and military he had treated well over the years. He activated his second identity and touched base with his second home every few months, a practice begun almost thirty years ago. Cautious and intelligent men did not get caught. It was the fools, like Michelet.

Walter Claussen, or rather Reinhart Schmidt, was known, simply, as a business man on the go. Now he would be seen as retiring at last.

Retiring not to shrivel and die but to complete his memoirs in a German prose unequaled since Nietzsche – and to watch his revelations shock the world while the CIA blundered to new heights trying to cover up its own little Holocaust and find out where he was.

A fitting retirement, one which he deserved, one for which he had planned his entire adult life.

Dawn came, and with it scattered clouds and reports of a vile murder in France. He was bored. He switched off the car radio and reached over to the passenger seat for the piece of fake parchment he had gathered up with the rest LeConte’s papers. Holding it up to the windshield, he read it with perfect backlight.

“LeConte’s List of Lacking Virtues.” He laughed. Didn’t that say it all? America with its pathetic failings wrapped up in one underachieving young man. If Sophie Marx had not become infatuated with this loser, she might be alive today.

The light faded, a cold rain slapped the windshield and fog swirled across the highway. The front must have stalled, Claussen thought, lighting another cigarette.

The front, but not his plans. A minor delay because of the weather was of no importance. In a few days, Reinhart Schmidt would be enjoying the sun on his Bolivian flagstone terrace.

Chapter Forty-Three

One leather flying hat, one pair of goggles and two mildewed sheepskin jackets were the extent of the wardrobe the pilot kept in the barn. Better than nothing, thought Warner, but it left a lot to be desired.

The Stearman had two cockpits, one behind the other, with seats hard as bicycle leather. The passenger, Nicole, would have to travel more like luggage than human cargo, lying across the skeleton of wooden spars in the hollow section of fuselage between Steven’s seat and the tail. Heat and windows she wouldn’t have, so Warner showed her how to make a cocoon with clothes and blankets.

  He pointed out the control cables running to the stabilizer, impressing on her the need to keep them free of any obstruction – hair, feet, blankets. He asked if she was claustrophobic, and was glad she said no.

Following his instructions, Nicole entered her cabin head-first so that she would be facing forward and would have the use of her legs to brace herself against the back of Steven’s seat for the eventuality of an emergency landing. Her head was in the thinnest part of the tail, surrounded by ancient creaking pulleys and cables.

Warner and Steven put on every piece of warm clothing they had before squeezing into the flying jackets, which were as large as they were odorous. Warner wore the hat and goggles, Steven donned the motorcycle helmet. They climbed up on the wing and slid into their seats.

Although primitive, the plane’s instruments were adequate for flying in poor conditions. Warner was glad to see an artificial horizon and a vertical speed indicator. He would need them for the second leg of their journey if the night turned stormy.

He entrusted Steven with the field glasses and infrared camera. His partner was going to have to function as night copilot, a prospect Warner tried not to think too much about.

Shortly after nine a.m. Warner revved up the loud 7-cylinder engine. He taxied to the end of the strip, studied the sock and pushed the throttle forward. They bumped along the sodden earth, sinking into muddy troughs that slowed their acceleration. The northwest wind hit them at an angle, the morning sun blazed behind them, the engine sounded like a giant lawn mower with a defective bearing.