Faith placed her finger in front of her lips and whispered, “Cockpit voice recorder.”
“A cockpit voice recorder? You want to take a CVR to Moscow?”
“No. We’re being recorded.”
“Jeez,” Frosty said as he put a headset over one ear. “Ian wasn’t joking that you’ve spent too long behind the Iron Curtain-the rust is rubbing off.”
“Hey, paranoia’s a lifestyle for me,” Faith said.
“And for me,” Ian said. “Don’t mind the CVR. There are privacy workarounds. Not particularly legal, but effective nonetheless.”
Frosty grinned. “I call it the Bill North maneuver, after the guy who taught it to me back when I was flying out of Miami. The 727s have an erase button that only works when you’re on the ground with the parking brake set. But pull the parking brake latch lever in the air and the plane thinks it’s at the terminal. Push the erase button at the same time, and presto. Butt is covered.” Frosty chuckled.
“So what’s so hush-hush? Stasi making an arse of itself again?” Ian said.
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“You know, I once had a mechanical in Bucharest and had to overnight. Everywhere I went it was the same thing. Two men in the most horrendous leisure suits were attached to us like limpets.” Ian glanced at the instrument panels.
Faith ignored Ian and turned to Frosty. “All the spooks monitor who’s booked in and out of Berlin. The master here has taught me they don’t pay much attention to the comings and goings of airline personnel, so I used interline travel papers or whatever they’re called to get out of Dodge with as little of a trail as possible.”
“Why all of the cloak-and-dagger, my dear?” Ian said.
“I need you to do a rush delivery for me. It’s critical.”
“I gathered that when you rang me up yesterday. You were so out of breath, you sounded like you’d run a marathon. We both know that would never happen, now don’t we? So where are you headed?”
“I’ve been dreaming of a few days of R and R in Amsterdam.” She closed her eyes briefly and found herself admiring Van Gogh’s sunflowers, dodging bicycles, and gorging herself on nasi goreng.
“You had to slip out of Berlin posing as airline staff and you expect me to believe you did it to go on holiday?” Ian said.
“It’s never easy to get away, is it?”
Frosty spoke into his headset, “Roger that on the bogie, Berlin. Range twelve miles.” He turned toward the captain. “We got traffic, Ian. Five o’clock westbound. Coming up on our tail.”
“Take the right-hand seat and have a peek. I’m disengaging the autopilot. We won’t do anything unexpected. We’ll let him avoid us. He only wants to give us a cheap thrill-I hope.” Ian flipped a switch on the control yoke with his thumb.
Frosty slid into the co-pilot’s seat and leaned back to search the sky over the right wing while Ian searched port. “Got him. A MIG’s hanging off the starboard wing. Right at three o’clock.”
“Jesus.” Faith grabbed the seat and braced herself for a collision. No one spoke. A minute passed.
“Here he comes.”
A plump snubnosed fighter cut in front of them, rolled and flew straight up.
“Now let’s all wave at the commie.” Frosty gestured toward the window.
“I’d estimate the Faggot was within five hundred feet.”
“That was an awful close five hundred feet. I’d swear that guy needed a shave.” Frosty chuckled to himself.
“A faggot?” Faith eased herself back against the hard seat. Her palms were sweaty.
“MIG-15,” Ian said. “Faggot’s the NATO designation, I swear. I saw these all the time in Korea when I was flying the blockade. Dreadful buggers. We were in Sea Furies, piston-engine craft, and those jets would scream out of nowhere. Haven’t seen one of those in years. They must have taken it out of the mothballs for me.”
“This isn’t going to be like the Korean Air Lines over Sakhalin?”
“Nah, they’re just yanking our chain,” Frosty said.
“They’re not supposed to be in the corridors, but they do this all the time,” Ian said.
Suddenly the MIG reappeared ahead of them and flew a parallel course, slightly to their left. Faith guessed it was less than a thousand feet away. She strained to see over Ian’s shoulder. “Is it Russian?”
“Actually, I think that’s a Jerry. Can you tell, Frosty?”
“You know them commies all look the same to me.” He winked at Faith.
“The fifties, sixties, that’s when it was fun to fly this stretch of air. You never knew what was going to happen next. I was flying for BEA in those days-BAC one-elevens. A splendid plane. One time a MIG flew in front of me and all at once the sky filled with chaff and-”
“Isn’t this kind of dangerous?” Faith gasped as the MIG soared across their path to their starboard.
“Yes, extremely hazardous. As I was saying, I suppose the Russians were trying to block whatever dirty work they thought we were up to. They released the chaff and the entire sky filled with this glitter sparkling in the sun. Quite lovely, actually. Anyway, I radioed in to control, ‘Berlin Centre, Bealine six-eight-five-I can see the Iron Curtain!’ “
“Aren’t you worried about a midair?”
“Keenly. But without proper missiles, there isn’t much I can do, is there? Unless you prefer me hiding in the clouds. I’ll do that if he fires on us and misses, but until then I prefer we all stay in plain sight, where there’s less chance of bumping into one another. And the clouds only work if he hasn’t been retrofitted with modern equipment. Did I ever tell you the story about the Air France pilot flying the corridor in the fifties who really did have to take to the clouds after a MIG fired on him? Landed at Tempelhof with eighty-nine bullet holes in the fuselage.”
Faith was sure the gap between the two planes was narrowing.
In the main cabin, Vasily Resnick flipped through Clipper magazine, pausing to study an ad for Pan Am’s WorldPass frequent flyer program. He was pleased with himself that he figured out what FedEx was up to just in time to hop the same flight out of Berlin. He had contacted Titov from the gate. The general warned him that the Bonn residency knew about the shipment and was trying to find FedEx. Thus far he’d seen no signs of meddling from his former Bonn colleagues. The only unusual development was that FedEx had something going on with the cockpit crew. She hadn’t left there since she boarded. At least he knew whatever she was carrying was either checked in the belly of the plane or safely with her up front.
He set down the magazine and took the blue plastic sandwich box from the stewardess. From the way her gaze fondled him, he knew she wanted him. Too bad he was on assignment. He pulled the rubber band off the boxed meal. Salad, sandwich, water and cake. The Americans sure knew how to treat passengers well. Aeroflot could learn from them. He squirted mayonnaise and mustard on the ham and bit into the sandwich.
Then he saw him.
The Bonn residency did have someone on board. Resnick immediately turned his head away and reached for an imaginary object on the floor. He stayed bent over until the agent passed. Resnick glanced back to check for any sign the man had noticed him. Kivisto stood in the back, oblivious to anything other than the redheaded stewardess he was hitting on.
Art Kivisto. Artur Kivisto-son of Estonian immigrants. His grandmother was an easily intimidated Soviet citizen still residing in Tallinn. Back before Titov had rescued Resnick from the incompetence of the drunk Voronin at the Bonn residency, Resnick had recruited Kivisto as an informant. An informant for the Bonn residency’s network. He had come from the cockpit, where FedEx was. Kivisto was the type of snitch who would pass along any information he thought he had a remote chance of getting paid for. He had undoubtedly seen enough out of the ordinary to file a report with the residency as soon as he got to Frankfurt.