Alexander didn’t want to hear it. Although two of the hits he had ordered had gone totally awry, Alexander remained self-assured; he was convinced that he would eventually triumph.
He’s always so damned self-confident, Harry Kennebeck thought. And usually there’s no good reason why he should be. If he was aware of his own shortcomings, the son of a bitch would be crushed to death under his collapsing ego.
Alexander went to the huge maple desk and sat behind it, in Kennebeck’s wing chair.
The judge glared at him.
Alexander pretended not to notice Kennebeck’s displeasure. “We’ll find Stryker and the woman before morning. I’ve no doubt about that. We’re covering all the bases. We’ve got men checking every hotel and motel—”
“That’s a waste of time,” Kennebeck said. “Elliot is too smart to waltz into a hotel and leave his name on the register. Besides, there are more hotels and motels in Vegas than in any other city in the world.”
“I’m fully aware of the complexity of the task,” Alexander said. “But we might get lucky. Meanwhile, we’re checking out Stryker’s associates in his law firm, his friends, the woman’s friends, anyone with whom they might have taken refuge.”
“You don’t have enough manpower to follow up all those possibilities,” the judge said. “Can’t you see that? You should use your people more judiciously. You’re spreading yourself too thin. What you should be doing—”
“I’ll make those decisions,” Alexander said icily.
“What about the airport?”
“That’s taken care of,” Alexander assured him. “We’ve got men going over the passenger lists of every outbound flight.” He picked up an ivory-handled letter opener, turned it over and over in his hands. “Anyway, even if we’re spread a bit thin, it doesn’t matter much. I already know where we’re going to nail Stryker. Here. Right here in this house. That’s why I’m still hanging around. Oh, I know, I know, you don’t think he’ll show up. But a long time ago you were Stryker’s mentor, the man he respected, the man he learned from, and now you’ve betrayed him. He’ll come here to confront you, even if he knows it’s risky. I’m sure he will.”
“Ridiculous,” Kennebeck said sourly. “Our relationship was never like that. He—”
“I know human nature,” Alexander said, though he was one of the least observant and least analytical men that Kennebeck had ever known.
These days cream seldom rose in the intelligence community — but crap still floated.
Angry, frustrated, Kennebeck turned again to the bottle that contained the French frigate. Suddenly he remembered something important about Elliot Stryker. “Ah,” he said.
Alexander put down the enameled cigarette box that he had been studying. “What is it?”
“Elliot’s a pilot. He owns his own plane.”
Alexander frowned.
“Have you been checking small craft leaving the airport?” Kennebeck asked.
“No. Just scheduled airliners and charters.”
“Ah.”
“He’d have had to take off in the dark,” Alexander said. “You think he’s licensed for instrument flying? Most businessmen-pilots and hobby pilots aren’t certified for anything but daylight.”
“Better get hold of your men at the airport,” Kennebeck said. “I already know what they’re going to find. I’ll bet a hundred bucks to a dime Elliot slipped out of town under your nose.”
The Cessna Turbo Skylane RG knifed through the darkness, two miles above the Nevada desert, with the low clouds under it, wings plated silver by moonlight.
“Elliot?”
“Hmmm?”
“I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this.”
“You don’t like my company?”
“You know what I mean. I’m really sorry.”
“Hey, you didn’t get me mixed up in it. You didn’t twist my arm. I practically volunteered to help you with the exhumation, and it all just fell apart from there. It’s not your fault.”
“Still… here you are, running for your life, and all because of me.”
“Nonsense. You couldn’t have known what would happen after I talked to Kennebeck.”
“I can’t help feeling guilty about involving you.”
“If it wasn’t me, it would have been some other attorney. And maybe he wouldn’t have known how to handle Vince. In which case, both he and you might be dead. So if you look at it that way, it worked out as well as it possibly could.”
“You’re really something else,” she said.
“What else am I?”
“Lots of things.”
“Such as?”
“Terrific.”
“Not me. What else?”
“Brave.”
“Bravery is a virtue of fools.”
“Smart.”
“Not as smart as I think I am.”
“Tough.”
“I cry at sad movies. See, I’m not as great as you think I am.”
“You can cook.”
“Now that’s true!”
The Cessna hit an air pocket, dropped three hundred feet with a sickening lurch, and then soared to its correct altitude.
“A great cook but a lousy pilot,” she said.
“That was God’s turbulence. Complain to Him.”
“How long till we land in Reno?”
“Eighty minutes.”
George Alexander hung up the telephone. He was still sitting in Kennebeck’s wing chair. “Stryker and the woman took off from McCarran International more than two hours ago. They left in his Cessna. He filed a flight plan for Flagstaff.”
The judge stopped pacing. “Arizona?”
“That’s the only Flagstaff I know. But why would they go to Arizona, of all places?”
“They probably didn’t,” Kennebeck said. “I figure Elliot filed a false flight plan to throw you off his trail.” He was perversely proud of Stryker’s cleverness.
“If they actually headed for Flagstaff,” Alexander said, “they ought to have landed by now. I’ll call the night manager at the airport down there, pretend to be FBI, see what he can tell me.”
Because the Network did not officially exist, it couldn’t openly use its authority to gather information. As a result, Network agents routinely posed as FBI men, with counterfeit credentials in the names of actual FBI agents.
While he waited for Alexander to finish with the night manager at the Flagstaff airport, Kennebeck moved from one model ship to another. For the first time in his experience, the sight of this bottled fleet didn’t calm him.
Fifteen minutes later Alexander put down the telephone. “Stryker isn’t on the Flagstaff field. And he hasn’t yet been identified in their airspace.”
“Ah. So his flight plan was a red herring.”
“Unless he crashed between here and there,” Alexander said hopefully.
Kennebeck grinned. “He didn’t crash. But where the hell did he go?”
“Probably in the opposite direction,” Alexander said. “Southern California.”
“Ah. Los Angeles?”
“Or Santa Barbara. Burbank. Long Beach. Ontario. Orange County. There are a lot of airports within the range of that little Cessna.”
They were both silent, thinking. Then Kennebeck said, “Reno. That’s where they went. Reno.”
“You were so sure they didn’t know a thing about the Sierra labs,” Alexander said. “Have you changed your mind?”
“No. I still think you could have avoided issuing all those termination orders. Look, they can’t be going up to the mountains, because they don’t know where the laboratories are. They don’t know anything more about Project Pandora than what they picked up from that list of questions they took off Vince Immelman.”