Murder in Foggy Bottom Page 3

  Pauling’s demeanor, too, impressed the impressionable Juan. He was easygoing and always courteous, something Juan couldn’t say about some of the demanding, unreasonable amateurs he met on the tie-down line.

  Strapped in the left-hand seat, Pauling set the throttle at half power and leaned out the open window to shout “Clear!” to alert anyone in the vicinity that he was about to start the engine. He turned the key; the engine and prop cranked over easily. Pauling waved to Juan, who threw him a smart salute—good kid, Pauling thought— and squeezed the throttle forward just enough to break inertia and to begin his taxi to the end of the thousand-foot macadam strip, the airport’s only runway. He tuned his radio to the ground control frequency and announced into the handheld mike, “Cessna three-three-nine Alpha rolling.”

  “Okay,” the airport owner rasped from the yellow shack.

  Pauling held his toes on the brake pedals as he advanced the throttle all the way to the instrument panel, then released it. The Cessna jerked forward, gaining speed, until the natural lift created under the curved wings was sufficient for Pauling to pull back gently on the yoke.

  Procedures at the airport called for a right turn as soon as it was safe to avoid flying over a housing development. He banked right, leaned out the fuel mixture once he’d reached his announced cruise altitude, set the throttle to 75 percent power, and settled back for the two-hour flight to Washington.

  He flew most of the trip on autopilot, adjusting the Cessna’s heading and altitude when instructed to do so by ground controllers. This was prime time for Pauling, alone in his little plane, his pride and joy, above the stresses of daily life on the ground, at work, and in his personal life. It was what fishing was for some men. He did his best thinking when in the air, indulged in his most fertile and useful reflections.

  This most recent visit with his ex-wife and sons had been like most visits since their separation and subsequent divorce four years ago—practiced civility by the adults, guarded behavior by the sons to avoid the appearance of taking sides. The only potential for a fissure in their adult politesse was when his older son, Rob, asked when he and his brother could go flying with Dad.

  “Don’t even ask,” Doris said.

  “Dad’s instrument rated,” Rob said. “He’s as good a pilot as any airline captain.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Max said.

  “I don’t care how many licenses he has, he flies that silly little plane that a stiff breeze could blow over. You’re not going up with him.”

  Years earlier, Max had taken offense at her stance, silently considering it an assault on his ability and, yes, his manhood. But he no longer argued.

  “You live with Mom and you do what she says,” he told them, glancing at Doris for approval. “When you’re older and making your own decisions, there’ll be plenty of time to fly together, maybe even get you started on flying lessons of your own.”

  Another glance at his wife brought a stern look in return. He smiled, and she resumed basting that night’s dinner, as if the ham were him.

  He’d never blamed Doris for filing the divorce papers while he was in Moscow. Once he’d joined what they once called the Company—the CIA—he was barely home, certainly long enough to father two kids, but that hadn’t taken long. The marriage had quickly become one in name only, he off on secret ventures to exotic places, she running a house, paying the bills, and bringing up two energetic sons without him around to help. In a sense, it was a relief when he learned she was divorcing him. He didn’t contest it, nor did he attempt to make a case for custody. He wouldn’t have been any better a father than he’d been a husband. The boys needed a full-time father and a mother; whatever Doris’s feelings for him, her love of their sons was profound.

  Later that night, he and Doris sat alone on the screened porch at the rear of her house. Max knew she enjoyed being with him, and he liked sitting with her. Romantic love was a thing in their distant past; there had never been any talk of giving it another try. But there was a comfort in spending time with someone you knew intimately, and with whom you’d shared a good hunk of your life. No need for posturing, no putting silly spins on things when the other person knew the truth.

  “How’s Washington?” she asked.

  “All right.”

  “Must be blah after romantic Moscow.”

  “Romantic Moscow? You’ve never seen the leftover Soviet Union.”

  “I understand Russian women are very beautiful— and seductive.”

  Where was this going? he silently wondered.

  “They are beautiful, almost as beautiful as American women.”

  “Does that include me?”

  “I meant you.”

  “Thank you.”

  She looked away from him and placed the knuckle of her right index finger against her lips. Max knew what that meant; there was something she wanted to tell him but was debating whether to do it.

  She looked at him again. “Max, I’ve met someone.”

  “You have? Who?”

  “Someone at work. A nice man.”

  “An accountant?” She worked in a large accounting firm.

  “Yes.”

  “A solid citizen. Accountants are solid.”

  “Dull, you mean?”

  “I didn’t say it. I mean dependable.”

  He saw her smile in moonlight filtering through the screen. “Look, Doris, if you’ve fallen in love with a nice guy, I’m happy for you. I really am. All I care is that he’s good to the kids if you end up marrying him. He’s what, divorced, widowed, never married?”

  “Divorced. He has two daughters. They’re about the same age as Rob and Joe.”

  “Sounds like it has all the makings of a fifties sitcom.”

  “Which you never enjoyed.”

  “On TV or in real life?”

  “Both. The role of husband and father was beneath you.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way, Doris. I had other things on my mind.”

  Her laugh was not sarcastic. “Other things. God, Max, you really do love what you do, don’t you?”

  “Shouldn’t I? You’re supposed to love what you do.”

  “Which is supposed to include being a husband and father.”

  “I wasn’t bad—when I was around.”

  “Max, even when you were around, as you put it, your mind was in some dark alley in Beirut, playing the bad guy, wondering whether the real bad guys would get on to you and put a bullet through your brain. I—”

  “Are we about to get into an argument? There’s no need for that. We’re not married anymore. You knew what I did for a living when you married me.”

  “No, I didn’t. That was against the rules. ‘Sorry, honey, but I’ll be away for six months, can’t tell you where or why, I’ll miss you, take good care of the kids—’ ”

  “I don’t want an argument, Doris.”

  “Nor do I. I married you, Max, because you were the most charming man I’d ever met, not that I’d met many charming men at age twenty-four, but you were smooth. Part of the job description, isn’t it?”

  Max said nothing.

  “I suppose I just want you to know yourself and not have any illusions about who Max Pauling is. And I understand, I really do. There are men who marry and father children and mean well, but who have a pull in some other direction that overrides changing diapers and helping with homework and attending school concerts and parent-teacher meetings.”

  “I agree, Doris. You’re right. A PTA meeting can’t hold a candle to a cloak-and-dagger meeting in some Moscow alley with a half-crazed Russian mafioso. And as for school concerts, grade-school music teachers either have a special place in heaven or they end up serial killers. No, Doris, my adrenaline did not flow when the kids were squeaking on their clarinets. I’m glad you’ve met your accountant.”

  “You’re being facetious.”

  “No, I’m not. Being married to a solid citizen is—”

  “Don’t jump ahead too
far, Max. We’ve just been dating a few months.”

  “Well, however it turns out, know I just want the best for you and the boys.”

  “You always have, and I appreciate it. You? No Mrs. Max Pauling number two in the future?”

  “No. I have my work and my plane and—”

  “Don’t kid a kidder, Max. You aren’t saying that the handsome, rugged ex-Marine I married doesn’t have women falling all over him? I read there’s at least four women to every man in Washington.”

  “Can’t prove it by me. Does your friend own a plane?”

  “No, thank goodness.”

  “Then we probably won’t have anything in common except that we fell in love with the same knockout woman. If I get in trouble with the IRS, will he help me?”

  “Think I’ll get to bed. Good night, Max.” She came to where he sat, kissed him on the forehead, and left him alone to sit in the still darkness for another hour before going to the guest bedroom, where he stood in front of the mirror staring at the face peering back at him. From his perspective, he hadn’t changed much from his Marine days in ’Nam, although there were the dozen or so crevices lining his face that hadn’t been there, and the skin under his eyes sagged a little, and some silver had crept into his brown hair and—he hadn’t lost any hair; there was solace in that, and he kept fit through regular workouts, including weights. His Marine uniform still fit.

  But time marched on, as it was said, and Pauling knew it. His sons were on the verge of becoming men; his wife, still attractive, was not the dazzling young gal he’d married, and seemed interested in settling down with a middle-aged accountant with two teen daughters. On top of that, he, Max Pauling, had been relegated to a desk job, put out to metaphorical pasture. What next?

  He slept fitfully.

  He realized as he approached Washington that he’d been so immersed in his thoughts about Doris and his sons that he’d forgotten there had been a commercial aviation accident in New York. He turned on the plane’s AM radio and tuned to a Washington all-news station in search of a quick update before having to negotiate air traffic control. He sat through a movie review and a story about a murder-suicide in Rockville, and was about to turn off the radio to avoid its distractions when a newscaster came on:

  “We reported earlier that a commuter airliner has crashed in Westchester County, New York. The downed flight, we’re told, was bound for Washington and carried a full passenger load, including area residents. Stay tuned for further developments in this breaking story.”

  “Damn!” Pauling muttered as he clicked off the AM radio and focused in on his approach instructions. Traffic was heavy and he had to hold for fifteen minutes, but eventually landed and taxied to the side of the airport reserved for private and corporate aircraft. It cost him what he considered a small fortune to tie down there, but he never toyed with going to a less expensive, private facility out in the country. He liked being around a major airport, enjoyed conversations with professional pilots and serious amateurs like himself.

  He walked into the flight planning room to close out his IFR flight plan and was in the process of doing the paperwork when another private pilot he knew came up to the desk.

  “Coming or going, Max?”

  “Just flew in. I was in Pittsburgh visiting my ex-wife and kids. You?”

  “Going up to Maine to do some bass fishing. Weatherby’s Lodge. Know it?”

  “No. I haven’t been fishing in years. I caught the news about the accident. You have anything new on it?”

  “The accident? Make that two.”

  Pauling slowly turned and looked quizzically at his friend. “Two?”

  “Boise, Idaho. Just heard it five minutes ago.”

  “Two in one day? What was the equipment in Boise?”

  “A Dash 8, I think. Commuter flight out of a regional there.”

  Pauling drew a deep, distressed breath, signed his completed flight close-out form, slid it across the counter to the duty officer, and picked up his overnight bag. To his aviator friend, he said, “Safe flight.”

  “Maybe I ought to check how the planets are aligned today, along with the weather.”

  “Not a bad idea. Two in one day. Take care.”

  Pauling drove to his apartment complex in Crystal City, Virginia. The fifteen-minute drive was nothing more than a blur, as though it hadn’t happened. All he’d thought about, the only vision he had, was of a twisted, burning, crushed aircraft strewn over countryside, or suburb or city, body parts sprawled everywhere, acrid smoke searing the throat and nose, and, if lucky, a painful cry from someone who’d survived. He’d once been at an aircraft crash site, and the scene was forever etched in his memory.

  His phone was ringing when he walked through the door, and the digital readout on his answering machine indicated eight messages had been left. He picked up the phone.

  “Max, it’s Colonel Barton.”

  His boss at State was military through and through, always referring to himself by rank, never Walter or Walt, which annoyed Pauling, like a doctor who insists on being called Doctor but uses his patients’ first names. It wasn’t the military thing that bothered Max. He’d liked his tour of duty with the Corps even though it meant Vietnam, and he respected the need for a clear chain of command, all the rules and regulations, the need to forbid fraternization between officers and enlisted men—and women. It had to be that way if you were going to win wars. Pauling always felt a sense of silent pride whenever he saw young men and women in uniform riding the Metro to and from the Pentagon, no rings in the nose, ear, or lip, no scraggly beards, but clean-cut and erect and proud. Or ready to be proud once they’d proved themselves.

  So it wasn’t Barton’s military bearing and mind-set that bothered Pauling. It was the man behind the uniform, more politician than officer. Lots of them in Washington.

  “Hello, Colonel. What’s up?”

  “I’ve been trying your cell phone.”

  “Batteries must have run down.” Truth was, Pauling had turned it off when he left for the weekend.

  “I need you here right away.”

  “I’m on leave . . . Colonel.”

  “You were on leave, Max. Can you be here in a half hour?”

  “Yeah, I suppose so, but what’s so important?”

  “A half hour.”

  Pauling held the dead phone away from his ear and said something decidedly not official—and certainly not military.

  4

  That Same Day

  New York

  First to reach the Dash 8 that had crashed less than three minutes after taking off were two New York State troopers, who arrived in separate marked cruisers. At first, they weren’t sure where the plane had gone down. They could see smoke when they’d first gotten the call while patrolling 684 and headed in that general direction, but it wasn’t until a homeowner a mile from the crash scene called 911 to report “some sort of accident” that they were able to home in, converging in front of the caller’s house and setting off on foot down a hiking trail leading to the shoreline of Kensico Reservoir.

  When they reached the downed aircraft, they were stunned by the carnage spread out before them. The fuselage of the Dash 8 must have exploded upon impact, sending passengers, and parts of passengers, flying in all directions. The troopers started toward what appeared to be the largest intact portion of the plane, but one of them suddenly stopped and recoiled. A few feet in front of him was a man’s torso, the lower portion of his body missing.

  “God Almighty,” the younger of the two troopers said, squeezing his eyes closed. He’d seen fatal auto accidents up close on the state’s highways, but this was beyond anything he’d ever imagined.

  “Nobody survived this,” his colleague said quietly. They stood side by side, not moving, saying only those things that tend to be said when there is nothing meaningful to say, hearts pounding, smoldering wreckage and brush ignited by the flames hissing in the background.

  The senior trooper pulled his
radio from his belt and spoke into it: “Troopers Mencken and Robertson at scene of airliner crash. A couple hundred yards up from the reservoir, the Kensico. It’s a . . . it’s a mess. No apparent survivors.”

  The voice in his ear said, “I read. Secure scene. Nobody near it until you’re relieved.”

  They looked at each other before splitting up, one staying where they’d been, the other slowly, carefully circumventing the apparent perimeter of the crash site to take up a position on the opposite side.

  FBI Special Agent Frank Lazzara had been appointed agent in charge of the White Plains field office only a month earlier after serving three years with the Bureau’s organized crime unit in Manhattan. At first, he resisted the reassignment because he considered it a demotion. Working organized crime in New York City was where the action and visibility were. White Plains? In suburban Westchester County?

  But when his boss and mentor explained over dinner one night that the mob was in the process of shifting many of its more lucrative operations out of the five boroughs and into smaller but still sizable cities in New York and Connecticut—they’d already established a stranglehold on the carting industry in Westchester—and that the Bureau considered White Plains and adjacent cities and towns to be future hotbeds of mob activities, Lazzara changed his view of the new posting. He had started the reverse commute from Brooklyn, where he and his wife and their one-year-old child lived, and spent much of his first month in the new office being brought up to speed on pending cases and getting to know other special agents who’d be working under him.

  He was poring over a thick file that had been compiled on mob-connected carting companies in the county when another agent entered the office.

  “Frank, there’s been a commercial airline accident.”

  Lazzara looked up, wondering why he was being told.

  “It’s local,” the agent said. “A commuter plane out of Westchester airport. A Washington flight.”

  Lazzara sat back and frowned. He’d flown from Washington into Westchester the previous day after a round of meetings at the J. Edgar Hoover Building.