Houston, Texas
There is a pervasive order and simplicity about the Johnson Space Center, the 100-building complex where more than 10,000 NASA employees work amid a purposefully comfortable setting of uniformity and coherence. Neat green lawns, trees, walkways and man-made ponds of symmetrically landscaped quadrangles sparkle between sprawling work centers.
In a corner of the massive parking lot adjacent to the concrete-and-glass command center building, Special Agent Claude Jackson, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's counter-espionage branch, surreptitiously placed a radio beeper on the inside surface of a Volvo's rear fender in a movement so practiced, so slick, it would have gone unnoticed even by someone paying attention to him. However, no one was paying undue attention to the tall black man striding into the parking lot. Passersby coming and going from the building were occupied with their own determined preoccupations, as were the drivers of those cars that entered and exited the parking lot in a moderate but steady flow. They paid scant attention to Jackson as he stooped down briefly, sprightly for a man of his considerable bulk, as he passed between the Volvo and the vehicle in the next parking space. In no more than the length of time it would take to flick a twig from his pants cuff or a speck of dust from his shoe, it was done. He continued on to the unmarked Bureau car parked several aisles away where Chalmers, his partner, sat waiting behind the steering wheel. The car's interior was comfortably warm from the early afternoon sunshine pouring in through the windshield.
A pair of binoculars and a long-lens camera, loaded with high-speed film, rested on the car seat. Jackson lifted the binoculars, focusing them on a side exit of the building. He said, "Better let 'em know we're in place."
Chalmers spoke into his lapel mic, reporting across the tac net to their senior watch officer stationed with backup nearby. "We've set up surveillance."
Jackson and Chalmers worked the enforcement detail out of the center's FBI office. Undercover agents were in place at every level of the center, a protective measure designed to neutralize sabotage and/or espionage. The Johnson Space Center held the secrets of everything relating to the American space program, and so every person on center grounds had to be considered a potential security risk. This was the reality that mandated the Bureau's security operations in Houston. For the inhabitants and workers of the space center, it was no secret that undercover FBI agents worked among them. Such agents were viewed resentfully as spies by hardworking Americans, who took offense at the suspicion of their integrity and patriotism implicit in such undercover activity, nor were they much appreciative of the routine use of lie detectors and surveillance.
As viewed through Jackson's binoculars, the space center appeared to function as normal. His partner had selected a surveillance position well inside the parking lot, with enough distance from the building to ensure that their daylight surveillance went wholly unnoticed by the parade of briefcase carriers hustling about. The slight increase in their number, discernible only to Jackson's trained eye, alone indicated the massive event of a few hours ago.
Chalmers slapped the steering wheel impulsively. "Damn, this is like trying to catch a fart with a butterfly net. We're spread way too goddamn thin to get results as fast as Washington wants." He had a youthful face set above a middle-aged body. He and Jackson had been partners for eighteen months.
Because of the time it would take to go over every personnel file at Houston for any possible leads to what had happened to Liberty, the assistant director who honchoed counter-intel ops from Washington had promised reinforcements before the day was out. Chalmers knew this. He was just an impatient guy.
Without taking the binoculars' focus from the building exit, Jackson said, "At least we have those prelim scans to work from."
Chalmers grunted irritably. "I guess that'll have to do. The pressure's on, that's for goddamn sure."
"If there is someone who brought that shuttle down, it's someone working in Mission Control."
Chalmers grunted again. He slapped the steering wheel again. "Someone inside NASA, reprogramming computers. That sure as hell is a first. I wonder if we have our man."
"Lennick seems to think so." Jackson was referring to the senior watch officer. "The red flags are sure there."
Chalmers nodded. "Wife terminally ill. Seeing an Asian woman." The files on primary Mission Control personnel had been reviewed as soon as word had come from DC about the shuttle. "Yeah, I guess going on what we know," said Chalmers, "I'd put my money on Eliot Fraley."
"There he is," said Jackson.
Fraley was the stereotypical brilliant, middle-aged computer nerd, a wiry little guy wearing a bow tie. His sports jacket didn't match his slacks. He had thick-lensed, wire-rimmed glasses and a balding pate encircled by a thatch of untamed, curly hair. He exited the building, making a beeline toward the parking lot. His wiry legs scissored with that hurriedly awkward stride of one not used to hurrying. He reached and boarded his waiting Volvo, backing it from his parking space and leaving the parking lot.
Jackson and Chalmers followed, observing surveillance distancing as the Volvo drove down Highway C in the direction of the front gate.
Jackson said into his lapel mic, "Subject is moving."
Fraley was one of the ground team of flight controllers assigned to the Johnson Space Center Flight Control Room. There he'd labored, functioning like an automaton, endless week after week. At first, when his job had been a challenge, he'd loved it. But week after week had turned into month after month, then year after year. He himself did not fully understand it, but eventually the initial joy of computers and space technology had become reduced for him to a grinding drudgery made worse by the pressures of an overburdened personal life.
Less than an hour earlier, in the immediate aftermath of the blackout from Liberty, he'd been standing with the growing crowd of NASA scientists and administrators around the flight director's console, which was the heart of the rows upon rows of monitors and their attending technicians. At first, he'd feigned interest and concern, standing there with his co-workers who moments earlier had been operating their computers, digesting their radar data, plotting the orbiter's path on the large map projection screen on the front wall. Then, eventually, he had been able to unobtrusively unplug his station from the flight director's loop, had set down his headset and walked away from the hubbub of concern. Don't panic, he'd told himself.
He was still telling himself that as he stepped up to a pay phone on the concourse leading to the waiting area at the loading gate, where he was supposed to meet Connie. He'd already scouted the seating area where they were supposed to meet. People were beginning to congregate for the flight, which was scheduled to board in ten minutes. Fraley glanced at his digital watch. Actually, the flight was to board in nine minutes and forty seconds. He snapped his eyes away from the security of mathematics, a logical world that always made sense. He again scanned the busy scene around him: arriving and departing people and their accompanying parties pouring along the concourse in both directions.
Maybe there is a logical reason to start panicking, Fraley told himself.
He slipped coins into the pay phone and dialed Connie Yota's number, fully expecting to hear her answering machine message click on after half a ring, as always. He did not know what he should do if Connie didn't show up in time to catch the flight. She was supposed to be here waiting for him when he arrived. That was their plan, agreed upon and etched in stone as recently as this morning in bed. But he now jolted physically as if an electrical jolt had shot through him when he heard, instead of Connie's answering machine, the disembodied, metallic, recorded telephone company voice advising him that the number he was calling had been disconnected, and that if he thought he'd dialed the number in error, he should… He disconnected, got the dial tone again and fed more coins into the pay slot, again punching up the number he had memorized since his and Connie's first night of hot sex several weeks ago… which had been the first night they'd met. He took extreme effort this time to dial the correct number and only then realized that his index finger was trembling. He cursed this sign of inner weakness. Damn nerves. The connection rang twice. Again, he got the wrong number recording. He replaced the receiver before the disembodied voice could speak the third word of its message.
It dawned on him. Of course. She had disconnected her phone because that's the way Connie was. Her mind functioned with the same precise intensity as her sex drive.
He turned to again survey the flow of people moving along the concourse. He could often foretell the approach of Connie's lithe, small-boned, tight figure, her flowing shoulder-length black hair, her dusky beauty that radiated both sex and intelligence… He knew when she was approaching, sometimes before he saw her, by the way men's heads would begin turning to view her approach. But not this time. Still no sign of Connie. He glanced again at his watch. Eight minutes and forty seconds to boarding. The crowd was growing by the minute in the waiting area by the loading gate. People beginning to stir. Businessmen and businesswomen organizing their work, snapping shut their laptops. Mothers gathering up their children and their luggage. Family, friends and lovers were preparing to say goodbye. A well-coifed airline employee standing by the desk was eyeing the clock too, preparing to announce the boarding.
Watching the teeming concourse, Fraley tried hard not to show the panic that was building within him with each passing second. His heartbeat was pounding like a bass drum in his ears, almost completely blotting out the sounds around him.
He was ready to kiss everything goodbye. His life, his career, everything… to begin a new life with the gorgeous, brilliant Japanese beauty who had come into what had been a wretched life and made it incredibly exciting… and dangerous. But that danger would diminish to nothing the instant they boarded this flight to the Caribbean. She was in love with him and they would fly away together. Connie had promised him this, and he believed her.
It had been like something out ol Penthouse Forum. Night after night of the wildest sex imaginable with this single, twenty-three-year-old Japanese civilian with a law degree, who spoke several languages, whom he'd met accidentally at the restaurant he frequented near his home. From that first night of their chance encounter when she'd invited him to her apartment, when their lust had burned through the night on silken sheets cast in candlelight, the smell of incense blending with the scent of warmed oils, the moans and the gasps of pleasure mingled with the low, subtle music that caressed and provided the changing tempos of their lovemaking… Ms. Connie Yota had shown the computer scientist things about the physical act of love that he'd never imagined. He'd been her slave in every way since then. She demanded much, but his rewards were exquisite and, in addition, Connie had professed a true love for him that had touched Fraley's heart as much as his libido.
Where is she? My God, don't let anything go wrong! He wondered with a start who he was to be imploring anything of a deity he'd never acknowledged the existence of. He self-analyzed this as an indication of just how overwrought he was, and he hoped this was not noticeable to anyone passing by. Of course, he had no right to ask any god for any help after the sins he had committed. He'd sold out his country. He'd sold out the crew of the space shuttle Liberty. And, even more poignant to him personally, he was about to run out on his dying wife for a woman half Nora's age. No, he did not think there was any god anywhere who would condone any of that. He was somewhat surprised that the thought even flashed through his mind. But then, life-including his own mind, soul and heart-had proven to hold untold surprises since the moment Connie had appeared in his life. It had been a roller-coaster of emotions, in direct conflict with his lifelong psychological need for emotional stability to facilitate his mental discipline. He accepted this conflict as part of what generated the unbelievably rewarding sexual and psychic bond between himself and her. He could hardly believe that he was about to embark on a lifetime of experience with this woman who had so changed him.
He had picked up their tickets. He carried only his travel-on, a single brown leather suitcase, as she'd suggested. She was a seasoned traveler, obviously, though they had never directly discussed her work for what she had only once vaguely referred to as "a Tokyo corporation with connections everywhere." She had mentioned this, she assured him, merely to assure him that they would lead a life of comfort, even luxury, as part of his payment for his onetime betrayal. And the betrayal of his wife of seventeen years? Fraley blinked the thought of Nora from his mind. His wife had been a paraplegic since that terrible car crash seven years ago. He hadn't wanted to fall in love with another woman, but it happened anyway. He had made financial arrangements to ensure that Nora Fraley would be well taken care of for the duration of her life. Reviewing the situation in this manner, Fraley felt suddenly as free as a bird. Connie had already arranged payment of the promised amount into his numbered Swiss bank account.
"Mr. Fraley?"
He jerked around to find himself confronted by two men who, he knew instinctively, could only be plain-clothes law officers of some kind: a muscular black man and a Caucasian with a lumpier build and a boyish face.
"Uh, yes… my name is Fraley."
"Mr. Fraley, my name is Agent Chalmers. This is Agent Jackson. Sir, you're under arrest. Please don't make a scene. Put your hands behind your back. Read him his rights, Claude."
The black agent read him words that Fraley had heard a million times in movies and on TV shows about things he said used against him and his right to remain silent. He nodded dumbly when asked if he understood. His head drooped forlornly. The hand-cuffs snapped tightly, coldly, behind his back, making him wince. Then the two men were guiding him along the concourse, back in the direction of the airport parking lot. Jackson's massive grip felt like a steel vise on Fraley's upper arm, while Chalmers steered Fraley from his other side, hurrying him along far faster than he ever would have walked of his own volition. At times, they practically dragged him, and he was becoming winded. His preferred world since childhood had been the cerebral, rarely the physical. That had all changed with Connie, of course, certainly when it came to sex. Even at a time like this, he could only think of her in those terms and of the passions she stirred within him. He thought, at least they don't have Connie. It's good that she didn't make it in time for the flight. He would pay for his betrayal, but thank God she would remain free…
As if reading his mind, the black agent at his side chuckled without humor. "You were set up, stupid. You have figured that part out, haven't you?"
Fraley blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
Chalmers chimed in, "Not that it did your sweet little fortune cookie any good."
"Connie?" It burst from him.
Jackson nodded. "She was apprehended ten minutes ago at a car rental agency. She was leaving town without you, Eliot. We just don't know yet where she was going or who set her up to take you down. Do you know?"
Fraley summoned up every ounce of inner strength he could muster, which wasn't much. "I don't know anything about what you're talking about." He spoke in a voice he did not recognize as his own.
They left the concourse using an "authorized personnel only" exit.
Chalmers said, "Miss Yota is being interrogated. They played you for the patsy you are, pal, getting you to sell out your soul and your country for a piece of ass. Something like this, tapping someone as high up as you… can you say compartmentalization? That means your Connie will know just enough to incriminate herself into a nice long prison sentence, even if she is a lawyer."
"So how about you, Doc?" said Jackson. "You could get your honor back, or at least some of your self-respect. You will cooperate?"
"I don't know anything," Fraley insisted.
"We'll see," said Jackson with supreme confidence. They steered him toward a waiting unmarked car. "Mr. Fraley, the shit of your life has just hit the biggest fan there is."