TWENTY-ONE
A plane carrying a President of the United States is ordinarily recognizable. In this instance however, it was a very ordinary-looking Air Force C-17B cargo transport, with temporary facilities that allowed its several passengers to work and sleep. And to clean up properly for a secret meeting, for there would be no layovers enroute.
The transport flew seemingly unaccompanied, but half a hundred miles to both north and south, sea-rescue aircraft flew parallel courses while tracking her by radar. Arne Haugen wasn't aware of them. There was no particular reason that he should be; the risk was slight.
It had been early afternoon when they'd taken off from Andrews Air Force Base, flying toward westward-creeping night. Their destination was six time zones east, and the prospect of jet lag suggested going early to bed, but meanwhile this was an opportunity to read something the president had been putting off as of relatively low priority. He opened the report that Cromwell had given him more than a week earlier, on the executive boards, past and present, of the Holist Council. It was in a post-binder, thick, with a detailed table of contents, an index, and protruding tabs to help access it.
He forgot about bed until he'd finished it; his fellow passengers were already asleep. He had a drink then and stripped to his shorts, while an Air Force corporal prepared his bunk. Afterward he lay awake for a time, thinking about what he'd just read. Although it was a listing of open activities lacking any direct information on motives or conspiracy, it had given him a different perspective on the problems of his country, and by extension the world.
It would take awhile to digest it properly, to integrate it sufficiently within his subconscious database that he would compute with it automatically, subliminally. But the world, and especially America, would never look quite the same to Arne Haugen again.
At the same time, it did not alarm him. There was nothing urgent about it; it required no immediate action. He would put it out of his attention and free his mind for more immediate things, matters to which the new information was operationally irrelevant.
***
The unmarked Bell Mescalero SOC helicopter lifted from the joint German-U.S. air base at Leipheim and headed south over the black forests of the Schwäbische Alb in bright early sunshine. Here and there, snow powdered the firtops on higher ridges, and before long the little aircraft had crossed the dark green water of Lake Constance into Switzerland. The Swiss air defense network monitored its passage, but it had clearance; the symbol crawling across their CRTs was watched for routine air safety rather than military security. High rugged snowscapes loomed ahead on the splendid Glarner Alpen, then passed below, making the entire world seem white beneath blue. The chopper, with a performance ceiling of 6,500 meters, lifted lightly over knife-edged arretes and toothed tors, where snow plumes curled coldly in a northwest wind.
The high ridges and peaks became the Alpi Lepontine, and crossing the last major crest, the pilots and their passengers looked south down a long valley, blue with lake, dark with forest and drab with autumn meadow, separating two snowy ridges of the Italian forealps.
On a broadly rounded side ridge, newly snow-covered, stood the villa of an Italian industrialist who found pleasure in privately hosting the eminent; a man who kept secrets well. The Mescalero swung low. Its pilot noted the groups of armed and uniformed men below, all watching, ready, and there were sure to be others he couldn't see. Their weapons included what had to be SA rocket launchers. He'd been told there'd be heavy security—heavy and very touchy.
For a moment he hovered, then landed in a gritty swirl of white. When the vanes had stopped, three men strode toward her, one an African robed in black.
Arne Eino Haugen climbed out, with Father Stephen Joseph Flynn, John Zale (acting now as Haugen's travel secretary), and Papal Nuncio Msgr Robert Alfred Koenig. They met the greeting party halfway, and greeters and greeted went into the villa together, talking as they walked, while the Mescalero lifted and left for a prearranged refueling at an Italian army base.
It was back in little more than an hour, and waited, leaving with its passengers early enough to return to Leipheim before the early nightfall. The C-17B was waiting, ready to fly. Arne Haugen would eat breakfast in his own apartment the next morning, having been away less than forty hours on "a visit to the Nevada test site." He was returning well-briefed on the character of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Premier of Poland, and on the somewhat precarious semi-autonomy his country maintained, close against the armor-plated breast of the Russian bear.
His Holiness the Pope knew Jaruzelski, and was always very well informed and up to date on things in his homeland.
***
Cromwell tapped a key on his phone, accepting the call, "Good morning, Mr. President," he said with a smile. "I hope they were good to you in Nevada."
"Very good, Jumper. The flight was fine, and the people I talked with were very helpful. On the way there, I read Chilberg's report. Interesting as hell. Do you have any more on that?"
"No sir. But we recently acquired an inside contact we're working with now." Cromwell hesitated, then decided to say no more about it just then. They'd managed to install a spy device in Massey's Connecticut residence, an opportunity of the moment that could hardly have been foregone. He'd write up a request for authorization for the president's signature and give it to him later today.