Another spoke into his. "I want someone on the ground in Germany who sprechen ze English. We need to know if they've seen any suspicious activity there, any breaches. Also, we need a primer on their baggage-handling procedures."
Another ordered: "Check the flight plan and reclear the passenger manifest. Yes-every name, run them again. This time accounting for spelling variations."
"Okay," said another, reading from his handheld. "Full specs. Plane reg is N323RG. Boeing 777-200LR. Most recent transit check was four days ago, at Atlanta Hartsfield. Replaced a worn duct slider on the left engine's thrust reverser, and a worn mount bushing on the right. Deferred repair of a dent in the left-aft inboard flap assembly due to flight schedule. Bottom line-she got a clean bill of health."
"Triple sevens are new orders, aren't they? A year or two out?"
"Three hundred and one max capacity. This flight boarded two ten. A hundred and ninety-nine passengers, two pilots, nine cabin crew."
"Any unticketed?" That meant infants.
"I'm showing no."
"Classic tactic," said the one focused on terror. "Create a disturbance, draw first responders, gain an audience-then detonate for max impact."
"If so, then we're already dead."
They looked at each other uncomfortably.
"We need to pull these rescue vehicles back. Who was that fool up there stomping on the wing?"
Captain Navarro edged forward, surprising them with a response. "That was me."
"Ah. Well." The guy coughed once into his fist. "That's maintenance personnel only up there, Captain. FAA regs."
"I know it."
"Well? What'd you see? Anything?"
Navarro said, "Nothing. Saw nothing, heard nothing. All the window shades are drawn down."
"Drawn down, you say? All of them?"
"All of them."
"Did you try the over-wing exit?"
"I did indeed."
"And?"
"It was stuck."
"Stuck? That's impossible."
"It's stuck," said Captain Navarro, showing more patience with these five than he did with his own kids.
The senior man stepped away to make a call. Captain Navarro looked at the others. "So what are we going to do here, then?"
"That's what we're waiting to find out."
"Waiting to find out? You have how many passengers on this plane? How many 911 calls have they made?"
One man shook his head. "No mobile 911 calls from the plane yet."
"Yet?" said Captain Navarro.
The guy next to him said, "Zero for one-ninety-nine. Not good."
"Not good at all."
Captain Navarro looked at them in amazement. "We have to do something, and now. I don't need permission to grab a fire ax and start smashing in windows when people are dead or dying in there. There is no air inside that plane."
The senior man came back from his phone call. "They're bringing out the torch now. We're cutting her open."
Dark Harbor, Virginia
CHESAPEAKE BAY, black and churning at that late hour.
Inside the glassed-in patio of the main house, on a scenic bluff overlooking the bay, a man reclined in a specially made medical chair. The lights were dimmed for his comfort as well as for modesty. The industrial thermostats, of which there were three for this room alone, maintained a temperature of sixty-two degrees Fahrenheit. Stravinsky played quietly, The Rite of Spring, piped in through discreet speakers to obscure the relentless shushing pump of the dialysis machine.
A faint plume of breath emerged from his mouth. An onlooker might have believed the man near death. Might have thought they were witnessing the last days or weeks of what was, judging by the sprawling seventeen-acre estate, a dramatically successful life. Might even have remarked on the irony of a man of such obvious wealth and position meeting the same end as a pauper.
Only, Eldritch Palmer was not at the end. He was in his seventy-sixth year, and he had no intention of giving up on anything. Nothing at all.
The esteemed investor, businessman, theologian, and high-powered confidant had been undergoing the same procedure for three to four hours every evening for the past seven years of his life. His health was frail and yet manageable, overseen by round-the-clock physicians and aided by hospital-grade medical equipment purchased for his private, in-home use.
Wealthy people can afford excellent health care, and they can also afford to be eccentric. Eldritch Palmer kept his peculiarities hidden from public view, even from his inner circle. The man had never married. He had never sired an heir. And so a major topic of speculation about Palmer was what plans he might have for his vast fortune after his death. He had no second-in-command at his primary investment entity, the Stoneheart Group. He had no public affiliation with any foundations or charities, unlike the two men jockeying for number one with him on the annual Forbes list of the world's richest Americans, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway investor Warren Buffett. (If certain gold reserves in South America and other holdings by shadow corporations in Africa were factored into Forbes's accounting, Palmer alone would hold the top spot on the list.) Palmer had never even drafted a will, an estate-planning lapse unthinkable for a man with even one one-thousandth of his wealth and treasure.
But Eldritch Palmer was, quite simply, not planning to die.
Hemodialysis is a procedure in which blood is removed from the body through a system of tubing, ultrafiltered through a dialyzer, or artificial kidney, and then returned to the body cleansed of waste products and impurities. Ingoing and outgoing needles are inserted into a synthetic arteriovenous graft semipermanently installed in the forearm. The machine for this procedure was a state-of-the-art Fresenius model, continuously monitoring Palmer's critical parameters and alerting Mr. Fitzwilliam, never more than two rooms away, of any readings outside the normal range.
Loyal investors were accustomed to Palmer's perpetually gaunt appearance. It had essentially become his trademark, an ironic symbol of his monetary strength, that such a delicate, ashen-looking man should wield such power and influence in both international finance and politics. His legion of faithful investors numbered thirty thousand strong, a financially elite bloc of people: the buy-in was two million dollars, and many who had invested with Palmer for decades were worth mid-nine figures. The buying power of his Stoneheart Group gave him enormous economic leverage, which he put to effective and occasionally ruthless use.
The west doors opened from the wide hallway, and Mr. Fitzwilliam, who doubled as the head of Palmer's personal security detail, entered with a portable, secure telephone on a sterling-silver serving tray. Mr. Fitzwilliam was a former U.S. Marine with forty-two confirmed combat kills and a quick mind, whose postmilitary medical schooling Palmer had financed. "The undersecretary for Homeland Security, sir," he said, with a plume of breath steaming in the cold room.