“I don’t have to tell you this is doing nothing for my nerves, do I?” Allie said.
Spencer eyed Uncle Pete. “You know how to use one of these?” he asked, patting the AKM.
Uncle Pete nodded solemnly. “Like ride bicycle.”
“Don’t shoot our feet off,” Spencer warned, and handed him the other Kalashnikov.
The angle of the Bell changed, and soon they were flying over banana fields, which transitioned into jungle as they traveled north. When they reached the starting point for the first quadrant, Spencer tapped Daeng on the shoulder. “Maybe we should start at the northern edge of their last known position?”
“Bad idea. I want to try to avoid the Myanmar side as long as possible,” Daeng called over the sound of the turbine.
Spencer sat back as the helicopter slowed to a crawl. The altimeter read twenty-five hundred feet — which, given the elevations, put them no more than eight hundred feet off the jungle floor. Drake raised his binoculars to his eyes and began searching the area. Allie and Spencer joined him, peering through the cloudy glass as the chopper droned forward.
“We’re looking for anything that might be a crashed plane — wreckage, a furrow in the canopy as it crashed, whatever. Call out if you spot anything, no matter how insignificant it might seem,” Spencer said.
The first quadrant took four hours to cover, after which they agreed to try for another two hours and then return for fuel and a quick lunch. By the time they were back on the ground, they were more than ready to stretch their legs. Daeng walked over to a waiting fuel truck as Uncle Pete called the taxi driver they’d used to get there. Ten minutes later they were on the way to a local restaurant the driver assured them was the best in all Thailand, oblivious to Drake’s and Allie’s skeptical frowns.
The second half of the day went very much like the first, and other than several remote villages and an occasional hill tribesman on one of the innumerable trails, they didn’t see anything promising. By the time they called it a day, the magnitude of their task was obvious, and they were quiet and thoughtful as they returned to Chiang Rai, grateful for the breeze through the half-open windows that passed for air-conditioning in the ancient helicopter, though it was still woefully inadequate under the relentless blaze of the tropical sun.
Chapter 19
The streets of Georgetown were crowded with pedestrians on their way to dinner or heading home after a late day at the office. Early diners were already seated in the restaurants along picturesque M Street as Alan Sedgewick strolled along, slowing to admire the groups of female university students ambling in the warm breeze.
Sedgewick had changed from his business attire into a rugby shirt, jeans, and a frayed Baltimore Orioles baseball cap, and appeared to be almost as young as the students around him — perhaps a late bloomer working on a doctoral thesis. He looked nothing like a top aide on the Hill, which was the point; he was embarking on a dangerous course, he knew, from which there could be no turning back, and he wanted to avoid attracting attention.
At the corner of Thirty-First Street, he jaywalked along with a dozen others and continued along the block until he reached his destination — a popular French bistro well away from his usual haunts, where the possibility of being recognized was slim. He dutifully waited for the couple ahead to be shown to a table, and spotted his rendezvous as he shifted from foot to foot: a stocky male Sedgewick’s age with black curly hair, nerdy glasses, and a pallor that spoke of long hours in front of a computer screen.
Sedgewick moved to the table, and the man looked up.
“Alan, good to see you. Please, sit.”
“Larry, been too long,” Sedgewick said.
“Yeah, well, life does have a habit of getting in the way, doesn’t it?” Larry gave Sedgewick an appraising glance. “You look good. Being a parasite agrees with you.”
“Long hours for crap pay.”
“They don’t really feature that in the sales material, do they?”
Sedgewick shrugged. “I knew what I was getting into.”
“How long do you see yourself doing it, though? It’s a young man’s game.”
“Another few years. Then it’s onto the lobbyist gravy train. That’s where the money is. Only way to make easier cash is panhandling or televangelism.”
“Or working on Wall Street.”
Sedgewick made a face. “I’d turn tricks in rest-stop bathrooms before I’d stoop that low. I have some morals.”
Both men laughed. Sedgewick and Larry Burnell had gone to college together, Larry pursuing journalism while Sedgewick had gone into public service. Now Larry was a reporter for the Washington Post, trying to make a name for himself and dreaming of winning a Pulitzer for an earth-shattering story that so far had eluded him.
They studied the menu and made small talk and, after ordering, got down to business. Larry sipped his chardonnay and sat back. “So to what do I owe this pleasure? Not that hanging out isn’t reward enough, but you mentioned on the phone you had a story?”
“Might have a story,” Sedgewick corrected. “First of all, let’s establish some ground rules, okay? Everything I tell you is off the record until I give you the go-ahead to run with it. Deal?”
“Sure. This must be pretty serious if you want to muzzle me. Why even tell me at all?”
“I want to bounce it off you and see what you think.”
“Fine. Shoot.”
“You know I work for Whitfield, right?”
Larry nodded. “It came up.”
“His daughter went down in a private plane crash a few days ago. In Laos.”
“What? That’s the first I heard of it. But… that’s the big secret?”
“Part of it. They’ve kept a lid on the news so far.”
“Why?”
“That’s where it gets strange.” Sedgewick paused. “You know Whitfield’s on the committee investigating the DOD, right?”
“Of course. The liar’s club, we call it in the business.”
“Well, a couple of CIA rankers showed up, and apparently Whitfield’s got them looking for the plane wreckage on the sly.”
Larry considered the information. “That doesn’t make sense. It would be in his best interests to have a full-blown aerial reconnaissance over the flight path. Pull out all the stops.”
“That’s what I say. Something’s fishy. There’s more to the story, and I think I know what it is. And it scares the hell out of me, because we’re talking about… treason.”
“What? Who — Whitfield? He’s as red, white, and blue as they come.”
“That’s what I’ve always thought, but now I have my doubts. I think we could be looking at something as big as Snowden. Maybe as big as Watergate.”
The waiter arrived with their dishes, and they remained silent until he’d left.
“Do you have any evidence?” Larry asked, after confirming the adjacent tables were still empty.
“I’m collecting it.”
“Care to tell me what you suspect?”
“Not until I have it documented. If I’m wrong… let’s just say I don’t want to say anything more. I just want to know whether this is something you could run with if I hand everything off to you once I’ve got definitive proof.”
“Of course.”
“And would you keep me anonymous? If word leaked, I’d be finished in this town.”
“I’d treat it as a confidential source. Wild horses couldn’t drag it out of me.” Larry eyed him. “Dude, you look pretty stressed. This must be huge.”