Nelson Demille: The Lion's Game

I kind of ignored my teammates and made for the coffee bar, which, unlike the one in my old detective squad room, is neat, clean, and well stocked, compliments of the Federal taxpayers.

I fooled around with the coffee awhile, which was my way of avoiding my colleagues for a few more minutes.

I got the coffee the right color and noticed a tray of donuts that said NYPD and a tray of croissants and brioche that said CIA and a tray of oatmeal cookies that said FBI. Someone had a sense of humor.

Anyway, the coffee bar was on the operations side of the big room and the commo side was sort of elevated on a low platform. A lady duty agent was up there monitoring all the gidgets and gadgets.

My team, on the operations side, was sitting around somebody's empty desk, engaged in conversation. The team consisted of the aforementioned Ted Nash of the CIA and George Foster of the FBI, plus Nick Monti of the NYPD, and Kate Mayfield of the FBI. WASP, WASP, Wop, WASP.

Kate Mayfield came to the coffee bar and began making herself tea. She is supposed to be my mentor, whatever that means. As long as it doesn't mean partner.

She said to me, "I like that tie."

"I once strangled a Ninja warrior to death with it. It's my favorite."

"Really? Hey, how are you getting along here?"

"You tell me."

"Well, it's too soon for me to tell you. You tell me why you put in for the IRA section."

"Well, the Muslims don't drink, I can't spell their f-ing names on my reports, and the women can't be seduced."

"That's the most racist, sexist remark I've heard in years."

"You don't get around much."

"This is not the NYPD, Mr. Corey."

"No, but I'm NYPD. Get used to it."

"Are we through attempting to shock and appal?"

"Yeah. Look, Kate, I thank you for your meddling-I mean mentoring-but in about a week, I'll be in the IRA section or off the job."

She didn't reply.

I looked at her as she messed around with a lemon. She was about thirty, I guess, blond, blue eyes, fair skin, athletic kind of build, perfect pearly whites, no jewelry, light makeup, and so on. Wendy Wasp from Wichita. She had not one flaw that I could see, not even a zit on her face or a fleck of dandruff on her dark blue blazer. In fact, she looked like she'd been airbrushed. She probably played three sports in high school, took cold showers, belonged to 4-H, and organized pep rallies in college. I hated her. Well, not really, but about the only thing we had in common was some internal organs, and not even all of those.

Also, her accent was hard to identify, and I remembered that Nick Monti said her father was an FBI guy, and they'd lived in different places around the country.

She turned and looked at me, and I looked at her. She had these piercing eyes, the color of blue dye No. 2, like they use in ice pops.

She said to me, "You came to us highly recommended."

"By who? Whom?"

"Whom. By some of your old colleagues in homicide."

I didn't reply.

"Also," she said, "by Ted and George." She nodded toward Schmuck and Putz.

I almost choked on my coffee. Why these two guys would say anything nice about me was a total mystery.

"They aren't fond of you, but you impressed them on that Plum Island case."

"Yeah, I even impressed myself on that one."

"Why don't you give the Mideast section a try?" She added, "If Ted and George are the problem, we can switch you to another team within the section."

"I love Ted and George, but I really have my heart set on the anti-IRA section."

"Too bad. This is where the real action is. This is a career builder." She added, "The IRA are pretty quiet and well behaved in this country."

"Good. I don't need a new career anyway."

"The Palestinians and the Islamic groups, on the other hand, are potentially dangerous to national security." r

"No 'potentially' about it," I replied. " World Trade Center."

She didn't reply.

I'd come to discover that these three words in the ATTF were like, "Remember Pearl Harbor." The intelligence community got caught with their pants down on that one, but came back and solved the case, so it was a draw.

She continued, "The whole country is paranoid about a Mideast terrorist biological attack or a nuclear or chemical attack. You saw that on the Plum Island case. Right?"

"Right."

"So? Everything else in the ATTF is a backwater. The real action is in the Mideast section, and you look like a man of action." She smiled.

I smiled in return. I asked her, "What's it to you?"

"I like you."

I raised my eyebrows.

"I like New York Neanderthals."

"I'm speechless."

"Think about it."

"Will do." I glanced at a TV monitor close by and saw that the flight we were waiting for, Trans-Continental 175 from Paris, was inbound and on time. I asked Ms. Mayfield, "How long do you think this will take?"

"Maybe two or three hours. An hour of paperwork here, then back to Federal Plaza, with our alleged defector, then we'll see."

"See what?"

"Are you in a rush to get somewhere?"

"Sort of."

"I feel badly that national security is interfering with your social life."

I didn't have a good reply to that, so I said, "I'm a big fan of national security. I'm yours until six P.M."

"You can leave whenever you want." She took her tea and rejoined our colleagues.

So, I stood there with my coffee, and considered the offer to take a hike. In retrospect, I was like the guy standing in quicksand, watching it cover my shoes, curious to see how long it would take to reach my socks, knowing I could leave anytime soon. Unfortunately, the next time I glanced down, it was up to my knees.

Sam Walters leaned forward in his chair, adjusted his headset-microphone, and stared at the green three-foot radar screen in front of him. It was a nice April afternoon outside, but you'd never know that here in the dimly lit, windowless room of the New York Air Traffic Control Center in Islip, Long Island, fifty miles east of Kennedy Airport.

Bob Esching, Walters' shift supervisor, stood beside him and asked, "Problem?"

Walters replied, "We've got a NO-RAD here, Bob. Trans-Continental Flight One-Seven-Five from Paris."

Bob Esching nodded. "How long has he been NO-RAD?"

."No one's been able to raise him since he came off the North Atlantic track near Gander." Walters glanced at his clock. "About two hours."

Esching asked, "Any other indication of a problem?"

"Nope. In fact…" He regarded the radar screen and said, "He turned southwest at the Sardi intersection, then down Jet Thirty-Seven, as per flight plan."

Esching replied, "He'll call in a few minutes, wondering why we haven't been talking to him."

Walters nodded. A No-Radio status was not that unusual-it often happened between air traffic control and the aircraft they worked with. Walters had had days when it happened two or three times. Invariably, after a couple of minutes of repeated transmissions, some pilot would respond, "Oops, sorry…" then explain that they had the volume down or the wrong frequency dialed in-or something less innocuous, like the whole flight crew was asleep, though they wouldn't tell you that.

Esching said, "Maybe the pilot and co-pilot have stewardesses on their laps."

Walters smiled. He said, "The best explanation I ever got in a NO-RAD situation was from a pilot who admitted that when he laid his lunch tray down on the pedestal between the pilots' seats, the tray had pressed into a selector switch and taken them off-frequency."

Esching laughed. "Low-tech explanation for a high-tech problem."

"Right." Walters looked at the screen again. "Tracking fine."

"Yeah."

It was when the blip disappeared, Walters thought, that you had a major problem. He was on duty the night in March 1998 when Air Force One, carrying the President, disappeared from the radar screen for twenty-four long seconds, and the entire room full of controllers sat frozen. The aircraft reappeared from computer-glitch limbo and everyone started to breathe again. But then there was the night of July 17, 1996, when TWA Flight 800 disappeared from the screen forever… Walters would never forget that night as long as he lived. But here, he thought, we have a simple NO-RAD… and yet something bothered him. For one thing, this was a very long time to be in a NO-RAD status.