LACKING VIRTUES

by Thomas Kirkwood

  “Clifton and Ward, take the Pratt & Whitney people, a man from Delta and someone from the Airport Authority out to the engine. I want to know which way it was facing when it hit, if it was rotating, the usual. If it’s positioned in such a way that you have access to the mounting structures, I want a preliminary report. The mounting bolts? The mounts themselves? Any attached remnant of pylon that might indicate a crack, such as the one found on the DC-10 at O’Hare?”

  “Right, sir. We’ll get it done.”

  “Connors, McCauley and Johnson, the wing is yours.”

  “Frank,” Johnson said. “You’ve indicated it’s out in a field somewhere. Are the authorities making certain it’s not disturbed or are they too involved with the main wreckage and the fire?”

  “Good question. Allen, call the Atlanta P. D. and confirm that the cops are protecting the wing. If they tell you their men are all needed at the Ford plant, explain to them what happens to our investigation if the wing is tampered with.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll try to make them understand.”

  “Roth, I want you to coordinate the salvage operations. Find someone in the city government who can give you a listing of reliable local operators.”

  “Right, Frank. Where are we going with the wreckage? Have you lined up anything yet?”

  “No, but the old Eastern hangar at the airport is vacant again. If we can get it, it would be the most convenient place to reconstruct the aircraft.”

  “Do you want me to check into that, too?”

  “Please. Downey, you book the hotel. We’ll need a place for meetings and eleven rooms – unless some of you are volunteering for double occupancy.”

  Jack Kendall said, “How long do you think we’ll be here, Frank? I promised my wife I’d give her my best guess.”

  “Don’t get into the habit of doing that, Kendall. Families need to understand that you have no control over the length of an investigation. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I want the rest of you to come with me to the Ford plant. It won’t be a pretty sight, so prepare yourselves. I don’t know if this thought helps you at such times, but it helps me: for each body you see tonight, others who would have ended up the same way will live – if we control our guts and do our job.”

  Simmons said, “By the way, Frank, I’ve chartered us a few helicopters from Peach-Tree DeKalb over to the main airport. A look at the accident site from the air seemed like a good idea.”

  ***

  Warner stared in silence out a window of the Bell Jet Ranger. If someone had the inclination to loot a shopping mall across town, he thought, there would be no obstacle. Every police car, fire truck and rescue vehicle in the Atlanta metro area seemed to be jammed into the parking lots around the Ford plant.

  It had been a direct hit, precisely the sort of thing they had all been dreading since the big jets took to the air. Perhaps the young idealist, Kendall, was right. Perhaps he should have pushed the NTSB to put more pressure on Congress, though he doubted it would have done any good.

  Their helicopter flew closer.

  The center section of the Taurus assembly line building was a mass of blazing rubble. The fire was still spreading to wings of the plant that had not been hit directly by the plane. Stone and metal were no match for a hundred thousand pounds of aviation fuel.

  “Jesus, there’s the tail!” Simmons exclaimed. “Look at that, Frank.”

  “Yes, I see it.” The inverted tail section of the 767, with one rudder still attached, loomed like a great wounded beast above the shadows of an outlying lot. The blaze a couple hundred yards away lit up the Delta markings on its aluminum skin. They looked as fresh and reassuring as they did in the TV commercials.

  Warner remembered the days when the first people on the site of a crash were the airline paint crews, working in fire and wind to white out the company name. This was a terrible accident, one that would not sit well with the flying public. He imagined the more mercenary corporate souls down in the bowels of Operations scrambling around for paint. They would be too late. He could see at least three separate news crews filming the tail. In 1999 the media beat them all to the punch.

  Warner frowned. He had just noticed something that made his blood boil. “Do either one of you see any cops around the tail or the first-impact debris?”

  “No cops. TV people and souvenir hunters,” Kendall said. “They’re like vultures.”

  “This is unconscionable. The cockpit voice recorder and black box are in the tail. Doesn’t anyone understand we can’t solve a crash without those parts?”

  Chapter Three

  They entered the terminal building at 11:30 p.m., three hours after the crash. Television news crews roamed the A Concourse like jackals, latching on to anyone who would talk to them. When they recognized Warner and his team, they attacked in a hungry swarm, blocking his progress.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in his flat but authoritative voice, “show the good judgment you ask of your government officials and move out of the way. The first hours of an investigation can be critical. You are impeding our progress, and hence the safety of future air travel. I can’t imagine that will help your ratings. Step aside, please.”

  Miraculously they obeyed. Warner had that effect on people, even reporters.

  The throng outside the Crown Room, which Delta officials were using as their crisis center, resembled an angry, grieving mob. Relatives and spouses of workers at the Ford plant had joined those who had lost loved-ones in the crash. Rabble rousers shouted down the Delta spokesman, who fielded all questions but refused to give substantive answers. Warner grabbed a cop, showed his I.D. and asked for an escort to the door.

  Inside the elegantly appointed room, Delta executives, attorneys, crash investigators and media consultants had organized into groups to deal with the many-headed monster the crisis had spawned. There were decisions that had to be made quickly. How, for example, were they going to keep Delta reservations from plummeting in the days ahead? How could they best show an empathetic corporate face to those who had suffered loss in the crash without appearing to admit guilt – guilt which, if established, could cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars? How could they speed up their own internal investigation so that, if the crash had been a result of some inadequate or negligent service procedure on the part of the airline, safeguards against a repeat could be put into effect at once? What type of initial posture should they assume toward the Ford Motor Company, whose Taurus assembly plant one of their planes had reduced to rubble, and whose skilled work force it had decimated? A careless decision here could mean the end of Delta.

  Into this solemn corporate war council marched Frank Warner and his Go Team. Every airline executive who cared to be honest with himself knew that, without the NTSB, airline travel would be a lot more dangerous than it was. But this didn’t stop them from having a big problem with Warner. He was too harsh; he did not understand the needs of the corporate world; he saw the causes of a crash in black and white when gray would be more appropriate; he was a perfectionist in an imperfect world; and worst of all, he did not understand how to distribute the responsibility for a mishap.

  In spite of all this cozying up to him, Warner knew the truth. He was not offended. On the contrary, he considered their dislike the highest compliment they could have paid him. In his view, closeness between the regulators and the regulated was a disease that had greatly weakened the American system. He wanted no part of it.

  Reid Allworth, the brilliant, dashing chairman of Delta, came over and warmly shook Warner’s hand. “Hello, Frank. I’m glad you and your men are here. Renaker and the boys from Pratt & Whitney are on their initial approach, so give them another twenty minutes or so. There’s time for us to go over the aircraft’s maintenance records and the pilot bios while we’re waiting.”

  Warner stood stiff as a rod. “The records can wait, Reid. The engine boys can join us when they arrive. I need to get my people in th
e field while there’s still something to examine. By the way, are you aware that the tail section of your aircraft is sitting in the Ford parking lot totally unguarded?”

  “What? Why, that’s – ”

  “Reid, the CVR and black box are in the tail. If they’re gone, so are our chances of solving this crash conclusively. What about the wing? Do you know for a fact that it’s being protected?”

  “Of course. I instructed the police – ”

  “I realize you’ve got a company to run. I know this is a very trying time for you. Nevertheless, Reid, your first responsibility as a public carrier is to the safety of your passengers. It’s very difficult for me to conduct an investigation on a wreckage you have allowed the curiosity seekers to contaminate.”

  “Frank, what are you talking about? My first priority was to secure the wreckage. It’s impossible that either the tail or the wing is unguarded. I gave the police instructions that could not have been more explicit.”

  “It’s unguarded, Reid, at least the tail is. We had a good look at it from the air.”

  “I’ve got the local FBI,” said Simmons, who had wrenched a phone away from one of the airline’s media people.

  “Thank you,” Warner said, still seething. “While I’m talking, get me the Atlanta police.”

  The atmosphere in the conference room remained icy as Warner dispatched his teams to examine the engine, the wing and the tail, letting Allworth decide which airline people would work with each group. He would make his peace with the Delta chairman later, when he wasn’t so angry. Right now he had his mind on the black box and the cockpit voice recorder, the CVR, which he hoped were still in the tail.

  Chapter Four

  Eastern Germany

  Paul Delors had driven all night to arrive in the village of Altenhagen, 160 kilometers north of Berlin, before dawn. When he pulled up in front of Claussen’s farmhouse, a few stars still blinked overhead but morning was not far off. A band of steel gray light shone to the east, and he could make out the silhouette of pine forests and banks of fog that lay around like great sleeping beasts.

  He got out of his Citroën and stretched. A single dim bulb burned above the farmhouse door, illuminating a patch of faded stucco wall with chinks blown away by gunfire half a century old. Prussia, the Third Reich, East Germany, the Federal Republic. It didn’t matter what you called the place, thought Delors, it never changed.

  He took his travel bag from the trunk. When he glanced up, Claussen was standing on the porch in his bathrobe, smoking a cigarette.

  Delors raised his hand in greeting, and Claussen responded with an almost imperceptible nod. “Good morning, Paul. You’d best come in before my fellows have their revenge on the French.” He laughed, softly and without malice.

  Delors had been vaguely aware of a living presence in the darkness beyond his car, but had not wanted to appear jumpy. Now he looked around. A gaggle of large, silent geese loomed behind him, closing ranks as if they were about to attack. He quickly climbed the steps and went inside.

  Claussen had prepared for his visit. In the kitchen, the table was laid out for breakfast. A coffee pot gurgled on the counter and water for the eggs boiled on a black hooded stove. Claussen put in the eggs and set out bread, butter, cheeses and wurst. He took a bottle of clear schnapps from the refrigerator.

  “Please have a seat, Paul. I know you’re not accustomed to this level of modesty but I prefer to keep things simple.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, Walter. I quite enjoy life in the country.”

  When everything was ready, Claussen sat. Delors watched him decapitate a soft boiled egg with a precise whack of his knife. He had steady hands that would have suited a surgeon, with long, delicate fingers. Though almost 60 years old, he looked to be in very good physical condition and was even more handsome than Delors remembered him being when they had last seen each other. Perhaps his face had a few more wrinkles now and his keen blue eyes a few more crow’s feet at the corners. But his light brown hair had not thinned or gone gray, his teeth were still good and his strong chin had not been eroded by the wattles common to men his age. Claussen still had what it took.

  ***

  After breakfast Delors offered him a Gauloise cigarette, as he had done when they met for the first time more than a decade ago. Claussen again accepted the cigarette. The two men smoked in silence, drank a shot of schnapps and watched the sun come up.

  Delors finally spoke. “Walter, there are serious matters you and I need to discuss.”

  Claussen got up, opened the window and threw his geese some table scraps. “Cannibalistic buggers. They go first for the rye spread with Gänseschmalz.” He stared out at the courtyard and the pines beyond. “We’ll discuss your serious matters after you have rested. Your room is at the top of the stairs on the left. I’ll be in the library.”

  ***

  When Delors awoke, birds were singing and sunlight filtered through the fir trees outside his window. He grabbed his watch from the night stand, fearing he had overslept. Ten thirty, it could have been worse. He dressed and wandered through the cool, sparsely furnished house in search of the library.

  The only decor on the white walls was an occasional watercolor, a nature scene without people or animals. The pieces were unsigned, but Delors had little doubt who the artist was. They were born of the same lonely, understated elegance as the man he had come to visit.

  He found Claussen writing at a roll top desk. When he tapped on the open door, Claussen stood, limber as a young man. “Hello, Paul. I must say, you look better. Up for a swim?”

  “Always.”

  They came to the Augraben River after a pleasant hike through pine groves and meadows swarming with butterflies. The two men undressed and left their clothes draped over a carved marble bench, a relic, Claussen said, of the Junker estate that had been here before the communists collectivized agriculture.

  Delors, into his trunks first, dived into the gentle green current, feeling strong and rested. He was an excellent swimmer and worked out in the indoor pool across from the “Piscine,” the SDECE headquarters in Paris, several times a week.

  He crossed to the other bank with a strong crawl, returning to meet Claussen in the center of the stream. “Which way?”

  Claussen did not speak but swam with the current, his backstroke relaxed and effortless. Delors swam beside him, keeping the pace easily. They rounded a bend and the river flowed into a large lake with an island near the center.

  “I usually swim to the island and back,” Claussen said. “If I tire, I rest on the island for a while. It’s about a kilometer and a half, round trip. Are you up to it?”

  “Yes.”

  Claussen rolled over and breaststroked. He said, “Bismarck came to this old estate in the fall of 1869 to plan his attack on France. The place inspires good ideas, Paul.”

  “Let’s swim,” Delors said.

  Claussen spit out a stream of water and picked up the pace. Delors stayed with him, but it wasn’t easy. When they reached the island, Claussen lifted himself effortlessly onto the sagging boat dock. Delors was tired and accepted the German’s hand.

  Claussen stretched out on the dry wood, his lean, suntanned body even younger in appearance than his face.

  Delors sat on the edge of the dock and waited for his breathing to slow down. He casually surveyed the island. It looked abandoned. He felt confident he could talk freely here without risk of being recorded or photographed. This would be as good a place as any. Though he basically trusted Claussen, he wasn’t a fool.

  Chapter Five

  Deaf as stones Michelet had assured him. Perhaps. But the words Paul Delors was going to speak tonight had the power to give stones ears.

  He had waited through five courses of heavy Breton cooking to make his pitch, and now he would wait some more. He would wait until these two decrepit old servants at Michelet’s country manor cleaned up the kitchen; wait until he could no longer hear sounds of running water and ri
nging china; wait until he was certain that Henri and Isabelle had left the house for the night.

  His hour struck a short time later. He and Michelet had moved to the library, where they sat sipping cognac and discussing recent political events beneath the gaze of somber family portraits.

  It thundered. Delors glanced outside at the chiaroscuro of rain clouds skirting past the moon. In that moment he saw lights in the servants’ cottage across the way. Isabelle appeared in the window, a stooped silhouette tugging at the wind-blown shutters. Henri reached around her to help. The coast was clear; he could speak at last.

  “Georges,” he said, abruptly changing the subject, “I took the liberty of bugging Gaullist headquarters. I was shocked by what our conservative allies are saying about you. If you’re not aware of it, you should be.”