LACKING VIRTUES

by Thomas Kirkwood

  “Well that’s remarkable,” she said. “The world-famous French financial genius passed through your school. He must have learned more than his three Rs. And who, Monseigneur, was the second boy you mentioned?”

  Father Roget, responding to a persistent tug at the sleeve of his black shirt, apologized to his mother. “I don’t remember his name, Madame Marx. He was not a student of mine, he was following the technical curriculum. But I knew from Albert and Georges that he had the highest scores in mathematics the school had ever seen.”

  “Very interesting,” Sophie said. “Your class of fifty-three certainly was distinguished.”

  “Yes, yes, quite a distinguished class,” Father Roget droned.

  “Do you suppose you would recognize the second boy if I found a photograph of him?”

  “I don’t know, Madame Marx. It’s been a long time and, as I said, he wasn’t a student of mine. I’d certainly be glad to try.”

  “Thank you, Monseigneur. Well, what do you say? Shall we tackle the primary topic I came here to research, the origin of Michelet’s keen interest in politics?”

  “Of course, Madame Marx, and here I think I can make a genuine contribution to your understanding. We must go back to De Gaulle, the Second World War, the way the Allies treated the Free French. Of course, Vietnam and Algeria are important, too, very important.”

  Steven’s mind started to wander. To his surprise, he felt hungry again – for dinner and for Nicole. France had some major defects as a country, he thought, but when it came to stimulating the appetites, She was without equal.

  ***

  Frank Warner arrived at Honolulu General Hospital two days after the crash. He was waiting in the corridor with Tim Simmons and Jeremy Little, an attorney for the Pilots’ Association, to speak with Captain Hutchinson’s physician.

  Dr. Gary had brushed off their introductions when he came to examine his patient. He had disappeared into Hutchinson’s room, muttering about schedules and interference. When he came out, Warner stood. “Well, Doctor, how’s he doing?”

  “Physically, he’s doing fine,” Gary said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Mr. Warner, he’s having a normal reaction to learning that one hundred sixty men, women and children with whose safe transport he was entrusted did not make it. He feels guilty for being alive. He holds himself personally responsible for their deaths. These are all quite normal reactions to the type of trauma he’s been through. I’m confident he will get over them.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he will. Right now I need to talk to him.”

  “He’s in my care, Mr. Warner, and you are not going to talk to him. I have consulted with the staff psychiatrist, whom your pilot refuses to see. Having a person of your authority judge Captain Hutchinson’s performance at this fragile stage in his recovery could have severe long-term emotional consequences. You will have to wait until next week at the earliest.”

  Warner, all six feet two inches of him, blocked the doctor’s passage, fixing him with the withering, red-eyed stare reserved for those who irritated him when he was exhausted.

  “Look, Doc, you and I are going to get something straight. I don’t know what business you’re in, but I’m in the business of saving lives. We have no black box and no flight recorder from this crash. Other than the pilot, we have no adult survivors to tell us what happened. But that pilot is alive and healthy enough to talk, which is a miracle. We’re going to interview him, not to judge him but to gain insight into what caused the crash. Waiting could endanger every person who steps aboard a plane in the next week. Is this what you want, Doctor?”

  The doctor tried to look Warner in the eye but couldn’t. “All right, if it’s that critical you may talk to him for a few minutes. But I insist on being in the room. That’s my condition.”

  “You can climb into the sack with him for all I care. Gentlemen, let’s get this done.”

  ***

  Hutchinson was propped up on the elevated bed watching a college football game. In spite of the bandages, tubes, casts and traction devices, he looked pretty good.

  “Who’s playing?” Warner asked.

  “Iowa and Purdue, not too interesting.”

  “May I turn it off?”

  “Sure.”

  Warner squeezed the remote. The picture shrank to a bright dot and vanished. “Captain Hutchinson, I’m Frank Warner of the NTSB. This is Mr. Simmons, my colleague. The big guy is Jeremy Little, attorney for ALPA. Don’t get the wrong idea. You’re not being investigated. His presence is a formality. It’s tough being up there in a jet with no power. I know. It happened to me in the Air Force.”

  “You probably handled it better than I did.”

  “Not exactly,” Warner said, pulling up a chair. “I punched out. I would have done it differently if I’d had the wisdom of hindsight. My plane nearly crashed into a school.” He sat down close to the bed. “When did you lose control?”

  “At the very end. When the wing tip caught a wave. We had no information on surface winds or the direction of the sea. When we broke through the low clouds, we had to bank to get the aircraft parallel to the troughs. To tell you the truth, I thought I had it knocked. I was leveling off and preparing to set her down on the backside of a swell when it happened. I waited too long to come out of my turn. I guess I tried to be exactly parallel. I tried to make it too perfect a ditch – and you see the results. I’m prepared to take the blame.”

  “Blame for what?” said Warner. “The odds of ditching safely without power in a Seven Five are less than a hundred to one. The odds weren’t with you that day or you wouldn’t have lost both engines.”

  “Amen.”

  “So, Captain Hutchinson, stop blaming yourself. You are not to blame. We need to move on to more substantive matters.”

  “It just hurts to have come so close.”

  “I understand. Now, Captain, can you give us any idea why those engines started losing oil? Was there an irregularity you noticed at any stage of the flight that could provide a clue?”

  “Look, between you and me, it’s gotta be those maintenance yo-yos at SFO. I’d bet what’s left of my dick there’s some kind of cover-up going on there. Have you checked it out?”

  “We have. There’s no cover-up. A supervisor and two line mechanics all saw the O-rings on the sender units when they were installed. We found the discarded parts I.D. numbers in the trash. They matched the computer record of the items requisitioned by the mechanics.”

  Hutchinson tried to reposition himself and groaned. Warner helped him turn on his side.

  “Thanks,” Hutchinson said. “I don’t necessarily mean the O-rings themselves. I’ve been lying here for thirty hours trying to figure out the same thing you are. This morning I thought of an old incident I’d all but forgotten. I was flying the 727 back in the seventies. It happened on that red-eye from New York to San Francisco, remember it? Stopped in Chicago, Denver and Salt Lake, and could be pretty miserable in winter.”

  “I took it more than once,” Warner said. “I was always glad someone else was flying. What happened?”

  “We got diverted to Des Moines, a blizzard in Chicago. It was past midnight and the maintenance crews were packing it in. Anyway, I needed the oil topped up in two of my engines. Maintenance got a couple guys out there who looked half asleep. They did the job, the passengers bound for Chicago got off and we continued on to the west. Everything remained uneventful until we reached cruising altitude coming out of Salt Lake City. All of a sudden the engines that had been topped up started pissing oil. Know what caused it?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Those dingbats in Des Moines had dumped in hydraulic fluid by mistake. The stuff ate through the O-rings after a few hours and caused the oil to hemorrhage. I was lucky they hadn’t touched the third engine or we would have ended up in the Sierras.”

  “That’s an interesting parallel, Captain. It seems to me I vaguely remember the report of th
at incident. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself. All the elements of the present crash were there, weren’t they? A few hours of normal operation, then a sudden massive loss of oil.”

  “They’re there all right. Can you look at the engines? How much of the wreck did you recover?”

  “Floating debris only. The evidence is five thousand feet down. It’s gone, Captain. Which means we’ll have to concentrate on the other end, the maintenance fellows. You’ve certainly given me a fresh hypothesis to test. I appreciate it.”

  “You’ll find something at SFO. I’m convinced of that.”

  Warner’s cellular telephone, concealed in his briefcase, rang shrilly.

  “Hey,” the doctor said, “those things aren’t allowed in this hospital. You could interfere with the operation of sophisticated medical equipment.”

  Warner ignored him and took the call. The doctor got to his feet but Warner’s stare froze him on the spot.

  Warner listened in disbelief. He rang off and shook his head, looking even more exhausted.

  “What is it, chief?” Simmons asked.

  Warner took his man aside. “Another Seven Six,” he whispered. “Crashed on take-off at Pittsburgh, two hundred twenty on board. Engine separation. Similar to the Atlanta mishap last spring, except that the aircraft exploded when the engine hit the wing.”

  “This is crazy,” Simmons whispered back. “Look at the stats, Frank. From ’83 to Atlanta that’s eleven years – you’ve got a total of one crash involving a 757 or 767. Since last May – that’s what, five months? – you’ve got another three. It just doesn’t add up. There’s something strange going on here.”

  “Let’s not speculate, Tim. Our job is to understand what caused each crash. I’m going back to San Francisco. I want you to assemble a Go Team for Pittsburgh.”

  Warner returned to Hutchinson’s bedside. “I have to go now, Captain. Thanks again for your help. Give me a call when you get out and I’ll let you know what we found.”

  “I’ll do that, Mr. Warner. I’d like to get my hands on the bastard who fucked up.”

  “So would I.” Warner turned the football game back on and walked out, his thoughts already on the most recent crash. If the aft engine mount had failed again, as it had in Atlanta, he might have his first solid lead.

  ***

  Claussen, back from a brisk swim around the island, listened to the latest radio report of the Pittsburgh crash. Regrets were inevitable, he thought, pouring himself a shot of Himbeer-geist. The events of the last months proved beyond doubt that Volkov had underestimated the power of Operation Litvyak. Judging from the ease with which he had caused the disasters in Atlanta, over the Pacific and in Pittsburgh, Claussen no longer had any doubt that the Soviet Union in its prime possessed the capacity to bring American civil aviation to its knees.

  If just two dozen modified parts judiciously placed in the parts stream could provoke this degree of havoc, he thought, what would have been the destructive potential of his entire inventory? A hundred crashes the first day the Americans attempted to airlift troops to Europe? Three hundred? Not at all unthinkable, given the involvement of the line mechanics Claussen had recruited with such care.

  Volkov had wanted 10,000 American soldiers eliminated before they reached the front; Claussen would have delivered; and rewarded him with a bonus of 40,000 more.

  With the publication of his memoirs after he had assumed his long-planned retirement identity in Bolivia, Claussen would have become the towering giant of wartime sabotage. His name would have become synonymous with brilliance, stealth, fearlessness, and the refusal to submit to the credo of the modern world – which was that important work was done by groups, that a single man could no longer make a difference.

  Ah, well, he thought, gazing out at his cantankerous geese, it was not to be. He would have to content himself with a paltry dozen or so crashes of no long-term historical significance.

  But not so fast, not so fast. These crashes were precisely the proof he needed to make the world believe that Operation Litvyak not only existed but could have effortlessly achieved what it was designed to do. Because of them, his memoirs would be credible. They would be received as the record of a genius at work rather than the rant of a lunatic. That was a benefit he should not despise.

  He threw his geese some scraps, slammed the window shut before they distracted his thinking and moved to his roll top desk. He was leaving for Liechtenstein tomorrow to take care of some minor financial matters. It would be a good time to post the letter that represented his checkmate in the power struggle with his employers. He would compose it now; he was in the mood.

  Claussen could not help smiling as he drew his pen and wrote:

  Dear Georges,

  I know you wanted to remain anonymous – it’s only human nature in situations such as these. But I never allow inequality to imbalance and ultimately threaten my working relationships.

  Now that I know who you are, I would like to express my thanks to you, your colleague, Mr. Haussmann and, of course, to my old friend, Paul. I am pleased I could be of help to you in a matter that you consider vital to your country’s economic and cultural independence.

  I am also pleased to report that everything is proceeding as planned and that you can look forward to a quick and successful conclusion of my assignment.

  I want to stress that my knowing who you are in no way increases your risk of exposure. I have no interest in ever divulging a scheme that would take down all four of us. However, as a prudent man, I felt it wise to deliver you from the temptation to eliminate me after I fulfilled my part of the deal.

  To this end, I have placed detailed records conclusively establishing your role in this operation with several of my attorneys. Copies of some of the evidence contained in my “files,” such as photographs of the three of you together at the Michelet country home and the visual and audio record of my initial meeting with Paul, will be delivered to you by special courier.

  I stress again that my knowledge is harmless as long as your intentions toward me remain honorable. However, should I die or become incapacitated in the next five years for any reason, I have asked my attorneys to make your files public.

  Take good care of me, gentlemen. It is in my best interest; and also in yours.

  cc: Paul Delors

  Albert Haussmann

  Claussen reread the letter, made two copies, and addressed three envelopes. After sealing the letters, he placed them in the zippered pocket of his briefcase. He stretched and returned to his desk.

  It was seven o’clock this fine September evening. He would work on his memoirs until ten o’clock, as he did most nights, then devote the hours before midnight to his watercolors. Life had never been more pleasant.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Frank Warner threw in the towel at nine o’clock in the evening. Calling his small contingent of investigators to his suite, he thanked them for their work in San Francisco and dismissed them. He was not accustomed to leaving the initial phase of an investigation so soon, and he was plagued by a persistent ugly doubt that he had missed something.

  But he had no choice. He and his people had tested every conceivable hypothesis that might explain why the United Airlines 757 en route to Hawaii had lost oil and plunged into the Pacific. They had meticulously researched Captain Hutchinson’s theory of hydraulic fluid in the oil, which sounded promising but had been soundly disproved. They had even located O-rings made from the same batch of compound as those installed on the ill-fated plane and had analyzed the compound for the slightest irregularities. There were none.

  Given the point in the flight at which the leak had begun and the rate at which it had stabilized, Warner could not help clinging to the hunch that degradation of the O-rings was in some mysterious way to blame. But since he could find no supporting evidence, his own strict rules of investigation forced him to toss his hunch on the junk heap of dead-end suppositions accumulated by his staff. The investigation wou
ld have to be continued in labs and offices all over the country. His hands-on first assault had failed.

  He telephoned Claire, whom he hadn’t been able to reach for the last three days. It was after midnight on the East Coast and she still wasn’t home. She had left him, he couldn’t deceive himself any longer. Probably inevitable, he thought, but he wished she had picked another time. This was shaping up as the worst week of his life.

  No sooner had he hung up than Susan Waters from the New York office, who had been working with the team in San Francisco day and night, telephoned from the room down the hall.