by Larsen, Ward
It was the young woman who spotted the first article, a quick blurb on the Houston Chronicles Web site. She said, "Olson Industries had a fire last night. Their primary furnace manufacturing operation has been decimated. It's going to be down for six to nine months."
The man, older and more experienced, did not even reply. He typed the name of a Russian corporation into his own computer. The results came immediately. "Bloody hell!" he said. "Petrov I. A. burned to the ground!"
The woman's voice took an edge. "There's one other manufacturer, right? Isn't it Dutch --"
"DSR," the man spat, having already typed the full name. The wait seemed interminable, but when the computer finally gave its answer, the man exhaled a deep, controlled sigh. "No, nothing there. DSR is fine."
The two looked at one another. If they had been corporate planners they might have viewed the events in strategic terms, a market opportunity worth targeting. If they had been policemen they might have been curious about the coincidence on a criminal level. As it was, the two financial analysts did their job. They got on the phone.
In the first thirty minutes after the London market's opening gavel, Barclays was on the leading edge of a small wave. Futures indices for gas oil, heating oil, and unleaded gasoline blendstock rose three percent. DSR traded up twelve.
Some people had trouble sleeping on airplanes. Davis could sleep anywhere. He had snoozed on a metal pallet in a C-130 transport, crashed on the deck of an Aegis class missile cruiser in the Red Sea, and slept like a baby in an ice cave during Arctic survival training. So when he got to France after a long night in a Boeing 777 first-class sleeper, he was fully rested.
His first stop was the airport restroom where he ran an electric razor over his face and splashed cold water on the back of his neck. He also donned a fresh polo shirt--dark green and dull, just how he liked it. Diane had bought him a pink shirt once, tried to tell him the color was something called "salmon." Jammer Davis knew pink when he saw it.
From Paris he caught the TGV, a high-speed train that would deliver him to Lyon in less than two hours. He took a window seat in an empty row, settled back as the train began its smooth, quiet acceleration. Not like a Boeing, he reckoned, but quick all the same. In no time, the urban center of Paris gave way to soft brown pastures. Trees vacant of foliage and tawny hedges waited patiently for the coming of spring. Davis watched the countryside roll by, a misty morning blur at almost two hundred miles an hour.
He had spent three years in France as a teenager. His father, a sergeant in the army and a linguist, had been assigned embassy duty in Paris, and so Davis had attended a high school for Foreign Service dependents. He'd grown to like the country, enjoy the people. In the course of it all he had picked up a new language -- and a new sport. Davis had played high school football in the States. In France he'd seen the local kids playing something similar, only without the pads. Davis liked the idea, and rugby had become his game.
The train flowed over the track easy and quick. Davis closed his eyes, tried to let his mind go blank. It didn't work. The upcoming investigation was already there, cluttering his mental screen like hard rain on a windshield. He had experience in both military and civilian investigations. The military versions were close to the vest -- clipped press releases, no-nonsense colonels staring down cameras. But what most people didn't see in the military boards was the infighting, the flag-grade politics that went on behind the scene. Colonels and generals trying to pitch blame and catch credit. But at least the military inquiries were quick. A month, two at the outside. Civilian accident boards, like the one he was about to wrestle, could take a year or more. And Davis, by nature, was not a patient man.
Aside from the time involved, there were other differences. Since 1947, the business of investigating civil aircraft accidents had been regulated by an agreement known as the Chicago Convention, or more specifically, an obscure subsection called Annex 13. Among the more important provisions was the tricky terrain of jurisdiction. Aircraft, by nature, were transient beasts -- they could crash in one country, be registered in another, and owned by a party in a third. Annex 13 declared that the "state of occurrence" governed the authority to investigate a crash, falling back on registration should an airplane go down in international waters. So it was, the investigation of World Express 801 would be administered by France. More specifically, the Bureau Enquetes-Accidents, or BEA.
Davis would have preferred that World Express 801 had gone down elsewhere. England, Ireland. Or Lichtenstein, for that matter. France was peculiar, one of the few countries that always ran dual investigations-- the traditional safety side that he would help guide, but also a parallel criminal version where prosecutors tried to make names for themselves, tried to tie someone to a post for cobblestone target practice. In the case of World Express 801, they might go after individuals who worked for the manufacturer, CargoAir; or the operator, World Express. Captain Earl Moore and First Officer Melinda Hendricks, posthumously, would at least be spared that indignity.
Davis dozed for the last hour of the trip. The TGV dropped him right at Lyon s Saint Exupery International Airport. He exited through the rail terminal's high, fan-shaped arches. From there he could have walked to the investigation command center. Instead, Davis found a cab.
It was late morning when he arrived at the crash site.
Chapter SEVEN
Solaize, France
The weather was hard winter, a gunmetal gray sky blurred by darker veils of rain in the distance. Light drizzle swirled on an arbitrary breeze that blustered back and forth, never seeming to settle on a direction. A French breeze, Davis mused.
He knew he wasn't going by the book. He should have checked in first at the investigation's headquarters. Signed off paperwork, gotten somebody's approval. But he always liked one initial look at a crash without distraction, without people pulling him by the elbow to places he didn't want to go.
The cab was at least a half mile from the crash site when an array of barricades and police cordoned off the road. A fleet of forklifts and sturdy flatbed trucks were parked nearby, lying in wait for the awkward task of moving the wreckage to a secure location. It was a difficult undertaking, as the pieces were often huge, some weighing tons. Through all the shifting and manhandling, evidence was invariably lost, damaged, and altered. There should have been a more delicate, clinical way to do it. There wasn't.
A helicopter was hovering beneath the overcast clouds. The craft was almost stationary, side slipping now and again to give the men inside new lines of sight. The aerial photographers had likely been shooting since first light. There would be more photographers on the ground, and nothing on the site would be moved until every angle had been recorded, documented. Davis noticed a line of reporters and civilians standing at the best vantage point, the top of a nearby ridge.
They were all pointing and exchanging comments. Vulture's row. Something like it materialized at all aircraft crashes, onlookers drawn by the same morbid allure, Davis supposed, that made automobile wrecks so interesting.
He paid the cab and sent it away, figuring he wouldn't have any trouble getting a ride later -- there had to be a constant flow of vehicles between the crash site and the center of operations. Following a rise in the road, Davis reached a perimeter that was marked with police tape. Probably four miles of it. Five men and two women, all wearing yellow vests marked policier stood firm at the entry point. When they saw him coming, two of the men moved to stand in his path. That's how things worked when you were a wide six foot four.
One of the policemen held up an arm.
Davis came to a halt.
"This area is closed to the public," the gatekeeper said in French.
Davis pulled out his NTSB identification, said nothing.
The lead man eyed him critically, but stepped away to reference a clipboard. Next he got out his mobile phone. It took two minutes. When he spoke again it was in English. "Very well, monsieur. But you must soon find your proper credentials."<
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Davis nodded. "Merci beaucoupy."
He started walking again. Fifty steps later he crested the hill.
And there it was.
Davis stood still.
It always hit him this way. The first time he saw any accident site he could only stare. Even now, two days after the crash, a few thin currents of smoke drifted up from the charred earth, like the last wisps of steam escaping a once-boiling pot. Everywhere he looked, the colors and textures were those of death. Brown earth, slick and damp from the rain. Blackened, jagged clumps of wreckage strewn in a seemingly random pattern. He had seen the aerial photos, but from ground level the crash site looked different. It always did. The individual pieces of debris seemed incredibly still, an impression at odds with what the sum implied to the contrary -- noise, fire, turmoil.
He shifted his gaze to the horizon. In the midwinter distance, dormant grass and leafless trees gave a dismal frame to the apocalyptic scene. A few broken clumps of mist hovered in the valleys, soft pools to cradle the chaos. Davis began walking again, steering toward the main debris field. A large downed tree was lying prone amid the wreckage, testament to the physical forces that had engaged in one cataclysmic moment. He navigated through a minefield of metal, composite, wire, glass, and fabric. Most was from World Express 801, but a few things had probably already been lying around. An old car tire, beer bottles, a discarded compact disc. That much more for the investigators to sift through.
It was the smell that hit him next, the stinging odor of jet fuel and soot grating on his respiratory tract. At least it wasn't mixed with that other smell, he thought. If there was any good news here, it was that the human element of the tragedy had been minimal. Two pilots. No passengers.
He stopped first at the largest section of wreckage--just like everyone would -- and tried to place it. It was a central section, an arrangement of thick beams and bulkheads. Probably rectangular to begin with, it was now slightly askew. The attached skin and fittings were a mix -- some clean with jagged edges, other parts drooping and charred where the heat had done its work. Davis scanned all around and saw it everywhere -- fire. World Express 801 had probably been carrying a hundred tons of Jet A fuel. A lot of potential energy.
He began walking again. The ground was crisscrossed with deep ruts. These were not a direct result of the crash, Davis knew. Emergency vehicles always dominated the first few hours, and they did a lot of damage, running over debris, indiscriminately spraying water and fire retardant on the whole mess. Nobody could blame them. It was a tough job, and sometimes lives were at stake. But it only added to the forensic nightmare, made the investigators job that much harder.
Davis stepped over a large metal tube that had one end ripped apart in three sections -- it formed a perfect fleur-de-lis. He found a cockpit instrument panel, a twelve-inch square liquid-crystal display.
The glass screen was intact in its frame, black and empty, and a cable covered in melted insulation snaked out from the back. In years past, flight instruments were round dials with needles, "steam gauges" in the parlance. In those days, you could tell how fast an airplane was going when it hit by finding the indentation the airspeed pointer made on its glass cover plate. Now things were different. The actual instruments were void, black masks that hid whatever had existed at the moment of impact. The only way to tell was to mine chip sets, dig into memory cards, read bits of data. Clinical and secretive.
Davis drew to a stop and put his hands on his hips. He took one last look at the scene, taking a mental picture as he had done many times before. Not for the official record. It was just for his own sake.
By chance, airplanes could crash anywhere. By design, crash investigations were almost always based at airfields. The reasons were many. Airports were publicly owned, had communications gear, buildings to support meetings, trucks and tugs to haul things around. And they had hangars to hold wreckage. Sometimes there were only a few massive pieces involved. Sometimes there were millions. But a vacant hangar was always the way to go.
Davis hitched a ride with a photographer, an amiable Parisian who'd contracted himself out for air crash work to support his more artistic side -- landscape black-and-whites. Like a good starving artist, he gave Davis his portfolio to study on the twenty-minute drive. The guy was actually good. As far as Jammer Davis could tell.
Davis got a good look at the Lyon airport as they drove. It was a fairly busy regional hub, maybe a dozen midsized jets nested at the passenger terminals. The terminal buildings had a modernist tilt, two grandiose main structures that reached for the sky. It was getting to be an architectural cliche, he thought. Give an airport designer a blank check, and you'd get no end of columns, arches, wings, and height.
The photographer drove around the airfield on a perimeter road, skirting the two north-south runways. He pulled into a quiet corner of the airport, a place that in the States might have been referred to as a "business park." There were groups of offices, workshops, and hangars. The photographer pointed to the correct building. Davis thanked the fellow and wished him luck. He really meant it, too.
It was labeled soixante-deux. Building Sixty-two. A boxy two-story support complex was attached to a larger hanger. Both seemed relatively new. Davis could just make out the faint impression of a name on the hangar s corrugated sidewall where the large letters of a sign had been removed. All that remained was a shadow where the paint had weathered unevenly -- primaire. The name stood there like some pale, ghostly apparition, serving as the headstone of yet another European budget airline gone into receivership. Now the place had found a new life. Any remains of the carcass of primaire had been exhumed. Padlocks were snapped off, electricity restored, and the floors swept up. Building Sixty-two had been fully requisitioned and prepared for the cause of World Express 801.
At the main entrance a woman sat behind a table. She was shuffling papers, a bureaucratic bird featherbedding her nest with forms and messages. She was good at it, three neat piles. In, Out, Trash, Davis guessed. If she were a cashier, she'd be the type who put every bill in the tray face up, aligned the same way. He stopped right in front of her.
"Bonjour. Je suis Jammer Davis." He pronounced the J in his name hard, not wanting anybody to start calling him Zhammer.
The woman smiled officiously. "Yes, Mr. Davis. The investigator-in-charge has been expecting you."
She had gone right to English. Davis wondered if his French was that rusty. The woman checked his NTSB identification and said, "Follow me."
At the mouth of a hallway they passed a single rent-a-gendarme. He was sitting in a chair smoking a cigarette and reading Le Monde. Security, Davis reckoned. The first stop was a small office. The woman arranged Davis against a blank wall, then picked up a camera that was connected to a computer by a cable.
"Don't smile," she said.
"But I'm happy."
A disapproving frown.
Davis gave a subtle kink to his upper lip. All the pose needed was a number board hanging around his neck, maybe a height scale on the wall.
There was a click, and the woman started pressing buttons to feed his picture to the computer. As they waited for the finished product, she handed him a folder. Inside was a single page labeled, "Rules of Conduct for Investigators." Don't talk to the press without approval. Dress standards. A code of personal conduct. At the top of the page was a little cartoon policeman blowing a whistle. In case you didn't know what "rules" were, Davis supposed.
Minutes later, the woman handed over a smart photo ID with a lanyard. Davis hung it around his neck and fell back into formation. As they left the room he discreetly dropped the rulebook into a trash can.
They ended up in the hangar, a cavernous place with bright fluorescent lights that gave full detail and color to every thing. The place was cold, and Davis wondered if it simply wasn't heated or if the heat had been turned off in some misguided effort to preserve evidence. An assortment of tugs, forklifts, and handcarts buzzed around in a frenzy, clearing the
concrete floor so the remains of World Express 801 could be brought to its postmortem slab.
He followed his escort to the middle of the place where a group was gathered around someone giving a talk. The angles changed as Davis got closer, and he was surprised to see a large piece of wreckage. Usually debris was left in the field for the best part of a week, until every inch had been meticulously mapped and documented. This investigation was barely forty-eight hours old, so Davis decided that whoever was in charge was either very efficient or very rushed.
He settled into the fringe of the crowd. The wreckage was a large section of the cockpit, left front side. The captain's seat was still recognizable, though its back panel had been exposed to heat -- the plastic was discolored and shot with a thousand tiny bubbles. It was a mystery how airplanes broke apart. Jagged metal and scorched wire bundles might surround a pristine section of seats or instruments, hardware that looked as fresh as the day it had come out of the factory. A photographer was at least snapping pictures from all angles, and a young woman was busy labeling parts and entering data into a laptop. Maybe they were just organized.