The holes that had burned through the fuselage skin were now acting as vents to clear the smoke, giving Lou a clearer view of what had happened. There was a tangle of severed control cables—tough, stainless steel cables, thick as a child’s crayon—burned clean through by the thermite.
The plane’s nose started to come up; they were no longer descending quite so fast. Fred called out, “HEY, THAT’S GOOD! YOU’RE SHIFTING THE C-G AFT!”
“I’M DOING WHAT?”
“YOU’RE SHIFTING THE C-G…THE CENTER OF GRAVITY. GO BACK A LITTLE FARTHER, LOUIE.”
But Lou was nearly face-to-face with the flames. “I WOULD IF I COULD, BROTHER.” Using his overcoat as insulation from the intense brightness and heat of the flames, he tried to break away pieces of the burning, weakened metal and jettison them through the scorched holes in the skin.
It was a losing proposition; the overcoat was burning up, too. Lou’s hands and face were being blistered and worse by the heat. If he looked directly into the white-hot flames, he was sure he would go blind. With the charred remnants of his overcoat, Lou managed to snuff out the smoldering ends of the severed control cables.
“THE CABLES ARE BURNED THROUGH, FREDDY.”
Fred’s mind reached into its bag of emergency procedures. OK…Loss of elevator control: use power and move the C-G to maintain pitch control.
They were at 1000 feet. The descent had slowed to barely 100 feet per minute.
Lou was no stranger to the workings of an airplane; the war had seen to that. He could tell by looking at the control quadrants in the tail which of the red-hot cables worked the elevators and which the rudders. The elevators were far more critical at the moment, the up elevator especially. Ignoring the searing pain, he grabbed the aft end of the severed up elevator cable with one hand.
Now he needed to sort out the forward cable runs, the four that went to the control yoke and rudder pedals. He grabbed and pulled those cables with his other hand. “FREDDY, I’VE GOT SOMETHING HERE…REAL GENTLE LIKE, PULL BACK ON THE YOKE.” Sensing which of the cables was tightening, he said, “OK…THAT’S GOOD.”
It was sorted out—Lou DiNapoli had become a human link in the airplane’s control system. He knew he would pay the price in third-degree burns, but that price was still cheaper than death.
“GO AHEAD, FREDDY…FLY THE UP ELEVATOR.”
Gingerly, Fred pulled back on the yoke. Feeling the pull on the cable in his right hand, Lou pulled on the cable in his left—and the plane’s nose began to rise.
“HEY! YOU’VE GOT IT, LOUIE! CAN YOU GET DOWN ELEVATOR? AND RUDDERS, TOO?”
“I’VE ONLY GOT TWO FUCKING HANDS, FREDDY. GOING UP’S THE PROBLEM. WHEN YOU PULL, I PULL. WE CAN ALWAYS GET HER TO GO DOWN, RIGHT?”
Fred had to admit it: Louie was right. It was easy to get an airplane to go down: just chop the power and down she went. Going up was always the hard part—you needed the elevators for that. They could live without the rudder, too, as long as both engines kept running. The turns won’t be so pretty, that’s all.
Fred relaxed a little. They were flying straight and level. He had the barest semblance of control. Just got to get ourselves to the nearest airport... He ran his finger across the map clipped to the sidewall. Stamford…maybe Bridgeport.
Lou’s frantic cry broke Fred’s deliberations. “FREDDY…I CAN’T HOLD THIS SHIT MUCH LONGER. AND WE’VE STILL GOT A FIRE BACK HERE…THE FUCKING TAIL’S GONNA BURN OFF PRETTY SOON!”
Tension gripped Fred once again. So much for that “nearest airport” shit…We’re going in the drink.
“LOUIE, WE’VE GOT TO DITCH!”
“NO SHIT!”
“I’M GOING TO CUT THE THROTTLES AND EASE HER DOWN…WE’RE GONNA NEED A LOT OF ELEVATOR TO FLARE JUST BEFORE HITTING THE WATER.”
“COUNT ME IN, BROTHER. JUST HURRY THE FUCK UP.”
There was just not enough time to do everything you should do before ditching. But there was one thing Fred knew he must do. He grabbed the microphone.
“MAYDAY MAYDAY. THIS IS PIPER 9814 KILO. POSITION OVER THE SOUND, SIX MILES SOUTH-SOUTHEAST STAMFORD. WE’RE GOING IN THE WATER.”
Fred had no idea if anyone answered; he was too busy to listen. They were 100 feet off the water and dropping fast.
“OK, LOUIE…THIS IS IT!” Fred pulled back hard on the control yoke.
Lou could not help but scream as his grip tightened to relay Fred’s input to the elevator; the pain was that intense. But he hung on—he did the job. The nose rose sharply. The descent slowed…
And then the tail snapped off. Everything that kept the plane pointed where you wanted it to go was gone in an instant. The plane nosed over violently, slammed into the water, and ripped apart. The wreckage sank in seconds.
Nothing but air bubbles and a slick of aviation gasoline rose to the surface.
Chapter Seventy-One
Take as long as you need, the mathematics department chairman had said while pushing the leave of absence on Joe Gelardi. After the events of the last few weeks, Joe was certain: he did not need to absent himself from the Institute any longer. He needed to busy himself as he always had, with teaching. He owed it to his students to guide them through the completion of the semester before heading for Armonk.
Hell, there’s no hurry tendering my resignation…I haven’t even seen the IBM contract yet. The wheels of corporate bureaucracy must grind even slower than those of a university. If I don’t return to the classroom, I’ll dwell on this Pilcher-Pola-pigeonshit business…and slowly go out of my mind.
The chairman was wholeheartedly in favor of Joe’s return. The strange abduction of a student from outside the Gelardi home had brought a new, unforeseen element to the equation of his absence. The Institute could be cast in a very bad light if the unfounded, but inevitable, talk of an “unstable” professor’s possible involvement in this bizarre episode made the news. Fortunately, the police did not seem to be very interested in Meredith Salinger’s brief ordeal. Consequently, the press was not interested, either.
More importantly, the Institute had gotten wind of some really fortuitous news: the official police report did not even mention anything about Joe Gelardi, other than the sidewalk outside his home was the site of the abduction and his home was the location of Meredith’s follow-up interview by state police detectives. Nothing wrong there: students frequently visited faculty homes. But if the police were to change their mind and decide to probe deeper, it would be most important for everything to appear perfectly normal at the Institute. A leave of absence would cause questions to be raised.
The chairman had become far more concerned with another facet of Joe’s absence: the senior faculty had been far too busy with their own courses and research to assume a colleague’s classes in mid-semester. The graduate teaching assistant the chairman had selected as Joe’s replacement came from a miniscule pool of possible substitutes. This teaching assistant, a young man named S.P. Hagedorn, had quickly proven himself not up to the task. To be more precise, Joe Gelardi’s brilliant students—especially the superlative Miss Salinger—were eating the incompetent Mr. Hagedorn for lunch, consistently indicating a better grasp of the subject matter than their new teacher. The rapidly spreading joke throughout the department was that S.P. stood for sleeping pill, uninspiring and sleep-inducing as Hagedorn’s classroom presence was. The chairman could not allow the academic standards of the Institute to appear compromised, and it was too late in the semester to replace Mr. Hagedorn with yet another novice teacher.
The mathematics department would, therefore, welcome Joe back from his brief absence with open arms, as if he had suffered nothing more serious than an appendectomy. In the shadow of new events, the emotional disturbances that triggered Joe’s leave of absence remained unexplained, unresolved, and nearly forgotten in the Institute’s collective memory.
Now he was back. In his first class, Number Theory, the students were relieved and delighted to have him. Joe watched with joy and pride as student
after student paraded to the blackboard to expand on the numerical progression exercise he had proposed at the beginning of the class. He gave the students center stage, retreating to a window ledge seat at the back of the classroom, interjecting infrequently and only when necessary to guide the discussion or propose a new twist.
It was Meredith’s turn at the blackboard. As usual, she found the work child’s play, neatly tying up a challenging equation effortlessly. When she turned to ask Professor Gelardi if it was okay to propose a corollary to her solution, she stopped in mid-sentence; the professor seemed to be in a trance as he stared out the window, not responding to her question.
Oh, no! she thought. Please don’t tell me he’s doing it again!
The look of alarm on her face made the class turn as one to Joe at the back of the room. Many had seen this crazed look of his before, and his frightening collapse that followed, when those boys had engaged in horseplay on the roof of the adjacent building. They had all felt the sting of the words nervous breakdown, for they had seen it with their own eyes. Now, that sting was back, and this time, they feared, it would take him from them for good.
They could not hear the voice in Joe’s head: He fell…he died. We did nothing about it. Could Pola be right? Is this the time to tell what we know?
And then, just as quickly as he had slipped away, he snapped out of it. “I’m sorry…did I miss something?” he asked, an inquisitive smile on his face. “Miss Salinger, I believe the floor is still yours. Keep it rolling.” Signaling for her to proceed, he whirled an outstretched finger playfully above his head—the signal to start aircraft engines. As he walked confidently to the blackboard, that finger still whirling in the air, the room shuddered with a collective sigh of relief.
Chapter Seventy-Two
Allegra Wise took one look around the room and thought, Welcome to hack heaven.
She was the only female among a dozen reporters prowling New York City Police Headquarters. Most of the others were older, wizened, and rumpled. Though one or two actually loved working the police blotter, most long ago accepted that they were stuck in a lackluster niche for the rest of their working days. Then there was the starry-eyed kid, sure that this was just the first rung in his meteoric rise up the ladder of success.
Allegra suddenly felt old and wizened, too. I felt like that kid once, when I first got put on the blotter in Pittsburgh. Boy, was I stupid. All you get here is small stories about small crimes...Maybe I should think about changing careers.
One of the old reporters welcomed her with the good-natured camaraderie of a fellow slogger. “Hey, Ally…how’d you get stuck here? I thought you were a real comer.”
Drearily, she replied, “Just lucky, I guess.”
As long as I’m here, she figured, I might as well try to do some work. Unlike the others present, she was not much for killing time with crossword puzzles, pinochle, or Mickey Spillane paperbacks. A rotund sergeant had just waddled through and dropped the latest summary of today’s police reports on the table. Allegra got her hands on it first.
Same shit, different day, she thought as she flipped through the summary. On the very last page, something finally caught her eye. It was the report of an attack on an NYU professor and the killing of the assailant by a private security guard. It went on to mention both the professor and the security guard were Swedish citizens. The assailant’s identity had not yet been determined.
Boy! Someone’s hushing this up pretty good…Can’t believe this didn’t make the Daily News already.. And why would a professor need a private security guard, unless…Whoa! Wait a minute! Swedish citizens? Just days after Sweden’s announcement about the Pilcher investigation? Could there be a connection? Or am I just dreaming?
Allegra jotted down the name of the professor and hurried to a phone. Pacing nervously as far as the phone’s cord would allow, she got the NYU switchboard on the line. “Operator, I need the number for Pola Nilsson-MacLeish…That’s correct, she’s faculty.”
Chapter Seventy-Three
The hulking blond man guarding the hotel room door had taken quite a while to check her bag and scrutinize her press credentials. Is smiling against this guy’s religion or something? Allegra Wise thought, her impatience boiling over and becoming obvious. Yet, the guard remained expressionless and unhurried. He spoke English slowly, with a thick Swedish accent that lacked inflection. “We cannot be too careful,” he said, “after the attempt on the professor’s life.”
Looks like they’ve got the careful part covered, that’s for sure. This guy’s obviously packing...That’s one hell of a bulge under his jacket. She did not dare complain when he asked her to remove her coat and gave her a polite frisking.
“I understand, sir, believe me,” Allegra said, hoping agreeableness might hurry this process along. She just might be the first reporter to get Pola Nilsson-MacLeish’s incredible story. For all she knew, though, some bigwig like Edward R. Murrow could stroll out of the elevator any second, leaving Allegra Wise out in the cold and out of luck.
Finally, the guard returned her press credentials. “Everything seems in order,” he said as he opened the door to the suite and allowed Allegra to enter. The opulence of the suite surprised Allegra. Pretty fancy digs! Some of these professors must really rake it in.
At the far end of the sitting room, near the curtained windows, Pola Nilsson-MacLeish rose from a plush easy chair to greet her. The professor was dignified, relaxed, and smiling, everything Allegra was not at the moment. She clasped Allegra’s offered hand with both of her own.
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Professor MacLeish.”
“Please, dear, call me Pola. May I call you Allegra? Such a beautiful name.”
Allegra felt her tension begin to drain away. “Why so formal? Call me Ally,” she said, punctuating her words with a buoyant laugh. Pola’s unlikely Scottish accent, that had so surprised her when they spoke on the phone just a few hours ago, now charmed and soothed Allegra like a warm ocean breeze. They settled into comfortable armchairs.
“Tell me, Pola, am I really the only reporter you’ve spoken to?”
“Yes, you are. I had every intention of offering my story to any American newspaper or broadcast network who would listen, but you connected the dots first and found me before I was fully ready to come forward.” Pola picked up a tall stack of handwritten pages on the table between them. “You’ve forced me to get my notes in order a little sooner than I planned. I don’t want to end up looking as bonkers as Anthony Moscone did in the American media.”
The serene smile faded from Pola’s face. “That doesn’t explain your eagerness, though, does it, Ally? I’ve already checked…You’re not here on behalf of your network.”
Allegra swallowed hard. She felt like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Shit! If she checked with CBS, Sid already knows what I’m doing. That blows my element of surprise with him. But she bluffed with some hard-nosed self-confidence. “I’m a reporter, Pola. If I smell a good story…”
Pola’s smile returned as she cut Allegra off. “No need to be defensive, Ally. You’re just what I need at the moment…a reporter genuinely willing to listen.”
Lady, you’re just what I need at the moment, too, Allegra thought. She relaxed and flipped open her notebook.
“That gentleman at the door,” Allegra said. “Is he the one who shot and killed your assailant?”
“Oh, no, dear. Although Mr. Andersson enjoyed diplomatic immunity as an embassy official, it was far better for all concerned if he left the country immediately.” Pola smiled reassuringly before continuing. “Don’t worry…I’m still very well protected. I trust you found Mr. Bjorkman quite thorough?”
Allegra tried her best not to sound sarcastic as she recalled the frisking. “Yes. Very thorough.”
The interview began in earnest. The sordid story unfolded: Malmö, Pilcher, Linker, the murder she saw. When Allegra asked, Pola recited the roster of Pilcher’s crew in Sweden. “Ther
e was David Linker, of course, Edwin Morris, and the poor lad who hung himself, Frank Hughes. Then there was Anthony Moscone. And Joseph Gelardi.”
“Did you get to know any of them well?”
“Morris and Hughes, not at all…Linker, a bit…And Moscone? No. His condition made things very difficult. But Joseph and I were friends. Good friends. In fact, we met recently for the first time since the war, here in New York City.”
The excitement those words triggered in Allegra’s body caused a tingling that was almost sexual. I knew it! I knew Gelardi was holding something back. They were friends, she says. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, honey…That sparkle in your eyes when you said his name…I’ll bet dollars to donuts you two were fucking. And lovers share secrets…
But Allegra’s mental victory dance was short. Even if she was right about Joe and Pola being lovers, it still netted her exactly zero. Gelardi could continue to stonewall her questions until she was blue in the face. All she had gained was one—and only one—potentially credible witness to Leonard Pilcher’s crime in Pola MacLeish. The confirmation of another credible witness still eluded her—and this MacLeish woman seems fully aware of how easily the media—or a politician—could destroy a witness if they so desired. Just like with Moscone, Pilcher could skate away from her allegations, too.
It was time for Allegra to go for broke. “Do you think anyone else, besides you and Tony Moscone, could have witnessed this murder?”
Pola smiled coyly. Her serenity was not about to be shattered. “That’s unknowable, my dear.”
That was not the answer Allegra was hoping for. She either really doesn’t know…or Professor MacLeish is the greatest poker player in the world.
“Will you be seeing Professor Gelardi again?” Allegra asked.
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