Phoenix Rising

by Nance, John J. ;

  The poisonous comment settled over the audience like a shroud. His eyes were hard and hateful and boring into her. How she answered this would be the ball game.

  Elizabeth reached for a reserve of strength and confidence and found it. Her smile never wavered as she glanced at the ceiling for a second, smiling even more broadly, like a tenured professor achingly familiar with questions he’d answered a thousand times, yet determined to indulge the student as an intellectual equal.

  “Lord Richards,” she began, noting the subtle facial response that confirmed his surprise that she knew his name, “you were the driving force behind the successful growth of St. James Publishing through the acquisition of two old-line hardcover houses in New York and the acquisition of a major Japanese publishing house.” She was reaching to the bottom of her memory, marshaling a dozen half-read magazine articles and praying she wasn’t overstepping her ability to recall the details, but the facts came cascading in from distant corners of her mind.

  “You, sir, in 1989, if I recall correctly, faced a massive difficulty on Wall Street when a major junk-bond issue was imperiled by the Boesky scandal, and what at that time was your highly leveraged empire seemed to be virtually teetering on the brink. You needed that financing badly to complete the plan you’d already set in motion, but you told the financial community in a series of meetings that your basic enterprises—the components of this empire—were very sound and well run and profitable. They almost didn’t listen to you, because they didn’t know you in America, and in fact a number of your backers bolted. You had to refinance the entire package and issue new common stock as well as bonds, a process that cost you millions of pounds and months of time. Do I have my facts straight, Sir Edward?”

  She held her breath as she watched his face, which remained impassive for a few seconds. Finally a slow, sly smile began to spread across his craggy features as he answered. “Indeed you do, Miss Sterling.”

  “Good. Because my point is that those who believed you and stuck with you in what was an artificial crisis profited handsomely, and I have long admired you for not giving up in the face of rancid opposition. In regard to the sound and profitable nature of your company, the world discovered that you were telling the truth …”

  She looked directly in his eyes, relieved to see him soften a bit and nod, a gesture observed by everyone else in the room.

  “… and, sir, so am I.”

  The papers were faxed to Seattle to a surprised Chad Jennings, who signed them as acting president and faxed them back by 3:30 P.M. By 4:00 P.M., Barclay’s Bank had transferred via wire eighty-five million dollars in loan proceeds to Pan Am’s main receiving account at Seafirst Bank in Seattle.

  22

  Friday, March 17, 10:00 A.M.

  Pan Am Headquarters, Seattle

  As Elizabeth Sterling settled back in a first-class seat aboard a British Airways flight direct from London to Seattle, an exhausted Brian Murphy was sounding an alarm to a roomful of shocked executives eight time zones away at Pan Am headquarters—and fielding questions laced with contempt.

  Acting President Chad Jennings and most of the company senior executives had listened quietly to the idea that the three largest airlines in the country would ever engage in a criminal conspiracy to put Pan Am out of business, and had rejected it totally.

  One by one, however, Brian had poked holes in any alternate theory. Ninety minutes after he started, the leaders of the new Pan Am filed out of the boardroom in a dazed consensus: apparently someone was out to ruin the new Pan Am.

  Chad Jennings was still in the boardroom, questioning Brian, when Ralph Basanji, Pan Am’s public affairs vice-president, arrived late for the meeting and caught corporate general counsel Jack Rawly on his way out the door.

  “Can you fill me in what happened in there, Jack? I couldn’t get away in time.”

  Rawly nodded and wordlessly motioned Basanji toward the elevators.

  “I heard,” Basanji continued, “that our chief pilot has a theory on what happened to his flight. What’d he say in there?”

  Rawly silently put his finger to his lips as they rode down to the Fifth Avenue level.

  “Care for a latte, Ralph?” Rawly asked at last, pointing to a Starbuck’s coffee shop in the corner of the main floor.

  “Sure.” Basanji lowered his voice as he scanned around, looking for eavesdroppers. “Why the secrecy?”

  Once again Rawly’s finger came up to his lips as they ordered the espresso coffee drinks, and then retreated to a tiny table in the far corner by a plate-glass window that separated them from the street.

  The corporate lawyer leaned over toward Basanji then, and cupped his hand, speaking in an urgent, low voice.

  “Basically, Captain Murphy thinks we’re under some sort of a coordinated assault designed to assist the big three in dominating the North American market. The theory is ridiculous and dangerous.”

  Basanji looked as if he’d been punched in the nose without warning, and Rawly raised his eyebrows to echo the surprise before continuing. “Murphy’s had a hell of a couple of days, and his actions are heroic, but I think he’s been without sleep too long.” Rawly took a sip of his caffe latte and continued, “I’ll admit he gave us a compelling argument that all the things that have been happening to us could be a coordinated assault by someone, but the overall question of exactly who could be responsible is a ticking bomb if we go off half-cocked and accuse someone powerful.”

  “What do you mean, ‘coordinated’? What’s coordinated? The Clipper Ten bomb and Clipper Forty’s problem? I expected that.”

  “No. There’s more,” Rawly said. “Murphy’s convinced that the files taken from his office were taken by the same people he says are creating deficiencies in our maintenance and training sections and then turning us in to the FAA for those same artificially created deficiencies. We’re being framed, in other words. In addition, he thinks they’re the same ones who’ve been giving our new CFO so much trouble trying to borrow more money, and the same people who’ve criminally sabotaged our aircraft. This is like listening to the John Birch Society’s views on the American political process. Everything’s riddled with sinister conspiracies, and ‘they’ are out to get us—whoever ‘they’ are.”

  “What if he’s right?” Basanji asked.

  “He may be!” Rawly shot back. “But to my way of thinking, the idea that the big three airlines would ever have anything to do with such a campaign is crazy!”

  Basanji shook his head silently and stared at the street. Rawly let the silence sit for a few seconds before speaking again.

  “Ralph, we may have a problem here. Jennings is buying this theory, and a few minutes ago up there he was talking about going public with his suspicions. Even Brian Murphy seemed horrified and warned him not to. But I saw a look in Chad Jennings’s eye that has me spooked.”

  Ralph Basanji’s mouth dropped open. “Going public?”

  “You know, to the media. Your bailiwick. Your turf.”

  “He … he wouldn’t!”

  “He might. And he could trigger a massive lawsuit if he did. We certainly don’t need that right now, any more than we need to make enemies of the big boys.” Rawly paused, studying Basanji.

  “Surely he knows better than to accuse other airlines of … of …”

  “Does he? I don’t know Chad all that well, Ralph. How prudent is he?”

  Basanji shook his head. “He’s not, really. You’re right about that. He’s a loose cannon—very smart, but temperamental and brash and sometimes embarrassingly immature. He’s—” A Pan Am middle-level manager Basanji recognized passed outside the window at street level, and the public affairs chief glanced at him self-consciously. The man was looking down the street, however, and Basanji felt momentarily silly for hesitating. He turned back to the company attorney. “He’s like an actor who occasionally steps out of character. As long as he’s in character, he’s great. But let something not go his way—get him upset, in other
words—and Chad can become a petulant child.”

  “Wonderful,” Rawly said, dripping sarcasm. “Does Joe Taylor have any idea of this?”

  Ralph Basanji shook his head. “Taylor doesn’t really know half of us very well. Ron Lamb assembled this management team.”

  “How much stock does Jennings hold?” Rawly asked out of the blue.

  “Our stock?”

  “Yes. I can look it up, of course, but I wondered if you might know.”

  Ralph Basanji studied Jack Rawly’s face. The veteran corporate lawyer was difficult to read, but there was something worrisome behind that question.

  Brian Murphy’s rapid departure from the Columbia Center past the same coffee bar went unnoticed by Basanji and Rawly. His appointment with the FBI was set for 11:00 A.M. at the Federal Building, several blocks away. He was already late.

  Agent Miller and NTSB field investigator Michael Rogers were waiting for him in a small, utilitarian conference room.

  “Okay, Brian,” Miller began, “on the file folder we found only one print not attributable to your staff, and it was someone’s single index finger. That print, however, is a bit strange. It’s as if the guy took off a glove at one point and purposefully left a single print on the folder. It was clear, crisp, and pressed right into the fibers. For everything else he did, I’ll bet your burglar wore latex gloves, but I’m beginning to believe the man replaced the folder on purpose—like he wanted to be discovered.”

  Brian was confused by the presence of the NTSB man, but put the matter aside for the moment.

  “Have you matched the print to anyone?” Brian asked.

  Miller shook his head and raised a finger. “Wait. There’s more.” He smiled a knowing smile and pulled some papers from a transmittal folder. “We have found a better set of fingerprints on one of the circuit boards in that black box of yours.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I’m here,” Mike Rogers added.

  Miller plopped the papers down in front of Brian.

  “The index fingerprint from your black box, and the index fingerprint on your file folder?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They match! They belong to the same individual! The guy who rifled your files, and most likely tipped the FAA, also had contact with the circuit board that forced you down in the Arctic.”

  Miller let that sink in before continuing. “If the owner of these prints is in the national files—criminal, military, government service, or anything else—we’ll find him. I’ve made it a high-priority search in Washington.”

  Brian mulled that over for a few seconds before looking up. “Would you let the FAA know this too?”

  Miller nodded. “Already have. But we’ve got still more to tell you.”

  Brian found himself sitting on the edge of the chair.

  “Go ahead. Please.”

  Mike Rogers took over.

  “Okay, you’ll recall we found some pieces of chromium on the underside of the wing of Clipper Ten, the 747?”

  Brian nodded, and Rogers continued, “You also know about the newspaper reporter who got a tip that a mechanic’s wrench had been left in the engine?”

  “I saw the article. The little jerk tried to imply we were feigning sabotage to cover up our so-called negligence.”

  Rogers nodded. “Adrian Kirsch was the reporter you’re talking about, but give the man credit. He came to me and reported the phoned-in tip before he printed it. I tried to make light of it to throw him off, but he saw through that. I, in turn, reported it instantly to Loren here. Though we weren’t sure at first, we all now believe that the man who called Kirsch was the same one who planted the bomb on Clipper Ten. He knew damn well there was no wrench in that engine, but he’d set it up to look that way.”

  “How?” Brian asked.

  “We think the plastic explosive was wrapped around a real chrome-plated wrench and placed inside the cowling near the top of the engine, where it connects to the pylon. We also believe he intended to just blow the engine off the wing at the strut and leave some residue of the wrench. He had to realize that if we found the engine, we’d know instantly it hadn’t come apart from anything maintenance had done, so he tried to time it so the engine would drop offshore.”

  “Didn’t he know you’d find explosive residue too?” Brian asked.

  “Probably figured we’d seize on the wrench first. It was a sloppy plan. Whoever designed it was not a professional saboteur. He used far too much plastic explosive. We confirmed the presence of plastique residue on the underside of the wing at about the same time your man Conrad dredged up the engine.”

  “Wait a minute!” Brian said. “You mean this guy had no intention of crashing the aircraft?”

  “I don’t think he did,” Miller said. “If your intention is to blow an airplane out of the sky over the ocean, you’d figure the wreckage might never be brought to the surface, or if it was, that it would take a long, long time to find it. Therefore, planting any misleading pieces of metal, like pieces of a wrench, on an airplane you expected to blow away would be a wasted effort. They’d never be found and you’d never get your red herring across.”

  Brian nodded, his eyes widening. “In other words, if you want to make Pan Am look incompetent, you do just enough damage to destroy the engine in a way that makes it look like mechanical failure, but you want the airplane to limp back so all this can be found out.”

  “Exactly,” Rogers replied.

  “By the same logic, then,” Brian said, “provided it’s the same guy, he didn’t expect I’d lose both engines in flight with what he did to the circuit board, which means that in the case of my flight he may have been trying to cause an in-flight abort and merely cost us money and public humiliation.”

  “We’re still looking at the circuit board,” Miller said. “One of our technical people has flown it out to the manufacturer, and we’re supposed to get word today on what the saboteur was trying to get the board to do.”

  Miller was studying Brian’s face. “You see any logic in all this, Brian?”

  Brian Murphy sat impassively for a second, staring at the wall as his mind turned over the possibilities. Slowly his head began to move up and down before he turned to the FBI agent and the NTSB investigator and snapped his fingers.

  “It fits. It dovetails.”

  Loren Miller and Mike Rogers glanced at each other in puzzlement.

  Brian jumped to his feet, his eyes aflame, and began pacing.

  “I decided yesterday that all this garbage we’ve been going through was part of a single, coordinated campaign to run us out of business, but I had no proof, and I had no unifying motive. I needed a unified field theory, so to speak. Something that would explain why someone was not only creating trouble for us with the FAA, stealing files, and blocking us economically in the marketplace, but why such a person or persons would also try to commit mass murder. Everything made sense except the sabotage of our airplanes.” He turned to Miller with the palms of his hands held to the ceiling. “You know, why in God’s name would anyone who was just trying to run an airline out of business for economic reasons resort to wholesale slaughter? But that’s just it! He didn’t, and you’ve hit on the answer! Whoever did this was an amateur at sabotage, someone who was just trying to cause trouble for us, not kill people. In both cases, though, he went too far and screwed it up.”

  Loren Miller sat with his head cupped in one hand, his fingers tapping the side of his face thoughtfully as he watched Brian and listened to his words.

  “Any idea who the perpetrator might be?” Miller asked.

  Brian nodded. “Not a name, but a type. The sort of person or persons you’re looking for would not normally know how to buy plastic explosives or how to get their hands on the right black box, let alone mess around with the circuit boards. A person like that would have had help for the technical aspects. Since he or she wouldn’t know where to find it, there should be a trail a mile long for the FBI to follow. These have to be trial-and-er
ror saboteurs, and I’d guess at least one principal and a confederate or two. There should be a bunch of people who’d remember dealing with someone purchasing parts and asking strange technical questions about the avionics of a Boeing 767.”

  Loren Miller made a note on a steno pad in front of him and looked up with a smile.

  Brian studied the FBI agent’s face before continuing. “One other thing, and this is just a guess, too, but I’ll bet that when you find this individual, you’ll find he was working for one or more of our competitors.” He outlined his suspicions of the big three carriers.

  Loren Miller listened carefully, as did Mike Rogers, but neither man seemed eager to accept the theory.

  Miller cleared his throat at last. “There’s one more item you and your company need to be aware of. The Bureau is of the opinion that someone on the inside is making this sabotage campaign much easier for whoever’s carrying out the specific acts.”

  “A Pan Am employee, you mean?” Brian knew he sounded alarmed. Hadn’t they eliminated that possibility when none of the employee fingerprints matched the one Miller had found on the file?

  Brian let his mind flash quickly back over the assumption. All Pan Am employees were supposed to have their fingerprints on file. Even company officers. He remembered Ron Lamb complaining good-naturedly about the ink on his fingers when they took his prints, so that had to mean everyone. Unless …