Charat stopped and his hands descended slowly to his lap as his eyes fixed on Joe, who was holding his breath.
“Yes?” Joe asked it at last, seeing that the Airbus representative was waiting for an invitation to present his coup de grace.
“The pilots commanded those changes. Whoever was flying pushed the nose over and failed to pull it back until too late. Our airplane only did what it was told. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Joe caught himself sighing, his right palm held up in the air as an unconscious gesture of frustration. These men were sincere, surely. But they were anything but neutral. They had an airplane to protect, and their conclusion was suspect. “The captain says he never pushed forward.”
“The captain, sir, is either lying or deluded.”
“That’s quite a statement, Mr. Charat.”
“And these fanciful and uninformed statements we are hearing, making electronically impossible accusations against our flight-control system, are they not inflammatory too? I tell you, we have information that there are some in the FAA who want to ground the airplanes.”
Joe knew his face was being studied for the slightest flicker of a muscle. Charat must know something of Caldwell’s attitude, he decided. Or he’s a skillful fisherman, casting out his worst nightmare, looking for a ripple on the water of official normalcy. When Joe could stand the impasse no longer, he shook his head. “No one’s going to ground your airplane unless there’s a clear and certain reason.”
“Oh?” Charat sat back, a scowl crossing his features. A Gallic scowl, Joe thought. The French were so good at acting as if they’d been mortally insulted, or was that an unfair, almost bigoted impression? The French executive leaned forward again. “And you are not aware, Mr. Wallingford, that certain people within the FAA have already started threatening the A320 with grounding if it cannot be proven to their satisfaction that no control problems could possibly be involved? Is that not an impossible standard?”
“What, exactly, are you referring to?” Joe asked, having just barely stopped himself from asking, “What, exactly, do you know?”
“We have our sources. And we know of certain FAA officials with ties to American manufacturers who would love to ground the 320 for months. We … I … hope that you, as an investigator with an impeccable record for balance and honesty, will not permit that to happen.”
They parted amicably, but Joe was deeply worried. The only explanation that made any sense was a system failure, either internally or induced by radio interference, and yet they had made a convincing case against it. But the hints about Bill Caldwell and his stand on the 320—as well as his intentions—had unnerved Joe. As Charat was leaving, he half mumbled something Joe did not quite understand. Now the words coalesced, as if his mental computer had needed time to decipher a coded message. “Check,” Charat had said under his breath, “who owns stock in which aircraft builders before deciding who to believe at FAA.” It was most likely a desperate gambit, a scandalous sidelong accusation against anyone in government who opposed their airplane. But like a multipronged fishhook snagged in the skin, it was going to be hard to dislodge.
If the men from Airbus were right that their flight controls were blameless, then Joe would have to accept the idea that Dick Timson, chief pilot, highly experienced captain, and a company vice-president, purposefully or negligently pushed the nose of his aircraft into a shallow dive at a point in time when such a thing would be, in effect, an act of suicidal stupidity, and of all the possibilities, that made the least sense. In fact, it gave more credence to the theory of electronic interference.
Joe found a phone at the back of the ballroom and called Barbara’s hospital room. She was supposed to be released on Thursday in time to go home with the team, but she was under everyone’s orders to rest in the meantime. Instead, she had spent almost every hour on the phone with members of her systems group, directing the various probes and trying to figure out the location of Flight 255’s elusive cockpit voice recorder.
“Farris wants me back early, Barbara.” Joe decided not to reveal his fury or the stupidity involved in Farris’s order. “I’ll leave Andy in charge, and he’ll make arrangements to get you to the airport Thursday.”
“I’m fine, Joe, and we’ll work it out,” she told him, still wincing with pain every time she drew a deep breath. “Joe, I talked with my team a while ago, and I’m sorry to report no progress on the CVR. They’re sifting through the last portion of the rear fuselage, but I don’t expect to find it there. It was stolen, Joe, or it wasn’t on the airplane.”
“Not installed, you mean? Hmmm. I hadn’t considered that.”
“Well, it’s possible. Either that, or, as I say, it was stolen just after the accident.”
“But, by whom, Barb? And how? That’s never happened before.”
“I know, but what if, for instance, sabotage was the cause, and whoever brought them down also slipped in and took the evidence.”
“That’s pretty far out, Barbara.”
“Well, all I know, Mister IIC, sir, is that we can’t find the damn cockpit voice recorder.”
Joe told Barbara to relax as he said good-bye, then punched in the number of Susan Kelly’s phone, reaching her just before the hotel shuttle was ready to load for the short trip to the terminal.
“I’ve been recalled,” he explained.
“I was afraid of that, Joe.”
“You mean Farris has already discussed this with you?”
“Not this, not the FAA’s anger over the leak of the tower tape. But I told you what he said to me before, on Saturday. He’s not happy with you, Joe. I’m not surprised he wants you out of here.”
Joe looked up at the hotel’s airport shuttle, which was still loading. “Where are you, Susan?”
“At the terminal.” They agreed to meet in ten minutes at Joe’s outbound gate, and Joe punched the phone off as he ran for the shuttle. Susan was waiting when he arrived to check in for the flight. They sat on a bench out of earshot of the milling passengers. “Look, Joe, I haven’t worked with Dean long enough to know all I need to know about what makes the man tick, but I do know that beneath that excellent intellect and that facade of polished control, there beats the heart of a political animal on the prowl for bigger political game. I should not be telling you this, and I hope you won’t repeat it, but Dean regards the NTSB as a refueling stop and not a destination. The problem, of course, is that Dean isn’t controllable, and he can ruin you professionally, Joe. You’ve got to be careful handling him.”
Joe was studying his hands and nodding, the mere suggestion of having his cherished position with the NTSB imperiled sending cold chills through the corridors of his mind. “I know that. Look, I love what I do.” He looked up at her, letting his eyes get lost in hers for a second. “I would never want to be prevented from serving the Board as an investigator. This is my home.”
“Then you’ve got to outlast him.”
“Yeah, but I can’t pull my punches when he’s dead wrong.”
“Diplomacy, Joe. A good diplomat can tell you to go straight to hell with such eloquence you find yourself thanking him for providing directions. Work on that art with Farris. For your sake, and for ours.”
They said good-bye with a brief handshake, and Joe turned for the jetway, the warmth of her hand radiating in his. Some of the cold edge, it seemed, had thawed.
The flight attendants were serving dinner at 35,000 feet by the time Joe realized the man next to him was writing on stationary emblazoned with North America’s logo, his expressions and demeanor that of an angry, upset executive. Joe decided to leave him alone, eating dinner in silence, thinking how effectively both of them could pretend the other didn’t exist while sitting mere inches apart. But somewhere over Kentucky, Joe’s seatmate lost control of his pen and Joe reached to the floor to pick it up—an act requiring eye contact and a thank-you, which slowly led to a reluctant conversation.
The man finally extended his right hand, no hi
nt of a smile on his face. “I’m Craig Lewiston. And you’re …?”
“Joe Wallingford with the NTSB.”
“Interesting,” he said. “I was vice-president/maintenance for North America until about five P.M. yesterday, when I reached the breaking point and resigned.” He held up his right hand again, palm out. “Nothing to do with the crash, I assure you.”
Lewiston went back to his writing for a few minutes, trying to avoid noticing that the NTSB man was waiting for him to continue.
Joe looked at Lewiston as well as you can look at a seatmate in the crowded coach section of an airliner. He was very tall, perhaps six foot four, a gaunt face framing a large mouth permanently turned at the edges into a slightly amused expression, which stood in contrast to his obvious upset. His huge eyebrows constantly fluttered when he talked and were so prominent Joe could see them in his peripheral vision.
Finally, reluctantly, he sighed and pocketed his pen, speaking with a pronounced Texas drawl. “As of today it isn’t my concern, but what are you finding in the investigation?”
Joe gave him a synopsis, noting the media had settled on sabotage.
“Damned unlikely,” Lewiston confirmed. “That airplane’s a marvel. I know the system—I worked with it and took the mechanics course myself. I’m a certified mechanic by original trade.”
“Really? A vice-president with greasy fingernails?”
Lewiston smiled thinly. “For all the good that does an executive these days.”
“May I ask why you’re leaving?”
“You may. I’m not sure I want to tell the NTSB, though. I’m headed to Washington to interview with USAir and the Air Transport Association, and possibly some others. I have no intention of leaving this business, just the North America war zone.”
He fell silent again, and Joe dove into the void. “Why is it a war zone? You said it wasn’t the crash?”
Lewiston snorted as if asked to recount something terribly obvious. “We’ve—I mean they’ve—been fighting an impossible financial battle for the last decade, and they’re almost out of assets to sell to keep them in the air. The people—including those of us in the executive corps—have taken a series of pay and benefit cuts that really hurt, and now we’re in play, a takeover target.”
“I hadn’t heard,” Joe told him.
“It came out just this morning. Fortunately I haven’t sold my stock. It immediately shot to thirteen.”
Lewiston checked his watch, knowing their descent into Washington would begin shortly and wanting privacy. Joe caught himself feeling guilty and rude, but the opportunity to probe was too golden to ignore.
“There’s something I’d like to ask, which no current maintenance chief could ever answer without toting the company line. But—”
“But since I’m a renegade now, will I tell it like it is, right?”
“Something like that.”
Lewiston nodded his head yes. “What?”
“Have you had trouble keeping your maintenance standards up during the past few years? You remember the fines against Eastern and so many others, and all the arguments that they had let things slip because of deregulation? Did you feel pressure like that?”
“Hell yes. Systemwide.” He shifted his large frame in the aisle seat for a moment. “You’re in the government. You remember when Mrs. Dole and Jim Burnley and all the others at the Department of Transportation came out like good little Reagan soldiers and toed the administration’s hard line: ain’t no problems in our pea patch, folks! Deregulation’s peachy keen wonderful! No one’s cut anything. Safety is perfect.” Lewiston shook his head again. “And the emperor is fully clothed. Trouble is, I can’t accuse them of lying because they were all too goddammed ignorant of the details of aviation safety to be able to lie. They thought all that garbage was the truth, but good Lord, people like me were facing angry leaders like Dave Bayne day in and day out and trying unsuccessfully to justify each overhaul and every part and every salary, and having the heart cut out of our maintenance budget.”
Joe nodded. “Many times we saw problems but couldn’t document them.”
“Of course. Because we didn’t kill any more people per year than the number the DOT had decreed was an acceptable slaughter rate. That’s why you couldn’t document it. The only figures they wanted at DOT were death and accident, death and accident. If those figures didn’t go up, it was “bidness” as usual. We didn’t have any way to measure the deteriorating safety margins and plummeting standards unless we started killing thousands of passengers. The big lie, Joe, the big lie. Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of them.
The voice of the captain came over the PA giving weather and arrival details for Washington National Airport, and Lewiston fell silent, waiting for the announcement to end. “You got me worked up at a time when I’m disgusted and madder than hell. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, don’t apologize. This helps me understand.”
Lewiston thought for a moment.
“Let me give you a tip for your accident probe. If it looks like a flight-control problem, cut through all the bullshit and look for electronic interference. It’s a good system. If it screwed up, something got it from outside. But if there’s human failure in the cockpit, look closely at who hired the chief pilot and whether he knew what he was doing.”
“What do you mean about the chief pilot?”
“Just a hint, okay? Dave Bayne’s a great guy, but he’s set a management style that trusts subordinate executives to perform, without following up to see that they do. Dave doesn’t find out someone’s screwing up until we’re in a real mess.”
“How could that—?”
“I don’t know. That’s just a tip. I don’t know if it has any application here. But if you start seeing strange executive performance, look beyond that level. You’ll find we didn’t communicate vertically worth a tinker’s damn at North America. Take my position, for instance. No one seemed to ever tell me a damn thing.”
There was a pause as Joe struggled with a question he dearly wanted to ask. “Did you quit because of the pressure, or because North America’s maintenance standards had finally been pushed too low?”
Lewiston sat in utter silence for more than a minute looking Joe in the eye before responding.
“I shouldn’t answer that, you know,” he said at last.
“But you will, won’t you?”
Craig Lewiston sighed and nodded. “Answer B,” he said simply.
Joe sat back, his mind applying Lewiston’s warnings as they banked to the left momentarily, weaving down the Potomac for a landing to the south under a high overcast sky at National Airport.
There was an airline agent waiting for Joe when he entered the terminal dutifully holding a cardboard sign with the name WALLINGFORD in view of the deplaning passengers. He had an urgent phone call.
Joe found a pay phone and dialed Andy’s number in Kansas City.
“We’ve found something, Joe, in the rear of the 320. It was tangled up in the pieces of the elevator controls—an electronic box of some sort. Joe, the point is, as far as the Airbus guys can tell, it didn’t come with their airplane. In other words, it may have been sabotage after all!”
11
Wednesday, October 17 Dallas, Texas
David Bayne was out of the elevator before it fully opened, moving with characteristic dispatch down the long carpeted hallway of the North America executive floor. The meticulously groomed chairman and CEO of North America Airlines had been a star running back in his collegiate days at Southern Methodist in Dallas, and his athletic training still showed in broad shoulders and a six-foot-three-inch frame.
Bayne was a study in Dallas-style corporate chic, a starched white shirt and well-tailored Italian suit complementing his sharp, angular face. His dark hair was combed back and slicked down slightly, a style popular among Wall Street climbers half his age. Forty-eight years old, intense, rich, powerful, and darkly handsome in a manner usually not associated with Texans,
Bayne turned female heads wherever he went—an ability that had served him well over the years, compensating somewhat for his pragmatic, humorless personality.
He brushed swiftly past the reception area with its photorealist oil paintings of various airplanes in North America livery and pushed open the heavy double doors to his suite.
“Good morning, Mr. Bayne. They’re all inside, sir.” His elegantly dressed secretary had already alerted the executives within his office that the boss was on the floor—a small but vital courtesy that kept him from walking in on an unguarded conversation and embarrassing everyone.
She smiled at him as he flashed past her contemporary desk of plate glass and polished chrome and noted with approval the spotless surface which, as per his orders, supported only a sophisticated telephone console and a small crystal vase containing one long-stemmed red rose—delivered fresh every morning before his arrival. A smaller glass surface to one side held her computer terminal and a few working papers.
“Thanks Connie.” He walked briskly into his office, tossing a cursory nod at the four senior vice-presidents who had been waiting for the past ten minutes: Ron Putnam, the operations chief; Holman Spradley, general counsel of the corporation; Lillian Buckman, in charge of corporate communications; and Mark Rogers, in charge of legislative and governmental affairs.
As a master of corporate nuance, David Bayne had trained himself for years to assert primacy by little more than body language and timing, and he began playing this assemblage with typical, if subconscious, ease, moving quickly behind the massive antique desk which had once belonged to Argentine dictator Juan Perón. The interior of his office was a traditional rectangle, with floor-to-ceiling windows forming the wall opposite the desk, framing a magnificent view of North Dallas and the city’s original airport, Love Field.
Bayne sat down, aware of the four highly paid people on guard and watching his every move, taking time to place his leather briefcase on the credenza with precision before picking up his telephone to pass a few assignments to his secretary, carefully avoiding for a moment any further acknowledgment of their presence. Swiveling around at last, he removed a yellow legal pad from the top drawer of the desk and unscrewed his fountain pen, placing an elegant pair of half-frame reading glasses on his nose before looking up. “As you know, yesterday we came under takeover attack. We’ll get to that in a minute. First, I want us to get completely up to speed on the Kansas City accident. Proceed, Ron.”
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