Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

He moved to the third sheet. “Now this is where the NTSB team actually found the bird remains.”

“It’s not even close,” Schaeffer said.

“Nope. Ken figures when they spritzed the stuff around they didn’t make any effort to duplicate scientific reality. Heck, they probably didn’t know what that reality was.”

“Well, this is pretty solid evidence, but there’s still nobody to pin it on,” Wister said.

“What’s this last sheet?” Schaeffer asked.

“This is a color overlay showing where the computer projections say bird remains should have been and where they actually were found. Where they should have been is in blue and where they were is in red.”

“At the risk of repeating myself, they’re not even close,” he said, repeating himself.

“Not even close. And these comparative figures down here—” Pace pointed to the bottom of the page “—are estimates of the actual volume of bird in the engine versus what the computer says should have been there. If you add them up, you’ll see there are four times more red volume than blue volume. In other words, there’s four times more bird inside the engine than the computer says there should be.”

“That’s because the computers say in a real bird strike, three-fourths of the bird’s volume would have gone around the engine and out the back of the pod?” Schaeffer asked.

“At least.”

“Paul, get the art department to reproduce this last graphic for tomorrow. And let’s do a companion chart on the volume figures. We’re going to play this big.”

He turned to Pace. “Fine work, Steve. Vindication must taste pretty sweet.”

Pace shook his head. “Not yet. Not until we nail down who did this.”

When Wister left, Schaeffer asked Pace to sit down. “We have a problem,” he said. “How well do you know Tim Hogan?”

“The Hulk? Our photographer?”

Schaeffer nodded.

Pace shrugged. “Reasonably well. We’ve worked a lot of assignments together, including this ConPac crash. He’s a pretty good guy. Why?”

“You see him socially?”

“We don’t hang out together if that’s what you mean. He’s a good deal younger, and he has more stamina for the singles-bar scene than I do. I see him at company parties, and we were softball teammates last year.”

“Did you ever meet his girlfriend?”

Pace laughed. “Which one? From what I’ve heard, Hulk’s personal crusade is to bed every unmarried woman in Washington before he’s thirty-five.”

“Apparently there’s one woman who’s been a regular for a couple of months. She’s a legislative assistant on Harold Marshall’s staff. She knew every move this paper was making on the ConPac—at least she knew as much as Tim knew, and that was most of it.”

“How do we know this?” Pace asked. “A tip?”

“No, the woman confessed to Hogan, and Tim came straight to us. As you can imagine, he’s sick about it.”

“He’d be sicker if I had my way,” Wister said as he reentered the room. “He’d be on the street. He’s put us in a hell of a fix.”

“Not necessarily, Paul,” Schaeffer demurred. “But what we do have—” and here he turned to Pace “—is some good reason to reconsider your suspicions about Marshall. Was he trying to sway the NTSB investigation? Then maybe he’s behind the phony bird strike.”

“Could be,” Pace agreed.

“You have sources, right?” Wister asked.

“Sort of,” Pace said.

“Use them,” Schaeffer ordered.

“They’re political,” Pace pointed out. “They’ve got Democratic axes to grind against Marshall’s Republican skull.”

“All sources are political,” Schaeffer said. “All of them have axes to grind, or they wouldn’t be talking to us. It isn’t our job to make judgments about their motives. But we keep their biases very much in mind and remember that we have to be able to prove what they tell us. We don’t take their information at face value.”

“Right,” Pace agreed, and Schaeffer smiled.

“So go find us another story.”

George Ridley returned Pace’s call shortly before ten o’clock that evening, one home phone to another.

“I wanted to tell you what we’re letting loose in the morning,” Pace lied.

“I figured there was another shoe to drop,” Ridley replied. “What size is it?”

“Eighteen triple-E.”

“That’s Republican size. Big.”

“Real big.”

“Would you care to give me a clue as to the style and color?”

“Incontrovertible proof that the bird evidence was planted.”

“Well, I probably could muster enough interest to read about that. Everything you’ve written lately has been mildly interesting. But,” Ridley paused, “this is the first time you’ve been kind enough to call me the night before with a preview of coming attractions.”

Pace confessed, “I have another reason for calling.”

“Why did I know that?”

“You remember the conversation we had at Dulles the morning after the accident?”

“Right after I left Lund? Sure.”

“You remember we talked about a certain senator who might be overstepping?”

“Yep. You wanted me to keep an eye on him for you.”

“Well, not quite. I suggested if you saw anything suspicious, I’d like to know.”

“I remember. I haven’t seen anything. On the other hand, I haven’t been looking.”

“There’s reason to look now.”

“What?”

Pace could hear the sudden interest in Ridley’s voice, so without naming names, he told him the story of Tim Hogan’s girlfriend. He was shocked when Ridley named the names for him.

“Hey, everybody knows she’s bedding Hogan, and everybody knows she’s squeezing him for info,” Ridley said. “It’s not unusual, man. Every time somebody on the Hill gets involved with a fucking journalist, it’s expected that tales will be told. It’s part of the scenery up here. Makes for damned juicy gossip.”

“No question,” Pace agreed. “But in this case, it wasn’t gossip she was looking for.”

“I see where you’re going with this. She finds out stuff the senator doesn’t know, stuff the senator’s very important constituent wants to know before it hits the papers. Senator has a mole in the chicken coop who can make him look like he’s wired to good sources, so he uses her boyfriend’s pillow talk to bolster his own stock with the homies. What a grungy thing to do.”

“Who knows what other excesses the man might be capable of?” Pace suggested.

“It’s worth further examination,” Ridley concurred.

“Discreetly, of course.”

“I’m always discreet,” Ridley replied.

And Pace broke up, laughing so hard he didn’t hear the Senate aide slam the phone.

“Good morning. I’m Frank Greshhold, and this is AP Network News. Could someone fake the cause of a major aviation disaster? That is the astounding report this morning in the Washington Chronicle. The story discloses there are serious doubts about the conclusion by the National Transportation Safety Board that a bird strike caused the April 17th crash of a ConPac 811 jetliner at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. That crash killed 334 people, making it the worse aviation disaster in U.S. history. The Chronicle reports that NTSB computer simulations of a hawk flying into a Converse Fan engine conclude most of the remains of the bird should have gone around the engine and harmlessly out the back. However, technicians calibrating the amount of material found inside the engine say there probably is enough to account for the whole bird. NTSB sources quoted by the Chronicle say while the evidence is circumstantial, it is a virtual statistical impossibility for the accident to have occurred as originally believed. They told the newspaper they are working under the assumption there could have been tampering with the engine after the accident to make it appear bird ingestion caused the crash when, in fact, the real cause could be much more sinister. An incredible story unfolding in Washington, and we’ll stay on top of it for you all day. More, after this…”