Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“Again, you’re asking for speculation,” Giavanova said. “If we had reason to believe further investigation of Senator Marshall would have led to additional criminal charges against these defendants or others, we would have continued.” She looked around again and recognized another local television reporter. “Yes, Nathaniel.”

“So what you’re saying is, the investigation, so far as it went, turned up no evidence of criminal behavior by Senator Marshall?”

“I think I’ve said that at least twice already.”

“But you can’t account for his source of capital to buy the Converse stock or for what he did with the proceeds of the sale of that stock?”

“No, we cannot. But those facts were not the point of our investigation.”

Nathaniel wasn’t satisfied yet. “So whose idea was it to stop the investigation without looking any farther?” he asked.

Now Giavanova was clearly uncomfortable, and she chose her words carefully. “I would say the decision was a joint one, made by me in consultation with officials at the highest levels of the Justice Department.”

“The attorney general?” someone asked.

“I don’t want to be that specific,” Giavanova replied.

“Why not?” the anonymous voice asked.

“I am here to discuss the details of this indictment,” she said. “I won’t go beyond it.”

The briefing droned on, but little new came of it. There was no question but that the indictment, coupled with Giavanova’s statements about possible improprieties in Harold Marshall’s conduct, did nothing to clean the senator’s sullied reputation.

But deep in his heart, in the hidden place where each man has to be honest with himself, Pace acknowledged the nagging doubt that Harold Marshall masterminded this conspiracy or even was a serious part of it.

Pace’s conviction slipped again, harder this time, when he got the call from Eddie Conklin.

It had been two days since the press conference in Ohio. Although the coverage of the event by the media emphasized that the grand-jury investigation terminated before the degree of Harold Marshall’s culpability could be determined, there was a general recognition that the extent of the late senator’s guilt was uncertain at best. Avery Schaeffer and Paul Wister strongly endorsed the notion that Marshall, dead or alive, could not be given the benefit of the doubt until unanswered questions about his mysterious wealth and his use of the profits from his stock sale had reasonable explanations. Publicly, Pace agreed. Privately, he worried.

That was why the call from Eddie Conklin jolted him to the marrow.

“I can’t talk very long, but I felt like I owed you this call after dodging you so thoroughly right after the crash,” the NTSB technician said.

“What’s up?” Pace asked.

“Maybe you’ve already heard this. You have sources a lot better than me. Did anybody tell you about the metallurgical report on the turbine disk of Flight 1117?”

Pace sat up straighter. “No,” he said. “I got a preliminary report that there was some difficulty finding the flaw in it.”

“It’s final now. The report came in late yesterday. Since we found out the bird thing was phony, everybody’s assumed the tests on the disk would come up with the same sort of flaw we found on the TransAm 811 in Seattle and the one that made the emergency landing in Kansas City. It took a long time to do the testing because the disk off the ConPac plane was so badly broken up. The engineers had to sort out which fractures and cracks were caused by the stresses and the pounding associated with the accident and which existed prior to the crash.”

“And?”

“They concluded that all the damage to the disk was caused by the violent vibrations that shook the engine loose from its pylon or by multiple impacts with the runway. They said they couldn’t find any preexisting flaws at all.”

Pace felt sick. “That doesn’t make any sense, Eddie,” he said. “Something went the hell wrong with that engine. What caused the vibrations in the first place?”

“We’re back to the drawing board.”

“Shit!”

“My sentiment exactly.”

Looking back on it later, Pace never could pinpoint what prompted him to call Ken Sachs at that moment. He wanted to know the cause of the crash; so did everybody else. But he didn’t expect Sachs to have it. So why did he ask: “Can we look at that engine again? Together? And maybe take Bill Teller or Howard Comchech along?”

“You’re kidding,” Sachs responded. “Why?”

“No better reason than it was the scene of our first big breakthrough, and from what I’ve heard about the final metallurgy report, we could use another breakthrough.”

“We?”

“I’ve taken a proprietary interest.”

“So I see. And I guess I can’t blame you.”

“Can we go?”

“Right now?”

“Why not? You got something more important on your plate?”

“Good point. I’ll meet you in the Marriott parking lot in ninety minutes.”

Shortly after 1:30, Pace slid into the passenger seat of Sachs’s government sedan.

“Bill Teller’s waiting for us at the hangar,” Sachs said. “Howard Comchech can’t make it. He’s—I guess I’m not supposed to be telling you this—but he’s testifying this afternoon before the Virginia grand jury.”

Pace nodded.

“What’s eating you?” Sachs asked.

Pace shrugged. “I can’t put it into precise terms because I don’t know exactly,” he said. “I feel like I’m living in a world filled with smoke and mirrors.”

“I can give it better definition than that,” Sachs offered. He pulled up beside the hangar, put the car in park, and turned to face the reporter. “You figured you had Harold Marshall pegged as the instigator and bankroller of a cover-up, and then Marshall got away from you, first literally and then legally. Somewhere in the back of your mind it’s nagging you that the stroke that killed him might have been brought on, or at least hurried along, by the pressure you and your newspaper put on him. Am I anywhere near close yet?”

Pace regarded Sachs. “Too close,” he admitted.

“And even though the net you cast caught a bunch of bad guys, it was almost by chance, something out of your control.”

Pace nodded.

“The package isn’t nice and neat.”

“Not at all,” Pace said. “And I admit to a certain amount of anxiety about that. I don’t want any more surprises.”

“I don’t blame you,” Sachs agreed. “But what do you hope to find out here?”

“Answers.”

“Read: salvation?”

“Maybe.”

“We got lucky the first time. It’s naive to think it could happen again.”

“Probably.”

“So,” Sachs said as he opened the car door, “let’s go see what there is to see. The naive aren’t always wrong, you know.”

Bill Teller and Jim Padgett were waiting for Sachs and Pace inside the hangar, neither investigator certain why he was there and both uneasy about Pace, who seemed to be able to go where no reporter had gone before.

Pace himself was beginning to feel uneasy. Why in hell had he wanted to come out here again? There was no reason to think he’d find vindication deep in the wreckage of Flight 1117.

Sachs, Padgett, and Teller were watching him in anticipation. He shrugged. “Do you all feel certain it was the splintering of the broken turbine disk that triggered the destruction of Number Two engine?” he asked.

All three nodded, and Padgett spoke for the group. “No question about it now,” the EEC said. “That was the first link in the chain of events.”