Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“How about accident or incident reports, or service-difficulty reports?”

“I checked those out, too,” Phillips said, his voice heavy with fatigue. “Fleet-wide, there’ve been twenty-nine service-difficulty reports, but Oke City tells me there isn’t a serious problem in the lot. There are also eight incident reports, fleet-wide. That’s not too bad for a new-generation aircraft. Apparently, there’s no pattern to the problems, or at least not enough that anybody here pulled them up for review. Specifically on the Sexton at Dulles, there’s nothing. I think you had that in the paper this morning. I’ve ordered all the reports up, though, because I’m sure NTSB will ask. And, to answer your next question, they should be here late today or early tomorrow. But since they didn’t arouse concern earlier, I doubt you’ll find anything but routine problems.”

“I need to find out for myself,” Pace told the FAA flack.

“Hey, I know that,” Phillips snapped defensively. “Call me late this afternoon, and if they’re here, you’ll come over. I don’t expect to be going home for a few days, so if it’s late, it’s okay. You have my after-hours number?”

Pace repeated it to him and got confirmation. Phillips started to hang up, but the reporter’s voice drew him back. “Con, do you have a list of the members of the go-team?”

“Try the NTSB. It’s their show.”

“I tried, but nobody’s available. So I’m asking you. Private question. Private favor.”

“Jesus, Steve, what do you want from me? Yeah, I’ve got the names for liaison purposes only. And that doesn’t mean liaison with the media.”

“Come on,” Pace urged. “That’s not eyes-only information. I just want a look at it.”

“Right, to see if there are any familiar arms you can twist. I don’t have to remind you how the NTSB hates speculation based on reports from ‘informed sources.’ It puts them under enormous pressure for confirmation they don’t have.”

“What are you worried about? What I do isn’t your responsibility.”

“It’s not in anybody’s best interest to louse up relations on this thing.”

“Let me look at the list, Con,” Pace said again. “All I’m asking is a favor that will save me some time. You know National Enquirer isn’t my style.”

There was a pause on the other end. “You asshole,” Phillips said. “I’ve got a meeting in forty minutes. Get here before then and we can have a private conversation in my office.”

The first thing Pace checked was the identities of the specialists assigned to the NTSB’s power-plants group. The group leader was Elliott Parkhall. His team was Howard Comchech, William Teller, and Mark Antravanian. None of the names meant anything to the reporter, but there were two other names in other groups that did.

The first was Captain Michael McGill, chief pilot for TransAmerican Airlines and chief training pilot for Sexton 811 crews. The NTSB had assigned McGill to head the go-team’s systems group, and Pace couldn’t think of anyone better qualified. They had met fifteen years earlier when the pilot was assigned to the NTSB investigation of the collision over San Diego. Their rapport was immediate. McGill’s assignment to the air-traffic-control group put him at the center of that probe, and he gave Pace excellent guidance through the story. After the American DC-10 accident in Chicago, McGill suggested the series that copped the Pulitzer Prize, a professional achievement for which Pace gave McGill considerable credit. The two became friends, personal and professional.

During subsequent years, McGill made himself available when Pace needed technical advice on aviation stories. Whenever Pace passed through Memphis, McGill met him at the airport for a couple of drinks, or for dinner if there was time, and they never failed to get together on those more frequent occasions when McGill’s business for TransAmerican brought him to Washington.

The pilot would be an excellent source inside the investigation, and if nothing else, he would be someone reliable off whom Pace could bounce ideas and theories.

So, too, was Eddie Conklin, a computer specialist at the NTSB’s Bureau of Technology, whose name also appeared on the go-team list. Ironically, Pace had met Conklin at a party on Capitol Hill the previous year, a party to which the reporter had been invited by Kathy McGovern. Over loud music and good Scotch, Pace and Conklin became friends, and Pace made it his business a few weeks later to drop in on Conklin and take the grand tour of the NTSB lab. Most of the technology was over Pace’s head, but he’d considered it time well spent.

Pace called Conklin before leaving the District of Columbia for Dulles and was told the technician was in a meeting. He started to leave a message but decided it wasn’t a good idea for anybody at the NTSB to be reminded that Conklin had a friend at the Chronicle. He had Eddie’s home number; he’d get in touch with him later.

If Pace hadn’t stopped to call Conklin and had arrived at Dulles a few minutes earlier, or if he had reached Conklin and been a few minutes later, he would have missed George Ridley in the airport parking lot. As it was, he spotted the chief of staff of the Senate Science and Transportation Committee emerging from the main terminal building and hailed him as he was getting into his car.

George Ridley did not look happy.

He ducked out of his car when Pace called him and pushed himself to his feet. His face was deeply flushed. He was breathing heavily, and his ample stomach strained the buttons on the front of his blue shirt. The knot on his tie was almost hidden beneath his second chin and appeared to be trying to strangle him under a shirt collar a size too small. He had sweated dark circles through the underarms of his ancient seersucker suit coat, and the shock of brown hair that fell over his forehead was matted there, although the air temperature was barely seventy degrees.

Pace meant only to say hello and pass a few minutes chatting about the Sexton accident; he was not prepared for the sight of a man who appeared to be a few heartbeats from a coronary.

“Hey, George, you okay?”

“Fine. What do you want?”

“Nothing special,” Pace replied.

Ridley’s breathing was fast and shallow, and Pace feared he would hyperventilate. He grabbed Ridley’s shoulders and shook him slightly.

“What’s the matter with you?”

Ridley’s eyes flashed, and he threw his arms up roughly to loosen Pace’s hands. “Get the fuck off me! I’m not in the mood for your glad tidings.”

“Okay,” Pace said, backing off a step. “We’ve established you’re pissed as hell at me. Mind telling me why?”

Ridley inhaled once, deeply, and his breathing became more regular. “It isn’t you specifically. It’s the world, the whole fucking world, and the scumbags who inhabit it,” he raged. “It’s people who think God made them better than everybody else so they don’t have to be accountable like the rest of us slobs. It’s one motherfucking senior senator from Ohio, if you want to be specific. One goddamn motherfucking senior senator from Ohio, who thinks I’m his goddamn go-fer. Thirty-one years I’ve got in on the Hill, and that prick still thinks he can use me for a goddamn go-fer. And all that’s off the record.”

Pace opened his mouth, but the scene was so ludicrous he had no response.

Ridley was pacing up and down beside his car, flapping his arms like an overweight mockingbird, scuffing at pebbles, real and imagined. Pace let him rant. That was George.

“What’s Marshall got to do with you?” Pace asked when Ridley’s tirade blew itself out. “He’s a Republican. You’re majority staff, unless I missed an election.”