Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“No,” Wister said emphatically. “If this thing is happening, it cost one man his life already. Sometimes a wild punch has a way of hitting the mark. We’d be risking too much.”

“There are 335 people dead now,” Schaeffer said emphatically. “Doing nothing is risking too much.”

“I’ll ask Mike,” Pace suggested. “He knows the players. He’ll know the right moves.”

“I don’t want you out of touch at any time,” Schaeffer reminded him.

Pace got up to leave. Wister put a hand on his arm. “Steve, I owe you an apology.” He extended his hand. Pace accepted it gratefully. The pieces of his life were falling back into the right places. “Thanks.”

Wister smiled. “Sometimes when we tilt at windmills, there’s something there.”

“If it’s out there,” Pace replied, “we’ll find it.”

Pace and McGill sat and talked in Schaeffer’s Mercedes in the far corner of the hotel parking lot, away from potential eavesdroppers.

The spring breeze was chilly, but it carried overtones of the humidity that would spread a summer blanket over the region. The weather was the last thing on their minds.

“A cover-up would be horribly risky,” McGill was saying. “And I’m not sure how you’d prove it. All things being equal, it looks like the NTSB came up with a competent and plausible explanation for the crash. I don’t see any holes in it. If you and I weren’t sitting here talking about it, there’d be nobody around asking questions because there wouldn’t be any reason to.”

“Then why do you say it’s so risky?”

“The number of people you’d have to involve. Let’s say you’re the villain, and the problem you’re trying to cover up is in the engine. That’s the logical target since it’s central to the accident. All the members of the power-plants group would have to be involved, as well as anyone else who poked around the engine. It would be a massive conspiracy. I don’t think it could be done.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would you have to involve everybody concerned with the engine?”

“Because they’re all going to examine the sucker. You can’t get an engineer to say the accident was caused by X when his own eyeballs tell him it was caused by Y.”

“So how many people are we talking about here?”

“The four we talked about before. Parkhall, Antravanian, Comchech, and Teller.”

“Anyone else likely to look at the engine?”

“Well, certainly the Converse engineers on the scene. They’d be all over it.”

Pace nodded.

“Padgett and Lund would see it, of course. The Sexton people would nose around it, too. How many is that?”

“Too many,” Pace said glumly. “It won’t wash.”

“It won’t,” McGill agreed.

“So what have we got?” Pace asked.

McGill shook his head, a pained expression masking his face. “A very nice and able man who lost his life trying to bring me a message of warning. And now that I’ve got it, I can’t make sense of it.” He shook his head and pounded the window frame with his fist. “And there’s another element, maybe the toughest of all. Let’s say you could involve everybody you needed to pull off a cover-up. That’s a ridiculous assumption, but let’s make it. Since members of the go-team rotate weekly, and since our villain wouldn’t have any idea when or where the major accident would be, how would he know who to bribe, or muscle, or hypnotize, or whatever he did?”

“Unless he had exhaustive computer files on all the people in the country qualified for go-team duty. But to have that he’d almost have to be inside the NTSB.”

“Jesus.” McGill sighed. “I don’t even like to think about that.”

“You got any better place to start?”

McGill was forced to make a silent admission that Pace had logic on his side.

Pace, who’d slumped in the driver’s seat, pushed himself erect. “Mike, we need help from somebody inside the agency. We’re going nowhere on our own. We could come up with a thousand different scenarios, and we could miss the one that’s right. We need somebody high up.”

“High up where?”

“High enough in the bureaucracy to be above suspicion, if there is anybody that high,” Pace explained.

“Normally, I’d say Lund.”

“He’s on the list. Besides, he hates my guts. He’d never help if I’m involved.”

“I can’t believe Lund could be turned, or that he’d reject his responsibilities because of a personality clash. But if we rule him out, I guess I’d recommend going to Ken Sachs.”

“The NTSB chairman.”

“Ken’s solid.”

“What makes you think he’s not involved?”

“He’s not working this accident. Why would he be?”

“Okay,” Pace said with a little reluctance. “I think we should see him together. The story will be more credible if he hears this from two people, especially if one of them’s you. Do you have the time to talk to him?”

“I can arrange to be away for a few more hours.”

“Let’s call from your room.”

“Why not from the car phone?”

“Car phones can be intercepted,” Pace said. “That paranoid enough for you?”

“Appropriately so, I’m afraid,” McGill replied.

They locked the Mercedes and walked toward the motel entrance, unaware that thirty feet away, in a battered blue Ford van they might have recognized from Saturday night had they noticed it, two men watched their every move.

In McGill’s room, Pace called Sachs and learned he was in a meeting. The reporter left a message and the number and said McGill would wait in his room for the chairman to return the call. He stressed it was urgent that the two speak as soon as possible.

“I think Mr. Sachs will be able to return Captain McGill’s call in about an hour,” the secretary said.

Pace then checked in with Wister and told him where he was and what was in the works. Wister told him not to worry about a story for the next day, that Schaeffer wanted him relieved of all other duties until the Sexton matter was resolved.

Then there was nothing to do but wait.

“We’re making a terrible mistake if you’re wrong about Sachs,” Pace said to the pilot.

“I’d stake our lives on Ken Sachs being clean,” McGill said.

Involuntarily, Pace grimaced. We might be doing just that, he thought.

An hour and ten minutes later, the phone rang. McGill picked it up. It was Sachs.

“Sorry to bother you, Ken, but something real important has come up at Hangar Three, and if what I suspect is true, Steve Pace and I have to talk to you as soon as possible, today if you can manage it… We’re out at Dulles, but we could be at your office in an hour or so… Yes, it does… I can’t go to him. There’s a possibility he’s involved, and what we’re talking about is serious business… Screw channels, Ken. We’re talking about conspiracy, murder, and God knows what other felonies. If Lund’s involved, talking to him is the last thing I want to do… Yes, I’m damned serious… Because Pace is as much a part of this as I am. Ken, please! Hear us out, and then if you want to throw us out of your office, you can pitch us all the way across town.”

McGill looked at Pace and rolled his eyes.

“Well, cancel the damned meeting. The budget’s not going anywhere. And frankly, if what we believe is true, and if it isn’t stopped right here, there might not be any NTSB to budget for… You’re goddamned right, I’m serious… One hour, right. Thanks.”

McGill slammed the receiver down. “Goddamned bureaucrats,” he swore.

At four o’clock that afternoon, Pace and McGill arrived at the secretary’s desk outside Sachs’s office. The wait for Sachs to call back and a late-afternoon traffic snarl downtown had McGill out of patience. He snapped at the receptionist, “Captain McGill to see the administrator. He’s expecting us.”