Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“You as a good ol’ boy could put me back in the hospital,” Pace said, accepting Brennan’s extended right hand.

“How’re you feeling?” Brennan asked.

“Physically, I’m fine,” Pace said. “Affairs of the heart are a little shaky.”

“Oh?” Now Brennan occupied Tarshis’s seat.

“I sent Sissy back to her mother a week early, and when I suggested to Kathy that she put some temporary distance between us, she walked out without even saying thanks for the memories,” Pace explained. “Said she’d be back for her things later. My source in the NTSB lab says the investigation is practically closed and they’re getting ready to ship the engine back to Converse, along with any dirty little secrets it holds. And it’s supposed to rain. So how’s by you?”

Brennan put his feet up on Tarshis’s desk and tried to light a cigarette without being noticed. He failed. But he took three deep pulls at it before Ginny St. George, a general-assignment reporter who specialized in national-security stories, brought him a triple-folded piece of aluminum foil she ripped from a sandwich carried in for lunch.

“Why don’t you go outside like all the other smokers and accept the fact that your ambient smoke isn’t welcome in here?” St. George demanded.

“Ambient?” Brennan asked in mock confusion. “Doesn’t ambient mean friendly?”

“No, and you know it doesn’t,” she replied. “Now put it out before I have you nuked.”

She hustled back to her desk, and Brennan tugged at the cigarette once more in defiance before stubbing it out in the makeshift ashtray.

“You’re beautiful when you’re polluted, you know?” he called after her.

St. George shook her head in exasperation, and Brennan turned back to Pace.

“Well, Steven, my man, I have to tell you that hanging around this story while you were inconvenienced, I began to get whiffs of the foul smell of decay. The leads have dried up, and so, I’m afraid to say, has the interest of yon supervisors. They’re ready to move on.”

“Anything about this story strike you as not quite right?” Pace asked.

“Everything’s not right,” Brennan replied with a shrug and a shake of his head. “We just had the worst airplane accident in U.S. history. Nothin’ right about that.”

Pace wouldn’t be put off. “Did you get a chance to talk to the lead investigators? Lund, Padgett? Elliott Parkhall, the guy in charge of the power-plants group?” he asked.

“I called Lund once, after the FAA announced they’d be putting the 811s back on flight lines one at a time as each was cleared after inspection. He wasn’t interested in talking. He was feeling smug, since he said all along there was no reason to ground them.”

Pace nodded. “You didn’t get any kind of rapport with him?”

“How do you develop rapport with a toad?”

“I’ll take that for a no.”

“He didn’t give me a chance. I asked for comment about the FAA statement that it wasn’t finding problems with the C-Fan. He said what you saw in the newspaper: ‘I told you so.’ That was it.”

Pace sighed. Time passed in silence until Brennan asked, “What’re you thinking?”

“The unthinkable,” Pace replied.

“Cryptic, aren’t we?”

Pace smiled. “What I’m thinking, you wouldn’t want to be associated with.”

“Try me,” Brennan insisted.

Pace shrugged. “Suppose, for purposes of discussion, there was no bird strike and the whole pile of evidence was manufactured—”

“Say what?”

“—to lead investigators away from the real cause of the crash.”

“My unlimited capacity for blarney has been exceeded,” Brennan said. “You’ve got a crash, and immediately you’ve got ten thousand people all over the scene. Nobody could go around inventing—or hiding or changing—the evidence.”

“Somebody might have been able to get to the Number Two engine,” Pace said.

“You’re losing me, boy.”

“The focus of attention on the day of the accident was the fuselage and all the bodies. Nobody was paying attention to the engine yet. By the next morning, everybody was all over it, including the reps from Sexton and Converse. So who had a chance to see the engine between the crash and, say, dawn on Friday? A list of those people would give us a list of those with opportunity. Then we narrow it down to those who also had motive.”

“It won’t wash,” Brennan said. “First off, nobody knew the plane was going to crash. Once it went down, your theory supposes somebody realized there was something to cover up, came up with a plan on how to do it, fabricated the phony evidence, drew the whole power-plants team into the conspiracy, and planted the fabricated evidence. Ridiculous!”

Pace shook his head. “Not if our villain was a member of the go-team?”

“Jesus, that’s a stretch,” Brennan said.

“This was supposed to be a blue-sky exercise.”

“It is that, for sure,” Brennan said. “So where do you go from here?”

“I think it’s past time Elliott Parkhall and I had a face-to-face chat.”

Pace didn’t get around to Parkhall until after lunch.

While rummaging through his mail, he took several phone calls from friends on the staff welcoming him back and wishing him well. Suzanne O’Connor stopped by to give him a hard time, and Sally Incaveria called.

“So how’re you doing?” she asked brightly.

“I’m okay,” he said.

“Good. What’s the status of the Antravanian accident?”

“I should ask you. I haven’t talked to Clay. Anything happen while I was away?”

“Personally or professionally?” she asked.

“Oh? How about both?”

“Personally, I’d say I’m very happy you invited me to dinner at Reston. Professionally, I think I mentioned the case to Clay maybe twice. He didn’t have anything new. All the police will say officially is they’re still investigating.”

“I’m pleased for you on the first count,” Pace said. “On the second, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep the case active in Clay’s head so he doesn’t forget it’s still important to me.”

After lunch, he called Mitch Gabriel, chief of public affairs at the NTSB.

“Hey, man, I heard you had a run-in with some guys who didn’t like the way you dress,” Gabriel joked without bothering to say hello.

“Didn’t like the way I look, either,” Pace said. “They redid some body parts for me.”

“No important parts, I hope.”

“None of any consequence. Just my face.”

“Oh, good. I’m glad it wasn’t serious. What’s up?”

“This is going to sound like a strange question, Mitch, but do you consider the Sexton investigation over?”

“Over? As in completed?”

“Yeah.”

“Not officially. We have probable cause. But there’s still technical work to do. The metallurgists are running tests on the turbine disks. There’ll be the public-hearing phase to present evidence and findings. The board will issue a final report. Then it’s over officially.”

“But for all intents and purposes—”

“It’s pretty much over now, yes.”

“You don’t expect the team to find anything else?”

“I don’t think the team expects to find anything else.”

Pace was quiet, and Gabriel picked up on the silence. “Why? What’s bugging you? You still on your murder/conspiracy kick?”

“You don’t think it’s a huge coincidence that two members of the team met violent deaths during the early stages of the investigation? Doesn’t that bother you at all?”

“Sure it does,” Gabriel said quickly. “I knew both men well, and I liked them, especially Mike. But coincidences do happen, even if there’s only a million-to-one chance. A million-to-one chance is a chance nonetheless.”