Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

Justin Smith pulled into Dulles a little before four o’clock. He parked his car in the hourly lot and found his way easily to the conference room and small suite of offices still being used by the go-team. Lund greeted him cautiously. “I don’t much care for reporters who ask to see me but won’t say why,” Lund said.

“Newsman’s natural paranoia,” said Smith. He smiled warmly. “Don’t want to give you too much time with the questions or you might come up with the right answers, and then where would my story be?”

Lund appeared to relax marginally. “So what’s on your mind?” he asked. “I’ll try to come up with the right answers off the top of my head.” He motioned Smith to a seat beside his desk in the small, cluttered office.

“I’ll get right to the point, Vernon,” the reporter said. “You know me, known me for years. I’m not one to rush off on tangents or put much stock in rumors that come over the transom.”

“You’ve always been very cautious and reliable,” Lund agreed. “We appreciate that.”

“So trust me when I tell you I have two absolutely solid sources for what I’m about to tell you,” said Smith. “They tell me the readings coming out of the flight data recorder show engine-performance deviations inconsistent with a bird strike.”

Lund’s face remained impassive, but his eyes locked on Smith’s and stayed there. It took nearly a minute for him to respond.

“That’s news to me,” he said flatly.

“True, though,” Smith said. “At least, it’s the interpretation of two good engineers.”

“I don’t doubt what you say. But I haven’t heard it before.”

“How can that be? You keep in contact with your lab, don’t you?”

“Of course!”

“Then you must have heard the same thing.”

Lund shook his head. “I can’t help you, Justin.” Then he lowered his head and looked at the Times man over his half glasses. “You’re beginning to sound like your young friend at the Chronicle, all bent out of shape over bad rumors and sour speculation. You watch yourself, or you could find yourself busted back just like him.”

“Your feelings about Steve Pace aren’t my concern,” Smith said. “Only came out here to discuss engine-performance parameters.”

“Then you’re talking to the wrong man,” Lund said.

“That’s it? You’re not going to check downtown?”

“Nope, probably not. And certainly not with you sitting here.”

“If I call you later, would you talk to me more about it—after you’ve had a chance to make some checks privately?”

“Not a chance in hell,” Lund said, and the conversation terminated.

Lund waited for ten minutes, until he was certain Smith was out of the building, before he summoned Jim Padgett and Elliott Parkhall to his office. He was in no mood to mince words.

“I’ve had a reporter in my office—Justin Smith. I’m certain you both know him or know who he is. He said he has reliable information on findings from the flight data recorder. I want to know if either of you has been talking to him.”

“No,” Padgett said definitely.

Lund’s eyes fell on Parkhall, whose upper lip had grown damp. He was fidgeting. “No, Vernon,” Parkhall said. “I don’t think I’d know Justin Smith if he walked in here right now. What… uh… what did he say he found out?”

Lund didn’t answer the question. “Either of you been talking to the lab downtown about the flight data recorder?”

Both men nodded. “Last I heard, though, there was nothing very helpful coming out of it,” Padgett said.

“Same here,” said Parkhall.

“Smith thought there was something helpful,” said Lund.

“What?” asked Padgett. “We need to know, if that’s true.”

Lund chewed on his lower lip as he contemplated the two men standing there. His natural bent was not to trust anybody, but he could think of no reasonable excuse to evade the question.

“Smith said the recorder’s data show that the performance of Number Three engine wasn’t consistent with a bird strike,” he said.

“Nonsense!” Parkhall exploded. “That’s perfect nonsense!”

“It seems to me if the lab had something like that, somebody would have called me—or you, Vernon,” Padgett suggested. “Have you heard anything like that?”

“No,” Lund said flatly.

“Then I wouldn’t put much stock in it,” the IIC said.

“Justin Smith is a good reporter,” said Lund.

“That doesn’t mean he’s perfect.”

Lund thought about that for a moment. Then he picked up his direct line to the NTSB downtown and dialed an extension. He talked to someone in tones so hushed that even in the small office neither Padgett nor Parkhall could make out exactly what he was saying and both tried. The conversation lasted just short of four minutes. When Lund hung up, he swung his chair back to his two subordinates.

“Well,” he said, “I guess it all depends on the spin you put on it.”

Now Parkhall’s face was sweating noticeably. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Lund frowned at him, wondering why his engineer was so nervous. Had he been a snitch for Smith after all? “It means some data could be interpreted as inconsistent with the ingestion of a bird, or any other debris, for that matter. But I’m told it’s far from conclusive enough to warrant changing the course of the investigation.”

“That’s not very conclusive then,” Padgett said. “That’s good enough for me.”

“Why can’t they leave this alone?” Parkhall wondered aloud.

“Who?” asked Lund.

“The damned press,” Parkhall said vehemently. “They keep trying to make trouble.”

Padgett turned to his companion. “They’re trying to do their job, Elliott,” he said.

“This isn’t their job,” Parkhall insisted. “This isn’t even close to their job.”

He looked at Lund. “Did you get the impression Smith was going to keep whipping this dead horse?”

“I don’t think he’s finished with it, no,” Lund replied. “Although Lord knows I didn’t give him any reason to carry on. I doubt if that will sway him.”

Parkhall shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “They keep butting their noses in where they don’t belong,” he said. “They keep needling and nudging and pushing and shoving, trying to make the facts fit their own preconceptions. They’re all trash, and we ought to wipe them out every time we catch them at it.”

“In what way?” Padgett asked. “You want to repeal the First Amendment?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Parkhall replied. “It would serve the sons of bitches right.”

So high was Parkhall’s level of outrage that something snapped. It happened between the time he got into his car outside the Dulles terminal and the time he reentered the gate to the field and Hangar 3. He wasn’t going to let this situation get as volatile and dangerous as it had been with Steve Pace. It would stop now, today, before anything actually got into the Times. He couldn’t risk another newspaper casting more doubt on the tentative conclusion of the NTSB investigation. One newspaper’s thinly-veiled allegations could be dismissed as vindictive. Two newspapers in bed together could be trouble.

In his makeshift office behind Hangar 3, Elliott Parkhall dialed the phone number at the infernal answering machine. No human being ever was there to answer. He wondered again where it was. In a closet somewhere? In a warehouse? Damn Sly anyway.

“Leave a message,” the taped voice said curtly.

Parkhall did. The message was detailed. The deed must be done this day.