Final Approach (61 page)

“I said, Captain, I'd like to ask you to rethink your answer now to my question of whether you have a clear memory of the last few seconds of Flight 255. Do you really remember, or did you construct a memory?”

“I … I don't …”

Kell saw the man was thoroughly broken, and he softened his tone. “Captain, just answer yes or no. Is it possible that you fell unconscious on that final approach, and that your hand may have pressed forward on the controls, causing the airplane to dive? Is that possible?”

“Yes.”

“And you don't to this day
really
have a memory of those last few seconds, do you?”

There was a long, interminable pause before sound emerged from Timson's bone-dry throat. There was no sound from the spellbound audience, and only the whirr of videotape recorders as the vibrations finally reached their ears.

“No,” he said simply.

The small envelope had fallen from the stack of Timson's medical records as Kell Martinson was examining them, and Mark hadn't noticed at first. The envelope was addressed simply “To Dick,” and when they realized what it was, Mark decided to hand it to Timson later.

Halfway through the questioning of Dick Timson, the final mental tumbler in Mark Weiss's subconscious fell into place, and with a start he faced the question of why Louise Timson would say what she had said, in the manner she had presented it. The jewelry, the dress, the neat house—it all added up, and he felt an ice cube in his stomach, the adrenaline pumping suddenly, his professional responsibilities to a hurting human having been totally breached.

Mark fumbled for the envelope, tearing it open.

“Dear Dick,” it began. “I can never tell you how sorry I am for what I've done. The crash was my fault, not yours. I hope somehow you can forgive me. I'll love you always. Louise.”

Mark got to his feet suddenly and pushed his way over several sets of toes to get out of the room, heading for the closest Senate office and commandeering a phone from a none-too-friendly secretary.

There was no answer at the Dallas home of the Timsons. Exactly what he had feared. He dialed the operator then, gaining her help in searching out the telephone number of the Dallas Police, who agreed to send a car to the house and phone him back if there was anything amiss. He called an ambulance service as well, giving them a credit-card number and begging them to send an aid unit immediately to the same address, just in case. Only then did he return to the hearing, his own feelings of guilt rising precipitously.

Dick Timson had left the witness table and taken a seat on the end of the second row, his head down, when the same secretary found Mark. He retraced his steps, calling the number given.

“Doctor, no one answered when our people arrived, so we forced entry. I'm sorry to say you were right.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs. It looks like an overdose. Her pulse was very weak. We transported her immediately and almost lost her twice on the way. She's in extremely critical condition, but she may make it. There was no note, by the way.”

Oh yes there was, he thought. She had, in effect, dictated it to him in person last night.

Mark trudged back to the hearing room as everyone was streaming out, Martinson having called a fifteen-minute recess. He watched Dick Timson simply ignoring the press—and everyone associated with North America ignoring him. The simple logistics of how to get a man who had become an instant pariah from that room to the anonymity of the parking lot and beyond was excruciating. Mark watched the pilot from a distance, following as Timson reached the hallway and turned, alone, scorned, and broken. There would be more than one duty to perform before he could walk away from the captain of Flight 255.

This was the man who had killed Kim and Aaron and Greg by pure self-interested negligence, violating the rules systematically, drawing his own family into the web of deception, bastardizing the medical checks and balances, and lying, lying, lying to cover it up. As in Kansas City, he fought to hate Timson, hate him enough to kill him.

But he could feel only pity.

Timson needed to be told about his wife—to go to her side, however angry he might be with her. He would undoubtedly be fired and prosecuted and reviled, and as the horror of what he had done to his life began to unfold, he would be in great need of psychological help. He probably had been for decades.

Dr. Mark Weiss put on a burst of speed suddenly, catching up with the hunched form of the slowly departing former chief pilot, stopping him and forcing him to look up, his vacant eyes red-tinged mirrors of despair. There were ethics involved. There was his basic humanity involved. And there was duty. He had failed Louise Timson, but there was yet another human life in the balance. And in the final analysis, he had the training to help.

26

Wednesday, January 9 Washington, D.C.

Beverly Bronson tightened the belt of her long black coat and stepped into the teeth of a stiff wind as Joe Wallingford held the door of the Hart Senate Office Building for her, the din of late-afternoon Washington traffic instantly assaulting their ears. A cab screeched to a halt in front of them, the cigar-chewing driver having sensed an impending fare as they approached the curb, but Joe waved him on, having concluded an unspoken agreement with Beverly that they needed the fresh air, however laden with carbon monoxide it might be.

They walked halfway to the Capitol in deep thought before Beverly found her voice, her words emerging as a sigh amidst a sudden explosion of condensed breath in the crisp air. “Other than Watergate, or Iran-contra, I don't think I've ever seen so much come out in a congressional hearing. That was amazing!”

“Are we going to survive?” Joe asked. “Will Farris resign?”

Beverly smiled and watched the sidewalk disappear beneath her feet for a few paces before glancing over at Joe to answer. “I saw him stop you in the hall, Joe. What did he say?”

There was a masculine snort as her companion shook his head in short staccato bursts. “Something on the order of, ‘Where are you working next week, Judas?'”

She resumed her perusal of the sidewalk until Joe was tempted to repeat his question, burning to know just how she assessed the damage.

“Well,” she said at last, looking in the distance ahead, “he told
me
that he might not get reappointed next year, but no one was going to run him out of Washington. He may stay, Joe, and I don't know how—”

“How I'm going to work with him?”

She nodded before continuing. “The rest of it … good grief! Not only did Martinson destroy Dean yesterday, he solved the crash for you.”

“We have Mark Weiss to thank for that, Beverly. He had Timson figured out from the beginning, which, I suppose, is what a trained psychologist should be able to do. I just can't believe the poor woman blamed herself. That's ludicrous!”

“I know. And such a tragedy.”

“I hate to say it, but I don't think we would have figured this out without her.”

They turned right at the southeast corner of the Capitol and walked westward for awhile, trending back toward the FAA building.

“What was fascinating to watch today,” she said, “other than Timson, of course, was David Bayne of North America, and how fast he figured out how to blow with the wind. I mean, here's the chairman of the airline that's just been exposed as grossly negligent in several ways, including its misuse of influence with the government, and the man sits there with a straight face and forcefully tells us he is in full support of the senator's bill, that the NTSB should never be manipulated this easily, and, Joe, that if your people had been allowed to do their job without interference, he, David Bayne, would have then had some way of finding out that
his
executives were lying to him! That is unprecedented.”

Joe nodded. “Talk about me being in professional jeopardy, I've never heard a senior corporate leader fire so many people in a public hearing before. Let's see …” Joe held up the fingers of one hand and began counting them off. “He fired John Walters, Ron Putnam—who was there in the audience, by the way—Dr. McIntyre, Captain Timson, of course, and two names I didn't recognize on Walters's staff.”

“Appearances and public perception, Joe. And guess what? It'll work. A lot of people out there watching on TV will feel great empathy for Bayne. The poor chairman! No one told him that his people were lying, cheating, and drawing him into the web. But he's a good moral individual who won't stand for such things, and here are the heads of the miscreants to prove it.” She shook her head. “I will give him this: he did at least say that as CEO he was fully responsible for failing to know what was happening. Those are the right words, but I know the positive impression he left with the public. Clever, clever man.”

“Yeah, but you know, maybe I'm naïve, but I think the man's truly sincere. I think he was amazed … watching him … that he had lost control.”

“You'd be surprised how few corporate leaders really know what's going on in their companies,” she said, remembering her time in the corporate world, trying to advise CEOs who simply refused to listen to things they didn't want to know.

“Beverly, I'm worried about
you
… your position, you know? Does Dean have you targeted?”

“He thinks I'm a mindless bimbo. I'll be fine.”

“What are my chances?” Joe asked, not certain he wanted to hear an answer.

“Joe …,” she began, then hesitated, her tongue massaging her upper lip as her mind raced ahead, looking for the best way to tell this professional investigator about the dangerous, shifting world of shadowy alliances and ever-changing prospects he had blundered into. “I don't know. A lot depends on … well, outside events we can't control.”

Joe looked over at her, trying to fathom her meaning, then deciding that ignorance would help him through the night.

“You going home, Joe?”

“No, I'm—” He caught himself before uttering Susan's name. “I'm meeting someone for dinner.”

They parted at the FAA garage and Joe drove the few miles to Georgetown, irritated with himself that he was running late. They had made the arrangements at noon, as Joe called Susan to report on the Timson testimony. Six-fifteen
P.M.
at her favorite French restaurant.

He didn't feel like dinner. In fact, he felt like hell, his stomach in a knot, his palms sweaty, and his prospects dim. Instinctively, he knew Farris was determined to get him, but it would probably take the form of a Chinese water torture—slow, excruciating moves to keep Joe from any substantive work, embarrassing him a thousand times over. Yet what could he do but take it? The Board was his home. He'd be lost without it.

The question of whether he should have gone to Martinson in the first place was moot. Whatever the cost, the process had brought him the answer to the Kansas City crash.

Susan was running even farther behind. It was 6:45
P.M.
before she appeared in the doorway of Michellene's, looking, Joe thought, like she had stepped off the cover of a fashion magazine, her face aglow, responding with an electric smile when she spotted him fumbling to get up from the table to come greet her.

“Where do we go from here, Doctor?” he asked, tapping a breadstick on the tablecloth, still struggling to look happy, struggling to hide the apprehension and turmoil he was feeling.

“Was that an institutional ‘we,' or a personal ‘we'?” she asked.

“Let's start with institutional, 'cause on a personal level, you may be fooling around with an unemployed bum before long.”

“Sexiest bum I've ever slept with,” she said.

That embarrassed Joe, which tickled Susan. She watched his color rise as he glanced around them furtively to see if anyone had heard the remark.

“Susan! Good grief,” Joe said under his breath.

“Okay, you want to know what happens next? We see whether the chairman falls on his sword. If he does, you are completely safe. If he doesn't, then in the long term, as I warned you, I'm going to have a devil of a time defending you.”

Joe tried to smile at that. “I wonder how many boxes I'll need.”

“For what?”

“Cleaning out my office.”

“Too soon. Don't give up yet. By the way, Joe, John Phelps came by to see me today with the details on the Miami Air situation and a copy of that smoking-gun memo. He said he didn't want to, but you told him he could trust the board member who wears pantyhose.”

Joe smiled sheepishly. “Did he use those words?”

“Um-hum, and I wonder where he got them?” She was grinning—fortunately, Joe thought. “Watch what sexist remarks you make about me, boy.”

“Yes ma'am. What did he say?”

“The FAA administrator called him personally just after Dean blew the whistle on Caldwell. Phelps went upstairs to meet with him, and took the house counsel. By the time he came back, Caldwell had been fired, and he's under criminal investigation for influence peddling.”

“Oh boy.”

“Yeah. And you may not have heard, but David Bayne lost the takeover battle for North America. That investment group from Miami won board approval for a buyout at fourteen a share. The way he fought it, Bayne will be out, too.”

“Provided the Transportation Department approves the buyout.”

“You kidding? DOT would rubber-stamp anything. United could sell itself to Aeroflot and get approval!”

Joe fell silent and just looked at her for a few seconds. “Should I come to work tomorrow?”

“Would you consider coming in together?” she shot back, “Not to be pushy, of course.” She winked at him, watching him blush anew, and he smiled in spite of himself as he shook his head. “I'd be pretty nervous, distracted company tonight, and you deserve better.”