Marine One (29 page)

Hackett had undoubtedly notified his PR hack, who almost certainly called a reporter or two and told them to station themselves somewhere in the hotel lobby or outside the hotel. They saw Kathryn and me approach and were left to speculate on why the two of us would be at Hackett's office at ten o'clock at night in between two important trial days. The only conceivable reason would be to discuss settlement. Which, of course, was true. I could just hear the conversation with the PR hack and the journalists. Be where? In front of the hotel. Why? Interesting people will arrive. What people? You'll see. Why are they coming? To testify? They're part of the trial. To discuss the trial? At ten o'clock at night? To settle? No comment.

WorldCopter had gone ballistic when Kathryn had told them that they could settle the case by chipping in a mere $19.75 billion dollars to WorldCopter's insurance-policy limits of $250 million. Wednesday of that week was perhaps the worst day. Hackett had completed his case and he rested. Nothing had gone wrong, we hadn't really dented any of his witnesses or experts, nor had we challenged his theory, at least during his case. The media was proclaiming victory all the way around and wondering why we didn't just pay Hackett Whatever he was asking for. Of course they didn't know what he was asking for, and if they had, they would have been horrified, or at least I hope they would have. And Bradley was nowhere to be found.

That night though, things turned. The usual weary group was in our conference room when I received an e-mail on my BlackBerry. It was the word that I had told Bradley to e-mail me when I needed to go outside and check my cell phone in my car.

I excused myself as if I were going to the bathroom, walked down the stairs, and out to my car. I sat down in the passenger seat and opened the glove box. I took out the phone and read the text message: Call me ASAP. WB. I dialed his cell phone and waited for him to pick up. I could tell by the background noise that he was driving when he answered. Before he even greeted me, he said, "Mike. You're not going to believe this. Are you at the office?"

"I'm sitting in my car. Where the hell have you been?"

"I'll tell you all about it. Can you meet me at my lab?"

"Sure, I guess. What do you have?"

"I've got to show you. I'm heading there now. When can you get there?"

"I don't know, maybe forty-five minutes."

"See you then."

"Oh, one other thing. You've got to call WorldCopter. You know that other Marine One, the helicopter they have in their hangar out there, the one behind that Plexiglas wall?"

"What about it?"

"You gotta get me in there. Tonight. With tools. Get Whatever permission you need. Get Marcel, get whoever you need. Have them meet us out there. And don't tell anybody else. Nobody. I mean nobody."

"I'll see what I can do. I've got to sneak out of here somehow. See you at your lab."

I hung up and grabbed some paper out of the glove compartment. I wrote notes to Marcel and Rachel: Meet me at the WorldCopter hangar at 10:00 PM. No questions. Do not let anyone follow you. I went back inside and back to the conference room. I said to Brightman, "So you're going to start with our meteorologist tomorrow morning, just laying the groundwork on the severity of the storm and the like?"

"Yes. I'd guess that's the safest way to begin. We need to warm the jury up to the idea of listening to what we have to say. The meteorologist has nothing controversial, so I think we'll start with him."

"Got it. Look, I told Wayne Bradley to be here tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, so I think I'll stay back and prepare him. We can put him on second?"

Brightman hesitated. "Maybe. We haven't really talked about who was going to take him. I was kind of assuming I would."

"I think I need to take him."

"I thought he'd gone quiet on us."

"I finally reached him. He'll be ready. I just want to prepare him, and then we'll have him ready to go in the afternoon."

Brightman had his arms folded and tapped his lips with his finger as if he were thinking. I knew what he was really thinking: how does he break it to me that I'm not going to do anything for the rest of the trial? I was going to let him think that as long as he wanted. As long as I had time to do what I needed to do. I asked Brightman to put a list of order of witnesses on the board so we could all agree how we were going to present the case. Everyone's eyes turned to the whiteboard, and I slipped the notes to Rachel and Marcel. They both read the notes and glanced at me with quizzical looks. I nodded, confirming I meant what I said.

I told Brightman that since he was prepared for the morning and I wouldn't be needed till the afternoon, I was going to catch up on some sleep and excused myself.

I headed toward my house, then turned sharply and floored my Volvo to head toward Bradley's lab.

I
RACED THROUGH
the darkness trying to imagine what Bradley had found and why he needed to meet with me at his lab. His lab was halfway to Washington from Annapolis, in Bowie, Maryland, about a half hour away. We could go on to the WorldCopter plant from there no problem.

It was a little hard to find, but I typed the address into my GPS so I wouldn't miss the turn, an unmarked road that led deep into the woods. I found the turn and kept my bright lights on as I hurried down the dark pavement. It was about a mile from the main road to his lab. It looked unusually bright as I approached the end of the road. My cell phone rang, and I picked it up.

It was Bradley. He sounded panicked. "Where are you?"

"I'm on the road to your-"

"Stop! Don't go down the road!" The tone of his voice was alarming.

I hit the brakes. "Why not?"

"My lab is on fire! The flames are fifty feet high. I'm heading back toward the main road. They may be there, Mike. There may be somebody waiting for us there!"

I felt a quick jolt of adrenaline. "On fire? What happened?"

"I don't know. I was driving down-"

"Is that you driving away?"

"Yes. Stop, that's me right in front of you."

He stopped his Honda Pilot right next to me. I opened my window. "What started the fire?"

"Not what, who. They're after us, Mike. They're onto us. I was staying away, trying to use other labs or make due. But I had to go back to get something. They know we're going to blow this thing sky-high, and they're trying to stop us." He looked in his rearview mirror and around in the darkness.

"We don't know what happened. Maybe somebody left the coffeepot on."

"No, Mike. We don't leave coffeepots on. It's the safest lab in the country. Somebody thinks we found something and burned the place down. Either to burn the evidence or to warn us. Or to get me."

I listened to the engines of our idling cars and looked at the glow at the end of the road. "They know the critical evidence is the tip weight. You still have it?"

Bradley nodded, with his mouth open.

"They wouldn't know that. But they would know it is made of bronze, or some other type of metal that's not likely to burn in a fire. It would make it through a fire, right?"

"Depending on how hot the fire is, but generally."

"That means they're talking to us. They don't want to kill us-we're too obvious, too much in the public eye. They just want us to shut up and let this case take its course, us losing and them fading into the shadows."

"You think it's the other attorney?"

"Hackett? He's sinister enough, but I don't know if he'd go that low. Can you show me at WorldCopter what you found?"

Bradley nodded, regaining his composure. "It would have been better here, but I have a portable in the back here." He indicated the back of his Pilot.

"Let's go. Stay right behind me. If you see anything suspicious, flash your brights."

I pulled up in front of the WorldCopter facility and stopped quickly. I was sure we hadn't been followed; of course, I'd thought that before, every day, and now realized I was probably wrong. Rachel and Marcel were waiting in the parking lot. Bradley pulled up right behind me. He got out of his Pilot. He looked disheveled, with his cuffed khakis hanging up on top of old brown leather boots that were two-thirds unlaced, and a large Hawaiian shirt overhanging his portliness. His reading glasses dangled around his neck, and his hair was everywhere.

"So what do you have, Wayne?"

Marcel and Rachel greeted him, but Bradley was all business. He pointed to the back of his Pilot. He opened up the back hatch, and there was what could only be described as a traveling lab. The backseats had either been taken out or laid really flat, and he seemed to have built out the back with snugly fitting cabinets and padded toolboxes. At the very back was what appeared to be a flat bottom; but he reached down, pulled on an invisible handle, and a table came up to his waist level. He reached over to the left, opened a door to one of his fixed cabinets, and pulled out a leather bag, or pouch, the kind of pouch you might expect to hold coins in the eighteenth century. He reached to the right side of the Pilot, which was still running, and pulled up the extension arm of a halogen desk light, which now sat directly over the table in front of him, illuminating the black felt surface. He opened the drawstring of the leather bag and dumped out the contents. It was the tip weight, but it had been further dismantled. I tried to control the panic rising in my chest.

"Shit, Wayne. You've destroyed it! We'll never get this thing into evidence."

"Bear with me here, Mike."

"Marcel, Rachel, this is one of the tip weights from Marine One. Marcel, see this serial number here. We can only see four of the six numbers, but they're the last four, and these are among the numbers of one of the tip weights that are missing from your list of known tip weights. We found it embedded in a tree at the accident scene."

Marcel leaned over, lifted the shattered disk up to his eyes, and examined the tip weight carefully. "How long have you had this? Why wasn't I told?"

Bradley nodded. "We weren't sure what it meant. Look at this." Everyone huddled under the upraised rear hatch of his Pilot with the bright halogen light shining on the tip weight of Marine One. Bradley pulled down a large magnifying glass that was attached to a boom from the ceiling of the Pilot. He pulled it down and held up the tip weight, now brilliantly illuminated behind the lens. He took a small metal instrument like a dentist's pick, although straight, and pointed to a section of the tip weight. "See this?"

We all squinted and looked hard. I thought I saw what he was pointing at. He continued, "See this?" Bradley waited for recognition to hit us. A small window was cut half the depth into the tip weight, showing a small wire.

I was suddenly thunderstruck by the implications. "Bradley, is that what I think it is?"

He smiled and nodded. "It is. I tested it."

I closed my eyes in disbelief. "Are you
shitting
me?"

"I shit you not."

I put my hands to my head as my thoughts raced to help me understand what I was looking at. "What does this mean? What do we do with this?"

Bradley put the pieces back in the leather pouch, placed it in his pocket, turned off the halogen light, put the magnifying glass back up where it belonged, stowed the shelf, and said, "You need to get me in to see the helicopter sitting behind that Plexiglas wall inside. If my theory is right, we can confirm it right now."

I wasn't following him. "How?"

"This tip weight didn't end up on Marine One by accident. There have to be more just like it. Probably many."

Bradley turned toward Marcel. "Have you looked into this helicopter?"

Marcel said, "In what regard?"

"Any of the blades replaced in the last three months?"

"I don't know. Probably. They replace blades all the time. The slightest nick and they replace a blade on Marine One."

Bradley nodded. "What I'm thinking may be true even if it was more than three months. But if less than three months, I think we could be almost sure. You've got to get us in there, Marcel. We've got to get access to that helicopter, and I need to take the end cap off of the blade that's been put on most recently."

"They'll never let us touch it. It's a Marine One helicopter. We don't have clearances."

I shook my head. "Make it happen, Marcel. Call Jean Claude if you have to."

Marcel shrugged and threw out his chin. "Let us try."

We closed the Pilot, walked into WorldCopter headquarters, and persuaded the guard to let us go back to the hangar area. Then we were confronted with the Plexiglas wall and a humorless guard. Marcel pleaded with him and begged for access to the helicopter. Not a chance. Marcel got the head of the Marine One maintenance program out of bed and begged for access. No. To allow anyone to even touch the helicopter without a Yankee White clearance would ground it forever unless they completely dismantled it and reassembled it. No way. Marcel wasn't giving up.

He continued up the chain of command, to the president of WorldCopter U.S. He was persuaded, but said it wasn't his call. He said we needed to get a hold of Jean Claude. Jean Claude was staying in a private home that had been rented in the hills of Annapolis for $10,000 a week. The mansion was owned by some mysterious businessman who had some indirect relationship to a shipping line that no one seemed to know the name of. Jean Claude's phone was off. Marcel grew more frustrated. He called everyone he knew, including Jean Claude's personal secretary in France. She was sound asleep when he called and was annoyed when he awoke her. When he explained the importance of what he was doing, she happily agreed to contact Jean Claude and seemed to have some other secret number for him. We waited and stared at the brightly lit Marine One helicopter sitting behind the Plexiglas wall, hoping against hope that we'd be able to test Bradley's theory.

Marcel's phone rang. He spoke in French and seemed pleased. He handed his phone to the head of security, who stood as he listened to the president of WorldCopter SA tell him to allow access to this group even though it would mean losing the use of this helicopter as Marine One. The guard threw the bolt electronically and pulled the heavy Plexiglas door toward him. We walked inside the restricted area, very aware of the intense lights and scrutiny that were on us. The security guard had called one of the other security guards, who had brought a video camera and was filming everything we did. Fine with me.

Bradley quickly grabbed a ladder and pulled it over to the helicopter. He turned to Marcel. "Which blade was put on more recently?"

Marcel said, "I will check. Do you want to take off the end cap?"

"The end cap and the tip weights."

"I'll check the maintenance records and bring the tools."

Marcel disappeared toward the back of the hangar, reviewed the maintenance records, and came back with two hand tools. "The blue blade was replaced forty days before the crash." Marcel looked at the rotor hub, saw the blue marking on one of the blades, and put the ladder underneath the end of it. He labored up the ladder and removed the Allen screws that held on the end cap. He pulled it off, handed it down to me. I set it on the floor, well out of the way. I looked up and saw the tip weights properly placed with a large nut holding them onto a bolt. Marcel loosened the nut, pulled it off, and removed the four tip weights that had been attached to the blade when it had been balanced in France. Marcel handed the tip weights to Bradley and climbed down from the ladder. Marcel asked, "Is that all we need?"

"That's it," Bradley said excitedly. "Let's go back to my car."

We exited the sterile environments of the hangared Marine One and waved to the security guards as we hurried outside to the Pilot. Bradley set up his portable lab and put a small block of metal on the tray. He put the tip weight on top of it and picked up a chisel and a hammer.

Marcel was horrified. "You're not going to destroy it, are you?"

"I'm going to break it open." Bradley raised his hammer and cracked the chisel into the tip weight, breaking it in half.

I got no sleep that night. And contrary to what I had told Brightman, I wasn't going to go meet Bradley the next morning. He was coming to my house. I still couldn't take the chance that the office was bugged and that Hackett would know what I was doing before I pulled the trigger. Bradley had agreed to stay at the first hotel he encountered, pay cash, and come to my house for breakfast at eight o'clock the following morning. He was to keep the tip weights in his possession at all times, including inside the hotel room. He was not to leave them in his car, and he was to have a separate bag for the tip weights taken from the Marine One at the WorldCopter hangar.

I was up banging out a new outline on my computer before the sun even hinted at the horizon. I stayed there while Debbie prepared breakfast for the kids, got them ready for school, and they left.

He arrived at eight. I let him in, brought him to the den, and got him a cup of coffee. He looked confident and rested. I felt confident and unrested. We walked through his testimony. He understood. He was ready to go. One pocket held the tip weight from the crashed Marine One, the other pocket held the tip weights from the intact Marine One.

I heard the front door open, which was a surprise because Debbie always came in through the back after she parked her car. I glanced out through the den's French doors and saw Debbie. She looked concerned. I excused myself.

"What's up?" I asked.

Debbie looked at the front door and put her car keys in her purse. "There's a woman standing in front of our house who said she needs to see you."

I rolled my eyes. "Reporter."

"She looks very unsure of herself, very much out of her element. She kept looking around."

I walked toward the front door. "What does she look like?"

"Black, pretty; early fifties."

I looked out the thin window next to the front door. I saw the woman Debbie had described. I'd never seen her before. I checked my watch. It was nine fifteen. The trial was back under way, any journalists would be there. "I'll see what this is about. Did you talk to her?"

"She said she needed to talk to Mike Nolan. I told her I was your wife, and she said she could only talk to you."

"Come with me."

We walked out of the front of our house and went to the woman on the sidewalk. She looked uneasy as I approached her. "Hi, I'm Mike Nolan. My wife says you need to see me."

She nodded. She handed me an envelope. I looked into her eyes, but she wouldn't look at me.

"What is this?" I took the envelope and saw that my name was written on the outside, in what was probably a man's handwriting.

"He said to give this to you."

"Who did?"

"My husband."

I looked at Debbie, but neither of us had any idea what this woman was talking about. "Who's your husband?"

"Tinny."

I felt a shot of fear. "You're Tinny Byrd's wife?"