“Okay, at the Marriott. Same place we met before, in the parking lot.”
“What’s up?”
“We’ve got the results from the first computer runs.”
“And?”
“The results are pretty conclusive. I don’t think they’re going to change.”
“You going to tell me or should I schedule a nervous breakdown on the Beltway?”
“I’m going to show you. And I’m going to give you a story that will shake this town like an earthquake.”
Pace appeared in the newsroom a little after four o’clock, a sheaf of large papers rolled under his arm. Wister could tell he was carrying a big story by the way he walked.
“So, yeah, what?” the national editor asked as the reporter approached him.
“Can we go in the Glory Room, where we can spread some papers out?”
“Sure. I’ll get Avery and meet you.”
“Avery’s working on Sunday?”
“You think he’d miss being in on this?”
Pace’s smile served as an answer.
When Wister and Schaeffer entered, Pace had several large sheets of computer graphics spread across the table. Three were in black and white. The fourth was in color.
The two editors flanked their reporter.
“What are these?” Schaeffer asked.
Pace explained them in the order he laid them out. “This first one represents the computer’s best estimate of where the remains of an average-sized red-tailed hawk would wind up if it flew headfirst into a Converse Fan operating at takeoff thrust.” He pointed to several blackened areas around the perimeter of the engine. “These ink smears represent pieces, uh, well, material that probably would have been channeled into the open space between the guts of the engine and the skin. That material would have continued through and out the back without doing any damage or touching any working parts except the fan blades. These jagged outlines represent pieces of fan blades broken by the impact. Most of them go around the engine, too, although the computer projected that a big enough piece could conceivably be ingested, and it’s represented by this outline here. But the black smudges are what’s important for now. That’s where the bird would have gone.”
He looked to see if his editors were following him, and both were nodding. He moved on to the second sheet.
“This is what might have happened if the bird was sucked in backwards. As you can see, there’s not too much difference. Ken explained to me that in the computer projections, the mass of the bird is the mass of the bird, no matter what direction it’s flying. The principal difference is that if the bird was flying in the same direction as the plane was moving, its own forward speed would detract marginally from the velocity of the impact. If it flew into the engine head-on, then its forward speed would increase the impact marginally. Again, what’s important is where the remains go, and as you can see, the smudges are in pretty much the same place either way.”
He moved to the third sheet. “Now this is where the NTSB team actually found the bird remains.”
“It’s not even close,” Schaeffer said.
“Nope. Ken figures when they spritzed the stuff around they didn’t make any effort to duplicate scientific reality. Heck, they probably didn’t know what that reality was.”
“Well, this is pretty solid evidence, but there’s still nobody to pin it on,” Wister said.
“What’s this last sheet?” Schaeffer asked.
“This is a color overlay showing where the computer projections say bird remains should have been and where they actually were found. Where they should have been is in blue and where they were is in red.”
“At the risk of repeating myself, they’re not even close,” he said, repeating himself.
“Not even close. And these comparative figures down here—” Pace pointed to the bottom of the page “—are estimates of the actual volume of bird in the engine versus what the computer says should have been there. If you add them up, you’ll see there are four times more red volume than blue volume. In other words, there’s four times more bird inside the engine than the computer says there should be.”
“That’s because the computers say in a real bird strike, three-fourths of the bird’s volume would have gone around the engine and out the back of the pod?” Schaeffer asked.
“At least.”
“Paul, get the art department to reproduce this last graphic for tomorrow. And let’s do a companion chart on the volume figures. We’re going to play this big.”
He turned to Pace. “Fine work, Steve. Vindication must taste pretty sweet.”
Pace shook his head. “Not yet. Not until we nail down who did this.”
When Wister left, Schaeffer asked Pace to sit down. “We have a problem,” he said. “How well do you know Tim Hogan?”
“The Hulk? Our photographer?”
Schaeffer nodded.
Pace shrugged. “Reasonably well. We’ve worked a lot of assignments together, including this ConPac crash. He’s a pretty good guy. Why?”
“You see him socially?”
“We don’t hang out together if that’s what you mean. He’s a good deal younger, and he has more stamina for the singles-bar scene than I do. I see him at company parties, and we were softball teammates last year.”
“Did you ever meet his girlfriend?”
Pace laughed. “Which one? From what I’ve heard, Hulk’s personal crusade is to bed every unmarried woman in Washington before he’s thirty-five.”
“Apparently there’s one woman who’s been a regular for a couple of months. She’s a legislative assistant on Harold Marshall’s staff. She knew every move this paper was making on the ConPac—at least she knew as much as Tim knew, and that was most of it.”
“How do we know this?” Pace asked. “A tip?”
“No, the woman confessed to Hogan, and Tim came straight to us. As you can imagine, he’s sick about it.”
“He’d be sicker if I had my way,” Wister said as he reentered the room. “He’d be on the street. He’s put us in a hell of a fix.”
“Not necessarily, Paul,” Schaeffer demurred. “But what we do have—” and here he turned to Pace “—is some good reason to reconsider your suspicions about Marshall. Was he trying to sway the NTSB investigation? Then maybe he’s behind the phony bird strike.”
“Could be,” Pace agreed.
“You have sources, right?” Wister asked.
“Sort of,” Pace said.
“Use them,” Schaeffer ordered.
“They’re political,” Pace pointed out. “They’ve got Democratic axes to grind against Marshall’s Republican skull.”
“All sources are political,” Schaeffer said. “All of them have axes to grind, or they wouldn’t be talking to us. It isn’t our job to make judgments about their motives. But we keep their biases very much in mind and remember that we have to be able to prove what they tell us. We don’t take their information at face value.”
“Right,” Pace agreed, and Schaeffer smiled.
“So go find us another story.”
George Ridley returned Pace’s call shortly before ten o’clock that evening, one home phone to another.
“I wanted to tell you what we’re letting loose in the morning,” Pace lied.
“I figured there was another shoe to drop,” Ridley replied. “What size is it?”
“Eighteen triple-E.”
“That’s Republican size. Big.”
“Real big.”
“Would you care to give me a clue as to the style and color?”
“Incontrovertible proof that the bird evidence was planted.”
“Well, I probably could muster enough interest to read about that. Everything you’ve written lately has been mildly interesting. But,” Ridley paused, “this is the first time you’ve been kind enough to call me the night before with a preview of coming attractions.”