“You bought yesterday when you were asking for help.” He smiled.
“I’m a hell of a lot cheaper date than you were,” Pace replied.
“I keep telling you, I’m older and wiser. By the way, you got any idea where we should meet our friend?”
“Let him choose,” Pace suggested. “He’ll be more relaxed in a place he knows.”
“I knew there was a good reason to bring you along.”
McGill threw a ten-dollar bill on the table, figuring that would cover the check and the angst of the waitress, and the two men walked into the parking lot together.
“We might be hoping for different outcomes on this, you and me,” the pilot said. “I hope this is a crock of shit, that there’s nobody out there with any proof of any kind of conspiracy. I don’t want there to be a midnight phone call. I think you’re wishing for the big story. I would be if I were you. But if there’s no midnight call, if this is a hoax, it stops right there. I won’t help you blow a hoax into a big story, and I hope that doesn’t put us at odds.”
Pace couldn’t help it. Professional recognition is addictive and, once tasted, not easily forsworn. He would be disappointed if Mike didn’t get the midnight phone call; he couldn’t help that. He would be disappointed if this didn’t turn into a very big story. But what the hell. He’d been disappointed before and survived. He’d survive again.
McGill misread Pace’s silence. “Man, I don’t believe you!”
Pace shook his head. “It’s cool, Mike. I was just having a couple of personal thoughts and private doubts. Nothing to do with this. If the bastards are out there, let’s bring them to ground. If not, we’ll forget it and catch up on our sleep.”
They shook hands on it.
As midnight approached, McGill paced his room and Pace sat quietly in a straight-backed chair, contemplating the carpet beneath his feet. The closer it came to the appointed hour, the more certain McGill was that the phone would not ring. Which was why he jumped when the oversized telephone bell shattered the silence in his room at 11:58, a full two minutes early.
“McGill.” He held the phone away from his ear so Pace could listen.
“I gather you received my message.” McGill thought he heard a hint of an accent in the voice, something vaguely familiar.
“I got your message, but for all I know, you’re some crank who crawled out from behind the woodwork with a novel idea for a practical joke that isn’t very funny.” The insult elicited no rise from the caller.
“I understand. But I’m no crank. I’m a desperate man living a nightmare and looking for help. The investigation is rigged.” Pace detected a tightness, almost pain, in the voice.
“If that’s true,” McGill said, “I’m willing to help. But I have no way to judge your integrity or your ability to distinguish a conspiracy because I don’t know who you are.”
“How do you suggest we resolve this dilemma?”
“I suggest we meet somewhere, in a private place you may choose, and you tell me who you are, what you know, what you suspect, and how you got involved.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
The caller thought for a minute. “You know where Georgetown Pike is? Route 193.”
“No, but I can find it.”
“Be careful,” the caller said. “It’s a narrow, hilly, winding road.”
“Right,” McGill replied.
The caller gave the pilot very specific directions to a small bridge near Great Falls, where, he said, there was a secluded pullout that would afford them privacy.
“Can you be there in an hour?” the caller asked.
“No problem,” McGill replied. “You’re certain you’ll be there?”
“Sir, this is neither a practical joke nor a joking matter. I’ll be there.”
The line went dead.
The telephone at the other end of McGill’s connection was in Hangar Three. The hand that held the receiver belonged to Mark Antravanian, who had spent his entire career dealing through channels, not anonymously over the telephone in the middle of the night. He hated what he was doing, and he was frightened. But he had no choice.
Thursday night he’d witnessed a man wearing an NTSB identification badge tampering with the crumpled starboard engine of the doomed ConPac flight. When the saboteur finished his task and left the scene, Antravanian took a quick look at the engine and recognized immediately what had been done to it. At that moment he had been too stunned to believe what he saw, let alone to act on it. It wasn’t until the power-plants group met early the next morning that Antravanian recognized the stranger at the engine to be the very man who would head the investigation of its performance.
The engineer flirted with the idea of confronting Parkhall at the breakfast table in the dining room of the Marriott Hotel in front of the two other members of the power-plants team. But his Eastern European civility wouldn’t allow him to make an accusation publicly before confronting Parkhall privately. His decision to wait was sealed by the approach of three men. Antravanian recognized the squat, barrel-chested, balding man in the lead as Walt Havens. He reckoned correctly that the other two also were representatives of the Converse Corporation, who would have come both to aid in the investigation and to oversee the interests of the company.
So Antravanian waited until after breakfast, when the group broke up to reconvene at the site where the Converse engine rested. He carefully moved into a position at Parkhall’s elbow as they walked out of the hotel into the parking lot.
Antravanian considered a diplomatic opening, but in the end, when the two were isolated from the others, he blurted it out. “What were you doing to the engine last night?”
Parkhall’s head snapped around as though he’d been struck from the other side. Antravanian saw the color drain from the man’s face.
“What are you talking about… Mark, is it? I wasn’t out at the engine last night.”
“Yes, you were,” Antravanian insisted. “I saw you there. And after you left, I looked at the engine. I had seen it for the first time during the late afternoon, and I saw immediately the difference. I didn’t know who you were until this morning, and now I demand an explanation or I will go to higher authority.”
“All right,” Parkhall relented. “Ride out to Hangar Three with me, and I’ll show you. It’s nothing to get all lathered up about.”
Inside a maroon Dodge sedan, Parkhall used his car telephone. “The warehouse. Five minutes,” was all he said. They rode across the airport grounds and through the guarded gates in silence. Antravanian once tried to press his questions, but Parkhall waved him silent. They parked beside the hangar. Antravanian started walking toward the entry door, but Parkhall called him in the opposite direction, toward a small warehouse.
Inside, they were met by two men who looked out of place, more like retired pro football tackles or soldiers of fortune than aviation engineers. Parkhall sat down behind a small desk. Antravanian stood in front of him, his back to the door and the hired help. Antravanian thought Parkhall looked more comfortable since they’d entered the warehouse. He surmised correctly the men standing behind him were hired muscle and the diminutive NTSB engineer felt less threatened—and more threatening—with them acting as back-up.
Without hesitation, Parkhall told Antravanian he’d been given a great deal of money to pay for an investigative conclusion that exonerated the Converse engines from blame in the Dulles accident. He said he was willing to share the money in return for Antravanian’s silence about what he saw Thursday night.
Even before Parkhall got into the details, Antravanian’s reaction was explosive, an accusation that Parkhall had gone mad. Parkhall remained calm, explaining that if Antravanian did not intend to accept the money or meant in any way to cast doubts on the contrived engine report, there was more cash available to take him out of the picture.