And of course Peter Phoenix. I figured he'd want to be there at the end to make sure everything got done properly.
The new member was Martin Coventry. He still seemed mobile. I guess the BC had called him in for lack of any really old players on the bench.
I was proud of Sherman. There is something to be said for putting on a show. He knew the outcome, yet he still played the moment for all it was worth. He went right up to their big curved table, lifted one leg, and sat down on it. Marybeth Brest scowled at him. He reached over and tousled her hair.
"You're probably wondering why I've called you together," he said.
The BC made an exception this one time, due to the infirmities of the Council. Having them come to the Fed would have involved a lot of logistical planning, since most of their bodily functions were performed by several tons of machinery. The five time capsules were sent over, and opened in their presence. I watched as they read the messages. They all said pretty much what my last time capsule had said: Do whatever he tells you.
Sherman gave them time to digest the messages. Then he stood up and faced them.
"Now. Here's what we're going to do."
18 "The Twonky"
Testimony of Bill Smith
So I rushed out of the hangar, alerted the FBI and the CIA and all the newspapers. The Governor called out the National Guard and the President called a special session of Congress. All the big think tanks put their best minds to work on the problem. I was debriefed endlessly, everyone wanting to know exactly what Louise Ball had said and what she had done every time I'd met her.
And if you believe any of that, you're a bigger fool than I am.
What I did was stop by a bar for a drink or four, and then call Tom Stanley. He was asleep, but said he'd listen to me. I drove to his hotel room, sat down with him, and told him the whole story. I hold him what Louise had told me, and I was amazed how different it sounded in the light of my experiences in the hangar. I told him what had happened to me, what I'd seen and heard, how I'd come around just as Louise had said I would, with a leg that hurt like hell and the beginnings of a bad cold from lying two hours on cold concrete.
"She told me she was from somewhere else Tom." I said. "Someplace where everybody dies. Somewhere a long ways from here, or a long time. I thought she was crazy. But she didn't know me! I'd just spent the night with her, and she said, "Smith, you don't know me," and I knew she wasn't kidding. She hadn't met me yet.
"And that thing ... that stunner. I didn't get to look into it very long, and they took it with them, but it didn't look like anything I'd ever seen before. And it knocked me out, but I could still breathe okay, but I couldn't even move my eyeballs. I just looked straight up. I thought they were Russians, or something. I thought they were going to kill me. But, see, they couldn't kill me, or Louise wouldn't let them ... I don't know."
I trailed off. I don't know how long I'd been going on about it. Tom had listened quietly.
"So who was she?" he finally said. "Where did she come from?"
"I don't know. But don't you see? We've got to find out."
There was a very long silence. He wouldn't look at me.
"Those watches, Tom. What about the watches? Something happened to them to make some of them go backwards, and the rest of them were forty-five minutes off. Forty-five minutes, Tom."
He looked up, then down again.
"And the tape. He said they were all dead and burned. Dead and burned. Why would he say a thing like that? Tom, are you going to ask me how much I've had to drink?"
He looked up- again.
"Something like that."
"What can I do to convince you?"
He spread his hands.
"Bill ... I want to believe you ... no, wait." He shook his head. "That's a lie. I don't want to believe you. Would you? I mean, it's a crazy story, Bill. It's crazy. But I'm willing to believe you if you show me something."
"What?"
He shrugged. "That's up to you, isn't it? Anything. Anything at all that's concrete. Put something in my hand. Otherwise, much as I hate to say this ... I think you've just flipped out about this girl. I don't know why. But why don't you go home and sleep on it? Maybe you'll think of something."
Damn, but that was an embarrassing situation. l think, in many ways, it was worse than all that followed.
There was no reason in the world why Tom should take my word on a story as ridiculous as this one. And yet, if I had a friend in the world, he was it. If I couldn't convince him, who was I going ping to convince?
The situation seemed to call for decisive action, so I took it. I bought a bottle and went back to my room and got drunk.
The next morning I started tackling it a piece at a time.
The CVR Tape: "I think that's been disposed of to everyone's satisfaction," Gordy said at the meeting that night. "Carole's analysis of DeLisle's words makes sense to me. She's got people looking into his records. He had a medical furlough five years ago. There's some evidence he might have been unstable. I don't know why you want to keep beating this one, Bill; it's a dead horse."
The consensus was we wouldn't release that part with the rest of the CVR transcript. It would be included in the official report, but that wouldn't be finished for about a year and by then nobody would give a damn.
Round Two, the kooky klocks: "It never happened," said Special Agent Freddie Powers over a cup of coffee at the Oakland FBI office.
"What do you mean? We saw it. So did the doctor."
"He doesn't remember it, and neither do I" He looked around furtively, like we were in a cheap spy film.
"Look, Smith, I've had a friend in San Mateo working with IC chips like the ones in those watches. He's done everything to them. He's burned them up, shot a thousand volts through them, done everything he could think of. The best he's come up with yet is watches that don't work. If he can duplicate it, I thought, I'd be willing to report it. But it's too late now. My report is already filed, and it doesn't mean a damn thing anyway, and they don't like funny, unsolved shit on your record."
"I thought you were the guy who liked to tackle the hard ones."
"Piss off, buddy. I'll do a hell of a lot for something that's important. But this isn't shit. It's just a nutty thing that can make us both look like a couple of nuts."
"I really thought you'd go to the wall on it. I didn't think you'd cover up evidence."
He leaned a little closer to me.
"A word to the wise, Bill. You're damn close to the wall, yourself. A padded wall. I've heard some things, you know how they get around. They say the guys upstairs don't like you reassembling that 747; they say it costs too much and we won't learn anything. Maybe you ought to take a vacation, go someplace and dry out, before somebody does it for you."
Kooky klocks, Part Two: So we had a lot of watches that were off by forty-five minutes.
So what?
Round Four, and the challenger staggers, bloodied, from his corner: Twelve dozen stomachs full of airline chicken. And five with beef, and one with cottage cheese.
It was obviously a mistake in Pan Am's records-which showed the normal distribution of beef vs. chicken plates-or a statistical anomaly with no bearing on the crash.
I gave up that round before it really got started, on points. The important thing was to stay on my feet until I got my shot.