“I hate to say this, April, but if they’re okay and they’re getting out of here in a few hours and flying home, why am I here?”
“In other words, why did the extremely busy Boeing executive have to cancel some really important appointments when little April could drop everything and take care of it?”
He nodded. “Okay, that did sound pretty selfish.”
“They’re really shaken up, Dean, and they need our support. They need to see you here. They can understand why between you and Sam, only one of you might be able to race up here—”
Dean held his hand up to stop her. “I’m sorry. I make this mistake more often than you know, thinking of you as still being in school, not the vice-president of a corporation.”
“Times change, bro.”
“Imagine that! My little sister a corporate officer.”
“Yeah. Strange, isn’t it? Look, call me when you know the projected release time, okay?”
He opened the door and hesitated, turning back to search her eyes. “What are you concerned about, April? Is this something to do with the broken propeller?”
“Maybe. I don’t want to go into it yet. I just need to know more.”
“All right.”
“And please, Dean. Don’t say anything to Dad. He’s upset enough.”
“So… where are you if they ask?”
“Tell them I’m using the opportunity of being in Anchorage to check up on one of my company’s cruise ships. That way, Empress pays for my airline ticket.”
Dean smiled. “You’ve always known how to speak Dad’s language.”
“Don’t start with the ‘airline pilots are cheap’ thing again.”
“No, no. Not cheap. Just… cost-conscious.”
“And generous to a fault. Dad’s living proof of that.” She waved goodbye as he closed the door.
April turned the car north toward the downtown area, her mind on the city’s relatively small port facilities and the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Office. She’d had difficulty locating anyone to talk to when she’d called them an hour before. A Lieutenant Hobbs had finally agreed to meet with her, and she found him in his office now, receptive but slightly suspicious.
“What, exactly, do you want to know, Ms. Rosen?” Hobbs asked.
April explained the loss of her parents’ plane and her need to find a radar site that might have seen what happened. She passed him the crash-site coordinates.
“Why do you need to see radar tapes?” he asked.
“Because I think my father’s airplane may have hit something on the water two nights ago, like the superstructure of a passing ship. If the fog was thick enough, the crew might not even be aware of it. Propeller blades are relatively fragile compared to nautical structures. Just a tiny touch could break a blade off and leave almost no marks on the structure below.”
“If he clipped a ship because of flying too low, isn’t that negligence?”
She shook her head and explained the difference. “It’s not a violation to accidentally fly into fog. It’s what you do in response that counts.”
She could see Lieutenant Hobbs glance around carefully before coming forward in his chair to pull out a small pad of paper. He opened an ornate Mont Blanc fountain pen, noting April’s curious expression. He glanced at the pen, then back at her.
“A gift from my dad,” he explained. “I told him I needed a basic word processor and he gave me this. He’s a professional comedian.”
“Aren’t all parents?”
“No… I mean, he really is a professional comedian. He lives in Vegas, was on the old Carson show a bunch of times, and still shows up on Leno every now and then. He’s had a good career.”
“I don’t recall a comedian named Hobbs,” April said.
“There’s a divorce and a name change in my background,” he replied. “I’m going to check with our radar guys for the time period involved and see what they have in the way of vessels in that general area, and whether I can get you a copy. I’ll also check on what ships might have been in the vicinity.”
“How long will it take?”
He was already on his feet, the interview obviously over, his discomfort at discussing the subject showing. “I’ll call you.”
She paused at his office door and turned back. “One more question. Can the Coast Guard bring the wreckage of our airplane up from the bottom?”
Jim Hobbs shook his head. “No. But why would you want to salvage it? The aircraft is undoubtedly totaled.”
April nibbled her lip for a few seconds in thought. “My dad’s propeller threw a blade. I need the remains of that propeller hub to prove it happened in flight.” She felt a chill as he shook his head.
“Won’t help you. Hitting the water could snap off a propeller blade. Water’s like concrete above a hundred miles per hour.”
She returned to the rental car too deep in thought to think about where she was heading, and realized she needed a few moments to figure out the next step. What could she accomplish in Anchorage in person that she couldn’t do from Vancouver?
April braked and pulled to the curb suddenly, deciding to park and get some coffee while she called Gracie. The sudden change of course prompted an angry honk from the minivan driver behind her, but she waved at the man with a smile as if he’d done something friendly. April put the car in park and got out, oblivious to the dark blue sedan that had pulled out of the parking lot several car lengths behind her and was now moving to the curb as well, the occupants’ eyes carefully following the raven-haired young woman ahead.
FOURTEEN
WEDNESDAY, DAY 3 UNIWAVE FIELD OFFICES ELMENDORF AFB, ALASKA
Normally, teamwork delighted Ben Cole, even when performing under the sword of a make-or-break deadline. A lab full of happily collaborating professionals was always a joy of intellectual synergy — except today. For the previous four hours, dealing with the constant communication of his team when he wanted to work alone had created perhaps the most agonizing challenge of his professional life.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go sit down and work quietly for an hour or so,” Ben said at last, triggering no objections as his people continued their intense efforts, going back and forth over the various ways the program might have failed.
At any moment, Ben figured, one of his team was bound to make the same discovery he’d made, stumbling onto the thousands of lines of inserted, renegade code. If not, he would have to make the “discovery” himself and pretend to be astounded.
First, however, he needed time alone in his office, which was little more than a larger cubicle in a “cubeville” collection of partitions on one side of the lab. He retreated there now and entered the necessary access codes, quickly retrieving the comparison copy of the program from a half year before and entering the now-familiar commands to run a general line-byline comparison with the latest version. The supercomputer began working as Ben sat back and waited for the results, which finally flashed on the screen: “No differences.”
He leaned forward, wondering where the lines of code could be.
What did I screw up?
He checked the dates on the program copies and started the comparison again.
Once more it yielded no differences.
Ben felt his pulse accelerating. There was no doubt he was working with the very same copies he’d illicitly transmitted home the day before. He opened the machine-code list on the latest version and entered the memorized line number which should take him straight to the first section of the illicitly added computer codes. But that particular line came up completely normal and identical to the original program.