Final Approach

by John J. Nance

  He replaced the chart and walked to her room.

  “Mrs. Timson?”

  The voice was slow in answering, but firm and controlled. “Yes?”

  “I’m Dr. Mark Weiss. May I come in?”

  They chatted amiably for a few minutes about innocuous things, Mark trying to anticipate her eventual reaction to his real purpose. There were a few flower arrangements in the room, but otherwise she was alone and unacknowledged, and she confirmed that her husband was not due to visit for several hours.

  “Louise, I need to tell you who I am and why I’m here. You probably don’t recall, but I met you in Kansas City, in the hospital, when I came to talk to your husband just after the accident.”

  She stayed quiet and studied him, only mild concern showing on her face. “I’m sorry, I don’t …”

  “That’s all right. I’m a psychologist who has worked in commercial aviation, and I’ve been looking into this tragedy, into why it occurred, and staying in touch with the NTSB, although I don’t represent them.”

  Now there was alarm on her face, her eyes darting to the door and back to the chair where he was seated. “I do remember you. You … you lost your wife in the crash. Oh my Lord! Your wife and little children. I’m so sorry, Doctor.” Tears began to fill her eyes as Mark held out his hand, surprised that she grasped it tightly. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  They sat in silence for a bit, Mark finally breaking it. “I desperately need to understand what happened, Louise.”

  She nodded, her lips pursed tightly together, saying nothing.

  “I need, especially, to know why you are so very deeply upset.” He kept his voice calm and even, hoping for an even reaction from her, but expecting worse. Her calm reply caught him unprepared. “I can’t.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “I … I can’t tell you the reason, Doctor Weiss. But I can tell you that my husband did not cause the crash.”

  “You can’t tell me the cause of the crash, or why you’ve been so badly affected?”

  “Neither.”

  More silence, Louise Timson closing her eyes, still gripping Mark’s hand tightly. They fluttered open at last, her voice a whisper. “I can’t. I can’t tell you … it’s … it’s …”

  “What?”

  Her eyes closed again, her head starting a series of back and forth jerks, slowly at first, then more rapidly. “No. I can’t. Only my priest.”

  “Are you telling me, Louise, that somehow you’re responsible? That you did something? That’s how you’ve been acting.”

  Her hand pulled away, both hands folding over her breasts protectively. “I can never tell you. It would hurt Dick. But he’s not responsible. I am.”

  The need for professional balance competing with the burning personal need to know fought a rapid battle in Mark’s mind, the professional training winning out.

  “Okay. I’ll stop asking.” Mark took his business card and placed it in her hand, folding her fingers back over it.

  “Keep this in a safe place, please. When you’re ready, I’ll be here. I’ll come back, anytime, day or night.”

  She nodded finally, and Mark got to his feet with great reluctance, all his gut instincts crying out for more questions, crying out that he should yank the answers from her if necessary.

  “One more thing. And you remember this, please. You’re not responsible. No one person can be responsible for such a thing. It is a chain of causes, okay? Whatever it is you think you did, the crash might have occurred even if you were not involved.”

  There was no nod, just her sad and tear-filled eyes.

  “Do you want me to go now?” he asked, hoping she’d say no.

  But Louise Timson nodded slowly.

  “You’ll call me when … if … you’re ready?”

  “Yes.”

  On the way back to his car Mark thought about calling Joe Wallingford or Andy Wallace, or perhaps Susan Kelly again. She certainly understood the situation from his perspective. Working with her had been a pleasure, but both she and Andy had warned him that Joe would be hard to convert, or to convince that human motivations and breakdowns were the most important key in the aviation-safety equation.

  He had not been able to get Joe alone during the Kansas City hearing. Suddenly, the idea of driving straight to DFW Airport and flying to Washington made as much sense as anything else. When he stopped and thought about it, he really had nowhere else to go that wouldn’t bring back the same wrenching cycle of memories. Mark stopped at a phone booth and phoned Wallingford, making an appointment for Friday morning, then checked to make sure the tape cassette and supporting papers from a certain telephone call to Kansas City were still in his briefcase. It was time to show Joe what they were really dealing with.

  It had been a genuine effort all day long to keep his mind on business, the sweet memory of Susan Kelly in his arms the night before drawing him away from even the panic he felt over the threat to his NTSB job. She had caught him awake in the middle of the night, leaning on one elbow, studying the curves of her face as she slept in satisfied warmth. Her eyes had fluttered open, meeting his, a sly smile painting her features as she asked, “What are you doing, sir?” in a sensuous voice that brought him to attention again.

  “I almost can’t believe you’re real. I don’t want to miss a moment of this,” he had said, melting into her smile, and her arms, once more.

  Senator Martinson had invited Joe to a late lunch Thursday morning, and without checking to see how Susan’s confrontation with Farris had turned out, he left the office at 2 P.M. to meet him, driving the short distance to a quiet restaurant north of the White House in a little under an hour, Washington midday traffic and scarce parking places taking their toll on his patience.

  Kell greeted him with genuine pleasure and escorted him back to a private dining room where the two of them could talk in obscurity. Normally being entertained by a senator would have been a cause for quiet pride, but too much was happening, and Kell had already become a friend and a professional asset in Joe’s estimation. He had called the senator a week before the hearing to plead for help penetrating the stone wall the Defense Department had thrown up around the Brilliant Pebbles project and the radar tracking unit.

  “Any word, Kell, on the radar?”

  Martinson shook his head. “Not yet. I’m pushing hard to find out, though. But that’s not why I called. I want to bounce some ideas off you, totally off the record for both of us, of course.”

  He had, he said, been fascinated with the hearing, the investigation, and the dedication of the staff members. But he saw problems, and needed help in defining them.

  “Such as?”

  “Well, North America is only one investigation among many you’re running, Joe. There are, at last count, about three hundred of you at the Board, both in Washington and in the field. How on earth can you take care of all these aviation accidents, as well as handle all the rail, sea, pipeline, and whatever else—”

  “Highway.”

  “Yeah, highway accidents. How can you keep up?”

  Joe looked at Kell, smiling. “It’s very simple. We can’t and we don’t. We give most of them as much attention as we can, concentrate on the spectacular ones, and the rest go begging. A lot go begging.”

  “Give me some details.”

  Alarm bells had gone off in Joe’s head as soon as the subject had come up. This was Dean Farris’s area of responsibility. He would have a fit if he saw Joe lunching with the very senator that helped control NTSB purse strings, let alone heard what Joe had just said.

  “Kell, uh, I’ve got a problem talking about this stuff.”

  The senator looked surprised. “Why? I’m cleared for security.”

  “It’s not that. Look, I’m already in trouble with Dean Farris.” Joe told him the story of the past few months and the rising tensions between them, leaving out the details of pressure from the FAA and North America. “Basically, he’s interfering
at will for reasons I don’t consider valid, but he is the boss, as everyone keeps pointing out to me. He was madder than hell that I invited you in as an observer without going through normal protocol—”

  Kell had smiled at that. “I hate normal protocol. Gets in the way.”

  “Yeah, I agree, but he doesn’t. But what I’m getting to … if he found I’d been criticizing the Board and exposing the internal workings to you, I’d be gone for sure.”

  “Hmmm.” The senator stared at the wall in thought for awhile, tapping a half-eaten breadstick on the table. He turned back to Joe at last. “I appreciate your position, Joe, but your Board needs reform, and though I can’t guarantee I can protect you, I would sure try.”

  “I understand, but I’m not political, Kell, I’m just an investigator.”

  “Okay”—Kell had his hand up—“okay, but I want you to think about this. If you love your job and this Board as much as I think you do, you know damn well there are a parcel of things that need to be changed. Not just more money. You see, I’m considered a liberal Republican because I think certain problems can only be solved by a combination of governmental restructuring and money. You need more money, but I need to figure out what else. The NTSB hasn’t been restructured in sixteen years, and I personally think you’re in trouble.”

  “You have good information sources.”

  “Well, part of it is from observing your operations these last few months, and part of it is the work of one part-timer on my staff who knows a few things about accident investigation.”

  “Who?”

  “Not yet, Joe. I want you to promise you’ll consider helping, with the understanding that you could lose your job despite my protection.”

  Martinson was sincere, he was sure of that, but the invitation was too dangerous. If he could outlast the problems he had already created with Farris and stay in his position, with Susan Kelly’s scintillating presence just down the hall, well, that was as close to a heaven as he could imagine. Politics and changing the world was for others, like the energetic and impressive senator across the table from him.

  “I’ll promise only that I’ll consider it,” Joe said at last.

  “Good. Very good. I should add that if you did help us, Farris would probably not find out, though I can’t guarantee that either.”

  “Uh, Kell, I should tell you Farris pulled me off the Kansas City investigation yesterday.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I won’t ignore the strange reaction of North America to our probing of the captain’s medical records, nor will I simply ignore the unanswered questions about the radar unit.”

  “Joe, I promised I’d get an absolute answer on the radar unit, and I’m trying. But I really don’t believe they’re lying. The risks would be enormous, lying to Congress, I mean. I can’t imagine why they’d do it. I’m assured, by the highest Pentagon authorities I deal with as a member of the Armed Services Committee, that the unit was not operating.”

  Joe looked him in the eye, knowing the senator was sincere. “I guess I just need to be … sure beyond, you know, a shadow of a doubt.”

  “Give me time. I’m also fighting one hell of problem with the Pebbles project and the SDI purists, and … there’s still the ticking bomb of my presence at the airport.”

  “What’s happening with that?” Jeff Perkins’s words echoed in Joe’s mind, but that was a private communiqué.

  “They may prosecute me, Joe, which is small potatoes compared to what’s going to happen when this leaks to the media. So far, as Cynthia points out, I’ve been very, very lucky no enterprising newsman has picked up on it and done a little homework. But it’s just a matter of time. Hell, when the other members of the committee find out, they’re going to come unglued. Cynthia wants me to hold a press conference and come clean. I’m not ready to commit political suicide quite yet, but I guess I’m toying with the inevitable. I just don’t know how my constituents will react, nor my colleagues, for that matter.” Kell Martinson sighed, raised his eyebrows, and sat back in the chair. “I guess I should have also said that my offer depends on whether I remain in office. I could be destroyed for reelection if it hits the fan. I tell you, to have something so innocent blow up so completely in my face, literally and figuratively …”

  A waiter poked his head in the room with a full coffeepot, but Kell waved him off. “The only good thing was finding my aide—the young lady—had not been on the plane.”

  “I’d like to meet her someday,” Joe said with thoughts of Susan dancing through his head.

  Kell smiled a broad smile that kept widening until he realized he was beaming and pulled it back down a notch. “Make a deal with you, Joseph. You come help me, and I’ll introduce you to my second-wife-to-be.” Provided, he thought to himself, I can pull her off the fence and up to an altar somewhere.

  21

  Friday, December 7

  John Tarvin had commuted the forty miles from his home near Leavenworth, Kansas, to the NTSB hearings at Kansas City Airport for both days of the proceedings on Monday and Tuesday, sitting anonymously in the audience each day, hoping to hear something in the testimony that would defuse his growing anxiety. He had read every news report he could get his hands on since the night of the disaster, and was painfully aware of the suspicions that the mobile radar tracking unit—the 90,000 pound oversized vehicle built by the defense contractor that employed him in Leavenworth—had caused the crash. Tarvin had hoped it was all a ploy by Larry Wilkins’s radical group, almost convincing himself that the Air Force and Department of Defense denials were believable. But then there had been the article about the suspicious power interruption recorded in the control tower, and Tarvin had read those words with sinking heart and knotted stomach. The time of the interruption couldn’t be coincidental! He was devastatingly sure of that.

  Only a handful of people in the world knew he had been in the driver’s compartment and was the operator of the mobile radar unit the night of the crash, and not one of that small group knew the whole story—his wife included. The dilemma of whether to tell someone else, breaching security and losing his job, was tearing him apart. Tuesday and Wednesday nights had been sleepless as well, as he had paced his way into the early hours of Thursday, deciding at last to wait one more week. If it had not been solved by then, he told himself, he would have to act.

  With morning sunlight penetrating the bedroom, Susan Kelly stretched luxuriously, an unseen smile caressing her face, a soft hum of contentment masked by the sounds of rustling sheets as she rolled over and reached for Joe—who was not there. Susan opened her eyes suddenly, emerging reluctantly from her sultry dreams of Joe Wallingford and realizing a day had passed since she had left his bed. She was alone in her apartment, and regretting it.

  Within an hour Susan was turning her car into the entrance of the FAA building’s underground parking garage, negotiating the 90-degree left turn and pulling up in front of the parking attendant’s station. Two members of the perpetually unsmiling and unfriendly garage staff took her keys without comment, one of them plunking himself disgustedly in the front seat. That usually irritated her, but not this particular morning. In a far corner Susan had already noticed the familiar car she had been unconsciously searching for when she entered the garage. Its presence meant Joe was already in the building, and that was a happy thought that eclipsed any other. For someone as meticulous as she, the unstructured jumble of her feelings for Joe and what had developed between them should have been upsetting. For one thing, no one at the Board could know—the gossip would be ferocious. But she was aglow, not, perhaps with love, but she was definitely falling “in like”—a term she used to hate. Yes, she admitted to her pragmatic self, her infatuation with Joe was unstructured, directionless, in part sexually motivated, presumptuous, perhaps improper, and definitely professionally dangerous, but the truth was, she hadn’t felt as good—or as feminine—in many years.

  Susan checked her watch, clearing her head, noting the
fact that she was uncharacteristically a half hour later than normal, the careful drive through snowy, commuter-clogged streets from her apartment now blessedly behind her, a major showdown with Dean Farris ahead of her. The chairman had postponed yesterday’s meeting, but this morning she and the other Board members would corner and confront him over his scandalous and unprofessional handling of Joe.

  And somehow the apprehension she expected in anticipation of that showdown wasn’t there. Instead she felt calm and content and optimistic, especially when she entered her large corner office on the eighth floor and noticed the small object sitting squarely in the middle of her desk blotter: a tiny crystal vase delicately holding a single red rose. There was no card, and none was needed.

  At that moment the former IIC of the North America investigation sat in his office halfway across the building reading through a pile of newspaper clippings supplied by Beverly Bronson. North America had suddenly filed suit against Airbus on Wednesday, claiming the flight controls had caused the crash and trying to gain the upper hand in the public relations battle over who to blame. The announcement came late Thursday afternoon from Dallas. Either the captain’s control stick, the suit charged (according to the New York Times), was defective, or the system had not been “hardened” against outside electromagnetic interference, and in any case Airbus had failed to warn them of the risks. North America had voluntarily grounded all its nineteen remaining A320s as of Friday morning for inspections of the system. What fools, Joe thought. Not a shred of evidence or even a clue where to start looking for defects—what to inspect—and they jeopardize their entire investment to hit back at Airbus for public effect. Joe was thoroughly disgusted, not that he hadn’t seen such corporate maneuvering before. North America’s leadership had obviously decided to build a wall around Captain Timson, who, of course, could not be at fault. Joe had shared that opinion at first too, but now …