Final Approach

by John J. Nance

  “No,” he said simply.

  The small envelope had fallen from the stack of Timson’s medical records as Kell Martinson was examining them, and Mark hadn’t noticed at first. The envelope was addressed simply “To Dick,” and when they realized what it was, Mark decided to hand it to Timson later.

  Halfway through the questioning of Dick Timson, the final mental tumbler in Mark Weiss’s subconscious fell into place, and with a start he faced the question of why Louise Timson would say what she had said, in the manner she had presented it. The jewelry, the dress, the neat house—it all added up, and he felt an ice cube in his stomach, the adrenaline pumping suddenly, his professional responsibilities to a hurting human having been totally breached.

  Mark fumbled for the envelope, tearing it open.

  “Dear Dick,” it began. “I can never tell you how sorry I am for what I’ve done. The crash was my fault, not yours. I hope somehow you can forgive me. I’ll love you always. Louise.”

  Mark got to his feet suddenly and pushed his way over several sets of toes to get out of the room, heading for the closest Senate office and commandeering a phone from a none-too-friendly secretary.

  There was no answer at the Dallas home of the Timsons. Exactly what he had feared. He dialed the operator then, gaining her help in searching out the telephone number of the Dallas Police, who agreed to send a car to the house and phone him back if there was anything amiss. He called an ambulance service as well, giving them a credit-card number and begging them to send an aid unit immediately to the same address, just in case. Only then did he return to the hearing, his own feelings of guilt rising precipitously.

  Dick Timson had left the witness table and taken a seat on the end of the second row, his head down, when the same secretary found Mark. He retraced his steps, calling the number given.

  “Doctor, no one answered when our people arrived, so we forced entry. I’m sorry to say you were right.”

  “Where?”

  “Upstairs. It looks like an overdose. Her pulse was very weak. We transported her immediately and almost lost her twice on the way. She’s in extremely critical condition, but she may make it. There was no note, by the way.”

  Oh yes there was, he thought. She had, in effect, dictated it to him in person last night.

  Mark trudged back to the hearing room as everyone was streaming out, Martinson having called a fifteen-minute recess. He watched Dick Timson simply ignoring the press—and everyone associated with North America ignoring him. The simple logistics of how to get a man who had become an instant pariah from that room to the anonymity of the parking lot and beyond was excruciating. Mark watched the pilot from a distance, following as Timson reached the hallway and turned, alone, scorned, and broken. There would be more than one duty to perform before he could walk away from the captain of Flight 255.

  This was the man who had killed Kim and Aaron and Greg by pure self-interested negligence, violating the rules systematically, drawing his own family into the web of deception, bastardizing the medical checks and balances, and lying, lying, lying to cover it up. As in Kansas City, he fought to hate Timson, hate him enough to kill him.

  But he could feel only pity.

  Timson needed to be told about his wife—to go to her side, however angry he might be with her. He would undoubtedly be fired and prosecuted and reviled, and as the horror of what he had done to his life began to unfold, he would be in great need of psychological help. He probably had been for decades.

  Dr. Mark Weiss put on a burst of speed suddenly, catching up with the hunched form of the slowly departing former chief pilot, stopping him and forcing him to look up, his vacant eyes red-tinged mirrors of despair. There were ethics involved. There was his basic humanity involved. And there was duty. He had failed Louise Timson, but there was yet another human life in the balance. And in the final analysis, he had the training to help.

  26

  Wednesday, January 9 Washington, D.C.

  Beverly Bronson tightened the belt of her long black coat and stepped into the teeth of a stiff wind as Joe Wallingford held the door of the Hart Senate Office Building for her, the din of late-afternoon Washington traffic instantly assaulting their ears. A cab screeched to a halt in front of them, the cigar-chewing driver having sensed an impending fare as they approached the curb, but Joe waved him on, having concluded an unspoken agreement with Beverly that they needed the fresh air, however laden with carbon monoxide it might be.

  They walked halfway to the Capitol in deep thought before Beverly found her voice, her words emerging as a sigh amidst a sudden explosion of condensed breath in the crisp air. “Other than Watergate, or Iran-contra, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much come out in a congressional hearing. That was amazing!”

  “Are we going to survive?” Joe asked. “Will Farris resign?”

  Beverly smiled and watched the sidewalk disappear beneath her feet for a few paces before glancing over at Joe to answer. “I saw him stop you in the hall, Joe. What did he say?”

  There was a masculine snort as her companion shook his head in short staccato bursts. “Something on the order of, ‘Where are you working next week, Judas?’”

  She resumed her perusal of the sidewalk until Joe was tempted to repeat his question, burning to know just how she assessed the damage.

  “Well,” she said at last, looking in the distance ahead, “he told me that he might not get reappointed next year, but no one was going to run him out of Washington. He may stay, Joe, and I don’t know how—”

  “How I’m going to work with him?”

  She nodded before continuing. “The rest of it … good grief! Not only did Martinson destroy Dean yesterday, he solved the crash for you.”

  “We have Mark Weiss to thank for that, Beverly. He had Timson figured out from the beginning, which, I suppose, is what a trained psychologist should be able to do. I just can’t believe the poor woman blamed herself. That’s ludicrous!”

  “I know. And such a tragedy.”

  “I hate to say it, but I don’t think we would have figured this out without her.”

  They turned right at the southeast corner of the Capitol and walked westward for awhile, trending back toward the FAA building.

  “What was fascinating to watch today,” she said, “other than Timson, of course, was David Bayne of North America, and how fast he figured out how to blow with the wind. I mean, here’s the chairman of the airline that’s just been exposed as grossly negligent in several ways, including its misuse of influence with the government, and the man sits there with a straight face and forcefully tells us he is in full support of the senator’s bill, that the NTSB should never be manipulated this easily, and, Joe, that if your people had been allowed to do their job without interference, he, David Bayne, would have then had some way of finding out that his executives were lying to him! That is unprecedented.”

  Joe nodded. “Talk about me being in professional jeopardy, I’ve never heard a senior corporate leader fire so many people in a public hearing before. Let’s see …” Joe held up the fingers of one hand and began counting them off. “He fired John Walters, Ron Putnam—who was there in the audience, by the way—Dr. McIntyre, Captain Timson, of course, and two names I didn’t recognize on Walters’s staff.”

  “Appearances and public perception, Joe. And guess what? It’ll work. A lot of people out there watching on TV will feel great empathy for Bayne. The poor chairman! No one told him that his people were lying, cheating, and drawing him into the web. But he’s a good moral individual who won’t stand for such things, and here are the heads of the miscreants to prove it.” She shook her head. “I will give him this: he did at least say that as CEO he was fully responsible for failing to know what was happening. Those are the right words, but I know the positive impression he left with the public. Clever, clever man.”

  “Yeah, but you know, maybe I’m naïve, but I think the man’s truly sincere. I think he was amazed … watching him … that he
had lost control.”

  “You’d be surprised how few corporate leaders really know what’s going on in their companies,” she said, remembering her time in the corporate world, trying to advise CEOs who simply refused to listen to things they didn’t want to know.

  “Beverly, I’m worried about you … your position, you know? Does Dean have you targeted?”

  “He thinks I’m a mindless bimbo. I’ll be fine.”

  “What are my chances?” Joe asked, not certain he wanted to hear an answer.

  “Joe …,” she began, then hesitated, her tongue massaging her upper lip as her mind raced ahead, looking for the best way to tell this professional investigator about the dangerous, shifting world of shadowy alliances and ever-changing prospects he had blundered into. “I don’t know. A lot depends on … well, outside events we can’t control.”

  Joe looked over at her, trying to fathom her meaning, then deciding that ignorance would help him through the night.

  “You going home, Joe?”

  “No, I’m—” He caught himself before uttering Susan’s name. “I’m meeting someone for dinner.”

  They parted at the FAA garage and Joe drove the few miles to Georgetown, irritated with himself that he was running late. They had made the arrangements at noon, as Joe called Susan to report on the Timson testimony. Six-fifteen P.M. at her favorite French restaurant.

  He didn’t feel like dinner. In fact, he felt like hell, his stomach in a knot, his palms sweaty, and his prospects dim. Instinctively, he knew Farris was determined to get him, but it would probably take the form of a Chinese water torture—slow, excruciating moves to keep Joe from any substantive work, embarrassing him a thousand times over. Yet what could he do but take it? The Board was his home. He’d be lost without it.

  The question of whether he should have gone to Martinson in the first place was moot. Whatever the cost, the process had brought him the answer to the Kansas City crash.

  Susan was running even farther behind. It was 6:45 P.M. before she appeared in the doorway of Michellene’s, looking, Joe thought, like she had stepped off the cover of a fashion magazine, her face aglow, responding with an electric smile when she spotted him fumbling to get up from the table to come greet her.

  “Where do we go from here, Doctor?” he asked, tapping a breadstick on the tablecloth, still struggling to look happy, struggling to hide the apprehension and turmoil he was feeling.

  “Was that an institutional ‘we,’ or a personal ‘we’?” she asked.

  “Let’s start with institutional, ’cause on a personal level, you may be fooling around with an unemployed bum before long.”

  “Sexiest bum I’ve ever slept with,” she said.

  That embarrassed Joe, which tickled Susan. She watched his color rise as he glanced around them furtively to see if anyone had heard the remark.

  “Susan! Good grief,” Joe said under his breath.

  “Okay, you want to know what happens next? We see whether the chairman falls on his sword. If he does, you are completely safe. If he doesn’t, then in the long term, as I warned you, I’m going to have a devil of a time defending you.”

  Joe tried to smile at that. “I wonder how many boxes I’ll need.”

  “For what?”

  “Cleaning out my office.”

  “Too soon. Don’t give up yet. By the way, Joe, John Phelps came by to see me today with the details on the Miami Air situation and a copy of that smoking-gun memo. He said he didn’t want to, but you told him he could trust the board member who wears pantyhose.”

  Joe smiled sheepishly. “Did he use those words?”

  “Um-hum, and I wonder where he got them?” She was grinning—fortunately, Joe thought. “Watch what sexist remarks you make about me, boy.”

  “Yes ma’am. What did he say?”

  “The FAA administrator called him personally just after Dean blew the whistle on Caldwell. Phelps went upstairs to meet with him, and took the house counsel. By the time he came back, Caldwell had been fired, and he’s under criminal investigation for influence peddling.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “Yeah. And you may not have heard, but David Bayne lost the takeover battle for North America. That investment group from Miami won board approval for a buyout at fourteen a share. The way he fought it, Bayne will be out, too.”

  “Provided the Transportation Department approves the buyout.”

  “You kidding? DOT would rubber-stamp anything. United could sell itself to Aeroflot and get approval!”

  Joe fell silent and just looked at her for a few seconds. “Should I come to work tomorrow?”

  “Would you consider coming in together?” she shot back, “Not to be pushy, of course.” She winked at him, watching him blush anew, and he smiled in spite of himself as he shook his head. “I’d be pretty nervous, distracted company tonight, and you deserve better.”

  “Judging from past performances,” she said, smiling and munching a celery stalk as seductively as she could manage, “I’d say if I could command just a quarter of your physical attention, I’d be in heaven. But if you insist, a rain check, perhaps?”

  “Absolutely,” Joe said.

  He battled the dragons all night long, sleeping fitfully, rising at 6, having finally concluded that there was nothing Dean Farris could do to him, politically or professionally—a refreshingly positive attitude which held until the elevator doors opened on the eighth floor and a uniformed security guard stepped forward to greet him.

  “Mr. Wallingford?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m here to inform you, sir, that you have been suspended pending dismissal by order of the NTSB chairman. I’ll escort you downstairs, if you’d like.”

  Joe shook his head and looked at the man. Just doing his job, of course.

  “I’ll just get some of my things …”

  The guard reached out to take Joe’s arm. “Ah … no, Mr. Wallingford. Your office is sealed. Your belongings will be sent to your home after the investigation.”

  “What investigation?”

  “I don’t know sir. I’m just telling you what I was told to tell you.”

  Joe pulled his arm away and returned to the elevator, angry and confused and frightened all at the same time. He was halfway to his car in the basement when Beverly Bronson caught up with him.

  “Me too, Joe. Dean fired us both, fired Andy, fired Nick Gardner—which we expected, of course—and he’s on a rampage. He’s not going to resign, he’s talking of suing us all, and at this rate he’ll self-destruct before dinner.”

  “What should …?”

  “Drive us to the Hart Building. I’ve already called Martinson’s people.”

  “No, Beverly, I can’t …”

  “What? Ask for help? I’m talking about strategy planning, fellow. You helped start the process of changing the Board, you can’t back out now.”

  Kell Martinson was waiting for them when they arrived.

  “Sit down, Beverly, Joe. This has been a wild morning.”

  “For us, too,” Joe said.

  Kell sat down behind his desk, leaning forward, drumming his fingers. “Okay, here’s where we are. The White House is in disarray about all of this. I was up half the night with … well, let’s just say members of my party, okay? They’re angry with you, Joe, they’re angry with me, and they’re infuriated that their man Farris has been exposed as an idiot, too stupid to even be on the take.”

  “Where does that leave us?”

  Kell held up his hand. “Let me work through all this a minute. Now, so far this morning, the chief of staff has asked Farris for his resignation and been refused, has called me to see if I would amend the bill to sweep the Board clean and start over when the bill passes, if it passes, just so they can get rid of Farris—they’re outraged he won’t step down—and they’ve offered the chairmanship to another Board member, which is grossly premature.”

  “Who?” Joe asked.

  “Dr. Susan Kelly,”
Kell replied, noting Joe’s stunned expression. “You know her, of course?”

  “Yes … I … ah …,” Joe stammered, angry with himself for breaking composure. “What did she say?”

  “She said no and suggested someone else. But she’s the only politically acceptable member of the Board right now. Okay, I was going to hunt you up, Joe, for a conference this morning, anyway, when I found out from Beverly’s call that Farris is firing most of the Western world, and may have to be physically restrained, if I understand the pitch of his anger.”

  “You do,” Beverly told him. “I believe the word is apoplectic.”

  “Well, he’s finished in this town politically, though he might succeed in hanging on until the end of his term at the Board. We’d have to have him criminally indicted to get him out of there otherwise.”

  “What about the new bill?”

  “We might be able to legislate him away, but it would take several months, in any event.”

  “What a mess,” Joe said, his head still spinning.

  “Yeah. The good part is that the media is having a field day with what happened in the hearings, and we tipped them off early this morning about Farris’s refusal to resign despite internal pressure. That means that by the time the papers come out in the morning, Farris will be barricading himself against public opinion and a media storm.”

  Beverly and Kell talked with Fred Sneadman, who had joined them, notebook in hand, while Joe’s mind raced around, looking for lifeboats. All he wanted was his job at the Board. How had all this occurred? Suspended, maybe fired … Farris on a rampage. How had it come to this?

  The fact that Fred Sneadman and not Cynthia Collins was serving as administrative assistant finally caught Beverly’s attention, and she asked where Cynthia was. Kell’s expression changed ever so slightly, a flicker of distress showing for a moment before he caught himself.

  “She’s taken some much-deserved personal leave.”

  “She is coming back?”

  Kell stared at her for a moment before answering. “Yes. Of course.”

  “Well, if she ever decides not to, keep me in mind. I seem to be out of work at the moment.”