“So I am told,” Daryaei replied, behind dark eyes devoid of expression. “What other countries would you recommend as our allies?”
“Have you paid close attention to the conflict between Japan and America?” Badrayn asked. “Did you ever wonder why some large dogs did not bark at all?” It was a funny thing about large dogs. They were always hungry. More than once now, however, Daryaei had talked about Ryan and his protection. One dog was the hungriest of all. It would make for an interesting pack.
“MAYBE IT JUST malfunctioned.”
The Gulfstream representatives were sitting in a room with Swiss civil-aviation officials, along with the chief of flight operations of the corporation which owned the jets. His written records showed that the aircraft had been properly maintained by a local firm. All parts had come from the approved suppliers. The Swiss corporation which did the maintenance had ten years of accident-free history behind it, regulated in turn by the same government agency which oversaw the investigation.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” the Gulfstream rep agreed. The flight-data recorder was a robust piece of hardware, but they didn’t always survive crashes, because every crash was different. A careful search by USS Rad-
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ford had failed to turn up the locator pings. Absent that, the bottom was too deep for an undirected search, and then there was the issue of the Libyans, who didn’t want ships poking around their waters. Had the missing aircraft been an airliner, the issue might have been pushed, but a business jet with a crew of two and three reported passengers–one of them with a deadly plague–wasn’t important enough. “Without the data, there isn’t much to be said. Engine failure was reported, and that could mean bad fuel, bad maintenance–”
“Please!” the maintenance contractor objected.
“I’m speaking theoretically,” Gulfstream pointed out. “Or even pilot error of some sort or other. Without hard data, our hands are pretty well tied.”
“The pilot had four thousand hours in type. The copilot had over two thousand,” the owner’s representative said for the fifth time this afternoon.
They were all thinking the same thing. The aircraft manufacturer had a superb safety record to defend. There were relatively few airliner manufacturers for the big carriers to choose from, and as important as safety was for them, it was even more so for the builders of business jets, for whom competition was stiffer. The buyers of such corporate toys had long memories, and without hard information to hang their hats on about the few crashes which took place, all they remembered was a missing aircraft with missing passengers.
The maintenance contractor had no wish to be firmly associated with a fatal accident, either. Switzerland had a lot of airfields, and a lot of business aircraft. A bad main-tainer could lose business as well, not to mention the trouble from the Swiss government for violating its stringent civil-aviation rules.
The corporate owner had the least to lose in terms of reputation, but amour propre would not allow him to assume responsibility without real cause.
And there was no real cause for any of them to take the blame, not without the flight-data recorder. The men looked at one another around the table, thinking the same thought: good people did make mistakes, but rarely did
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they wish to admit them, and never when they didn’t have to. The government representative had gone over the written records and been satisfied that the paperwork was all correct. Beyond that there was nothing any of them could do except talk to the engine manufacturer and try to get a sample of the fuel. The former was easy. The latter was not. In the end, they’d know little more than they knew now. Gulfstream might lose a plane or two in sales. The maintenance contractor would undergo increased government scrutiny. The corporation would have to buy a new jet. To show loyalty, it would be another G-class business jet and with the same maintenance contractor. That would please everybody, even the Swiss government.
BEING A ROVING Inspector paid more than being a street agent, and it was more fun than sitting behind a desk all the time, but Pat O’Day still chafed at spending most of his day reading over written reports generated by agents or their secretaries. More junior people cross-checked the data for inconsistencies, though he did the same, keeping careful penciled notes on his own yellow pad, which his secretary would collate for his summary reports to Director Murray. Real agents, O’Day believed implicitly, didn’t type. Well, that’s what his instructors at Quantico would have said, probably. He finished his meetings early down at Buzzard’s Point and decided that his office in the Hoover Building didn’t need him. The investigation was indeed at the point of diminishing returns. The “new” information was all interviews, every single one of which confirmed information already developed and already verified by voluminous cross-referenced documents.
“I’ve always hated this part,” ADIC Tony Caruso said. It was the point when the United States Attorney had everything he needed to get a conviction, but, being a lawyer, never had enough–as though the best way to convict a hood were to bore the jury to death.
“Not even a sniff of contrary data. This one’s in the bag, Tony.” The two men had long been friends. “Time for me to get something new and exciting.”
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“Lucky you. How’s Megan?”
“New day-care center, started today. Giant Steps, on Ritchie Highway.”
“Same one,” Caruso observed. “Yeah, I guess it would be.”
“Huh?”
“The Ryan kids–oh, you weren’t here back then when those ULA bastards hit it.”
“She didn’t–the owner of the place didn’t say anything about. . . well, I guess she wouldn’t, would she?”
“Our brethren are a little tight-assed about that. I imagine the Service gave her a long brief on what she can and cannot say.”
“Probably an agent or two helping with the finger painting.” O’Day thought for a second. There was a new clerk at the 7-Eleven across the street. He’d remembered thinking when he’d gotten his coffee that the guy was a little too clean-cut for that early in the morning. Hmph. Tomorrow he’d eyeball the guy for a weapon, as the clerk had surely done with him already, and out of professional courtesy he’d show his ID, along with a wink and a nod.
“Kinda overqualified,” Caruso agreed. “But what the hell, can’t hurt to know there’s coverage where your kid is.”
“You bet, Tony.” O’Day stood. “Anyway, I think I’ll go and pick her up.”
“Headquarters puke. Eight-hour day,” the Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office grumped.
“You’re the one wanted to be a bigshot, Don Antonio.”
It was always liberating to leave work. The air smelled fresher on the way out than on the way in. He walked out to his truck, noting that it hadn’t been touched or stolen. There was an advantage to dirt and mud. He shed his suit jacket–O’Day rarely bothered with an overcoat–and slipped into his ten-year-old leather one, a Navy-type flight jacket worn just enough to be comfortable. The tie was disposed of next. Ten minutes later, he was outbound on Route 50 toward Annapolis, just ahead of the bow wave of government commuters, and listening to C&W on the radio. Traffic was especially favorable today, and just
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before the hourly news he pulled into the Giant Steps parking lot, this time looking for official cars. The Secret Service was fairly clever about that. Like the Bureau, its automobiles were randomly tagged, and they’d even learned not to go with the obvious cheap-body, neutral-paint motif that fingered so many unmarked cop cars. He spotted two even so, and confirmed his suspicions by parking next to one and looking down inside to see the radio. That done, he wondered about his own disguise, and decided to see how good they were, then realized that if they were halfway competent, they’d already checked out his ID through the documents he’d handed over to Mrs. Daggett that very morning, or more likely even before. There was a considerable professional rivalry between the FBI and the USSS. In fact, the former had been started with a handful of Secret Service agents. But the FBI had also grown much larger, and along the way accumulated far more corporate experience in criminal investigation. Which was not to say the Service wasn’t damned good, though as Tony Caruso had truthfully observed, very tight-assed. Well, they were probably the world’s foremost baby-sitters.
He walked across the parking lot with his jacket zipped up, and spotted a big guy just inside the door. Would he stay covert? O’Day walked right past him, just another father in to pick up his munchkin. Inside, it was just a matter of checking out the clothes and the earpieces. Yep, two female agents wearing long smocks, and under them would be SigSauer 9mm automatics.
“Daddy!” Megan hooted, leaping to her feet. Next to her was another child of similar age and looks. The inspector headed over, bending down to look at the day’s crayoning.