The assembled attorneys bobbed their heads, sold on the idea. Caught up in the moment, they failed to appreciate the difference between discrediting a for-hire whore selling his opinions to the highest bidder and destroying the shell-shocked family members’ memories of their loved ones—men and women who were just trying to get from Point A to Point B.
If averages held, two of the associates sitting around the table would stumble onto that distinction at some point. And one of them would care. That one would become a former Prescott attorney. The other would someday pick out the furniture for a corner office.
The meeting broke up and people drifted out, talking about how awesome it must have been to shove that expert down plaintiff counsel’s throat.
Sasha stayed behind to cadge the remaining pastries for Lettie and her friends. On her way out, she stopped to offer one to Flora, who deliberated before settling on a muffin.
“Thanks,” she said, peeling back the paper with her purple talons.
Naya came out of the conference room and caught up with Sasha at Flora’s work station. She put a hand on Sasha’s arm to keep her there.
“What’s going on with Peterson?” Naya asked.
Sasha shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Well, you’d better be ready to take the lead during the meeting with Metz. Look at him.” Naya pulled Sasha back into the doorway.
Noah Peterson sat in the now-darkened, otherwise empty conference room, his eyes still on the mug on the table in front of him.
Chapter 9
Bethesda, Maryland
Jerry sat at his immaculate desk, running through the details of Friday’s upcoming exercise in his head. It was critical for the second display of his technology to go off with the same precision as the first had. Everything depended on another flawless performance.
One positive result could be considered a fluke or chalked up to luck, but two consecutive positives would be viewed as proof Irwin could consistently deliver what he promised: the ability to take down a commercial airliner without unbuckling your seatbelt. And that capability would fetch a fantastic sum on the not-exactly-open market. More than enough for him to disappear forever.
Jerry rehearsed the plan again. He found no vulnerabilities, but he would keep running through it, probing for weaknesses until he identified them. Then he would fix them. Because he was Jerry Irwin. He wondered if he could be considered a bona fide evil genius.
The chirping telephone broke into his thoughts. He glared at it, waiting for Lilliana to pick it up. Then he realized his desk phone wasn’t ringing. He reached into his top desk drawer and grabbed the prepaid cell phone. Only one person had the number, and it was only to be used to convey key information.
“Hello?” Jerry waited to hear what his partner had to say.
The voice on the other end was urgent but measured. “Hemisphere is meeting with the law firm today. And the NTSB found the black box already. That’s sooner than we’d hoped. It means the lawyers will start digging around, probably before Friday. We just need to stay focused.”
Jerry took in the news. He thought hard. Then he said, “Okay.”
Damage control wasn’t his responsibility. All he had to do was crash one more plane.
He hung up and ran through the plan again.
Chapter 10
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
It stood to reason they were meeting with Metz in the Frick Conference Room.
Frick had a postcard-worthy view of the city. From its wall of windows, downtown’s skyline was on display. On a clear day, the working barges that crossed the city’s rivers zipped by like dragonflies in the distance, and, at night, the high-rises glittered with lights. Each Fourth of July, the firm opened its doors to employees and their families to watch the fireworks display from the room.
In addition to the view, Frick was one of the largest conference rooms (wholly unnecessary for a three-person meeting) and the most opulent (wholly necessary for a meeting with a very important client like Hemisphere Air). An original painting by Mary Cassatt, a native of Pittsburgh, hung on one wall and competed with the view.
Sasha turned her attention from the Cassatt hanging on the wall to the distressed man sitting at the table.
Bob Metz looked like a man who hadn’t slept in a week. He was usually disheveled; his hair unruly, his custom-made suits rumpled. But his normal disarray had an air of too rich and not vain enough to care—like Angelina Jolie caught in sweatpants and a baseball cap picking up a quart of rice milk.
Today he looked more like a professional athlete who’d spent the night in a holding cell after shooting up a strip club. Actually, he reminded Sasha of that Nick Nolte mugshot that had been all over the Internet back in 2002. Not that Metz would be caught wearing a Hawaiian shirt, no matter how dire the situation.
He had a day’s growth on his chin and cheeks, his reddish blond hair was uncombed, and his striped necktie was tied in a sloppy four-in-hand knot that would have earned him detention in his boarding school days.
Sasha wasn’t sure who was in worse shape—her client or her boss. Peterson at least looked presentable. But he was still lost in thought and saying random things. Sasha doubted he was up to the task of providing the thoughtful advice for which Hemisphere Air shelled out eight hundred dollars an hour.
In his panic, Metz didn’t seem to notice his trusted counselor’s near-catatonic state. So, Sasha took charge of the meeting and set for herself the same goal she had every time she babysat her nieces and nephews: no blood; no property damage in excess of a hundred dollars; and everybody eats something.
She turned to Metz, “Bob, I know this is a stressful situation, but you should eat.”
She pointed at his untouched plate of Virginia spots, which Peterson had brought in from the Duquesne Club because they were Metz’s favorite dish.
Peterson was busy ignoring his own plate of spots. Sasha wasn’t a fan herself, although admitting as much about the breaded, white fish of indeterminate origin would be tantamount to heresy around Prescott & Talbott’s offices.
Metz shoved the spots around on his plate with his fork, dragging them through the beurre blanc sauce but not eating them. Peterson carefully buttered a hunk of warm bread. Neither man spoke.
She tried again. “Bob, why I don’t I fill you in on what we’ve learned thus far.”
She winced when she heard herself say “thus” but pressed on. “Mickey Collins filed, as you know. We’re making a copy of the complaint for you, but it’s nothing impressive. The real news is the case was assigned to Judge Dolans, who will recuse, given her personal history with Collins. Judge Westman is the most likely… “
Metz interrupted her, “They found the black box.”
The black box, often the sole survivor of a plane crash, isn’t really black. It’s bright orange.
Sasha supposed it might be charred black after a fire. She’d never seen one; she’d just worked with the data they’d preserved. The box contained two separate recorders; one recorded cockpit conversation and background noise, which often became unintelligible screaming at the end, and the other recorded literally hundreds of data points about the flight—things like speed, altitude, and fuel flow. Of the two, the voice recording was the more dramatic, but the flight data usually proved more helpful in piecing together exactly what had happened.
“That was quick. Were both recorders intact?”
Sasha looked sidelong at Peterson to see if he was even feigning an interest. He wasn’t.
Metz nodded. “The NTSB called about seven this morning. Vivian flew to D.C. to act as Hemisphere Air’s representative in the lab while they cracked it open. The cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder are both in pristine shape. They won’t have to do any reconstruction.” Metz glanced at Peterson then fell silent.
Bob Metz was a good guy. He was polite, considerate, and political without being oily. He was not a legal scholar. He’d earned gentleman’s Cs through college and law school and had relied on his family connections and charm to get where he was in his career.
Metz would do—always did—whatever Noah Peterson told him he should do. Although everyone in the room knew it, they all pretended not to. Instead, Peterson would couch his instruction as a suggestion, so that when Metz invariably followed it, he could act as though he’d independently evaluated and agreed with the advice of his legal counsel.
This arrangement usually suited both client and attorney just fine, but at the moment, Metz’s trusted counselor seemed to be counting the fibers in his cloth napkin. Or maybe he wasn’t even seeing the napkin.
“Did Vivian hear the playback from the voice recorder?”
Metz sighed, ran his hand down his tie, smoothed out some wrinkles, and said, “She said that first the pilot says something like the onboard system reset itself and was now locked in with new coordinates. Co-pilot checks them, agrees. They try to reset them, you know, override the autopilot, but nothing happens. They got out a mayday transmission, but barely. After that, she said it was just, uh, screaming. I think some praying.” Metz closed his eyes.
“And the data recorder information bears that out? The onboard computer changed the coordinates all by itself and couldn’t be overridden?”
“Yes. Oh, and the plane accelerated right before impact. No one else knows any of this yet—not even anyone inside the company. The TSA and NTSB asked Vivian to keep it to herself until they complete their initial analysis of the data, but, of course, she told me. And this conversation is privileged, so, I figured it’s okay to tell you.”
Sasha tried to imagine how the crew must have felt, watching the mountain loom closer and being unable to do anything to stop the plane from plowing into it. Powerless.
But the facts, horrible as they were, seemed to be helpful to Hemisphere Air’s defense. Either Metz was in complete shock or she was missing something.
She tried to pull Peterson into the conversation. “Noah, based on what Vivian’s learned from the NTSB, don’t you think it sounds like Hemisphere Air has a good indemnification claim against the manufacturer? Who was it—Boeing?”
Peterson nodded absently.
Metz shook his head. “We don’t.”
Sasha spoke slowly, almost as if he were a child. “Bob, if a plane suddenly changes its coordinates and locks them in, that’s not pilot error or a maintenance problem. In my view, that would result from a manufacturing defect. You can turn to Boeing for that.”
Metz shook his head again, miserably. “Not this time. You know how if you make aftermarket modifications to your car, you void the warranty?”
“Sure.”
“We modified that plane. Over Boeing’s express objection, we installed the RAGS link.”
“The what?”
Sasha thought she knew everything there was to know about Hemisphere Air’s business, and she had never heard of RAGS.
Peterson shook his head. He didn’t know about it either, assuming he had even heard what Metz had said and wasn’t just randomly moving his head.
“RAGS,” Metz said. “The Remote Aircraft Guidance System.”
Peterson, finally brought to life by the prospect of a legal malpractice claim, asked one question.
“Did Prescott & Talbott opine on the advisability of installing this RAGS link?”
Metz pushed his plate away.
“You did. Well, not you, of course, someone in your contracts review group. You told us not to do it. But Vivian insisted.”
Not good for Hemisphere Air. Good for Prescott & Talbott, though. Peterson’s shoulders relaxed and he went back to staring off into space.
“What exactly is a RAGS link, and why did Vivian want it so badly?” Sasha asked.