Fly by Wire

Chapter TEN

Dr. Hans Sprecht sat calmly, his slight frame supported by a plush leather chair, his feet resting on an expensive cherry desk. He admired his surroundings. The fine wood trim was first class, not the imitation rubbish that had found its way into so many physicians' offices. The decorations and artwork were tasteful, no diplomas or tacky before-and-after photographs of successful facelifts. He leaned back. Yes, the chair was his favorite part. It not only did its job of keeping one upright, but the soft leather coddled and caressed. It was almost sexual.

He let out a heavy sigh. If only it were mine.

It was the kind of place he would have liked. By his own account, the kind of place he deserved. Unfortunately, lacking a license to practice medicine in Switzerland for at least the next twenty years, it would never come to be. His career had first gone adrift over a handful of superfluous prescriptions, an unfortunate misunderstanding that had swelled completely out of hand. Then, with the professional board circling overhead, one mistake had become his rocky coastline. The case involved a young man who had requested breast implants. In the preoperative conference, Sprecht had asked few questions, naturally assuming his patient to be a homosexual. The generosity of Sprecht's nature was lost on the man — who was, in fact, a hopeful bodybuilder — when he awakened to find himself sporting a new D-cup bustline.

The licensing board was swift. It took Sprecht's future. The bodybuilder's lawyers took the rest. In the period of professional limbo that followed, Sprecht had considered going elsewhere, practicing under the radar. South America, perhaps, or the Far East. Buy the right permits, pay the right fees. But just as visions of a boutique practice in Brazil or Thailand had begun to float regularly through his dreams, Dr. Hans Sprecht stumbled onto a very good living.

His first case had been a Russian mobster in desperate search of a "new look." The work was a great success, and six months later Sprecht connected with an Italian pedophile, a man wanted keenly by Interpol. The third, an ousted Balkan general, was one step ahead of a war crimes tribunal. All of his patients had two things in common — a need for extensive work, and the means to pay handsomely for discretion.

Yet it was the fourth procedure that had proven his most daring. The work itself had been straightforward, however the logistics had been a nightmare. Sprecht had demanded a premium for that job. A premium delivered. And that admirable performance, under supremely primitive conditions, had led to this new patient — an undertaking that would prove his most lucrative yet.

Sprecht looked around the room with a renewed sense of satisfaction. The plastic surgeon whose office he had quietly sublet was in Peru on a five-week mountain climbing expedition. The rest of the year, the man toiled here, injecting neurotoxins, vacuuming flab, embellishing bustlines. Sprecht, by comparison, only worked a few days each year, enjoying a highly profitable niche in his line of work. It was as though he had become a satellite to his profession — occasionally coming in close contact, then parting for long periods in an extreme orbit. Yet, as agreeable as it all was, Hans Sprecht was forced to deal with separate issues. Issues that the man climbing a mountain in Peru could never imagine.

He looked at the Swiza clock on the wall. It read one minute before four o'clock. Sprecht pulled his feet from the desk, took out a handkerchief, and wiped the dampness from his forehead. He tried to think about the massive advance that had yesterday been credited to his Cayman account — a sum that easily counterbalanced the indignity of yet another withdrawal from his moral slush fund.

The second hand hit twelve. Right on cue, he heard the outer door open, then close. A tumbler locked into place. Sprecht straightened in his seat. The patient came in, closed the inner office door, and looked carefully around the room without speaking. The two had met once before to make preliminary arrangements.

"It is good to see you again," Sprecht offered.

"This is where you will do the work?" The tone was level, without emotion.

"Yes," Sprecht replied cheerily, as if his greeting had not been wholly ignored. "The procedures will take place here, along with a recuperation period under my personal, full-time observance." He did not bother to mention that he would have an assistant during the surgery. There was really no choice, as certain procedures could never be performed by a single pair of hands. Sprecht, however, had no desire to face the questions that such an admission would bring. As with his other patients, he simply did not address the issue. His nurse would enter and exit the sterile area when the time was right. A wonderful thing, anesthesia.

"How long will my recovery take?"

In an ode to his efficiency, Sprecht directed his patient to a chair and, as he spoke, began measuring facial regions with a pair of calipers. "The amount of work you have requested is significant. I cannot imagine recovery in less than six days. More if you wish." The surgeon stepped back and recorded his results on a notepad. He normally would have taken pictures, but that, of course, was out of the question. "Remove your shirt, please."

The patient complied, and said, "You know how I want everything." There was no inflection at the end of these words, and so it was not a question.

Sprecht said, "Have no worries. I have extensive experience. Your more regionalized features, they will be softened. When I am done, the nose might appear Roman. The eyes — Spanish, perhaps."

As he pursued his examination, Sprecht felt the eyes tracking him, watching every move. He knew his best defense was to keep busy, tied to the rituals of his work. He went to a cabinet and found a section of rubber tubing and a hypodermic needle. Returning to his patient, Sprecht wrapped the tube tightly around one arm as a prelude to drawing blood.

"Is that necessary?"

"Yes, absolutely," Sprecht said in his 'doctor's orders' monotone. "You will lose blood in the operation. I must have an accurate specimen to rule out complications." He performed the procedure quickly, efficiently. "You may get dressed now," Sprecht said. He moved back behind the desk, wanting some distance before again engaging the soon-to-be-Spanish eyes. "When will we begin?" he asked.

"The time is near, but I still require a certain degree of flexibility. Be ready in two days."

"Done. And you have decided to go ahead with everything we discussed? It is truly an extensive amount of work."

"Over the years many photographs have surfaced, doctor. My face is too well known in… in certain quarters. When you are done, I must bear no resemblance to my former self"

"We discussed this at our last consultation. You must understand that—"

"Doctor! Is there any doubt about your ability to perform the contract?"

Sprecht's thoughts stumbled. "I am only saying that you must temper your expectations. The scale of change you demand — know that I am a plastic surgeon, not God."

The patient's gaze fell hard and struck to Sprecht's very soul. The silence was discomforting, and at that moment Sprecht wished it was he who was climbing a mountain in Peru. The surgeon tried to hide his anxiety, yet knew he could not. Then the question came. The same question the others had always gotten around to.

"Do you know who I am, Doctor?"

As always, Sprecht considered a He. As always, he knew it would be a mistake. "You found me with your connections. Not an easy thing, I hope. Yet I have connections as well. I must be every bit as careful as you, my friend, for in my line of work any misstep will be my last."

The patient was absolutely still.

"But to answer your question — yes. I know precisely who you are." Sprecht paused, averted his eyes momentarily. "You are the terrorist, Caliph." When he looked up again, Sprecht saw a thin curl at one corner of a mouth he would soon alter.

"You are indeed a clever man, Doctor. I only hope your work reflects it. Make no mistakes."

"Rest assured," the surgeon said. "When other doctors make errors, attorneys and insurers do battle. If I make a mistake—" Sprecht left it at that.

The press briefing room that had been fashioned in Building Sixty-two was a typical affair. Perhaps a hundred loose chairs were divided in six gently arcing rows, giving the appearance of a poor man's theater. Three cameras were situated at the very back so as to take in the crowd, a small trick used by news crews everywhere to make a venue look bigger, to enhance the importance of an event. Reporters were ushered toward the forward rows, while Davis, along with the other investigators and technical help, kept to the rear.

The room was dressed for a show. A short stage had been constructed at the front with a central podium, lending subliminal authority to the high-and-mighty professionals. Bastien was flanked by three experts on each side. They were not, as one might expect, the working group leaders, but rather a global collection of men and women who had been chosen, judging by the labels in front of them, for their impressive academic credentials. Five of the six had the title "Professor" in front of their name, along with their university association.

Bastien had rolled up the long sleeves of his nicely pressed shirt, giving the image of a busy man who was stealing a few precious moments for the press, taking time away from the somber task of picking up the pieces of World Express 801. His voice was carefully contoured, self-important and airy. Reservedly French.

"Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen. We are here to provide a brief update on our investigation into the tragic loss of World Express Flight 801. Our work is well on course and, though it is very early, we have so far identified a number of issues that warrant further pursuit."

Bastien spread an arm theatrically across the stage. He had the whole point-and-pose act going on again. Davis heard the clicks, saw the flashes.

"As I said in our first briefing yesterday, we have brought in experts from around the world." Clearly not satisfied with yesterday, Bastien proceeded to give a rundown on each person s illustrious qualifications. The words flowed like quicksand.

Lost in a back row, Davis mumbled, "This is like some damned ivory tower academic conference."

"What?" came a reply. The woman from Honeywell had taken a seat next to him.

He asked in a hushed voice, "You don't have a Ph. D., do you?"

"No," she replied. "You?"

He gave her his best you-gotta-be-shittin-me grin. "Guys like this drive me crazy," he said. "They try to impress you with credentials and catchphrases."

"And guys like you?"

"I prefer the straight and true road of common sense. And if that fails, I go right to physical intimidation." He saw a smile from the corner of his eye.

Bastien prattled grandly, eloquently for the cameras, his head oscillating back and forth like a sprinkler giving full coverage. His only visual aid was a simple graph, a thing so embellished it bordered on the ridiculous. There were a dozen different colors and scripted artwork in the margins. Somebody had wasted a lot of time, Davis thought. The vertical axis, blue, was altitude. A chartreuse horizontal line represented time. The data points formed a line that dropped precipitously from left to right, like a stock market index that had fallen off a cliff. Bastien squandered ten minutes on the chart before reiterating that the investigation was in its very early stages. No conclusions could yet be drawn.

He ended in a flourish, and threw the floor open for questions.

A woman in the front row piped up, "Do you have any suggestion as to what caused this disaster?"

Davis rolled his eyes. It was always the first question. And the second, and the third. If the guy in charge was firm enough, the news-hounds would move on, happy with whatever scraps they were given.

"To this point, we are pursuing no particular causal factor. However, there have been two anomalies identified." Bastien paused as the room fell still.

Jammer Davis fell still.

Bastien picked up, "The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, or black boxes as you in the press so dramatically refer to them, both seem to have suffered interruptions during the incident."

The word "incident" did not escape Davis. "Accident" was more typical, but this implied randomness. An absence of fault.

"The cockpit voice recorder fell offline at the midpoint of the aircraft's severe dive. The reason for this has yet to be determined. The flight data recorder, which would have been supremely useful in our investigation, became inoperative just before the start of the final descent. We expect little useful data to be retrieved relating to the accident sequence. Of course, we are investigating the cause of this malfunction. Early evidence suggests that the data recorder may have been disabled at some point."

Davis stiffened in his seat.

A reporter near the front caught it too. "Disabled?" the woman said. "What do you mean by that? Did someone deliberately turn it off?"

Bastien replied, "The data recorder ceased functioning at an unusually critical moment, just before initiation of the aircraft's nearly vertical dive."

"How could this happen?" someone prodded.

"The data recorder does not have an on-off switch like most instruments on the aircraft. It can, however, be deactivated by pulling a circuit breaker on the electrical panel behind the captain's seat. Indeed, our initial examination of the wreckage has found this breaker to be in the open position."

Davis went rigid. He wondered why Bastien hadn't shared this news with him. He suddenly knew why everyone was so interested in his seventy-two-hour report on Earl Moore.

The reporter smelled blood in the water. "Are you saying that the captain might have turned it off? Why would a pilot do such a thing?"

Bastien said, "I should not speculate as to how this circuit breaker came to be deactivated." Then, after a momentary pause, he speculated. "Yet there is one precedent. SilkAir, December 1997."

Davis jumped to his feet. His chair scraped back hard over the floor and the noise drew everyone's attention, including that of Bastien. Davis canvassed the "experts" lined up on stage. None looked worried. None raised a finger to take exception. Had they known what was coming? Or were they just so many lemmings following the front man over a cliff?

Davis locked eyes with Bastien, the message written in stone on his face — not another word.

Bastien raised his chin defiantly, but then he guided the briefing to more routine topics. It didn't matter. Davis knew the damage was done. SilkAir. The press pool had no idea what it meant. Not yet. But give them ten minutes on the Internet, and they'd all have their headline.

Davis stormed out of the room and headed down the hallway, his long strides eating up ground. Halfway down the corridor he turned, burst through a door, and ended up in an outdoor courtyard. He came to a stop in front of a three-tiered fountain. Davis stood stockstill with his hands on his hips, staring intently but divided from his surroundings. He felt warmth at the collar of his polo shirt and tugged it away, hoping the cool air would lower his boiling point. He could not believe what the investigator-in-charge had just done.

Footsteps clacked over the cobblestone path behind him.

"Jammer?"

He turned and saw Sorensen.

"What was that all about?" she asked.

Davis turned back and stared at the fountain. Four cherubs were pissing in all directions. He said, "Bastien just told the world what caused the crash of World Express 801."

"What?"

"He accused Captain Earl Moore of committing suicide."