Fly by Wire

Chapter TWENTY-THREE

Sorensen offered to drive, but the hangar was only a mile from the hotel and the weather had moderated. No rain or sleet, just a cool breeze.

They both dressed appropriately, Davis wearing his throwback bomber jacket, Sorensen more contemporary in a ski parka, stylish blue and thick. It left Davis to conclude that, unlike the military, the CIA didn't issue uniforms — no standard issue trench coat or wide-brimmed hat.

When they got to the hangar there were only six people left in the place. Four were on their way out. Davis nodded as they passed, feeling like a salmon swimming upstream — an image that slotted nicely with his whole investigation. Even though they were miles removed from the crash site, the bitter stench of fire was etched into the air, unavoidably imported with the accumulating wreckage. At nine o'clock in the evening, the workday was long done, yet the place was still bathed in light so intense it would have blotted out the sun. It reminded Davis of a stadium where every light was kept on for hours after the big game. Self-important and wasteful.

He led Sorensen to the desired section of wreckage. Their footsteps echoed on a concrete floor that was cold and naked, no one having thought to add paint or lacquer to dampen the effect. The only other sound came from a pair of Asian men at the far end of the building who were chatting quietly near a main landing gear truck. Chances were, it was their product — and accordingly, their duty to convince everyone that a burst tire or hot brake assembly hadn't been the culprit to bring down World Express 801.

Davis drew to a stop at a piece of metal the size of a refrigerator.

It was upright, enough of the supporting structure still in place to hold everything in a more or less natural alignment.

"This is the rear flight deck bulkhead," he explained, "or at least part of it. This particular section was behind the captains seat. There's a matching bulkhead on the starboard side, behind the first officer — that one's not as intact."

"So it's basically a wall," she suggested. "To separate the cockpit from the rest of the airplane."

"Right."

Sorensen looked more closely and asked, "What are those?"

"That's what I wanted to show you."

All along the surface of the bulkhead was an array of what looked like small buttons. They were black circles, each a quarter inch in diameter, and protruding from the bulkhead roughly the same amount.

"This is one of the main circuit breaker panels," he said.

"And those are all circuit breakers? There must be hundreds of them."

"I've never counted, but yeah, there's a lot. The panel behind the first officer is about the same, and a there's a bunch more down in what we call the E and E bay."

"E and E?"

"Electronics and Equipment. It's a compartment in the belly where all the avionics are stashed. There are thousands of electronic gadgets, relays, and buses on an airplane like this, and each one has a breaker. The idea is, if there's an electrical problem like an overvoltage or a spike in the current, the breaker pops and removes power from that particular instrument. That way a box doesn't just sit there and fry until it catches on fire. It's a protective measure."

"Like a fuse in a house."

"Exactly."

"So which one controls the data recorder? That's the one everybody is interested in — especially Bastien."

Davis pointed to a breaker that stood out like a lone whitecap on a calm ocean. The black cap jutted out, and at its base was a half-inch cylinder of white. "This one has popped," he said.

"Boy, it'd be hard to miss. Between the black wall and the cap — the contrast is eye-catching."

"That's the whole idea."

Sorensen looked closer. Each breaker was labeled, and she read out loud from the one that was popped. "FDR. Flight data recorder?"

He nodded.

"So that's the one."

"Yep."

"And it's right behind the captain's seat."

"Yep."

"So Bastien was right?"

Davis caught her eye, shook his head. "One big problem."

"What's that?"

He swept two fingers across the panel. "Do you see any other breakers out?"

She scanned the black rows. "Yeah, I see six or seven. But they're different. They have some kind of colored plastic things holding them out.

"Those are collars," he said. "Sometimes maintenance deactivates certain circuits, disables equipment. A red collar might signify permanent disabling, blue temporary — that kind of thing."

"Okay, but what's that got to do with the data recorder?"

Davis pulled a pen flashlight from his pocket. The vertical panel was resting at a slight angle, so even in the harsh fluorescent glare the circuit breakers were dimmed by shadow. He shone the light on one of the collared breakers. It was labeled VHF3.

"This is for an extra radio that's not installed," he explained. "New airplanes are just like new cars — buyers don't necessarily want every option. Now, take a close look. Tell me exactly what you see."

Sorensen leaned in. She clearly hadn't hit the middle-aged roadblock of degraded near vision. She said, "The breaker is out, and it has a red collar"

"Describe the collar."

"It covers the white part, but not all the way around. There's a gap, maybe forty five degrees. That's how you get it on and off, right?"

"Yes. And in that gap you see part of the white breaker cylinder."

"Okay"

"Now—" Davis reached down and pulled the collar from the breaker labeled VHF3.

Sorensen saw it right away. "The part that was under the collar is a lot whiter, cleaner."

"The smaller portion in the gap was exposed to soot and smoke in the crash. Together with the heat, it makes for a permanent change. Any breaker that had been out when the airplane hit the ground would show the same degree of discoloration."

Sorensen stood back, looked at the sparkling white FDR circuit breaker. "You're saying this breaker wasn't out when the airplane hit? You mean—" her voice caught on the realization, snagged like a dragging anchor hitting a rock.

"Yep. Someone has been tampering with our evidence."

Whittemore had no trouble keeping Fatima in sight. Her pace was quick for someone her size, but he decided the cold might have something to do with it.

The wind was sharp, so it was easy for Whittemore to keep his collar high and his face turned down under his hat — it would have looked unnatural to do otherwise. He had followed a lot of people in the last ten years. Some were clumsy. Some were rather clever. None had ever shaken him. Whittemore was built for following. He wasn't tall nor short, fat nor thin. He wasn't much of anything. His hair was medium length and dark brown, his skin tone nondescript. A Scandinavian who'd seen some sun. Or a man of Mediterranean extraction who had not. Whittemore was built for blending in.

Fatima Adara was not.

Presently, she was moving like she had somewhere to go. The drinks had clearly had their effect, but sudden exposure to the elements had a way of sobering people up. From the hotel, she'd headed straight for the old harbor. The ancient cradle of Marseille's seafaring heritage, the harbor had succumbed to the contemporary, woefully reinvented as a mooring station for a thousand pleasure boats of all sizes and varieties. A few token older ships were lashed to the docks, barquentine relics that had been restored to well-lacquered semblances of their original glory for the sake of the tourists. On any summer evening, the sidewalks would have been shoulder-to-shoulder with pleasure seekers and bored teens and counterfeit mariners. But tonight, both the season and weather were against it.

Which gave Whittemore little crowd to work with.

Fatima ignored the waterfront as she pressed onward along the quai du Port, passing rows of souvenir shops that were shut down tight. She eventually paused at a corner, near an espresso shop. An outdoor seating area was completely deserted, empty chairs and tables looking cold and lifeless. Inside, however, there was still a warm glow, and a narrow ray of light sprayed out over the sidewalk like sunshine through a broken cloud. Even at this late hour, caffeine was being served.

Fatima stood immovable. She looked obviously over her shoulder. Lousy tradecraft? Whittemore wondered. Or was she lost? He slowed his closure and coasted into a shadow.

Fatima pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She turned to put her face leeward to the wind and fired one up. It might be a signal, a message to Caliph. More likely, it was just another bad habit. Whittemore knew smoking was endemic in the Middle East — Phillip Morris and Lorillard had probably killed more bad guys than the United States Army and Marine Corps combined.

Fatima began to move again. She fell in behind two nuns whose robes flowed and fluttered in the wind, giving the appearance that she was following two black ghosts. The whole curious entourage went out of sight, onto the side street. Whittemore hurried to the corner. As he closed in, he had yet another nagging thought about calling in his spot on Fatima. If he lost her now — and anyone ever found out — he'd be in deep trouble.

He reached the espresso shop and slowed to a crawl, looked in the window as if considering a stop. Down the side street, he spotted the nuns as they turned into the first building on the right. Fatima was nowhere in sight.

"Dammit!" he cursed under his breath.

He trotted ahead, discarding any illusion of stealth. Whittemore couldn't lose her now. He was sure Fatima hadn't gone into the espresso bar — the entrance had been in clear view. It only took a few steps to discern that the big building the nuns had disappeared into was a church, a big stone statement that looked like it had been there a thousand years. It was set back from the road, its placement slightly out of line with the rest of the buildings along the street.

Whittemore passed an alley that was also askew, a fitting separation of church and capitalism. He paused for a good look. On one side of the passageway were piles of empty boxes. They all looked the same from where Whittemore stood, but he reckoned you could probably tell which shops were in front by the smells — stale tobacco, old coffee grounds, rotten vegetables. On the other side of the alley he saw overflowing trash cans, spent building materials, and a shattered old lectern with the sign of the cross. Even God had his refuse.

Amid it all, Whittemore saw no movement. No sign of Fatima. A pair of undersized bulbs cast twin shafts of light into the alley, spilling as if from doors in a dark hallway. There were any number of alcoves and obstructions. Fatima could be there — somewhere. Or she could be in the church. Whittemore flipped a mental coin.

He headed for the church.

He walked quickly and climbed an ancient set of stone steps. At the crest was a massive door, the wood scarred and bent. The door swung open freely, belying its size and aged appearance. Soft light bathed the space inside, and when Whittemore closed the door behind him the biting wind was cut off. He instantly felt warmer. Stretching out before him was a church like any other, a long central aisle that delivered the faithful to rows of wooden pews. An ornate runner covered the cold stone aisle all the way to the front, and at the head a series of steps gave rise to the place of holy issuances. Above it all was Jesus on the cross, his enduring figure mounted over stained glass that sat muted for lack of light.

Whittemore spotted the two nuns for an instant as they disappeared into a vestibule at one side of the stage. A line of candles were arrayed at the steps in front, and two people kneeled in prayer — women probably, though it was hard to tell in their layered coverings. Neither could have been Fatima Adara. Whittemore eyed the path the nuns had taken and cursed under his breath.

He went back outside.