Fly by Wire

Chapter THIRTY-EIGHT

Davis and Sorensen approached the address carefully.

Thick, broad snowflakes drifted overhead through the spray of streetlights, their reflections telltale indicators of otherwise unseen currents and eddies. The street was like a hundred others in Lyon, a muddled mix of businesses, homes, and apartments. Near the place des Terreaux, many of the buildings had been in place for centuries, while others were newer, or at least updated. It all blended to afford the district a patchwork, almost cluttered appearance.

Number 27, rue d'Algerie, was five levels, a burnt-brick facade that was in need of some work. There was little to distinguish it from the surrounding structures. Maybe a lack of anything ornate — no columns or arches, no carved lions heads or coils of rope. It was just there, plain and square.

And somewhere inside was Dr. Ibrahim Jaber.

"What was the apartment number?" Sorensen asked as they weighed the place from across the street.

"Nineteen," Davis replied.

"I see twelve windows in front. There must be more on the backside. Third floor?" she guessed.

"Maybe." Of the three windows on that floor, only one was lit. "Let s go have a look."

They crossed the street to the building entrance and found twenty mail boxes in an alcove. Some had names. Number 19 did not.

Davis said, "Jaber was supposed to be staying with a relative, an older woman."

After a silence, Sorensen said, "Okay. So lets go meet her."

At the building entrance there was no indicator of which rooms were on which floor. To the positive, the entryway wasn't locked — just an old door that opened freely against a tired spring, and behind that a stairwell. Davis and Sorensen headed up. The door labeled "19" turned out to be on the fourth floor, higher than predicted. There was no light coming from the crack at the base of the door. Davis checked his watch. 10:52.

"Do you think he's in bed?" he whispered.

"I wouldn't be surprised — you know, with the way he looks and all."

"Great. So now what?"

Sorensen stepped up to the door and knocked, the sound echoing down the long hallway. Davis sensed nothing from inside the apartment, no stirring sounds, no change to the bland darkness at the bottom of the door. He gave the second knock, quick and sharp like a chain gun. More insistent. Still nothing.

"What now?" she said. "We don't have any authority for a search. I wonder how hard it would be to get approval from the French."

"Are you kidding? At this time of night? We took the word 'bureaucracy' from French, Honeywell."

"Okay. Any other ideas?"

Davis smiled.

Sorensen frowned.

"All right," she said. "But let me do it." She moved back a step and took a firm stance.

Davis put an arm in front of her. "I don't think so."

"I've done this before," she argued.

"Sorry, Honeywell, but you're built to have doors opened for you. I'm the one made for knocking them off their hinges."

Davis studied the door, looked up and down for locks and striker plates. He saw only two, both at hip height. Davis quarter-turned to one side and raised a leg.

She whispered harshly, "Jammer, are you sure about this?"

"No."

He kicked hard, his flat heel slamming into the door right where locks met wood. With a crash, the old jamb splintered and the door flew open, smacking back hard against the inside wall. They stood completely still, watching the dark interior of the apartment. Alert for any movement, any sound. There was nothing.

They stepped inside over splinters and plaster chips that had sprayed across a worn rug. The door was hanging crookedly on one hinge, the other two having pulled away from the wall. Sorensen looked at the door. Then at him.

He shrugged it off. "So I got a little carried away."

The room was chilly, clammy, like it had been closed up all day. Davis found a light switch and snapped it on. The room that came into view wasn't much to look at. The walls were covered with a mix of faded paint and peeling wallpaper. The wood floor and trim were at the stage where dirt, mold, and dry rot had to be declared the winner. If there could be a label for the room's decor it would be "minimalist" — just a few sorry pieces of worn furniture and the basic accessories of life. There was no sign of Ibrahim Jaber.

Davis looked around for confirmation that they had the right apartment. He found it on a table near the door — Jaber s investigation credentials, nested by a lanyard to his CargoAir ID. He held it up for Sorensen to see and said, "This is definitely the place."

Davis saw one adjoining room. He eased over and looked inside, saw a single bed, empty and neatly made. There was a suitcase on the dresser, packed to the brim, its flap lying open like a shucked oyster. One fresh suit hung in the closet amid a lineup of empty hangers. In the adjacent bathroom Davis found a toothbrush, a razor, and two pill bottles. Nothing else.

He went back to the main room. Sorensen was on the far side going through the small kitchen. It was separated by a laminate counter, watermelon red, and on the back wall two stacks of worn wood cabinets were divided by a stove and a naked section of wall that had been splashed years ago with lime green paint, somebody's crude attempt to spruce the place up.

"What do you think?" he asked.

They both looked around. There was a teapot on the stove, a box of breakfast cereal on the table, a few dishes in the sink.

"There's not much here," she said.

"I'm more struck by what's not here. No books, no pictures, no artwork. Jaber was supposed to be rooming with a relative, an older woman. If it's true, then she's led a really boring life."

"And if it's not?"

Davis scanned the room and wondered the same thing. His eyes settled on a laptop computer on the kitchen counter. It was already powered up, the lights on the keyboard shining, but a screensaver — a cute little progressive design of children's blocks snapping together — had kicked in to indicate standby mode. Davis went closer and saw a scattering of papers and printouts on the counter next to the computer. Most if it was indecipherable, page after page of equations and instructions.

"What do you think this is?" he asked.

Sorensen took a look. "I'm pretty sure it's computer code. You know, lines of instruction. He's a software guy, right?"

Rifling though the stack, Davis found a few pages that looked less daunting. They were flow charts of some kind, groups of rectangular boxes connected by lines. All the boxes were labeled with acronyms and he recognized a few. FCC for flight control computer, ADS for air data system, and FDR — flight data recorder. At the top was a title: C-500 Standby Three Architecture. Davis sifted through the rest of the papers and found another that pulled his attention. It was titled: Coordinate List.

He drew it from the pile. "Look at this."

"What is it?"

After a good look, he said, "These are all lat-longs."

Sorensen eyed the paper with suspicion, but didn't seem bowled over. "Latitude and longitude coordinates. So what? It's an airplane. You pilot types use that stuff all the time, right?"

Davis shook his head. "I dunno. There's something weird about this." He looked again at the flow diagrams referencing aircraft systems, the pages of computer code. He thought aloud. "Fly by wire. Flight control software, integration. That's Jabers specialty, isn't it?"

She nodded.

"Remember I told you I had looked into that? I explained how the software that controls this airplane is supposed to be shielded from intrusion."

"Okay."

"But that means protected from hackers. What about somebody on the inside? What about an imbedded malware program that comes right from the factory? Commercial aircraft manufacturers don't sell airplanes, they sell safety. Who would ever think to scrub millions of lines of computer code that are sourced straight from the design bureau?"

"You're saying that Jaber programmed World Express 801 to crash?"

Davis reached into his mind and strove for an alternate explanation. There wasn't one. As if trying to convince himself, he said, "I can't see it any other way."

Davis turned to the laptop and poked a random key. The machine began to spin through its wake-up call.

Fatima cursed under her breath. Her support arm was going numb.

The man and woman had been in her sights for nearly ten minutes, easy prey from this range. She decided it had to be the two irksome American investigators. She had never seen either, but the descriptions given by her useless Algerians matched perfectly — the woman a petit blonde, the man a big rough-looking type. She tracked them alternately, watched as they rifled through Jaber's papers and tinkered with his computer. She wondered about that — was it the computer that held the critical instructions? The one Jaber had told her was in a safe in his office in Marseille?

She decided it probably was.

Fatima kept shifting her sight. First the man, then the woman. She could take them both in seconds, but that wasn't why she was here. She needed Jaber first. For Fatima, he was the true threat. If she killed the Americans now there would be two muffled shots, a pair of bloody bodies lying near an open door. Any passerby could spot them. Or if Jaber returned to such a scene, he would know immediately what had happened. He would flee, not give Fatima a second chance. In either case, the alarm would be raised, and the police would come swarming in a matter of minutes.

She put her crosshairs on the head of the big man. Fatima ignored the bullet drop and wind compensation references built into her sight. They were little help at such close range. She sensed her finger putting slight pressure on the trigger. Fatima took a long, deep breath. The pressure eased.

She could not allow herself to lose a shooters most important weapon — patience.

Sorensen asked, "But why would Jaber sabotage these airplanes? To bring down the CargoAir corporation?"

Davis cupped his chin as he tried to figure that one himself. "I can't believe he'd have a grudge against the company. This whole design, the whole project was under his watch."

"There's no way the chief engineer would sabotage his crowning achievement."

Davis was distracted by a beep. The computer was up and running. He saw a security screen asking for a password. "Great."

She sighed, "Too bad this isn't a movie — we could just guess his password."

"Yeah, right." He shoved the machine aside. "This is a waste of rime."

Davis went back to the printouts and scanned over the latitude-longitude pairs until he found an eerily familiar set. N45.6 E004.8. He shook his head uncertainly. "That's got to be close, but—"

"Whats close?"

He rapped on the paper with an index finger and showed her. "This lat-long combination. I think it might be our crash site."

"World Express 801? The crash site is on that list? Jammer, this is crazy."

"Yeah, it is. We—"

"What are you doing here?" a strident voice interrupted. Davis and Sorensen both turned to see Dr. Ibrahim Jaber standing in his shattered doorway.