And yet even a small piece of wreckage tells a story. From the wing fragment they’d determined that the plane hit the water at a ninety-degree angle—diving straight down like a seabird. This is not a natural angle of descent for an airplane, which wants to glide on contoured wings. That suggested pilot error, even possibly a deliberate crash—although Gus reminded everyone of the possibility that the plane had actually descended at a more natural angle, only to impact a large wave head-on, simulating a nose-down crash. In other words, We don’t know anything for sure.
A few days later, a chunk of the tail section was spotted off Block Island. From this they got their first look at the hydraulic system—which appeared uncompromised. The next day two more pieces of luggage were found on a Montauk beach—one intact, the other split open, just a shell. And so it went, piece by piece, like searching a haystack for hay. The good news was that the wreckage seemed to be breaking up underwater, revealing itself a little at a time, but then, four days ago, the finds stopped coming. Now Gus is worried they might never find the bulk of the fuselage, that the remaining passengers and crew are gone for good.
Every day he faces pressure from his superiors in Washington, who, in turn, face mounting demands from the attorney general and from a certain angry billionaire to find answers, recover those missing, and put the story to rest.
There is an answer. We just don’t know it yet.
On Thursday he sits at a conference table reviewing the obvious with twenty-five bureaucrats, going over the things they already know they know. This is in the federal building on Broadway, home turf for Agent O’Brien of the FBI and Hex of the OFAC, plus the half dozen subordinates they control. To O’Brien this crash is part of a larger story—terrorist threats and splinter cell attacks targeting American interests. To Hex the crash is only the latest piece in a war story about the US economy and the millionaires and billionaires who devote massive capital to the breaking of rules and laws. Gus is the only one in the room thinking about the crash as a singularity.
These people on that aircraft.
Beside him, the CEO of the private security firm responsible for the Bateman family is describing the process they use to assess threat levels. He’s brought a six-man team with him, and they hand him documents as he speaks.
“—in constant contact with dedicated agents of Homeland Security,” he is saying. “So if there was a threat, we knew about it within minutes.”
Gus sits at the conference table, looking at his reflection in the window. In his mind he is on a Coast Guard cutter, scanning the waves. He is standing on the bridge of a naval frigate reviewing sonar imagery.
“I supervised a comprehensive review of all intel and activity myself,” the CEO continues, “for a full six months before the crash, and I can say with complete confidence—nothing was missed. If somebody was targeting the Batemans, they kept it to themselves.”
Gus thanks him, hands off to Agent Hex, who begins a review of the government’s case against Ben Kipling and his investment firm. Indictments, he says, were handed down as planned the day after the crash, but Kipling’s death gave the other partners the perfect scapegoat. So to a man, all have said that any trades with rogue nations (if they existed) were the brainchild of a dead man, laundered through their books as something else. They were duped, in other words. I’m as much of a victim here as you, they said.
Eighteen of the firm’s accounts have been frozen. Total value, $6.1 billion. Investigators have tied the money to five countries: Libya, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. They know from Kipling’s phone records that Barney Culpepper called him fifty-one minutes before the flight departed. Culpepper has declined to comment on what they discussed, but it’s clear the call was to warn Kipling about the indictment.
As far as Agent Hex and his superiors at the OFAC are concerned, the crash was a move by a hostile nation to silence Kipling and hamper their investigation. The question of exactly when the Kiplings were invited to fly back with the Batemans arises. The CEO of the security firm checks the logs. There’s a communiqué from the Batemans’ body man at eleven eighteen the morning of the flight, reporting a conversation with the principal (David Bateman, aka Condor) in which Condor stated Ben and Sarah would be flying back with them.
“Scott,” says Gus absently.
“What?” says Hex.
“The painter,” Gus clarifies. “He told us Maggie invited Sarah and her husband—it was earlier that morning at the farmers market, I think. And he’d already been invited—check the notes, but I think it was sometime Sunday morning. He ran into Maggie and the kids.”
Gus thinks about his last conversation with Scott, sitting in a taxi at the cemetery. He’d hoped to have a more detailed discussion, going minute by minute through Scott’s memories of the flight, boarding, the subsequent takeoff, and what he remembered from the air, but the conversation was hijacked by men looking for faces in the clouds.