He passed Balboa Park and looked at his dash clock. He’d be at the San Francisco Gold Club early enough to review his notes before tee-off with Quentin Lyle. He glanced up at the sky. Beautiful June day. Perfect for business. Before they reached the ninth hole, the Lyle factories would be the latest client of Beneficial Insurance Company. By the last hole he might have the trucking company as well. He hummed along with the music. His reverie was broken by the insistent buzzing of the cellular phone that lay on the passenger seat. He shut off the CD player and picked up the phone. “Yes?”
The voice came through with a slight hollow sound to it. “Mr. Metz, this is Judy. Trans-United Airlines has just called.”
He frowned. “Go on.”
“A Mr. Evans. The message was as follows: Flight 52, Straton aircraft, sent Trans-United a message saying aircraft damaged. But Mr. Evans said they were still transmitting so it might not be too bad.”
“That was the whole message?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not too serious?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Hold on.” He put the phone down in his lap and turned over several alternatives in his mind. But none of them was viable, really. Trans-United was far too important a client for him to pretend that he was out of touch with his office. Still, Beneficial didn’t insure what they called the hull-the aircraft itself. They were only the liability carrier. If no one was hurt, he was safe. He picked up the phone. “All right, I’ll call them from here. I may have to go down there. Call Mr. Lyle at the club. Tell him I may be late. Emergency. Hope to be there for the back nine. Maybe sooner. Make it sound really catastrophic, but don’t mention Trans-United. Got all of that? I’ll call you later.”
“Yes, sir.”
Metz hung up and drove by the San Jose Avenue exit. With any luck at all, his presence at the airport wouldn’t be necessary. He slowed his car, picked up the telephone, and punched a pre-stored number. The cellular phone immediately dialed the private New York number for Beneficial’s president, Wilford Parke. A few seconds later, Parke’s secretary put him through.
“Wayne? You there?”
Metz held the phone away from his ear. Like many older men, Parke was speaking too loudly into the mouthpiece. “Yes, sir.” He glanced at his clock. It was almost quitting time in New York. “Sorry to bother you so late in the day, but-”
“That’s all right, Wayne. Some sort of problem out there?”
Metz smiled. Out there. To most New Yorkers, anything west of the Hudson was out there. To Wilford Parke, anything west of Fifth Avenue was in another solar system. “Possibly, sir. I thought I’d keep you posted.” Metz’s thoughts were already two sentences ahead. “A call from Trans-United Airlines. Some sort of problem with an aircraft. No details yet, but they said it didn’t seem too bad and may only involve the hull. Still, there may be a liability claim. I thought I should call you before you left the office.” And before you heard it from another source, he thought.
“Good thinking, Wayne.”
“Yes, sir. And I thought I might go out there and see to it personally.”
“Fine, Wayne. Fine. Keep me posted. Glad to see you’re taking care of it personally. Where are you calling from?”
“Car. I’m already on the highway to the airport.”
“Very good. Let me know when you have some details.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good-bye, Wayne.”
Metz spoke quickly. “Sir, where can I reach you later?”
“Later? Oh, yes. Atrium Club. Having dinner. Over on East Fifty-seventh.”
Metz did not care where the club was located. “Can I page you there? Is the number listed?”
“Yes. Of course. You know the place. We were there last February. We had a bottle of Chateau Haut-Brion ’59. You can reach me there until about ten o’clock. Speak to you later.”
Metz tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. Wilford Parke was somewhere between senile and brilliant. In either case, he liked the old man. Talking with him was always a pleasure. He was a real gentleman of the old school. He was a man who believed in his company and who shared management’s privileges with those whom he trusted-like Wayne Metz. Metz had always been sure to stress his own Long Island boyhood and his college days at Princeton, which was also Parke’s alma mater. But the main reason he liked Parke was that Parke thought Wayne Metz could do no wrong. And he had thought so even before those embarrassing lapses of memory had set in. Wayne Metz hoped that Wilford Parke could hold on to his job long enough to secure Metz’s next promotion.
Metz wheeled his BMW through a pack of cars, then accelerated again through an open stretch of highway. He knew he’d been lucky to get the call when he did, on the highway, not far from the airport. From his downtown office it would have taken him over an hour to get there. That was typical of the luck that had propelled him to the head of the West Coast office. Yet he might have to miss the first few holes with Quentin Lyle. That might be ominous. He half believed in omens, and though he found astrology silly, many of his friends read their horoscopes each morning. Money can be worrisome. Set example for loved ones by cutting down. Do what you believe to be correct. Don’t be afraid to trust your heart.
But certainly his success had not all been luck, thought Metz. It was talent. Wilford Parke had years before seen something in Metz that as a young man he had not been aware of himself. In the corporate hierarchy, where a significant battle could be announced by a gesture as innocuous as the polite declining of a drink, Wayne Metz flourished. He was the master of the oblique and muted signal. He had an uncanny talent for projecting, in the most subtle ways imaginable, his likes and dislikes. He was, to quote his own analyst, perhaps too young a man to be so blessed.
Metz’s cellular phone buzzed again. He picked it up. “Metz.”
“Ed Johnson, Wayne.”
Metz stiffened in his seat. If the Operation VP was calling, it had to be a real problem. “I was just about to call you, Ed. What’s the latest?”
“It’s bad,” said Johnson, evenly. “It’s the Straton 797.”
“Oh, shit.” He and Johnson had once, over drinks, kidded each other about their mutual jeopardy in the Straton program. It had been Metz’s idea that Beneficial be the sole liability carrier for Trans-United’s fleet of the giant supersonic transports. He’d offered lower premiums with the elimination of the usual, but cumbersome, insurance pool. Johnson, for his part, had been one of the people to vote for the idea. Also, he had once admitted candidly to Metz, after a third martini, that his career was closely tied to the Straton’s success for a variety of other reasons. “Where did it crash?” Metz asked. “How many were killed?”
“It was en route to Japan. The good news is that the airliner’s still flying, and there weren’t many killed… yet. But the bad news is worse than you’d ever dream,” he said. “A bomb blew two holes in the hull and the air pressure escaped. The passengers suffered the effects of decompression. Up there, as you may know, it’s like outer space.”
Metz didn’t know. No one at Trans-United had told him about this possibility, and he had never had the foresight to have the dangers of high-altitude supersonic flight researched. It was all supposed to be government approved, so he had assumed that there was no extraordinary risk. “What did you say was the condition of the passengers?” Metz asked.
There was a pause, then Johnson said, “We’re not absolutely certain, you understand, but the consensus here-and up there-seems to be that they’re brain damaged.”
“God Almighty.” The BMW nearly went off the road. “Are you sure?”
“I said we weren’t sure, Wayne. But I’d put money on it.”
Metz realized that he had not assimilated all of it. “The survivors… how did they…?”
“We’re communicating with them on the data-link. That’s like a computer screen. Radios are gone. There are only five unimpaired survivors. They were all in the whiffies or someplace like that.”
“Whiffies?”
“Bathrooms, Wayne. You’d better get here fast and bring your company’s checkbook.”
