Marine One

essentially agreed to whatever they wanted. We told them we were ready to provide all documents they wanted-they were entitled to have them anyway by contract. Once again, our cooperation seemed to throw them off a little bit. We told Justice we would get the documents to them in sixty days, and they had accepted that. They had also said that they would wait to interview individuals until after they had received all the documents requested in their subpoena and after they had reviewed the depositions Hackett took. That was fine with us. It gave us additional time to prepare.

The consensus of the group was that Justice was waiting for the final NTSB report. That could take two years or longer, long after the trial. Until then, Justice was focused on clearances and people building Marine One without them.

All our experts were there when we arrived. After the usual greetings and some ambitious coffee consumption to hit the jet lag, we got down to business. Kathryn had asked for the meeting, but I was as anxious as she was to see where everyone was. I wanted to brainstorm theories and find out what the hell happened to Marine One. Pretty simple concept, but nothing about the theories in this case was simple. The WorldCopter investigators wanted to blame the pilot, our pilot expert wanted to blame the weather, and Wayne Bradley wanted to blame the NTSB, his former employer, for trying to hang it on WorldCopter without enough evidence.

I asked Bradley to set up his computer with a projector and pull up the wreckage photos. He explained what he saw in the bent metal, the forces necessary to bend the charred remains of the helicopter. He brought up the next slide. 'Look at this!' It was a close-up, a macro photo of some piece of metal. I couldn't tell what it was. 'These are the threads in the nut of the blade that separated. It is interesting, but not good enough.' He said to Marcel, 'We need to get this nut into a scanning electron microscope.' Marcel nodded and made a note.

Bradley looked at everyone else. 'Second, we've got to find those tip weights. I don't think they are far away. If my theory is correct, then those tip weights are somewhere near the accident scene. If they came out on impact with the ground, then they're nearby. We've got to find them; we've got to get them.'

Kathryn contemplated for a moment. She leaned forward on her elbows and pushed her hair back from her face. 'Mike, maybe I'm missing something. How does finding the tip weights help us?'

I looked at Bradley, who waited for me to answer. 'NTSB says-implies, really-that the tip weights came off and started the crash sequence. So the tip weights from that blade can't be at the crash site. They'd have to be miles away, if they got thrown off. So if they are there, right where the helicopter hit, then they came off when it hit the ground and couldn't have caused the crash. If we find them there, we can prove that. That right, Karl?'

Karl Will nodded. He cleared his throat. 'It's a question of sequence, Kathryn. If you jump off a train early, you can't be on it when it gets to the station.'

Kathryn nodded. 'But the NTSB didn't find any tip weights. They've got to be turning over every rock.'

Will nodded again. 'They are. And so are we. If we went out to the scene fifty years from now, I guarantee you we'd find part of Marine One. When these kinds of things happen, you can't ever find everything. We have to try to find what they didn't.'

'If your theory is right,' she noted.

'Exactly,' Will said.

Kathryn glanced around at everyone. 'Well, if it wasn't the tip weights, if that didn't cause the accident, what did? What's our theory?' She looked at Holly. 'You're the piloting expert, right?'

'Yes.'

'What do you think?'

Holly was on the spot. 'I'm not really sure. We've got an incredibly talented pilot, but he sounds like he hated the president. I flew the simulator like Mike here did and didn't really learn very much. He flew very well. The FDR and CVR don't help us that much either. So at this point, I'd say he was unprofessional, but I don't see any hard evidence of pilot error.'

Kathryn frowned. 'What does his professionalism have to do with it? Why do we keep talking about that?'

Holly looked at me to see if she was to say what she and I had been talking about. 'Well, if the pilot hates him enough, maybe he does something… to stop the presidency. Not saying that happened, but we have to consider it. There have been other examples. EgyptAir, SilkAir, others. The pilots almost certainly committed suicide and took hundreds with them. I don't see that here, not for sure, but it could be homicide. Something we have to think about.'

Kathryn was speechless. 'Is that what you think actually happened?'

'I'm just saying I don't rule anything out until there's proof it's wrong.'

Kathryn looked at me. 'What else hasn't been ruled out?'

'Well, there's some talk of hydraulic failure, but I'm not buying that. I'm just not seeing it based on the way this helicopter was flying. The idea that he was shot down or otherwise had an impact with another airplane or anything else, like a bird, I think that's a nonstarter. I don't buy it. I'm with Holly. I don't trust Collins. And why did the flight data recorder suddenly quit? Did he pull the circuit breaker? It's near the hydraulic pump, which he may have thought was failing, but maybe he pulled that circuit breaker too. Maybe he was trying to make it look like an accident. And why was President Adams in such a big damn hurry? Why did he want to get to a meeting at Camp David in the middle of a thunderstorm? And why fly? The Secret Service wanted him to drive, but he refused. Why? I think if we can answer that question, we may make a lot more progress.'

Kathryn shook her head. 'How will that tell us what happened to the helicopter? I don't want to get distracted by political considerations. Unless you're saying someone didn't want him to get there-someone not on that flight-that would mean somebody attacked the helicopter and the NTSB and FBI have clearly said there's no evidence of that. So don't waste your time with that. The answer is in the metal and the wreckage.'

'I agree, Kathryn. But if we find out why he was going there, it certainly won't hurt. I just like knowing everything about an accident.

'Anyway, we need to get these folks into the hangar and finish their examination of the wreckage.'

Marcel shifted. 'Yes, one thing that the NTSB told me while you were in Paris.'

'What?'

'They are going to finish the wreckage access, close access, as they are ready to finalize the group reports.'

The entire group was alarmed.

'What does that mean?' Tripp asked.

Marcel replied, but looked at Bradley for confirmation. 'It means the reports from the groups: engine group, airframe group, operations group and the like are done. They are finished and are preparing their reports to submit to the NTSB so they can put them in their final report.'

This was all wrong. Way too fast. 'Did you think the groups were done?'

'No,' Marcel said.

'Who says the groups are done then?' I pressed.

'Rose.'

We all stared at each other. The NTSB was cutting off the investigation. They had their conclusion so they were making sure nothing was going to challenge it.

Tripp was still confused. 'Why is that bad?'

I replied, 'Because we'll be cut off from access to the wreckage, and no one will be involved in whatever happens between now and the issuance of their final report. They'll be behind a wall of silence for the rest of their investigation.'

'But why?'

'Well, the benign scenario would be because they really think they are done. But the other possibility, the malignant scenario, is because they want to cut us off. They want to make sure we're in the dark.'

Kathryn was beside herself. 'If they stop looking and jump to a conclusion, this thing will make the debate over the Kennedy assassination look like child's play. It's like the Warren Commission stopping halfway through because they're sure they know what happened.'

Rachel said, 'Some people think that's exactly what happened.'

Bradley stood with some difficulty. 'But they haven't closed the doors yet. I say we get out to their hangar right now.'

16

I SHOULD HAVE gone home after spending the entire day at the wreckage hangar, but I hadn't been to my office in ten days. I called Debbie and told her I'd be home after stopping in at the office. I hurried to the second floor of our building and turned on the lights of my office. I could tell by the lights down the hall that a couple of other people were working too. I put my laptop back in its cradle and turned it on while I thumbed through the piles of documents, letters, legal pleadings, magazines, and other papers Tracy had placed on my desk. I was about halfway done when I suddenly realized someone was standing in my door. It was Braden, one of the new contract attorneys. Very good guy. We had received probably two hundred resumes after we put out our ads. Braden's was one of the best and he was clearly the best in the interview. He had graduated from Columbia Law School, something we didn't see often in Annapolis, and had worked at two large defense firms in New York City. He said he was tired of New York and wanted to find a place where he could settle down and raise a family someday. He was the best I had seen. A little too eager sometimes, but overall just trying to please. 'Hey, what's up? You're here late,' I said.

'Sorry. I didn't want to disturb you, but I heard you knocking around. How was the trip?'

'Good. Come on in. Have a seat. I'm just going through some correspondence. What are you doing here?'

'Working on the memo Rachel asked for on forum non conveniens.'

'Yeah, that's pretty hopeless. Not sure we'd even really try to transfer this case to another place if we could, but you may as well finish it.'

'Yeah, will do.'

I looked at him more closely. 'Rachel's impressed with your work. Your memos are quite good.'

'Thanks, I appreciate it.' He paused. 'Oh.' He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. 'Weirdest thing. I was using the copy machine last night and I walked by your office. It was late, like eleven thirty. I heard your phone ring, and then it stopped. Then it rang again and stopped. Someone wanted to talk to you but didn't want to leave a voice mail. It rang again so I answered it.'

'Who was it?'

'I don't know.' He handed me the piece of paper. 'Here's the number.'