dark eyes burned with anger. From the conference room, both men could look down Pennsylvania Avenue to a Capitol Hill scarred by the crash, still lit in the pre-dawn darkness by the hundreds of work lights.
'The co-pilot was murdered,' Murray said. Maybe that would help a little.
'Oh?'
Dan nodded. 'Stabbed, and it appears as though that took place prior to the take-off. It appears at the moment that Sato acted alone—at least as far as flying the airplane was concerned.' The lab had already determined that the weapon used was a thin-bladed steak knife with a serrated edge, of the sort used on the airline. As long as he'd been in the investigative business, it still amazed Murray what the lab techs could discern.
'I see. That makes sense,' Tanaka observed. 'The copilot's wife is pregnant, with twins, in fact. She is in the hospital now under close observation. What we have learned to date makes him appear to be a devoted husband and a man of no special political interests. My people thought it unlikely that he would end his life in this way.'
'Did Sato have any connections with—'
A shake of the head. 'None that we have found. He flew one of the conspirators to Saipan, and they spoke briefly. Aside from that, Sato was an international pilot. His friends were his colleagues. He lived quietly in a modest house near Narita International Airport. But his brother was a senior officer in the Maritime Self-Defense Force, and his son was a fighter pilot. Both died during the hostilities.'
Murray already knew that. Motive and opportunity. He scribbled a note to have the legal attache in Tokyo take up the offer to participate in the Japanese investigation— but he'd have to get approval from Justice and/or State about that. For damned sure the offer seemed sincere enough. Good.
'LOVE THE TRAFFIC,' Chavez observed. They were coming up 1-95, passing the Springfield Mall. Normally at this time of day—it was still dark—the highway was wall-to-wall with bureaucrats and lobbyists. Not today, though John and Ding had been called in, confirming their «essential» status to any who might have doubted it. Clark didn't respond, and the junior officer continued, 'How do you suppose Dr. Ryan is doing?'
John grunted and shrugged. 'Probably rolling with the punches. Better him than me.'
'Roge-o, Mr. C. All my friends at George Mason are going to have a fine old time.'
'Think so?'
'John, he's got a government to rebuild. This will be a textbook case in real life. Ain't nobody ever done that before, 'mano. You know what we're going to find out?'
A nod. 'Yeah, if this place really works or not.' Better him than me, John thought again. They'd been called in for their mission debriefing on operations in Japan. That was ticklish enough. Clark had been in the business for quite a while, but not long enough to be especially happy about telling others the things he'd done. He and Ding had killed—not for the first time—and now they'd get to describe it in detail to people, most of whom had never even held a gun, much less fired one in anger. Secrecy oaths or not, some of them might talk someday, the least consequence of which would be embarrassing revelations in the press. Somewhere in the middle came sworn testimony before a congressional committee—well, not anytime soon on that, John corrected himself—questioning under oath and the necessity of answering questions from people who didn't understand any better than the CIA weenies who sat at desks and judged people in the field for a living. The worst case was an actual prosecution, because while the things he had done weren't exactly illegal, they weren't exactly legal, either. Somehow the Constitution and the United States Code, Annotated, had never quite reconciled themselves with the activities the government carried out but did not wish to admit in open fora. Though his conscience was clear on that and many other things, his views on tactical morality wouldn't strike everyone as reasonable. Probably Ryan would understand, though. That was something.
'WHAT'S NEW THIS morning?' Jack asked.
'We expect recovery operations to be completed by this evening, sir.' It was Pat O'Day doing the morning FBI brief. He'd explained that Murray was busy. The inspector passed over a folder with the numbers of bodies recovered. Ryan gave it a quick scan. How the hell was he supposed to eat breakfast with such facts before him? the President wondered. Fortunately, there was just coffee at the moment.
'What else?'
'Things seem to be dropping into place. We've recovered what we think is the body of the co-pilot. He was murdered hours before the crash, leading us to believe that the pilot acted alone. We'll be doing DNA tests on the remains to confirm identities.' The inspector flipped through his notes, not trusting to memory to get things right. 'Drug and alcohol tests on both bodies proved negative. Analysis of the flight-data recorder, tapes of radio traffic, radar tapes, everything we've managed to pull together, it all leads to the same picture, one guy acting alone. Dan's meeting with a senior Japanese cop right now.'
'Next step?'
'It will be a textbook investigation process. We reconstruct everything Sato—that's the pilot's name—did over the last month or so, and take it back from there. Phone records, where he went, whom he saw, friends and associates, diary if any, everything we can get our hands on. The idea is to rebuild the guy completely and determine if he was part of any possible conspiracy. It will take time. It's a fairly exhaustive process.'
'Best guess for now?' Jack asked.
'One guy acting alone,' O'Day said again, rather more positively this time.
'It's too damned early for any conclusion,' Andrea Price objected. O'Day turned.
'It's not a conclusion. Mr. Ryan asked for a best guess. I've been in the investigation business for quite a while. This looks like a fairly elaborate impulse crime. The method of the co-pilot's murder, for example. He didn't even move the body out of the cockpit. He apologized to the guy right after he stabbed him, according to the tapes.'
'Elaborate impulse crime?' Andrea objected.
'Airline pilots are highly organized people,' O'Day replied. 'Things that would be highly complex for the layman are as natural to them as pulling up your zipper. Most assassinations are carried out by dysfunctional individuals who get lucky. In this case, unfortunately, we had a very capable subject who largely made his own luck. In any event, that's what we have at the moment.'
'For this to have been a conspiracy, what would you look for?' Jack asked.
'Sir, successful criminal conspiracies are difficult to achieve under the best of circumstances.' Price bristled again, but Inspector O'Day went on: 'The problem is human nature. The most normal of us are boastful; we like to share secrets to show how bright we are. Most criminals talk their way right into prison one way or another. Okay, in a case like this we're not talking about your av- erage robber, but the principle holds. To build any sort of conspiracy takes time and talk, and as a result, things leak. Then there's the problem of selecting the… 'shooter, for want of a better term. Such time did not exist. The joint session was set up too late for much in the way of discussions to have taken place. The nature of the co-pilot's murder is very suggestive of a spur-of-the-moment method. A knife is less sure than a gun, and a steak knife isn't a good weapon, too easily bent or broken on a rib.'
'How many murders have you handled?' Price asked.
'Enough. I've assisted on plenty of local police cases, especially here in D.C. The Washington Field Office has backed up the D.C. police for years. Anyway, for Sato to have been the 'shooter' in a conspiracy, he would have had to meet with people. We can track his free time, and we'll do that with the Japanese. But to this point there is not a single indicator that way. Quite the contrary, all circumstances point to someone who saw a unique opportunity and made use of it on an impulse.'
'What if the pilot wasn't—'
'Ms. Price, the cockpit tapes go back before the take-off from Vancouver. We've voice-printed everything in our own lab—it's a digital tape and the sound quality is beautiful. The same guy who took off from Narita flew the airplane into the ground here. Now, if it wasn't Sato, then why didn't the co-pilot—they flew together as a team— notice? Conversely, if the pilot and co-pilot were show-ups, then both were part of the conspiracy from the beginning, then why was the co-pilot murdered prior to takeoff from Vancouver? The Canadians are interviewing the rest of the crew for us, and all the service personnel say that the flight crew was just who they were supposed to be. The DNA-ID process will prove that beyond doubt.'
'Inspector, you are very persuasive,' Ryan observed.
'Sir, this investigation will be rather involved, what with all the facts that have to be checked out, but the meat of the issue is fairly simple. It's damned hard to fake a crime scene. There's just too many things we can do.
