B006U13W The Flight (Jenny Cooper 4) nodrm (42 page)

‘My lawyers also told me you had been arrested for stealing evidence.’

‘Seizing, not stealing – there’s a difference. And you’re right to point out that what I’ve discovered hasn’t exactly been welcomed. But the way I see it, you’re better off owning up to a fault and fixing it than being responsible for another six hundred or more deaths.’

‘I’m not responsible.’

‘You knew your aircraft had a problem, Mr Ransome.’

‘No. I did not.’ He was emphatic. ‘Where are you, Mrs Cooper?’

‘A short distance from Bristol airport – why?’

‘If I sent a helicopter for you, would you agree to come and meet me?’

‘Now?’

‘Now would be perfect.’

I
T WAS TEN THIRTY-FIVE
when the Bell JetRanger painted in full Ransome livery swung in a tight arc over the landing pad at Bristol Flight Centre in the south-east corner of the airport, and settled on the ground. Jenny had ignored the repeated calls from Alison, keeping her phone switched on only in the frustrated hope that Michael might still break his silence. Detective Sergeant Karen Fuller hadn’t wasted a moment. She had phoned at two minutes past ten to inform Jenny that she was officially in breach of bail and was liable to be arrested on sight. Jenny thanked her for the heads-up, but told her not to waste her day waiting: she wouldn’t be in a position to talk to her until at least the close of business.

The pilot jumped down from the cockpit and waved her over. He was evidently in a big hurry. Bracing herself against the downdraught from the idling rotors, she made her way towards the waiting machine.

‘Mrs Cooper?’ the pilot shouted over the noise of the engine.

‘Yes.’

‘Brendan Murphy. Welcome aboard.’

He opened the passenger door and helped her inside.

Jenny guessed that Brendan was a pilot whom Guy Ransome trusted for his experience. Silver-haired, but still an imposing physical presence, he exuded confidence and authority.

In moments they were airborne and leaving the airport behind. Skimming over the treetops and into a clear sky, Jenny felt like a fugitive making a jailbreak. Then it dawned on her: a fugitive was precisely what she was, and right now Karen Fuller would be emailing her photograph to every police station and patrol car in the country.

They tracked the M4 motorway eastwards, and in a little under thirty minutes were shearing off to the south and homing in on a grand Georgian estate surrounded by parkland. An ornamental lake shimmered silver in the winter sun. She had become used to the shuddering motion of the helicopter as it snatched at rather than glided through the air, but the sudden downwards swoop towards their destination had her forcing herself back into her seat.

Brendon threw her a friendly smile. ‘Just imagine you’re a bird.’

Guy Ransome’s personal assistant was waiting on the lawn at the rear of the hotel where the helicopter landed. She led Jenny along the gravel path towards a balustraded terrace than ran the entire length of the building, explaining that Mr Ransome was currently concluding a meeting and would be with her shortly.

The Cavendish was a hotel of the kind that would have impressed her ex-husband: loaded with chandeliers and ostentatious antiques. Jenny had never felt comfortable in such places, suspecting that in opulent surroundings men too often perceived women as part of the decoration.

She was shown into a large suite on the first floor and left alone to wait for Ransome. The view from the large windows took in the full sweep of the surrounding parkland. Sitting in the centre of a large table was a complex scale model of an Airbus A380 with the top half of the hull removed. Curious, Jenny took a closer look and saw that the seats in the cabin could be arranged in different configurations. Someone had left notes scribbled on a pad which appeared to show profit margins according to passenger numbers. Five hundred, six hundred, even eight hundred passengers were envisaged per flight. Amidst the tangle of figures the writer had circled the figure 800 and written: ‘
Insurance? Safety?
’ It was reassuring to know there were limits.

She had been waiting less than five minutes when Guy Ransome entered. For all his impressive height and immaculate tailoring, he showed every sign of having endured a very testing two weeks.

‘Mrs Cooper.’ He shook her hand and gestured her to sit on one of the suite’s two sofas. ‘Have you been offered coffee?’

‘I’m fine,’ Jenny said, anxious to get down to business, though suddenly unsure of her angle of attack.

Seizing on her uncertainty, Ransome took the initiative. ‘We both clearly have information the other would like to possess. The only problem remains what we each do with it.’

‘I’m not in the business of keeping secrets, Mr Ransome.’

‘You’re not in business at all – that’s what concerns me. But on the other hand, if my lawyers inform me correctly, you’re not in much of a position to be believed even if you were to go public with anything I might choose to share with you.’

Jenny paused to consider her next move. Ransome was prepared to trade, but wanted to control the flow of information to protect his airline. If she were to pursue a strictly ethical line she would have to refuse all attempts to gag her, but if she had learned one thing during the previous fortnight, it was that it doesn’t always pay to play by the rules. Getting justice wasn’t that different from getting ahead in business: in this fallen world, sometimes you have to play dirty.

‘I’ll be honest with you, Mr Ransome,’ Jenny said, preparing to be anything but. ‘What concerns me most is that whatever brought your plane down doesn’t happen again. Everyone wants that, I know. Until yesterday I would have said I was prepared to do whatever it takes, but faced with the prospect of losing my career I’m not sure I feel quite so bullish.’ She met his gaze, trying to signal that she was vulnerable. ‘In a way, you’re the passport out of my predicament. You see, if I know what happened to your aircraft I’m in a position to negotiate to keep my job. And if you have all the information I have, you’re in a position to save your business.’

Ransome stared at her for a long moment. She could tell he was trying to read her like he would a rival proposing a deal.

‘You want me to help you keep your job—’

‘And I help you to make your aircraft safe.’

‘You don’t make money killing your customers, Mrs Cooper.’

‘Then I think we understand each other. Who goes first?’

‘I will,’ Ransome said. He had decided to trust her. ‘You say you know about Dan Murray’s overrun and the problem with the autothrust failing to disengage?’

‘Mick Dalton told me it could have been pilot error, but I don’t think he believes that.’

‘Anomalies happen. You can trace a faulty servo or a leaking valve easily enough, but a one-off computer glitch is a different order of challenge altogether. If every plane that had one was grounded, there’d be virtually no carriers left in the air.’

‘What about Captain Farraday’s experience? Losing all flight computers and the ability to control the aircraft for twenty minutes is more than just a glitch.’

‘Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. A similar thing happened on a BMI A321 from Khartoum to Beirut in the summer of 2010 – all computers went down for several minutes before somehow resetting themselves. I admit it’s terrifying, but I don’t build aircraft, I just operate them.’

‘Farraday had been talking to Nuala Casey.’

‘Farraday was talking to anyone who’d listen. That was why we altered the pilots’ contracts – not to keep secrets, but to stop rumours. Having the internet buzzing with wild stories won’t make a single plane any safer. I’m very sorry about his accident, but I can assure you that’s all it was.’

There was nothing overly polished or pre-rehearsed about Ransome’s explanations and Jenny felt that he seemed relieved to be sharing his problems with someone outside his inner circle. She watched him reach up to his tie knot and loosen his top button. Look sympathetic, she told herself, play the understanding woman.

‘Nuala Casey thought Farraday’s incident was more than just an anomaly,’ Jenny said. ‘That’s why she came to see you here after Christmas, isn’t it?’

‘Partly . . .’ He hesitated, then changed the subject. ‘What do you have to say about the theory that my plane was shot down by a missile?’

‘I don’t believe that. There’s no evidence of a mid-air explosion.’

‘I heard about the Patterson girl’s phone call – is that what you’re basing your conclusion on?’

‘The passenger post-mortems are the most persuasive evidence. There’s no sign of injuries caused by an explosion in the air.’

Ransome considered her answer for a moment, turning over the possibilities in his mind. He switched the subject back again. ‘What do you know about Nuala?’

‘I know she sent a one-word text to her ex-boyfriend while the plane was heading for the ground. It was a password connected with an online forum she ran—’

‘I know about Airbuzz,’ Ransome interjected. ‘But before you jump to conclusions, Mrs Cooper, it wasn’t me who had it taken down. Look, there’s another layer to all this . . .’ He leaned forward towards her, as if taking her into his confidence. ‘Tell me about the helicopters. Did one of them fire a missile?’

‘That’s what the evidence suggests. And I’m beginning to think that Sir James Kendall’s inquiry must have known that very soon after the crash. It also looks as if whoever was in the helicopters cut Brogan’s lifejacket from him too.’

‘Who do you think was in them?’

‘I honestly have no idea.’

Ransome sat back, looking like his bleakest fears had been confirmed. ‘We got hold of a leaked report from one of the salvage crew that said the avionics bay was partly blown away – it’s directly beneath the cockpit. I’m told the photograph of the “lightning strike” was taken from the other side – from an angle at which you can’t see the damage.’

‘Where all the flight computers are housed?’

Ransome nodded. ‘I took it up with the security services. They weren’t happy that I knew, but they didn’t deny that it had been hit. But if they had any idea who did it, they weren’t letting on.’

‘Who do you think it was?’ Jenny asked.

‘I can make an educated guess, but I’m still struggling with the reason why.’ He turned his head abruptly towards the window as if fighting to control a surge of anger. He was bitter about something; something outside his control.

Jenny said, ‘You tell me your theory and we’ll see if it fits with what I know about some of the passengers who were on board.’

‘You mean Jimmy Han?’

‘Among others.’ She had his interest. ‘Why don’t we start from the beginning?’

The airline’s problems had begun in May of the previous year, Ransome said, starting with an unannounced visit from an American named Doug Kennedy. He claimed to be working for the US Federal Aviation Authority, but would later admit that he was attached to the Central Intelligence Agency. Ransome had since come to believe it was the other way around: Kennedy was a senior CIA agent who formed part of a team responsible for international aviation security. ‘He had an Englishman with him by the name of Sanders – ex-military, I’d guess; he seemed to be acting as Kennedy’s man on the ground.’

Sanders again. Now Jenny was beginning to understand his involvement more clearly. She kept her knowledge to herself and allowed Ransome to continue.

‘We receive security bulletins all the time,’ he explained, ‘but never personal visits. Kennedy told me that more than one intelligence source in the Far East had tipped off US agents to expect attacks on Western interests doing business with Taiwan, including airlines like ours that fly there. He said I was to report anything suspicious directly to him, and under no circumstances was I to speak to the British security services. If for some reason he wasn’t contactable, I was to speak to Sanders. He didn’t trouble himself with explanations – he simply told me that if I didn’t cooperate fully my US landing slots would vanish overnight and with it my business.’

‘What was his problem with the British?’

‘He was rather colourful on the subject – said our government was “halfway up Beijing’s ass”, and that ministers would still be sipping tea with the ambassador when Chinese tanks were rolling up Whitehall. He was a real armchair cowboy, even had the boots to go with it.’

‘What kind of attacks was he anticipating?’ Jenny asked.

‘He didn’t say.’

‘Did you talk to him again?’

‘He called me once or twice over the following months, but as far as I was concerned there wasn’t anything much to report. We had some technical problems, as you know, but nothing I equated with the kind of threat he had warned me of. I confess, I’d more or less forgotten about him when Captain Casey contacted my assistant asking for a meeting. I already knew about her forum and, I’ll be honest with you, I had recently taken legal advice about the best way to deal with her before she harmed my airline. Naturally, I was curious about what she had to say that was so urgent, so I invited her over.

‘We met here in this room. She told me that she had been speaking to my chief engineer, Mick Dalton, about what she considered was an unacceptably high incidence of faults in our flight computers and that they resembled those that had been cropping up on aircraft operated by a number of other airlines. It turned out they all had one thing in common: landing slots in Taiwan. That was interesting enough, but then she informed me that she had been contacted by Doug Kennedy, who had traced her through her internet postings. Apparently he was very exercised about a threat to computerized aircraft control systems and wanted her to attend an emergency summit he was organizing in Washington. He had expressly instructed her not to tell me – I think he assumed that for selfish reasons I would have tried to silence her – but I told her she should go; no one could have been more concerned about the safety of my aircraft than me. We agreed she would report back in confidence, and ten days later she headed out on Flight 189.’

The fog was finally starting to lift. ‘And was this summit specifically concerned with aircraft computers?’ Jenny asked.