Marine One (20 page)

"Yes."

"At that reception, at the White House, you spent a good deal of time speaking with Colonel Collins, did you not?"

"I don't really remember that."

"Do you recall what you were wearing?"

"No, I really don't. My wardrobe is selected by my assistant."

"Well, regardless of who selected it, do you recall what you were wearing?"

"No, I said I didn't."

Hackett put up his hand. "What is the possible relevance of what she was wearing to a reception three months before the accident?"

"You can answer the question."

"I did."

"Was the reception loud?"

"Loud?"

"Yes, was there loud music or anything else that would make it difficult to hear others?"

"Not that I recall. I don't recall there being any music at all."

"Can you explain then how it is that you were whispering in the ear of Colonel Collins on several occasions during that reception?"

She looked shocked. "I don't remember that being the case. Where'd you hear that?"

"Do you deny it?"

"Deny what?"

"Whispering in Collins's ear during the reception for the prime minister of Japan on December seventeenth."

"I don't remember doing that and I don't know why I would.
Denial
is a very rigid word. I would like to deny it, but I don't really recall the events at all."

"Did you have any kind of personal relationship with Colonel Collins?"

Hackett yelled, "This is outrageous! What is the meaning of this?"

"The implications are not as dramatic as you imply, it's a simple question. Did she have any relationship of any kind, even as a fellow coin collector, with Colonel Collins." I looked back at her. "Did you?"

"I knew him, as I flew on Marine One many times. When we were in various locations, we would occasionally find ourselves near each other and would converse, but nothing substantial."

"Did Colonel Collins ever express to you any dislike for the president?"

"No. Absolutely not."

"Are you aware that he purchased a substantial life insurance policy sixty days before his death?"

"No, I was not."

"Did you speak with the president on the night of the accident, before he climbed aboard Marine One?"

"Yes, of course." She shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

Hackett interrupted, "Is this a good time to stop? It's twelve fifteen and we need to grab lunch if we're going to go beyond the morning."

Without looking at him I answered, "We're definitely going to go beyond the morning, and, no, this isn't a good place to stop."

I asked the first lady, "You were aware when you spoke with the president that there was a major storm outside, correct?"

"I believe that storm had been going on for a few hours at that point."

"Did the president tell you why he needed to go to Camp David that night?"

"He said he had an important meeting."

I paused and waited for her to look at me. "With whom?"

"I don't know. He didn't say."

"Did you ask?"

"Yes. I was always asking questions."

"What did he tell you?"

"He told me it was highly confidential and he couldn't go into it."

"Have you since determined why he was going to Camp David that evening?"

She looked at Hackett. He said, "Other than what your counsel may have told you."

She looked back at me. "No, nothing other than what my attorney has told me."

"Did you ask President Adams why it was so important to get there so quickly that he was willing to fly in that storm?"

"Yes, I did. I thought it was unwise to fly."

"What did he say?"

"He said it was the most important meeting of his presidency."

I paused and looked at the others in the room, including the Secret Service agents, who were completely expressionless. "Did he tell you what he meant by that?"

"No."

"Do you know now?"

She hesitated. "No."

I
SHOULD HAVE
noticed that one of Hackett's associates was frantically e-mailing on his BlackBerry during the entire deposition. I actually did notice, but assumed he was taking notes. I was quickly dissuaded of that idea. Several members of the media that had waited in the lobby during the entire procedure pounced on me and asked, "Did you actually ask the first lady if she was having an affair with the pilot of Marine One? Is that WorldCopter's theory? Do you have any basis for that? Can the first lady sue you for slander?"

I smiled, waved at the press, and walked into the elevator to go down to my car. Several members of the press joined Rachel and me in the elevator, which was particularly awkward and uncomfortable since I didn't say anything. They peppered me with questions throughout the descent. I should have known Hackett would try something like that. He had insisted that the language of the order be extremely specific about how the press was excluded from the deposition in which the room was taken or from any access to the transcript after the deposition. I had expected the testimony to come out somehow. In a case like this, in something this politically volatile, everything will come out. It's just a fact. But I had expected Hackett, or more likely one of his associates, to slip a transcript of the deposition to a reporter, then claim to have no idea how the reporter had gotten it. But with this he had slipped. The press corps, or some of them, had obviously received e-mails from inside the deposition room.

I waited for one of the journalists to step away from the door of my car, then I got in and drove away. As soon as my BlackBerry had reception, my phone rang. It was Kathryn.

"You asked the first lady if she was sleeping with Collins?" Kathryn asked, surprised.

"Where'd you hear that?"

"It's all over the Internet. Some reporter posted a story about it, and every news site in the world picked up on it. So did you?"

"No, I didn't. Hackett's associate was e-mailing the press during the depo. I asked her if she had any particular kind of relationship with Collins, but that's all. Kathryn, I've got photos of her whispering in his ear at a reception. Several photos. They don't know I have them, but I've got to find out if there's anything to it."

"I want to have a meeting. I want Mark Brightman there, and Morton, Tripp, everyone. I want to meet at WorldCopter."

"Brightman?"

"The only way London would let me keep you on as the lead was to have Brightman basically shadow the whole case from New York. He's got everything I've got and knows as much as I do. We want to bring his thinking into the circle."

Great. "Let me know when you want to meet. And, Kathryn, don't let this depo stuff get to you. Hackett's going to try this case in the press and twist it as hard as he can."

"It just really makes me crazy, Mike. And the meeting is already on for tomorrow morning."

"Okay. See you then." We hung up.

I turned to Rachel, who had been quiet. She said, "Why didn't you tell me you were setting Hackett up with that mystery witness?"

"I wasn't sure how it was going to play out. If Tinny hadn't gotten that print run by his cop buddy in D.C., we wouldn't have had anything. And I think maybe you didn't really trust me. You thought I might actually pay a witness a hundred fifty grand to testify. Never going to happen."

Tripp met me at the reception desk at WorldCopter's headquarters and escorted me to the conference room near his office. The corporate offices were fairly nice, but the conference room was third-class; it could have passed for a government conference room. A cheap table stood in the middle with metal chairs, with styrofoam cups for the bad-flavored coffee brewing in the corner. I poured myself a cup and said hello. Brightman and Morton were both there already, as were the others. I wasn't sure how to deal with Brightman, so I did what I usually do-went right at it. I walked around the table and shook his hand. "I don't believe we've ever actually met. Maybe once at a conference, but I'm Mike Nolan."

"Hi, Mike. Mark Brightman. I'd recognize you anywhere. You've been on TV a lot."

"More than I'd like," I said, trying to keep it casual.

Kathryn took control of the meeting. "Mike, I got a call from London, and the press over there is crucifying us. All the questions to Mrs. Collins, and the first lady. Looks bad."

"We've got to ask, and we've done our best to keep it confidential. That's all we can do. We can't really worry about what the press thinks. We've got to build our defense and get ready for trial, which is coming down on us like a train."

"Tell me about the photographs you mentioned."

"She's standing right next to Collins at a reception where he had no business being, and at which she had no business talking to him. It's an odd photo that just shows them in what appears to be a very confidential conversation. And it looks like his hand is on her… lower back-best case. I just wanted her to explain to me why she was talking to him in that way."

"And what did you hope to gain from that?"

"This is discovery. I look into everything. I don't assume I know what anything means in particular. I have gotten the most remarkable testimony in my career by asking questions that everybody thought shouldn't be asked because they were obvious or stupid. Sometimes they do turn out to be stupid questions. But sometimes, just sometimes, people will be honest or caught off guard and tell you things that you never would have discovered otherwise. So, yes, sometimes I do ask questions that are a little bit uncomfortable. We've got to prove what really happened, wherever that takes us."

"Well
tell me. I'm all ears. What did happen?"

The room was remarkably silent. I spoke slowly but deliberately. "One theory that comes from the evidence, at least arguably, is that Collins crashed the helicopter on purpose. To kill the president. It may be that he hated him and saw the storm as an opportunity to take him out."

Kathryn shook her head slowly. "Prove it."

"I've got every book in Collins's library. He had a lot of fringe ideas. And a lot of side notes about President Adams. I don't have the smoking gun, some note that says he hated Adams, but just listen to the cockpit voice recorder. He wouldn't even talk to him."

She wasn't persuaded. "That's all you've got?"

"Collins bought a life insurance policy two months before the accident. A big one. Million dollars. And he wasn't sleeping with his wife-still not sure what that was about-but I think he was fed up. I don't know. But just maybe he was fed up enough to slam Marine One into the ravine in the middle of the storm. And maybe whatever was going on at Camp David was the last straw.

"I think the flight data recorder circuit breaker was pulled before the final descent on purpose. He wanted everyone to think he had hydraulic problems. Maybe he was trying to fake a hydraulic failure to cover the accident, and then rolled the helicopter over on its back and crashed in the middle of the night." I took a sip of the cooling coffee.

Kathryn said, "That's going to be hard to prove without more. Do you personally think that's what happened?"

Good question. I sure doubted it, but enough evidence suggested at least keeping it as open as a possibility. "Personally? I don't know. I've seen enough in this business to not be too quick to rule anything out. Could the pilot of Marine One kill the president? Sure, if he thought the president was a big enough threat to the country. People think that kind of thing all the time. But I still think the real explanation lies somewhere else. I think it has more to do with who was at Camp David that night."

Kathryn was growing frustrated. "You have any proof of who was at Camp David, any rumor, anything?"

"Byrd knows a guy who has that answer. I'm working it. But Byrd won't even tell me the guy's name. It's a Secret Service guy who is in charge of security at Camp David."

She looked encouraged. "Get his name. Byrd knows?"

I nodded.

"Get him to tell you the name. Set up his deposition. Let's develop this." She looked at the other attorneys, who nodded enthusiastically.

"He won't testify."

"Why not?"

"Refuses to even acknowledge any of it."

"Not so much that he wouldn't meet with you, I take it."

"He didn't meet with me. He met with Tinny."

"So how are you going to prove any of this?"

"We still have thirty more days of discovery."

"Right, so
how are you going to do it?"

"I don't know."

Kathryn looked over at Brightman. He picked up on the hint. "You've got to force it, Mike. This is life-or-death for WorldCopter." He glanced at Tripp, who was staring at me.

"I know, Mark. I'm on it. I can't force it yet."

"You think Byrd will tell you even if the Secret Service guy doesn't want him to?"

"Honestly?" I asked, looking around the table. "I don't know."

"Thirty days and you don't know. And have you thought about what you're going to do if you can't prove this? Do your investigators have a theory yet other than what the NTSB has said?"

"No. That rotor blade did come off, but that could have happened when the helicopter rolled inverted too. They're not designed to fly upside down. I'm just not buying the NTSB's theory."

Tripp asked, "And why not? Where is the flaw?"

"They don't have the tip weights. They have no idea when those tip weights came off."

"But doesn't that make it
more
likely they came off before the crash sequence started? Otherwise, they'd be nearby."

"I don't know. I don't think their failure to find them really proves much of anything. I think they've just jumped on that because the tip weights weren't there and that blade separated. That blade could have hit something on the way down and knocked the tip weights loose. Really, I think we're left with two possibilities. Either that the blade came off in flight, or the pilot did it on purpose. Fortunately, the plaintiff has the burden of proof."

Brightman stood up. "Do you have any
doubt
that Hackett is going to have an expert sit there on the stand and testify in somber tones about how this accident was caused by the failure to properly balance the rotor blade, and that the tip weights became unattached causing vibrations and resulting in the ultimate crash of the helicopter?"

"No. I don't have any doubt that he'll get an expert to say that. He can't cite the NTSB report of course because the conclusion is inadmissible. But he'll say it. No doubt. He'll say it. But our experts are the best experts in the country. And if they say it didn't happen that way, it's not at all a sure thing that Hackett will prevail."

Kathryn nodded toward Morton. "What about the Justice Department and congressional investigations?"

"Pretty much status quo. Since we gave them the warehouse full of documents, they've gone quiet while they go through them and look for damaging information. The Senate hearings have adjourned-most of the drama is over, and the grind of one witness after another pretty much emptied the room."

"Anything at all from any of that we can use to defend ourselves?"

"Just the materials I already gave to Mike. We can show the delay was the FBI's fault, but that's really only relevant to punitive damages. So, as to the cause of the crash? No, not really."

Kathryn thought for a moment while everyone waited in silence. The frustration of each person in the room was slightly different but palpable. She finally spoke. "Why does Hackett want you involved?"

"I've wondered about that. Like maybe he filed in Annapolis so I'd be sure to be involved. It seems to me that he has two equally attractive theories if he wounds me before trial. First, I go into trial with a national reputation of being unethical, or stupid, and he has the upper hand, or second, you or WorldCopter decide they don't want me on the case anymore and I get tossed. Then Mr. Brightman, or somebody else, rides in to save the day and defend WorldCopter, not having been involved in discovery, not having spent every waking hour dealing with this case for the last six months, and again he thinks he has the upper hand. For him it works either way. Plus, if I may be allowed an editorial comment, he may not have the greatest respect for Mr. Brightman's abilities either."

Kathryn said, "I think his whole strategy ever since he filed the lawsuit in Annapolis has been to get you deep into the case, through almost all of the discovery, and then start trying to cut your legs out from under you. He uses the press, false witnesses, personal confrontation, and probably a lot of other things we aren't yet aware of. He wanted me-this is really probably more about me than you-but he wanted me to remove you from the case to stop the barrage of bad press. But you know what, Mike?" She actually waited for me to answer.

I shook my head.

She continued, "He missed. You saw the fake witness coming, his deposition stories and leaks make us look aggressive, but not necessarily wrong, and otherwise we're matching up with him. Yesterday, frankly, I asked for this meeting with the idea of asking Mark to take over the lead of this case." She looked at him and he returned her look with barely concealed annoyance, knowing now where she was going. "But I think you're exactly the right guy to try this case. You've got the right experience, the right mentality, the helicopter knowledge, the
trial
experience, and the local knowledge. He may not fully realize how clever you are in trial. You're at your best when the fur is flying.

"We're going to put Mark's name on the caption. He'll stay up on things in case you get hit by a bus, but this is your case. You're going to try it. And based on their settlement demands, this case is going to get tried."

Kathryn walked back around to the other side of the table and picked up her now cool cup of coffee. "But you've
got
to find out what really happened. You've got to start
pushing
people. You've got to tell Byrd to put all his other cases on hold and work overtime. I want him working eighteen hours a day turning over rocks. I want him banging on that Secret Service agent to testify, or if he won't, then give us his name. I want our experts up all night, every night, running experiments, running aerodynamic analyses, figuring out what in the hell happened here. This helicopter did not fail just because it threw its tip weights. Something else happened. Maybe it was Collins. I'm not convinced, but it could be. Something happened and we need to find out what. And we need to
prove
who was going to be at that meeting and why. If you spring that in trial, all kinds of possibilities open up. You've got to find the proof. You've got to dig, and you've got to make it happen."