Final Approach (44 page)

Joe could feel Susan's questioning glances, and he knew the staff was stunned. There was no time to explain, but he could see he was beginning to chip Butler out of the company mold. “Did you hear the cockpit voice recording of Flight 255, Captain?”

“Yes sir, I did.”

“Now, this is of the utmost seriousness. You're a man who worked with and under Dick Timson. We're trying to find the causes here of a disaster that took just under two hundred lives. The only loyalty is to the truth, and to the principle that aviation-safety responsibilities transcend companies and are the responsibility of all of us. In that spirit, Captain Butler, as a certificated airman yourself, I ask you to tell us without reservation whether the voice, the demeanor, the attitude, and the words of Captain Timson on that tape were or were not typical of the man as you knew him on the job, in or out of the cockpit?”

No answer. Butler's right hand was rubbing his mouth, his left fingers drumming the table, his eyes absently on the far wall.

“Captain? Was that Dick Timson's management style or not?”

Slowly Butler's head came around as he looked at Joe, took a deep breath. “Okay, Mr. Wallingford. You want the truth? I'm under oath? Fine. You were right, that was a rehearsed line a minute ago, a carefully rehearsed line. You're right, too, that I wanted out before this crash occurred, but I … I supported my company's viewpoint when I walked into this room yesterday.” He paused and looked over at John Walters, who was looking at Butler with great alarm.

Butler looked back at Joe. “I wasn't even a small wheel in that office. Dick Timson didn't want an assistant—resented having to have an assistant—but they said he needed one, so I was brought in, given the bone of upgrading to captain, and told to stay the hell out of the way. Basically, I was a $140,000-a-year gofer.”

“Captain,” Joe began, but Butler's hand came up to stop him.

“Let … let me get this out while I can. No one can please Dick Timson. I thought at first it was just me, you know, maybe I was too new to know him. Then I figured the man was just cold and calculating, and he was—on the surface. In the last few months, though, I was around him long enough to see something else. Dick Timson, in my opinion, is not really in control. Oh, he makes you think he is, with blustering and tough discipline and unyielding decisions, but I've seen him with his guard down, which is rare, and he's struggling. I don't think he really knows how to do the job—how to be a manager—but he's afraid to go back to the line, afraid he'll lose the perks and the money. Management style? A reign of terror.” Butler looked to his left, searching for Dick Timson's face and finding it turned away. Timson was listening, but he would not look at him.

“In my opinion, Dick Timson is running scared, but he won't let anyone into his personal feelings, and he'll beat you to death if you try to get close and friendly—which I've discovered the hard way several times.” Butler's gaze had wandered over to Susan, Dean Farris, and to the staff table. Suddenly he refocused on Joe.

“You were right. I hated it in that office, especially since I was effectively useless. I found I had made one hell of a mistake, and even though it meant going back to flight engineer, I was ready. But I put in my request three months ago, and Dick told me, ‘You leave, and you'll never pass your next checkride.'”

Joe sat back in his chair, stunned. He had expected he might trigger a trickle of a response, but apparently he had broken the dam.

“Dick is very good at putting on a show, looking polished and professional and in control in front of his leaders. I doubt John Walters over there ever saw the real Timson that I saw. How did he regard line pilots? As lackadaisical goof-offs—his words, not mine—yet I think he envied them in many ways. What kind of a manager was he? The worst I've ever been around. He couldn't just sit and talk to you, or even give the impression that he cared about you as an employee, let alone an individual. Whether he did or not, he couldn't show it, so everyone below us got the impression—as you heard accurately here today—that we were at war with the rank and file. I wasn't, and I don't think Dick really was. He just didn't know how else to act. Being a manager meant having to be a tough drill sergeant to please the corporate leaders, but it also meant intimidating everyone. His memos were downright hateful.” He fell silent again, and a loud noise of disgust could be heard from Walters as the North America vice-president shook his head and scowled at the back wall of the ballroom.

“There's a question you haven't asked me, Mr. Wallingford, but I'll answer it anyway. Why have I stepped out of the mold? Why have I angered my leader over there and, as he will see it, defected? I sat here, Mr. Wallingford … I sat here yesterday and especially today, and it finally sank in how much damage has been done. No, I don't know what happened in that cockpit, but I agree the copilot should have been able to recover and was intimidated out of it. I knew Don Leyhe. He was scared to death of Timson.” Butler paused, his eyes searching the audience again, this time for the captain of Flight 170.

“Look at Captain Kaminsky out there. It's not just the fact that Dick Timson crashed into him, the fact that wrenches me is that because of this crash his world has become so dark. I never knew … I never wanted to know … that what we did in that office could have such an effect that … that …” He looked down again, shaking his head slightly. “I … haven't slept very well in the past few weeks knowing that even though Dick wanted me to stay out of the way, I was part of a management operation that could have contributed to this …
did
contribute to this. I just can't be a part of that anymore, even if I do flunk my next checkride.” He looked over at Walters again. “I'm sorry Mr. Walters.”

There was sudden silence in the room, John Walters sitting back in his chair, tapping his pen on the table with increasing vengeance, glaring daggers at Butler while Joe, Susan, Dean Farris, and the entire staff sat there effectively speechless.

Joe leaned forward at last and began guiding Butler through more questions, fleshing out the picture of Timson's methods and his day-by-day management of North America pilot matters. Susan permitted the ALPA and FAA members to continue the questioning until around 4
P.M.
, when there was simply nothing more to say.

Joe took the microphone again and thanked him, but before Susan could begin the rituals of closing the hearing, Dan Butler stepped off the platform and walked past the North America table, stopping by John Walters, who refused to look at him.

“By the way, Mr. Walters,” he said, “I'm going back to the line. I'll save you the trouble of firing me.” Butler moved on to the ALPA table, where he pulled out a chair and sat down as Susan read her closing statement and brought the hearing to an end.

Joe got up from his chair and looked at Susan, who was looking back, both of them obviously galvanized by what had transpired. Joe glanced around at his other colleagues, reading the same shocked, destabilized look on each face. Seldom had any of them experienced as dramatic a change in the middle of a hearing as the sudden crumbling of Dan Butler's facade. Butler's words would force the entire Board to deal with copilot intimidation, and the fact that Don Leyhe hadn't acted in time. Even if the Star Wars radar
was
responsible for the crash, Dick Timson was responsible for deactivating the most important emergency system he had, his copilot, by creating an operational environment of intimidation throughout the entire airline. Having the consequences come back on the perpetrator in such an unpredictable and fatal way was somewhere beyond ironic.

The immediate aftermath of an eventful hearing is always the same, as people crowd forward to talk to various individuals, the staff and Board members included. Dean Farris had his glut of people, Susan hers, and several were pressing for Joe's attention—which was difficult for Joe to deal with, his mind spinning around a quick review of the previous half hour. Joe realized with a start that one of the people pressing forward to speak to him was Dan Butler. He started to thank Butler, but the pilot stopped him. “Don't. I should have come forward sooner, but I have one more thing to tell you. It may be nothing, but he acted so secretive about it.”

“What?”

“Dick was supposed to be in perfect health, and I've seen his first-class medical come down without restriction from our company doctor, but I tell you, Timson took aspirin constantly. He always had a bottle in his briefcase. You might want to take a close look at that.”

Dick Timson had remained motionless for much of the previous hour, his hands in his lap, his head down, listening impassively. There had been no one sitting with him, and Louise Timson was nowhere in sight. As soon as Susan gaveled the hearing closed, Timson got to his feet slowly and walked from the room, utterly ignoring a couple of reporters who tried unsuccessfully to talk to him. His eyes were on the carpet ahead, his pace leaden.

Pete Kaminsky caught him by the door, physically stopping him with a big hand on Timson's sleeve, forcing him to look up. Pete saw a haunted look there, an emptiness accentuated by the dark circles under his eyes. Dick, he knew, had a way of jutting his lower jaw out and hunching his shoulders when he was angry, but Pete saw only defeat.

“Dick, would you like some company?”

Timson just stared at Kaminsky.

“I … I wanted you to know … I had to say what I believed to be true.”

Timson's right hand came up in a gesture of dismissal as he looked away. “Don't worry about it, Pete.” He sighed deeply and slowly pulled away then, disappearing down the hotel corridor, Pete watching him go and thinking him in many respects the saddest victim of all.

19

Wednesday, December 5 Washington, D.C.

Joe Wallingford walked into Dean Farris's office with the fatalism of a Roman gladiator facing the lions, having been warned by Andy Wallace a few minutes before that Farris was going to attempt to take him off the North American investigation. The odds were impossible, of course—Farris was the boss—but Joe wasn't about to surrender without a fight. The note to report immediately to the chairman's office had been affixed to his door for the staff to see, and that alone was infuriating.

“Well, Joe, you just couldn't take a hint, or an order, could you?” Farris was grinning ruefully as he motioned Joe to a plush chair while he moved to his throne behind the desk. “You hadn't been back from Kansas City for ten minutes yesterday before going after North America's doctor again, right?”

“First, Mr. Chairman, I don't appreciate the public note on my door.”

Farris shrugged and smiled as Joe continued.

“Second, as the hearing broke up two days ago, Dan Butler came up and said that Timson was using medicine heavily, perhaps aspirin, perhaps not, and that John Walters has been guarding the files since the crash. Now that, to me, raises flags I can't ignore. There was no mention of medication on any of the medical records we received, nor on any of the FAA medical forms Timson filled out each year.”

“I told you to leave the doctor alone.” Farris's voice was even and threatening.

“We did, for heaven's sake. All we did was renew our request to talk to him.”

“I told you to come to me first. I ordered you to lay off, Joe. I've spent half the damn morning on the phone listening to David Bayne yelling at me and then Bill Caldwell upstairs griping at me.”

“What …?” Joe cocked his head. “How does this concern Caldwell?”

“Bayne says you're harassing him, and Caldwell, who's an old friend of the man, agrees.”

“Harassing Bayne? North America's CEO?”

“No, the doctor. McIntyre.”

“That's not true, we—”

“Dammit, Joe, I told you not to call them again.”

“Wait a damned minute here, Mr. Chairman! We did
not
call the man in Canada yesterday or today. All I did was authorize Andy to get on the phone to John Walters after the hearing and demand to see
all
of the files, and to talk to the doctor in person, on the record, when he gets back. I don't know what they're saying to
you
, but it looks to me like it's not the doctor that's scared, it's North America.”

Farris had turned toward the window, ignoring Joe's response, and merely waiting for him to finish.

“In addition, Joe, I told you that it is the policy of this Board that there will be no further probing into the presence of that Air Force plane or its cargo.” Farris whirled around to face him. “That, too, was an order. It's a closed issue! Yet you've had Andy Wallace running all over the landscape behind my back asking questions about it.”

“Mr. Chairman, how the bloody hell can I conduct an investigation if you're going to keep second-guessing me?”

“You're not.”

Joe looked at him. “What? I don't understand.”

“I know you don't understand. You don't understand who's in charge around here. Your conduct at the hearing was inexcusable.”

“In what way?”

“In terms of respect for the chairman of this organization, Joe. You're not going to have to worry about this investigation because I'm removing you.” Farris had sat down and was leaning back in his chair, looking imperious, enjoying the upper hand. “I've had it with your insubordinate, I-know-everything-I-was-here-before-you attitude. You are hereby removed as IIC. I'm directing every department not to talk to you about any aspect of it. And, as to whether I let you keep the position of chief of the aviation accident division, or even keep working here at the Board, depends on whether you can learn to follow a directive from your superior.”

Joe set his jaw and stared at Farris. “Fine. Fire me. But what are you planning to do about the medical records, the doctor, and what's beginning to smell like a cover-up of some sort? In addition, what are you going to do to satisfy the bulk of the American public who aren't going to believe us any more than they now believe the Air Force if we don't make an honest effort to find out about that damned radar?” Joe was leaning forward in his chair, tapping the desk, looking Farris in the eye and trying hard to keep hold of his temper. It would be very satisfying to throttle that sanctimonious son of a bitch, he thought.