Executive orders - Tom Clancy [54]
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 average 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. Is it theoretically possible to set things up in such a way as to fool our people? O'Day asked rhetorically. Yes, sir, maybe it is, but to do that would take months of preparation, and they didn't have months. It really comes down to one thing: the decision to call the joint session happened while that aircraft was over mid-Pacific.
Much as she wanted to, Price couldn't counter that argument. She'd run her own