“Good. Do you think I’m too old to get a job flying commercial airliners?”
Fitzgerald smiled and replied, “You’re obviously capable.”
Berry smiled for the first time in a long time. He looked around, then said, “I’ve seen enough of this cockpit.”
Fitzgerald nodded.
Both men slid down the yellow chute into the sunlight and landed on their feet.
Mayday
21
John Berry passed through the ornate iron gate into the tea garden. He walked slowly down bamboo-railed paths, over grassy slopes, and beside red-leafed Japanese maples.
He crossed small stone bridges that passed over little streams and lichen-covered rocks, and came to a chain of five pools filled with water lilies and goldfish. Over a still pond in the distance curved a wishing bridge, its reflection in the water completing a perfect circle. Waiting on the bridge was a woman and a girl.
He moved toward them, passing fantastically misshapen bonsai trees and delicate trees of plum and cherry. The day was still and the smell of camellias and magnolias hung in the air. The setting sun cast elongated shadows of stone lanterns over the paths and dappled the grass between the trees.
John Berry quickened his pace, and found that his heart was beating rapidly. Then he stopped abruptly at the foot of the bridge, as though the vision in front of him would vanish if he came closer. He looked up and smiled hesitantly.
Sharon Crandall, dressed in a light blue sundress and straw hat with a wide brim, smiled back. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Linda Farley waved a greeting. “We thought you got lost.”
Berry stepped onto the bridge and approached them. He stood awkwardly for a moment, then impulsively bent down and kissed Linda Farley on the cheek. “How are you feeling?”
She nodded. “Good.”
“Good.” He straightened up and handed her a large box of chocolates. “Here. The prize for spotting land first.”
Linda took the chocolates and smiled. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He turned to Sharon. “I wanted to bring you something, but I didn’t know-”
“Dinner in New York.”
“Yes. We made it to the airport, didn’t we?” He paused. “You’re looking well.”
She put her hand on his cheek and frowned at his cuts and bruises. “You look as though you lost a fight.”
“You should have seen the other guy.” He looked out at a red-tiled pagoda surrounded by carefully pruned vegetation. “This is quite a place.”
“Yes. I thought you’d like it. It’s a beautiful example of how man and nature can live in harmony.”
“You come here often?”
“Whenever I have a lot of thinking to do.” She looked down at her reflection in the pond. “I used to come here with Barbara Yoshiro sometimes.”
“I…” He didn’t know what to say. “I think she would have been happy to know you came here and thought of her.”
“Let’s take a walk.”
They crossed the bridge. On the far side they passed through a thicket of leafy bamboo and took a path to the west. They walked in silence for a long time, came to a grassy slope, and climbed it. A breeze came up, and Berry stood on the summit of the hill. Small puffs of white clouds rolled across the sky. Gulls circled in the distance and the vapor trail of a high-flying jet left a white line on the deep blue sky. “No fog today,” he said.
“No.” Sharon Crandall walked a few yards down to the western slope, took off her hat, and lay in the sunny grass. “No. No fog today. We could have used this weather yesterday at this time. But then, that wouldn’t have been consistent with yesterday’s luck.”
“No.” Berry sat down beside her.
They both watched in silence as Linda walked slowly down the grassy slope and toward a brook at the base of the hill.
“Don’t go too far,” Crandall shouted after her. She turned to Berry. “She has her good and bad moments. She just finished crying before you got here. She hasn’t come to terms with it yet.”
“Her mother?”
“She wasn’t one of the survivors.”
Berry nodded. It was, in his mind, better that way. Easier, in the long run, for Linda.
Sharon Crandall looked down at the young girl and watched her for a few seconds, then turned back to Berry. “I spoke to Linda’s grandmother.”
“What did she say?”
“She’s the only relative, except for some cousins in Kansas or someplace. Linda’s father died years before. The grandmother lives in a small apartment on the south side of the city. She’s going to take custody of Linda now, but she is very concerned about being able to raise a young girl by herself. When I told her I’d like to help out, she was very happy.”
“I’d like to help out too, if I could.”
“Sure.”
Neither of them spoke for some time, then Berry said, “Golden Gate Park reminds me of Central Park.”
Crandall smiled. “Does it?”
She closed her eyes and stretched out in the grass and kicked off her shoes. “I don’t really want to hear the latest, but you might as well tell me.”
Berry looked down at her face. The sun lay on her features the way it did in the cockpit of the Straton and highlighted the nice cheekbones and soft lips. “The latest. The latest is that we have to speak with the FBI again tomorrow morning.”
“I figured that. What else?”
“Well, Commander Sloan was flown in to Alameda Naval Air Station this morning from the carrier Nimitz and is under custody there. Incidentally, even though it was a top-secret test, all the radio transmissions to and from the fighter were automatically recorded in the Nimitz central radio room. It’s some kind of electronic recording loop that they keep for safety investigations, and it erases itself every twenty-four hours. Apparently, Sloan didn’t know that, because only safety officers have access to that stuff. You’d think people would be more careful about recordings these days. Anyway, the Navy got to the recordings before they automatically erased, so the charge against Sloan is evidently going to be murder.”
“How about the other two Navy men?”
“The pilot is still missing at sea. Admiral Hennings hasn’t been found onboard yet. Apparently he jumped. But they want that downplayed. The Navy’s not saying much about what exactly was on the recordings, but they did tell me that it proved conclusively that Sloan was the instigator. My impression was that Sloan conned and bullied the Admiral and the pilot into the cover-up. And the original mistake was Sloan’s, too. After the Straton’s late departure from San Francisco, Sloan never received updates from Air Traffic Control because of a technical problem. He just assumed that the area was clear of traffic, even though he was supposed to check.”
“He sure doesn’t sound technically competent. What about Edward Johnson and Wayne Metz. They almost pulled it off, didn’t they?”
“Johnson’s made a full confession. He says he was pulled both ways the entire time-save the airplane or save the airline.”
“Sure,” Crandall said sarcastically. “He says he did it all for the airline? Nothing in it for him?”
“That’s his story.”
Trans-United was certainly going to be under the microscope for a while, Berry thought. But his gut feeling was that the airline would survive it. Even the press seemed to be playing up the actions of individuals rather than organizations. Maybe that’s the way this thing would ultimately wash out. But Berry did understand, at least a little, why Johnson had not wanted Flight 52 to come back. He thought about Daniel McVary.
“Has there been any improvement in Dan McVary or the others?” Crandall asked, as if she had sensed his thoughts.
“No. The same. There’s no hope for any of them. The doctors told me that the brain damage is unquestionably permanent.”
“That’s what I had guessed,” she answered softly, shaking her head.
Berry nodded. “Me too.” He remembered a similar conversation with Harold Stein. Stein had been right, at least about his family. It was hopeless. Berry could feel his emotions begin to slide again. He was becoming increasingly maudlin. He pulled out a handful of grass and scattered it down the hill. He forced his mind to change gears. “Metz hasn’t said much yet, except to hint that it was all Johnson’s idea. He says he didn’t know what was happening with the data-link.”