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"Yes"
"You&039;re a trusted, highly placed executive"
She nodded If he only knew
"Now there is an incident Flight 545 Involving an aircraft you say is perfectly safe"
"Correct"
"Yet three people died, and e, which we&039;ve all seen, is horrifying Your Incident Review Tea around the clock And noe hear you have a finding"
"Yes," she said
"You knohat happened on that flight"
Careful
She had to do this very, very carefully Because the truth was she didn&039;t know; she just had a very strong suspicion They still had to put the sequence together, to verify that things had happened in a certain order, the chain of causation They didn&039;t know for sure
"We are close to a finding," Casey said
"Needless to say, we&039;re eager to hear"
"We will announce it tohts, she saw Rich that The little bastard was trying to see where she was going
Let him try
Across the table from her, Reardon turned aside, and Malone whispered in his ear Reardon nodded turned back to Casey "Ms Singleton, if you knohy wait?"
"Because this was a serious accident, as you yourself saidThere&039;s already been a great deal of unwarranted speculation from many sources Norton Aircraft feels it is i publicly, we have to confir the same aircraft that was involved in the accident"
"When will you flight test?&039;
&039;Toretfully "But that&039;s too late for our broadcast You understand that you&039;re denying your coes"
Casey had her answer ready "We&039;ve scheduled the flight test for five AM," she said "We&039;ll hold a press conference immediately afterward - tomorrow at noon"
"Noon," Reardon said
His expression was bland, but she kneorking it out Noon in LA was 3:00 PM in New York Plenty of tieles Norton&039;s preli would be widely reported on both local and network news And Newsline, which aired at 10:00 PM Saturday night, would be out-of-date Depending on what eht before, would be ancient history It hed "On the other hand," he said, "ant to be fair to you"
"Naturally," Casey said
NORTON ADMINISTRATION
4:15PM
"I don&039;t know," Rich She&039;s pretty sh," Marder said
"Fuck her," Marder said to Richman "It doesn&039;t make any difference what she does now"
"But if she&039;s scheduling a flight test - "
"Who cares?" Marder said
"And I think she&039;s going to let the news crews filht Test will only make the story worse She has no idea what caused the accident And she has no idea ill happen if she takes that Transpacific plane up They probably can&039;t reproduce the event And there may be problems nobody knows about"
"Like what?"
_ "That aircraft went through very severe G-force loads," Marder said "Itcan happen, when they take that plane up" MarderNewsline airs fro I&039;ll notify the Board that so our way, and we have to schedule an eet back fro in time And his friends on the Board will drop him when they hear about a sixteen-billion-dollar deal They&039;ve all got stock They knohat the announcement will do to their shares I&039;m the next president of this coarton And certainly not Casey Singleton"
WAR ROOM
4:20 PM
The cameras were packed up; the white foa, the microphones unclipped; the electrical boxes and caed on Ed Fuller, the lanky head of Legal, was there; so was Teddy Rawley, the pilot; and two engineers orked on FT, to answer technical questions that arose
For Newsline, Malone now did all of the talking; Reardon paced in the background, occasionally stopping to whisper in her ear His cohts; he now appeared tired, fretful, and i that since Newsline was doing an entire segment on the Norton N-22, it was in the interest of the coht test
Casey said that presented no probleht tests were documented with dozens of video cameras, mounted both inside and outside the plane; the Newsline people could watch the entire test on round They could have the film afterward, for their broadcast
No, Malone said That wouldn&039;t be sufficient Newsline&039;s crews had to actually be on the plane
Casey said mat was impossible, that no airfraht test She was, she said, already round
Not good enough, Malone said
Ed Fuller broke in to explain it was a question of liability Norton simply couldn&039;t allow uninsured nonemployees on the test "You realize, of course, there is inherent danger in flight test It&039;s simply inescapable"
Malone said that Newsline would accept any risk, and sign waivers of liability
Ed Fuller said he would have to draw up the waivers, but that Newsline&039;s lawyers would have to approve them, and there wasn&039;t tiet approval from Newsline&039;s lawyers in an hour Any tiround He said if Norton was going to let Newsline see the flight test, he wanted to be sure that the results of that test were accurately reported He said he wanted to approve the edited film
Malone said that journalistic ethics forbade that, and in any case there wasn&039;t tiht test ended around noon, she would have to cut film in the truck and transmit it to New York at once
Fuller said the probleht test portrayed accurately
They went back and forth Finally Malone said she would include thirty seconds of unedited coht by a Norton spokesperson This would be taken from the press conference
Fuller demanded a minute
They compromised on forty seconds
"We have another probleht test, we don&039;t want you to use the tape you obtained today, showing the actual incident"
No way, Malone said The tape was going to be aired
"You characterized the tape as having been obtained from a Norton employee," Fuller said "That&039;s incorrect We want the provenance accurately stated"
"Well, we certainly got it from someone orks for Norton"
"No," Fuller said, "you didn&039;t"
"It&039;s one of your subcontractors"
"No, it&039;s not I can provide you with the IRS definition of a subcontractor, if you like"
"This is a fine point"
"We have already obtained a sworn statement from the receptionist, Christine Barron She is not an employee of Norton Aircraft She is not, in fact, an eency"
"What&039;s the point here?"
"We want you to state the facts accurately: that you obtained the tape froed "As I said, this is a fine point"
"Then what&039;s the probleht for a minute "Okay," she said
Fuller slid a piece of paper across the table "This brief docun it"
Malone looked at Reardon Reardon shrugged
Malone signed it "I don&039;t understand what all the fuss is about" She started to push it back to Fuller, and paused
&039;Two crews, on the aircraft, during the flight test Is that our agreereeround"
"That won&039;t work for us"
Casey said that the Newsline crews could come to the test area; they could fil But they couldn&039;t actually coht
"Sorry," Malone said
Teddy Rawley cleared his throat "I don&039;t think you understand the situation, Ms Malone," he said "You can&039;t be walking around filht test Everybody on board has to be strapped in in a four-point harness You can&039;t even get up to pee And you can&039;t have lights or batteries, because they generate s"
"We don&039;t need lights," she said "We can shoot available light"
"You don&039;t understand," Rawley said "It can get pretty hairy up there"
"That&039;s e have to be mere," Malone said
Ed Fuller cleared his throat "Let me be entirely clear, Ms Malone," he said "Under no circu to allow your film crew on board that aircraft It is absolutely out of the question"
Malone&039;s face was rigid, set
"Ma&039;aot to realize, there&039;s a reason we test over the desert Over large uninhabited spaces?"
"You ht happen Trust round"
Malone shook her head "No We oing to be big G-forces - "
Casey said, "There&039;ll be thirty cameras all over the plane They&039;ll cover every possible angle - cockpit, wings, passenger cabin, everywhere You&039;re getting exclusive use of the fil the footage"
Malone glowered, but Casey knew that she had made the point The woman only cared about the visuals
"I want to place the cameras," she said
"Uh-uh," Rawley said
"I have to be able to say our cameras are on board," Malone said "I have to be able to say that"
In the end, Casey hammered out a compromise Newsline would be allowed to position two locked-down caht They would take the feed directly from these cae from other cameras mounted in the interior Finally, Newsline would be allowed to shoot a stand-up with Reardon outside Building 64, where the assembly line was located