Chương 15
I looked at the pavement.
“Maybe.”
The word surprised him.
“What?”
“Maybe I do.”
Silence.
Ortiz’s trace officer shook his head.
Burner routing.
No location yet.
I continued.
“But you put an incendiary device beneath an aircraft full of passengers.”
“No.”
“You’re going to tell me that isn’t what it was?”
“It was leverage.”
“Leverage burns.”
“It was never supposed to activate in flight.”
“That distinction won’t help you.”
“It wasn’t for the passengers.”
“Then who?”
“You.”
My fingers went cold.
Neil’s voice became quieter.
“You were supposed to land in row thirty-eight.
The device would activate only after ground arrival and only if the trigger sequence completed.
You’d survive the initial fire.
That was the point.”
Rebecca whispered, “Jesus Christ.”
I said, “You wanted me alive.”
“I wanted you disgraced.”
There it was.
Not profit.
Not espionage.
Not ideology.
A wounded man’s need to reverse a hierarchy.
“You wanted the device linked to my transmitter.”
“Yes.”
“And the cargo irregularities?”
“Real enough to make everything believable.”
“What did Richard Sterling have to do with it?”
“Very little.”
That surprised me.
“His companies were convenient.”
“For what?”
“Noise.”
Neil almost sounded proud.
“Sterling Maritime had sloppy compliance.
NorthStar had employees willing to bend rules.
You had a board audit already touching those routes.
All I had to do was push existing dirt into the same room.”
“So Richard wasn’t financing you.”
“No.”
“Did he know about the cargo manipulation?”
“He knew about false declarations on some shipments.
Not mine.”
“And Victoria?”
Neil laughed.
“She was a gift.”
I looked toward the secure interview vehicle where she had been taken.
“What does that mean?”
“Chad had been taking money from her for upgrades for months.
When I told him to move you, he said he had an easy way.”
My jaw tightened.
“He used her.”
“He used what she already was.”
“No.
You used what all of them already were.”
The sentence came out before I had shaped it.
Neil went quiet.
Greed.
Vanity.
Fear.
Carelessness.
My own reputation for silence.
Martin’s embarrassment.
Chad’s willingness to steal.
Victoria’s entitlement.
Richard’s questionable business practices.
Neil had not created any of those weaknesses.
He had arranged them.
That was why the plan had worked as long as it had.
He said, “You see it now.”
“I see you hiding behind everybody else’s flaws.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“It’s exactly what this is.”
Ortiz signaled again.
They had narrowed the phone to airport property.
Neil was still nearby.
I kept him talking.
“You wanted scandal.”
“I wanted accountability.”
“You wanted revenge.”
“I wanted you removed.”
“Why?”
His restraint finally cracked.
“Because you were going to fire me.”
I looked at Rebecca.
Her eyes widened.
I had never announced that decision.
Only three people knew.
Myself.
General counsel.
Neil’s compensation committee chair.
“You found the draft termination memo.”
Neil laughed once.
“You left it in a board packet.”
“No.
It was in restricted governance storage.”
“Well, apparently not restricted enough.”
“How long ago?”
“Six weeks.”
That explained the timing.
My first-class ticket had been purchased six weeks ago.
He had built the plan around a flight he knew I would take.
“What were you being terminated for?” Ortiz whispered.
I answered Neil instead.
“You manipulated internal audit findings.”
Daniel turned sharply toward me.
Neil’s silence confirmed more than any confession.
I continued.
“You buried contractor failures to protect your acquisition targets.”
“You were going to destroy twenty-seven years of my career over reporting classifications.”
“You altered risk findings.”
“I corrected alarmist language.”
“You erased warnings.”
“I protected value.”
“You protected yourself.”
His breathing had become louder.
“After everything I built.”
“You built useful things.
You also crossed a line.”
“You were going to replace me with some forty-year-old compliance evangelist.”
“I was going to replace you with someone who didn’t falsify audit records.”
Ortiz mouthed, Keep him talking.
I did not need encouragement.
“Where are you, Neil?”
“You know I’m not answering that.”
“You’re still at JFK.”
A pause.
Small.
Enough.
“You have the transmitter.”
No answer.
“You’re close enough to watch.”
Still nothing.
Then I saw movement beyond the service road.
A man in a dark jacket stood beside a maintenance vehicle near a restricted fence.
Too far away for facial detail.
Near enough for posture.
Neil had always stood with one shoulder slightly lower from an old tennis injury.
I looked at Ortiz.
He followed my gaze.
The tactical officers moved without drama.
No shouting.
No running toward him.
Two vehicles repositioned to close exits.
Neil’s voice came through the phone.
“You always were good at silence.”
“I learned when to stop filling it.”
He saw the vehicles.
I knew because his breathing changed.
“Eleanor.”
“Stay where you are.”
“You think I’m stupid?”
“I think you’re scared.”
“Don’t.”
“That isn’t an insult.”
“Don’t analyze me.”
“I’m not.”
“You’ve been doing it for twenty years.”
The man by the fence moved.
One tactical officer raised a rifle.
Ortiz spoke into his radio.
“Subject in sight.
Possible device in hand.”
My stomach tightened.
Neil said, “If they come closer, I trigger it.”
Ortiz froze the advance.
I looked toward the aircraft.
Technicians were still working beneath the hold.
“How far is the receiver from isolation?”
Ortiz covered his radio microphone.
“Unknown.”
Neil said, “Call them off.”
I watched him from behind the SUV.
His right hand was inside his jacket.
The old transmitter had been roughly the size of a garage-door opener.
If he had retained or replicated it, he could be holding it now.
“Neil.”
“What?”
“You said the device wasn’t meant to kill anyone.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Then don’t make yourself a liar.”
His voice became strained.
“They’re surrounding me.”
“Because you have a gun.”
“I’m not holding the gun.”
“Then put both hands where they can see them.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because then it’s over.”
There was the real sentence.
Not accountability.
Not value.
Not betrayal.
Over.
He could not imagine himself after exposure.
May you like
I understood that more than I wanted to.
“You’re sixty-one,” I said.
