Night Fall

I shut off the engine and headlights and followed.

Above the small door was a light that illuminated a sign that said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

She turned the door handle, as though she knew it would be unlocked, and we entered the huge hangar, which had a polished wooden floor that made it look more like a gymnasium than an aircraft hangar. The front half, where we stood, was in darkness. But at the rear of the hangar were rows of fluorescent lights. Beneath the lights was the reconstructed Trans World Airlines Boeing 747. Kate said, “This is where Grumman used to build the F-14 fighter, so it was a good place to rebuild the 747.”

We stood in the darkness and stared at it. For one of the few times in my life, I was speechless.

The white-painted fuselage gleamed in the lights, and on the ripped aluminum of the left side, facing us, were the red letters ANS WOR.

The forward section and the cockpit were separated from the main fuselage, the reconstructed wings lay on the polished wooden floor of the hangar, and the tail section sat to the right, also separated from the main fuselage. This is how the aircraft had come apart.

Strewn across the wooden floor were huge tarps, on which lay bundles and tangles of wires and other debris, which I couldn’t identify.

Kate said, “This place is so big, people used bicycles to get around quickly and save time.”

We walked slowly across the hangar, toward the carcass of this giant machine.

As we approached, I saw that all the glass had been blown out of the portholes, and I could see now the separate pieces of the aluminum skin that had been meticulously pieced together, some huge, the size of a barn door, some smaller than a di

The midsection, where the center fuel tank had exploded, was the most damaged, with large gaps in the fuselage.

About ten yards from the aircraft, we stopped, and I looked up at it. Sitting on the floor, even without its landing gear, it was as high as a three-story building from belly to spine.

I asked Kate, “How long did this take?”

She replied, “About three months, from begi

“Why is it still here after five years?”

“I’m not sure… but I hear unofficially that a decision has been made to send it to a junkyard for recycling. That will upset a lot of people who still aren’t satisfied with the final report-including relatives of the deceased, who come here every year before the memorial service. They were here this morning.”

I nodded.

Kate stared at the reconstructed aircraft. She said, “I was here when they began the reconstruction… they built scaffolds, wooden frames, and wire netting to attach the pieces… The people working on it started calling it Jetasaurus rex. They did an incredible job.”

It was hard to take this all in-in one respect, it was a giant jetliner, the sort of object you didn’t have to study to know what it was. But this thing was somehow greater than the sum of its parts. I now noticed huge, scorched tires, twisted landing struts, the four mammoth jet engines sitting in a row away from the aircraft, the wings sitting on the floor, the color-coded wires everywhere, and the fiberglass insulation laid out in some sort of pattern. Everything was labeled with tags or colored chalk.

Kate said, “Every object here was examined in minute detail-seventy thousand pounds of metal and plastic, a hundred and fifty miles of wire and hydraulic lines. Inside that fuselage is the reconstructed interior of the aircraft-the seats, the galleys, the lavatories, the carpeting. Everything that was brought up from the ocean, over one million pieces, was put back together.”

“Why? At some point they must have concluded that it was a mechanical failure.”

“They wanted to put to rest any other theories.”

“Well, they didn’t.”

She didn’t reply to that, and recalled, “For about six months, this place smelled of jet fuel, seaweed, dead fish, and… whatever.”

I was sure she could still smell it.

We stood silently in front of the white, almost ghostly aircraft. I looked into the empty portholes, and I let myself think about the 230 Paris-bound passengers and I tried to imagine the last few seconds before the explosion, and the moment of the explosion, and the final few seconds after the explosion as the aircraft separated in midair. Did anyone survive the initial fireball?

Kate said softly, “There are times when I think we’ll never know what happened. Other times, I think something will reveal itself.”

I didn’t respond.

She said, “You see all that missing structure from the midsection? The FBI, National Transportation Safety Board, Boeing, TWA, and outside experts tried to find an entry and exit hole, or evidence of an explosion other than fuel-air. But they couldn’t. So they concluded that there was no missile strike. Could you conclude that?”

“No. Too much structure missing or mangled.” I said, “Also, the gentleman I spoke to did his own research, as I’m sure you know, and starting with his absolute belief that he saw a missile, he concluded that the missile didn’t have an explosive warhead.”

A voice behind us said, “Therewas no missile.”

I turned around to see a guy approaching out of the darkness. He was dressed in a suit and tie, and he strode purposely across the hangar into the light and came toward us. He said again, “There was no missile.”

I said to Kate, “I think we got busted.”

CHAPTER NINE

Well, as it turned out, we weren’t caught red-handed by the Federal Thought Police.

The gentleman who had joined us was named Sidney R. Siben, and he was an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, and didn’t look like the sort of chap who would read you your rights and slap the cuffs on, even if he owned cuffs.

In fact, up close in the light, he was not as young as I’d thought by his jaunty stride. He was intelligent-looking, well dressed, and seemed perhaps a bit arrogant, or at the least, self-assured. My kind of guy.

Kate explained that she and Sid had become acquainted during the investigation.

I asked him, “Were you just in the neighborhood and passing through the hangar?”

He looked quizzically at Kate, who said to him, “You’re early, Sid, and I haven’t had the chance to tell John you were coming.”

I added, “Or why.”

Kate said to me, “I wanted you to hear the official version from one of the men who authored the final report.”

Sidney asked me, “Do you want to hear what actually happened? Or do you want to believe in conspiracy theories?”

I replied, “That’s a loaded question.”

“No, it isn’t.”

I asked Kate, “What team is this guy on?”

Kate replied in a strained, darling-what-are-you-talking-about tone, “There are noteams, John. Just honest differences of opinion. Sid made himself available to speak to you about your concerns and doubts.”

Most of the concerns and doubts I had about this case had been very recently planted in my brain by Ms. Mayfield herself, who had obviously told Mr. Siben that I needed to have my brain cleansed of doubts and conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, she forgot to tell me. But to play along, I said to Sidney, “Well, you know, I’ve always thought there were problems with the official version. I mean, there are seven major theories about what caused this plane to explode-missile, methane gas bubble, plasma death ray… and… so forth. Now, Kate is a firm believer in the official version, and I-”

“Let me tell you what happened here, Mr. Corey.”

“Okay.”

He pointed to something in the far corner. I looked and saw a huge lime green object on the floor.

Mr. Siben informed me, “That is a 747’s center fuel tank. Not the one on this aircraft, which was taken to the lab. But another one that we brought here to make this reconstruction complete.”