"I propose three motions. First, that Flight 408 be grounded immediately and the aircraft removed from service pending a full inspection. Second, that all aircraft with similar deferrals be reviewed within forty-eight hours. Third, that Mr. Sterling be suspended from all board duties, effective at once, pending an independent investigation."
"Seconded," said the young director, so quickly that he almost tripped over the word.
"Seconded," said Reginald Voss, a half beat later.
The vote was taken by a show of hands. Eleven hands rose. One remained resting on the table, and it belonged to an elderly man named Cornelius Pratt, who had known Sterling for forty years and who now stared at his own fingers as though he did not recognize them.
"Cornelius?" Margaret asked.
The old man looked up. "I have seen this company grow from four planes to four hundred," he said slowly. "I have never seen it grow by killing people. If that is what Harold has been doing, then I cannot defend him." He raised his hand. "Twelve to nothing."
The motion carried.
Margaret set down her pen. For a long moment she sat with her eyes closed, as though gathering strength. When she opened them, she looked at Imani, and the severe lines of her face had softened into something like gratitude.
"Captain Okafor," she said, "on behalf of this board, I would like to apologize. You should never have had to do what you did tonight. You should never have been left with no other option. The failure was ours."
"Thank you," Imani said, and her voice caught slightly. "But I would ask for something more useful than an apology."
"Name it."
"Ground the aircraft," Imani said. "And then let us build a company where the next pilot who finds a fault does not have to walk into a restaurant to be heard."
CHAPTER 13: THE MAN IN THE ADJOINING ROOM
Harold Sterling waited alone.
The adjoining room was a small, windowless office with a gray carpet and a single leather sofa. A glass of water stood untouched on a side table. He had loosened his tie, and the white pocket square, so precisely folded at the start of the evening, had slipped halfway out of his jacket and hung there like a flag of surrender.
He sat on the sofa with his hands between his knees and stared at the carpet. Through the thin wall he could hear the low murmur of voices, the scrape of chairs, the occasional clink of a glass. He could not make out the words, and he did not need to.
He was thinking about a day, nearly fifty years ago, when he had been a young man in a cheap suit, standing at the back of a hangar in a town that no longer existed. He had been a junior accountant for an air freight company then, a hungry, anxious, ambitious boy who believed that the world rewarded those who were willing to do what others were not. A senior executive had pulled him aside one afternoon and told him something that he had carried ever since.
"There are two kinds of men in this business," the executive had said. "Those who build the planes, and those who decide how long they fly. The second kind are the ones who get rich."
Sterling had believed him. He had believed him through the first promotion, and the second, and the third. He had believed him when he signed the first deferral, and the tenth, and the hundredth. He had told himself, each time, that the numbers were fine, that the risk was acceptable, that the engineers were being cautious, that nothing had ever happened and nothing would.
Nothing had ever happened, because he had been lucky. He understood that now, sitting in a gray room with rain on the glass. Not wise, not careful, not shrewd. Lucky. He had gambled with other people's lives for fifty years, and the dice had simply never turned against him.
A knock sounded on the door. It opened, and Daniel Hale stepped in.
The young man looked tired. His blue suit was creased, and there were shadows under his eyes. He did not sit. He stood just inside the doorway, his hands loose at his sides.
"They have voted," he said. "The aircraft is grounded. You are suspended."
Sterling nodded slowly. "I expected nothing else."