Free Fall. Rick Mofina

so it’d be a win-win.”

      “I say we run it,” Reeka said. “It’s our duty to report this.”

      “It’s a little more complicated than that,” said Howard Kehoe, who headed all foreign bureaus. “Right now, we can’t verify the validity of this thing. We run this with the threat and we’ll cause havoc to air travel around the world.”

      “But our job is to inform the public,” Marisa said. “There’s a public safety issue here.”

      “That’s just it,” Kehoe said. “If we run this claim and this threat, will it make air travel any safer? If we don’t run it, are we truly risking lives? We have the fact the captain said something went wrong on the flight, and now this person is claiming that somehow they took over the plane. How? Does the technology to do this sort of thing even exist? They’re a bit short on details.”

      “I’m wondering why video from passengers in the cabin hasn’t surfaced yet,” Bruce Dabney, the business editor, said. “These days it’s almost guaranteed somebody has shot something.”

      “That’s right, and my point,” Kehoe said, “is that we don’t yet have any official, investigative confirmation from the NTSB, or the FAA, or anyone, on what happened. I think we need to be careful here.”

      “Could it be a terrorist threat?” Marisa asked.

      “There’s no indication in the note, no claim to affiliation, no demand or condemnation,” Kehoe said.

      “What about the name Zarathustra?” Reeka asked.

      “That’s the name of a Persian prophet from around seven or eight hundred BC,” Chuck said. “As I recall, he taught about humanity following one God and the priority of living a moral life.”

      “You’re dating yourself by a few centuries, Chuck.” Marisa smiled.

      “I took a few philosophy courses in school.”

      “So what would you like me to do?” Kate asked, glimpsing something through the boardroom’s floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Sloane was talking with Mark Reston, who was nodding to the meeting. Sloane looked uneasy.

      “We’re walking an ethical tightrope here,” Graham Lincoln, Newslead’s editor-in-chief, said. “If we run a story now and it turns out that the note is a practical joke, we open the floodgates to all sorts of crackpots and our credibility takes a hit. I think under the circumstances we’re not going to publish it.”

      “Ever?” Kate asked.

      “For now,” Lincoln said. “Of course, we have a moral responsibility to protect public safety, so we’ll alert the authorities, the FBI in this case. We’ll ask them if we’re the only news organization to receive this note, ask them not to share our note, and to keep us informed on their investigation of it. Above all, we’ll investigate journalistically. That is our responsibility and our duty. That’s what we’ll do.”

      Lincoln let a moment pass for his direction to sink in around the table.

      “I think we’re done here. Chuck, Kate, contact the people at Federal Plaza straightaway, get the ball rolling. And remember, folks, everything said in this room remains confidential.”

      As the meeting broke and editors moved from the boardroom, Kate looked again at Sloane.

      He was still talking with Reston and watching her.

      Intensely.

      Fifteen

      Manhattan, New York

      “What’s your information on EastCloud Flight Forty-nine Ninety?”

      Special Agent Anne Bartell was unsmiling, as was her partner, Agent Phil Enroy, who’d clicked his pen and poised it over his pad. After Kate was cleared at security, they’d taken her to an interview room on the twenty-eighth floor of the FBI’s New York Field Office in Lower Manhattan.

      It was late afternoon and people were leaving for the day.

      Kate didn’t know Bartell and Enroy. She’d worked with agents at this office before; Nick Varner was one, but her call got bounced and had been assigned to agents who were new to her, so she was starting cold.

      “You’re aware of what happened to the flight?” Kate asked.

      “We’ve followed the press reports, including yours,” Enroy said.

      “Is the FBI investigating in any way?”

      “No cause has emerged for us to be involved. The NTSB leads the investigation. What’s the nature of your information?” Enroy said.

      Kate started by relating background on Newslead’s public email for reader responses to stories, then reached into her bag and handed them printouts of the email. Upon reading it the agents made notes, and summoned Special Agent Ron Sanchez, a cyber analyst, who was also a senior member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

      “Have you received any other communication from the sender?” Sanchez asked.

      “Nothing.”

      “Would you be able to forward me the email to this address?” Sanchez took out a business card and jotted down an email address.