Victoria Hayes tore the diagnostic report precisely through the center, as though the paper itself were responsible for the eight days she could never get back.
One half fluttered beneath the polished white wing of her private jet. The other struck an engineer's shoe and lay there, face up, with the words NO FAULT DETECTED printed in large, reassuring letters. Victoria stared at those words and felt something in her chest turn cold.
"Ninety million dollars," she said. Nobody moved. "Ninety million dollars, and not one of you can tell me why it won't fly."
Hangar Four at Hallidge Field had been designed to accommodate three wide-body business aircraft at once, but that morning there was only one machine inside. It occupied the center of the floor like a white sculpture somebody had forgotten how to bring to life. The aircraft's long swept wings caught the bluish autumn daylight streaming through the high windows, and the silver trim along its fuselage reflected two hundred faces that looked anywhere but at Victoria. They were not all incompetent people. Some were among the finest engineers in private aviation, men and women who had saved aircraft in impossible circumstances and whose experience she had paid a fortune to bring here. But eight days of competing theories, changing diagnoses, and polished reassurances had led to the same result: the airplane remained grounded.
An engineer near the forward landing gear cleared his throat. Victoria knew the sound. It was the sound men made when they were about to explain why yesterday's certainty was no longer today's certainty, and why tomorrow required another expensive investigation.
"Don't," she said, before he could begin. "Unless you are about to tell me something we can prove, don't tell me another theory."
Dr. Malcolm Feldman stepped forward from the group surrounding the maintenance carts. His silver hair was damp with sweat despite the cool air, and his identification badge hung from the pocket of a shirt that had been pressed in a hotel room that morning. He was a respected specialist in integrated power and propulsion systems, a man whose fee had once seemed justified simply because he was willing to take Victoria's calls at midnight. She looked at him, and he looked at the torn report on the floor.
"On Tuesday you said the problem was fuel pressure," she said. "On Thursday it was an actuator. On Saturday it was the starter-generator assembly. Tell me what it is today."
Feldman removed his glasses. "We have ruled out those components. That's progress."
"Progress toward what?"
He inhaled carefully. "At this point, I don't know."
The words seemed to lower the temperature of the hangar. For eight days everybody had spoken in the language of progress, mitigation, confidence levels, and probable causes. Nobody had used the only three words that were genuinely supported by the evidence. Victoria felt a strange relief beneath her anger, then hated herself for being relieved. Ignorance acknowledged was still ignorance, and she had nine days before the meeting in Geneva that could determine whether Hayes International Aviation survived the winter.