Before the Fall Read online

  “The OFAC,” says Scott. “I just saw something about that on the TV.”

  Hex chews gum silently.

  “If you feel up to it, Mr. Burroughs,” says Gus, “we’d like to ask you some questions about the flight, who was on it, and the circumstances leading up to the crash.”

  “Assuming it was a crash,” says O’Brien. “And not an act of terrorism.”

  Gus ignores this.

  “Here’s what I know,” he tells Scott. “As of now we’ve found no other survivors. Nor have we recovered any bodies. A few pieces of wreckage were found floating about twenty-nine miles off the coast of Long Island. We’re examining them now.”

  He leans forward, placing his hands on his knees.

  “You’ve been through a lot, so if you want to stop just say so.”

  Scott nods.

  “Somebody said the boy’s aunt and uncle are coming from Westchester,” he says. “Do we know when they’ll get here?”

  Gus looks at O’Brien, who ducks out of the room.

  “We’re checking that for you,” says Gus. He pulls a file folder from his briefcase. “So the first thing I need to do is confirm how many people were on the flight.”

  “Don’t you have, I mean, an itinerary?” Scott asks.

  “Private jets file flight plans, but their passenger rosters are pretty unreliable.”

  He looks over his paperwork.

  “Am I right in saying your name is Scott Burroughs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mind giving me your Social Security number? For our records.”

  Scott recites the number. Gus writes it down.

  “Thanks,” he says. “That helps. There are sixteen Scott Burroughs in the tristate area. We weren’t sure exactly which one we were dealing with.”

  He offers Scott a smile. Scott tries to work up an encouraging response.

  “From what we’ve been able to piece together,” Gus tells him, “the flight was crewed by a captain, a first officer, and a flight attendant. Would you recognize the names if I said them?”

  Scott shakes his head. Gus makes a note.

  “Passenger-wise,” says Gus, “we know that David Bateman chartered the flight and that he and his family—wife, Maggie, and two children, Rachel and JJ—were on board.”

  Scott thinks of the smile Maggie gave him when he boarded. Warm and welcoming. A woman he knew in passing, small talk at the market—How are you? How are the kids?—the occasional conversation about his work. That she is dead right now at the bottom of the Atlantic makes him want to throw up.

  “And finally,” says Gus, “in addition to yourself, we believe that Ben Kipling and his wife, Sarah, were on board. Can you confirm that?”

  “Yes,” says Scott. “I met them when I got on the plane.”

  “Describe Mr. Kipling for me, please,” asks Agent Hex.

  “Uh, maybe five-eleven, gray hair. He had, uh, very prominent eyebrows. I remember that. And his wife was very chatty.”

  Hex looks at O’Brien, nods.

  “And just so we’re clear,” says Gus. “Why were you on the plane?”

  Scott looks at their faces. They are detectives scrambling for facts, filling in missing pieces. A plane has crashed. Was it mechanical failure? Human error? Who can be blamed? Who is liable?

  “I was—” says Scott, then starts again, “—I met Maggie, Mrs. Bateman, on the island a few weeks ago. At the farmers market. I would—I went there every morning for coffee and a bialy. And she would come in with the kids. But sometimes alone. And we started talking one day.”

  “Were you sleeping with her?” asks O’Brien.

  Scott thinks about this.

  “I wasn’t,” he says. “Not that it’s relevant.”

  “Let us decide what’s relevant,” O’Brien says.

  “Sure,” says Scott, “though maybe you can explain to me how the sexual interactions of a passenger in a plane crash are relevant to your—what is this?—investigation.”

  Gus nods quickly three times. They are getting off course. Every second wasted takes them farther from the truth.

  “Back to the point,” he says.

  Scott holds O’Brien’s eye for a long antagonistic moment, then continues.

  “I ran into Maggie again Sunday morning. I told her I had to go to New York for a few days. She invited me to fly with them.”

  “And why were you going to New York?”

  “I’m a painter. I’ve been—I live on the Vineyard and I was going in to meet with my rep and talk to some galleries about doing a show. My plan was to take the ferry to the mainland. But Maggie invited me, and, well, a private plane. The whole thing seemed very—I almost didn’t go.”

  “But you did.”

  Scott nods.

  “At the last minute. I threw some things together. They were actually closing the doors when I ran up.”

  “Lucky for the boy you made it,” says Leslie from the FAA.

  Scott thinks about it. Was it lucky? Is there anything lucky about surviving a tragedy?

  “Did Mr. Kipling seem agitated to you?” Hex interjects, clearly impatient. He has his own investigation and it has little to do with Scott.

  Gus shakes him off.

  “Let’s do this in order,” he says. “I’m leading this—it’s my investigation.”

  He turns to Scott.

  “The airport log says the plane took off at ten oh six.”

  “Sounds right,” says Scott. “I didn’t look at my phone.”

  “Can you describe the takeoff?”

  “It was—smooth. I mean, it was my first private jet.”

  He looks at Frank, the OSPRY rep.

  “Very nice,” he says. “Except for the crashing, I mean.”

  Frank looks stricken.

  “So you don’t remember anything unusual?” Gus asks. “Any sounds or jostling out of the ordinary?”

  Scott thinks back. It happened so fast. Before he could even get his seat belt on they were taxiing. And Sarah Kipling was talking to him, asking him about his work and how he knew Maggie. And the girl was on her iPhone, listening to music or playing a game. The boy was sleeping. And Kipling was—what was he doing?

  “I don’t think so,” he says. “I remember—you felt the force of it more. The power. I guess that’s what a jet is. But then we were off the ground and rising. Most of the shades were closed and it was very light in the cabin. There was a baseball game on the TV.”

  “Boston played last night,” says O’Brien.

  “Dworkin,” says Frank in a knowing way, and the two feds in the doorway smile.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Scott says, “but I also remember music. Something jazzy. Sinatra maybe?”

  “And did there come a time when something unusual happened?” Gus asks.

  “Well, we fell into the ocean,” says Scott.

  Gus nods.

  “And how exactly did that happen?”

  “Well—I mean—it’s hard to remember exactly,” Scott tells him. “The plane turned suddenly, pitched, and I—”

  “Take your time,” says Gus.

  Scott thinks back. The takeoff, the offered glass of wine. Images flash through his mind, an astronaut’s vertigo, a blare of sounds. Metal shrieking. The disorienting whirl. Like a movie negative that has been cut and reassembled at random. It is the job of the human brain to assemble all the input of our world—sights, sounds, smells—into a coherent narrative. This is what memory is, a carefully calibrated story that we make up about our past. But what happens when those details crumble? Hailstones on a tin roof. Fireflies firing at random. What happens when your life can’t be translated into a linear narrative?

  “There was banging,” he says. “I think. Some kind of—I want to say concussion.”

  “Like an explosion?” asks the man from OSPRY, hopefully.

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so. It was more like—a knocking and then—at the same time the plane kind of—dropped.”<
br />
  Gus thinks about saying something then, a follow-up question, but doesn’t.

  In his mind, Scott hears a scream. Not of terror, but an involuntary expulsion, a reflexive vocal reaction to something unexpected. It is the sound fear makes when it first appears, the sudden, visceral realization that you are not safe, that this activity you are engaged in is deeply, deeply risky. Your body makes the sound and immediately you break out in a cold sweat. Your sphincter clenches. Your mind, which up until this moment has been moving along at pedestrian speeds, suddenly races forward, running for its life. Fight or flight. It is the moment when the intellect fails and something primal, animal takes over.

  With a sudden prickling certainty, Scott realizes that the scream came from him. And then blackness. His face pales. Gus leans in.

  “Do you want to stop?”

  Scott exhales.

  “No. It’s fine.”

  Gus asks an aide to bring Scott a soda from the machine. While they’re waiting Gus lays out the facts he’s managed to assemble.

  “According to our radar,” he says, “the plane was in the air for eighteen minutes. It reached an altitude of twelve thousand feet, then began to descend rapidly.”

  Sweat is dripping down Scott’s back. Images are coming back to him, memories.

  “Things were—flying is the wrong word,” he says. “Around. Stuff. I remember my duffel bag. It just kind of levitated off the floor, just calmly floated up in the air like a magic trick, and then, just as I reached for it, it just—took off, just disappeared. And we were spinning, and I hit my head, I guess.”

  “Do you know if the plane broke up in the air?” Leslie from the FAA asks him. “Or was the pilot able to make a landing?”

  Scott tries to remember, but it’s just flashes. He shakes his head.

  Gus nods.

  “Okay,” he says. “Let’s stop there.”

  “Hold on,” says O’Brien. “I still have questions.”

  Gus stands.

  “Later,” he says. “Right now I think Mr. Burroughs needs to rest.”

  The others stand. This time Scott gets to his feet. His legs are shaking.

  Gus offers his hand.

  “Get some sleep,” he says. “I saw two news vans pull up outside as we were coming in. This is going to be a story, and you’re going to be at the center of it.”

  Scott can’t for the life of him figure out what he’s talking about.

  “What do you mean?” he says.

  “We’ll try to shield your identity as long as possible,” Gus tells him. “Your name wasn’t on the passenger roster, which helps. But the press is going to want to know how the boy made it to shore. Who saved him. Because that’s a story. You’re a hero now, Mr. Burroughs. Try to wrap your mind around that—what it means. Plus, the boy’s father, Bateman, was a big deal. And Kipling—well, you’ll see—this is a very messy situation.”

  He extends his hand. Scott shakes it.

  “I’ve seen a lot of things in my day,” says Gus, “but this—”

  He shakes his head.

  “You’re a hell of a swimmer, Mr. Burroughs.”

  Scott feels numb. Gus herds the other agents out of the room with his hands.

  “We’ll talk again,” he says.

  After they’re gone Scott sways on his feet inside the empty lounge. His left arm is in a polyurethane sling. The room is buzzing with silence. He takes a deep breath, lets it out. He is alive. This time yesterday he was eating lunch on his back porch and staring out at the yard, egg salad and iced tea. The three-legged dog was lying in the grass licking her elbow. There were phone calls to make, clothes to pack.

  Now everything has changed.

  He wheels his IV over to the window, looks out. In the parking lot he sees six news vans, satellite dishes deployed. A crowd is gathering. How many times has the world been interrupted by the cable buzz of special reports? Political scandals, spree killings, celebrity intercourse caught on tape. Talking heads with their perfect teeth ripping apart the still-warm body? Now it is his turn. Now he is the story, the bug under the microscope. To Scott, watching through tempered glass, they are an enemy army massing at the gates. He stands in his turret watching them assemble their siege engines and sharpen their swords.

  All that matters, he thinks, is that the boy be saved from that.

  A nurse knocks on the door of the lounge. Scott turns.

  “Okay,” she tells him. “Time to rest.”

  Scott nods. He remembers the moment from last night when the fog first cleared, and the North Star became visible. A distant point of light that brought with it absolute certainty about which direction they should go.

  Standing there, studying his reflection in the glass, Scott wonders if he will ever have that kind of clarity again. He takes a last look at the growing mob, then turns and walks back to his room.

  Chapter 5

  List of the Dead

  David Bateman, 56

  Margaret Bateman, 36

  Rachel Bateman, 9

  Gil Baruch, 48

  Ben Kipling, 52

  Sarah Kipling, 50

  James Melody, 50

  Emma Lightner, 25

  Charlie Busch, 30

  Chapter 6

  David Bateman

  April 2, 1959–August 23, 2015

  It was the chronic chaos that made it interesting. The way a story could spark from a cinder and race through a news cycle, changing speed and direction, growing wilder, devouring everything in its path. Political gaffes, school shootings, crises of national and international import. News, in other words. On the tenth floor of the ALC Building the newsmen rooted for fires, both literal and metaphoric, betting money on them like a back-alley dice game.

  Anyone who could guess the length of a scandal down to the hour got a salad spinner, David used to say. Cunningham would give you the watch off his wrist if you could predict a politician’s apology word for word before it happened. Napoleon offered sex with his wife to any reporter who could get a White House press secretary to curse into an open mike. They spent hours establishing the ground rules on that one—what constituted a curse? Fuck, sure. Shit or twat. But what about damn? Was hell enough?

  “Hell will get you a handjob,” Napoleon told them, feet stacked up on his desk, left over right, but when Cindy Bainbridge got Ari Fleischer to say it, Napoleon told her it didn’t count because she was a girl.

  If you were lucky, what started as a brush fire—a governor’s name found on the client list of a call-girl ring, for example—quickly became a raging inferno, exploding in backdraft share points and swallowing all the oxygen out of the broadcast market. David used to remind them constantly that Watergate started with a simple B&E.

  “What was Whitewater, after all,” he’d say, “but a bush-league, Podunk land scandal?”

  They were twenty-first-century newsmen, prisoners of the cycle. History had taught them to dig for scandal in the fringes of every fact. Everyone was dirty. Nothing was simple except for the message.

  ALC News, with a staff of fifteen thousand and a viewership that hovered around two million a day, was founded in 2002 with a hundred-million-dollar investment by an English billionaire. David Bateman was its architect, its founding father. In the trenches they called him The Chairman. But really what he was was a general, like George S. Patton, who stood unflinchingly as machine-gun fire strafed the dirt between his legs.

  David had worked on both sides of the political scandal racket in his day. First, in his role as a political consultant running to stay ahead of the gaffes and missteps of his candidates, and then, after he retired from politics, in constructing an upstart twenty-four-hour news network. That was thirteen years ago. Thirteen years of outrage and messaging, of jeering chyrons and knock-down, drag-out war; 4,745 days of constant signal; 113,880 hours of sports and punditry and weather; 6,832,800 minutes of tick-tock air to fill with words and pictures and sound. The sheer, endless volume of it was daunting sometim
es. Hour after hour stretching out to eternity.

  What saved them was that they were no longer slaves to the events they covered. No longer held hostage by the action or inaction of others. This was the Big Idea that David had brought to the table in constructing the network, his masterstroke. Sitting down for lunch with the billionaire all those years ago, he laid it out simply.

  “All these other networks,” he said, “they react to the news. Chase after it. We’re going to Make The News.”

  What that meant, he said, was that unlike CNN or MSNBC, ALC would have a point of view, an agenda. Sure, there would still be random acts of God to cover, celebrity deaths and sex scandals. But that was just gravy. The meat and potatoes of their business would come from shaping the events of the day to fit the message of their network.

  The billionaire loved this idea, of controlling the news, as David knew he would. He was a billionaire, after all, and billionaires get to be billionaires by taking control. After coffee they settled it with a handshake.

  “How soon can you be up and running?” he asked David.

  “Give me seventy-five million and I’ll be on the air in eighteen months.”

  “I’ll give you a hundred. Be on in six.”

  And they were. Six months of frantic building, of stealing anchors from other networks, of logo design and theme music composition. David found Bill Cunningham throwing snark on a second-tier newsmagazine show. Bill was an angry white guy with a withering wit. David saw past the small time of the program. He had a vision of what the guy could become with the right platform, a godhead from Easter Island, a touchstone. There was a point of view there that David felt just might personify their brand.

  “Brains aren’t something they hand out in Ivy League schools,” Cunningham told David when they met for breakfast that first time. “We’re all born with them. And what I can’t stand is this elitist attitude that we’re all, none of us, smart enough to run our own country.”

  “You’re doing a rant now,” David told him.

  “Where’d you go to college anyway?” Cunningham asked him, ready to pounce.