But you wouldn't have caught the other aircraft, she said. I understood what she was saying. He hadn't been inside the other aircraft. He hadn't opened any NL except the primary jet's flight control assembly. The rest, the fleet audit, the apex vector mapping across the operation, the fuel valve that was Susan Okapor's team.
That was the independent inspection that Victoria had ordered after their conversation in his shop. No, he said honestly, I wouldn't have caught the other aircraft. That happened because you grounded the fleet. I grounded the fleet because you gave me a reason to. She said, "You had reasons before I gave you one." He said, "Your father had started looking at Apex Vector before he died." She went still.
"Delgato told me." He said, "Not the detail, just that there were earlier reports. I assume your father was one of them." Victoria looked at the floor. Something moved across her face that had nothing to do with boardrooms or invoices or the operational mechanics of a private aviation program. Something that was just a daughter and a father who'd seen something coming and the terrible distance between that warning and this hanger. He didn't tell me what he was looking at, she said quietly.
I thought it was just his way of staying involved. He was retired. He still wanted to feel useful. She stopped. He was trying to hand me something and I didn't know enough to take it.
Malcolm said nothing because there was nothing useful to say to that. Some silences deserve to sit. After a moment, Victoria straightened up. She put her hands in her pockets. She looked at the maintenance tape across the aircraft 6 NL with the focused steady attention of someone deciding something.
I'm going to rebuild this program from the bottom up, she said. Not cosmetically, not for the press statement. From the procurement protocols to the inspection schedules to who gets authority to sign what, she paused. And I am going to need people I can trust to help me do that. Malcolm waited.
I'm not offering you a job, she said. I already know what you'd say. The smallest pause, almost humor in it. I'm asking whether Hayes Arowworks would be willing to help design the new standards. He looked at her.
What does that mean practically? He said, "It means I want you and your team to help us build an inspection protocol that doesn't have the holes this one had." She said, "An independent protocol maintained independently that reports to the board rather than to operations." She paused. So that the next time someone inside this company decides that procurement shortcuts are acceptable, there is a system in place that will find it. He thought about it. Who authorizes the final say on airworthiness?
He said the independent inspector, she said. You or whoever Hayes Arow works designates. No executive override. No executive override. She said board reporting only.
He said in writing. Every flag, every discrepancy, every unresolved item. The board sees it before operations does. Agreed. She said he thought about Rachel's call that afternoon.