They opened the avionics bay on the primary aircraft, the 48 million Bombardier Global 7500 at 3:44. Inside behind the main stack, in a location nearly identical to where the device had been found in aircraft 11, there was nothing. The bay was clean. Malcolm stared at it. Why is this one clean?
He said more to himself than to anyone else. The technical specialist said because this aircraft has been in restoration for 6 weeks. Anyone monitoring the fleet would know it wasn't flying. She looked at the bay. No reason to track an aircraft that's grounded for maintenance.
Malcolm thought about that, about the logic of it, about someone who was careful enough to think through which aircraft were worth tracking and which weren't. Then he thought about something else. The restoration, he said slowly. I was inside this aircraft for 6 weeks. My team was inside it.
Delgato looked at him. If someone was monitoring who had access to Sterling Crown's aircraft, Malcolm stopped. They would know you were here, Delgato said. for 6 weeks, Malcolm said. And they would know I was doing a deep restoration, which means they would know that if anything was hidden in this aircraft, Malcolm said, I was in the best possible position to find it. The hangar went quiet.
Delgato looked at his agents. Something passed between them, a communication that didn't require words. Mr. Hayes, Delgato said, has anything unusual happened to you or your team in the past 6 weeks? any contact you didn't initiate, any visits to your shop by people you didn't know, any communication that felt off. Malcolm thought about it carefully.
He went back through the six weeks of the restoration, the late nights, the supplier delays, the component hunts, the caught in the hanger. Then he thought about something he'd filed away at the time as irrelevant. Week three of the restoration, he said. I came back from a supply run and the hanger had been accessed in my absence. I checked the access log and there was an entry I didn't recognize.
I assumed it was Sterling Crown's facilities team doing a routine check. I noted it in my personal log and moved on. Do you still have that access record? Delgato said. In my daily log, Malcolm said, "Yes, I need it today." Delgato said.
"I'll text it to you within the hour." Malcolm said. Delgato turned to his agents again, then back to Malcolm. Mr. Hayes, I need to ask you something directly. Ask it, Malcolm said.
Is there any possibility, any at all, that someone tried to access the primary aircraft systems while your team was conducting the restoration, and you didn't notice because of the volume of work? Malcolm held the investigator's gaze. I thought about every night in that hanger, about the maintenance log updated in real time, about the documentation discipline that Rachel had described as obsessive, which was the most accurate word for it. About the fact that he cross-referenced every component, every wire run, every system access against the aircraft's documentation history. If someone had accessed the primary aircraft systems during my restoration, Malcolm said they would have had to do it while I was in the hangar because I was in the hangar almost continuously for 6 weeks.
They would have had to do it without disturbing any of my ongoing work and their access would have shown up in the maintenance log which I reviewed every morning against the previous day's entries. He paused. So yes, he said it's possible, but if they did it, they were very, very good and they would have left traces. Your technical team should look. Delgato nodded.