His technical specialist was already back inside the primary aircraft. Malcolm walked outside the hanger and called Rachel. He explained what they'd found in aircraft 11. She was silent for a long moment. A tracker, she said.
A position tracker, he said. 14 Months of flight data. Malcolm, her voice was careful. The unauthorized hangar access week three. I already told Delgato, he said.
No, she said. I mean, I pulled something when I was building the documentation package. I didn't think it was relevant, so I didn't include it. A pause. Two weeks before you started the restoration, there was an inquiry about Hayes Arowworks from a corporate email address I didn't recognize.
They asked about our availability and our rates for a restoration class project. I responded with our standard information sheet. They never followed up. What was the email address? Malcolm said.
That's the thing, Rachel said. I tried to trace it last month when I was doing a general inbox review. The domain doesn't exist anymore. It was registered 2 weeks before the inquiry and abandoned about a week after. Malcolm stood outside the hangar in the afternoon air.
He thought about what that meant, about someone who was careful enough to use a temporary email domain, about the timing. Two weeks before the Sterling Crown restoration contract landed on his desk, someone was checking us out. He said, "Before we got the contract, before Sterling Crown even called us," Rachel said, "because Sterling Crown called you 3 weeks after that email came in, which means he stopped. He worked through it. Which means someone knew Sterling Crown was going to need a restoration contractor.
Rachel said before Sterling Crown's procurement department had made the decision. She paused because someone inside procurement was making it. Curtis Hayward had been director of aviation procurement. Curtis Hayward, who had systematically compromised Sterling Crown's maintenance program for 4 years. Curtis Hayward, whose authorization code appeared in the access log for aircraft 117 months ago.
Malcolm thought about it in one long connected line, the way he traced a wiring fault, not jumping to conclusions, but following the circuit component by component until the break became visible. Curtis Hayward had arranged for Malcolm to get the restoration contract. Not because Malcolm was the best option, because he was the option that would be inside that aircraft doing a deep restoration for six weeks long enough to be in a position to find the things Hayward needed found. But that didn't track. If Hayward was hiding components inside the aircraft, he wouldn't want a meticulous restorer finding them.
Unless in Malcolm's mind went somewhere cold and specific. Unless the components weren't what Hayward was hiding. Unless the tracking device was Rachel, he said the primary aircraft, the Global 7500, it wasn't tracked. The bay was was clean, she said. You said it was clean when they opened it today, he said.
But what if it wasn't clean before I started the restoration? Silence on the line. What if someone installed a tracking device on the primary aircraft? He said slowly. And then the restoration started.