He'd already heard from Daniel. He declined. She called her backup pilot, a contractor she kept on retainer for exactly this kind of situation. He asked about the maintenance log. She told him it was a contractor dispute, nothing safety related.
He said he'd need to see the log himself before he could make a decision. She arranged access. He looked at the log for 11 minutes. He called back and told her he wouldn't fly it. She offered him double his normal rate.
He said no. By 10:00, Victoria Sterling had contacted six pilots, six different men, some of whom she'd worked with for years, some of whom she'd never met, some of whom she'd offered extraordinary money. Every single one of them had said no. Not because they knew Malcolm, not because they were coordinating, not because they were making a statement, because the log was the log. The discrepancy was the discrepancy. and Malcolm Hayes's name.
The absence of his name on the certificate was apparently enough of an answer by itself. She stood in the executive terminal phone in hand, the New York flight already a memory, and said to no one in particular, "Who is this man?" Her assistant, young and careful, said nothing. But one of her executives, an older man named Gerald, who'd been with Sterling Crown for 14 years, looked up from his laptop. "He's the mechanic who wouldn't sign, Gerald said. I know that.
No, Gerald said carefully. I mean, that's his reputation in private aviation. He's the mechanic who wouldn't sign. He paused. That's not an insult.
That's how people know him. He's walked off three contracts in 20 years because he found something he wasn't comfortable with. Every time he was right. Victoria looked at him. Why?
She said slowly. Did no one tell me this before we hired him? Gerald said nothing because the answer was someone had and she hadn't listened. Jaw. She called Malcolm at 10:47 a.m.
He answered. I need you to come back, she said. I'm not coming back, he said. Malcolm, pay my team what they're owed. Open the Apex vector question with your fleet coordinator and let me resolve the discrepancy properly without a deadline.
I have a board meeting in New York on Friday. then you should have paid me on Monday, he said, and his voice wasn't angry. That was the thing she couldn't quite process. There was no anger in it. There was something more difficult than anger. There was certainty.
Ms. Sterling, I'm not playing a game with you. I'm not using the aircraft as leverage. I need you to understand something. Then help me understand it.