every policeman in the terminal. Most airports had similar systems to alert their police without the public being made aware.
Ordway was wasting no time. Undoubtedly he would brief his men about Inez Guerrero as they reported to the main entrance.
"Call your D.T.M.," Mel instructed Tanya. "Ask him to come to this office as quickly as he can. Tell him it's important." Partly to himself, he added, "We'll start by getting everybody here."
Tanya made the call, then reported, "He's on his way." Her voice betrayed nervousness.
Mel had gone to the office door. He closed it.
"You still haven't told me," Tanya said, "what it was you found out."
Mel chose his words carefully.
"Your man Guerrero, the one with no luggage except the little attache case, and whom you think might have a bomb aboard Flight Two, took out a flight insurance policy just before takeoff for three hundred thousand dollars. The beneficiary is Inez Guerrero. He paid for it with what looked like his last small change."
"My God!" Tanya's face went white. She whispered, "Oh, dear God... no!"
PART THREE Chapter Six
THERE WERE TIMES---tonight was one---when Joe Patroni was grateful that he worked in the maintenance bailiwick of aviation, and not in sales.
The thought occurred to him as he surveyed the busy activity of digging beneath, and around the mired Aereo-Mexican jet which continued to block runway three zero.
As Patroni saw it, airline sales forces---in which category he lumped all front office staff and executives---comprised inflatable rubber people who connived against each other like fretful children. On the other hand, Patroni was convinced that those in engineering and maintenance departments behaved like mature adults. Maintenance men (Joe was apt to argue), even when employed by competing airlines, worked closely and harmoniously, sharing their information, experience, and even secrets for the common good.
As Joe Patroni sometimes confided privately to his friends, an example of this unofficial sharing was the pooling of information which came to maintenance men regularly through conferences held by individual airlines.
Patroni's employers, like most major scheduled airlines, had daily telephone conferences---known as "briefings"---during which all regional headquarters, bases, and outfield stations were connected through a continent-wide closed-circuit hookup. Directed by a head office vice-president, the briefings were, in fact, critiques and information exchanges on the way the airline had operated during the past twenty-four hours. Senior people throughout the company's system talked freely and frankly with one another. Operations and sales departments each had their own daily briefing; so did maintenance---the latter, in Patroni's opinion, by far the most important.
During the maintenance sessions, in which Joe Patroni took part five days a week, stations reported one by one. Where delays in service---for mechanical reasons---had occurred the previous day, those in charge were required to account for them. Nobody bothered making excuses. As Patroni put it: "If you goofed, you say so." Accidents or failures of equipment, even minor, were reported; the objective, to pool knowledge and prevent recurrence. At next Monday's session, Patroni would report tonight's experience with the Aereo-Mexican 707, and his success or failure, however it turned out. The daily discussions were strictly no-nonsense, largely because the maintenance men were tough cookies who knew they couldn't fool one another.
After each official conference---and usually unknown to senior managements---unofficial ones began. Patroni and others would exchange telephone calls with cronies in maintenance departments of competing airlines. They would compare notes about one another's daily conferences, passing on what information seemed worth while. Rarely was any intelligence withheld.
With more urgent matters---especially those affecting safety---word was passed from airline to airline in the same way, but without the day's delay. If Delta, for example, had a rotor blade failure on a DC-9 in flight, maintenance departments of Eastern, TWA, Continental, and others using DC-9s, were told within hours; the information might help prevent similar failures on other aircraft. Later, photographs of the disassembled engine, and a technical report, would follow. If they wished, foremen and mechanics from other airlines could widen their knowledge by dropping over for a look-see at the failed part, and any engine damage.
Those who, like Patroni, worked in this give-and-take milieu were fond of pointing out that if sales and administration departments of competing airlines had occasion to consult, their people seldom went to one another's headquarters, but met on neutral ground. Maintenance men, in contrast, visited competitors' premises with the assurance of a common freemasonry. At other times, if one maintenance department was in trouble, others helped as they were able.