Page 1 of Gryphon

1

December 13th

Rolm Lindgren hung up the phone without quite slamming it down, though he wanted to drive it straight through the top of his desk.

He’d spent the last two hours on the phone while dictating press releases, checking in with key personnel, and trying to control the disaster. Every time he hung up, there’d been two more calls waiting. Finally, it had quieted for three whole minutes—before it gut-shot him again. He’d managed it all smoothly until now, but this had been one phone call too many.

In the echoing silence, without any more calls to make, he could finally start to think.

He glared at the calendar. He remained old-fashioned enough to keep a paper one by his desk for quick reference. Right now, it irritated him almost past reason.

With only eight days until its final retirement, the last Boeing 737-700 in Rolm’s fleet had gone down—hard.

He’d purposely planned his own retirement to follow the day after that of the 737’s. The way he felt, he might well be dead by tomorrow—from sorrow, if nothing else.

A hundred and thirty-seven passengers (only four empty seats), two flight crew, and four cabin crew had boarded the LuftSvenska flight under their own power. They would all be departing the flight, or at least the rolling hillside of the Fjällberget ski area, very differently. He’d been told that DNA testing would be required to straighten out who some of the parts belonged to. There was also the matter of eleven skiers still unaccounted for on the ground.

Rolm shifted his glare from the calendar to the cold sky outside his window and did his best not to read anything into today’s date. Easier said than done.

December 13th.

He considered himself to be no more superstitious than the next Swede, but it was the precise seventieth anniversary of the airline’s first disaster.

Not that he could do a damn thing about it from here, not until he knew what had happened. As if. President of the airline never did a damn thing anyway except PR—and suffer a thousand headaches.

His desk offered a sweeping view from the top floor of the headquarters building. Stories below, the waterfront of northern Stockholm inspired guests in his office to exclamations of pleasure. But all he’d ever really cared about was looking up. There, he caught glimpses of their LuftSvenska planes headed in and out of Arlanda Airport thirty kilometers to the north. As the country’s flagship airline, the King had granted permission to paint the planes flag blue with wide yellow stripes down the window line and diagonally up the tail. Distinctively Swedish from miles away.

Rolm’s service boss had been one of the many calls, assuring him that the bird had passed all safety checks and the maintenance was fully current. There’d been no slacking off as the aircraft approached end-of-service.

Then why had the 737 gone down?

Had it looked at a calendar? His wife, Gertrude, had suggested that when he’d called to let her know. Unlike him but like so many of his fellow countryman, she was deeply superstitious about the number thirteen.

The press was sure to make a heyday of that and the seventieth anniversary of that first disaster combined. LuftSvenska’s first crash, a midair collision over London that had killed all the crew and passengers, thirty-four in all, had almost killed the airline. Always remembered as the second-worst disaster in the airline’s history. Would it now be remembered as the third or finally relegated to the chronicles of the past? No, the newsies would make sure it was prominently remembered for a good while yet.

Yet another call: the PR department asking goddamn questions about the rework of the diamond jubilee of the airline’s founding campaign. Intended to kick off in two weeks—the Seventy-five Years of Happy Customers campaign would require a complete and horridly expensive rebuild.

The one other great tragedy in the airline’s history, the newly demoted to second-worst disaster, had been the nine days after he’d taken over the airline twenty-five years ago. This one nine days before he left it.

That wasn’t a coincidence, that was some cosmic joke on his career. The media would probably label him as the President of Crashes. Like that headline could possibly be more important than all the people who’d died.

The first crash of his presidency—and the only one until today—had been a collision in fog between a departing LuftSvenska passenger jet and a bizjet crossing the runway it shouldn’t have been anywhere near. The Italian airport management and ground traffic controllers had been found guilty of that one, served jail time (when they should have been run through with a sword), which hadn’t mitigated the disaster.

And now…

Rolm stared at the garment bag hanging on the back of his office door. Tonight was supposed to be the first of a series of retirement dinners. How the hell to put a good face on that? Besides, he hated wearing suits. He’d told Gertrude that in ten days, the day after he left the airline, they were going to have a suit-burning celebration. Her look said that wouldn’t be occurring, she had a penchant for fancy restaurants he didn’t much share. He hadn’t conceded the win on that one yet.

That damned Boeing plane.

In the early decades, until Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas, LuftSvenska flew the MD aircraft. After Boeing purchased MD, everything began slipping sideways. MD aircraft were being phased out, but not fast enough. Boeing jets were brought onboard, but MD parts and Boeing parts didn’t match. Machinery, engines, pilots, service people, service methodologies, none of it. Then the former management had picked up a couple of Airbus jets. And yet other makes for short-haul connectors: Fokkers, Bombardiers, a couple of BAEs, even a lone, home-grown Saab fifty-seater.

And the idiots wondered why it had all spun out of control.

Holding the fractured mess together made for hard years, compounded with each bad decision. Rolm thanked the gods that he hadn’t been around to see them, at least not on the front lines. Not until he’d been elevated from the rank and file to clean up the mess. For his entire first year he’d raced from fire to fire, plugging holes as fast as possible. Including the ripples of the worst crash in the airline’s history—up until two hours ago.

Had he even seen his Gertrude in those first months? Probably not. Blessedly more tolerant than he deserved, which meant he would be keeping a dinner-out suit.

Knew that battle was lost before you even started it, Rolm. Acknowledging it didn’t make him any happier.

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