3.

December 4, 2001, 15:00 EST.
Atlantic Ocean, 140 feet down, 11 nautical miles off Long Island.

Kathy held a small metal tag in her hand. It was attached to the watertight tarp. And on it was written: "BLERIOT B1-X1 – 50 HP GNOME ENGINE – 1909" The tarpaulin was thicker around this plane, no doubt because of its age. Kathy could see that parts of it were in wood and canvas – obviously it was very delicate and needed better protection.
Encouraged by her discovery, she swam over to the aircraft that she imagined to be military. She quickly found the metal tag. This one read "RAFALE M – M88-2 – 2001". According to the tags of the other two, they were as Kathy had suspected: an Airbus and a Boeing 737. But it was under the wing of the 737 that she made the most significant recovery. Another metal tag was attached to the tarp over the jet engine. It read: "CFM56-7B20 ENGINE", followed by a long serial number written by hand.
She took out her writing slate and made a note of all the information she'd gathered.
Now she had something to work on….
It took a while to complete all the decompression stages, and by the time she'd surfaced and recovered from the dive, the sun was already sinking over the horizon. Kathy asked for office space with fax, phone and an Internet connection, then ate a quick meal.
Leaning back on her chair, she reflected on the events of the day. The immense, undulating tarpaulin over the 737 haunted her mind.
What in hell were those four planes doing down there? All pointing towards the west… landing gear down, all perfectly "landed" on the ocean floor.
Someone had taken care to cover them with a bizarre, perfectly watertight material which seemed almost organic. Above all else, it was this fact that troubled Kathy the most. Why had the planes been put there? Neither the FAA nor the NTSB believed it. The authorities didn't have the faintest clue. Not for the moment, at least.
Why were those planes placed there underwater, with such care? And by whom?
And all in the past ten months.
Kathy looked over her notes and noticed the serial number of the jet engine.
"Time to get serious, my girl…"
She went online, started off with a few of the well-known search engines before finding one specialized in aviation. In less than an hour she'd already found out that the engine, a CFM56-7B20, was built by a company called CFMI (jointly owned by Snecma and General Electric), and that this model was designed to be used on the New Generation Boeing 737. The 7B20 version had been rolled out in 1997. All this was a start, at least. She also learned that they were still being manufactured, and although the TECH56 research program had worked on new engine development from 1999 to 2003, the CFM was still considered very competitive.
Plunging further into detail, Kathy discovered that the serial numbers of the engines were now all inscribed in a barcode, including the CFM56-7B20 manufactured at the beginning of the century. Not only that, but this serial number corresponded to a particular geographic region. Within fifteen minutes she found that her engine came from Europe. More precisely from St Quentin in France, one of the CFM production sites – the other being Evendale in the States.
In her notebook, she scribbled: "Engine manufactured between 1997 and 2001-2003 (?) in France."

Kathy barely noticed as the hours passed and an inky blackness descended on the ocean vista beyond the porthole. Every now and then, a lightning bolt would illuminate this darkness, accompanied by a thunder roll that echoed like a plane crashing through the sound barrier. Raindrops spattered against the glass ever more fiercely, until you could barely see out of the porthole.
A knock on the door finally broke Kathy's concentration, and Captain Haisselbak strode into the room.
"Well, that light drizzle they forecast has turned into a full-blown storm," he said. "On top of that, Mr. Budmera has just come to see us. Have you got anything new to report? Anything to give him?"
Kathy frowned. Arnold Budmera was the billionaire owner of Trans-Bell. In fact he owned practically everything it was possible for one man to own in this country. That he'd made the trip out in the middle of the night to a ship belonging to one of his "little" companies was surprising, to say the least.
"The big boss in person? Why did he come?"
"He must have heard the story and decided to see for himself. I suppose he's as intrigued as we are. And he's the one losing money while we're stuck here. Anyway, I tried to tell him to wait 'til morning, once the storm's over. But there was no arguing with New York: the boss is already in the helicopter, they said, he'll be there any minute."
Kathy pointed to the computer.
"OK, I'm doing what I can, I'm making progress. Let me know if he wants to talk to me about… all this."
Haisselbak nodded and left.
Kathy turned back to her computer. What she wanted to do was speak to someone in France – what with the time difference, it should be almost eight in the morning there. Finally, on her third attempt, she got through to someone who knew about the engine. Better still, she was given the serial number of the aircraft on which the engine had been fitted. Once she'd gotten that information, the rest was easy – she could track down which airline had sold the 737 to which other airline.
Right up until it was taken out of service. Recently.
It was four in the morning when Kathy found an article in the Internet archives of a major New York daily. The article had come up when she'd typed into a search engine the name of the main shareholder in the airline who'd taken the 737 out of service.
What she discovered was enough to make her drop her pen.
She had half the solution now. And yet that hardly seemed to make things any clearer….

***