Chapter 22
— Landon's Cover Story
Landon's cover story arrived the way all his stories arrived, polished and reasonable and almost believable, if you did not know the facts underneath it. It came first as a statement to the board, read aloud by Rhys at a meeting I did not attend, and then as a letter to the shipping authority, and then as a few careful words to the press, who repeated them because they sounded like the sort of thing a worried son would say. His mother, he said, had been confused in the months before the cruise. She had been forgetful, and anxious, and she had begun to imagine things. She had fallen from the deck of the Danube Empress by accident, in the dusk, when she had gone to the rail alone. No one had pushed her. No one had wished her harm. The river had taken her, and the family had grieved, and now, cruelly, her name was being used to make trouble for the company she had founded.
The audit, he said, was part of the confusion. I had talked about an independent audit, he admitted, but only because I had become convinced, wrongly, that the company's maintenance invoices were false. He said I had misunderstood the paperwork, that I had mistaken proper repairs for phantom ones, and that my illness, years ago, had left me prone to suspicion. The invoices were genuine, he claimed. Alpen Trade was a genuine supplier, a small firm that did specialist work on the boats, and the payments to it were proper. The fact that the logbook did not record those repairs meant nothing, he said, because the logbook was a personal notebook, not a company record, and it had gaps. He said this with a straight face, and Rhys, I was told, nodded along, as if a mother's forty years of careful ink could be dismissed as a hobby.
The sale of the two boats was, in his telling, entirely proper. He had acted under the power of attorney I had signed, which he described as broad, and general, and intended to let him manage the company if I became unable to do so. The Wachau Queen and the Vienna Star were old boats, he said, expensive to maintain, and the company needed the money. Fenella Waverly had paid a fair price, in his account, and the sale had been approved by the board. He did not mention that the partnership agreement required both founders' signatures, or that Nelson was dead, or that the price Fenella had paid was a fraction of what those boats were worth. He did not mention that Fenella herself had returned them, or that she was willing to testify. He simply said the sale was done, and done properly, and that reopening it would harm the company and everyone who worked for it.
Zane brought me a copy of the letter Landon had sent to the authority, and we read it together, marking every claim that the documents contradicted. Confused, we wrote in the margin, beside the logbook entries that were clear and dated and consistent for forty years. Fell by accident, we wrote, beside Kieran's statement, which described a man on the deck and a boat that did not stop. Genuine supplier, we wrote, beside Wesley's bank records, which showed Alpen Trade passing money straight to Landon. Broad power, we wrote, beside the original document, which said medical decisions only, in plain language. Each lie had a document waiting to answer it, and that was the comfort in the work. Landon could tell a story, but he could not change ink, and he could not change bank transfers, and he could not change what Kieran had seen.
Octavia read the letter too, and she was not surprised. She told me that a cover story like this was expected, and that it was, in its way, useful, because it committed Landon to a version of events that the evidence would test. If he said I fell by accident, then Kieran's account contradicted him. If he said the invoices were genuine, then the logbook contradicted him. If he said the power of attorney was broad, then the document itself contradicted him. Every claim was a rope he had tied around his own case. She advised me not to answer him in public, not to argue in the press, not to give him a quarrel he could use to distract the panel. Let the hearing do the work, she said. Let the documents speak, one by one, in order, in a quiet room, where a smooth voice counts for less than a dated page.
I took her advice, though it was hard. I wanted to stand up and shout that I was not confused, that I had never been confused, that I knew my own company and my own mind. But I was seventy-two, and I had learned, over a long life on the river, that shouting against the current only tires you out. The river wins by patience, not by noise. So I kept my counsel, and I kept my documents, and I waited for Vienna. Landon had told his story, and it was neat, and it was sad, and it was false. In three weeks, in a hearing room, with the logbook open and the bank records laid out and Kieran standing to tell what he saw, that story would come apart, piece by piece, like a badly built boat in a strong current. I would be there to watch it happen, alive, clear-headed, and ready.