Total Control

Arthur Lieberman, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, has terminal pancreatic cancer and is deeply in debt following a ruinous divorce. On the morning he boards a flight from Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles, a fueler sabotages the plane by spraying corrosive acid on the fuel tank and planting a modified heating element inside the wing. The acid eats through the tank midair, the leaking jet fuel ignites, and the starboard wing shears off. Western Airlines Flight 3223 crashes into a Virginia cornfield, killing all 181 people on board.

One month earlier, Jason Archer, a young executive at Triton Global, the world's dominant technology conglomerate, has been secretly copying confidential company documents. His wife, Sidney Archer, is a part-time attorney at the law firm Tyler, Stone, where she serves as lead counsel on Triton's acquisition of CyberCom. Before leaving for the airport, Jason tells Sidney he is interviewing at another company, a fabrication to explain his secrecy. He copies his gathered materials onto a floppy disk, makes an encrypted duplicate, and heads to Dulles, where he executes an identity switch: He enters a restroom in a suit and emerges disguised, while a look-alike boards the doomed flight in his place. Jason flies to Seattle instead. He tries to call Sidney before departure, but she is busy managing their two-year-old daughter, Amy, and hangs up, a decision she bitterly regrets.

Sidney learns of the crash at a Triton meeting in New York. Nathan Gamble, Triton's domineering chairman, presses her about whether she knew Jason was aboard; she lies and says she did not. In Seattle, Jason delivers his briefcase of documents to men at a warehouse, believing he is passing evidence of corporate wrongdoing to allies. His escort, a professional killer named Kenneth Scales, takes him captive at gunpoint after Jason's pager displays the crash headline.

FBI Special Agent Lee Sawyer, a veteran with 25 years of experience, joins National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigator George Kaplan at the crash site. Examination of the recovered wing confirms sabotage. The fueler, a career criminal named Joseph Riker operating under a false identity, is found murdered in his apartment, eliminating the only direct witness.

Sidney calls the company Jason claimed to be interviewing with and learns they have never heard of him. Quentin Rowe, Triton's young president, presses her for answers, and Gamble threatens to pull Triton's account from Tyler, Stone. Sidney covertly enters Jason's office using his security card but finds nothing significant, though she notices a microphone attached to his computer. At home, she checks Jason's e-mail and briefly sees a message flash across the screen before it vanishes.

Frank Hardy, head of SecurTech, Triton's outside security firm, and Sawyer's former FBI partner, shows Sawyer surveillance footage from the Seattle warehouse proving Jason was alive hours after the crash. Hardy claims Triton suspects Jason of selling CyberCom deal information to RTG Group, a European competitor, and of embezzling $250 million. Sawyer issues a worldwide manhunt. He and his partner, Agent Ray Jackson, interview Sidney on the morning of Jason's memorial service. She conceals the fact that Jason called minutes earlier, alive and instructing her to meet him in New Orleans.

Paul Brophy, a Tyler, Stone partner secretly working with colleague Philip Goldman to steal Triton's deal secrets for RTG, overhears and records Sidney's call. Sidney travels to New Orleans, partially evading FBI surveillance. In Jackson Square, a shoeshine man slips her a message directing her to call her office, where a voice she believes is Jason's tells her to go home. Sawyer later realizes the trip was a diversion: While Sidney was away, intruders planted surveillance software on Jason's home computer. On her return flight, private investigator Edward Page warns Sidney that he witnessed Jason's identity switch at Dulles and that Jason is in grave danger. Scales murders Page minutes later. Sawyer discovers that Page's brother, Steven, and Lieberman were secret lovers, and that Steven died five years earlier of an insulin overdose ruled a probable suicide.

Sidney works with Jeff Fisher, a Tyler, Stone computer specialist, to decrypt the floppy disk Jason mailed to himself from Seattle. She locates the encryption password in a misdirected e-mail Jason sent from captivity, along with his cryptic instruction: "all wrong all backwards." Goldman and Brophy confront her, attempting blackmail with the recording. Sidney pretends to agree. In the parking garage, Goldman's driver, Parker, confiscates her 9mm pistol; moments later, a masked gunman kills Parker, Goldman, and Brophy with Sidney's own weapon, plants a tracking device in her purse, and leaves the gun and tape at the scene, framing her for the murders.

Sidney goes on the run, arming herself from her brother's gun collection and driving to her parents' beach house in Bell Harbor, Maine, to await a copy of the disk. Scales and Richard Lucas, Triton's security chief, track her using the device in her purse.

Sawyer cracks the case by reversing the password's numbers as Jason instructed. The reversed figures correspond to five dates when Lieberman unilaterally changed the Federal Funds Rate, the benchmark interest rate set by the Federal Reserve. Someone blackmailed Lieberman into manipulating rates to generate billions in profits. Sawyer traces the scheme to Rowe, who attended Columbia University with Steven Page. Rowe arranged Page's relationship with Lieberman, documented the affair for blackmail, and killed Page with an insulin overdose when Page threatened to expose everything after learning Rowe had given him HIV through a contaminated blood transfusion. Sawyer also deduces that the voice Sidney heard in New Orleans was not Jason but a recording assembled from his voice, captured by the microphone on his office computer.

Gamble's forces lure Sidney to an isolated Maine resort by playing a recording of Amy's voice, making her believe they have kidnapped her daughter. Inside, Sidney confirms they do not have Amy. Gamble reveals he blackmailed Lieberman and ordered the plane sabotaged when Lieberman's terminal diagnosis emboldened the chairman to go public. Rowe arrives and declares that with CyberCom acquired, he no longer needs Gamble; Rowe confirms his role in the conspiracy and orders Scales to kill both Sidney and Gamble.

Sawyer arrives with Jackson, an FBI tactical team, and state troopers. In the ensuing gun battle, Jackson saves Sawyer by tackling Scales, killing the assassin but sustaining wounds. Gamble kills Rowe before an unidentified shooter kills Gamble and seizes the disk. Sawyer pursues the shooter to a cliff and confronts Hardy, who confesses: Jason brought evidence of Triton's crimes to Hardy, trusting the former FBI agent, but Hardy staged the warehouse exchange to frame Jason and covered up the conspiracy for profit. Hardy admits Jason is dead. Sidney arrives in time to hear the confession before Hardy leaps to his death.

In the aftermath, Sidney buries Jason. Sawyer secures a two-million-dollar government reward for her. On the night before Christmas Eve, he delivers the check and a gift for Amy. Sidney is pregnant with a second child, conceived the morning Jason left. The two share a quiet moment, and Sawyer promises he will always be there for her.