“He could have gone off his rocker,” DeVarian said. “Taken off for Russia on his own—a kind of Rudolf Hess flight, a peace mission dreamed up by a sick mind.”
“No,” Jones objected again. “If you’re going to use the Hess analogy, that was strictly a one-man affair, a solo flight. The President of the United States couldn’t pull anything like that off all by himself. He’d have to involve at least a certain number of persons. A pretty large chunk of the Air Force, for one thing. He’d have to clear that flight through God knows how many Air Defense Commands. And do you think he’d leave someone like General Coston totally in the dark?”
“I would think,” Damon said slowly, “that the President of the United States could pull off any damned thing he wanted to, and in complete secrecy if the stakes were high enough.”
“Granted,” the White House reporter said. “But only up to a point. And the point where your logic falls apart is that plane crash. Assuming the existence of a secret flight to Moscow or someplace, by now he would have come forward and disclosed the whole thing. What stakes would be high enough to throw the whole world into a turmoil?”
The five men in DeVarian’s tiny office fell silent, shuffling the mental cards of arguments and reasoning.
“There’s one more possibility,” DeVarian said finally. “Farfetched, I’ll admit, but nothing seems too farfetched in this situation. Suppose he did get the same urge that prompted Hess to fly off to England, a half-baked peace mission. Only he didn’t bother to tell the Russians about it first. So he has a jet take him over to the Soviet Union and is shot down. It stands to reason the Russians wouldn’t be bragging about killing the President, even if it was justifiable.”
“You’re still on the insanity kick,” Jones said. “He’d have to be out of his mind to invade Soviet airspace without any warning.”
“Not insanity as such, Jonesy,” DeVarian said. “More of a fixation like Hess had—the notion he could end the war by the sheer drama of flying to England unannounced. Haines could have had the same fixation, a sudden, dramatic peace mission would end the cold war just as Hess thought his flight would bring England and Germany together. If the Russians shot Haines down, that would explain why he hasn’t revealed his whereabouts—he could be dead. And Moscow had a perfect out. The plane crashed in Arizona, a coincidence that took the Soviets off an embarrassing hook.”
“I’ll agree with one aspect of your hypothesis,” Jones said.
“What’s that?”
“Haines is dead. How or why—I can’t even guess. But I think he’s dead. Or he would have unbuttoned this whole rotten mess by now. I wish to God there could have been some mistake on that body identification. That, regardless of fingerprints and all that crud, it was Haines they found in that wreckage. And remember, they still might find his body, and the only mystery you’d have left is the identity of the extra passenger.”
The White House reporter slumped wearily in his seat. Damon knew Jones must be exhausted, emotionally as well as physically. “Jonesy, why don’t you go home and get some sleep? That crash site must have been pretty hard to take.”
“Hard doesn’t describe it. It wouldn’t have been so bad for Pitch, I imagine. He’s seen what a busted-up airplane looks like. Me, I didn’t believe what I saw. And not just the wreckage and bodies. The little things. Like the match-book covers. God, how many times have I swiped those matchbooks off Air Force One so I could give them to friends as souvenirs? Or that shoe I found. The laces were still tied. And it was an elevated shoe. I remember when I picked it up, I was thinking about the frailty of human vanity. Somebody on that plane must have been self-conscious about being short and a hell of a lot of good it— Gunther, what’s the matter?”
Damon’s mouth was open, almost gaping like an impaled fish.
“What kind of a shoe did you say you found?” he breathed.
“An elevated shoe. It was built up to give added height. Why the—”
The White House reporter stopped, what he was about to say suddenly choked off by an alarm bell reverberating in his brain. “Jesus, an elevated shoe,” he muttered.
“Yeh,” said Damon. “An elevated shoe. Only it didn’t belong to anybody with an inferiority complex about height. There was an impostor on that plane. Wearing shoes to make him as tall as Jeremy Haines.”
Typically, it was DeVarian who took the opposite tack— that of trying to break down the symmetrical logic of the clue mainly because it was almost too good to be true.
“Let’s not jump at conclusions,” he said cautiously, yet unable to keep the eagerness out of his voice. “There were sixteen persons on the plane. Eliminating the woman secretary, that leaves fifteen who might have worn elevateds. We can’t assume that shoe belonged to an impostor.”
“No, we can’t,” Damon countered, “but it’s a pretty good place to start. Maybe Colin here, could ferret out how tall all those crew members were. In that way we might find out if anyone outside the impostor might have been wearing built-up shoes. I’m sure it couldn’t have been Admiral Philips—he was about six two. Ditto Phil Sabath. I’ve known Phil for years. He was almost a six-footer— come to think of it, I’ve been swimming with him, and in his bare feet he was three or four inches taller than I. That leaves two security guards, the two stewards and the three Secret Service agents. I doubt if the guards or stewards would be wearing uplifts—they’d probably have GI shoes on their feet and I never heard of an elevated being standard GI equipment. The agents are another matter. I suppose a Secret Serviceman could have vanity like anyone else. We could find out the height requirements for agents—that might eliminate them.”
Jones arose with the important air of a fictitious detective about to unveil the name of the murderer. “I don’t think we have to check any of this out.”
“Why not?” asked Damon.
“Because I think I know who the impostor was.”
“Okay,” Damon said. “Let us in on it.”
“Think back. Gunther, you asked Pitch about the appearance of the man he thought was the President the night the plane took off. Think, now. Pitch said he not only looked like Haines but he walked like him. Doesn’t that ring any bells?”
Damon shook his head but DeVarian whistled.
“Senator Haines,” the bureau chief said quietly. “The President’s brother. He walks exactly like Haines. Those short, quick steps.”
“Wait a minute,” Pitcher said. “I’ve seen the senator. He’s got white hair. Haines had gray hair. The guy who boarded that plane had gray hair. Besides, the senator’s in Maine fishing. He went to Boston the night of the crash.”
“Yeh,” Damon said. “But nobody’s heard from him and nobody can find him. The hair would be easy to fix—just dye it gray. Pitch, can you find out from your airline buddies if Bert Haines actually flew to Boston?”
“Maybe, if he took an airline plane. I can check the passenger manifests. Let’s see—he’d fly Eastern, American or Northeast. I’ll do it first thing in the morning.”
“You’ll do it right now,” Damon ordered. “Boy, I think we’re on to something. Bert Haines is at least two inches shorter than the President. But put elevated shoes on him, dye his hair, give him that homburg Jeremy Haines always wears, add the similarity of their walk, and you’ve got the answer. At night, from where Pitch and the other reporters were standing, you couldn’t tell them apart. Pitch, get going.”
Jones was thoughtful as he watched the aviation editor go out the door of DeVarian’s office. “Even if we find out it was Bert Haines impersonating the President, we’re still a long way from the truth.”
“Sure,” Damon agreed, “but we’ve got our foot in the door.”
“I wonder if we should be walking in,” the White House reporter said in a low voice.
“And what does that crack mean?” Damon demanded. “Meaning we may be sticking our journalistic noses into something bigger than we can even imagine. Something maybe we shouldn’t know about. That
’s what bothers me. If we find out that the senator never went to Maine, it’s a copper-riveted cinch he was posing as the President. So the next question is, what in God’s name prompted Jeremy Haines to arrange the switch?”
“Followed by another question,” DeVarian said. “If Jeremy Haines deliberately planned this whole mess, why is he still hiding? He must know his brother is dead.”
“More than that,” Damon said “He sent his own brother to his death. Along with Phil Sabath and everyone else on that plane. Accidentally, if we buy Pitch’s explanation of the crash. But that doesn’t mean they’re less dead. And if Jeremy Haines is alive, I hope he has a motive strong enough to justify what’s happened. Maybe you’re right, Stan. Maybe he’s just nuts.”
“It’s not inconceivable. The presidency is the loneliest job in the world. A man might crack wide open, particularly at this time. Wondering how to avoid World War III without giving up the country’s underwear.”
“If you’re through with me, I’ll get back to my many-sided mausoleum,” Colin announced. “You still want me to check on those crew members?”
Damon pondered this for a moment. “No, let’s wait and see what Pitch comes up with. I’ll be in touch with you.” After Jones and Colin left, DeVarian lit his ninth cigarette of the meeting and blew smoke rings toward the ceiling. “You know, Gunther, Jonesy said something which we should consider.”
“Jonesy said a lot. What in particular prompts this outburst of precaution?”
“That we could be sticking our noses into something too big for IPS or any wire service to handle. The situation, to put it mildly, is somewhat touchy.”
“I know that, Stan. If it makes you feel any better, I promise to consult with you before we put anything out. But we might as well understand one thing right now. If Pitcher tells me Bertrand Haines wasn’t on any flight to Boston, I’m going to run with it—to all twelve hundred and fifty-eight IPS clients.”
It was one of Rod Pitcher’s virtues as an aviation specialist that his field of acquaintances stretched far beyond airline public relations men. He also knew numerous pilots, stewardesses, crew schedulers, ramp personnel, salesmen, ticket agents, dispatchers and reservations clerks—often by their first names. He had cultivated many friendships among the industry’s rank and file. He could walk into any airline operations office at National Airport, for example, and be greeted more like a colleague than a newspaperman.
Thus it was relatively easy for him to obtain the passenger manifests in question. At American, he merely phoned an assistant district traffic manager and found out where the manifests were kept.
“Just want to look through them for one particular night,” he explained. “Checking to see if somebody I know was aboard any flights to Boston. Thanks, Jimmy. No, I won’t have to take them out of the office. I’ll look at them there.”
American’s manifests drew a blank. No sign of a “B. Haines” anywhere. He had a further hunch and went up to the airline’s Admiral’s Club at National Airport where he asked to see the registrations for that never-to-be-forgotten night. He figured that, being a United States senator, Haines probably belonged to this private club and might have stopped in for a drink before taking off. He did not ask the receptionist at the club if Haines was, indeed, a member because he did not want to tip his hand. But, again, he found no sign that the senator had visited the club on this occasion.
At Eastern the search was somewhat complicated by sheer numerics. Pitcher called on a passenger service representative he knew at the airport, again explaining in a casual, “it really isn’t very important” tone that he just wanted to check the names of passengers boarding planes to Boston for this one day, up through the final scheduled flight.
“I’ll show you where the manifests are located, Pitch,” the PSR informed him, “provided they haven’t been sent to our accounting office in New York. But there’ll be quite a few names. We’ve got seven shuttle flights to Boston, plus another five regular flights.”
“Do you have anything out of Dulles for Boston? Or Friendship Airport? Or would everything leave from National?”
“They all depart National. Here’s the office.”
Fortunately the manifests hadn’t been transferred to New York yet. The PSR introduced Pitcher to the traffic clerk on duty and left him with a sheaf of manifests for the regular flights.
“I’ll need the shuttle manifests too,” Pitcher said.
“There aren’t any manifests for the shuttles,” the clerk said. “But I can let you see the individual boarding cards. Maybe you should go through those first. There are a helluva lot of them.”
The reporter examined approximately five hundred boarding cards without success. Then he turned to the manifest sheets. His eyes were tired and he was worried that he might skip over “B. Haines” even if he saw the letters. But he was lucky as well as persevering. On the fifth and final manifest, marked “Flight 518, DCA-BOS, Scheduled Departure 9 P.M.,” he found his B. Haines. Next to the name, in a small space under a column labeled Check-In, were the letters “N.S.”
No show.
With difficulty, Pitcher suppressed his excitement. “I hate to bother you, but is 518 the last flight to Boston?”
“Last one,” the clerk replied. “Nothing more until eight the next morning.”
“I think I’ve found what I was looking for,” Pitcher said.
CHAPTER NINE
Only Stan DeVarian’s firm conservatism blocked Damon’s intentions of breaking the Senator Haines story that Thursday night after Pitcher’s report. The bureau chief and the news superintendent had a knockdown verbal battle before Damon surrendered to his superior’s authority. In a wire service, the chain of command is as inviolate as in an army.
“You’re throwing one hell of a beat into the ash can,” Gunther protested in a last-ditch argumentative flurry.
“We’re not throwing it away. We’re just delaying it. Until we can check out a few more facts. I repeat what I told you at the start of this little donnybrook, Gunther. The brother didn’t have to go to New England on a commercial plane. Pitch should check air taxi services. Haines might have even decided to take a train at the last minute. That could be the reason he didn’t show at the airport. Train service is fast these days—five hours between Washington and Boston on that new Pennsy express. We can find out if he had a parlor car reservation. Let’s keep our shirts on until we’re sure.”
“I’m sure now,” Damon grumbled. “I’ll bet you a dinner at the Press Club this thing’ll pop wide open while we’re doing a reasonable facsimile of the goddamned play-it-safe AP. Hell, I’ll even bet Madigan will announce it at a press conference tomorrow.”
“So the world won’t come to an end. Better we miss on this than look silly if the senator’s found fishing at some Maine lake. Do you want Pitch to keep checking tonight?” Damon thought that over briefly. “No, it’s too late for the night cycle. Besides, he’s bushed. It’ll take him another three or four hours to go through train reservations and air taxi stuff. There must be a half dozen air taxi outfits operating out of here. I’ll put him back to work tomorrow morning.”
DeVarian examined his subordinate with something akin to affection.
“Sore at me, Gunther?” he smiled.
“A little,” Damon admitted. “I think you’re being overly cautious. But what the hell, you’re the boss. I may get drunk tonight—the inevitable sublimation for a frustrated newspaperman.”
DeVarian’s cold blue eyes narrowed. “You may have some more frustration in the future, Gunther.”
“Oh?” The one word was more of a challenge than a question.
“Yeh. I may tell you to sit on this a while longer even if Pitch finds out Haines didn’t go to New England on any means of public conveyance.”
“Our little donnybrook, as you phrased it,” Damon snapped, “seems far from over, I take it. Your move, Stan.”
“Don’t blow your blood vessels, my friend. I figure we might d
o some further detective work before we unload. For example, I have a hunch your secret-flight-to-Russia idea might be skirting pretty close to the truth. So I’ll make a bargain with you. If Pitch finds out that some mystery plane left Andrews the same night as Air Force One, and we have this Senator Haines angle well coppered, I’ll let you open fire.”
“Mr. Pitcher is going to be a very busy young man,” Damon said.
“We can put somebody else on the air taxi outfits and the railroad. Pitch’ll do better concentrating at Andrews. You know our aviation editor—he wouldn’t take a train from here to Baltimore. He’d regard it as unpatriotic.”
Damon chuckled, his good humor restored. The more he thought about it, the more that Moscow flight made sense. They had evidence that Senator Haines did not go on a fishing trip. They had indications that it might have been the senator aboard the presidential aircraft. If they could establish the existence of a mystery departure from Andrews, it all added up to justification for a story even under DeVarian’s boundary lines of caution. The departure angle was nebulous, admittedly, because Pitcher could never get confirmation that the President was aboard any departing flight. IPS would have to speculate that it could have involved the President on some secret mission. But even the mere speculation might force some official admissions—or maybe some interesting “no comments” which in themselves would add credence to the speculation. Of course there might be flat denials but that was the calculated risk any newspaperman took with a story based partially on circumstantial evidence and raising intriguing possibilities instead of presenting only hard-nosed facts. And now he had DeVarian’s promise to let him break it.
“You’ve got a deal,” he said. “And believe me, brother DeVarian, I’m gonna hold you to it. Tomorrow ought to be one hell of a day. Pitch’ll be working on the plane angle and Jonesy can give us the poop on Camp David. Maybe we should have some one talk to Senator Haines’s wife. It stands to reason she’d know if her husband actually went fishing.”
The President's Plane Is Missing Page 17
