The President's Plane Is Missing

by Robert J Serling

“I doubt if it would do any good,” DeVarian said. “If there was some kind of a plan to plant the senator on Air Force One instead of the President, she’d either be sworn to secrecy or she wouldn’t have been let in on the plot in the first place. As for Jones, with all this arguing I forgot to tell you. He’s already left for Camp David.”

  “He isn’t wasting any time,” Damon observed.

  “Nope. He said he wanted to get it out of the way. Figured there might be too much popping tomorrow.”

  “That might be the understatement of the year. I only hope nobody else is on to what we are.”

  It was just as well for Gunther Damon’s peace of mind and mental equilibrium that he did not know that Vice President Madigan, at this very moment, was phoning the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the pointed question:

  “Do you think it could have been the President’s brother whose body was found on the plane?”

  The FBI chief was the visual antithesis of predecessor J. Edgar Hoover—lean, scholarly-looking with his horn-rimmed glasses, and almost ascetic in appearance. He was soft-spoken to the point of seeming diffident, but his FBI associates knew only too well that Director Paul Reardon’s personality was that of a marshmallow with a steel ball hidden inside.

  The Vice President’s abrupt question took him by surprise, and Reardon was a man who was seldom surprised by anything. His answer was not an answer but a cautious probing.

  “Sir, do you have any particular reason for asking that? Anything you’ve heard that might make you think the unknown body was that of Senator Haines?”

  “Well,” said Madigan a bit petulantly, as if the FBI Director was challenging his common sense, “I’ve been talking to Ruth Haines, the senator’s wife. She hasn’t heard a thing from her husband. She’s a little worried because nobody’s been able to find him. And it got me thinking. I just wondered if you knew or suspected something I haven’t been told.”

  “Did Mrs. Haines call you or vice versa?” Reardon asked.

  “I don’t see where that makes any difference,” Madigan bristled. “As a matter of fact, I called her. I’d like very much to talk to Bert Haines. He might be able to fill in some of these damned gaps. So I called her to ask if she had heard from him yet. She said no, and she sounded quite upset. Quite upset, Mr. Reardon.”

  “I can well understand that, Mr. Vice President,” Reardon said sympathetically. He said nothing else. Madigan was left dangling on what the FBI chief evidently considered the end of the conversation.

  The Vice President became miffed. “Well, how about it, Reardon? I asked you a simple question and I’d appreciate some kind of answer. I’ll ask it again if you can’t understand plain English. Was Bert Haines on Air Force One?”

  “Mr. Vice-President,” Reardon said with firm politeness, “we’ve already talked to Mrs. Haines. She drove her husband to National Airport that night, she put him on a nine o’clock non-stop flight to Boston and she waited until the plane took off.”

  Gunther Damon was at home, having just finished science’s most magnificent contribution to the health and welfare of bachelors who can’t cook—a frozen TV dinner. He had eaten it absent-mindedly, and by tomorrow morning he probably would not even remember what kind of a dinner he had put in the oven. He was one of those men who would not have been unhappy to have somebody invent a pill that could afford complete nourishment and satisfaction of hunger, because generally he considered both cooking and eating an unfair consumption of his valuable time.

  He would admit to certain female friends, those who regarded his penchant for frozen dinners as a subconscious, lonely yearning for matrimony, that such repasts usually had all the culinary appeal of a glass of water. Actually, the TV meals were part of his rather systematic mind, a kind of timing mechanism. In the fifteen minutes it took to preheat the oven, and the subsequent twenty-five minutes for cooking, he knew he could mix and consume his nightly before-dinner quota of three martinis.

  Damon opened the Evening Star to the radio-TV page, looking over the television schedule. It was one of those nights when not a single station had anything of interest, which was almost as annoying as those nights when there were excellent late movies on at least three channels. He wished he had a good book. He considered driving to the drugstore in a nearby shopping center to pick up a paperback, then decided against it because he was anxious to hear from Jones on the Camp David trip. Maybe he’d call Janie. He abandoned this notion. Janie was the last girl he had bedded with and on his part it was a purely sexual relationship, one he could not bear repeating on two successive dates. If it was sex he wanted tonight, it would have to be with a different woman. The hell with it. He was tired, anyway.

  And while he did not want to admit it, he was also bored.

  And lonely.

  Vice President Frederick James Madigan was at home, recounting to Hester the events of the day with what he hoped was appropriate modesty for a man imbued with a new spirit of aggressive confidence.

  “Everyone’s being real helpful,” he assured his wife. “Naturally, it’s a bit difficult because I’m literally only half a President. I wish they’d find out what happened to Haines. I’d like to be either in or out of office, not midway through the door.”

  “The body they found in the plane wreck,” Hester asked, “what are they doing about identifying it?”

  “The FBI is cross-checking the fingerprints, I suppose. But that involves going through millions of files. God knows how long it’ll take to establish his identity—provided his fingerprints are on file.”

  “Most people are, aren’t they?”

  “Well, yes. If they were once in the military, or have had some kind of a security check or a criminal record. That covers most of the population. You know, Hester, I had a hunch it might have been Bert Haines on that plane instead of the President. But the FBI director told me they’re convinced Bert went on that fishing trip.”

  “Did they check the fingerprints on that body? To see if they were Bert’s?”

  “I would assume they did or they wouldn’t have been so positive. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why it’s taken so long to locate Bert.”

  “Maybe he didn’t go on the fishing trip but couldn’t tell Ruth,” Hester said with a sly look.

  “Why on earth would he do that?”

  His wife cluck-clucked in mock exasperation. “Oh, come on now, Fred. If a man wanted to go away for a while and his motives weren’t exactly honorable, what better excuse could he give than a phony fishing trip in a place nobody could find? I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Bert Haines were shacked up somewhere with a floozy under an assumed name.”

  The possibility had never occurred to Madigan, who with all his faults was at least faithful to the marriage vows— perhaps more from fear of Hester than from a moral sense. Actually, he was rather naive about such matters and he was quite shocked that a United States senator could even be suspected of conducting an assignation.

  “I can’t conceive of Bert Haines doing anything like that,” he declared.

  “Why not? Just because he’s a senator? It certainly would explain why nobody can find him in Maine, which isn’t the biggest place in the United States. Fred, I’ll bet he’s even trying to get into Maine incognito so the state police can find him where he was supposed to be in the first place. No wonder he’s still missing. He probably was too ashamed to come back to Washington from where he really was.” The Vice President gravely pondered this interesting conjecture. Come to think of it, he mused, this would explain why Reardon acted so uncooperative on the phone. The FBI probably knew where Bert Haines was—and who he was with, if the President’s brother was indulging in some extramarital monkey business.

  “I’ll leave it to others to follow this line of inquiry,” he told his wife. “I think it’s beneath my dignity. This could be very embarrassing to Ruth. I certainly am not going to call her any more.”

  Which meant that Fred Madigan suspected
his wife had solved the mystery of the missing senator.

  Rod Pitcher was at home, his abused eyes feeling as if there were weights tied to their lids. He also had a monumental headache compounded by chagrin over what he considered Damon’s cavalier treatment of his detective work.

  The news superintendent had reacted to Pitcher’s breathless phone call from the airport with surprising casualness. “Okay, Pitch, nice work. We’re going to sit on it for tonight and I want you to check some more stuff out tomorrow. Be in as early as you can—like no later than eight-thirty. You’ll have to go out to Andrews first thing.”

  Rod was complaining loudly to Nancy. “Three and a half cruddy hours of going through those manifests and shuttle boardings. Then he doesn’t even use the story. I make like Ellery Queen and Damon says they’re gonna sit on it. Nancy, we got any aspirin?”

  She brought him the pills and a glass of water, perching on the arm of his chair while he gulped them down with a grimace and listening to him grumble some more. “I swear, Nance, I’m gonna quit this rat race and get a good job with an airline. Look how late I was for supper tonight, and your pot roast was ruined.”

  “I thought you said it was delicious,” she chided him.

  “It was very good,” Pitcher amended hastily. “But not as good as the first time you cooked me a pot roast. Then it melted in my mouth. Tonight’s was a wee bit overcooked.”

  “You’re fibbing, beloved husband,” she purred. “The pot roast was awful and you know it. Rod, you don’t have to lie about my cooking. When I fix you something and you don’t like it, tell me the truth. That’s the only way I can be a better cook.”

  “You’re a very good cook,” he assured her. “Better than you claimed to be when I was courting you. Anyway, you’re sensational in bed and that’s even more important.”

  “Don’t change the subject. Anyway, I have a slight suspicion you’re more upset about getting home late than about their not using your story. Do you think I’m mad at you?”

  “Are you?”

  She lowered herself into his lap and kissed him very gently, very softly, a fleeting caress that was electric in its unspoken tenderness. “Rod, when we started going together, remember all those times I had to break dates? Like when we were supposed to go to the Aviation Club dinner and I got stuck in Detroit in a blizzard? Or the airline Christmas dance when I was on reserve and had to take a trip out two hours before you were to pick me up? The time you had tickets to that hit play and we had a mechanical delay out of Chicago—so we missed the first act?”

  “Yeh, I remember. I figured the only way a guy could get a stewardess to keep a date was to marry her. So I did. What’s your point?”

  “My point is that you always accepted those broken dates as part of the occupational hazards when you go with a stewardess. You never complained. You never got angry. That’s one reason I fell in love with you. Then came a certain day when American asked you to speak to a stewardess meeting on air safety. You told the girls how important their jobs were, and how proud you’d be to have a daughter grow up to be a stewardess.”

  “So?”

  “So in a way you were telling me in front of everyone I worked with that you were proud of me. That’s the day I decided I was in love with you. Now the shoe’s on the other foot, husband. I’m proud of you. I’m proud I married a newspaperman. Even one who comes home late and gripes about a big exclusive they didn’t use and lies about my cooking just so my feelings won’t be hurt. Don’t be so oversolicitous, Rod. It’s as bad for a marriage as being too inconsiderate. Do you read me?”

  “I read you, Nancy,” he said huskily. “I also love you.”

  “The feeling is mutual. Let’s have an after-dinner brandy, followed by seduction.”

  “Who’s gonna seduce who?”

  “Pour the brandy while I think about it. Did Mr. Damon have anything else to say besides what you told me?” Pitcher pushed his wife off his lap and went over to their small portable bar where he located a bottle of brandy. He poured some into a couple of tumblers and swished the contents around professionally. “Yep, he wants me to go out to Andrews tomorrow morning.”

  “Why, honey?”

  “To check outgoing flights, I guess. Just between us, Nancy, Gunther’s got a notion that the President secretly flew to Moscow on some kind of a screwy peace mission. That the Palm Springs trip was a cover-up.”

  “I guess I’m just a dumb ex-stew, but if a Moscow flight was secret, what does he expect you to find out? They won’t tell you much at Andrews.”

  “Nope. I’ll be looking for clues, mostly. The tower won’t have anything down in black and white, like ‘secret flight to Moscow,’ but it’ll have a list of departing planes and Gunther says I should see if any were long-range transports. I wonder.”

  “Wonder what, Rod?”

  “I wonder,” he said as he handed Nancy one of the brandy glasses, “what Gunther will do if I draw a blank.”

  Malcolm Jones was at home, his burly frame aching with fatigue in every seam and joint. Twice, on the way back from Camp David, he had nearly fallen asleep at the wheel and for the last fifteen miles he had driven with his window down, poking his head out every few minutes to catch the cold, crisp air on his face.

  His wife was vastly displeased at his making the trip when he was so obviously exhausted from the Arizona assignment.

  “You could have gone tomorrow just as well,” she nodded. “Now look at you. You’re an absolute wreck.”

  “Fix me a double scotch on the rocks,” he said wearily. “And do me another favor, Anne—lay off. I’m too tired to argue and, believe me, I went tonight because I knew I’d be just as bushed tomorrow.”

  His wife looked at him and softened to sympathy instantly. After eighteen years of marriage, she sensed that these were symptoms of more than fatigue. He was upset about something and she knew him well enough not to ask him why. Sooner or later he would volunteer what was bugging him if he wanted to. Sometimes he did and sometimes he didn’t. Tonight, she reckoned, he didn’t. She merely went to get him the scotch.

  Jones stretched out on the couch, uncomfortably aware that his mind was racing even as his weary body sagged to a stop. His brain was an engine that persisted in running after the ignition key was turned off. He’d have insomnia tonight, Jones thought, with all his fatigue. He sipped the scotch his wife brought him and stared at the ceiling. “Mai, why don’t you go to bed?”

  “I will. After I make a couple of phone calls.”

  “One’s to the office, I suppose. Do you have to call the office tonight? Won’t it wait until tomorrow?”

  “Only take a minute. Then I’ll go to bed. I promise.”

  “I know you, Mai. They’ll want you to come in tonight and you’ll go.”

  Jones shook his head. “Anne, I wouldn’t go downtown tonight if Kim Novak was waiting for me in a transparent nightgown. But I do have to check in. I told Gunther I would.”

  He lurched to his feet with an effort, went into his den and closed the door. He dialed the IPS number. It rang only once before Bobby Andrews, the early night switchboard operator, chirped brightly, “IPS, Andrews.”

  “This is Mai Jones, Bobby. Has Mr. Damon gone home?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Would you give me his home number? I have it here somewhere but I’m too tired to look it up.”

  “It’s 365-2306, Mr. Jones.”

  “Thanks, Bobby. One more favor. Have you got that card index with all the unlisted numbers handy? The one that has the home phones of government officials. Good. Will you look up Reardon? Paul Reardon. The FBI director.”

  He waited until Andrews found Reardon’s unlisted number and read it to him.

  “Many thanks, Bobby. I’m home if anybody wants me, and if anybody wants me tonight, it had better be damned important. Like the end of the world.”

  He dialed Gunther’s apartment, half hoping that the news superintendent would be out. But Damon answered almost
immediately.

  “Jonesy, Gunther. I’m back from Camp David. It’s dark and it’s dead. No sign of activity.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Damon said. “My Moscow brain storm looks better and better.”

  “Maybe,” Jones said with such curtness that Damon was mildly startled.

  “Anything eating you, Jonesy?”

  “No, Gunther. I didn’t mean to snap. I’m just tired. Guess I’ll hit the sack.”

  “Good idea. See you tomorrow. ’Night.”

  Jones hung up. His stubby fingers beat a tattoo on the battered, wobbly card table that served as his work desk. Not for another five minutes did he dial the second number Andrews had given him.

  The continued failure to find the President’s body and the mystery of the unknown passenger registered on the world’s diplomatic and journalistic seismographs with the impact of a global emotional earthquake.

  The British Prime Minister issued a statement assuring the Acting President of the United States “that the United Kingdom, even as it prays for the safety of President Haines, reaffirms its support for the principles of freedom to which our two great nations are pledged throughout eternity.” Privately, the Prime Minister of Great Britain called Madigan on the transatlantic telephone, asking quietly but firmly, “What the devil’s going on there?”

  The British press asked the same question publicly, suggesting that the apparent disappearance of Jeremy Haines—coming only a few years after the assassination of President Kennedy—indicated that the United States Secret Service must be wallowing in inefficiency.

  Peking Radio reacted as expected. First it said the entire incident, including the plane crash, was “a deliberate plot by the warmonger Haines to lay the blame for a kidnaping hoax on the People’s Republic, so as to give this blood-seeking criminal an excuse to attack China.” One hour later Peking Radio announced solution of the mystery. President Haines, it said, was not dead but in seclusion under heavy guard because he had gone insane from his futile attempts to “restrain the warmongers in the United States Defense Department from unleashing World War III.” The third Peking version topped the first two in scope. Vice President Madigan, said this account, ordered the presidential plane shot down so he could seize power and commit America to war. It described Haines as a martyr.