The President's Plane Is Missing

by Robert J Serling

  The President’s voice turned hoarse for the first time, the Cabinet could see his utter weariness, the lines of fatigue etched into his face as sharply as rivulets from a heavy rain can cut into soft soil.

  “You couldn’t have predicted the crash, Mr. President,” Ed Silverman said softly. “Only God is omniscient.”

  “No,” replied Jeremy Haines, “but that doesn’t ease the guilt. I remember that when a handful of us began to plan the fake trip it almost seemed like a game to me. As if I were an author working out the plot of a complicated detective story, figuring out all the potential loopholes and weaknesses. Only I’m afraid the plot got away from me. I have much to answer for, to Judi Nance’s parents, to Colonel Henderson’s wife, to everyone who suffered a loss because of what seemed like such a clever little scheme.”

  The President rose. One by one, the members of the Cabinet stepped up to shake his hand. Madigan was the last and Haines said, “Stay behind a minute, Fred. I want to talk to you alone.” The room emptied except for the man who was President of the United States and the man who thought he wanted to be.

  “Tell me something, Fred,” said Jeremy Haines. “Would you have pushed that button if I hadn’t showed up?”

  “I don’t know,” Madigan admitted. “Maybe, but I think I would have lost my nerve. I think the loneliness of the presidency would have overwhelmed me, caught up with me, at the last second. I was mad at Sharkey. I was mad at you. I actually thought I was President and I had this . . . this almost desperate desire to do something on my own.”

  “I understand,” Haines said. “I let you down, Fred. Please forgive me for not trusting you. It will never happen again. You know, I’ve learned a lesson. From that crash. Our plan was perfect, but it didn’t take into consideration the unexpected. It made no allowances for the unpredictable. And, in effect, that’s been my attitude toward you. I haven’t let you be a good Vice President because I somehow refused to admit the possibility that you might really have to replace me. I’ve paid only lip service to training you, preparing you for the presidency. Any mistakes you’ve made these past few days were my mistakes.”

  “Mr. President,” said Frederick J. Madigan, “only a great man would have said what you just did. Now, would you tell me something?”

  Haines nodded.

  “Was it all worthwhile? The sixteen deaths on the plane? The chance you took, leaving the nation in the hands of . . . me?”

  Jeremy Haines looked through the Vice President rather than at him, his gray eyes burning as if with fever.

  “Let me put it this way. If I were blessed with omniscience and could have foreseen the crash as an inevitable part of the tapestry we had to weave, I still would have dispatched Air Force One even to its certain fate. Not just as the President, but as the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces would send a bomber on a vital suicide mission. The stakes were that high.”

  Jeremy Haines put his hand on the Vice President’s shoulder. “And then, my friend, having done this, I would have sat in that oval room and cursed the day I ran for the presidency.”

  Deep in the bowels of the Pentagon a three-man communications team manned the two duplicate teletypes that formed the U.S. end of the Washington-Moscow hot line. A sergeant sat in front of each machine and behind them stood a major in civilian clothes, a Russian-language specialist.

  “I wish to hell it would come,” said one sergeant. “The suspense is murder.”

  “It’ll come,” the interpreter assured him. “A watched pot never boils or something like that.”

  “Is there a Russian equivalent for that little slogan?” asked the sergeant. “I’d rather—Jesus, here it is!” The machine in front of him clattered into life. So did the adjoining backup printer. The three men watched the Russian words march onto the teletypes. The interpreter looked at his watch and swore.

  “Just the hourly test run,” he said. “I think it’s a quote from Gogol.”

  “I’ll acknowledge and transmit our test,” the sergeant sighed. He punched a few words in English, the message going onto a piece of half-inch tape in the form of a perforated code. He inserted the tape into a transmitter and shoved the sending key into the up position. The tape moved through the transmitter at its fixed rate of sixty-six words a minute.

  The three men relaxed. The teletypes chattered again.

  “Return acknowledgment,” murmured the second sergeant.

  “Yes,” said the interpreter. “I imagine—Wait a minute, that’s not a test confirmation. It’s . . . it says . . . ‘for the president.’ . . . This is it!”

  The printer keyboard danced, goaded by impulses sent over 4823 miles of cable at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Three minutes later the transmission ceased and the machines fell silent as if exhausted from their quick surge of exertion. The major tore the paper from the printer. “It’ll take me about five minutes to translate it,” he said. “One of you guys get the White House on the horn. Tell ’em the Kremlin’s coming in loud and clear!”

  It was much later that night when Gunther Damon and Stan DeVarian found time to relax in the latter’s office. They were relishing that first sip of hot, steaming coffee and for once Damon forgot to libel the coffee vending machine.

  “Quite a day,” he ventured.

  “You said it,” DeVarian agreed. “I thought our output looked pretty good, Gunther. You satisfied?”

  “Reasonably. We logged a minute ahead of AP on the original break—Haines being alive. Even with UPI, according to New York. I don’t know how we did on his press conference but I couldn’t fault Al and Chris. They did a helluva job. We could have used Jonesy, dammit.”

  “I know. I think tomorrow I’ll run out to his house and talk to him. A few reassuring words will get him straightened out. Funny how he went all to pieces. You suppose he got a guilty conscience—that he really did lie to us?”

  “Yep. The night he went to Camp David, it must have been crawling with security. I’ll bet he was stopped five miles away—the guards probably were told to use some excuse like secret construction work in the area, but Jonesy would have seen through that. Well, it doesn’t make much difference now. God, how close we came to busting it wide open. I’ll always wonder what we would have done if he had told us something was cooking at Camp David.”

  “I imagine,” DeVarian said, “that’s what hit Jonesy. He probably started wondering too. He must have had one hell of a tug of war tearing him apart—loyalty to us or loyalty to Haines when he suspected the President had to be alive. And maybe it’s just as well we didn’t bust it wide open, Gunther. A lot of history was made tonight. History that’ll let all of us sleep better. I know I will. And none of us would have slept soundly if IPS had been the instrument for a premature disclosure that might have screwed up the works.”

  “We wouldn’t have screwed up anything,” Damon insisted. “We didn’t have enough of the answers to cause any damage.”

  “Speaking of answers,” DeVarian remarked, sidestepping a renewed debate, “there are a few I still don’t have. For example, how the hell did Haines pull that impostor business on so many persons who had to have close contact with him that night? The security guards on the plane. The stewards. The helicopter pilots who flew him to Andrews.”

  “I guess you didn’t read all the Q and A we carried tonight,” Damon said. “A lot of the President’s explanations got left out of the main lead. It seems Haines counted on both night and the power of suggestion. Those who knew someone was posing as him didn’t matter. Those who didn’t never expected the deception and it was easy for a man resembling the President to pass himself off. In other words, everyone expected to see Haines and so they assumed they did. That cousin was instructed to keep his hat over his eyes and his head down, from the time he boarded the helicopter until he was in the stateroom on Air Force One. Presumably he disappeared into the private quarters the moment he climbed aboard, just as he was ordered. Sabath, the secretary and the doctor were the only on
es allowed to enter the compartment during the flight.”

  “And the intended arrival in Palm Springs also was to be at night,” DeVarian observed. “But Haines was taking a hell of a lot of chances. How about that security guard on the helicopter? He must have been right on top of the impostor.”

  “Haines was asked that at the press conference,” Damon explained. “The security guard wasn’t a real Army man. They put a sergeant’s uniform on a Secret Service agent. The Secret Service, naturally, was in on the whole affair.”

  “What about the deception at the other end? In Palm Springs? How was Haines going to work that if the plane had arrived like it was supposed to?”

  “The President explained all that too. He personally told Tom Kendricks the vacation trip was a blind, although he didn’t reveal why. Kendricks agreed to co-operate without asking a single question. The cousin was to stay at his residence until further notice. His servants were replaced by Secret Servicemen, which was logical because that’s a normal security precaution for a presidential visit to a private residence. When the plane went down and all the mystery developed, Kendricks was one puzzled citizen. Haines was afraid he’d talk, so he had Jim Sharkey phone Kendricks and warn him not to say a damned word to anyone. Kendricks must have guessed that the President was alive, but he kept his mouth shut.”

  A copy boy came in and tossed a copy of the first edition of the Washington Post on DeVarian’s desk. The two men glanced at the black headlines.

  HAINES ALIVE

  ANNOUNCES SECRET U.S.-RUSSIAN PEACE PACT

  AND REVEALS FULL STORY

  BEHIND DISAPPEARANCE MYSTERY

  “I’d better clean up some work,” Damon said. “Tell Jonesy hello for me.”

  “Sure.”

  The news superintendent walked into the newsroom, in time to see Lynx Grimes disappearing out the bureau door on the arm of a young man with peg trousers and hair that badly needed cutting. She was chattering away with happy, aimless animation and Damon heard her say, “Let’s go over to the Willard and get a drink. I heard my boss say they’ve got a nice quiet cocktail lounge.”

  Damon turned morosely toward the desk of overnight editor Frank Jackson.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi, Gunther.”

  “Frank, I think we could use a separate piece on the mystery. All the explanations and cover-up gimmicks that Haines concocted, combined in one package. Maybe we could tell it in the style of the last chapter of a murder mystery. Sort of tying up the loose ends.”

  “Good idea. I was figuring on a main lead, with sidebars on the pact itself and the diplomatic angles. New York’s putting together a piece on world reaction. Any other suggestions?”

  Damon did not answer. All of a sudden, he felt old and tired.

  “Anything else, Gunther?” Jackson repeated.

  Gunther Damon shook the cobwebs of self-pity out of his soul, as a wet dog rids himself of water. “Yeh. Be sure and get the President’s addressing the nation on radio and TV tomorrow night up high in the main lead. No later than the third or fourth paragraph, I’d say. And, Frank, we should have a sidebar on . . .”

  EPILOGUE . . .

  Frederick James Madigan noted that the bevy of Secret Service agents in front of his apartment had dwindled to the usual two.

  He inserted his key into the door. “Hester?” he called as he entered.

  His wife came out from their bedroom and gave him a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. He tossed the final edition of the Post on the coffee table and slumped into his favorite lounging chair. Hester Madigan picked up the paper and read the eight-column headlines.

  She pursed her full lips in displeasure. “The son of a bitch, keeping you in the dark the way he did.”

  “He apologized to me, Hester,” Madigan said wistfully. “He told me personally it was the hardest decision of his life, but that he felt the country was in good hands while the negotiations were going on. Did you see me on television, at the press conference?”

  “Yes, I saw you. You looked very good. He should have told you, Fred. It wasn’t fair.”

  “Well, yes, but I want you to see his statement praising me. It’s on page one. Right there, below the fold.”

  She gave the story a cursory examination and looked down at her husband. “He’s still a bastard. How can you sit there and condone what he did to you? Conjuring up a wild plot like that and not telling the Vice President about it! It’s humiliating, Fred. How does he think you must feel?”

  Madigan expelled a sigh. “I know how I feel. I’m kind of glad it’s all over. Let me tell you something, Hester. He’s got a lousy job.”

  Malcolm Jones was feeling better. He had called DeVarian to get a certain confession out of his system and the bureau chiefs sympathetic response seemed to dissolve the bowling ball that had been sitting in his guts. Then came a call from the White House. After he finished talking, he came into the living room with the first smile he had worn in five days.

  “Who was it?” his wife asked.

  “It was the President,” he said, trying to keep the pride out of his voice. “He wanted-to thank me for something. I’ll tell you about it later when I feel more like talking. Meanwhile, Anne, he did say something I’d better tell you right now. He also called to offer me the job of assistant press secretary. He promoted Newt Spellman to the top spot.”

  “Oh, Mai—” she started to enthuse but stopped when Jones shook his head.

  “I had to say no, Anne. It would smack too much of a pay-off.”

  She did not comprehend his words, but she still could fall back on the inevitable plea of an IPS wife. “You’d get some regular hours for a change.”

  Jones laughed. “Regular hours, working for the President of the United States? Don’t kid yourself. You’d see less of me than you do now. I wouldn’t take Spellman’s job, for that matter. I guess I’ll always be a newspaperman, Anne. You’re stuck with a reporter for the rest of your life because that’s what I want to be stuck with for the rest of my life.”

  She fired one more shot before surrendering. “It would only last as long as he was in office. Then who knows? Look at the wonderful positions press secretaries have gotten when they left the White House. Big salaries and . . .”

  Malcolm Jones put his hand on her graying hair. “Covering number one man is all I ever want, Anne. Try to understand that.”

  Mrs. Marcus Henderson read for the fifth time the letter bearing the presidential seal, delivered by a special White House messenger that same night.

  . . . I know it offers you little solace that I have awarded Colonel Henderson the Distinguished Service Medal as a most inadequate token of my gratitude. No medal can compensate for the loss you feel. I can only pray that you, his widow, will someday put aside your grief and come to the realization that he gave his life to the cause of peace, as surely as any soldier on a battlefield. The events of the past few weeks, I believe, will make this world a brighter one for all children, including your own, and your husband has earned the humble thanks of his President for the role he played in this achievement. Please accept my sincerest personal condolences, and may God grant you comforting strength in this hour of bereavement.

  Jeremy Haines

  She laid the letter down. As she stared with tear-filled but unblinking eyes at a picture of Marcus Henderson on the fireplace mantel, she felt the stirrings of the new life within her.

  Rod Pitcher sat in front of his portable typewriter in the unused bedroom that passed as a den. He was not looking at it. He was glaring at a mortal enemy, inanimate but evil in its very silence.

  Ostensibly, he was working on his novel, having recovered from the ignominious experience earlier that night when Damon had told him he wasn’t needed on the Haines story. Now his usually fertile brain had dwindled to a trickle of halfhearted starts on sentences which he quickly X’d out. The absence of literary noise finally prompted Nancy to call out from the kitchen. “Having trouble, Rod?”

  “I can�
��t seem to get going,” he complained. “Come in here and give me a kiss. Maybe it’ll inspire me.”

  She complied but, while the kiss may have been adoring, it definitely did not achieve the status of inspiration. Pitcher patted her cheek, but glumly ripped the paper from the machine and wadded it into a ball.

  “It’s no use,” he said. “Writing a novel about a Washington correspondent uncovering graft in the Senate has all the dramatic impact of a wet dishrag. All I can think of is the story I just helped cover.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” she said softly.

  “Maybe I should try a different plot. Something with an airline background.”

  “That would be nice. Then I could help you with the stewardess parts.”

  “Yeh. Hey, Nancy, I could have this airline captain accused of pilot error—that reminds me, I’d better remind Chet Colin tomorrow to goose the Air Force on when that final accident report is due.”

  “You can’t stop thinking about it, can you?”

  Rod Pitcher threw the wadded paper into his wastebasket “No, I can’t. It’s hard to stop thinking about any crash, Nancy. When you love airplanes, something dies inside of you when a bird goes down. You don’t even have to know the pilot. Fraternity of the air, I suppose you’d call it. I keep thinking about Marcus Henderson. Wondering what was going through his mind when he knew his elevators were gone and he couldn’t pull out of that dive. Wondering if his last thoughts were of the President he assumed was on board, or his own family. Or maybe himself and that he was going to die. Jesus, what a way to go. Straight down to oblivion in a couple of minutes.”

  “Straight down to heaven,” she said gently. “Or is that too corny?”

  “No, it’s not corny. Straight down to heaven. That would make a hell of a title for some book.”

  “Maybe the one you’re going to write,” said Nancy Pitcher.

  The wind whistled through the lonely Arizona gorge, plucking with unseen fingers at the few pieces of metal left unclaimed in the muck. Occasionally a strong gust rattled the aluminum and the metallic sound slapped against the canyon walls.