“Bob is a smart guy and would be able to figure out in a second where this information came from. They have things locked up real tight here and if they know where an open gate is, they will soon close it. We would just as soon remain personna grata with the entire organization. We will be more useful to you and it will be safer for us.
“You must remember that so long as you live we come under the mantle of your protection, but if anything should happen to you, we would be at the mercy of somebody,” added the conspiring nursemaids, less than sanguine about the long-term prospects of their bedridden boss.
“You have assured us that we have nothing to worry about, and we don’t—as long as you are healthy enough to function, but after that what?”
The atmosphere of double-dealing and dangerous intrigue grew more intense just one week later when Hughes discovered that Maheu had secretly slipped back into Nevada, and was hiding out at his country retreat in nearby Mt. Charleston. Far worse, he had used one of the loyal Mormons to deceive Hughes into thinking he was still in obedient exile.
Hughes flew into a jealous rage. Maheu had violated his harem, his polygamous immediate family, and Hughes was even more angered by the seduction than by Maheu’s defiant homecoming.
First he turned on the hapless Mormon.
“Roy,” he wrote, “there is no use of us fencing or manoeuvering about this any longer.
“For Maheu and his people to be evasive with me and cover up for one another is serious enough. But when this practice penetrates into my own, personal, most trusted staff, it is a great deal worse.
“Roy,” he continued, lecturing the faithless aide, “my relationship with you and your group must be on a basis of such complete trust that I do not ever have to pause, consider, reflect, or wonder—not even for a fraction of a second—not ever—and not about anything.
“If I cannot have this kind of ‘Stock Exchange’ trust with my own top echelon inner sanctum, how can I ever hope to have loyalty from more remote executives?”
Next Hughes turned on Maheu. His secret return, his penetration of the palace guard was final proof of his clandestine takeover.
“Re your whereabouts—I dont want to debate this until I get settled at my destination,” wrote Hughes, still frantically plotting his escape, now desperate to move his headquarters out from under Maheu before Maheu could steal the empire out from under him.
“I only hope everybody accords my forthcoming trip the same security and secrecy that was given your movement to Charleston Peak.
“Bob, I dont say you intentionally fail to inform me of things, I just say you have created such a spirit of loyalty to you and your group of people that it simply amounts to an ‘organization-within-an-organization.’
“I perhaps could live with this. You have said you must inspire loyalty to get the job done.
“But when my immediate, personal group of five very most trusted senior executives, men who have been with me for many, many years, who have been granted by me authority to place my signature to commitments involving hundreds of millions of dollars—I say when these men are so fearful of being in the posture of disclosing some scrap of information which might displease you—to the extent that I virtually had to cross-examine Roy and drive him into a corner to bring out the fact that you had returned, I feel this is going too far.
“Nobody wants to be in the unpleasant position of being an informer,” concluded Hughes, who was now constantly hearing whispered tales of Maheu’s treachery from the very Mormons he feared had been seduced, “but the conscious feeling of tension that my close friends and associates feel when the conversation touches on you or anything concerning you, is so evident that I cannot help but be aware of it.”
Now, more than ever, Hughes had to escape Las Vegas. He had to escape Maheu as well.
All this time, while his relationship with Maheu was falling apart and the tensions within his empire growing, Howard Hughes had been making urgent plans to bust out of his penthouse, getting conflicting advice from the rival courtiers and driving all of them crazy with his constant alerts and endless delays.
He was afraid to go, afraid to stay.
Day after day Hughes tried to make good his getaway, but each step was terrifying. For three years he had not left his blacked-out bedroom, had not once even looked out his window, and by now the entire world outside was a dangerous unknown. He could hardly bear to think about the perils, much less actually walk out into them.
Day after day Hughes found one reason after another to put off the trip, but never let the planning or the stand-by alert flag for a minute.
His greatest fear was of being seen. But the billionaire had a plan. He would announce that he had already left, then sneak out sometime later.
“I want to consider very seriously the immediate issuance of a brief statement announcing that I have forthcoming plans which will be announced in due course,” he wrote, “and that in the meantime I have left on a long overdue trip abroad in connection with certain interests I have overseas.”
Maheu was dubious.
“Howard, I am fearful that such a statement would cause your exit without being seen to be an impossibility. I can just visualize a 24 hour coverage of the Desert Inn by reporters, free-lance photographers and what have you. The logistics could be handled much more advantageously if such an announcement were made shortly after you have in fact departed.”
Despite his fears of Maheu, Hughes still depended on the ex-FBI and CIA agent for security, so even as he plotted to escape his protector he continued to rely on his expertise. Still, he would not easily give up his plan.
“It seems to me the go-but-not-be-detected deal would be more difficult to accomplish,” he reasoned, “because if your principal were seen, just for one second, getting out of an automobile, or such-like, the success of the project would be destroyed.
“On the situation we are discussing, nobody sees anybody except for one small group of highly trusted men.”
It was hard to argue against that. As long as Hughes remained in his lair, no outsider would see him. The plan, however, had one serious flaw. It would work only so long as Hughes stayed up in his penthouse.
“I guess a whole new plan is indicated,” he reluctantly conceded, and once more threw himself into the planning.
Each day he made a definite decision to leave the next day, or certainly the day after, but there were so many important details to work out, so many dangers to consider.
“Only one feature of this trip causes me to hold off until Monday,” he informed his Mormons after weeks of delay.
“I want someone to make the trip from the D.I. to the point where the airplane will be parked here, and someone else to make the movement from an airplane to the door of the apartment at the destination, and both take along some kind of an air temperature measuring device, and both men to report maximum temp. encountered during the entire transition process, and duration of any high temperature encountered.
“Also, freedom from insects at destination without using spray.
“Also, same measurement to be made in apartment at destination without our man spending any time therein other than the momentary period in the region just inside the front door necessary to measure temperature and check absence of insects.
“I definitely want to leave no later than Tuesday,” added Hughes, quite confident now that he had scouted ahead for bugs and bad weather, “and prefer Monday in order to have a day of leeway in the event of some unforeseen circumstances.”
But the circumstances he had not foreseen always required more leeway than he had anticipated. And no wonder. The world outside seemed like one vast conspiracy aimed at preventing his getaway.
“Please give this message careful consideration, as I am on the verge of making a decision concerning our departure,” he wrote days later, ready to go but sensing real danger.
“It seems to me the most important issue is the event scheduled for Wednesday. There is goi
ng to be a huge anti-Vietnam affair next week, and if the far left crowd should get wind of the fact I am in transit on this trip at that particular time, they might attempt some kind of public demonstration to protest, due to my symbolic representation of the military-industrial complex, etc.
“It seems to me it would be highly desirable for us to arrive before this affair,” he continued, not at all eager to head smack into a mass of angry demonstrators.
“If we are en route, it could add to the problem should the press learn that I am on the way and where we are going. I can just visualize some bitter publicity by the leftist factions pointing to our destination and suggesting that it is a pleasure trip—which it is not, but I am sure they would use that approach.
“So I want you to please weigh carefully advantages of an earlier arrival,” he concluded, analyzing the calendar like an astrologer looking for the propitious day, “and balance that against the disadvantages of the Friday night departure versus the Sunday night departure, and give me your opinion based on all these conflicting considerations as to which is the better choice, and please describe carefully the various factors which lead you to make such decision.”
When the report came, however, Hughes was not at all happy with the chosen day.
“Have you taken into account the fact that Sunday night is a time when the news gathering people come back to work after the weekend and start searching about for something to fill the Monday newspapers?” he inquired, alert to all hidden dangers.
“I admit the hotel is more crowded over the weekend. However, it is not the public or the crowds who pose a problem for us, it is the press, the columnists, newscasters, publicity men and related people who would be the threat to maintenance of this trip in an unnoticed state.
“One thing is certain, I do not want a situation where the press is going to learn I am en route and descend on the train en masse at the end of the trip and insist on seeing me. This could develop to a point where they might demand to see me and really press the issue.”
Trapped in his penthouse, trying to summon up the courage to make his daring getaway, Hughes could only picture himself trapped in his private railroad car, surrounded by swarming insects, angry antiwar demonstrators and hordes of reporters ready to expose him to the entire hostile world.
And it was hostile. He could see that even from his blacked-out bedroom, watching warily through his TV screen.
“Every news broadcast seems to suggest increasing fear over the risk of prominent Americans being molested while travelling,” he noted with alarm.
“Today, for the first time, reference was made to the potential kidnapping and execution of tourists as well as diplomats.
“I know the easiest thing for you to do is to say to me, ‘Well, lets play it safe and forget the trip.’
“But this is not what I want,” added Hughes, although he made no move to go.
“What I want is the very most careful and dilligent all-out effort to advise me of the extent of the risk and what can be done about it, and all this without discussing it with anyone whomsoever, and I mean this in the very strongest terms.
“The surest way to encourage somebody to dream up some wierd plot like this would be for even the slightest trace of a hint to leak out, suggesting that we have been talking about this or that I might be concerned.”
Hughes was, of course, concerned. Yet even as he sat naked on his unmade bed compiling a catalog of the dangers outside his closed world, he continued just as feverishly to plan his escape from the dangers within.
By now he had a vast array of getaway vehicles on stand-by. Chartered jet planes under special guard at remote airfields. Private railroad cars pulling in to obscure junctions. Yachts being appraised at distant ports. Mobile homes being outfitted for cross-country travel. Whole fleets of unmarked cars and limousines and customized vans waiting for his “go” signal.
Train schedules and flight-condition reports, weather reports and road maps littered his bedroom.
And his loyal Mormons stood on alert, packed to go ever since Hughes first decided to make his escape.
But the billionaire would not, could not budge.
August 1970. Howard Hughes lay sprawled on his bed watching the eleven-o’clock news when the utter and complete desperation of his sorry situation suddenly crystallized on the TV screen. Hit him as it never had before.
Almost a year had passed since Hughes first planned his big getaway, month after month of frantic stop-and-go preparations, but at last he was actually ready to escape Nevada and set off for paradise—Paradise Island, in the Bahamas.
Not one, but two entire floors in two different hotels were reserved, sealed, under guard, and awaiting his arrival. Hughes was, in fact, about to close a deal to buy the whole enchanted island.
But now, late on the evening of Friday, August 7, right there on his television, came the shocking news. Nerve gas! Sixty-six tons of lethal nerve gas, one-ninth of the Pentagon’s entire poisonous stockpile, 12,500 decomposing old M-55 rockets encased in concrete “coffins,” all being loaded onto trains at army depots in Kentucky and Alabama, hoisted by derricks into open freight cars guarded by soldiers wearing gas masks, trains headed for U.S. Navy ships in North Carolina, ships that would carry the thousands of leaking canisters south and dump the entire deadly cargo into the Atlantic Ocean, sink it all right off the coast of the Bahamas—just 150 miles from Paradise Island.
Hughes watched the incredible spectacle in stunned horror. What he saw was beyond his worst paranoid vision.
Tons of GB and VX gas—the same gas that had killed the sheep!—gas so lethal that a few pounds could kill thousands in minutes, gas so deadly that one-ten-thousandth of an ounce could destroy the central nervous system, simply dissolve the enzymes that transmit nerve impulses, leave a man twitching horribly and choking for air until he just stopped breathing and died, all that gas was right now headed straight for his secret safe haven.
The one place fit for his exile was about to be irrevocably poisoned by another invisible plague. A plague fully as terrifying as atomic radiation, indeed somehow even more insidious, more threatening to a man obsessed with the purity of fluids.
Hughes grabbed his bedside legal pad and scrawled an urgent allpoints bulletin to all his key aides and executives.
“Bob—
“Chester—
“Roy—
“George—
“John—
“& Bill Gay in Los Angeles
“I want this to be an all, all out effort beyond anything we have ever mounted before on anything, and putting aside all considerations of expense,” he wrote, mobilizing his Mormons and their leader, Bill Gay, calling in his chief counsel, Chester Davis, no longer willing to rely on Maheu alone, Maheu who had failed him on the bomb.
“I want you to hire one of those Washington or N.Y. public relations firms that specializes in single difficult emergency political problems such as this, …” Hughes continued, mapping out his antigas campaign.
“I want every available avenue of effort to be pursued, but I think the most effective is to persuade the Bahamian Govt. to lodge a really strong demand.
“I know they have already complained, but not to any-where near the extent that can be done.
“If we have even 1/10th the amount of influence with the Bahamian Govt. that you have assured me we have, then a really strong new complaint can be lodged and somehow a way must be found to publicize this to the high heavens.
“I assure you that if hundreds of TV stations all over the world, starting right now during the weekend can be induced to start in ballyhooing this issue and playing up the black vs. white aspect of it, I think there is a real chance of success.
“Nixon, with his well-publicized attitude toward the black race, is a natural target for this kind of a campaign,” he continued, zeroing in on his unlikely nemesis, the ingrate he had so generously supported all these years, the man he had chosen to be president.
&nb
sp; Nixon was calling down strikes on all his positions. Bombing him in Nevada. Gassing him in the Bahamas. Forcing him out of his kingdom. Now cutting off his escape route. It was time to strike back.
“I can just see a cartoon of the Bahama Islands with a carricature of a thick-lipped black boy, of the typical Calypso-singing variety, and Mr. Nixon descending on him with his bulging container of nerve-gas,” wrote Hughes, relishing his counterattack on the treacherous commander in chief.
“I am positive Nixon will be more responsive to a plea from another government, particularly a negro government than he ever would be to pressures from within.
“I beg you to move like lightning on this. I am sure you agree that the most difficult problem we face is time.”
Those trains had to be stopped.
Rather than launch a covert operation against the president, Maheu tried to reach Nixon through the regular channels, using the established Danner-Rebozo connection.
Just a month earlier Danner had visited Rebozo at the western White House in San Clemente and there delivered to him another $50,000, the second installment of the promised $100,000 from Hughes to Nixon. It was over the Fourth of July weekend that the two had last met, sorcerer’s apprentices still acting under an old spell. Hughes had soured on Nixon long before, but Maheu was counting on Rebozo to arrange a settlement with TWA, a coup that might save Hughes a large chunk of the default judgment and get Maheu back in the billionaire’s good graces.
So, on July 3, 1970, Danner had gathered up another wad of hundred-dollar bills from one of Hughes’s Las Vegas casinos, stuffed them into a manila envelope, and handed the secret cash to Rebozo in the Cuban’s guest cottage at Nixon’s California home. Rebozo, as he had done before, slid the money out of the envelope, laid the bundles on his bed, and counted them. Ten bundles, each bound in a Las Vegas bank wrapper, $50,000 in all. Rebozo put the cash in his handbag, then took Danner on a tour of the estate, strolled with him around the private golf course, and finally dropped in on the president at his office.
Citizen Hughes Page 41
