Hadley nodded. "This place is a monument to her, you know. She built it because she was tired of you and me running around playing with airplanes. She wanted it to be just big enough for two families—with lots of babies."
"Well, even Clarice would have enough babies to go around tonight."
"How's little Ulrich getting along with your kids?"
"He's a nice boy, shy, after all he's been through. Lyra watches over him like a tigress—I think she's a little too protective."
"Patty still crazy about Lyra?"
"If she liked a man as much, I'd shoot the bastard. I think they get along so well because they both know how miserable it is to be married to a pilot."
Roget turned and eyed him quizzically. "I hear what you're saying, but I can tell you're not too happy. What's the matter?"
"I'll be honest with you, Hadley. I don't like having people living in our side of the house. You and Clarice were always over in your own wing, but Lyra and Ulrich are just down the hall. I can't walk around in my underwear, and Lyra is so nervous that I'm afraid I'm scaring her."
"Did you tell Patty this?"
"She just laughed at me, told me I was gone most of the time, and that it wouldn't be forever."
"Be patient, son. After all Lyra went through—the Nazis, the bombing, losing her husband, everything—she'll need a little time. And Patty's right. The Air Force keeps you on the go most of the time; you're more like a boarder with bedding privileges than a husband."
"Well, that's not all. I think Patty's drinking too much. She's got a glass of wine in her hand all the time. And she's putting on a little weight."
"Aw, Bandy, you're full of it. What the hell is that in your glass, milk? She's just relaxing from her worries." They stood together quietly for a while, then Roget said, "I guess Patty told you that we're starting to lose our ass in the housing business."
Bandfield put his fingers to his lips and pointed—two deer were walking quietly in the shadows at the edge of the old flying field. Then he whispered, "Yeah, cut-throat competition from jerry-built houses. She says we're trying to build quality houses like we built quality airplanes, and we've priced ourselves out of the market. The question is, are you willing for us to fold our tents and get out of the business?"
Roget stood and stretched. Two inches taller than Bandfield, he had the ropy, hard-knit muscles of a man who'd labored all his life. He was letting his white hair grow long again, a sign that he was at last beginning to overcome the melancholy that had engulfed him when he lost Clarice. Once it had been his trademark, one of his few vanities, a great mound of silver that made him look like an old-time prophet. Clarice had always taken care of it for him, shampooing it, only trimming it when absolutely necessary. When she died, he'd had it cut off and buried with her.
It bothered him that for all the years they'd been married, he'd been preoccupied with work; now that she was gone he thought of her constantly, missing her, and grieving that he had not paid more attention to her. The sorrow had changed his nature, too; once he'd been a punster, always ready with a joke, usually a bad one. Now his long rugged face was etched with lines and tinged with sadness.
"Hell, Bandy, I've folded more tents than a tribe of Indians. I never liked building houses, anyway—the damn things don't fly. How long a tour of duty are you going to have to pull with the Air Force this time?"
Bandfield laughed. "Depends. Patty says we've got plenty of money, but I figure I ought to stay in for twenty, anyway, and nail down a pension in case we go bust again."
"Pension, you don't give a goddamn about no pension, you just want to fly the new airplanes. Don't try to bullshit old Hadley."
Bandfield nodded and grinned. It was true—but he couldn't admit it to Patty.
Roget's voice went up an octave. "Your marriage is as weird as mine was—I hope you take better care of Patty than I did of Clarice." They drained their glasses and Roget went on. "Anyway, I've got some ideas about going back into the airplane modification business, and I'm not so sure I can handle it without you."
Bandfield groaned. The only time they'd ever made money on airplanes was during the war, when Patty was running the plant, subcontracting parts for the bigger contractors. Every time they'd try to build airplanes themselves, they'd been squeezed out of the market.
"Don't you groan at me. I've got some good ideas, can't miss."
"Like the Aircar?" Roget had dumped a small fortune into a combination car-plane that was a bad car and a worse airplane.
"That was a fluke, Bandy, and you know it. No, I think—damn it, I know!—that there's going to be a market out there for big airplanes that can drop water and chemicals on forest fires. God knows we've got enough forest fires every year to make a market. That's one thing. The other is converting surplus airplanes to executive planes—you know, taking a Lodestar, stripping out the military gear, cleaning it up, putting in a luxury interior, and selling it for a company plane."
"Sounds good to me, because you and Patty can handle it here in Salinas. We know who all the good workers are—start small, and work up. If it gets to be too much for you, I'll ask to be released."
They shook hands and Bandfield continued. "I think converting airplanes to fight forest fires is the best bet to start with—the whole west needs help with that."
They heard Patty laughing and then she called, "Bandy, get in here and watch Lyra set the house on fire." Bandfield rolled his eyes and tilted an imaginary shot glass back.
Roget scowled, "She ain't drunk, Bandy, don't kid yourself. And even if she was, she'd still be able to handle you."
Inside the group was gathered around a table that had been cleared and covered with a rough canvas tarpaulin. In the center was a hot plate, with a pot bubbling on it, the smell of hot metal searing the air. On the floor was a washtub filled with water.
Roget handed Bandfield a fresh tumbler of whiskey and whispered, "Looks like your visitor friend is loosening up."
"A little dago red will do that. She's sure looking better. I wish she'd do a little walking around in her underwear."
During the war, Lyra Josten had been in the German resistance movement, doing espionage work for General Henry Caldwell. She'd arrived from Sweden six months before, pale and painfully thin, her eyes dull with fatigue and anxiety, a sharp contrast to plump, rosy-cheeked Ulrich. It was clear that she had been denying herself to make sure that her baby was well fed. Now both were looking beautiful, thanks to Patty's tender care and lavish diet. As Lyra busied herself with a ladle and gloves, Roget said, "I'd never thought two young women would get along in one house like they do."
Bandfield nodded. Patty was a wonder. When she'd heard that Lyra needed help to get into the United States with her baby, Patty had roared into action. Within a few weeks she'd secured all the paperwork and arranged for their transportation over.
Lyra was bubbling with pleasure. "Ladies and gentlemen! We're going to play an old-fashioned Russian Christmas game. First, you stand up and tell where you were last Christmas and where you want to be next Christmas. Then you pour a splash of molten lead into the water. When it cools, you fish it out, and the shape of the metal will tell your fortune."
Waving the ladle she said, "Patty, you go first while I make sure the children stay back."
Patty took the ladle, saying, "I was here in this house last year; I hope we're all here next year." She poured a stream of lead into the washtub; there was a hissing stream of steam as the lead settled toward the bottom.
Lyra scooped it out. "See, it looks like a star! That's a good omen, it means your wish will come true."
"Who's next? Bandy?"
"No, let young Lyra go next."
Lyra took the ladle and began to speak in a quavering voice.
"This really works, you know. Last year in Stockholm, I wished we would be in the United States—and look at us here, with you good people."
She stepped over and took Bandy by the hand. "Come here, because the wish I m
ake is going to please you."
"I wish you all a Merry Christmas—and for next year, I wish Ulrich and I will be in our own home."
Bandy blushed as Lyra poured the lead into the water—she had him figured out, no question. Patty was smiling as Lyra pulled a long silver strand from the tub and flourished it.
"What is it? I can't tell what it is."
Bandfield took the still warm lead and slowly rotated it. "Well, if you hold it this way, it looks a little like a map of Argentina. But if you turn it this way, it looks like a bear."
Lyra took the metal. "I'm going to put this away so we can look at it next year and see what it was trying to tell us."
***
Chapter 2
Nashville, Tennessee/January 8, 1948
Relaxed as a stroked kitten, Ginny luxuriated in the unaccustomed comfort of the fieldstone rambler that served as the McNaughton Aircraft Company's guesthouse, taking advantage of Stan's absence to play her private hair game. Placing her right hand at the top of her head, her fingers worked incessantly until they had grasped an individual hair. When she had it secured in solitary splendor, she pulled it, stretched it out in front of her mouth and bit it in half. It was a reflexive habit she'd had since adolescence and it drove Stan crazy.
Walking in suddenly, he caught her.
"Honey, you're doing it again. That's worse than biting your nails and I don't think it's healthy. Shouldn't we talk to a doctor about it?"
"I'll talk to a doctor about this, if you'll talk to him about the way you save things."
They stared angrily at each other, in the rough eye-contact of marital silence. He broke the impasse by throwing a magazine against the peeled-pine log wall.
"This crummy place looks like a Sonja Henie movie set."
"That shows what you know. It must have cost Troy a fortune—it's better than a ski lodge. Even has a heated swimming pool." She glanced around, mentally ticking off the prices of the expensive Ethan Allen furnishings.
Then, trying to make up, she said, "Sorry, baby. We're just nervous after all that's gone wrong. Maybe things will work out after all."
Coleman shook his head, his voice bitter. "Fat chance. We were better off before you got your dad involved."
"Better off! At least you got a chance to fly McNaughton's rocket plane."
"Big deal. Yeager goes through the sound barrier, and they cancel our program."
She lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it. "Why the hell couldn't he have crashed? Or even just bailed out?"
"Because he was good."
Sounding genuinely contrite for a change, she said, "I'm sorry, honey, I was trying to help."
"Yeah, just like today. The only reason Troy McNaughton is going to talk to me is because of your stepfather. I know that, he knows that, and it makes me feel like a jerk."
Ginny reached out and stroked his arm. "That's not true. You're here because you're a great pilot, and McNaughton needs you.
She managed him by switching subjects like a conman shifts the pea under the shells. Plopping herself down on his lap, she asked, "What's his wife like?"
Coleman shrugged. "I haven't seen her, but I hear she's pretty good-looking—she's a lot younger than Troy—and she's supposed to run the plant single-handed."
"You be careful around her."
He hugged her and said, "Let's both be careful. When you see her tomorrow, let her do the talking, find out all you can. This might be our big chance. And maybe our last one."
The next day had gone quite well for Stan Coleman; Ginny thought it had gone well for her, too.
Coleman was early for his nine o'clock appointment, and McNaughton gave him a quick tour of the huge plant. Only three years before, it had teemed with workers as Sidewinder and Mamba fighters poured off the production line for Russia, three shifts a day, seven days a week. Now most of the bays were empty, chained off, lights darkened and populated solely by the birds that inevitably found their way into the gloom of empty hangar space. Some modification activity was going on, but no new production. The empty plant made Coleman uneasy—McNaughton Aircraft looked as if it needed a funeral director more than a test pilot.
"Sad, isn't it? We took this place from a cornfield to one of the most modern aircraft plants in the world in just a few years. Now we'd be better off turning it back into a cornfield; we could get a few niggers in to run it. Might as well—the whole South's being taken over by them anyway."
"Somehow you don't look like a corn farmer to me, Mr. McNaughton." Stan traded on repackaging what people had just said, giving it a humorous conspiratorial twist. He'd already caught McNaughton's prejudiced view of Negroes and played to it. "We've got a few hundred thousand colored down in Arkansas we could send you, though—it'd be good riddance." Coleman hadn't been exposed to Negroes before he married Ginny; since then he'd adopted her family's attitude toward them.
They were sitting in Troy's trophy-bedecked office—photos of famous pilots, film stars, politicians, models of McNaughton aircraft, and Troy's sporting trophies. Coleman made a practice of knowing the name of the best of everything, and he quickly complimented McNaughton on the brace of Purdey shotguns and the Greenhart fly rod.
Troy went to the window to adjust the blinds. He moved around the office constantly in short little runs, from his desk to the sideboard, from the sideboard to the window, as if he could burn away his problems with his energy.
"The long and short of it is this. We desperately need to get a new product in production or just shut down. We were doing fine in our San Diego plant until the idiots in Washington cut the funding for missile research and development."
He tapped a Camel out from a pack and Coleman's lighter appeared like lightning. Troy took the light, his eyes narrowed to avoid the smoke.
"Stan, I understand you're in line to do the test work on Boeing's new bomber. Have you flown it?"
"Just once, up at Moses Lake. Pardon my French, but it's fucking sensational. Handles more like a fighter than a bomber."
"But it's too short-ranged. It needs aerial refueling and that won't work in wartime."
Catching the scent, Coleman jumped in. "Yes, you sure couldn't send tankers over enemy territory."
Nodding in agreement, Troy went on, "And the B-36 has enough range, but it's too slow. Let me show you something."
McNaughton moved a long, narrow box over to the center of his desk and lifted its lid. Inside was a model of a flying-wing bomber, not unlike the one Northrop had built, but much sleeker, with longer, narrower wings and six jets clustered in the center on the trailing edge.
"Ever hear of the Horten brothers?"
Coleman shook his head.
"They designed dozens of flying wings in Germany and flew a lot of them. They had a first-class jet fighter ready to go at the end of the war, faster than anything on either side. After the war they moved to Argentina, like a lot of the Germans, and they kept up their research, working in secret for Vanguard Aircraft. When we bought Vanguard, we acquired the rights to manufacture it."
Coleman ran his finger over the model's smooth black skin. "It looks like a boomerang someone tried to straighten out. Where's the cockpit?"
"Well, that's my little secret. We'll talk about that later. I call it the 'Manta'—it looks like one. It'll be faster than the B-47 and have a longer range than the B-36. And it's so slim, they tell me you won't even be able to pick it up on radar."
Coleman was impressed but felt the need to assert himself. "Why not a new fighter? That's what you've got your experience in."
"I'd like to, but North American and Republic have too much clout—they've got the market sewn up tighter than a politician's wallet. Our last fighter, the Copperhead, got frozen out, even though it was a better plane than the F-84 or F-86."
His eyes bored into Coleman like an IRS auditor checking deductions.
"I want to build a flying wing. That's why I want to hire you."
Coleman nodded as if he fully understood as Mc
Naughton went on. "I've got to take the long view on something like this, Stan, it's a four-or five-year process. We'll have to make some smaller airplanes at first, just like Northrop did, to get the hang of it."
Coleman stood up, wanting to say something strong, insightful. "Well, what about Northrop's wing? It's already flying."
"Yes, but it's an old design—all they've done is stick jet engines in a piston-engine airframe. I'm not worried about them. Boeing's the outfit to beat, and I don't know if anyone can beat them, even us. But the budget's tight and getting tighter, and I've got to get the development money. That's where you come in."
Coleman nodded judiciously, understanding that it was the Ruddick connection. He should have minded, but he did not; McNaughton had a soothing, almost hypnotic effect upon him.
Troy hurried to a sideboard cluttered with decanters and soda siphons. He poured himself a Dr Pepper, offering one to Stan. Coleman was thirsty, but he shook his head no—who knew how many Dr Peppers he had left?
"Stan, I've got some political connections, but you've got the best I've ever seen. I'm an old friend of your father-in-law's, but I want you to tell me all about him, how you see him."
Coleman nodded. This was comfortable ground; he far preferred talking about his father-in-law than the engineering merits of a flying wing. "I suppose you know most of what I know. His wife's family was Old South aristocratic and Texas-oil rich. She's left half of Arkansas and a good chunk of Texas to him."
"How did she die?"
"She'd been sick a long time and finally committed suicide. It was tough on the kids, particularly Ginny."
McNaughton was quiet. It seemed terribly convenient for a politician to have a rich wife die.
"Ginny's just his stepdaughter, from the wife's first marriage, but she loves him more than most people love their real father. They're thick as thieves. And you have to give the man credit. Ruddick made a ton of money on his own, too, during the war and after. He was a Congressman for eight terms, and he's one of the few politicians rich enough to contribute to other politicians' war chests. He's smart and knows the defense business backwards and forwards, so he has a job no matter which administration it is. And mainly, he knows where the bodies are buried."
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