“You ready to do some selling in Washington? We’ll back you with everything we’ve got.”
“You bet,” Cliff said, his tongue thick and dry in his mouth. He watched Billy taxi smoothly down the runway toward them. In a moment he was climbing out of the plane with his copilot and flight engineer. “The thing flies itself,” Billy said. “You just got to tickle its clit now and then.”
Inverness flowed on the old SkyRanger they flew back to Santa Monica. As far as they could see, the Talus was as good as sold. “I gottta hand it to you, wingman,” Buzz McCall roared, holding out his glass to Frank Buchanan. “I thought it was a piece of fucking insanity the first time I saw it but you’ve made me a believer.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you. Without all of you,” Frank said. He lurched down the aisle to pound Billy on the back. “Without this pilot at the controls.”
He thumped Cliff’s shoulder. “Without this executive pulling it all together. Adrian thought we were going to fall on our goddamn faces. Didn’t know we were a family! Band of fathers—and brothers.”
Frank whacked others on the back too. One of Buzz’s engineers, Bruce Kelly, who ran things at the Muroc end of the line, designer Sam Hardy who had solved all sorts of problems with the Talus’s ailerons. Dick Stone, who had made the cost estimates low enough to keep Adrian at bay. Frank talked exultantly of getting to work on an airliner version within six months.
“That’s when we’re really going to start lying about costs,” he chuckled, winking at Dick.
They were so high on Inverness and anticipation they barely noticed when the plane landed at Buchanan Field. They piled out and gazed at a satisfying sight on the flight line. No less than nineteen copies of the Talus roosted there, some ready to fly, others waiting for the jet engines Frank had persuaded the Air Force to let them try.
“Let’s head for the Honeycomb and pick out the best pussy on the list,” Buzz said.
“Why not?” Billy said.
“Why not indeed?” Frank said.
Cliff took a deep slow breath. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got to get home.”
Buzz could not believe his ears. “What the fuck? Have you gone queer, Big Shot?”
“No. Married,” Cliff said. “I’ve gone married.” His face was flushing. His whole body felt like it was melting. Billy McCall was grinning at him.
“What’s wrong? Afraid you’re going to draw Califia?” Buzz said. Everyone had decided one of the girls at the club was Califia. Buzz liked the idea of screwing a woman who might murder you before it was over. He said it was better than stunt-flying.
Cliff struggled for breath. He could handle Buzz. If Billy said something he was going to knock him into the Pacific Ocean. “You’re absolutely right,” Frank said, squeezing his shoulder. “I wish I had a wife to go home to.”
“I was going to let you try Madeleine tonight. That’s how good I’m feeling, Big Shot,” Billy said.
“She’s all yours,” Cliff said.
“I’m worn out. I think I’ll head home too,” Dick Stone said.
“Jesus,” Buzz said. “Respectability is spreading like a fucking plague. Let’s get the hell away from these pansies.”
Cliff realized Frank and Dick Stone had tried to help him. It was a small comfort. He drove home in a daze. Had he really done it? Had he made a total asshole of himself for Sarah Chapman Morris’s sake? Buzz would never let him forget it. Billy would be telling him all about Madeleine’s cries and sighs for the next month. He must be going crazy to let a woman—a foreigner who knew absolutely nothing about Americans—mess him up this way.
He parked the car in the driveway and trudged slowly across the lawn to front door. Sarah met him just inside, her eyes shining. “I hope you’ve got good news,” she said.
“Pretty good,” he said.
“Mine is very good. I’m pregnant.”
It was the current again. Carrying him in the right direction. His response came from somewhere outside his mind. “It’s going to be a boy.”
“I’m sure of it too.”
They made the tenderest love of Cliff’s life that night. Sex had never been tender for him. He never thought of women as fragile. He liked them big and muscular. Maybe it was because there was so much of Tama—and he saw it all in the Redondo Beach house. Sarah was fragile, especially that night. She was like a precious object, a vase or a statue that a harsh touch could smash.
He did not even want to do it at first. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt the kid,” he said. “You won’t. I want you. I want you more than ever.”
He rested her on top of him again. It was beautiful and slow and almost sad. He kept thinking of what Billy was probably doing with Madeleine, what Cassie Trainor might be doing for Dick Stone. Why couldn’t he have both worlds? Why was Sarah inflicting this choice on him? For a moment wisps of the green fog drifted through his mind, he saw her with Billy. But he concentrated on loving Sarah, on the current that was carrying them both toward some sort of special happiness.
Afterward they talked about the Talus, the hopes it was igniting. The day after tomorrow Billy was going to fly it to Washington. Adrian Van Ness and the top people from the project team were going to join him there and display the plane to senators and congressmen. The Air Force was going to back them with all the influence they could muster.
They could not fail. The current was irresistible now. Cliff rubbed Sarah’s stomach and said: “What’ll we name him?”
“It’s your choice if it’s a boy.”
“Charles. But I’m going to call him Charlie.”
Princess Elizabeth, England’s future queen, had just named her first son Charles. Tears streamed down Sarah’s face. “Oh Cliff, I do love you. No matter what happens in the future, let’s never forget these three months.”
“Don’t worry about the future,” Cliff said. “It’s going to get better and better.”
Sarah sighed. “You Americans are all such optimists.”
The next day, the chill in that comment made it difficult for Cliff to share the ebullience of the Buchanan team on the flight to Washington. Over the Rockies, he noticed Adrian was not joining the celebration. He sat alone, looking out the window of the Lockheed Super Constellation.
“What’s the boss worried about?” Cliff said, sitting down beside him.
“The usual thing a boss worries about. Money,”
“Won’t this contract take the pressure off?”
“It would—if we get it.”
“Is there any doubt? Our only competition is that ridiculous B-Thirty-six. The other day General Scott called it a B-Twenty-nine with elephantiasis.”
The boss managed a smile. “Maybe I’m worried about the government’s overall policy. It doesn’t seem to have one. We’re drifting from event to event. While the Communists take over huge chunks of the world.”
“Like China.”
Adrian nodded. “The Democrats will never recover from that one unless they do something dramatic with the defense budget. Stay sober when we get to Washington. Talk to people your age—majors, lieutenant colonels, congressional aides. Sometimes they know more about what’s coming than the people at the top.”
“Sure,” Cliff said, flattered that the Adrian was confiding so much to him.
They landed at National Airport and ensconced themselves in a pair of suites at the Shoreham. The next day at Muroc Billy climbed into the jet-engine version of the Talus and streaked across the nation in four hours and twenty-five minutes. He came within twelve minutes of breaking the transcontinental speed record, which had been set by a Lockheed P80A “Shooting Star”—a fighter plane.
Billy roared over Washington and landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. The afternoon papers carried pictures and front page stories. The next day, President Truman inspected the Talus and remarked, “This looks like one hell of an airplane. We ought to have some.”
Everyone at Buchanan could almost hear the rustle of money. Th
e Air Force announced it was interested in buying four hundred copies. That would put the contract close to a billion dollars. At the Shoreham, Billy was the center of a nonstop party for senators and congressmen from the armed services committees, Air Force generals, and Pentagon officials.
Cliff remembered Adrian’s orders to stay sober and listen. Standing with two Air Force lieutenant colonels, he heard one say: “this thing fits beautifully into NSC Sixty-eight.”
“What’s that? A new way to sink the Navy?” Cliff asked.
The Navy and the Air Force had been battling ferociously over their share of the budget in the consolidated Department of Defense. The lieutenant colonel grinned and shook his head. “Top secret for the time being. We’re still putting it together. A new policy statement.”
They flew back to California that night. On the plane, Cliff told Adrian about NSC-68. “Interesting,” Adrian said. “NSC stands for the National Security Council. It’s one of Truman’s better ideas. They’re supposed to advise the president on defense policy—instead of letting a lot of kitchen cabinet pals make up his mind for him, Roosevelt-style.”
In California, the ebullience continued to build. Buzz McCall drew up plans for rehiring 20,000 workers. Frank Buchanan put the design department to work on converting the Talus to an airliner. Jet engines still guzzled too much fuel to make a commercial plane profitable. They would have to go back to props, which meant a lot of expensive changes. Jim Redwood talked to Cliff about joining him in an expanded sales department as second in command.
The Air Force continued to test the Talus at Muroc. Other pilots found it a difficult plane to handle. Perhaps they lacked Billy McCall’s skills—or his determination to make the plane perform for Frank’s sake. There was a third crash, killing another three-man crew. But three crashes were not considered excessive for a radically new plane. Frank was sure another redesign of the ailerons would solve the problem.
One hot day in June of 1950 Cliff was summoned to Adrian Van Ness’s office. He charged up the stairs wondering if the good news from Washington had finally arrived. The CEO was standing at the window, looking down on Buchanan Field, where nineteen completed copies of the Talus now sat on the flight line. “I’ve got a little present for you,” he said.
He handed Cliff a check for a thousand dollars. “A bonus for staying sober in Washington and hearing about NSC Sixty-eight. It’s the most important state paper since the Monroe Doctrine. It proposes a policy to deal with the Communist threat. It’s what they call a forward strategy—a network of bases around the world that’ll support our allies and enable us to meet a Soviet challenge wherever and whenever it appears. Do you see why that could be very important to Buchanan Aircraft?”
Cliff nodded. “Air power. That’s where we’re ahead of the Russians. Most of those forward bases will be for planes. We’ll need fighters to defend them, transports to supply them.”
“Exactly,” Van Ness said. “After I finished reading NSC Sixty-eight, I slept for eight hours. It’s the first time I’ve done that since the war ended.”
Adrian moved some papers around his desk for a few moments. “But it doesn’t mean our worries are over.”
He moved a few more papers. “How’s the Talus doing? Buzz tells me you’ve still got those stability problems.”
“Frank thinks he’s got them licked.”
“I want the reports on it. All of them. Don’t say anything about this to Buchanan.”
There was a hostile sound to the way he used Frank’s last name. “Why not?” Cliff asked.
“Because you just got a direct order from me not to,” Adrian said.
“What’s going on?”
“A lot of things I can’t explain to you.”
“Mr. Van Ness—Adrian—” Cliff was never sure which name to use. “I think I’m entitled to an explanation. I’ve put a year and a half of my life into this plane.”
“If we don’t get this bomber off our backs, we’ll have to lay off three or four thousand people—and you’ll be one of them.”
“I thought it was worth a billion dollars if the Air Force buys it!” Cliff gasped, trying to comprehend what Adrian was saying.
“The powers that be in Washington, in particular the Secretary of the Air Force, don’t want to buy it. They prefer Convair’s B-Thirty-six. Do you know who Floyd Odlum is?”
“He’s head of Convair.”
“The Secretary of the Air Force vacations regularly at his house in Palm Springs. Consolidated’s going to build the B-Thirty-six in Texas. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Sam Rayburn, is from Texas. One of the slickest, crookedest operators in the U.S. Senate, Lyndon Johnson, is from Texas. They want that billion dollars to go to Texas, not to California.”
“Why the hell should we let them do that, if their plane isn’t as good as ours?”
Adrian Van Ness smiled briefly. The flash of bitter humor exposed Cliff to a world of power and intrigue that he barely knew existed. “I’ve been told by the Secretary of the Air Force, personally, if we encourage our friends among the generals and pilots to fight for our plane—and they could fight very effectively—we’ ll never get another contract from the Air Force or the Navy or the Marines. We’ll be back to trying to sell planes to airlines that don’t need them.”
“So you’re going to give the Secretary the stability reports and he can use them to beat the Air Force generals’ brains in when they complain?”
This time Adrian Van Ness’s smile was almost pleasant. “I begin to think I haven’t misjudged you after all, Cliff.”
“Yes you have. I don’t buy it. If Frank knew about this, he could fight back. He could give them data that proves we’ve solved most of the problems. Or will in a couple of months.”
“That won’t do him or you or me any good. It will just make the blood flow on both sides. Consolidated has the votes—in the Pentagon and in Congress. What is there about growing up in California that makes people so naive?”
Cliff felt a flush of anxiety and humiliation. Adrian was talking to him as if he were a child. Cliff heard Buzz sneer momma’s boy. “I’m trying to educate you, Cliff. You could go a long way in this company,” Adrian said. “We need someone with a good personality and no moral principles worth mentioning.”
Cliff tried to choke down that compliment. It was so oblique, it was not easy to get down his throat. He gulped and gulped, trying to make excuses for Adrian Van Ness. Maybe if you were born rich it was hard to treat people as equals. Maybe it had something to do with graduating from Harvard.
“It’s for the good of the company,” Adrian said. “It’s even for Frank’s good. He’s got years and years of planes to design for us.”
“But he loves this plane,” Cliff said. “It’s the most original thing he’s ever created.”
“Frank gives every plane that ultimate rating. He tends to think in extremes. You have to learn to use people like him. And people like Buzz, for that matter.”
With an inrush of regret Cliff realized Adrian Van Ness had him figured exactly right. He would do this rotten thing. He would help Adrian sabotage the plane Frank Buchanan had worked on day and night for eighteen months. He would betray a man who had been his second father and friend.
Why? Was something missing inside him? Was this another moment of truth like the one over Schweinfurt? Cliff twisted away from answering that question. Courage had nothing to do with it. Adrian was right. It was for the good of the company. He was bending before the power of the Pentagon and Congress and making Cliff bend before his power. That was the way power worked.
For a moment Cliff thought of Sarah and the current of love that seemed to be carrying him toward some special happiness. What did that mean now? “Get moving,” Adrian said. “I need those stability reports before the end of the day.”
Cliff nodded obediently. He was being sucked into a vortex that swirled invisibly around Adrian Van Ness the way knots of force swarmed around a wing and fuselage in
flight. He had watched them testing models of the Talus in the wind tunnel, charting these vicious unpredictable unknowns. He had learned a lot about building airplanes in the last eighteen months. Now he was learning how they were destroyed.
LAYING ON OF HANDS
Dick Stone sat before his computer putting together a cost estimate for redesigning the Talus as an airliner. Frank Buchanan burst into his office with a painting of the plane soaring over the Rockies. “We need a new name for it,” he said. “Something dignified—but with commercial appeal.”
“How about the Aurora,” Dick said. “Didn’t Moon Davis say it took him back to the dawn of flight?”
“Wonderful!” Frank said, whacking him on the back.
Frank wandered around the Black Hole, showing the painting to everyone. He returned to tell Dick the name had won unanimous approval. “Now all we’ve got to do is sell it to Adrian Van Ness. He thinks naming planes is his prerogative.”
About a half hour later, Cliff Morris dropped into Dick’s office. “How’s it going?” he said.
“Great,” Dick said. “I’ll have an estimate for the airliner version ready by the end of the day.”
Cliff closed the door. “That may be premature. We’re having some problems with the bomber. It takes more than a good design to sell a plane to the government. We need some help from you.”
“Who’s we?”
“Adrian Van Ness and your old buddy.”
That was supposed to impress Dick and to some extent it did. “We want you to revise your cost estimates on the Talus,” Cliff said.
“Scale them down to the minimum?”
“No. Raise them to the maximum.”
“What the hell’s the point of that?”
“Look. Trust me. I can’t explain everything right now. A maximum evaluation would be very helpful with the problem we’re having.”
Conquerors of the Sky Page 41
