“You don’t have the courage to say yes. You knew I’d laugh in your face.”
“I have the courage to love you. You’re the one who doesn’t have the courage to believe it.”
“Take me again. Slower this time. You’re the only man in years who’s aroused me.”
They made love while the dark TV screen stared at them like the blind eye of fate. An eye that refused to blink shut, no matter how many buttons were pushed or pulled. The touches, the kisses, were simultaneously sad and joyous. When it ended with the same small cry, Dick felt strong enough to challenge God himself. “Now tell me the truth. Admit what you said in Paris was true.”
“How many times do I have to deny it? As your reward for that half hour of happiness, I’ll finally tell you the truth. I’m not German. I’m Swedish. I was recruited by Madame George on a visit to Stockholm. I speak excellent German because that’s what we were all taught in school until 1944, when it dawned on everyone that Hitler was going to lose. Then we started studying English. I devoted six months to mastering Heine because Madame George insists all of us must know at least one major writer so we can discuss him intelligently. Heine was perfect for me because he was Jewish. I was able to make so many German industrialists squirm as I quoted him. It never dawned on me until I met you that he could be used in other ways.”
“Why would you take up such a life? What did it offer you?”
“Money—and a chance to prove to my father what I contended throughout the war—that the Swedes were the whores of Europe.”
Dick turned on the television set. Nixon had carried California, proving his switch to the Warrior was good politics even if—according to rumor—it infuriated Eisenhower. But Kennedy was carrying another crucial state, Illinois. “It’s going to be President Kennedy,” Dick said.
“I’ll say this much for him. He has a reasonable amount of money,” Amalie said.
They went to sleep and Dick dreamt he was walking beside Amalie down an arcade of shops, immensely longer than the little alley in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. It stretched over the horizon and Amalie methodically bought fur coats and diamond bracelets and pearl necklaces. She piled them all in the trunk and front seat of a gleaming red Ferrari that he was driving slowly behind her as she went from shop to shop. At the fifth or sixth stop, as Amalie piled a dozen pairs of shoes in the narrow backseat, she pointed at him and burst out laughing. Dick looked down and realized he was naked.
In the morning, he awoke exhausted—and reckless. “Are you going back to Europe with the Prince?” he asked.
“I doubt it,” Amalie said. “Our partnership is becoming precarious. He leaves me in New York more and more. I see now why he agreed so cheerfully to this apartment. Italian men are incapable of speaking directly. They delight in sending messages in invisible ink.”
Dick casually extracted fifty thousand dollars from the Prince’s money and announced they would go shopping to celebrate their engagement. Amalie was not amused. “You’re teasing me,” she said.
“I’m serious,” he said. “I want to see you spend a reasonable amount of money.”
“I know exactly where to go.”
They strolled up Park Avenue to Fifty-fourth Street and east to an auto showroom that featured Italian sports cars. A red Ferrari sat in the window, a gleaming creature so sleek, so curved, so powerful looking, it was a fusion of masculine and feminine. Dick bought it for 45,000 dollars and an hour later drove it up Park Avenue to Ninety-sixth Street. Amalie drove it back to the Waldorf Towers and parked it in the garage.
Madness. He had crossed some sort of boundary, exceeded some kind of altitude limit with this woman. He was no longer Richard Stone, the astute guardian of Buchanan’s finances. He was no longer the rabbi’s son, with ethical principles drilled into his bones. Maybe it had something to do with knowing too much about everything. About the plane business, about the new president of the United States, about Amalie Borne.
Two hours later the Prince arrived, looking somewhat tired. He explained that negotiating bribes with Italians was the most exhausting process in the world. There was always someone else to be paid—cousins, uncles, in-laws. But the deal was still set, if Buchanan agreed to a new wrinkle. The planes would be assembled in Italy.
Dick saw no objection but he checked with Cliff Morris to make sure. Cliff cleared it with Adrian and called back. “Nixon just conceded,” he said. “Kennedy’s the president. I think it’s great. I trust him more than Tricky Dick.”
“Yeah,” Dick said with obvious unenthusiasm.
“Still brooding about Amalie? Have you seen her?”
“She’s right here,” Dick said.
“Ask her what she thinks of sleeping with JFK now. She may be getting invitations to the White House.”
“She says JFK’s got your problem. Satyriasis.”
“Fuck you.”
In the next room, the Prince was looking confused. He had just finished counting the money. “We seem to be a little short, Dick. With the added costs I’ve mentioned, my share of this arrangement will barely pay my barber.”
“It must have been a mistake at the bank,” Dick said. “I’ll take care of it today. They have a branch in New York.”
“Please enter it in the books as such,” the Prince said. “I would not want to give Adrian the least impression of dishonesty.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take full responsibility.”
“I’m to stay here in this dreadful city,” Amalie said. “My lord and master thinks I will be happier here. He promises to return in a month. In the meantime I must rely on you for entertainment, Mr. Stone.”
“I’ll do my best,” Dick said.
The Prince smiled. But his eyes betrayed a certain lack of amusement. “Madame George sends you a thousand kisses,” he said to Amalie.
“Tell her I return every one,” Amalie replied.
“She’s her favorite,” the Prince explained to Dick. “Ever since the war, no one has come close to her in Madame’s affection. Others come—and often go abruptly. Madame can be severe.”
“Our love is mutual—and undying,” Amalie said, informing the Prince that his threat had failed.
The Prince began talking about the significance of Kennedy’s victory. It would mean billions for Buchanan on the Warrior bomber, of course. But it was the Warrior’s descendant, the supersonic airliner, that the Prince was urgently awaiting. In other respects, he wished Nixon had won. The Republicans guaranteed American stability. The Democrats were a party of political adventurers.
Dick barely listened to the Prince’s monologue. He gazed at Amalie’s beautiful face with its impenetrable glaze of smiling disillusion and told himself love was there behind the mask. Love that would somehow outshine the diamonds and restore the wonder and pity of that night in Paris. Love that would enable him to be an American and a Jew in a way that was beyond the gift of Cassie Trainor or any other all-American girl.
CAPITOL PUNISHMENT
“In the councils of government,” President Dwight D. Eisenhower droned, “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”
“The son of a bitch,” Adrian Van Ness said. “He’ll make me a registered Democrat yet.”
It was January 7, 1961. Dick Stone and Cliff Morris were in Adrian’s office, along with a half-dozen other Buchanan executives, watching Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation. General Curtis LeMay had told them not to miss it. He said the word was out that Ike was going to get even with the Air Force for defying him on the Warrior bomber.
“That idea is going to haunt us,” Adrian said. “Every loudmouth who wants to take a cheap shot at the aircraft business will use Ike as his authority.”
Cliff was inclined to be skeptical
. “Our guys are in the White House and he isn’t,” he said. “Isn’t that what counts?”
“Let’s see if they’re our guys before we start celebrating,” Adrian said.
Again, Cliff put Adrian’s attitude down to his WASP prejudices against seeing an Irish-American win the presidency. Cliff was equally unimpressed by Dick Stone’s loathing for Kennedy. So he wasn’t the world’s most considerate lover. Cliff suspected a lot of Dick’s antipathy was ethnic rivalry. He was sore because a Jew didn’t get there first.
The prospect of a billion-dollar contract for the Warrior was not the only reason Cliff liked Jack Kennedy. His election also had an unexpected warming influence on his marriage. Suddenly there was this wonderful idealist in the White House, telling everyone in Churchillian accents that it was time to do battle for freedom around the world. Suddenly the Warrior, even the Scorpion, did not seem quite so tainted by Adrian Van Ness’s amoral methods.
Naturally, Cliff did not say a word to Sarah about Kennedy’s sex life. He had stopped sharing almost everything like that with her. He seldom had anything to say about his work, period. She seldom asked about it. Their marriage was polite, tranquil—and empty.
Cliff did not worry about it very much. He was working too hard. There were always some congressmen or their aides in town to inspect the Warrior and enjoy the pleasures of Los Angeles, escorted by several of Buchanan’s willing secretaries. Adrian supplemented midweek entertainment with weekend cruises aboard an ultramodern 150-foot yacht, the SS Rainbow.
On the night of JFK’s inauguration, Cliff summoned Sarah and the kids around the TV screen to watch the news reports of Kennedy’s speech. He had heard it in full at work—everyone was hoping he might say something about the Warrior. Cliff was genuinely moved by Kennedy’s peroration, telling the world that a new generation of Americans was taking charge of the country, a generation that would pay any price, bear any burden, in the defense of freedom.
At work, everyone had cheered and slapped each other on the back, assuming that the price included a billion dollars for the Warrior. At home, hearing it again, the speech had a much more personal meaning. The hundreds of hours of boredom and fear in the Rainbow Express acquired purpose. Cliff Morris had helped to create this triumphant generation that was taking charge of the world. He held Sarah’s hand and said: “Doesn’t that make you proud of being an American?”
“Yes,” Sarah said. “I think I finally feel like one.”
Her expression reminded Cliff of the way she looked in England during the war—simultaneously innocent and sexy. That night, as they went to bed, he reached out to her and she responded to his kiss in the old yearning way.
“Maybe we ought to try to forget some things I’ve said—and you said,” Sarah whispered.
“That sounds great to me,” Cliff said.
For a little while they were lovers again.
In the morning at breakfast, Charlie asked Cliff if JFK was a better president than Eisenhower. “He’s better than Ike and Truman and Roosevelt,” Cliff said. “And maybe better than Lincoln and Washington and Jefferson too. He’s going to tell the Russians where to go and he’ll give us the money to build the greatest plane in the world.”
“The Warrior?” Charlie said. “Any chance of a ride in that thing, Dad?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ve made up my mind. I definitely want to be a pilot.”
Cliff glanced uneasily at Sarah, fearing the abrupt end of their newfound harmony. But she only smiled and said: “You’ll change your mind a lot about what you want to be before you’re twenty-one.”
Everything was possible in John F. Kennedy’s America.
One week later, Cliff Morris sat in a plane to Washington, D.C., rereading with disbelief a story in the Los Angeles. Times. KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION CANCELS NEW BOMBER. With sarcasm dripping from every word, Adrian Van Ness had told him to find out what happened—and see if there was any possibility of rescuing the situation. Buchanan had kept ten thousand workers on the payroll, sitting around doing almost nothing, while they waited for Kennedy to get elected and the billion for the bomber to arrive.
By four o’clock Cliff was in Curtis LeMay’s office in the Pentagon listening to his bitter explanation. “It’s the gang of Harvard whiz kids Kennedy’s installed at the Pentagon,” he said. “They put the data into a fucking computer and it came out m-i-s-s-i-l-e. You won’t believe these double-domed characters. They wear glasses eight inches thick and they’re about thirty years old. They sit there telling Curtis LeMay he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“I’m here to find out if we should lay off ten thousand workers tomorrow,” Cliff said. “It’s costing us about ten million bucks a month to keep them playing cards and shooting craps on the assembly line.”
LeMay chomped on a cigar and growled: “You keep right on paying those guys. You can get it back from the contract. We’re gonna fly that bomber. I don’t give a goddamn what a bunch of fucking Ph.D’s who never saw a war say. We’ll go up to the hill and get it this spring. You ever met Carl Venison?”
Cliff shook his head. He had heard of the legendary chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who was now eighty years old. “Truman wanted to make him secretary of defense,” LeMay said. “Old Carl turned him down. He said he’d rather run things from where he sat. He wants that fucking bomber. But the first thing you’ve got to do is build some of it in Georgia.”
“Why?” Cliff said.
“Because that spells j-o-b-s,” LeMay said.
No further explanation was necessary. It was obviously the Air Force’s answer to m-i-s-s-i-l-e-s. “That’s a big decision,” Cliff said. “I’ll have to talk to Adrian Van Ness.”
“Talk fast. We haven’t got a day to waste,” LeMay said. “While you’re at it, talk to him about opening a plant in Oklahoma.”
“Why?”
“Because Bobby Kerr, the head of the Senate Finance Committee, is from the fucking state. If necessary we’ll throw in another Air Force base to make the bastard delirious.”
“Can I make the call from here?” Cliff said.
He sat down outside LeMay’s office and called Adrian. He got the idea instantly. “We’ll be ready and eager to open plants in Georgia and Oklahoma. The extraordinary size of the Warrior program will require that sort of decentralization. You might mention that there’ll be a vast expansion in the future, when we go from the bomber to the supersonic transport.”
“I’ll do that. In the meantime, ship me Dick Stone and a ton of data on the plane. We’ll start selling it on Capitol Hill tomorrow morning.”
Dick arrived that night with the data. They headed for the White House, where their old crewmate Mike Shannon now had an office in the West Wing, in charge of Congressional liaison. The pintsized Shannon had become a scaled-down Jack Kennedy, complete with the haircut and one-button suit. Everything but a Boston accent. They adjourned to the Jockey Club, the best restaurant in Washington, and compared notes on the last fifteen years of their lives.
Shannon had married Teresa, the girl of his lovelorn Rainbow Express dreams and found out she was a nun. He had stashed her and four kids somewhere in Maryland. “How the hell is Lady Sarah?” Shannon asked Cliff. “You still getting it on with her?”
“About as much as you are with Sister Teresa,” Cliff lied. He could never resist being one of the boys. “Stone here’s the only guy who’s done it right. Still a bachelor.”
“That’s because he’s a Jewish atheist. No worries about sin,” Shannon said.
“Is that right?” Cliff asked, remembering Dick’s fury over Amalie Borne.
“Just guilt. Jews don’t even have to commit sins to feel guilty,” Dick said.
They finally got around to the bomber. Shannon explained it all very carefully to them. The president hated the idea of canceling it. He was Irish and a promise was a promise. But Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense, was not Irish in spite of his name. He had canceled the
plane without clearing it with Kennedy. That had left the president in a very negative frame of mind.
“If you can get some support in Congress, you won’t find anyone in the White House fighting you. Do you get the idea?” Shannon said.
“How about a little fighting in our favor?”
“I might manage some guerrilla stuff,” Shannon said, with a knowing grin.
“To the Rainbow Express,” Cliff said, raising his Scotch.
There was a split-second of hesitation before Shannon and Dick Stone raised their glasses. Cliff realized they were both remembering Schweinfurt. They were avoiding his eyes. Especially Navigator Shylock. You son of a bitch, you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me. Cliff almost shouted the words in his face.
Shannon inadvertently rescued them. “Jack wonders if you’ve still got that dame he met in L.A. on the payroll. Amalie Borne? Can you fix him up?”
Cliff smiled wryly at Dick. “Sure. If she’s willing.”
“Let me know. We’ve got a back door to the White House Jackie hasn’t found yet.”
At the hotel, Cliff got on the telephone to Adrian Van Ness, even though it was 4:30 A.M. in California. Could Amalie Borne be persuaded to spend another night with JFK?
“I don’t think there’s a woman alive who can resist the most powerful man in the world,” Adrian said. “Just in case, tell her she can buy any fur coat in the store at Bergdorf’s if she keeps him contented.”
Cliff called Amalie at 7:45 A.M. the next day. “I’ll be delighted to see your president,” Amalie cooed. “Tell him to call me about arrangements.”
Adrian was right, as usual. Where did that leave Dick Stone? Cliff decided to tough it out with him. At lunch he said: “I called your dream girl in New York. She said she’d be delighted to see JFK again.”
“I’m not surprised,” Stone said. “She collects examples of how low people can sink. Especially Americans.”
“I don’t get it,” Cliff said, although to some extent he understood it all too well. It was not that different from Sarah’s disgust with the way they did business overseas.
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