“And for binding the world together, how goes the supersonic transport?” Pontecorvo asked.
“Slowly. We’re still fighting over the supersonic bomber,” Dick said.
“The potential for commercial profits, Stone, is astounding. I don’t understand this hesitation. The British and the French are discussing a consortium to build one.”
“The Democrats are in power. They like to spend money on public housing, education, civil rights programs.”
“But this plane will create thousands of jobs.”
“I know. But the Democrats don’t think that way.”
“I thought steps were being taken to persuade them?”
He smiled at Amalie, his tufted eyebrows raised.
“You don’t understand these Kennedys,” Amalie said. “You’re deceived by the photographs, the TV footage, where Prince Hal seems incarnate. Off-camera, they’re crude, foul-mouthed gangsters.”
Much later, after a dinner marked by several similar exchanges between Amalie and the Prince, Dick sat in his room staring across the tilted shacks and littered streets of Brazzaville at the jungle. He had knocked on Amalie’s door an hour ago—she was in the room across the hall—and gotten no answer. That could only mean she was with the Prince—unless she was with the Nigerian general.
A knock. Amalie stood at the door in a long blue robe. She stepped into the room and opened her arms to him. The kiss came from her. She pressed her whole body against him and let her lips wander across his face, his neck. “Oh, Richard, Richard,” she whispered, a name she only used when she was amorous. “Do you feel it out there—the jungle, the heart of darkness? I wanted to come to Africa and make love to you in the middle of it. I wanted to streak my face and my breasts and my thighs with Congo mud, I wanted to lure you once and for all from your middle-class fears and follies, I wanted to find a primeval wildness lurking in your bourgeois American heart.”
“We’ll go now. I’ll rent a car. I’ll shoot a rhinoceros for you. I’ll wear the horn on my forehead.”
He was tuned to her mockery, her fantasy, now.
“I didn’t let him touch me. We talked business. Nothing but business. But from now on you’ll have to be on guard.”
“Why?”
“Later, I’ll explain later. Coat me with jungle mud, now. Then lick it off. Taste Africa in my body. Create it inside me.”
He breathed the perfume in her hair. He accepted her nakedness, so white, so sinuous, as the geography she was demanding. She was a continent not unlike Africa, capricious, incomprehensible, corrupt. But Dick had learned to think as well as feel in his explorations of the many Amalie Bornes he had encountered. When it was over, when she smiled and sighed childishly in his arms, he asked her again for an explanation.
“It’s of no consequence. The Prince and I have parted. I grew weary of playing the waitress to his maitre d’. I wanted a share of his salary. He indignantly refused. So now, like you and Lockheed, we are competitors.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means in some situations, you and Adrian Van Ness may have to decide who is more useful, the Prince or Amalie Borne.”
“And in the meantime, we’re responsible for your happiness?”
“Of course. Exactly how you arrange that part of it, I leave to your discretion.”
Dick did not need a further explanation to grasp Amalie’s plan. With him in charge of arrangements, she expected a cascade of cash. Why did she insist on piling burden after burden on their love? Was she still trying to make him hear the warning she had given him the day they met?
In the morning Amalie announced she wanted to see a gorilla colony about forty miles from Brazzaville. The hotel operated a van that took tourists to visit the site. There was only one other person in the van besides the hulking black driver—a short foxy-faced man in a well-pressed business suit who asked them if they would mind if he smoked. Amalie grandly gave him permission and he was soon conversing knowledgeably with them about Africa. His name was Korda and he was a sales representative for the Israeli aircraft industry. He apparently did a brisk business selling helicopters, trainers, and fighters to every country on the continent.
“Mr. Stone is with the American aircraft industry,” Amalie said. “A company called Buchanan.”
Korda praised the Scorpion fighter extravagantly as they got out and viewed the gorilla colony from a respectful distance. They watched the great apes swinging through the trees, while the females perched on lower branches and nursed and nuzzled their young. Occasionally one of the younger apes would beat his chest and roar defiance at the intruders. Amalie adored the show.
“Now I understand the Americans and the Russians, the French and Germans, the Arabs and the Israelis,” she said.
“Unmolested, they’re quite peace loving,” Korda said.
“Aren’t we all,” Amalie said.
Korda was silent for the first few minutes of their ride back to Brazzaville. Then he stubbed out a half smoked cigarette and said: “Miss Borne tells me you might be interested in helping Israel to defend herself.”
“Oh?” Dick said.
Korda leaned forward in a suavely confidential way, though there was no need to worry about being overheard. “We might find some of the research your designers and engineers invested in your supersonic bomber, the Warrior, quite useful. Compression lift could be invaluable in a new fighter-bomber we’re developing.”
“No doubt,” Dick said.
“You might even persuade your chief designer to give us some personal help. I understand he’s quite fond of you.”
“I’m quite fond of him too,” Dick said. “I’m even fonder of the United States of America. They have first call on Frank Buchanan’s mind—and my loyalty.”
“We could enable you to be extremely generous to Miss Borne—”
“You must be hard of hearing,” Dick said. “Or do I have to translate the word loyalty into Hebrew?”
Back at the hotel, Amalie blended innocence and mockery. “I don’t understand you, Stone. I thought I was giving you a chance to resolve all your conflicts. You could be a free American primate, beating your chest and cavorting with me in our various bedrooms and a loyal Jew on the side—with a reasonable amount of money in the bargain.”
Was it another redefinition of love, the worst imaginable burden she could invent? Or was she testing him in some subterranean way to see if he was worthy of the truth? Dick struggled to control a vortex of emotions: rage, regret, shame. “You don’t seem to understand. You don’t want to understand—”
The mocking eyes never wavered. “I’ve always thought my problem was understanding too much.”
In New York, Amalie persuaded him to stay overnight to cure his jetlag. He had never seen her so amorous. The next day, Dick flew on to Los Angeles, exhausted and appalled. She was a whore. She loved him. She was a whore. She loved him. The sentences rebounded crazily in his head for the entire flight. He tried to tell himself her mockery of love simultaneously affirmed it.
He had barely arrived in his office when his secretary told him Adrian Van Ness wanted to see him. He found Buchanan’s president standing by the window watching an antisubmarine version of the Starduster taxiing out for takeoff. There were dark pouches under his eyes. Adrian was starting to look old.
“How was Africa?” Adrian said with forced jauntiness.
“I only saw twenty-four hours of it.”
“How many of those were devoted to Amalie Borne?”
“A few,” Dick said, deciding it was foolish to lie if Adrian already knew Amalie had spent the night with him. Had the Prince in his pique played tattletale?
“We’ve got some problems with her,” Dick said.
“I’m not surprised, considering the encouragement you’ve been giving her. Women are unstable creatures, Dick. They’re particularly prone to fantasies of power.”
Adrian watched the new Starduster climb into the blue sky. “Let’s talk about the mone
y first. There seems to be three hundred thousand withdrawn from our Swiss account on your signature without any authorization from me.”
“I used the money to buy presents for Amalie,” Dick said.
The words dangled in midair in the quiet office for a long moment. What did he feel? Dick wondered. Fearful? Was he looking at a prison sentence for embezzlement? To his surprise—and dismay—he realized his dominant emotion was relief. He had just shed an intolerable burden.
Quizzical wrinkles sprouted on Adrian’s brow. “A not entirely objectionable policy—if she can help us get Kennedy to deliver on the Warrior and the supersonic airliner. Is that all there is to it—a desire to keep our princess happy?”
“You obviously know everything. Why don’t you just fire me and get it over with?” Dick said. “I’m in love with her. I probably would have stolen twice that if you hadn’t caught me.”
Adrian seemed to find the criminal language offensive. “The Swiss reported the first fifty thousand. I asked Hanrahan to have you watched,” he said.
“I’ll clean out my desk and go quietly,” Dick said. “I’ll sign an agreement to pay it back over the next ten years.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Adrian said. “You’re not the first man who lost his head over a beautiful woman. I’ve done it myself. The important thing is to learn a lesson from it. To learn something about yourself—and about women. You can make the money back for us in a year by helping us get a grip on our finances. Those Kennedy bastards in Washington have abolished the cost-plus contract. We’re going to have to keep track of every screw, every gallon of paint—and somehow restrain the madmen in the design department, led by their resident maniac, you know who. They think nothing of burning up a million dollars in a mock-up they chop to pieces the next day. You’re going to have to do more than project earnings now. You’re going to have to create a whole cost-control system.”
Dick sat there, numb. “I’m not fired?”
“Dick,” Adrian said in his gentlest tone. “Have you gone deaf?”
The similarity to his conversation with the Israeli made Dick shudder. “I—I can’t do any of those things. I can’t do anything with her on my mind. I’m starting to hate the company, the whole business, because of the way we’re using her.”
“I think you’ll soon find it’s the other way around, if the Prince is right. He called me last night from Brazzaville. He says Amalie has quite a lot of his correspondence in a safe deposit box, location unknown. It would embarrass a half-dozen governments if she sent copies to a newspaper.”
“She’s threatened to do this?”
“She hasn’t threatened to do anything yet. She’s waiting to see how well you negotiate for her.”
“She told the Prince I was going to do that?”
“She saw it as another way to intimidate him.”
It made sickening, demoralizing sense. There had to be a purpose beyond or behind the fantasy selves, the mockery of love in the very moment of transcendence. The luminous intelligence that transfixed him had analyzed reality and drawn its own bitter conclusions.
“Is she Jewish?”
Dick knew how absurd the question sounded. But he did not care. It suddenly became the most important fact in the world to him.
“Does it matter?” Adrian said.
In those offhand words, Dick saw the cold hard face of reality as defined by Adrian Van Ness. If he was going to accept the salvation Adrian was offering him, he would have to accept it as the only reality.
Ruefully, bitterly, Dick recounted Amalie’s Schweinfurt story. Adrian shook his head in equally rueful admiration. “Women are amazing,” he said. “They have the most diabolical imaginations.”
He leaned back in his chair and picked up a stainless-steel model of the Scorpion on his desk. “To get practical for a moment,” he said. “We have to deal very carefully with Amalie. She may still be useful to us with the Kennedys.”
“She doesn’t think so.”
“There are many ways to be useful beyond the obvious one. We have pictures of her leaving the White House, for instance. Naturally I hope we never have to use them. It would be very dangerous for us—and for her.”
A new kind of unreality clouded Dick’s brain. Was he sitting here with Adrian Van Ness, talking about Amalie Borne as if she was disposable, loseable, like a copy of a plane in a war?
“For the time being, it’s important not to alarm her. Go back to New York in a week or so and assure her that all is well. Spend enough money to convince her. But begin trying to find out where she’s stashed the Prince’s correspondence. That will no doubt take some doing, but it should be enjoyable.”
Adrian was assigning Dick Stone the role he had played with Beryl Suydam. The lover who was not a lover, who was a secret enemy—and still a lover. Dick did not understand why, but he could see that Adrian was enjoying himself.
“Of course I understand it won’t be entirely enjoyable,” Adrian said. “It will take a lot of self-control. But I think you can do it.”
Adrian held out his hand. “Do we understand each other, Dick?”
Dick accepted the hand. Adrian squeezed hard, unusual for him. “Thanks,” Dick said.
“Nonsense. It’s to our mutual advantage, I assure you.”
Gazing into those subtle eyes, the shy yet shrewd smile, Dick heard that reassurance not once but twice and then three times. Adrian too was an expert at expanding the meaning of words. Mutual advantage encompassed much more than Dick’s ability to set up a cost-control system for Buchanan Aircraft. It involved years and years of future arrangements with people like the Prince, in which Dick Stone’s acquiescence, his readiness to bury unpleasant costs deep in Buchanan’s records, were guaranteed. As he walked out of the office, Dick was no longer a prisoner of love. But he was a prisoner of Adrian Van Ness.
DEATH IN THE DESERT
Cliff Morris sat in the oak-paneled committee room beside Dick Stone and Mike Shannon, watching Adrian Van Ness testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Adrian had just finished arguing for the survival of the Warrior bomber. He had laid special stress on its future as a supersonic airliner.
“The plane,” Adrian continued, “has won the enthusiastic applause of veteran pilots such as Colonel Billy McCall, one of the first men to break the sound barrier, holder of a half-dozen high-altitude records.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Van Ness,” said the lean hunched senator from Iowa, shoving his sallow face so close to the microphone he seemed to be swallowing it. “Isn’t he your son-in-law? Isn’t his correct rank lieutenant colonel?”
“Yes to both questions, Senator,” Adrian said, as reporters grinned and several staffers in the seats around them tittered. “Lieutenant colonels are normally referred to in ordinary discourse as colonels—”
“But he is your son-in-law”
“Yes. But Colonel McCall is the sort of man who would only tell the exact truth about any plane he flew. His reputation as a test pilot is the point here.”
“Of course, Mr. Van Ness,” the senator sneered.
It was the Creature. He had run for the Senate in 1962 with John F. Kennedy’s reluctant endorsement and won. His venal style—in particular his utter indifference to facts—had not changed an iota. Before the hearings began, he had given Mike Shannon a list of things he wanted in return for his support for the bomber. They included an Air Force base within shouting distance of his hometown, an invitation to be the principle speaker at the Air Force Association annual dinner, and a Buchanan factory in Iowa as big as the one they had promised Robert Kerr in Oklahoma. Shannon urged Cliff to say yes. But Cliff said the package was too much for any freshman senator to ask and with Adrian’s approval had said no.
Beside Adrian Van Ness, Billy McCall sat very straight and silent in his blue Air Force uniform. In the front row of the spectators’ seats, Victoria Van Ness wore a powder blue suit of almost identical color. It was one of her small ways of stating her devotion to Billy
. Beside her sat her secret enemy, Sarah Morris.
They pretended to be warm friends. At Sarah’s suggestion, Cliff had adopted the same policy toward Billy. It was not that difficult; since the Starduster days, he and Billy had become wary semi-friends. Behind his back, Cliff sabotaged Billy in large and small ways, according to Sarah’s plan. He referred to him as “the son-in-law” in conversation with other executives. He wryly predicted Billy would never put up with marriage and hinted he already was straying from Victoria’s bed. Cliff had balked in the negotiations with the Creature because he wanted the senator to come into the hearings angry at Buchanan, even if it risked the future of the Warrior.
The bomber was in trouble for far more serious reasons. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was showing the Kennedys he had learned to play the Byzantine politics of Washington. With the help of the fighter pilots in the Air Force, who resented the influence of General LeMay and his Strategic Air Command bomber jocks, the secretary of defense was promoting another plane, called the TFX or F-111, a smaller, cheaper supersonic bomber that could double as a fighter. General Dynamics and Boeing had been invited to bid on it and their lobbyists and favorite senators and congressmen were pushing it, creating confusion in the ranks of the Warrior backers.
Lieutenant Colonel McCall took Adrian’s place in the witness chair. “Why do you think a plane is superior to a missile?” the Creature asked. “Is it because you’d be flying it?”
“They wouldn’t let an old man like me fly a serious mission, Senator,” Billy said. “We’ve got young fellows with a lot more stamina and brains than I have.”
“The mission this plane would execute would be very dangerous, am I correct?”
“No question.”
“The Russians would do everything in their power to stop it?”
“Definitely.”
“You seem awfully complacent about letting younger men risk their lives while you sit home giving them orders, Colonel.”
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