Conquerors of the Sky

by Thomas Fleming

  The Creature had friends inside Carter’s White House who were backing him for reasons of their own. Washington was aswirl with rumors that the president was about to renege on his campaign promise and cancel the BX bomber. The hearings would smear Buchanan with enough mud to make a counterattack by their backers in Congress impossible.

  Carter was turning into the unreliable president Dick had predicted the first time he saw him. His administration was an unstable congeries of ex—sixties activists and moderate Democrats like Carter himself, incapable of dealing with the pressure tactics of the left. The liberals were demanding a pound of flesh from the Military Industrial Complex and the BX bomber was the most tempting slice.

  The Van Ness housekeeper emerged to report that Cliff was on the telephone. “Put him on,” Adrian said. He gestured to Dick to pick up another extension.

  “‘Lo, Adrian? Lissen. News isn’t good on the Aurora. Only thing to do is end production run. Can’t sell another fuckin’ copy.”

  Dick had already told Adrian their wide-body jet was on its way to becoming the white whale of the business. “When are you going to stop drinking?” Adrian said.

  “Hey—jus’ had a couple for lunch.”

  “It sounds like a couple of dozen.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Lissen. I’ll be in California for next few days.”

  “The action is in Washington, Cliff. That’s why Dick Stone is here. Where the hell have you been? Mike Shannon has spent the last two days calling you all over the world.”

  “Adrian—man has a right to a personal life.”

  “Pussy,” Adrian said. “That’s all she is, Cliff. You can get the same thing in your own office. There’s no reason to get drunk over her.”

  “Adrian I loved the goddamn woman. She’s got my kid!”

  Adrian hung up and stared coldly at Dick Stone. “We’ve got to do something about him—fast.”

  Dick Stone nodded mournfully. For a year now, Cliff Morris had spent half his time trying to revive his affair with Angela and the other half vainly trying to sell the Aurora while red ink gushed through the Buchanan Corporation.

  For months Dick had been conferring with Adrian by telephone about how to service Buchanan’s terrifying debts, which were now close to a billion dollars. He was growing more and more weary of shouldering the burden. The loss of the BX could easily shove them into bankruptcy. As the corporation’s money man, he saw that as a personal defeat. He was not sure how well he could handle it. Without Cassie and his children, he was vulnerable to crushing bouts of depression.

  Dick had come east expecting an aging Adrian Van Ness to let him suggest a drastic answer to their problems—perhaps selling the missile division or some other part of the company to raise cash. Instead, he had found Adrian full of determination to rely on the same combination of guile and grease that had kept them aloft so far. He seemed to be thriving on Washington’s rampant intrigue and devious power plays. He had no intention of letting Buchanan get shoved out of any part of what he liked to call the great game.

  “Are they canceling the whole BX program?” Dick said.

  “That remains to be seen. We might be able to salvage something,” Adrian said. “Much will depend on whether we can survive these hearings. Do you have our Geneva, Tokyo, and Casablanca files up to date?”

  These were the cities through which overseas bribes were funneled. Dick nodded, not trying to conceal his distaste. “Dick, Dick,” Adrian said. “The persistence of your Jewish conscience is the only thing about you that distresses me.”

  Adrian was shocked by the figures Dick spread before him. “My God,” he said. “Cliff Morris is a bigger spender than I thought.”

  In Japan, Cliff had paid five million dollars a plane to sell the Aurora. Prices had been slightly lower in the Mideast and Europe but Africa and South America were worse—no less than seven million dollars per plane in some countries. It came to an appalling $190 million dollars in the last three years for the Aurora program alone. Cliff had been equally reckless in pushing the business jet that Adrian had christened the Argusair. The supersalesman turned CEO had paid roughly twenty million dollars to peddle 200 of them.

  “How much are we likely to lose on the Aurora?”

  “Two hundred million,” Dick said.

  “Mea culpa, mea culpa,” Adrian said, scanning the figures.

  Amanda Van Ness came out on the porch wearing a high-necked black silk dress and pearls. She looked ten, perhaps twenty years younger than Adrian. Everyone marveled at her smooth skin, her gleaming russet hair.

  “The guests are arriving,” Amanda said. “You aren’t even dressed. How are you, Mr. Stone?”

  “Fine. How are you, Mrs. Van Ness?”

  “As well as can be expected in exile. What was the temperature in California when you left?”

  “Eighty-one.”

  “Now you know why I hate my husband,” Amanda said.

  Not knowing what else to do, Dick pretended to be amused. Adrian’s smile was strained.

  “Have you seen Frank Buchanan lately?” Amanda asked.

  “I speak to him on the phone every few days,” Dick said.

  “Give him my love,” Amanda said.

  Frank had retreated to a mountain overlooking the Mojave Desert in search of wisdom, leaving Sam Hardy as Buchanan’s chief designer. But there was so much knowledge in Frank’s ancient head, Dick was constantly begging him for advice in their continuing struggle to perfect the BX.

  Adrian’s smile vanished with the mention of Frank Buchanan’s name. The word love made him twitch as if his wife had just struck him with a dart. He shook a pill from a dark brown plastic bottle and gulped it. Dick suddenly recalled Kirk Willoughy muttering about Adrian’s heart.

  Dick retreated upstairs, put on a fresh suit and joined Adrian as he greeted a swirl of Pentagon undersecretaries and congressmen and senators. Vietnamese servants disposed of their luggage. The VIPs had cocktails on the lawn under ancient oaks, supposedly planted in Jefferson’s era. Most of the guests were moderate Democrats like Buchanan’s old friend and supporter, the senior senator from Connecticut. Adrian did not waste his time or money on the Creature and his pals. The moderates fretted over the way the Russians were extending their influence in Africa and the Mideast. Adrian suggested the BX and another production run of the Colossus might give the United States the muscle to stop them.

  Adrian concentrated on one of Carter’s Georgians who was part of the White House inner circle. He plied him with several glasses of twenty-year-old bourbon and then asked, with an air of weary casualness: “Has the president made up his mind on the BX?”

  “I’m afraid so,” was the drawled reply. “He walked the floor for three nights and finally decided it was the one major weapons system we could cut without endangerin’ our strategic posture.”

  “In a way I’m relieved,” Adrian said. “No one likes to hang by the thumbs indefinitely. We’ve got other things on our plate we can get to now.”

  A gong summoned them to dinner. Adrian fell in step beside Dick. “Isn’t that fellow from Jawgia a wonder?” he murmured. “A year ago he never thought of anything more strategic than how to write a press release. Now he’s picked up the jargon that spells life and death for the country—and thinks he understands it.”

  Adrian produced one of his more enigmatic smiles. “I’m glad he came, for your sake. One of the purposes of this soiree is to display the pinheads with whom we’re doomed to deal.”

  In the paneled dining room, Adrian began the meal by introducing the entire Vietnamese weekend staff to the guests. Each told what he had done in his former life. One had been a cabinet minister with an economics degree from the Sorbonne, another was a surgeon who had directed Saigon’s main hospital, a third had been a professor of history.

  The professor was writing a book on the war. “He thinks if we had the BX in time South Vietnam might be independent today,” Adrian said.

  The Carter aide squirmed. So
did most of the other Democrats. At the end of the evening they conferred with the senator from Connecticut about the progress of the Creature’s hearings. They learned he had persuaded Frank Church, a fellow superliberal, to investigate Buchanan with his subcommittee on multinational corporations.

  “What if I gave you an unsigned memorandum, telling in considerable detail how all the other aircraft companies have been committing the same overseas sins for a long time?” Adrian asked. “You could slip it to the Creature to prove your heart is in the right place on this issue.”

  “What the hell would that accomplish?” the senator said. He was a little slow when it came to Machiavellian tactics.

  Dick saw instantly what Adrian had in mind. The Creature would find the added targets irresistible. Spreading the blame would take a lot of the heat off Buchanan. But Dick could not figure out why Adrian regarded the hearings with such equanimity from a personal point of view. He had been involved in these overseas payments for two decades.

  The rest of the weekend slid by. There was a private visit to Monticello, golf for those who played it, horseback riding for others, led by Amanda, who still rode like a teenager, bounding over ditches and fences. Adrian and Dick Stone followed at a more sedate pace. Dick was not at home on a horse and Adrian was not much better.

  “Still enduring divorce?” Adrian said.

  “More or less.”

  “You could be worse off. Try living with a woman who hates you.”

  “Why does she?” Dick said, surprised by Adrian’s confessional impulse.

  “Everyone pays a price for trying to reach beyond the rainbow,” Adrian said. “Amanda’s mine.” He pointed toward Monticello. “Read a biography of him sometime. You’ll see how many prices he paid.”

  They ambled on through the autumn sunshine. “Once I told Frank Buchanan it was the pots of gold I was reaching for. Now I know it’s something far less tangible. I think we’re all pursuing an image of ourselves, a personal apotheosis.”

  “What was—is—yours?” Dick asked.

  “To be a man of substance.” Adrian smiled wryly. “So substantial I’d be forever beyond the reach of ruin. What better place to do that than the aircraft business? It says wonders for my judgment, don’t you think?”

  “You could have done worse. Trying to beat the horses. Or the tables in Las Vegas.”

  Adrian chuckled. He was enjoying himself. Dick had seldom seen him so genial. “I haven’t figured out the gold beyond your rainbow, Dick. What is it?”

  “Maybe I haven’t either,” Dick said warily.

  “You should. It’s the final step to maturity.”

  For an uneasy moment Dick felt he had failed a question in an examination where a perfect score was expected.

  As soon as their guests departed, Adrian announced they were flying to California. “We’ve got to put Cliff back together for those hearings,” he said. “Find out where Angela is living these days.”

  That was no challenge for their security men. All they had to do was read the gossip columns about the spectacular new house Angela had built in the Malibu colony. Leaving Amanda in Virginia with the housekeeper, Adrian and Dick flew to LAX and drove up the coast to Malibu. Dick telephoned Angela from a nearby restaurant and asked if they could see her.

  Angela met them in white slacks, blue boating jacket, a white beret. With her was Lenin Jr. in his inevitable blue jeans. “I’ll get right to the point,” Adrian said. “How much will it take to persuade you to kick Cliff out once and for all?”

  Angela laughed. “What an outrageous idea,” she said. But Dick could see it appealed to her. She gave her revolutionary friend a conspiratorial smile.

  “Two million dollars,” he said. “Off the books, of course.”

  “Done,” Adrian said. “Give them a check, Dick.”

  Dick wrote a check on Buchanan’s Swiss account and handed it to Angela. “Don’t deposit it anyplace but in Switzerland,” Adrian said.

  They drove to Buchanan’s headquarters. “Be sure to include in the explanation for that check something about services rendered,” Adrian said.

  This time Adrian was much too far ahead of Dick. “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “We’re buying silence,” Adrian said. “They might have done us a lot of damage at the Creature’s hearings. Now Cliff can go down with dignity.”

  Security Chief Hanrahan informed them Cliff was at the Beverly Wilshire. They drove to the grand old lady of Los Angeles hotels and found the chief executive officer in his underwear, halfway through a bottle of Inverness. A two-day stubble sprouted on his chin.

  “What the hell do you want?” Cliff growled.

  “Is that what I get for flying three thousand miles to see you?” Adrian said.

  “For what? To fire me? Go ahead. I don’t give a goddamn.”

  “What happened? Did Angela throw you out once and for all?”

  “Yeah. Yesterday.”

  Adrian pretended to be amused. “She is clever.”

  “Clever?”

  “She just accepted my offer of two million dollars to throw you out—after she’d done it.”

  “You’re a fucking liar!” Cliff roared.

  Dick showed him the carbon of the check he had just written. “I’ll get it back,” Cliff said, jamming his feet into his pants.

  “Sit down,” Adrian said, shoving Cliff backward onto the bed. “I’m seventy-eight years old. I had hoped before I died I’d see this company sound, secure, ready to fly into the next century. Instead I’ve got a self-pitying pussy-chasing playboy in charge and a conscience-stricken ex-student of the Torah as second in command. Do you think I might be entitled to feel just a little sorry for myself?”

  “Most people—including me—will say you’re getting pretty much what you deserve,” Cliff said.

  “I know that,” Adrian said. “That’s why I just spent two million dollars to prove something to you—instead of pleading for sympathy.”

  “What else is happening?” Cliff said. He was not stupid. He knew Adrian always had another motive.

  “Carter’s canceling the BX the day after tomorrow. There may be hearings. I want you sober for them. I want you to cut out the booze and Angela absolutely and totally. Will you promise me abstinence on both counts?”

  Dick held up the carbon of the check again. He still did not completely understand the game Adrian was playing. But he wanted to straighten Cliff out for personal as well as corporate reasons. They were still friends.

  Back in Adrian’s car, Dick got another surprise. “I want you to come out to the desert with me and tell the workforce the BX is canceled.”

  “Isn’t that Cliff’s job?”

  “I want them to hear it from you.”

  “Why?” Dick said.

  “Because such matters may soon become part of your job.”

  What was Adrian saying? Dick Stone was the next Buchanan president? Then why sober up Cliff? Why not just fire him and let Angela and Sarah worry about the consequences?

  The next day, Adrian and Dick flew to the Mojave. The sweep of the desert beyond the factory brought back a surge of memories. The White Lightning, the Talus, the Scorpion, the Warrior. Billy McCall swaggering from the cockpit, Cassie waiting in the bedroom at the Villa Hermosa. Amalie whispering her mocking conundrums. So many betrayals, so many failures, so much heartbreak.

  Yet the planes flew. Was that the only thing that mattered? The Colossus filled the sky with thunder. The Aurora was a majestic flow of cursives and thrust in a thousand takeoffs. The new fighter, the SkyDemon, defied gravity, flying straight up as fast as it flew horizontally, even if the goddamn Air Force had rejected it.

  Dick rode with Adrian to the fourth floor balcony of the huge plant, the length of four football fields and the width of two. A dozen fuselages of the BX rested on jigs while workers swarmed around them, riveting, wiring, welding. The usual big American flag dangled from the balcony.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” D
ick said over the public address system. “Could I have your attention? You know me, Dick Stone. You know how proud I am of the work you’ve done on this plane and other planes. But in this business we’ve learned a long time ago that hard work, dedication, isn’t always appreciated. We just got some bad news from Washington. Tomorrow President Carter is canceling the BX. That means a lot of you may lose your jobs. I thought you ought to know that as soon as possible. But I also want you to know I’m going to do everything I can to keep this plane alive. We’re going to try everything to keep you with us. That’s a promise!”

  The words, especially the promise, were spontaneous. Adrian Van Ness had simply ordered Dick to deliver the news of the cancelation. How he did it was up to him. The sight of that gigantic flag, the unfinished planes on the jigs, had demolished the rational side of Dick’s nature—and banished the depression that wrapped his emotions in a leaden overcoat most of the time.

  Dick went down on the plant floor to deal with angry questions and furious threats. Some people wanted to trash the BX skeletons on the spot. Others offered to work on half pay to finish them. Most were resigned but very bitter. They had been hired and fired and rehired by Buchanan and other companies too often.

  When Dick returned to the plant manager’s office where Adrian was waiting for him, he was bathed in sweat. But he had learned something about himself. “We’re going to keep that goddamn plane alive, somehow,” he said.

  “I was hoping I’d hear that,” Adrian said.

  For the next six months Dick struggled to make good on that vow. He picked up subcontracting programs from Boeing and General Dynamics and Tony Sirocca scraped together thirty million dollars from the Air Force’s Independent Research and Development Fund to do some work on a mach 3 stealth fighter. He grew so absorbed in the struggle, he almost forgot about the Creature and his friends in Washington.

  But Adrian, deep in his end of the great game, had not forgotten this threat to their existence. One afternoon in April of 1978, he jangled Dick’s nerves with an updated version of Paul Revere’s cry. “To arms, to arms, the dimwits are coming.”