Conquerors of the Sky (29 page)
Read Conquerors of the Sky Online
Authors: Thomas Fleming
His head still aching from the champagne he had drunk to celebrate the victory over Germany, Adrian Van Ness flew to Muroc Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, where Frank Buchanan was testing a rocket engine using liquid hydrogen fuel in a silver bullet of a plane, nicknamed White Lightning. No one was sure what the next-generation plane-engine configuration would be. A half-dozen aircraft companies had experimental models flying out of Muroc, some using hydrogen, others kerosene in a jet engine developed by the British.
Frank Buchanan was exultant about their progress. He thought hydrogen was an ideal fuel for a plane engine. It was odorless, powerful. Unfortunately it was ten times more expensive than kerosene but Frank was sure they could solve that problem. Adrian was not so sure. He watched White Lightning fly at a speed close to six hundred miles an hour after it was launched from a pod beneath a Bâ29 bomber.
The amount of money being spent was breathtaking. But it was all on that wonderful World War II invention, the cost-plus contract, so there was no reason to wring his hands. Uncle Sam paid for everything designated as costs and Buchanan still got the plusâthe fixed fee. Anyway, he was not here to fret about money or even to check out White Lightning.
He brought a case of California champagne with him to help the Buchanan team celebrate the end of the war in Europe. After a liquid lunch, he strolled to the small office at one end of the hangar where Frank Buchanan was designing planes that might utilize what they were learning from White Lightning's high-speed flights. Frank began discussing compressibilityâthe phenomenon that buffeted a plane almost to pieces as it approached the speed of sound.
“Interesting,” Adrian said. “By the way, will you please stop screwing my wife?”
The desert glare filled the end of the hangar. In the center of it stood the white plane with its stubby wings and burnt black tail section. It would be hard to conceive a more perfect setting. Here was the resident genius, being permitted to spend a hundred thousand dollars a day to indulge his fantasies of future flight by his admiring boss. Now, with pain and sadness in his heart, the boss reveals the awful truth he has accidentally discovered.
“Who told you that?” Frank said, perhaps trying to gauge the value of a denial.
“She did,” Adrian said. “It finally got to her conscience. Sounds old fashioned, I know. But she's been worried about Victoria'sâproclivities, shall we say? It gradually dawned on her that she couldn't very well preach to her daughter while she was committing adultery herself.”
“I love Amanda,” Frank said. “You have to understand that. I was afraid she'd begin to feel this way. Are you going to divorce her?”
Adrian shook his head. “I don't intend to ruin my daughter's life by exposing her to such an ugly truth at the age of fourteen.”
“I suppose you want me out of the company as soon as possible.”
“There's no need for you to leave if you promise me you'll never touch Amanda again.”
“Of course,” Frank said. He was utterly, totally crushed.
It was all so convincing, for a moment Adrian almost believed his own invention. It was true, he did not want to expose Victoria to a messy divorce. But the rest was a carefully calculated performance, infinitely superior to sputtering outrage and angry dismissal. He now had Frank Buchanan in his grasp forever. No one else would ever make a plane designed by this strange combination of genius and fool.
Back at the plant in Santa Monica, Adrian conferred with Buzz McCall and the treasurer, a big bulky man named Thompson, whom he had hired away from Lockheed. The Bâ29s were in full production and Buzz had somehow found enough workers to produce Newton Slade's five hundred fighter-bombers at the same time. The last of these were rolling off the assembly lines and work would soon begin on the Skylord transport.
Buzz was all business, urging Adrian to put more money into jet engines as well as the rocket engine Frank was testing, telling him to use his influence with General Slade to get their hands on one of the jet fighters the Nazis had deployed in the skies over Germany in the final months of the war.
Buzz unquestionably knew Tama had become Adrian's mistress. If it had any impact, he concealed it behind his usual swagger. Probably a better index of his feelings was his reaction to Adrian's attempt to have Cliff Morris brought home. The moment Buzz heard it, he had gotten on the phone to Mellow and other generals and bullied them into forgetting it.
Thompson was telling them how much money they would have to pay in excess profits taxes when the door burst open. Tama stood there, tears streaming down her face. “Cliff's gone!” she cried. “He went down over Berlin three nights ago!”
When she saw Buzz, Tama went berserk. “Are you happy now?” she screamed. “Are you glad you killed him, you rotten bastard?”
“When I get home tonight, I want you out of the house,” Buzz said.
Treasurer Thompson fled and Adrian telephoned General Slade at the Pentagon. The general got through to Rackreath Air Base and talked to someone
who told him other pilots had seen parachutes from the
Rainbow Express
as it spun down into burning Berlin.
who told him other pilots had seen parachutes from the
Rainbow Express
as it spun down into burning Berlin.
Adrian spent the next two days consoling, calming, a frantic Tama. On the third day, Newton Slade's oily voice crooned over the wires from the Pentagon. “Adrian. Cliff's okay. He and two other guys got out. They came down behind the Russian lines.”
A month later, Cliff flew into Los Angeles aboard a TWA SkyRanger II with his British wife, Sarah. Adrian found her shy but charming. He gave Cliff high marks for marrying the daughter of the chief designer of de Havilland Aircraft, the best plane maker in England. Cliff was undoubtedly coming to work at Buchanan after the war and the connection could be useful.
Tama outdid herself with a publicity extravaganza that got Cliff and Sarah on the pages of every major newspaper in California. It was climaxed by Cliff taking delivery of the 200th Bâ29, which they named the
Rainbow Express
II. He and Sarah, in her WAAF's uniform, took off on a savings bond tour, along with a halfâdozen other air heroes. Offhandedly, Adrian checked with Newton Slade and made sure Cliff would not be assigned to bombing Japan. With the end of the war in Europe, there was no shortage of pilots.
Rainbow Express
II. He and Sarah, in her WAAF's uniform, took off on a savings bond tour, along with a halfâdozen other air heroes. Offhandedly, Adrian checked with Newton Slade and made sure Cliff would not be assigned to bombing Japan. With the end of the war in Europe, there was no shortage of pilots.
Tama filed for divorce from Buzz and she and Adrian resumed their weekly visits to San Juan Capistrano. Adrian's ardor mounted with Tama's ingenuity. He had never met a woman for whom sex was both love and a game. Her sense of humor, which was almost nonexistent verbally, seemed to emerge in bed. He also discovered something less entertaining. For Tama, sex meant not only pleasure but power.
She announced she wanted to be Adrian's executive secretary. She said it would give her more authority over her volunteer escorts. Adrian saw it would also give her power over a lot of other people. Soon no one would get to see Adrian Van Ness without consulting her. He finessed this move by doubling Tama's salary and insisting no one could replace her in the publicity department.
Adrian was more amenable to Tama's penchant for sharing gossip about the shortcomings of Buchanan's executives, suggesting promotions and demotions. It did not take him long to notice most of these stories were directed against Buzz McCall.
Buchanan's production chief maintained a stable known as Buzz's beauties, who did very little work on the assembly line when they showed up at all. Others in his department were imitating his example. Tama shuddered at what might happen if the story got into the newspapers.
Buzz was not the sort of man who sat quietly, letting any woman, above all his ex-wife, ruin him. He marched into Adrian's office one day with Frank Buchanan beside him. “I hear someone's tellin' you my guys are exploitin' the ravishin' beauties we got on the line,” he said. “I checked into it and found a couple of bozos were guilty. I fired them yesterday. I got an idea to make sure it doesn't happen again.”
Adrian was forced to admire his effrontery. “I'm listening,” he said.
“Frank here's movin' out of his house in Topanga Canyon. He's ready to sell it to us for practically nothin'. I think we should convert it into a club for our top guysâwhere they can relax without anyone tellin' stories about them. A club where guys call the shots and the women don't have nothin' to do with Buchanan. We'll pay everyone's dues, just the way we pay your dues and mine at the Conquistadores del Cielo and other clubs.”
“What do you think, Frank?” Adrian asked their chief designer.
Frank was drunk. Tama had told Adrian that Frank was drunk alarmingly often lately. He was not taking Amanda's loss well. “You haven't heard the best part of it,” he mumbled.
“The women ain't gonna wear a goddamn thing. It's gonna be the ultimate in realistic advertising,” Buzz said.
“Can you find enough of them to do that?” Adrian said, momentarily staggered.
“Sure. They had a speakeasy like it in Kansas City I used to drink at when I flew the mail for a while in the twenties. This is Los Angeles. The canyons are full of dames who'll take it off in ten seconds to get a part in a picture. We'll pay them plenty to take it off permanently. I guarantee you they'll like it. We'll have twice as many applications as we can handle.”
“Let's understand a few things,” Adrian said. “First of all, we never had this conversation. Frank here doesn't know a thing about what you're planning to do with the property. This was your idea and we approved it without asking any questions.”
“Sure,” Buzz said, defiance flashing in his gray eyes. “You can do me the same kind of favor.”
“What?” Adrian said.
“Tell Tama all about it.”
The Honeycomb Clubâa name suggested by Frank Buchananâenraged Tama and simultaneously demoralized her. Adrian realized time was the enemy here as well as Buzz. Like many Californians, Tama found the approach of middle age terrifying. Buzz's ability to defy it, to continue his unlimited access to young women, was more than an affront, it was a judgment on Tama's fading youth. She clung to Adrian with almost frantic ardor, not quite able to believe his assurances that he found her much more desirable than some naive twenty-year-old.
In the Pacific, the Bâ29s pounded Japan. The war surged toward a climax. Something similar surged in Adrian's bloodâa new sense of dimension and pathos and pride. There seemed to be nothing that the conquerors of the sky could not have for the asking. Buzz McCall's descriptions of the Honeycomb Club turned the executive dining room into a passion pit. Adrian, determined to avoid any hint of approval, declined to visit it. He sought his climaxes with Tama in San Juan Capistrano.
“Your choice,” she would whisper. “Tell me what you want to do.”
At first Adrian's ideas were mundane. But as the summer of 1945 wrapped
southern California in a haze of heat and humidity, he became more ambitious. One night in August he said: “Tie you up.”
southern California in a haze of heat and humidity, he became more ambitious. One night in August he said: “Tie you up.”
He was amazed by the words. They came out of an unknown part of his mind. Tama liked it. Giggling, she let him spread-eagle her on the bed and tie her wrists and ankles to the walnut bedposts. Adrian knelt beside her and Tama added touches out of her silent movie repertoire. She whimpered and begged for mercy, she writhed in mock fear.
The barrier Adrian maintained between his ego and his desires crumbled. A fist began to pound inside his chest. A red film filled the room with sunset light. His penis was a sword of revenge and celebration. It was more than Buzz McCall's ex-wife on the bed. It was woman in all her maddening ambivalence and ambiguity. His hands clutched Tama's breasts until she cried out with pain and pleasure.
Tama enjoyed it as much as he did. She loved and hated men in almost the same proportion that Adrian loved and hated women. They were a fusion of hatred and love emitting the energy of a hundred suns. “More, more,” she begged. “Hurt me a little more.”
Grunting, growling, Adrian seized fistfuls of her ample rump. His penis was spewing fire like the White Lightning rocket plane. He was a hydrogen engine annihilating himself and this woman. He and Tama had become a machine driving pleasure, pleasure, great thundering waves of it, thick and foaming as Pacific surf, through Adrian's soul. He could not stop, it would never stop, it was eternal, they were reaching some shore wreathed in red light.
Of course it was not eternal. Adrian was not a machine. An hour later, he lay on top of a whimpering, laughing, writhing Tama, his penis a dry aching stalk.
“Adrian, Adrian, make me the happiest woman in the world.”
“Yes, yes, anything.”
“Fire Buzz. Fire him even if Frank Buchanan goes with him.”
Overreach, overload. The Adrian of desire was gone. The Adrian of intellect and forethought reappeared. He had lost control. He was in danger of losing another kind of control. He did not like it.
“Did I spoil it?” Tama asked, clinging to him. “I couldn't help it. It just came out.”
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