Conquerors of the Sky (55 page)

Authors: Thomas Fleming

BOOK: Conquerors of the Sky

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Upside down in his Aero Commander, Dick Stone flew cheerfully over the dark green surf-washed cliffs near Cape Mendocino, in Humboldt County. “How do you like this?” he asked.

Cassie Trainor laughed. “You're a maniac at heart!” she shouted. You could not scare Cassie.

Aerodynamically, Dick was becoming a very good pilot. Psychodynamically, he was a mess. For three years, he had flown to Palo Alto to see Cassie as she majored in American Studies at Stanford. He had watched her self-confidence grow as she discovered that coming from Noglichucky Hollow did not limit her ability to think and learn. Outwardly, Cassie turned into an all-American girl not unlike her classmates in their brass-button blazers and pleated skirts.

Dick was fascinated by the Stanford scene, shot through with California sunshine. These western Americans seemed to have discovered the secret of life without angst. They were so good-natured, so well-intentioned, so confident that a future of married love, hard work, babies, success, would create happiness. Their optimism, their laughing serenity, seemed to confirm his decision to become a complete American, to abandon the Jewish side of his hyphen. But beyond the sunshine stood Amalie Borne, whispering:
Never ask me how.

Dick banked the Aero Commander and headed out to sea. Climbing to ten thousand feet, he turned to Cassie and said: “Time for the autopilot?”

Cassie was already taking off her clothes. There was a mattress spread out on the cabin floor. Dick set the autopilot's slaveâa tiny claw that fastens onto a headingâand waited a moment to make sure the plane was obeying its robotic commands. Then he struggled out of his pants and shirt. It was not easy to undress in a plane and it was even harder to dress. But in between there was an unforgettable reward.

It was part feeling, the vibration of the metal skin, the roar of the motors
and the rush of the airflow, and part idea, knowing where you were, hurtling between the sky and the earth at 150 miles an hour. It was a marvelous blend of sensation and power. Cassie called it angel love. She said it was the way angels would do it, if they had bodies.

For Dick there was an even more important idea at first. He was challenging Billy McCall for supremacy in Cassie's soul. He was daring Billy's two ladies of the sky to make a move on him. He was blending danger and love to prove how much he wanted to make Cassie free and happy.

It had worked, it had broken Billy's spell. By now it had become a ritual. But it could not free Dick Stone from Amalie Borne's spell. She was always there in the shadows, mocking his attempt to be a macho American lover.

Lately he had begun to imagine him and Cassie as two lovelorn robots in a science fiction movie, two machines who had accidentally acquired the ability to love each other. He thought of his penis as a piston operating with the same methodical frenzy displayed by the gleaming metal rods in the Aero Commander's growling engines. They were parts of the plane, extensions of technology, not two fleshy warm caring bodies and souls.

Insanity. He had only seen Amalie Borne once in the last three years, at the 1957 Paris air show. Again their eyes had met across a crowded room. But this time Dick read the enormous sadness in them. She had left for Rome the following day without speaking to him.

Why was he being haunted by a woman who disdained him? Amalie answered the question with a mocking sigh:
Never ask me how.

Cassie was above him and Dick had both his palms pressed against the hard teats of her coned breasts, while the engines pounded between his shoulder blades. He raised his head and rotated his tongue on the teats. Cassie bit the bone and flesh on his shoulder. The blue sky stared in both windows. Off to the left and right he could see the propellers whirling. He put both hands on her firm smooth rump and moved her up and down. Her tongue slithered up his neck and into his mouth. He breathed the perfume of her auburn hair, the sweet deodorized smell of her flesh. “Dick, Dick,” Cassie cried. “I wish it could last forever.”

There was a romantic answer to that question. Will you marry me and make it try to last almost as long as forever? But Dick could not say the words. Did Cassie expect them, want them? Money was not a problem. He was now the assistant treasurer of Buchanan Aircraft. Cliff Morris had rescued the Starduster from red ink by selling two hundred copies in South America. Cliff thought he could do almost as well in the Middle East. The design department was in a frenzy, working on a top-secret supersonic bomber. The Lady of Luck might not give a damn but she was smiling on Buchanan Aircraft.

He came and came and came and Cassie cried out with joy and raked her nails across his chest. There was still a delicious blend of desire and animosity in their lovemaking. She was still a creature to be tamed, mastered. She still resisted surrenderâwhich made it so much sweeter when she came.

Sighing, Cassie put on her slacks and blouse and Dick got his pants and shirt
back on and they flew north along the Santa Cruz coast to the Santa Lucia mountains, with the Hearst Castle sitting in the middle of their huge rocky faces like a rich child's toy. They had flown all over California in the last three years, seeing it from the air in all its immensity and splendor. From Muir Beach, a sliver of white sand between dragon's jaws of green crouching headlands to the great Central Valley with its stupendous swaths of fruit and vegetable farms to Death Valley's narrow wasteland.

He was heading for their favorite siteâthe winding serenity of the Russian River as it descends between green hills to the sea at Jenner in Sonoma County. Soon they were swooping over it at 1,000 feet. “It's what heaven must look like,” Cassie said.

“I thought you didn't believe in heaven anymore,” Dick said.

“That changes my mind,” Cassie said, gazing down at the looping ribbon of water.

For a moment Dick wondered if this was more important than the love they had just consummated on autopilot. He had shared his ownership of California from the airâthe word
ownership
kept forcing itself into his mindâwith this woman. Could he ever do it with anyone else? Amalie Borne? That might be a betrayal of Cassie far worse than sexual infidelity.

They landed at the small airport on the outskirts of Palo Alto and Cassie helped Dick tie down the Aero Commander. They drove to a roadside restaurant in Cassie's 1950 Ford and discussed her future. She was going to graduate in four months. What did he think she should do? Could he get her a job at Buchanan?

Again the unspoken question dangled between them. “You might be better off at Douglas or Lockheed. If you're set on the aircraft business.”

“Why?”

“The Honeycomb Club. People remember you.”

Instantly, he hated himself for saying it. “Is that what's wrong? Is that what's worrying you?”

“Nothing's worrying me.”

“That's not true. We haven't been honest with each otherâin the old wayâfor a long time. A couple of years. We talk about American history and literature. But never about us.”

“Maybe there isn't anything to talk about,” Dick said.

“Really?” Cassie said. “You mean that?”

Dick was hating himself, the conversation, more and more. How could he lose control of the situation this way? “We're not exactly romantic lovers.”

“Whoever said we were?”

She had him. All the cards were in her hand. All the pain too. “Look, I don't mean any of this the way it sounds. I like you a hell of a lot. I wouldn't have spent all this time with youâ”

“Maybe you're tired of starring in
Pygmalion.
Especially now the statue's startin' to talk back.”

“You've been talking back since the night I met you. I like it.”

“But you don't want to marry someone from the Honeycomb. It wouldn't fit the executive image. Is that it?”

“In this business? Are you kidding? It could make me the next president.”

She did not like that either. Her eyes were bright with tears. A nerve pulsed in her temple. “I guess I'd just like to hear you say you love me.”

There it was. The trump card of the 1950s, played between the heavy coffee cups and the thick plates of this roadside restaurant in the last year of the decade. “I do. But I'm not sure about the rest of it. Can you give me more time?”

“Sure.”

He picked up her hand and was shocked to see how badly she had been chewing her nails. One or two fingers were raw, bitten to the quick. Maybe it was not as easy to become an all-American girl as some coeds made it look at Stanford.

Three days later, Adrian Van Ness called Dick into his office and told him to withdraw four million dollars from the Los Angeles branch of the Swiss bank in which they had set up a special account during the 1955 Paris Air Show. “The Prince is at the Ambassador. Take it over to him. It's for the Starduster sales in South America. Carry it on the books under extraordinary expenses.”

So much for Cliff Morris's miraculous sale of two hundred planes, which he was celebrating all over Los Angeles, along with his promotion to sales vice president. Something deep in Dick's nature opposed this way of doing business. But he could not resist the way Adrian took him into the inner circle of the company's policies. It was a level of trust that no one else had achieved. It was Adrian's way of saying people like them, intelligent, sophisticated people, understood the way the world worked.

Dick could not decide what troubled him most, his own inner resistance or the way Adrian Van Ness seemed utterly unbothered by the bribery. Knowing nothing about Adrian's early commitment to Oakes Ames and his epic example of making ends justify means, Dick fell back on uneasy rationalizations. The money went to foreigners to keep Americans working. Buchanan was not breaking any laws. They were not even losing money for the stockholdersâthe bribes were merely added to the cost of the planes.

Dick brooded on these conundrums as he drove to the Ambassador with the four million dollars in his briefcase. At the desk in the ornate lobby, the clerk told him the Prince's line was busy. He wandered down a corridor full of shopsâjeweled Swiss watches, the latest fashions in furs, dresses, shoes. A figure in the dress shop froze him to the deep-piled carpet. A tall woman with a mane of flowing chestnut hair. Amalie Borne.

Of course it made sense. The Prince was here. Why should he leave her in Europe with the meter running? Dick stepped into the shop. “It's nice to see some foreigners have a conscience,” he said. “I bet before you're through with these shops, fifty percent of our lend-lease debts will be settled.”

She turned, her smile archâbut pleased. “You're absolutely right,” she said. “But I gather it can't be done without your assistance. Why aren't you upstairs? Your arrival has been anxiously awaited all morning.”

“The line is busy.”

“He's on the phone to his wife in Milan or his mother in Rome. He calls them every day.”

“How admirable. It makes me feel guilty. I haven't called my mother in six months.”

“Such schadenfreude. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“You can do more than that. You can help me carry these dresses to our suite.”

“I'm not interested in three way conversations.”

“Why not? They allay suspicions.”

He let the smiling saleswoman pile three large boxes on his arms and followed her to the elevator. “What sort of a tip can I expect?”

“If by tip you mean adviceâI've already given you all I have.”

In the suite, the Prince was just finishing his telephone call. “Ciao, Mamma,” he crooned. “Ciao.” He kissed the receiver and hung up.

“I encountered this old friend at the desk when I picked up our mail,” Amalie said. “We met at the Paris Air Show. He took me to Verfours for dinner, saving me from starvation when you abandoned me for some disgusting Germans.”

“I'm happy to see you again, Dick,” the Prince said. “You have the full amount? Some of our friends in South America are growing rather urgent.”

“It's right here,” Dick said, handing him the briefcase.

The Prince opened it to make sure the amount was correct. The money was in five-thousand-dollar bills. “James Madison has such an engaging visage,” the Prince said.

“I've already counted it,” Dick said.

“We're flying to New York today,” the Prince explained. “Then on to Rio. Any mistakes might be inconvenient.”

“Of course.”

“I'm taking an apartment in New York. At the Waldorf Towers,” Amalie said.

“Oh?” Dick said. “I seem to recall you detested Americans.”

“That sounds just like her,” the Prince said, briskly shuffling through his mail. “She specializes in outrageous opinions.”