Conquerors of the Sky (58 page)

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Authors: Thomas Fleming

BOOK: Conquerors of the Sky
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Later that afternoon, a memo arrived from the assistant treasurer.
TO: Cliff Morris
RE: Entertainment expenses for the BX Bomber.
According to bills received today from the Ambassador Hotel, the following charges were made to the account labeled Adrian Van Ness Extraordinary: one white mink coat, $50,000. One Chinchilla coat: $85,000. One bracelet inlaid with diamonds and rubies, $65,000.
Yours Truly,
Richard Stone
Ex-Moralist
In the splendid new terminal TWA had recently built at Los Angeles International Airport, Sarah's brother Derek looked shabby and prematurely old—a veritable image of his once powerful country. Derek was going back to England after less than six months in California. His wife and daughter had already departed. He had stayed to complete some assignments at Buchanan.
“I'm thinking of writing a book,” Derek said. “Aborted. About all the wonderful planes our idiotic government canceled. What do you think?”
“Do it,” Sarah said.
Perhaps it would get the disappointment out of his system. He was so bitter. It was the real reason he and his wife had soured on California. They had soured on their country, their lives. He said he was going back to renew the struggle
for the lost planes. But he was really fleeing the casual abundance, the assumption of unlimited success that pervaded America. He told Sarah he was afraid he would end up hating Americans and he did not want to do that. He did not think they were bad people, on the whole. Just spoiled.
His decision to go home stirred special pain in Sarah. She had encouraged Derek to come to California. She had persuaded Cliff to get him a job. She saw now it was a desperate attempt to cling to her English self, that moral idealist who had said no to Cliff in Peru. But it had not worked. Derek was so bitter, his wife was so intimidated by California's casual manners and morals, they had only made Sarah realize how American she had become.
“I've been meaning to ask you—but never quite found the courage,” Sarah said. “Was Father faithful? Or did he have his girlfriends, like so many aircraft people over here?”
“I think he sowed a few wild oats. Most men do. But I doubt if he did much in his later years. He didn't have time, for one thing.” Derek smiled bleakly. “Painful to say, but the damn planes get more attractive than women in the long run.”
His Boeing 707 began boarding passengers. “Come see us,” he said, kissing Sarah on the cheek.
She stood on the terminal's sunny upper deck watching the plane take off. What would he have said if she suddenly announced she was going with him? She was leaving them all—American husband, daughters, son. She imagined herself yielding to some drastic impulse like that more and more often lately.
She hated the way she and Cliff had drifted apart again to become polite, slightly hostile strangers. She wondered if he was faithful during his weeks on the road. She doubted it but she did not have the energy, the anger, to accuse him.
She rode an escalator to the lower floor, oblivious to the faces flowing past her. “Sarah!” called a woman's voice.
It was her old friend Susan Hardy. She lived several blocks from them on Palos Verdes. Her husband Sam was ascending on the design side at about the same pace Cliff was rising on the sales side of Buchanan. Susan had the same wicked tongue and disillusioned view of men and California. She had continued snacking in the afternoons and drinking hard in the evenings. She was now at least fifty pounds overweight.
“I've got an hour before my flight,” she said, hefting a bag. “Feel like a drink?”
“I'd love some tea.”
Susan gave her a wry look. Sarah could almost hear her thinking: goody-goody. They found a restaurant that served both liquor and tea. At the last minute Sarah decided she would have a Scotch and soda after all.
“Where are you going?” she said.
“New York,” Susan said. “I'm going home to talk it over with my mother. I think I've had it with Mr. Five by One.”
That was one of her milder epithets for her husband. For a while Sam and Susan had made a kind of revue of their alienation. But it had grown less amusing as it became clear they really did not get along and the humor was mostly serious insult.
“I'm so sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. Under California's wonderful new community property law, I'm going to take him for fifty percent of everything he owns. Then we'll see how much he spends on his Las Tunas Canyon cunt.”
Why did you marry him in the first place? Sarah wondered. Why didn't you try to hold him? Lose weight, control your tongue? Appalling. She was applying Tama's approach to this bitter, unhappy woman. But Sam Hardy was not Cliff Morris. He was a thin, balding man with pipe-stem arms and a scrawny neck.
Was she still in love with Cliff on some fundamental physical level that transcended the hostility, the alienation that flickered between them? She remembered the night of reconciliation, his whispering
you're my luck
when he was inside her. She had loved that idea. It appealed to the mystical streak in her soul.
“He met her at the Honeycomb Club,” Susan continued. “He set her up in this house that cost twice as much as ours—”
Swept by self-reproach, Sarah tried to listen. A woman was sharing her pain and she was thinking about herself. Her egotism was shameful. Sarah could only shake her head while Susan told her about Sam Hardy's obsession with this beautiful woman.
“She can barely stand the sight of him, dates other men—but takes his money.”
“How awful,” Sarah said.
“It's not that bad,” Susan said, knocking down the last of her Scotch in a barroom swallow. “I'd rather see a woman sticking it to the bastard that way than the kind of thing that usually happens. Have you heard about Madeleine West, one of Billy McCall's ex-girls? She followed him to Korea and back to this country. He wouldn't even look at her. She became a drunk, a streetwalker. Last month she drove her car into the desert, soaked the cushions with gasoline and struck a match. Died like a test pilot.”
“My God.”
“Some women are vulnerable, Sarah. I'm glad I'm not one of them. I hope you aren't. I haven't heard anything about Cliff lately. Have you got him under control?”
“I hope so,” she said, gulping the rest of her drink.
Susan departed for New York. Sarah drove slowly home to Palos Verdes thinking about the woman who had immolated herself in the desert. They were all loathsome! Cliff, Adrian Van Ness, even Dick Stone. But none of them could equal the loathsomness of Lieutenant Colonel William McCall.
I was wrong
, Tama whispered. For the first time Sarah began to suspect she knew what it meant.
“I arrived at the great man's room at midnight, as directed. He was on the telephone. He interrupted his call long enough to tell me to take a shower and lie down on the bed in the next room. Only the supposedly enormous importance of my visit persuaded me to stay. He was still talking on the phone when I came out of the bathroom. I lay there for ten minutes, listening to him debate with someone named Bobby whether or not to support your wonderful plane.
“Finally he strolled into the room, pulled down the sheet and examined me as if I was a cadaver on a slab. Five minutes later I was back in the bathroom. I took another shower. Never in my life have I felt so unclean! When I came out, he was on the telephone again, trying to arrange a date with another woman. He blew me a kiss as I departed.”
Dick Stone lay beside Amalie Borne in the rose-and-gold bedroom of her Waldorf Towers apartment, listening to her describe her visit to John F. Kennedy. They were both naked. On the television screen at the foot of the bed Walter Cronkite and other talking heads were excitedly reporting the 1960 election returns. The race between Kennedy and Richard Nixon was still too close to call.
As far as Buchanan Aircraft was concerned, it was a no-lose situation. Kennedy's support for the Warrior had forced Nixon to abandon Eisenhower's cancellation and promise to build the plane. Nixon had stumped through California the day before the election, telling everyone the Warrior would provide an unbeatable defense against Soviet Russia—and 20,000 jobs.
On a chair in the corner was another briefcase full of James Madisons for the Prince, two million dollars' worth. He was arriving tomorrow to pick it up. After several false starts, intensive lubrication had persuaded the government of Italy to buy 150 upgraded Scorpions as fighter bombers. Frank Buchanan did not approve of burdening the plane with the extra weight—it would make it even more lethal to fly—but Adrian Van Ness decided not to turn down a hundred-million-dollar contract.
Dick was no longer worrying about the ethics of overseas bribery. He was more troubled by the moral perceptions of Amalie Borne.
I'm not a whore
, she had cried—and paid herself 175,000 dollars for the humiliation John F. Kennedy had inflicted on her. Dick's normally controlled, reflective self wavered in the violent emotions this woman stirred in him. He still believed the story she had told him in Paris was true. But tonight, after dinner at the Chambord with two bottles of wine, they had made love and she told him a different story.
She was the illegitimate daughter of Rudolf Hess, the Nazi leader who had fled Germany to England early in the war, supposedly to try to arrange a truce
with England in return for a promise to depose Hitler. “That's why I prayed for your bombs to destroy Schweinfurt,” she whispered in the shadowy bedroom, while taxis honked on Park Avenue forty floors below them.
She described growing up in a Germany that regarded her mother as twice a pariah, as the woman who had seduced Hess from the arms of his faithful wife—and urged him to go to England to try to rescue Europe from Hitler's madness.
Bewilderment sucked at Dick's brain. He was not psychologically equipped to deal with a woman like this. Was she simply crazy? Or was she compelled to create myths because the truth was too unbearable to remember?
“Now this Irishman, this case of satyriasis, is going to be your president,” Amalie said, as the television cut to Kennedy's headquarters and he expressed confidence in eventual victory. “But you don't care, do you? As long as he funds your bomber.”
“I care a great deal. I'm not a slave of the business. I have other hopes and dreams for myself, the country.”
“What are they? Tell me? I collect illusions.”
“Let's talk about us instead.”
“Another illusion. How much money do you personally expect to earn from this bomber and other planes you hope to foist on the warmongers of this world?”
“I have no idea. I'll be happy with a reasonable amount.”
“There is no such thing as a reasonable amount of money.” Amalie pointed to the briefcase in the corner. “Is that a reasonable amount?”
“That depends on what you want to do with it.”
“Would it be reasonable for us to take that two million dollars and disappear? Go to South America or Lebanon? Would you do that for me?”
“You'd spend it in six months and I wouldn't be able to make any more. We'd starve.”
“I've starved before.”
“Are you serious?”
“Are you?”
She was challenging him to abandon his career, his respectability, for her. He wanted her to do the abandoning, to join him in rational affection, reasonable happiness. How could he convince her it was possible? “I'm serious about loving you in the real world.”
“You don't love anyone else? Some American or Jewish girl? I hear a frantic note in your voice, as if you were using the absurdity of loving me to escape her.”
“I was fond of one woman I met in California. I still am. But it doesn't compare to my feelings for you.”
“Does she want to marry you?”
“She did for a while. Now she's getting more interested in literature.”
That was not entirely true. Cassie was teaching freshman English at Oxnard, a small private boarding school for girls north of Los Angeles. But she was still
waiting for him to make up his mind about the step beyond saying he loved her. His excuses were growing more and more fraudulent. She knew something was wrong—and he did not have the courage to tell her what it was.
“Do you really see me as a housewife pushing a vacuum? Shopping at the supermarket? Changing diapers?” Amalie said.
“There are servants who can do those things.”
“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.

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