Conquerors of the Sky (77 page)
Read Conquerors of the Sky Online
Authors: Thomas Fleming
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 outâafter 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 peopleâincluding meâwill 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 youâinstead 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.
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,” Dick 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 natureâand 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.”
“Dimwits?” Dick said.
“Congressmen,” Adrian said. “The hearings are about to begin.”
A few days later Church subcommittee staffers arrived with subpoenas for Buchanan's overseas records. Dick naturally warned Cliff. He brushed it off with a shrug. “It's not against the law. How come it's any of their business in the first place?”
“If they feel like it, they can make anything their business,” Dick said. “If I were you I'd start talking to our lawyers.”
The lawyers did not have much to offer. Since no one was being accused of a crime, they could not advise Cliff or Adrian to take the fifth amendment. Cliff was reassured to learn Adrian was going to be the first witness.
“I'll just follow his lead,” Cliff said.
Dick flew to Washington with Cliff a month later. The hearings were held in one of the Senate's cavernous paneled chambers, with batteries of microphones on the witness table and TV cameras whirring on the sidelines. Adrian sat down in the central chair at the table opposite the senators and they went to work.
“Mr. Van Ness,” Senator Church said in his best Eagle Scout manner. “Would you tell us about Buchanan's overseas payments?”
“We never made any while I was chief executive officer,” Adrian said. “If we've made any in recent years, they've been without my knowledge.”
“You have had no connection with the company since you retired as president?” the Creature sneered.
“Only as a stockholderâand board member.”
“Aren't you chairman of the board?” Senator Church asked.
“At the moment, yes. But the title gives me no executive authority. I've been living in Virginia since I retired. Which would make it rather difficult to run a billion dollar corporation in California, even if I wanted to.”
“Your innocence is much too studied for my taste, Mr. Van Ness,” growled the Creature, who had, if possible, grown uglier with age.
“That is your problem, Senator, not mine,” Adrian said. “I am proud to say that except for a few parking tickets, I have never been convictedâor even investigatedâfor any crime. My reputationâand the reputation of the Buchanan Corporation as far as I know itâis spotless.”
“We have evidence to the contrary before this committee!” the Creature roared. “Millions of dollars in what you call overseas payments were nothing but bribes. Bribes to foreigners!”
“I know nothing about it,” Adrian said.
There was a lot more sparring, in which Adrian steadfastly denied everything. Mockingly, he wondered if the Creature knew that it was not a crime for an American businessman to persuade foreigners to buy his products by sweetening the deal with some extra dollars. He recounted memories of his days as a merchant banker in London, when douceurs were regularly used to guarantee or enhance overseas investments. He discussed the foreign policy of the Roman empire, which for three hundred years included the fine art of buying friendship with hostile tribes on its borders.
Again and again, when it came to specific details he referred the senators to the next witness, Buchanan's current president, Clifford Morris. The hearings adjourned for lunch with the solons in an exasperated mood.
Adrian, Cliff, Dick Stone, and Mike Shannon taxied to the exclusive Cosmos Club, which Adrian had joined when he came to Washington. He had reserved
a private dining room so they could confer without eavesdroppers.
a private dining room so they could confer without eavesdroppers.
The waiter had barely poured their drinks and departed when Cliff snarled: “Do you think you can get away with this act?”
“I hope so,” Adrian said.
“Don't we have records of how you and the Prince operated in the fifties and sixties?”
“The IRS only requires you to keep records for three years,” Adrian said. “When Dick computerized everything in nineteen seventy-six, all that material was obliterated.”
“Is that true?” Cliff asked Dick.
Dick nodded. “Why wasn't I told?” Cliff roared.
“You've never had the slightest interest in anything that mundane,” Dick said.
“I've still got news for you, Adrian. I'm not going to be anyone's fall guy,” Cliff said. “If I go, you're going with me.”
“I don't think you mean that, Cliff,” Adrian said. “I think you care more about this companyâeven about meâthan that threat implies. If you reveal we've been doing these naughty things for decades, it would destroy our image. Newspapers would print vicious cartoons of planes soaring over rainbows with bags of money in them. No bank in the world would loan us a nickel. We'd be out of business.”
“Why the hell should I let you put me out of business?” Cliff raged.
“I'm not at all sure that's going to happen,” Adrian said. “For one thing, I've supplied the committee with a lot of information that makes it clear we're not alone in making off-the-books overseas payments. If there's one executive who can survive this scandal, it's you. Who else can match your war record? Forty-nine missions over Germany. I'm sure our board of directors will back you without reservations.”
Cliff gulped his drink, unconvinced. “It's a gamble, I admit,” Adrian said. “But I don't see any other sensible way to deal with it. Do you really want to put the whole company at risk for the sake of petty revenge? Especially when your big mouth got us into this mess?”
He told Cliff where the Creature had obtained the original evidence to start the investigation. Cliff cursed and poured himself another drink.
“There's one more thing I might mention,” Adrian continued. “Another more personal reason why you might want to protect me. All these years, I've protected you from a scandal that could have destroyed you any time it was leaked to the press.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Cliff said.
“During World War II I got a call from a general I did several favors forâNewton Slade. He told me the Red Cross in Geneva had reported a complaint from the German government about a B-Seventeen with a rainbow on its nose that faked a midair surrender over Schweinfurt, then shot down the German pilots who were escorting it to a nearby airfield.”
There was total silence in the dining room for a full minute. “General Slade
quashed the matter as a personal favor for me,” Adrian said. “He sent me the papers. I've saved them all these years. I had a feeling they might be useful someday.”
quashed the matter as a personal favor for me,” Adrian said. “He sent me the papers. I've saved them all these years. I had a feeling they might be useful someday.”
Adrian smiled at Dick Stone and Mike Shannon. “A little example of forethought.”
Loathing, that was the only emotion Dick felt for Adrian Van Ness, sitting opposite him in that elegant dining room with the memories of Schweinfurt and other raids clotting the air until it was almost impossible to breathe. Dick wanted to snarl a curse in Adrian's face, urge Cliff to tell the whole truth and damn the consequences. But everything Adrian had said about the consequences of the truth was true. They would be out of business. His vow to those workers in Palmdale would be aborted. But the worst pain would be inflicted on Sarah Chapman Morris. Why did he know that? Why did he still remember the adulation in her blue eyes that day beside the smoking ruin of the
Rainbow Express
?
Rainbow Express
?
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