Cliff turned expectantly to his hero, General LeMay and his cohorts, expecting a furious counterattack. Instead, the generals and the colonels looked dumbfounded. The CIA had not said a word to them about such developments. It was Cliff's first glimpse of the way the American defense establishment operated, not as a team but as a collection of warring tribes.
The meeting broke up with the Air Force and Buchanan Aircraft in disarray.
“Now maybe you'll understand why I chopped up the Talus,” Adrian said to Frank Buchanan as they rode back to their hotel in downtown Atlanta. “You see the stupidity, the arrogance, the infighting we have to deal with? The quality of the plane is irrelevant.”
“I wish I'd taken my mother's advice and stuck to painting pottery,” Frank said.
As they sat in the hotel bar gloomily sipping Scotch, Billy McCall joined them with General LeMay. “What's the next step?” Frank Buchanan asked. “Do we chop it up?”
“Like hell,” LeMay said. “That goddamn plane is gonna fly or I'm gonna get court-martialed. That fucking infantryman knows as much about air strategy as I do about molecular biology. He's only gonna be in office another fourteen months. There's two political parties in this country and the other one is looking for an issue to beat Ike and his boy Tricky Dick next year. This plane could be it. What we want to know is, will you guys cooperate?”
“What do you want us to do?” Adrian said.
“Spend some money,” LeMay said. “We're gonna bring congressmen out to fly in that bomber by the dozen. We want you to make sure they're well entertained.”
“Can you protect us if Ike starts canceling other contracts?”
“We'll try,” Lemay said. “But we can't guarantee anything.”
Adrian looked at Cliff and Dick Stone. Was he remembering his pledge to fight for the plane? It was hard to read his impassive face. Was he thinking of his billion-dollar Starduster dream that would have made them independent of this gut-shredding political game? Probably. “We're with you,” he said. “Cliff here will be in charge of the reception committee.”
Cliff sat with Frank Buchanan on the flight back to California. “I'm amazed,” Frank said. “I never thought Adrian had this much guts.”
“He wants that supersonic airliner,” Cliff said, trying to play peacemaker.
“So do I,” Frank said ruefully, as if it pained him to agree with Adrian on anything.
First on LeMay's invitation list was the Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson, who was running for president. The tall, stooped Texan came to the Mojave factory on a swing through California to try to line up money and support. He had a memo in his hand when he got off his Air Force plane. “Is this bullshit or the God's honest truth?” he said, handing it to Cliff.
The memo was a hymn to the power and beauty of the Warrior. It declared the bomber was the issue that could make Johnson president. “The truth, Senator,” Cliff said, raising his right hand. “I wrote it myself.”
Cliff introduced Johnson to Billy McCall and they took a walk around the Warrior, as it crouched on its eight-wheeled landing gear in the desert sunshine. “That's the damndest plane I've ever seen,” Johnson said. “Looks like a bald eagle with its neck stretched.”
“Wait'll you fly in it, Senator,” Billy said.
“You couldn't get me into that thing for all the gold in Fort Knox,” Johnson said.
“I hope you have time to watch her go up,” Cliff said.
Johnson shook his head. “I'm meetin' eleven oilmen in the Bel Air Hotel in exactly one hour. But this thingâit's got my support.”
“We were hoping we could entertain you in other ways, Senator,” Cliff said. “Buchanan's got some of the best-looking girls in Los Angeles on the payroll.”
“Don't worry about me, son. I can get my own pussy anytime, anyplace,” Johnson said.
The next day, the
Los Angeles Times
carried a story announcing Senator Johnson's “all-out backing” of the Warrior. “This is the greatest plane of the century,” he said. “If we can't afford to build this plane to defend ourselves, we don't deserve to remain a free people. General Eisenhower is showing his age when he dismisses it as nothing more than a manned missile. I've flown in it. I've witnessed its miraculous technology in action. I am going to urge the Congress of the United States to fund it, no matter what the president says.”
Cliff came home in a celebratory mood. He suggested cocktails on the patio before dinner and told Sarah the inside story of Johnson's endorsement. “We didn't even have to pay anyone overtime to entertain him,” he said.
“You're still doing that?” she said, implying that Tama's stable should have died with her. “It's sickening to think a man like him is running for president. He sounds as bad as the Prince. Is his endorsement worth anything? You can't trust him, can you?”
“I'm getting awfully tired of your sermons on morality,” Cliff said. “Did it ever occur to you that you're hopelessly out of your depth?”
“Did it ever occur to you that I might like a husband with some integrity, some genuine pride in what he's doing?”
“I've got pride,” Cliff roared. For months he had tried to ignore the anger he had felt about her judgment on the Starduster sales. This new disapproval seemed to justify unleashing it with compound fury. “I've got all the pride I need. I'm proud of the plane. I'm proud of the way we're selling it. You don't build planes in a fucking convent school and you don't sell them in a church.”
“Shhh, the children will hear you,” Sarah said.
“Let them hear me!” Cliff shouted. “I'm not ashamed of what I'm doing. You're the one who should be ashamed, trying to undermine me with them, with myself. Trying to destroy my self-confidence. You're worse than your goddamn brother. He's sitting around telling everyone we're going down the tubes the same way you stupid limeys went, chopping up planes because the Russians found out how to shoot off a goddamn rocket.”
She was trembling. Her eyes were swimming with tears.
“Maybe Derekâand Iâcan't help trying to tell you the truth. It's a bad habit among us stupid limeys.”
He saw how impossible it was going to be to talk to her about anything from now on. “I'm sorry about the limey stuff. Let's forget it.”
The next day at lunch Adrian congratulated Cliff for the Johnson endorsement. “You can expect a visit from the mick from Massachusetts within the month,” he said.
Adrian was talking about Senator John F. Kennedy, who had recently announced he was a candidate for the White House. Showing the built-in prejudices of his Boston ancestry, Adrian found it hard to believe any Irish-American could be presidential material. Within two weeks, the Kennedy office called to arrange a visit. A week later, JFK bounded off another Air Force plane and seized Cliff's hand with an almost lethal grip. “Where is this superbomber?” he asked.
Cliff introduced the senator to Billy McCall and he promptly recited three of the four records Billy had set in high-altitude flight. Billy grinned. “You must have had a hell of a briefing.”
In the desert sunshine Kennedy seemed almost unnaturally youthful. Compared to him the drooping Johnson looked like an old man. As they rode down the flight line, Kennedy said: “We've got a mutual friend who says hello.”
“Who?”
“Your old tail gunner, Mike Shannon. He's handling my campaign in New Jersey. Doing a great job. He told me what a hell of thing you did over there. Going for another twenty-five missions.”
Cliff managed to grope his way past the memory of Schweinfurt to embellish the myth. “That's what happens when you fall in love with an English girl.”
“Still married to her?”
“More or less.”
Kennedy grinned. They understood each other. They were men of the world. A good feeling. Cliff's hopes soared. Shannon was a good omen all by himself.
The Warrior awed Kennedy. He walked around it twice. “It flies?” he said.
“Want to find out for yourself?”
“You bet. Should I make out a will?”
“Not to worry,” Billy said. “We've got a parachute for you.”
“What happens when you bail out at mach three?” Kennedy asked as they strapped in and Billy turned the engines over.
“You lose your head,” Billy said. “And your legs and your arms and anything else that happens to be stickin' out.”
“Let's go,” Kennedy said.
It was as wild a ride as Cliff Morris had ever had in the bomber. Billy sent her right up to the red line, 2,273 mph. He took evasive action against imaginary fighters, rolling right and left, diving from 70,000 to 50,000 feet. Kennedy never showed even a quiver of nerves. “Where the hell are we now?” he said, looking down at the clouds obscuring the earth beneath them.
“Over Alaska,” Billy said. “We'll be home in an hour.”
On the ground, Kennedy thanked them and said: “I hear you fellows are good at other kinds of entertainment.”
“We do have that reputation, Senator,” Cliff said.
“What have you got that I haven't seen?” Kennedy said. “Lyndon told me you fixed him up with the greatest night of his life. But that raunchy bastard has no taste worth mentioning.”
To avoid duplication, Kennedy let Cliff flip through his address book. It was full of names of movie stars that left him momentarily speechless. “Johnson's girl was one of our best,” Cliff said. “But she's a little old for you. I've got another one from the top of our A listâ”
“I'll be in meetings till about eleven tonight. Tell her to come by my room at the Bel Air around midnight,” Kennedy said.
“She'll be there,” Cliff said.
Kennedy flew on to LAX and Cliff got on the phone to Adrian. He told him how much the senator liked the planeâand what he expected for the evening. “She can't be one of the secretaries, Adrian. Have you got anything special in reserve?”
“I've got someone in New York. She can be here by eight o'clock. One of Madame George's girls.”
The next morning, Cliff phoned the Bel Air from his office and got through to Kennedy. “I just wanted to make sure everything went all right on the entertainment front.”
“It was special, all right. Where did you find her? I'm putting her in the front of my book,” Kennedy said.
“Are you going to make a statement about the plane?”
“It's being typed.”
Cliff had barely hung up when his secretary somewhat nervously informed him there was a woman who wanted to see him. She had asked to see Adrian Van Ness, who was in a meeting and had shunted her to Cliff. Ten seconds later, Cliff was face to face with the angriest, most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Amalie Borne glared at him and said: “Mr. Morris. Did you have anything to do with arranging my introduction to the famous Senator Kennedy?”
“In a way.”
“I have a message I wish you would deliver to Mr. Van Ness. I am not a whore. I resent being treated like a whore. If I am ever treated this way again by you or Mr. Van Ness I will retaliate with every resource at my disposal.”
“What the hell happened?”
“I have no intention of discussing it with you. Simply give him my messageâand also tell him I have bought a few things at the hotel. The bills will signify in a very small way my outrage. I knew in my heart I should have nothing to do with you Americans.”
Later in the day Cliff found Adrian Van Ness and passed on Amalie's message, including the warning about bills of outrage. Adrian told him not to worry about it. He showed him a copy of the
Los Angeles Examiner
with Kennedy's endorsement of the Warrior on the front page. “She got results. No need to worry about the bills if we land the contract.”
Cliff could not resist finding out what sort of bills Amalie had run up. He told the story to Dick Stone over lunch and asked him to check with the
accounting department. He was amazed by Dick's reaction. “You approve using a woman like that to sell this goddamn bomber?”
“Christ, you sound like Lady Sarah. I spent two months in South America with Amalie. She didn't exactly impress me as a Girl Scout.”
“I met her in Paris. She's telling the truth. She's not a whore!”
“She works for Madame George, doesn't she?”
“You have the moral sensibility of a hound dog, Captain.”
“If I'm reading you right, you're making a big mistake, Navigator. Stay away from that broad. She doesn't play by the usual rules.”
“We're not talking baseball!”
Cliff was amazed by Dick's fury. It was out of character. “Hey, listen. Between her and Cassie Trainor, when it comes to dames, your taste doesn't exactly run to Snow White. I don't get this moral outrage act. Calm down and find out how much she charged us for being treated like a whore. Maybe that'll change your mind.”