It was close to midnight on December 23, 1972. Dick Stone sat in the White House's Oval Office beside Cliff Morris, Mike Shannon, Adrian Van Ness, President Richard Nixon, and several aides as the opening credits of
Lusty Lady
unrolled. Dick had brought the film from California. Adrian had introduced it as a “little treat” he thought the president would enjoy.
“Whoa!” the president chuckled, when he saw who Angela Perry was. “This
is
a treat.”
In the past two years, Angela had made three movies that zoomed her from semi-obscurity to stardom. Cliff Morris was largely responsible. He had introduced her to a half-dozen studio executives with whom he had become chummy since his ascent to Buchanan's presidency.
“She made it years ago, before she changed her name,” Adrian said. “One of our security people tracked it down.”
The plot involved an anemic scoutmaster and his sexy wife, who take a troop of Boy Scouts camping. The Scouts all look like leftover members of the Waffen SSâblond muscular hunks who eye the wife lecherously from the first frame. In the third frame the scoutmaster falls off a cliff and disappears beneath a foaming waterfall. The Scouts proceed to enjoy Angela in every position and through every available orificeâleaving them all exhausted, while she pants for more.
The president thought it was wonderful. He laughed and laughed. When it finally endedâwith a naked Angela inspecting the exhausted members of each gasping ScoutâNixon insisted on Adrian getting him a print for private showings to members of Congress.
The president knew nothing about Cliff's connection to Angela, of course. He had no idea Adrian was showing the film not only for his delectation but to embarrass Cliff into ending his fling with this Jane Fonda clone before she messed up his careerâand Buchanan Aircraft.
Neither gratitude nor Cliff's arguments had altered Angela's politics. She had joined Hanoi Jane and other Hollywood luminaries in raising millions to defeat Nixon for reelection. To their chagrin he had won in a landslide, thanks largely to a last-minute announcement that “peace” had been signed with the North Vietnamese.
The announcement would never have been made without a massive application of American air power. For the first time, targets that Curtis LeMay and other air-war experts had wanted to bomb for seven years were taken off the prohibited list. Navy planesâBuchanan Thunderersâhad mined Haiphong harbor and Boeing's B-52s had pounded Hanoi. For the heavies it had been anything but a joyride. The fifteen-year-old B-52s had taken horrendous losses
from Soviet SAM missiles and the enormous concentration of radar-guided antiaircraft guns around the Communist capital. Morale among the B-52 crews had plummeted alarmingly and there was even a rumor of a mutiny. But the Communists, knowing nothing of this development, saw a future of even more devastating raids and began serious peace negotiations.
Along with a print of
Lusty Lady
, Dick had brought Buchanan's 13,000 page condensation of the thirteen-million page Total Performance Package contract bid for the new bomber, which was going to be simply called the BX to make it sound as futuristic as possible. Cliff had wanted to call it Warrior II but Adrianâand Nixonâthought that would unnecessarily arouse congressmen who had voted against the previous bomber. Besides, the BX was an essentially new plane, smaller, slimmer. It was not as fast as the Warrior because it was designed to fly at fifty feet, where mach 3 speed would be suicidal. But the plane had something the Warrior mortally lackedâstealth. Its carbon epoxy fuselage, its virtually invisible engine ducts, left no trace of its path on a radar screen.
After the movie, Adrian signaled Dick Stone to begin his presentation of the BX. Dick struggled to his feet, feeling as if his flesh were sludge and his brain were full of L.A. smog. The TPP contract had consumed him and his staff eighteen hours a day for the past four months. He had finished working on this presentation aboard his flight from LAX. Taking a deep breath to clear his head, Dick set up a rack for his charts and did the job in five smooth minutes. He stressed that the price they were bidding was fifty million dollars a plane. But Dick made it clear that the ultimate cost would be closer to a hundred million dollars. The electronic equipmentâespecially the ground-hugging radarâthey were putting into the plane was fantastically expensive.
“It's all right to surprise Congress, but we don't want to surprise you, Mr. President,” Adrian said.
Nixon nodded contentedly. “As long as you know something in advance, damage control is never a problem.”
“I trust that goes for the unpleasant noises our Democratic sore losers are making over that break-in at the Watergate apartments,” Adrian said.
“Of course,” Nixon said. “It never should have happened in the first place. The boys got carried away by our momentum.”
A final flip and Dick displayed the mock-up of the BX, flying directly into the camera, its needle nose emanating menace. “Beautiful,” Nixon said. “With two hundred of those in the barn, Hanoi won't say boo for the next twenty yearsâand Peking will be nicer than ever.”
“What's the matter with Morris?” one of Nixon's aides asked. “Doesn't he like the plane? He hasn't said a word for a half hour.”
“Like it?” Cliff said. “That's the greatest plane, pound for pound, we've ever built. That anyone's ever built. You don't like something that fantastic. You love it.”
“I hope Cliff and Mike'll be in the trenches when we send it up to the hill,”
Nixon said. “In spite of the landslide, we're going to need all the help we can get.”
“You can depend on Cliff and Mike, Mr. President. Right?” Adrian said.
“You're damn right,” Cliff said.
They trudged into the cold Washington night, Dick lugging the film and his presentation kit. “You fucking son of a bitch,” Cliff said to Adrian.
“Give him the film,” Adrian said. “Hanrahan spent a lot of time and money looking for it.”
Dick handed Cliff the film. He flung the hexagonal can into the middle of Lafayette Park. “I wouldn't leave it there if I were you. It can't do your beloved any good,” Adrian said.
“Go get it,” Cliff said to Mike Shannon.
Cursing, Shannon waded through the muddy grass to retrieve the can. “I recommend a nightly viewing,” Adrian said. “I'll even pay for renting a projector.”
Adrian hailed a taxi and disappeared into the chilly darkness. Cliff shouted defiant curses after him.
“You're out of your goddamn mind,” Dick Stone said.
“Second the motion,” Mike Shannon said.
“Fuck you both,” Cliff raged. He glared at Dick. “Did you know about this stunt?”
“All I did was carry the can from California,” Dick said. “No one told me what was in it.”
Shannon hailed a cab and they rode to the Buchanan company apartment in the Watergate complex. Even before Cliff took off his overcoat, he poured a full glass of Inverness and drank half of it in one gulp. “Fuck you and your bomber, Dick,” he bellowed. “I'm staying till we get the Aurora straightened out. Then I'm through.”
“What are you going to do?”
“First get a divorce from the Smiling Zombie, also known as Lady Sarah. Then become a movie producer. It'll be a snap compared to the fucking aircraft business.”
“You'll be a sensation,” Dick said. “You're as ruthless as Harry Cohn, as egocentric as Louis B. Mayer, as mean as Jack Warner.”
“Second that motion too,” Shannon said.
“I'm serious. Angela wants me to produce her next film.”
“You'll be working for her. It's insanity,” Dick said.
“It's love. Nobody believes it but it really is love, Dick.”
There was a desperate appeal in Cliff's voice. He was asking Dick to understandâand simultaneously reminding him why he expected some sympathy from him. But the memory of his obsession with Amalie Borne was still too painful for sympathy. In his mind, Dick evaded the word
love
as if it were a SAM missile. He had not heard the word from Cassie for a long time. Only the children were holding them together. They were a pair of actors pretending
affection whenever they performed in front of their special audience. There had been one too many quarrels about his heroic working hours, one too many pleas that Cliff was spending 50 percent of his time thinking about Angela and someone had to hold Buchanan Aircraft together.
“Cliffâthe Aurora program is almost out of control. No one else but you can straighten it out. Lockheed and Douglas are mopping up the domestic market. If you can't make at least a hundred overseas sales, we're going to do a Convair.”
Dick was talking about the record loss Convair had taken trying to break into the commercial jet market several years agoâ440 million dollars. At the time it was the largest corporate loss in the history of American business.
“I've got a tour all lined up. Starting in Japan. If I don't sell fifty copies in Japan I'll buy you a fucking DC-Ten.”
“Cliffâyou should be on call for this BX thing,” Shannon said.
“You're gonna have to fly solo, Tailgunner.”
“In that case, I think I'll get a decent night's sleep.”
“Kiss Jeremy for me,” Cliff said.
“I will,” Shannon said. “Just make goddamn sure you don't try for any on your own.”
He departed with a defiant slam of the door. The telephone rang as Cliff poured himself another triple Inverness. “Answer that, will you, Dick?” Cliff said. “If it's Angela tell her I'm asleep. I can't talk to her after seeing that fucking film.”
“This is Tony Sirocca,” said a gravelly voice. “Is Cliff there?”
There was death in General Sirocca's voice. Dick did not understand why or how he knew it. Maybe he simply felt the Lady's icy fingers on his flesh. Maybe he deduced at IBM-compatible speed that death was the general's principal business and he did not call people late at night for any other reason.
“It's for you. The Pentagon,” Dick said.
Cliff grabbed the telephone, feet spread wide in a fighting stance, ready to tell someone else off. Within ten seconds he was bending, crumpling as if Tony Sirocca had kicked him in the groin. “Oh Jesus,” he gasped.
He spun on his heel and fell onto the couch, the phone still clutched to his cheek. “There's no hope?” he whispered. “He couldn't have gotten back out to sea? I meanâit's one tough plane, Tony.”
Cliff was aging like someone in a science fiction film as he talked. His checks caved in, his chest collapsed, his legs curled up. “Sure, Tony, sure. I appreciate your calling,” he said. “I'll call his mother. She couldn't have handled the usual routine. I'm not sure I could.”
Cliff did not hang up. He did not have the strength. “Charlie's gone,” he said. He slumped there, arms akimbo, one hand still clutching the white telephone. “He flew flak suppression over Hanoi for the B-Fifty-twos. A direct hit tore the wing off the plane.”
“Jesus. I thought he was on his way home,” Dick said.
Charlie had been aboard a carrier off Vietnam for almost a year, flying Buchanan Thunderers. “They canceled his ordersâthey were trying everything to protect the B-Fifty-twos,” Cliff said.
Dick thought of his nine-year-old son in California, the love he felt when he watched him playing or sleeping. It was so acute, it was almost pain. He poured Cliff another full glass of Inverness. “Anesthesia,” he said.
“No,” Cliff said. “I've got to call Sarah.”
“I'll call her.”
He went into the bedroom and dialed Sarah's number in California. The phone rang and rang. Finally a sleepy voice answered. “Sarah?” Stone said. “This is Dick. Dick Stone. I'm calling for Cliff. He just got some terrible news.”
“Charlie's dead,” she said. “I've been expecting it.”
Dick was so staggered he could only gasp: “Why?”
“The sins of the fathers,” Sarah said. “And mothers.”
“SarahâI know this is a hell of a shock. But that doesn't make sense.”
“Yes it does. You're the one who doesn't make sense, Dick. Trying to rationalize, organize, a business that was shot through with evil from the start.”
Suddenly her empty voice was vibrating with rage. “Why are you telling me this?” she hissed. “Doesn't he have the guts to talk to me?”
“Sarahâ”
“Get him on the phone. Get the chief executive murderer on the phone. I insist!”
Dick felt his flesh shriveling in the ferocity of the hatred that was coming over the line. “No, Sarah. It would be better if you talked in a few days.”
“I'm on the line, Sarah,” Cliff said. “Say it to me, not to Dick. I know you've been wanting to say it for a long time. Maybe it'll make you feel better.”