The Carpetbaggers (88 page)

Outside, the white-hot mid-July sun beat down on the Nevada air strip, but here in the General's office, the overworked air-conditioner whirred and kept the temperature down to an even eighty degrees. I looked at Morrissey, then across the table to the General and his staff.

"That's the story, gentlemen," I said. "The CA-JET X.P. should reach six hundred easier than the British De Havilland-Rolls jet did the five-o-six point five they're bragging about." I smiled at them and got to my feet. "And now, if you'll step outside, gentlemen, I’ll show you."

"I have no doubt about that, Mr. Cord," the General said smoothly. "If there'd been any doubts in our minds, you never would have got the contract."

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go."

"Just a moment, Mr. Cord," the General said quickly. "We can't allow you to demonstrate the jet."

I stared at him. "Why not?"

"You haven't been cleared for jet aircraft," he said. He looked down at a sheet of paper on his desk. "Your medical report indicates a fractional lag in your reflexes. Perfectly normal, of course, considering your age, but you'll understand why we can't let you fly her."

"That's a lot of crap, General. Who the hell do you think flew her down here to deliver her to you?"

"You had a perfect right to — then," the General replied. "It was your plane. But the moment she touched that field outside, according to the contract, she became the property of the Army. And we can't afford the risk of allowing you to take her up."

I slammed my fist into my hand angrily. Rules, nothing but rules. That was the trouble with these damn contracts. Yesterday, I could have flown her up to Alaska and back and they couldn't have stopped me. Or for that matter, even catch me. The CA-JET X.P. was two hundred odd miles an hour faster than any of the conventional aircraft the Army had in the air. Someday, I'd have to take the time to read those contracts.

The General smiled and came around the table toward me. "I know just how you feel, Mr. Cord," he said. "When the medics told me I was too old for combat flying and put me behind a desk, I wasn't any older than you are right now. And I didn't like it any more than you do. Nobody likes being told he is growing older."

What the hell was he talking about? I was only forty-one. That isn't old. I could still fly rings around most of those damp-eared kids walking around on the field outside with gold and silver bars and oak leaves on their shoulders. I looked at the General.

He must have read the surprise in my eyes, for he smiled again. "That was only a year ago. I'm forty-three now." He offered me a cigarette and I took it silently. "Lieutenant Colonel Shaw will take her up. He's on the field right now, waiting for us."

Again, he read the question in my eyes. "Don't worry about it," he said quickly. "Shaw's completely familiar with the plane. He spent the last three weeks at your plant in Burbank checking her out."

I glanced at Morrissey but he was carefully looking somewhere else at the time. He'd been in on it, too. I'd make him sweat for that one. I turned back to the General. "O.K., General. Let's go outside and watch that baby fly."

Baby was the right word and not only for the plane. Lieutenant Colonel Shaw couldn't have been more than twenty years old. I watched him take her up but somehow I couldn't stand there squinting up at the sky, watching him put her through her paces. It was like going to a lot of trouble to set yourself up with a virgin and then when you had everything warmed up and ready, you opened the bedroom door and found another guy copping the cherry right under your nose.

"Is there anywhere around here I could get a cup of coffee?"

"There's a commissary down near the main gate," one of the soldiers said.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome," he said automatically, never taking his eyes from the plane in the sky, while I walked away.

The commissary wasn't air-conditioned but they kept it dark and it wasn't too bad, even if the ice cubes in the iced coffee had melted before I got the glass back to my seat. I stared morosely out of the window in front of my table. Too young or too old. That was the story of my life. I was fourteen when the last one ended, in 1918, and almost over the age limit when we got into this one. Some people never had any luck. I always thought that war came to every generation but I was neither one nor the other. I had the bad fortune to be born in between.

A medium-size Army bus pulled up in front of the commissary. Men started to pile out and I watched them because there was nothing else to look at. They weren't soldiers; they were civilians, and not young ones, either. Most of them carried their jacket over their arm and a brief case in their free hand and there were some with gray in their hair and many with no hair at all. One thing about them caught my eye. None of them were smiling, not even when they spoke to one another in the small groups they immediately formed on the sidewalk in front of the bus.

Why should they smile, I asked myself bitterly. They had nothing to smile about. They were all dodoes like me. I took out a cigarette and struck a match. The breeze from the circulating fan blew it out. I struck another, turning away from the fan and shielding the cigarette in my cupped hands.

"Herr Cord! This is indeed a surprise! What are you doing here?"

I looked up at Herr Strassmer. "I just delivered a new plane," I said, holding out my hand. "But what are you doing out here? I thought you were in New York."

He shook my hand in that peculiarly European way of his. The smile left his eyes. "We, too, made a delivery. And now we go back."

"You were with that group outside?"

He nodded. He looked out through the window at them and a troubled look came into his eyes. "Yes," he said slowly. "We all came together in one plane but we are going back on separate flights. Three years we worked together but now the job is finished. Soon I go back to California."

"I hope so," I laughed. "We sure could use you in the plant but I'm afraid it'll be some time yet. The war in Europe may be over but if Tarawa and Okinawa are any indication, we're good for at least six months to a year before Japan quits."

He didn't answer.

I looked up and suddenly I remembered. These Europeans were very touchy about manners. "Excuse me, Herr Strassmer," I said quickly. "Won't you join me in some coffee?"

"I have not the time." There was a curiously hesitant look to his eyes. "Do you have an office here as you do everywhere else?"

"Sure," I said, looking up at him. I'd passed the door marked Men on my way over. "It's in the back of this building."

"I will meet you there in five minutes," he said and hurried out.

Through the window, I watched him join one of the groups and begin to talk with them. I wondered if the old boy was going crackers. You couldn't tell, but maybe he had been working too hard and thought he was back in Nazi Germany. There certainly wasn't any reason for him to be so secretive about being seen talking to me. After all, we were on the same side.

I ground my cigarette into an ash tray and sauntered out. He never even glanced up as I walked past his group on my way to the john. He came into the room a moment after I had got there. His eyes darted nervously toward the booths. "Are we alone?"

"I think so," I said, looking at him. I wondered what you did to get a doctor around here if there were any signs of his cracking up.

He walked over to the booths, opened the doors and looked. Satisfied, he turned back to me. His face was tense and pale and there were small beads of perspiration across his forehead. I thought I'd begun to recognize the symptoms. Too much of this Nevada sun is murder if you're not used to it. His first words convinced me I was right.

"Herr Cord," he whispered hoarsely. "The war will not be over in six months."

"Of course not," I said soothingly. From what I had heard, the first thing to do was agree with them, try to calm them down. I wished I could remember the second thing. I turned to the sink. "Here, let me get you a glass of— "

"It will be over next month!"

What I thought must have been written on my face, for my mouth hung open in surprise. "No, I'm not crazy, Herr Cord," Strassmer said quickly. "To no one else but you would I say this. It is the only way I can repay you for saving my life. I know how important this could be to your business."

"But— but how— "

"I cannot tell you more," he interrupted. "Just believe me. By next month, Japan will be
verfallen
!" He turned and almost ran out the door.

I stared after him for a moment, then went over to the sink and washed my face in cold water. I felt I must be even crazier than he was, because I was beginning to believe him. But why? It just didn't make any sense. Sure, we were pushing the Nips back, but they still held Malaya, Hong Kong and the Dutch East Indies. And with their kamikaze philosophy, it would take a miracle to end the war in a month.

I was still thinking about it when Morrissey and I got on the train. "You know who I ran into back there?" I asked. I didn't give him a chance to answer. "Otto Strassmer."

There seemed to be a kind of relief in his smile. I guess he'd been expecting to catch hell for not telling me about that Air Corps test pilot. "He's a nice little guy," Morrissey said. "How is he?"

"Seemed all right to me," I said. "He was on his way back to New York." I looked out the window at the flat Nevada desert. "By the way, did you ever hear exactly what it was he was working on?"

"Not exactly."

I looked at him. "What was it you did hear?"

"I didn't hear it from him," Morrissey said. "I got it from a friend of mine down at the Engineers' Club, who worked on it for a little while. But he didn't know very much about it, either. All he knew was that it was called the Manhattan Project and that it had something to do with Professor Einstein."

I could feel my brows knit in puzzlement. "What could Strassmer do for a man like Einstein?"

He smiled again. "After all, Strassmer did invent a plastic beer can that was stronger than metal."

"So?" I asked.

"So maybe the Professor got Otto to invent a plastic container to store his atoms in," Morrissey said, laughing.

I felt a wild excitement racing inside me. A container for atoms, energy in a bottle, ready to explode when you popped the cork. The little man hadn't been crazy. He knew what he was talking about. I'd been the crazy one.

It would take a miracle, I'd thought. Well, Strassmer and his friends had come into the desert and made one and now they were going home, their job done. What it was or how they did it I couldn't guess and didn't care.

But deep inside me, I was sure that it had happened.

The miracle that would end the war.

I got off the train at Reno, while Morrissey went on to Los Angeles. There was no time to call Robair at the ranch, so I took a taxi to the factory. We barreled through the steel-wire gate, under the big sign that read CORD EXPLOSIVES, now more than a mile from the main plant.

The factory had expanded tremendously since the war. For that matter, so had all our companies. It seemed that no matter what we did, there never was enough space.

I got out and paid the cabby and as he pulled away, I looked up at the familiar old building. It was worn now, and looked dingy and obsolete compared with the new additions, but its roof was gleaming white and shining in the sun. Somehow, I could never bring myself to move out of it when the other executives had moved their offices into the new administration building. I dropped my cigarette on the walk and ground it into dust beneath my heel, then went into the building.

The smell was the same as it always was and the whispers that rose from the lips of the men and women working there were the same as I always heard when I passed by "
El hijo
." The son. It had been twenty years and most of them hadn't even been there when my father died and still they called me that. Even the young ones, some of them less than half my age.

The office was the same, too. The heavy, oversized desk and leather-covered furniture now showed the cracks and wear of time. There was no secretary in the outer office and I was not surprised. There was no reason for one to be there. They hadn't expected me.

I walked around behind the desk and pressed the switch down on the squawk box that put me right through to McAllister's office in the new building, a quarter of a mile away. The surprise echoed in his voice as it came through the box. "Jonas! Where did you come from?"

"The Air Corps," I said. "We just delivered the CA-JET X.P."

"Good. Did they like it?"

"I guess they did," I answered. "They wouldn't trust me to take it up." I leaned over and opened the door of the cabinet below the telephone table, taking out the bottle of bourbon that was there. I put the bottle on the desk in front of me. "How do we stand on war-contract cancellations in case the war ends tomorrow?"

"For the explosive company?" Mac asked.

"For all the companies," I said. I knew he kept copies of every contract we ever made down here because he considered this his home office.

"It'll take a little time. I'll put someone on it right away."

"Like about an hour?"

He hesitated. When he spoke, a curious note came into his voice. "All right, if it's that important."

"It's that important."

"Do you know something?"

"No," I said truthfully. I really didn't know. I was only guessing. "I just want it."

There was silence for a moment, then he spoke again. "I just got the blueprints from Engineering on converting the radar and small-parts division of Aircraft to the proposed electronics company. Shall I bring them over?"

"Do that," I said, flipping up the switch. Taking a glass from the tray next to the Thermos jug, I filled it half full with bourbon. I looked across the room to the wall where the portrait of my father looked down on me. I held the glass up to him.