He was holding his face in his hand and peering through the web of his fingers. “This is so goddamn dangerous…. We could both get our asses in one hell of a sling. What are you trying to prove, Heller?”
“You tell me,” I said. It was an honest answer.
He stared at the flame in the coconut, as if its flickering held meaning. “This has to be some kind of…military business. The government’s been on this thing like a heat rash since the first day. I mean, why else would everybody on Uncle Sam’s payroll be so eager to please?”
“For example.”
He was looking at me now, not the flame. “Before the first attempt, we did a lot of our prep over at March Army Air Base—near Riverside?”
“Military installations aren’t usually available for the activities of private citizens, are they?”
“Hell no! That’s strictly off limits! Yet, here we got the run of the place, with their mechanics pitchin’ in with us, and, get this: armed military police outside the building.”
“That’s one way to keep the press out.”
“But when we were at Oakland, we used the Naval Reserve Hangar, and got the same kind of help, and security. Don’t you find that, I don’t know…unusual? Kinda out of the ordinary, the Army and Navy throwin’ in together like that?”
It was very odd. The Army and the Navy were separate entities, divided by rivalry, each with their own turf, their own hierarchies, their own agendas. What would it take to bring them together on one project?
The answer came to me at once, and made the skin on the back of my neck crawl—or was that merely a reaction to my latest sip of Zombie?
“Their Commander-in-Chief could elicit their support and cooperation,” I said.
He swallowed thickly. “You mean, the President.”
“I mean, the husband of Amelia Earhart’s pal Eleanor.”
“We shouldn’t even be talking about this.”
The waitress brought Tisor his egg rolls and a second beer.
“Ernie,” I said, “G. P. Putnam put his wife’s fame—and her life—on the bargaining table. If the President of the United States was on the other side of that table, does that make it any more acceptable?”
“I didn’t even vote for the son of a bitch,” he said, biting the end off an egg roll.
I had. Twice. Thank God for the two-term limit, so I wouldn’t have to do it again.
“You know, this kind of thing ain’t that unusual,” Tisor said. “It’s an open secret in our business, Pan Am’s in bed with Uncle Sam. Pan Am gets the contracts for overseas mail service, and the government gets…favors now and then.”
“This is something Amelia would be aware of.”
“Sure. Everybody knew what the government was gettin’ out of the flight.”
“An airstrip at Howland Island.”
“Right. And Miss Earhart was okay with that, I’m sure. I know she appreciated gettin’ this help from ‘Franklin’—that’s how she referred to him, y’know.”
“I know.”
“But when I heard about the change in flight plan, switchin’ from east to west to west to east? I
Out in the courtyard, a parrot asked,
“Ernie, can you make any sense of it? Why
Having polished off the first egg roll, he picked up the second and gestured with it. “Well, first of all, think about the Lockheed Electra herself. She’s the ideal plane for a military mission…particularly with those powerful military- issue engines.”
“There are special engines on that plane?”
“…Not the first plane.”
“What do you mean, the ‘first plane’?”
His eyes were hooded and his voice was very soft as he said, “Heller, you may not want to know this. I know I don’t.”
“You know where that woman is, Ernie? She’s either floating on the ocean, or she’s under it.” I glanced around, gestured to the “atmosphere.” “Or maybe she’s on an island somewhere in the South Pacific, only she’s not sitting under a fake palm tree at a varnished teakwood table eating a damn egg roll.”
A macaw cawed.
“Between the crackup at Oahu and the takeoff in May,” Tisor said, “the Electra was over at Lockheed’s overhaul hangar.”
“Which is also in Burbank.”
“Yeah. Next-door neighbors of ours, but we weren’t privy to the repair job. It was kept under wraps.”
