“Jesus Christ!” said Jay, protecting his ears from a high-pitched shriek that threatened to render everyone deaf from one end of Fairfax County to the other. And then to Marie, he added, “Everything under control?”
He intended the question to have an edge of irony to it. But Marie had never been terribly into irony. She possessed the quintessential literal mind. Jay had a policy
She turned to face him, with a quick deep red smile designed to betray the put-upon hurt of early-morning martyrdom. “Perfectly,” she replied. “I wish you had been here a little earlier.”
“Oh really?” he replied, caving in to his own sense of humor yet again. “I’m sorry, Marie. I had no idea you’d be so occupied.”
Thus began the busiest, most important day in the entire history of the Boeing PR department. “Sometimes I think you say things just to upset me,” said Marie. “Which is very unfair when you know how difficult this has all been. And how pressed we are for time.”
“Ah, but I have inordinate faith in you,” said Jay. “And I know we’re going to see order spring from this chaos inside the next thirty minutes. Either that, or we’re all fired.”
Marie turned, exasperated, back to the flower arrangers. Jay moved toward his technical director, who was testing the television satellite hookup that would relay live from the cockpit the entire flight of Starstriker 001. “We in good shape, Charlie?” he asked.
“Yessir. Looking good…here watch this, see that picture there, looking out at the maintenance area of the airport? That’s being filmed right through the cockpit windshield of Starstriker. We got a ship out there off Long Island recording the sonic boom from below…we got the black box wired up to the satellite link. Everyone in this room’s gonna hear every word, while they’re watching the big screens…these guys are gonna think they’re
“Looks terrific, Charlie. Sound effects okay?”
“Yessir. We got the full Dolby wraparound digital system installed. When that baby blasts off the runway, this room is going into a gut-rumbling shudder…just like in a movie…the earth will move.
“When she breaks the sound barrier that sonic boom is going to rattle the cutlery in here. Then we’re switching right back to the main cabin, where there will be total silence. The pilot is going to mention the boom right before it happens…then he’ll explain how it slips away and how no one inside the aircraft can hear a thing.”
“Perfect. No glitches, Charlie, for Christ’s sake…we got the President in here and God knows who else. Right now the future of the entire corporation is in your capable hands.”
“Yessir. Don’t worry. We’re not going to have a problem. Everything is very routine. And we’re well organized. Just sit back, eat your breakfast, and enjoy.”
“You do good work, Charlie. Keep going.”
Jay Herbert held down one of the biggest PR jobs in the United States because he never wasted his time on details. His responsibilities were too diverse for that. He delegated carefully, picked his people well, and edited the minutiae out of his life on a daily basis. He did not much like her, but he had hired the Obergruppenfuhrer because he sensed that real detail, feverish pursuit of the apparently unimportant, was her forte. She never forgot anything, her desk was a symphony of lists, and she walked around with a clipboard of the key ones, checking off, adding to, adjusting, arranging, adjudicating.
“Marie Colton,” Jay would whisper conspiratorially to senior colleagues, “lets nothing through the cracks, and I mean that financially, socially, academically, and probably sexually.” It always got an inexpensive laugh, which was after all a part of the corporate PR head’s job.
There was just one area of his duties that caused Jay Herbert to become marginally bogged down, and that was copywriting. An ex — Chicago newspaperman, the forty-eight-year-old Jay had been out of journalism for almost twenty years, but he still had the editor’s dire compulsion to cut, change, and rethink other people’s words. He always said it had to do with the natural literary rhythm that ran through his soul, and he found it impossible to deal with any writer who did not march to the beat of that precise same drum.
As such he drove a succession of advertising-agency executives almost crazy with his insistence on passing, personally, on every sentence of every Boeing brochure, every headline, every cross-head, every descriptive word. He would pore over submitted copy, cutting, editing, improving, forcing advertising men to wonder why the hell he had hired them in the first place, since he plainly wanted to write the stuff himself.
That day’s brochure, printed and designed in the most expensive color it was possible to use, had taken six months to put together. Jay regarded it as his masterpiece, and it probably was.
He walked outside into the corridor, to where the big boxes were being opened. Four female assistants were in the process of placing one brochure at each table setting. Another pile was being placed at the entrance table, where each guest would receive a metal Starstriker badge engraved with his or her name.
Jay could see the front cover of the brochure, glossy white with the legend: STARSTRIKER — STAIRWAY TO THE FUTURE. It was illustrated with a thin line of shooting stars that swept away to a rendition of Old Glory fluttering in the heavens. The PR chief thought it was a knockout.
It was almost 0730, and Marie Colton had the flowers under control. The horticultural mess had vanished, and the room was spectacular. The miles of electrical wires that had traversed the floor a few minutes earlier had also vanished. The two big cinema-sized screens were in place diagonally across two corners of the great room, ensuring that everyone could see everything.
Jay had a quick conference with the catering boss to make certain absolutely anything anyone could desire for breakfast was available. The top table was laid with a milk white tablecloth, on which were placed jugs of orange juice and bowls of fruit. Baskets for toast, hot rolls, and Danish pastries were everywhere. All of the waitresses were dressed as international airline stewardesses, the waiters as pilots.
The sixteen guests at the top table would be the President of the United States, John Mulcahy, Senator Kennedy and their wives, plus Admiral Arnold Morgan and Robert Macpherson. Then, interspersed, would be seated Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Scott Dunsmore, plus the three separate service chiefs, including, of course, Admiral Mulligan, all with wives. An Air Force band was tuning up in a corner of the room. A 25-foot-long model of the new supersonic aircraft was suspended from the ceiling.
The two other main tables, each of which seated forty-eight people, were placed at right angles to the VIP group, and everyone was seated democratically, senators, congressmen, business leaders, potential customers, and show-business personalities. Behind these was a long narrow press table on which were seated, facing the screens, twenty-four media heavy hitters: a half dozen top columnists, six stars of television news, six editors, and six proprietors, all handpicked by Jay Herbert.
Outside, beyond the doors of the great room, was another whole press area with its own screens and tables, buffet refreshments, and a zillion telephones and computer terminals. The press and public launch of Starstriker would bang a hole in a million dollars. The place was already crawling with Secret Servicemen.
Shortly after 0735 the guests began to arrive. And, as they did so the cinema screens came to life, the one on the left showing the scene outside the door with a detailed announcement of who each person was. “Ladies and gentlemen we are pleased to welcome now Sir John Fredickson, Chairman and Chief Executive of British Airways, and Lady Fredickson, both of whom arrived last night from London…”
The big screen on the right was relaying the scene from the cockpit, where Scanner Richards and his co — test pilot, the African-American Yale graduate Marvin Leonard, were running through the checks with the Senior Flight Engineer Don Grafton. As with Concorde, the procedures would take more than an hour. They had been working on it since 0700. The audience could see them in the dark cockpit, following the list on Engineer Grafton’s board, as he studied the cathode ray tubes that contained the critical data bank that would alert them if anything was even remotely amiss. The “Glass Cockpit’s” instrumentation panel, with its six big CRTs, made Concorde’s bewildering mass of conventional dials and switches seem like something out of the Dark Ages. In the deep background, caressed by symphonic Dolby sound, Frank Sinatra sang alternately, “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Come Fly with Me.”
He sang until precisely 0800, when the Presidential motorcade arrived, the first car bearing the President and his wife, with Admiral Morgan and Robert MacPherson.
In two cars following came the service chiefs and more Secret Servicemen. Everyone was greeted by John Mulcahy and his wife, and the party walked into the big room while the Air Force band robustly played “Hail to the
