Senator Hiram Duquesne was not philosophical when he tele- phoned George Ludlow. “You keeping up on what’s going on out in Tonopah?” he thundered.
“Well, I get reports from Vice Admiral Dunedin. Captain Graf- ton reports to him several times a day.”
“I want to know why the officer in charge out there insisted on performing maneuvers that the manufacturer did not feel the plane was ready for, or safe to perform.”
“He’s doing an op eval. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Oh does he? He’s got a twenty-five-year old woman with no previous test experience flying that plane, a four-hundred-rnillion- dollar prototype!”
“She’s not twenty-five. She’s twenty-seven.”
“Have you seen her?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what the hell is going on over there, George? A lot of people have a lot riding on the outcome of this fly-off. And you got Bo Derek’s little sister out there flying the planes! Is she the best test pilot you people have? My God, we’ve been spending millions for that Test Pilot School in Pax River — is she the best you’ve got?”
“If you have any information that implies she’s incompetent, I’d like to hear it.”
“I hear she intentionally shut down both engines while she was up in the sky. Now Consolidated is spending a ton checking them far damage. I’ll bet Chuck Yeager never shut down both engines on a test flight at the same time!”
“I wouldn’t know. You’d have to ask the air force.”
“Don’t get cute. I’m serious. Dead serious. Don’t let that hero fly-boy Grafton and his bimbo test pilot screw this up, George. I’m warning you.”
“Thanks.”
“By the way, the authorization for reactors for that new carrier you guys want to start? My committee voted this morning to delete it. Maybe next year, huh?”
The senator hung up before Ludlow could respond.
Jake Grafton changed Rita’s test profile for the last three flights. He had her avoid all high-angle-of-attack maneuvers, though he did let her ease toward the advertised five-G limit, where the air- flow to the engines once again became turbulent and began to rumble.
The three flights took another ten days. When they were finished the navy crowd spent three more days correlating their data and talking to Consolidated engineers, then packed up for the return to Washington. It would be three weeks before they came back to fly the TRX prototype.
On their last night in Tonopah the navy contingent threw a party in the officers’ club for a very subdued group from Consoli- dated. Adele DeCrescentis didn’t attend, which was perhaps just as well. Along toward midnight, after Toad Tarkington had enjoyed the entire salubrious effect of alcohol and had begun the downhill slide, he spotted Stu Vinich in a corner putting the moves on some woman from Consolidated’s avionics division. He strolled over, tapped Vinich on the shoulder, and as the test pilot turned, flat- tened him with one roundhouse punch.
21
Jake Grafton was amazed when he saw Amy at the passenger terminal at Andrews Air Force Base. In the three weeks he had been gone the child had visibly grown. “Hi, Jake,” she warbled, and ran to throw her arms around him. “Miss me?” he asked.
“Not as much as Callie did,” was the sophisticated reply. As he and Callie waited for the luggage to be off- loaded from the airplane, Callie visited with the other officers who had ridden the DC-9 from Toaopah. Jake made a fuss over Amy and teased her a little, causing her cheeks to redden. But she stayed right there beside him, saying hello to everyone and smiling broadly when spoken to.
“So how’d it go?” Callie asked him as they walked to the car- Jake shrugged. Everything was classified. “Okay, I guess. And you?’
“I stopped going to Dr. Arnold. Last Friday was my last ap- pointment.”
Jake set his luggage on the pavement and gave her a tight squeeze as Amy skipped on ahead, her black hair bobbing with every bound. Callie looked happier than Jake had seen her in a long, long time.
The next morning, a Tuesday, he spent closeted with Admiral Dunedin going over the test results. They watched videotapes and looked at numbers, and began writing down tentative conclusions.
“So how did Moravia do?” the admiral asked at one point
“Fine. Good stick, keeps her wits about her, knows more aero- nautical engineering than I even knew existed.”
“So you want to keep her for the TRX bird?”
“No reason not to.”
The admiral told him about the conversation Senator Duquesne had had with George Ludlow. ‘The secretary didn’t tell me to fire her, or keep her, or anything else,” Dunedin concluded. “He just relayed the conversation.”
“Let me see if I understand this. Admiral. Duquesne’s commit- tee deleted the appropriation for reactors for the new carrier from this year’s budget. Is he implying that if we get another test pilot he’ll put it back in?”
“No. I think the message is that unless the navy buys the Con- solidated plane, he’s not going to be — he’ll be less enthusiastic about navy budget requests.”
“Sir, I don’t think Consolidated’s plane can be modified enough to meet the mission requirements for a new attack plane. And you have to factor Athena into the equation. With Athena we won’t need to buy all that expensive stealth stuff on every airplane.”
“Fly the TRX plane. Then we’ll see.”
“Do you want me to get another test pilot?”
“I just wanted you to understand what’s going on. The tempera- ture is rising. Ludlow and all the politicos in SECDEFs office are playing politics right along with everyone else in this town. The admirals and generals are parading over to the hill for hearings. It’s that merry time of year.”
“I think we have to keep Moravia. After she’s flown both planes she can make point-by-point comparisons that can’t be questioned for extraneous reasons. Consolidated will beat us to death with Rita’s corpse if we use another test pilot to fly the TRX plane, and then recommend it instead of theirs. They’ll claim they got shafted by an incompetent, inexperienced pilot. You and I will look like blundering idiots, or worse.”
“I agree,” the admiral said.
One morning several days later Dreyfus stuck his head in Luis Camacho’s office door. “X mailed the Russians an- other letter.”
Dreyfus handed Camacho a copy and sank into a chair while his boss perused it. Addressed to the Soviet ambassador, the letter was a commentary on Gorbachev’s recent visit to Cuba. The last para- graph contained some advice on how the Soviets should handle Castro.
“On generic copy paper, as usual. Just like all the others.”
“Has the original been through the lab yet?”
“Nope. I just took it down.”
“Go get it. I want to see it”
“What for? That’s an accurate copy.”
“Please. Now.”
With a shake of his head, Dreyfus complied.
Camacho opened his desk drawer and pulled out a pair of rubber gloves, which he worked onto his hands without the benefit of baby powder. Then he extracted a jar from the lower left drawer. He opened it and used a letter opener to smear a little of the blue jelly on his desk. Oops, too much. He used a piece of paper from a legal pad to blot the mess, then stared at the stain on the back of the paper. After firmly closing the jar, he stowed it back in his desk.
When Dreyfus returned with the letter, Camacho was at the window idly watching the pedestrians on E Street. He gingerly opened the plastic bag and extracted the letter while Dreyfus watched openmouthed. He laid the
