The Fly Boys (25 page)

Gold, frowning, waited until Suzy had left the veranda. “Working all day and taking those art courses at UCLA at night … I
don’t think she’s spending enough time with Robert.”

“Oh, Herman,” Erica chided affectionately, “we’ve been through all this countless times.”

“I know,” Gold moped as Ramona, the matronly servant who ran the household, came in with his bacon and eggs. His mood momentarily
lightened. Ramona was the only person in the world who could cook eggs just the way he liked them. A few months ago, with
his pants getting tight in the waist, he’d put himself on a diet: bacon and eggs for breakfast only every third day, fruit
and wheat toast the rest of the week. Normally he looked forward to his big breakfasts, but this morning he had no appetite.

He stared at his wife. “I still think you’re defending Suzy because it was your idea that she go to work.”

“I just thought that if Suzy began to get out and around, meeting new people—
new men
,” Erica emphasized, “she would come out of her shell.”

“I know, I know. You meant well, and I agreed with you at the time,” Gold admitted.

Suzy and the baby had moved back in with them in December 1942, just after her husband, Blaize Greene, an RAF fighter ace,
was killed in action. Blaize and Susan had been married just over a year, and his death had left her emotionally shattered.
If it hadn’t been for the baby, Suzy might have gone completely to pieces, but the responsibilities of motherhood helped her
to pull herself together. About a year later, Erica came up with the bright idea that Gold should offer Suzy a job at GAT.

Suzy had been enthusiastic when Gold had offered her a position. Like a lot of women, she’d felt that going to work during
wartime in a defense-oriented industry was the patriotic thing to do. Suzy had some secretarial skills from finishing school,
so Gold put her to work as a secretary in Teddy Quinn’s Engineering Research and Design Department. Eventually she’d moved
up in the department to become Teddy’s personal secretary.

“I’ve started to think your strategy has backfired,” Gold complained to Erica as he picked at his breakfast. “I asked her
the other day why a beautiful girl like her wasn’t dating when there were so many eligible men around. You know what she told
me? That with work and school she didn’t have the time!”

Erica frowned. “You think that she’s using the job and her night school courses as an excuse to keep men at arm’s length?”

“That’s right,” Gold replied. “She keeps herself busy, and that way she doesn’t have to think about the fact that she’s determined
to be a widow for the rest of her life.”

Erica shook her head. “I still think she has a better chance of running into the man who might snap her out of it by being
out and around, instead of staying home with Robert all day.”

“And what about Robert?” Gold demanded irritably. “Is
he
better off?”

Erica shrugged off his question. “What about
you
?” she countered, quietly scrutinizing him.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“You know as well as I do that Robert is doing just fine. The question is, what has put
you
in this foul mood?”

“Who says I’m in a foul mood?” Gold said defiantly.

“For one thing, you haven’t stopped growling like a bear since you came downstairs. For another, it’s bacon-and-eggs day,
but you’re not eating.”

Gold looked down at his plate. He’d nibbled most of the bacon, but the two untouched sunny-side-up eggs were staring back
at him accusingly. He pushed away the plate. “Okay, okay, so maybe I’m not in such a great mood today.”

“What’s wrong?” Erica paused. “Suzy was right, wasn’t she? It
was
your conversation with Steve, wasn’t it? Did you two get into another argument once I was off the line?”

Gold shrugged. “Not another argument, the
same
argument.” He paused while the new maid came in to pour them both more coffee and take away his plate. “Every time it’s the
same thing. I swear to myself that I’m not going to bring up the matter of his coming into the business, that I’ll leave the
entire subject alone and keep the peace.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “But then, while we’re talking, my mind starts to
play tricks on me. I want so badly for him to change his mind that I start to think I’m hearing that he
has
changed his mind, but that he’s too proud to tell me.
Then
I think that if I make the offer again, this time he’ll
accept.
” He sighed. “But, of course, he doesn’t accept, and I hear that sarcastic tone in his voice, and it pushes my buttons, and
then we’re off and running.”

“All I can tell you is that it’s the same thing from his side,” Erica said. “He doesn’t want to fight with you, but he’s just
as helpless as you to avoid the arguments.”

“How do you know that?” Gold asked sharply.

“He tells me.”

“Great,” Gold muttered. “You’d think he’d tell me something once in a while,” he trailed off, shaking his head.

“This is a difficult time for him, too, you know,” Erica said. “We both can read between the lines, Herman. We know it’s not
all peaches and cream for him in the Air Force. He’s not happy stuck where he is.”

Gold nodded. “He said he’s working on something for himself, but he was vague.” He eyed his wife. “Did he tell
you
about it?”

Erica shook her head. “Only that he wants it to be a surprise.”

“Maybe it’s a big promotion,” Gold fantasized. “Or maybe he’s going to be reassigned as an aide to a general. A couple of
years doing something like
that
would give him the confidence he needs to come to work at GAT,” he added wistfully.

“Herman,” Erica said in warning.

“Okay, okay,” Gold surrendered. “You know, as much as I want him working with
me
, at least I’m grateful that he’s safe and sound at a desk job in Washington, and not risking his neck flying fighters.”

Erica laughed. “You make it sound like we’re still at war.”

“Well, look at what’s going on in Berlin,” Gold pointed out. “You don’t think our SAC interceptor squadrons in Europe aren’t
on alert in case the Reds try something? And even in peacetime fighter squadrons fly practice maneuvers, you know. And accidents
happen.”

“Stop!” Erica complained. “Herman, you
are
in a black mood talking like that! I swear, if this keeps up I’m not going to
let
you talk to Steven anymore.”

“It’s not just Steven,” Gold said, shrugging.

“Then what?”

“Ah …” He made a face. “I’ve got a luncheon meeting with some big shots from Air Force Procurement today. They’ve flown in
for a few days to meet with the various contractors. Maybe I’m a little worried about it.”

“Is it about the BroadSword?”

Gold shook his head. “It’s about a new design for a bomber we’ve come up with. These guys have had our proposal for months,
but we haven’t heard a thing from them.”

“I’m sure they’re going to buy lots of your bombers, darling.”

Gold chuckled. “You know, you’re pretty cute when you talk like that.” He glanced at his watch. “I’d better get going,” he
said, standing up. “I’ve got a ton of things to do at the office.”

“Just remember,” Erica smiled, “you had butterflies in your belly the day you pitched your first airplane, and you probably
always will.”

“Hmm, you’re so smart,” Gold murmured, coming around to kiss her.

“Hmm, I know,” Erica said, kissing him back. “Go sell your airplanes, and then come home to me and we’ll celebrate.”

“Champagne?” Gold asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Caviar?”

“But of course.”

“Wanton lovemaking?”

Erica pretended to ponder. “It depends on how large an order the Air Force gives you.”

“Then it shall be for a vast air armada,” Gold declared.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Erica laughed.

“Whose fleets shall darken the skies.”

“You’d better call before you leave for home tonight, so I can turn down the covers and put on perfume.”

“Just make sure you perfume all of my favorite places.”

“And where, pray tell, might those be?”

Gold winked at her. “How big a bottle of that stuff have you got?”

It was a sunny morning, so Gold put the top down on the scarlet, Cadillac Series 62 convertible for the drive to Burbank.
With its 150-horsepower V-8 engine, the convertible wasn’t the biggest or most expensive Caddy out of Detroit, but it was
the only one the company made.

He’d bought the car last year, as soon as the ‘47s had come out, and had it shipped directly from the showroom to the company
that did the interiors for his airliners. He’d had them gut the Caddy’s interior along with its bench seating for six, and
install new carpeting, burled walnut inserts for the dashboard and inside door panels, and a single pair of custom-built,
thronelike bucket seats upholstered in cream-colored leather—the same kind used in the first-class sections of his Monarch
GC series. The customized interior made the Caddy a better car, but it was still not a great car. Nevertheless, Gold figured
to stick with it until somebody somewhere began selling a vehicle designed for serious driving.

Gold usually enjoyed threading in and out of traffic, giving the Caddy a workout as he made a game out of trying to get to
the office in the shortest possible time, but this morning he was content to motor sedately with the stop-and-go traffic.
He figured he was going to need all of his energy and competitiveness for his upcoming lunchtime encounter with the tightfisted
skeptics from Air Force Procurement.

Gold thought about his exchange with Erica just before he’d left. He wished that he felt as confident about selling his new
bomber as he’d pretended.

Gold rapped the Caddy’s walnut dashboard.
Knock on wood the deal making today goes as smoothly as the negotiations went concerning the BroadSword….

For the past few years GAT research and design had been advancing on two separate fronts. The first front concerned the development
of a jet fighter.

Back in 1945, the grateful United States government had kept to its part of the bargain in exchange for Gold’s having rescued
Heiner Froehlig and his six aeronautical wunder-kinder from the Russians. Directly after the Germans had been reunited stateside
with their families who had been brought out of the Allied-held sectors of Berlin, they’d been hidden away in a top-secret
compound at Muroc Air Base in the Mojave Desert about seventy miles northeast of Los Angeles.

Once settled, the Germans were instructed to cooperate with GAT in its USAF-authorized and -funded preliminary research for
a jet fighter. Gold’s chief engineer, Teddy Quinn, and a hand-picked team practically moved in with the Germans to expedite
the work. Gold held down the fort at GAT, and began the laborious process of translating from German into English the wealth
of microfilmed research data concerning the aerodynamics of high-speed flight that Froehlig had brought with him out of the
Berlin Air Ministry.

For the next sixteen months the American-German team worked on Gold’s original swept-wing design: essentially the concept
that Gold had conceived while watching his wife swimming in their pool back in ‘43. A swept-wing model, dubbed the Experimental-Pursuit
(XP) 90, was built. Wind tunnel tests proved that the swept-wing concept was fast. Unfortunately, the new concept created
an equally new and frustrating problem. The tests revealed that swept wings were unstable at
low
speeds; an airplane so equipped would have a totally unacceptable tendency to stall.

Froehlig’s people were familiar with the problem, and had previously warned the Americans about it. They had encountered the
low-speed instability phenomenon during their R&D on the legendary World War II Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter. The Germans
had, in fact, abandoned their hopes for a fully swept-wing Me 262 because they could find no workable solution to the problem.

Things were looking bleak at GAT the winter of 1946. The Air Force had placed large orders for Lockheed’s P-80 Shooting Star,
and the Navy was going with Grumman’s proposed Panther jet fighter bomber. Because neither plane was a swept-wing design,
there was a lot of self-doubt at GAT, a lot of talk of abandoning what looked like yet another dead-end concept.

Gold, however, was adamant that swept wing was the way to go. While the German-American team collectively tore out its hair,
Gold spent his days administrating at GAT, his evenings locked in his study at home, translating Froehlig’s smuggled documents.
It was while he was translating an almost overlooked appendix to some research on the Me 262 that he came across a hastily
scrawled sketch for a slat, or movable surface, that could be set into a swept wing’s
leading
edge. The sketch had a brief, scribbled notation suggesting that when the plane was moving at low speeds, the slat would
open to give more lift to the wing. As speed picked up, the slat would retract.

The drawing was unsigned. Neither Froehlig nor any of the other Germans recognized it. It was little more than a doodle in
a margin, but something about it appealed to Gold. It was just the kind of quick sketch that he’d used to make back when he
was a young man and a blank sheet of drafting paper had seemed a glorious challenge, not fraught with peril and the threat
of failure.

The Germans warned Gold that the Me 262’s wings had been equipped with a version of this leading-edge slat, and the results
had been mixed. They were doubtful that the slat concept would lead to anything, but Gold had a hunch. He ordered that time
and money be expended on the idea.

And so GAT had picked up where the Germans had left off. A German may have conceived the idea, but it took good old American
know-how to turn the concept’s potential into reality. Teddy Quinn and his band of crew-cut, slide-rule-wielding sorcerer’s
apprentices captured the dream on graph paper. GAT’s production line built a working sample.

By New Year’s Day 1947, a new XP-90 model equipped with leading-edge wing slats proved itself a winner in wind tunnel tests,
thanks in part to a kid on the production line who earned himself a bonus and a big promotion by suggesting a new approach
to dive brakes. Instead of trying to fit them onto the already overburdened wings, the kid came up with the bright idea of
doors which could be fanned out from the lower side of the jet’s rear fuselage. The brakes seemed to work perfectly on the
model, promising to afford the XP-90 the ability to stop on the proverbial dime.