Top Gun (11 page)

Who
are
these Agatha fuckers?
Gold wondered, savagely grinding out his cigarette in the ashtray.

“You know how damned arrogant Rogers and Simpson has been getting concerning prepayment on after-sales service and spare parts,”
Rosa was continuing. “The consensus among the airlines is that Rogers and Simpson has gotten too big for its britches, and
that part of that is GAT’s fault. For too long they’ve been your sole engine supplier. They need to be shaken up a little.
It will do Rogers and Simpson—not to mention us airlines—a world of good to have a little competition concerning who supplies
the engine for a GAT jetliner. “

And “competition” is the airlines’ word for price- cutting,
Gold thought, remembering what Don had just told him about the nature of the business.

“But what about all that flag-waving you and the others were doing?” Don asked weakly. “You said the only way you would buy
a foreign airplane was if it came with American engines?”

“Well, now, we did say that, didn’t we?” Rosa clucked. “And that brings me to the real purpose of this call. You offered us
a nice enough price on the Rogers and Simpson/ Pont combo, but that price is now yesterday’s news in light of this new offer
from Agatha Holding. There’s a lot of good airplanes out there waiting to be bought. If you want us to keep considering the
Pont, you’re going to have to come back with a lower unit price and sweeter finance deal on the Rogers and Simpson/Pont combo,
and a
drastically
lower price/financing package to make up for the bad press we’ll receive if we go with the all foreign combinations of the
Pont equipped with Payn-Reese engines. If you can’t, or won’t, it’ll mean the Pont is knocked out of the running, and TransWest
will have to make its selection from the other available jetliners.”

“I hear you. Jack,” Don said tiredly, getting to his feet and moving toward the telephone console on the sideboard. “I’ll
get back to you.”

“Sure, Don.” Rosa must have picked up on the dejection in Don’s voice. The airline executive suddenly sounded oddly different
as he added, “Don? It’s just business, you know?”

“I’ll get back to you.” Don pushed the button on the console that broke the connection, and then shut off the speakerphone.
“Jack’s sounding guilty,” Harrison said to Gold. “He knows something he’s not telling us.”

“You have any idea at all who Agatha Holding might be?” Gold asked.

Don shook his head. “But I’m going to find out.” He picked up the’telephone and rang his secretary: “Get me Otto Lane at Lane
Associates.”

“Who’s that?” Gold asked as Don waited for the call to go through.

“They’re an investigations firm based in L.A., with offices in Chicago and on Wall Street,” Don explained. “They’ve been handling
GAT’s business for years—”

“What sort of business?”

“The Lane group supplies us with corporate intelligence,” Don replied. “They’re private detectives who know how to use a computer
instead of a gun to discover corporate malfeasance. When GAT considers, say, advancing an airline a substantial line of credit,
or is interested in taking over a smaller company, we use Otto Lane and his people
to
make sure we’re not about to bite into a wormy apple—” Don held up his hand to Gold. “Hello, Otto? How are you? I’m fine.
Listen, Otto, I need a favor, and I need it immediately. I need to know who’s behind an L.A.-based outfit called Agatha Holding
Company. Yes, I guess it is spelled like the woman’s name…”

“The woman’s name Agatha,” Gold muttered. Something about that rang a bell…

“No, Otto, I’m sorry,” Don was saying. “I don’t have any Social Security numbers to give you. Realize I’m not asking for an
in-depth report. I just want to know who runs the damn thing. Yes, I need the information immediately. Really? That quickly?
That’s wonderful! I’ll be waiting for your call.” Don hung up the phone. “He said he can get back to us with the information
in just a few minutes.”

“I wonder who they’re going to turn out to be?” Gold mused. “The name Agatha sounds familiar to me.”

“Really?” Don returned to his chair. “Well, whoever they are, they’re the fucking angels of death as far as GAT is concerned.
They’ve obviously made the same offer to the other airlines that they made to TransWest.”

“Do we have any room for financial maneuvering?” Gold asked worriedly.
“Can
we do better on the price/financing deal?”

“We’ve got no choice, but that alone won’t get us out of this jam. You see, the fact that these bastards at Agatha have muddied
the waters concerning the Pont is bound to cost us orders, and some of those orders we do keep will likely require the Payn-Reese
engines.”

“An airline would be crazy not to specify them considering the deal Agatha is offering,” Gold had to agree. “And that will
further delay our break-even point.”

“Delay it!” Don laughed thinly. “Hell, at this stage of the game, GAT’s so far in the hole the break-even point has become
largely theoretical. The break-even point moves into the next
century
if we have to pay out to Payn-Reese that portion of income that was originally going to go to recouping the R and D costs
we sank into Rogers and Simpson.”

“I’m getting a headache.” Gold sighed.

“I’m getting into my car and driving off a cliff,” Don replied. “That way
you’ll
be the one who’ll have to finagle the books, deferring expenses while desperately hoping the Stiletto project comes to fruition.”
He paused, smiling sadly. “So, Steve? How do you like the corporate world so far? Aren’t you glad you let me talk you into
leaving the Air Force for this snake pit?”

Gold winked. “I’ll get you for this, Harrison.”

Don waved him quiet. “You’ll have to stand in line. First dibs on my hide will go to the stockholders, the IRS, the—”

The telephone rang. Gold watched as Don bolted out of his chair and over to the sideboard to snatch up the receiver.

“Yes,” Don said impatiently into the telephone. “Of course put him through! Hello, Otto? Yes? It is?
Who?
I’ll be
damned!
Thanks, Otto. Talk to you soon. Bye.”

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” Gold implored as Don hung up the telephone.

“It’s Tim Campbell,” Don said fiercely. “What’s with this Agatha bullshit, I’d like to know? Did Campbell think we wouldn’t
be able to see through it?”

He wants us to know,
Gold thought. “He wants us to know. Agatha was Tim’s wife’s name. That’s why the name sounded so familiar to me. This was
just Tim’s little joke on us. Like a child’s riddle, you know? He’d probably laugh his head off if he found out we had to
call your high-powered private eye to figure it out.”

“Well, I’m not laughing,” Don said. “He wants to ruin this company, you know?”

“I know he had this love-hate thing going with my father for over forty years. Ever since they disbanded their partnership…”

“He couldn’t bring GAT to its knees while your father was alive,” Don muttered. “So he’s trying again now.”

Steve said, “Listen, Don. I want to work with you on this. Tim Campbell is one tough son of a bitch. You’re going to need
somebody flying on your wing—watching your back— if you intend to take him on.”

“I could use the help.” Don nodded. “We’re way out on a limb on this one. The wind is blowing and the bough is starting to
break.”

Steve nodded grimly. “And old ‘Uncle Tim’ is the tree surgeon.”

(One)

Agatha Holding Company

BADCO Towers

Los Angeles, California

4 March, 1974

Tim Campbell’s huge corner office was on the fiftieth floor, with sky-blue carpeting and walls of translucent frosted glass
framing dramatic, panoramic views of downtown L.A. There were no file cabinets or bookcases in this office, and minimal furniture:
just a set of sleek chrome-and-leather armchairs arranged in front of Campbell’s long desk with its gracefully carved redwood
pedestal and thick glass top. There were no folders or papers on the desk. Not even a pen. Just photographs of Campbell’s
wife, his children and grandchildren, and a large, sophisticated telephone console. The telephone was Campbell’s weapon of
choice—with a phone he could move mountains—but the phone was it. Campbell had other offices scattered around the country
and the world, and they were all just as Spartan. At one point in his life Campbell had coveted
things,
the pricier the better, but not anymore. Anyway, Campbell’s spiritual adviser had stressed the importance of lack of clutter
as well as transcendental meditation if Campbell wanted to lower his blood pressure without resorting to medication.

Campbell didn’t believe in pill popping, and he didn’t believe in doctors. He believed in mind over matter. Thought into action.
“Will to power,” as that kraut Nietzsche put it. Campbell thought about Nietzsche a lot, just like he thought a lot about
that other kraut son of a bitch who’d so influenced his life: Herman Gold.

Campbell was seated behind his desk in his big leather swivel chair. He was wearing a green silk turtleneck and a tan gabardine
suit. He should have been meditating on his mantra, but instead he contemplated an imminent, sublime victory. Thanks to Campbell,
Gold Aviation and Transport was about to join its founder in the hereafter, or at the very least, became a crippled shadow
of its former self.

Campbell smiled in anticipation of this crowning achievement in a life that had been dedicated to the art of coming from behind
in order to even the score….

Campbell was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the youngest of seven children. His father spent his days slaving away in a
textile mill, and his nights getting drunk, coming home to rage and swear and beat his wife, while the children watched, cowering.
It was during those nightmarish outbursts of domestic violence that young Tim Campbell, huddled in the corner of that shabby
living room, learned what it was to be powerless. It was then that he swore that someday he would be the hammer, not the nail.

He ran away when he was twelve, riding the rails to Boston, where he joined a gang of older boys who found his big, dark eyes
and winning smile useful in panhandling. The gang took care of him, taught him how to survive on the streets, to be a pickpocket
and con artist, to take what he wanted through stealth and guile.

Once Campbell felt he’d learned all that the older boys could teach him, he ran away from them. He preferred being a loner.
He rode the rails for a while, making the freight boxcars his home. He was little and fast, and knew how to hide when it suited
his purposes, so he managed to stay one step ahead of the railroad-yard bulls for over a year, until the odds finally caught
up with him in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The railroad cops turned him over to the Tulsa police, who didn’t know what to do with him
since Campbell refused to tell them where he was from: There was no way he was going back to that hellhole in Providence.
In 1913, the Tulsa authorities put him in a nearby work farm run by the Protestant Church.

The work farm turned out to be Campbell’s first lucky break. He could have done without the preaching, but they gave him a
warm bed, clothes, three square meals a day— and an education. Campbell came to love learning, especially arithmetic. By the
time he was fifteen, he’d earned his high-school diploma. He asked the supervisors if there wasn’t some work he could do on
the farm that would let him use his book learning as opposed to working in the fields, which he loathed. They let him teach
reading and numbers to the youngest boys, who called him “Mister” and “Sir.” Tim Campbell reveled in the status and respect
that his cleverness won. He knew that he was on the right track, that knowledge was the way to power, to paraphrase Francis
Bacon.

When he turned sixteen, the work farm arranged a job for him as an office boy at the Western Union office in Tulsa. He worked
there for a year, taking night-school courses in accounting and hearing a lot about California as the new land of opportunity.
When a slot opened up in the Los Angeles Western Union office, Campbell applied for it, and was transferred to L.A. Within
a month of the move, Tim Campbell left Western Union, landing a job as a teller at Pacific Coast Bank.

He resumed his night-school education, intent upon earning a college degree in accounting. On his eighteenth birthday, after
finishing his day at the bank, Campbell decided to treat himself to a steak dinner before accounting class. He went into a
café near the school and sat at the counter, where he was served by a slim, dark-haired waitress with big blue eyes and a
shy smile. It was a slow night, and she tarried to chat with him while he ate. Her name was Agatha Wilcox, and within a few
years time she was to become his wife….

Campbell gazed at the photograph of his wife on his desk taken on their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Aggie had passed away
two years ago.

When the United States entered World War I, Campbell was drafted but turned down as physically unfit due to a heart murmur.
When Campbell was twenty, after three years at the bank, he was promoted to head teller. The increase in salary meant he and
Agatha could be married, and soon they were. A little while later, Aggie became pregnant. That was a dark time for Campbell.
He was ecstatic over the prospects of having a family, but money was tight. He was resigned to quitting night school and moonlighting
at a second job in order to make ends meet, but Aggie wouldn’t hear of it, so the family suffered through some lean years
while Campbell pressed on, finally earning his bachelor’s degree in accounting in 1923. That same year, the bank moved him
out of his teller’s cage, promoting him to junior loan officer. The new desk job was gratifying, but money was still as tight
as ever, especially when the Campbells had their second child.

Time passed as Campbell cooled his heels at his desk at the Western Pacific bank headquarters in downtown L.A. Then one morning
while Campbell was thinking about how lousy it was to always be a dollar short, and that it would be another three years at
best before he could even hope that he might be promoted to senior loan officer, into the bank walked Herman Gold. Campbell
recognized Gold immediately from his photo, which regularly appeared in the newspapers. Gold had curly red hair and a bushy
mustache. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and looked on top of the world in his fancy suit and snappy fedora. Back then,
Herman Gold was barely thirty years old, but he was already a somebody in L.A., thanks to his air-transport business that
moved people, mail, and freight up and down the West Coast.