Trophy for Eagles (24 page)

"His backers heard you were against selling airplanes for record
flights, and that's what he wants it for, a trip around the world. Is he
right?"

"Yeah, Slim. After the fiasco in Oakland, when all the airplanes were lost, I made up my mind we wouldn't sell airplanes just for
setting records. We want to sell airplanes that make money doing a
job, carrying passengers or freight, not just jumping from A to B. That doesn't prove anything, and it costs too many lives."

Lindbergh's eyes were serious. "You may be right, Bandy, but you're premature. I don't know any airplane, including yours, that can make money flying people around. Southern Airlines is going
bust, even though your Rockets are doing a good job. I think it will
be a few years before it can happen."

Bandfield's heart sank. "Maybe not on airlines, but they pay their
way hauling executives and troubleshooters around. I was hoping Post wanted the airplane for the oil company he works for."

"Yeah, but what's the market for that? In the United States, maybe twenty or thirty airplanes, worldwide another ten or so. If
that's all there is, if that's all there's going to be, you and I are in the
wrong business."

Bandfield shrugged. He was beginning to think that himself.

"Could we go out to your airplane to talk? I don't want anybody to
see us, or I'll spend the rest of the day shaking hands and signing autographs."

Walking quickly to the Rocket, Bandfield asked, "How's the old
married man, Slim?"

"Great, Bandy, I want you to meet Mrs. Lindbergh first chance we get. How about yourself?"

The words "Mrs. Lindbergh" puzzled Bandy for a moment; he thought Slim was talking about his mother. Lindbergh interpreted his expression incorrectly, and thought he'd made a gaffe. He remembered when Bandfield had met Millie Duncan, and had heard that he was still carrying a torch for her.

"No, I guess I'm a born bachelor, Slim. Or should I call you Colonel now?"

"Slim's just fine. I sure never thought I'd make colonel, though. Neither did anybody else."

Lindbergh walked around the Rocket, then climbed inside.

"Just like old times at Roosevelt Field, eh?"

Bandfield let Lindbergh get his long legs sorted out behind the
control column and settled himself in the left seat.

"Sure, but we've improved the airplane a lot—a four-hundred-and-fifty-horsepower Wasp, wheel brakes, radios, the works."

Lindbergh pulled a map torn from a Rand McNally atlas out of his pocket and spread it on the throttle quadrant between them. "Bandy, I want a special kind of airplane, one in which Mrs.
Lindbergh and I can fly some long-distance survey flights. It's got to
be able to use wheels and floats interchangeably, and be simple enough to fly for her to feel comfortable in it. Should have a cruise speed of about one-fifty and a range close to a thousand miles."

"We could put floats on the Rocket easy enough, Slim."

"I'm sure you could, but that's not what I want. I need a new airplane, something that breaks new ground. A low-wing monoplane, if possible, one that looks modern." He paused. "One thing I've learned from these darn reporters is that looks are important.
I've got to have an airplane that looks new and fast. Of course, it has to be fast too, but a fast new airplane is even better than a faster old
one. Get me?"

Bandfield nodded his head in understanding.

"And I want it soon. I'm talking to Lockheed, and they've shown
me some preliminary drawings of a low-wing Vega. It looks pretty
good, but I wanted to talk to you, too."

"Let me think about it, Slim. I'll be honest with you—we're
strapped for money. We couldn't do anything on spec. We'd have to
have cash in advance, and I'm not sure how you feel about that."

Lindbergh bobbed his head in an authoritative manner. It was a new gesture, reflecting his new status in life.

"Believe it or not, Bandy, for the first time in my life, money is no
problem. But time is. I need to know in the next two weeks what you can do, earlier if possible."

"I'll let you know in a week."

They walked back to the car. "Great news about Byrd and the South Pole, isn't it?"

"Yeah. And how is my old buddy Hafner doing?"

Lindbergh laughed. "He's doing all right, Bandy. You know he
made a lot of money in the stock market. I hear he's going to Europe pretty soon to try to sell airplanes over there. And his stepdaughter's
getting married to a French war ace. I met her once. She looks just like her mother:"

"Well, if she does, that's pretty good. So long, Slim."

Bandfield watched the Franklin depart, its air-cooled engine rumbling as smoothly as Lindbergh's own life. What a difference that thirty-three hours to Paris had made for him—from buck-ass mail pilot to international hero in a little over a day.

He knew that wasn't fair, that the flight had been the easiest part. Getting the backing, building the airplane, having the brains to take
off at the right time—that's what had made Lindbergh. But to the public, the thirty-three hours was what counted.

It had taken less than twenty minutes for the sun to burn away the
frost on the tiled roof, and for two possible sales to dwindle into
nothing. There was no way he and Hadley could come up with an airplane with the performance Lindbergh wanted and test it adequately in the time frame Slim was talking about.

He could see the headline that would finish them off once and for all—"Lucky Lindbergh Crashes in Roget Airplane." Shrugging, he
walked toward the Rocket for the trip back to Salinas.

*

Enroute to Orleans, France/December 15, 1930

Patty edged her way back out of her mother's first-class compart
ment, a smile fixed on her face. She steadied her hand on the well-worn brass rail in the corridor and tried to calm her stomach.
She must be pregnant! Her period was a month overdue, and for the
last three mornings she had been nauseated.

She managed to get back to her compartment and sat down,
closing her eyes to the beautiful French countryside flashing past, a
confection of villages, canals, fields, and herds.

On the other hand, a week in Paris with her mother and Bruno
was surely enough to make anyone ill. She shuddered at the thought
of the week to come. She knew that the two were hot-blooded, but wasn't prepared for the aphrodisiac effect that Paris had on them. She'd scarcely been able to get her mother out to go shopping. The
woman was over forty years old and apparently had the instincts of a
feral rabbit. And she wasn't at all sure that there wasn't something going on with her stepfather's colleague, Dusty Rhoades, as well. Just what a girl needs for her wedding, she thought, a nymphomaniacal mother.

Still, she smiled to herself as she closed her eyes. Perhaps it
explained her own hot blood. Stephan's ardor was already waning
compared to hers; he joked about it, but it wasn't really funny to
him. She was sure that was why they were here at all, why there was
going to be a marriage at Stephan's benign insistence. He wanted to
pin her down, secure her in marriage before someone else came along.

The train curved around a bend and went dark as it flashed through a tunnel. The rhythm of the rails changed as they passed over a trestle, and the new meter caused her stomach to leap in time. She put her handkerchief to her mouth and looked around for some sort of receptacle. The moment passed and she sank back.

She loved Stephan, and loved making love to him, but didn't feel
that marriage was essential, not yet. At least not until she thought
she was pregnant. Now it might be necessary after all. If there was
some strange little lump inside her, cells multiplying like a machine
gun, it was time to get married.

The ordeal of Paris was behind her. At least she hadn't gone with
them when Bruno insisted on driving up to Douai, where he'd
fought a good portion of his war with the Richthofen circus. From
what Charlotte had said, the Frenchman whose chateau they'd occupied had been anything but pleased when Hafner bounded up the steps and knocked on the door to "present his compliments."

The ordeal of Orleans was ahead. Stephan had been there a week already, trying to smooth his mother's feathers, ruffled at the suddenness of the wedding. The Dompniers had always hoped that
Stephan's "infatuation"—as they inevitably termed it—would pass,
and he'd marry someone sensible whom they had selected for him.
They were appalled that he was marrying an American, and scarcely
mollified because she had taken religious instruction. Madame Dompnier had insisted on a wedding at home, in their own chapel. On the surface it sounded tender and familial; Stephan's halting
explanations inadvertently revealed that it was instead intended to
limit the number of people attending and thus the shame. Ordinari
ly a Dompnier wedding took place in the Cathedral of Sainte-Croix.

It bothered Patty only to the degree that it bothered Stephan.
Anyway, by Friday night it would be over, and they would be off on
a legitimate honeymoon. And if there was a baby nestled in her belly, he or she would be legitimate too.

Stephan had been ecstatic when she dropped the hint about the
baby, much to her relief. Apparently he regarded it as his hole card
for his family; once a grandchild was on the way, all the reservations
would tumble. She wondered if Stephan was sincere about his
desire for a child, how confirmation of the news would affect him.
She would tell him as soon as she arrived, so that there would be
time to call the whole thing off if he felt differently. If he did, she'd
go to Sweden and get an abortion.

Out of the question, she thought. She'd just hole up with Char
lotte and Bruno on Long Island, have the baby, and raise it. There'd
be no finger-pointing from Charlotte.

She fell asleep, her stomach somewhat settled, her emotions not at all.

*

Orleans, France/December 15, 1930

Stephan lay in the enormous bed in the room of his childhood, the windows open to the courtyard below. How quickly everyone cast
off his adult life and resumed his place in the family hierarchy! He
had been home for no more than twenty minutes when his sister
Monique had started the usual argument, and, as she always had done, flown to her room in tears.

Poor Monique. No matter how she blamed him for her unmarried state, he knew different. Monique was now, this very month, thirty-two. She had been sixteen in 1914, in a fervor of
blooming adolescence and patriotism, when she had given herself to
an endless series of soldier lovers. By the time the war was over, she
was a legend of the camps, a true angel of mercy, and her chances of
marrying anyone but a foreigner were gone forever. He knew that
she had not changed her ways materially, that she was always going
away to "visit friends." He felt sorry for her, not for reasons of
morality, but because she was so desperately unhappy with herself.
She was still beautiful, but what would she do when she was not?

On this visit, as always, she had upbraided him for leaving home,
deserting her, running off to enjoy himself flying while she had to care for their parents.

Monique was as slender as Stephan but slightly taller, an unfair distribution of family traits that had once disturbed him. He had looked at her closely. She seemed destined to fade into the same
worn veil of the past as had their mother. He noted with a brotherly
tenderness that her breasts, once so pert, now drooped in resigna
tion, as if they sensed they had more than fulfilled one part of their
function, enticement, but were condemned never to fulfill the more important task of providing nourishment.

Her voice was indeed their mother's, sharp as a flint. "We need a man to run this place. Look at your father—he is dying on his feet. And Maman has simply given up. And because of you, I can never
marry, never leave this filthy hole."

Nothing she said made sense to Stephan, but it never did. The
place was no longer maintained as it had been when he was a child,
when there was still money flowing in from the vineyards and the
rents, but it was more than presentable for a wedding. And his father
was as placid as he had always been, dourly argumentative about
religion and politics, but otherwise seemingly willing to live and let
live. In many ways, he was easier to get along with now than he had
ever been.