Trophy for Eagles (40 page)

He thought about the empty factories and the little girl, and he
wondered again what he was doing there. The whole racing process
was symbolic of the way competition for the few available dollars
drove aviation into the murderous frenzy that Turner had talked
about. Flying at 250 mph, fifty feet off the ground, and pulling into
high-G turns every four or five miles, there was no way to minimize
the danger, no way to look out for the other man.

The risks didn't make sense if you just looked at the prize money,
usually just enough to pay part of the expenses. The real goal was
the breakthrough from impoverished obscurity, scraping to get new
spark plugs, to being on top of the world. You could go from unknown backyard mechanic to national hero overnight, just by winning a big race. And winning a race sometimes depended upon just putting in a little more effort, taking a bigger chance. The
Granvilles had failed in two aircraft businesses, and built their 1931
winner on borrowed money in an abandoned dance hall. Now they
were at the top of the heap. That was where he wanted to take Roget
Aircraft.

Bruno had insisted on getting corner suites in the Statler Hotel for Patty and Stephan, but even with windows on both sides open the
late-evening summer heat raised the room to a warm-taffy tempera
ture. Patty sat in a high-backed wooden chair watching while her husband stood, fists clenched, staring out the window.

"Stephan, you've got to snap out of it. It was an unfortunate encounter with a drunk, one person out of the three hundred at the party. It could have happened in France, anywhere."

"No, it could only happen here, in this grubby country with its terrible food, dirty hotels, and stinking weather."

She walked over and put her arms around him; he was rigid, frozen in his indignation.

"My darling, Dickens is an ignorant man. All the other pilots
detest him. Even before you were talking to him, didn't you see how
people moved away from him? He was shunned."

She felt him give, just slightly.

"But for Bandfield and Turner to interfere! That was intolerable. And I had to accept it, like some helpless child."

"They responded in the American way, Stephan. You have to
understand, this is not France, this is not the officers' corps. Bandfield is rough-hewn, and so is Turner, for all the genteel manners he
affects. But they were sympathetic to you, they wanted to help."

Her hands began to rub his stomach, to sweep up over his chest.
He turned quickly and kissed her.

"Were you embarrassed? Did I disgrace you?"

She would have laughed but knew that it was too serious.

"No, but come over to the bed and let me disgrace you a little."

Later he lay beside her, his hand on her belly, relaxed and
smiling, "I'm sorry. I was being foolish. Nothing matters but right
here, the center of my universe." He rose up and leaned over to kiss
her navel.

It bothered her, and it shouldn't have. This was the first time they
had made love spontaneously in months. Their love life, once so
tempestuous, had become as regulated as a time clock, dedicated to procreation and not recreation. She still felt great passionate urges,
but he had seemed to lose all interest in anything but his clinical determination to make her pregnant. For the last year, he'd been trying to engineer their lovemaking, always bringing in new theories. He wouldn't share them with her—he refused to discuss the possibility that he was sterile. Instead, she would notice that he
would make love only during certain periods, or only after having a
cold bath, or only with her astride him. She wasn't sure where he
got his ideas, but there was a great deal of correspondence with some
doctor in Texas.

"I guess we'd better get dressed and go upstairs. Bruno's back, and
Mother wants us to have dinner with them."

Stephan sighed and traced his finger between her breasts and
down to her little mound of hair. "I wonder if something's going on
in there. I hope so." He laid his ear against her belly and stared
wistfully at the wall, almost as if he were trying to listen to the click
of cells dividing.

Six floors above, in an identical corner suite, Bruno and Charlotte were going through an increasingly familiar ritual, circling around
an argument like Indians around a wagon train. Both had their agendas prepared, and were busily sorting through the delicate pre-argument formula that required polite entry. Either one could explode; the winner made the other go first.

"Are you all right, Bruno?"

"What's the matter, don't I look all right?"

"That's the problem. You look too good. You must have lost thirty pounds in the last six months, and you didn't get that tan in a bar."

"I'm just trying to keep up with you."

"Sure you're not trying to keep up with your secretary?"

He snorted. "I'm not so hard up that I have to resort to screwing an eighteen-year-old girl."

Bruno was lying about his secretary, and she knew it. If anything, his secretary was already too old for his taste; young girls seemed to
be a particular passion of his. The really intriguing part of the puzzle was his old wartime uniform; he'd had it cleaned and pressed, and she'd seen him trying it on. That was no doubt why he'd lost the weight. Maybe there was going to be a reunion.

Charlotte picked up a Lockheed brochure, showing Lindbergh's new monoplane. Anne Lindbergh was standing by it, looking up adoringly at her husband. She was a tiny woman; Charlotte won
dered what she was like. She was sure she enjoyed a totally different
relationship with Lindbergh from her own with Bruno. She turned the page, and there was a full-length photo of Amelia Earhart standing by her latest Vega.

"That bitch Earhart is making headlines every day with that Vega. You can't pick up a paper without seeing her skinny face."

The litany was so familiar Bruno groaned. "Well, I tried to talk to
you about a transcontinental flight. Next thing you know, she's
going to make a hop from Hawaii. It's easy—no problems like those
in the other direction. Maybe even I wouldn't get lost coming this way." He said it as a conciliatory joke, something to get her in a decent mood before Stephan and Patty arrived.

Charlotte walked over to the sideboard and poured a thimbleful of
gin over the ice in the cocktail mixer. She shook it with silent fury and drank it straight from the shaker.

"Patty seems to think Earhart is wonderful. She knows I don't like
her, but she acts like Earhart is God's gift to aviation." She took another thimbleful, hesitated, and poured it out.

"Her husband, George Putnam, is forcing her to fly."

"How do you know that? People probably are saying that about me, and I can't keep you out of a cockpit."

"It's true. I talk to the other women pilots. He even has her cut
her hair and wear clothes so that she looks more like Lindbergh than
Lindbergh. Makes everyone wonder if she's normal."

Bruno glared at her, wondering if Charlotte was a good judge of
what was normal. Or if he was, for that matter.

"I'm not so sure about her myself. And I'm not so sure I like her being so friendly with Patty."

"Are you implying something? That's a hell of a thing to say about anybody. And what difference does it make about Patty? She might as well have a girlfriend. Stephan isn't doing her any good."

As he knew she would, Charlotte walked over and slapped him. He had won round one, had the high ground.

He smirked at her.. "I wish I'd been there last night. I would have
taken care of that lout Dickens."

"Yes, a brawl would have been wonderful. You could have completely destroyed Stephan by protecting him."

"Look," he said, retreating to a safer line of reasoning, "let's drop
that, and get back to Earhart. It's just that Putnam's smart. He is in
the publicity business, and he's made Earhart a celebrity by keeping
her in the public eye."

Her hand stung, and she rubbed it on her hip.

"I'm trying to do the same thing with you, letting you fly in the
military competitions. If you want me to get you a publicity agent, I
will. You know, you could be the first woman to fly around the
world. You and Patty could do it together, just like Post and Gatty."

Charlotte's anger evaporated in a chill of apprehension as the conversation turned in the wrong direction. "Wait a minute. I'm a realist even if Earhart is not. Flying is not worth dying for. I don't mind taking my chances, but I don't want to do any ocean flying, not in bad weather especially. I can fly in the clear, and I can fly
instruments if someone will navigate. But I'm not exposing Patty to
any dangerous flights, and I'm not going to do it alone."

"You don't have to. Post took Gatty. Now I hear he's having an
autopilot installed for a solo flight. We could get one for you, put it
in one of the new transports. It would be good publicity. Believe me,
Liebchen,
if you don't, Earhart will."

Charlotte realized this was doubly dangerous ground. If Bruno
flared up now, he might force her to agree to do something she was
afraid of doing. She shifted her attack back to Earhart. "She's always
so fucking wholesome. Did you ever read her book? Sounds like it was written by some goddam twelve-year-old nun. But she's tough
underneath—you try to upstage her when a reporter's around and she'll cut your armpits out."

Bruno looked at his pocket watch, a gift from a grateful Pierre
Dompnier. It was nearly seven. Patty and Stephan would be there shortly.

"Look, Charlotte, you can't have it both ways. You can't want the publicity and not make the flights, and you can't treat the press like
you do, like one of the boys. Amelia gives them the pap they can print. They are not going to write about a woman who curses and pinches them on the arse. They may like you better than Amelia, and I think you probably like them better than Amelia does, but their editors are only going to print sugar-candy stuff."

It was the winning point. More than once he'd found her crying,
embarrassed that she had ruined an interview. Bruno was becoming
increasingly bored with this familiar routine, and he wanted to end the conversation.

"If you don't want to fly around the world—and I think you should—let's figure out a string of record flights you do want to make. I think we could fix up one of the bombers with tanks in the
bomb bay, and go for closed-course records for distance, speed, and
maybe altitude, too."

Charlotte found comfort in this.

"Maybe, Bruno. It sounds better than flying around the world. That scares me, no kidding. I don't want to be over some big goddam ocean and not know where I am, and maybe have an engine cut out."

"Just wait till Amelia does it—then you'll do nothing but complain."

"She'd never make it. Bruno, she's a lousy pilot, no matter what they say. I've watched her time and again, and it's all she can do to get an airplane on and off the ground."

Hafner changed the subject. "What's your competition going to be like?"

She frowned. "Mostly Gee Bees like mine, and one clip-wing Laird biplane. I should be able to win, or at least take a second."

Bruno decided to make amends. He needed this woman for a
while longer. In time, he would solve all the problems, her involve
ment in the business, for which she was getting disproportionate credit, and the stupid romance with Dusty, which had become embarrassing. In Germany, he would have had to call the man out, duel with him. Well, he would take care of them both. "I asked Armand Bineau to design a racer for you. It doesn't make sense for us to be advertising Gee Bee products."

"I've already got one hell of an airplane. It's all I can handle. Don't have Bineau do anything until I talk to him. I want something safe as well as fast."

Bruno's voice took on his Kaiser's officer quality, the set of his lips
changing quickly from a tense line into a V-shaped smile. He barked out, "There is
no
airplane you cannot handle!" Having settled the question for all time, he changed the subject. "Are you serious about having Patty and the Frenchman come into the business?"

"Yes. I want Patty to stay in this country, and Stephan says aviation is dead in France."

"If he wants to come in with us, he can help his father and Monique running the Marseilles operation. Things are busier all the time there, and having a former French air force officer would be good camouflage."