The President's Plane Is Missing

by Robert J Serling

  The men in the room applauded. Haines’s stern face relaxed into an ingratiating grin. When Jeremy Haines smiled it gave the effect of Mr. Hyde transforming back into Dr. Jekyll and it even achieved the miracle of melting Madigan’s inner resentment. The presidential candidate got to his feet and offered Madigan his hand m a gesture of natural, easy graciousness.

  But those few moments had been the last when Madigan felt gratitude and friendship toward Haines. When he got over the excitement of sharing a ticket that had an excellent chance of winning, and a possible future beyond his rosiest dreams, he remembered Jeremy’s sharp judgment of him.

  “If anything should happen to me, I wonder if you’d be up to the presidency. . .”

  That was three years ago. He remembered those words every time he saw Jeremy Haines. They eclipsed Haines’s friendliness, his efforts to treat the Vice President with dignity—especially before others. He remembered them at Cabinet meetings, when the President would ask his views on policy matters and issues with respect that seemed genuine.

  His wife was snuggling closer, following her subtly clever pattern (never comprehended by Madigan) of sending him off to something important like a Cabinet meeting with his libido satisfied in such a way as to inflate his ego. She murmured, “Just a few minutes more, lover . . .

  But he still remembered Haines’s indicting, cutting words even as he held his wife in his arms. Always within his consciousness were his self-confessed inadequacies, his ineptness, his shallowness. Yet he could not prevent what now came leaping into his mind.

  He wished the goddamned plane would crash.

  Colonel Marcus Henderson, commander of Air Force One, awoke that morning and did what most airmen do on the day of a flight. He looked outside to see what the weather was like.

  The pungent, pleasant, tantalizing odor of freshly brewed coffee came from the kitchen where his wife, just beginning to swell with her fourth pregnancy, already was busy. He shaved, showered, put on slacks and a sport shirt, and sat down at the breakfast table. He was one of those homely men whose virile masculinity masked such features as a big nose and jug-handle ears.

  “Morning, honey. Kids gone to school?”

  “Yes, thank God. I’m glad I let you sleep. They were positively obnoxious this morning. I swear your youngest son should be drafted.”

  “At seven?”

  “Wait till I tell you what he did. He . . .”

  She rambled on about their youngest son’s latest transgressions, but Henderson hardly listened. As usual, before a presidential trip, his mind was crammed with what had to be done before take-off. Flight planning. Inspection. Crew briefing. And then there was that call from Sabath last night.

  “Marcus? Phil Sabath. Thought I’d tell you the President will be sort of hors de combat tomorrow night. He wants to stay in his compartment the whole trip and get some rest. Just by himself. Tell the crew that applies to everybody— including the stewards.”

  “Hope there’s nothing wrong, Phil.”

  “Nothing wrong. He just wants complete privacy. There won’t be any reporters aboard this time, either. They’re all taking the press charter.”

  Not like Haines, Henderson thought after the press secretary had hung up. The President was a friendly man who often liked to wander around the cavernous hulk of Air Force One. He particularly enjoyed sitting in the cockpit jump seat, puffing a pipe and watching the crew work. He would do that for about half an hour and then saunter back to the forward passenger compartment where the bulk of the passengers parked on a presidential flight. Secretaries. The regulars from the White House press corps. Maybe a few congressmen trying to act blasé at the honor of being aboard Air Force One.

  Haines would stop and chat with every one of them, but longer with the reporters. Not in any public relations sense, but as Kennedy and Johnson had done before him, to draw from their sharp, inquisitive brains what few underlings would tell a President of the United States. Haines, Henderson knew, had enormous faith in their basic honesty. The President admired them all as intelligent, capable men even when he disliked what they wrote or asked at news conferences. It had been an awful shock the first time he inquired of Malcolm Jones what the IPS man had thought of a certain policy speech.

  Jones half smiled, a curious mixture of wryness and sadness.

  “Frankly, Mr. President, it was bullshit.”

  Haines’s jaw dropped, but then the President burst out laughing.

  Like his predecessors, Haines quickly learned to differentiate between the newsmen’s professional performances and their personal beliefs, which occasionally involved a chasm wider than the Pacific Ocean. This was why he liked to talk to them on long flights, when they were off duty and discarded their roles as gadflies, hatchet men, hair shirts and lofty representatives of both the free press and the public conscience.

  They, in turn, were not a little awed and pleased when a President asked their views, opinions and even, on occasion, their advice. Sometimes, they discovered later, he even took the advice.

  Henderson a few times had listened to the presidential-press banter aboard Air Force One with something akin to awe. The Air Force was the most informal of the services, but he still could not get used to banter that often challenged presidential dignity. He would no more talk to a President the way Jones and others did than he would have told Curtis LeMay to go screw a turbine.

  He would miss the irreverent press himself on this trip, but Sabath had given him a logical explanation. He still wondered if the President was ailing. He hoped not. The thought of calling Frederick Madigan “Mr. President” was appalling even to a political eunuch like Colonel Marcus Henderson.

  Senator Bertrand Haines, brother of the President, awoke that morning and went immediately to use the downstairs phone so he would not disturb his still sleeping wife.

  He cradled the receiver on his shoulder, dialed 4561414, and between the clicks and the first buzz managed to light a hasty cigarette.

  “White House.”

  “The President, please. This is Senator Haines.”

  “Good morning, Senator. One moment.”

  The interoffice dialing system rang the President’s bedroom phone twice before Jeremy Haines’s deep, beautifully modulated voice answered.

  “This is the President.”

  “Morning, President, sir. This is your older brother. How the hell are you?”

  Jeremy chuckled. Bert followed the rigid protocol of addressing the Chief Executive only in public. In private he went to the other extreme, burlesquing that protocol “just to keep you from getting too damned pompous.”

  Actually, they were more like casual friends than brothers. They did not have the close family, political and intellectual relationship enjoyed by the Kennedys. They were of the same party, but this mutual association might as well have been membership in the same country club. Bert was impulsive, loudly garrulous, earthy where Jeremy was cautious, soft-spoken, innately dignified. Bert was liberal out of fashionable convenience instead of conviction. Liberalism to Jeremy was a religion with toughly elastic rules that could be stretched slightly for occasional, absolutely necessary expedience, but never near the breaking point. Bert regarded compromise as a logical alibi for surrendering a principle. Jeremy erected a steel wall between compromise and principle; he might be forced to move the wall back a few inches, but it was always there.

  Physically, there was only a superficial resemblance in build. Jeremy was three inches taller and two years younger although this chronological difference was deceiving. Bert looked at least ten years older, thanks mostly to his snow-crusted cranium.

  “Bert, I’d appreciate your stopping in here before the chopper leaves for Andrews.”

  “No problem. You all set?”

  “John’s packing now. Cabinet meeting at ten, and my appointments list has more people than a Russian novel. But I’d still like to say good-by to my brother.”

  “Fair enough,” the senator observed. “But
remember, I’ve got a reservation on that nine o’clock flight to Boston.”

  “It won’t take long. Just a few things I want to talk over with you. How did your fishing trip sit with the wife?”

  “She’s resigned to my disappearing into the wilds of Maine every year about this time. But you know Ruth— she’s a good sport. She knows I need a vacation as badly as you do. By the way, any idea yet how long this Palm Springs trip will last?”

  “Probably not more than a week, Bert, but I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know the return time.”

  “Okay, Jerry, see you tonight.”

  The click of the disconnect was a good ten seconds old before the President of the United States hung up his own phone. At that particular moment he felt very close to his brother. A deep, emotional closeness he had not felt since they had been children. Plus a vague, intangible sense of regret that it had taken this long.

  Gunther Damon rode the elevator to his office on the seventh floor of the National Press Building. It stopped on 3 to disembark a couple of United Press International reporters, with whom Damon had exchanged nods in somewhat the same coldly formal manner as enemy soldiers swapping salutes during an armed truce.

  It had always rankled Damon that the IPS quarters on the seventh floor had once been occupied by UPI, before the latter moved to more luxurious and larger space on 3. He liked the convenient location of the Press Building, but working in an office discarded so eagerly by an opposition wire service as cramped, obsolete and hopelessly inadequate was like wearing hand-me-down clothes bequeathed by a condescending relative.

  He had argued loud and long with the IPS bureau manager, Stan DeVarian, against the move to the Press Building as something akin to degrading.

  “The rent’s reasonable, Gunther,” DeVarian had said patiently. “Hell, I know it was too small for UPI but it’s bigger than what we have now and it’s the largest office available for the dough. Besides, when the building gets through renovating that seventh floor, you won’t recognize it.”

  The renovation was impressive, Damon had to concede. The once dingy, dark corridors were brightly lit and modernistically paneled. The IPS office itself had indirect lighting, air conditioning, and DeVarian—much to the total surprise of the entire staff—had wheedled an extra four thousand dollars out of the penny-pinching New York headquarters for new desks and chairs.

  Putting the ancient IPS typewriters on those desks was roughly like wrapping a burlap sash around a mink coat. The contrast, however, pretty well described IPS. Being the smallest of the wire services and definitely not well heeled, it was always half starved, in both physical equipment and manpower. A typewriter manufactured in 1946 squatting on a brand-new desk was poignantly symbolic. Or a reporter with a background largely of sports writing having to cover a suddenly summoned press conference on economic policy, because the man who normally would have gotten the assignment was staffing a Civil Aeronautics Board hearing. Which, in turn, should have been handled by the aviation editor, who had been sent, under duress, to a meeting on urban transportation problems.

  Improvising, shuffling personnel, plugging one hole only to find news pouring out of another left unguarded—that was Gunther Damon’s world. He sometimes marveled himself that his adaptable, versatile, generally uncomplaining staff could perform as efficiently as it did.

  He entered his world at exactly ten o’clock, to be greeted by the rhythmic chatter of thirty-odd teletype printers pounding away, their keys marching across the yellow paper like tiny robots.

  Les Butler, the day editor, a tall man with perpetually sleepy eyes and languid movements, looked up from his copy-reading. “Hi, peerless leader. Get your coat off. We got troubles already.”

  Damon grunted unhappily and hung up his seersucker coat. “I need coffee before I solve problems,” he said. “Have you flipped yet?”

  “Nope. Waiting for our prime sucker.”

  Every morning Damon and the day desk matched coins for the honor of buying coffee. They flipped until all but one coin was heads or tails. The odd man lost, Damon being the odd man an average of five out of six times.

  Today he was lucky. Sam Foley, a red-haired deskman of massive proportions and the gentle disposition that comes so naturally to many big men, finally pitched heads against four tails and reached resignedly into his pocket for a crumpled dollar bill.

  “My wife tells me this morning the kid needs braces on his teeth,” he said sorrowfully. “Now I lose my first flip in three weeks. I should have stayed in bed. Where’s Custer?”

  “Custer” was the early-trick copy boy, a full-blooded Sioux youth studying law at George Washington University at night. His full Christian name was John Badlon but Rod Pitcher had dubbed him “Custer” the first time he learned of his Indian background.

  “He’s in the can,” Butler said. “Be out in a minute. Gunther, we got a call from the Chicago Clarion a little while ago. They’re screaming because we missed covering that ICC hearing yesterday.”

  “What ICC hearing?”

  “The one on the railroad merger. They said they expect full coverage today.”

  “Well, tell Barney McGrath to handle it. ICC’s on his run.”

  “I did. Barney says he’s tied up at Justice all day. They’re expecting something to pop on the Crime Commission report any hour.”

  “Oh hell,” sighed Damon. “Better call the Hill and see if they can spring a regional guy. What time’s the hearing?”

  “Starts at two.”

  “Okay, if the Crime Commission report comes out this morning, Barney can get over to ICC this afternoon. Tell the House staff to have someone stand by just in case.”

  “The House, peerless leader, will be most unhappy,” Butler said.

  “The House has lots of company,” Damon murmured. “Anything else?”

  “This message from Louisville.”

  Butler handed the news superintendent a strip of yellow teletype paper.

  WA

  CLIENT ASKS WHEN IS PROMISED THREE-PART SERIES ON OCEANIC EXPLORATION EXPECTABLE?

  LV

  “What’ll I tell them?” Butler asked.

  Gunther Damon sighed. “Give ’em an evasive answer,” he suggested. “Tell ’em to go screw themselves.”

  Butler laughed.

  “Dammit, Joe Tyler’s still down in Miami for that medical conference,” Damon said. “We can’t do anything about that series until he gets back.”

  Butler slipped a sheet of copy paper into his typewriter and rapped out a message to Louisville.

  LV

  RE RQST FOR SERIES, SCIENCE ED ON OUTA TOWN ASSIGNMENT. WILL ADVISE ON SERIES SKED SOONS RETURNS MON.

  WA

  “I liked your first answer better,” Butler observed as he handed the reply to the B wire operator.

  “The day I leave IPS,” Damon said, “I’m gonna put a message to that effect on the A wire and address it to all clients.”

  He walked over to his own desk, tucked away in a corner of the newsroom, and began opening the mail which Custer had stacked neatly next to his typewriter. Nothing exciting. A note from the New York feature editor suggesting five special projects, each of which would have earned a magazine writer at least $750 and which Damon would parcel out to his own staff to be researched and written (for free) whenever they could find time. A couple of invitations to cocktail parties and the usual collection of handouts hopefully addressed to a top editor like Damon instead of just IPS. He threw away all but one, which contained a possible science feature idea. This he marked with Joe Tyler’s initials. When Custer finally brought him his coffee, he asked the copy boy to put the handout in Tyler’s mail slot.

  His next chore was to examine the overnight report for the first editions of today’s afternoon papers. He got no further than the first story out of Washington, because it suddenly reminded him of his earlier, unexplainable uneasiness.

  (PRESIDENT)

  BY MALCOLM JONES

  IPS WHITE HOUSE
CORRESPONDENT

  WASHINGTON (IPS)—A CABINET MEETING (10 A.M. EDT) WAS THE ONLY ITEM ON PRESIDENT HAINES’S AGENDA TODAY AS THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE PREPARED TO LEAVE FOR A PALM SPRINGS VACATION.

  HAINES WAS EXPECTED TO BRIEF THE CABINET ON THE RAPIDLY WORSENING RED CHINA SITUATION, MARKED BY ANOTHER ANGRY ACCUSATION FROM PEKING THAT THE UNITED STATES WAS PLOTTING WORLDWIDE AGGRESSION.

  THE PRESIDENT’S DECISION TO PROCEED WITH A LONG-NEEDED REST, HOWEVER, WAS SEEN BY DIPLOMATIC OBSERVERS AS INDICATING THAT THE ADMINISTRATION IS NOT CONVINCED RED CHINA IS READY TO PULL THE TRIGGER FOR WORLD WAR III.

  HAINES’S ANXIETY TO GET SOME RELAXATION AT THE PALM SPRINGS RESIDENCE QF HIS CLOSE FRIEND, INDUSTRIALIST THOMAS KENDRICKS, UNDERLINED THE PRESIDENT’S ADMITTED FATIGUE. WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY PHILIP SABATH, IN FACT, TOLD NEWSMEN YESTERDAY THAT NO REPORTERS WOULD TRAVEL ON THE PRESIDENTIAL AIRCRAFT TONIGHT, EXPLAINING THAT THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE “WANTS TO START RELAXING THE MINUTE THE PLANE TAKES OFF” AND THUS PREFERRED COMPLETE PRIVACY FOR THE LONG FLIGHT . . .

  Damon finished reading Jones’s story and postponed checking the rest of the overnight layout. He walked over to the day desk where Butler was editing some copy from the Senate. “Les, anything from the Cabinet meeting?”

  “Not yet. Jonesy said he’d phone in a first lead on the overnighter soon as it breaks up. He doesn’t think there’ll be much, though. Whatever Haines tells them will be off the record.”

  “Brubaker might talk. He usually does.”

  Harvey Brubaker was the Secretary of Transportation, a perpetually smiling man who loved most of all to see his name in the papers and cultivated reporters rigorously and almost indecently. A year ago, when he held his first news conference following recovery from a mild heart attack, he had embarrassed the usually unembarrassable press corps by confiding the intimate circumstances in which he had been stricken. The boys had a time deciding whether to use this delicious tidbit, and finally indulged in self-censorship more to protect Mrs. Brubaker than her free-talking husband.