The President's Plane Is Missing

by Robert J Serling

  “Your day editor is a quivering mass of curiosity, peerless leader.”

  “My day editor will have to curb his curiosity. I haven’t got all the ducks lined up yet.”

  “I would be the last one to jeer at our peerless leader if any of his ducks flew away at the first shot. Perhaps you’d—”

  “Perhaps I’ll renege on the doughnuts if you keep asking me questions. You’re the journalistic equivalent of a nagging wife. Go away. I’ll fill you in later.”

  “I may sulk,” Butler said. “There’s nothing worse than a sulking day editor whose curiosity burns unsatisfied, like a frustrated virgin.”

  “There’s one thing far worse. A sulking day editor who thinks up pornographic similies. I’m serious, Les. I don’t want to say anything until I get a few things checked out. We got burned once on that mass of assumptions known as the Senator Haines angle. And speaking of the Haines burning, our aviation editor has just arrived. An hour early, no less. He must have had a fight with Nancy.”

  “He probably wants to get off two hours early and is trying to impress you,” Butler corrected. “Well, I shall retire to the slot and await Mr. Pitcher’s wrath. It seems New York chopped his overnighter by about forty per cent. He’ll blow his stack.”

  “I’ll blow mine in unison,” Damon said. “The preliminary crash report on Air Force One was no story to cut. Did you say anything to New York?”

  “Jules Tamborello called a while ago about something else. I asked him how come the hatchet job on Pitcher and he said there was too much technical crap in it.”

  “Frank Jackson said it got a bit heavy but that he fixed it up. I’ll give Tamborello a ring. I’m in such a good mood I might not even lose all of my temper. Look, Pitch is reading his story now, Les. He’ll be over here steaming in two minutes.”

  Pitcher was over in one minute and twenty-seven seconds, his face seething with the glow of righteous anger. “Goddammit, Gunther, I’m no prima donna but that goddamned New York—”

  Damon held up his hand. “Yeh, I know, Pitch. They butchered you. I’m gonna raise some hell about it. Give me a chance to read it over and take a look at the incoming report. Relax and I’ll call you over when I get Jules baby on the horn.”

  Pitcher went to his own desk. Damon read his story, counted the lines and then walked to the day desk where he examined the original copy. It had, indeed, been emasculated with large chunks of the actual report cut out and even some quotes from the Coston press conference slashed by whole paragraphs. Damon briefly looked over the incoming copy from other bureaus, including a long story from New York on a wildcat subway strike that had hit the city during the last evening’s rush hour. Now he was seething too.

  He asked Mrs. Strotsky to get him Jules Tamborello on the New York tie line, returned to his desk and beckoned Pitcher. His phone rang just as the aviation editor sat down, expectantly.

  “New York says the overnight editor has gone home,” Mrs. Strotsky said. “Do you wanna talk to anybody else?”

  “Yeh. Try Miles Burke.” Burke was vice president and executive news editor. Pitcher looked both impressed and worried.

  “Burke here.”

  “Gunther Damon, Miles. How are you this morning?”

  “Fine, Gunther, just fine. But, heh-heh, you didn’t waste IPS money to ask about my health, did you?”

  “Nope, I’m spending IPS money to tell you New York should send its overnight desk back to journalism school.”

  “I gather, heh-heh, our overnight desk has committed a nefarious crime, Gunther?”

  “If you can put stupidity in the category of crime, Tammorello deserves to be indicted. Look, Miles, we’re busting our asses on this Haines business. Yesterday the Air Force puts out a preliminary report on why that plane crashed. Plus a press conference. Rod Pitcher did a helluva fine overnighter. His original copy ran about fifty-five lines. Your clowns cut it to twenty-eight. It was the President’s plane that went down, Miles, not a goddamned Piper Cub flown by somebody’s grandmother.”

  “Well, now, Gunther, you know that very few stories have to be told in more than three hundred words. Jules might have been a little overzealous but wire space is at a premium. You know that.”

  “Yeh, at a premium, Miles. But if wire space is so damned precious, how come New York let its overnighter on that two-bit subway strike run sixty-one lines? Six hundred words on a story that’s of prime interest only to New York. And your Mr. Tamborello cuts the Air Force One crash report down to less than three hundred. That’s not editing, Miles. It’s inexcusable butchery.”

  “Now, Gunther, I—”

  “You let me finish, Miles. This bureau is overworked, shorthanded and so damned tired the guys are walking around with their chins on the ground. We’re bleeding out our guts on the biggest story in history and we won’t put up with any incompetent slob at your end who wouldn’t know a legitimate news story if it ran up his butt. Six hundred words for a goddamned lousy subway strike and you give me a wire space alibi. Jesus Christ, Miles!”

  “Well now, Gunther, calm down. Tell you what. I’ll talk to Jules myself later today after he’s had some sleep. We work hard up here too, heh-heh, believe me.”

  “Why don’t you call him in about an hour, after he’s gone to sleep?” Damon suggested. “The knucklehead deserves to be jarred awake. And you can tell him if he wants to argue about his great news judgment I’ll be delighted to discuss it with him.”

  “Gunther, I promise I’ll talk to him. I’ll let him know exactly how you feel.”

  “Miles, you don’t have enough profanity in your vocabulary to let him know how I feel. You tell him for me to keep his clumsy hands off major Washington overnighters or I’ll come up there and amputate them. Good-by, Miles. I hope I’ve spoiled your day. The stupid sonofabitch just spoiled mine.”

  He hung up, still boiling, and then had to grin at the startled expression of awe on Pitcher’s face.

  “I feel better,” he relented.

  “God, Gunther,” Pitcher marveled, “that oughta do some good.”

  “Sure it will,” Damon said. “For about three or four days. Then we’ll have to fight the battle all over again. Ever meet Jules Tamborello?”

  “No. He must be something.”

  “Actually,” Damon chuckled, “he’s a nice guy and a pretty good newspaperman. Being in New York is his main trouble. Bring him down here and we’d shape him up in about a week. You kind of lose perspective up there. Well, are you satisfied with my defense of your prose?”

  “Eminently,” Pitcher said happily. “Frankly, Gunther, I wouldn’t have the nerve to talk to Miles Burke the way you did.”

  “That didn’t take nerve, Pitch. In the first place, I can get away with that kind of insubordination. My severance pay would break this outfit. In the second place, I was right and he knew it. They shouldn’t have mangled your story that way. Good yarn, by the way. You satisfied with the Board of Inquiry report? Think that’s what really happened?”

  “I am,” Pitcher replied positively.

  “No pilot error? Strictly the airplane?”

  “Strictly. Funny thing, Gunther. I keep wondering how much of a mystery we’d have if Air Force One hadn’t crashed. Assuming, of course, that the President wasn’t on it”

  Damon nodded, half meditatively and half in agreement. “Yep, assuming a lot of other things too. Such as there really being an impostor plot. Then you’ve got to speculate on whether Haines would have stayed missing this long if that plane hadn’t gone down. Whether there’s any connection between the accident and his hiding someplace.”

  “The tragedy,” Pitcher commented, “is that the crash probably wouldn’t have happened if any plane but the Condor had been used. That pilot had a hell of a lot of experience on the 707. Too bad Haines or whoever took his place didn’t wait for the old Air Force One that came in later that night.”

  “History is written by the little words in our language,” Damon said. “Like ‘if.�
�� Well, Pitch, I’ll let you get back to work.”

  The aviation editor was five yards away before the delayed reaction, a mental double-take, struck Damon’s brain with the impact of an anvil. “Pitch!”

  Pitcher turned around and came back. Damon was eying him. “Something wrong, Gunther?”

  “What you just said. Repeat it.”

  “Repeat what? I think I said they should have flown a 707 that—”

  “No. You said something about the old Air Force One coming in the same night. Where did you get that tidbit?”

  “At the Andrews tower when I was checking on all those departures. I looked at the arrivals too. The tower logged a landing for N-26000—that’s the number of the Boeing 707 Kennedy and Johnson used. Haines too, until he got the Condor. I recognized it, the number, I mean.”

  “Pitch, where did it come in from?” Damon spoke very slowly and very distinctly.

  “Let’s see, I’m trying to remember. Minneapolis, I think. Yeh, Minneapolis. I wondered what it was doing in Minneapolis. I asked the tower chief and he said it was probably on a training flight. Or maybe hauling some junketing congressmen around. He didn’t seem to attach any importance to it, Gunther. I—”

  “What time did it land?”

  “Hell, I can’t remember that. Wait a sec, it was around 5 A.M. Or a few minutes after.”

  “Sure?”

  “I’m sure. Five A.M. or thereabouts. But why—”

  Damon already had picked up his phone and jiggled the hook three times to raise the switchboard.

  “Mrs. Strotsky, get me our Minneapolis bureau on the double. I want to speak to the bureau manager. Make it person to person. What the hell’s his name—here’s the bureau directory. Memphis . . . Milwaukee . . . Minneapolis. Bureau manager Calvin Brenden. Brenden, Mrs. Strotsky. Calvin Brenden.”

  “I don’t get it, Gunther,” Pitcher fussed. “Should I have told you about that arrival before? You said to check departures. Long-range stuff. What’s so significant about this one arrival?”

  “I don’t know,” Damon muttered. “One of my hunches, maybe. It could be that we checked the wrong thing at Andrews. Departures instead of arrivals.”

  “Well, that made sense,” Pitcher protested. “We were trying to find out where the President really might have gone. Like to Moscow. Who cares what came in that night?”

  “Jeremy Haines, maybe,” Damon said, almost in a whisper. “Jeremy Haines might have cared what came in that night. On the number two plane in the presidential air fleet.”

  “But, Gunther, the Air Force uses that plane for all sorts of purposes. It must land at Andrews fifty times a year. Why are you crawling all over this one landing? It could have been a normal operation. It probably was.”

  “A normal operation in normal times. But these aren’t normal times. All I want to know is whether it actually flew from Minneapolis to Washington. If I find out that it didn’t, even my suspicions are gonna have suspicions.”

  His phone rang.

  “Damon. Put him on. This Brenden? This is Gunther Damon in Washington, Cal. Would you do some fast checking for us? It’s damned important. Fine. Do you have any good contacts at your airport? The main one, I mean. Yeh, Minneapolis-St. Paul International, I guess that’s what you call it. That’s the only big one, isn’t it? I thought so. No military air bases around your area, are there? Okay, this is what I need. Find out if the old Air Force One was in Minneapolis the day before the President’s plane went down. The plane Kennedy and Johnson used to fly. See if it was there, say, two or three days before. The plane’s number is—what the hell is it, Pitch?”

  “N-26000. It has the words ‘United States of America’ on the fuselage above the cabin windows.”

  “N as in Navy. Two-six-zero-zero-zero. Got it? No, I can’t tell you what it’s all about yet. I’m not sure myself. But get after it right away and call me collect. Don’t put the answer on any message or trunk wire. Phone me person to person. If I’m out, give the information to Rod Pitcher. You know, our aviation editor. Oh, he says the plane has ‘United States of America’ on the fuselage, if that’ll help. Cal, I appreciate this. I’ll pay off in martinis first time you get to Washington. Phone me as soon as you can. So long.” Damon sat back, stroking his chin with thumb and forefinger. Pitcher shook his head. “You still don’t get it, do you, Pitch?”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t see what difference it makes whether that 707 landed at Andrews after Air Force One left. Or what it was doing in Minneapolis. What’s important about Minneapolis?”

  “Nothing’s important about Minneapolis. Provided our former Air Force One actually was in Minneapolis. But I’ve got an idea it wasn’t. That whatever you saw on those arrival logs was a phony. That’s why I asked Brenden to check it out.” ‘ ‘

  “Where do you think it came from?”

  Damon did not answer immediately. He swiveled his chair around and concentrated his gaze on the Willard Hotel across the street. He suddenly swung back.

  “Pitch, right now Chris Harmon’s digging up something that might give us a lead to Haines’s whereabouts. If he produces it, and Cal Brenden tells me that 707 hasn’t been in Minneapolis, I’m going to put two and two together and I’m coming up with a very fascinating answer. Maybe a couple of answers.”

  “Where do you think it came from, Gunther?”

  “Right now, I can only guess. And I’ll keep my guesses to myself. My hunch is that we’ve been looking in the wrong direction. At where the President really flew to that night. Now we’d better start looking in the other direction. Come on, Mr. Harmon. Phone me, dammit, phone me. Pitch, go back to work. I want to think this out some more.”

  He waited impatiently for Harmon to call. He was only momentarily disconcerted by the arrival of Lynx Grimes, who looked in his direction with a shy half-smile and received in turn a half-wave that was as much embarrassment as salutation. He would have liked to talk to her but Stan DeVarian came in and Damon disappeared immediately into the bureau chief’s office to brief him. DeVarian was typically non-committal and outwardly unenthusiastic, which meant nothing. Damon knew that Stan, like Chris Harmon, usually consigned overly excitable reporters to the same niche in which adults place giggling adolescents.

  “Well, let’s just wait and see, Gunther,” was DeVarian’s reaction to his news superintendent’s latest brain wave. It could have meant an indifferent “Boy, you’re out of your mind” or an enthralled “Boy, you’ve got something.”

  It was mild torture for Damon to wait and he had to resist calling the State Department press room to inquire as to Harmon’s progress or lack of it. Chris finally phoned him at eleven-twenty, apologetic for the delay.

  “Sorry, Gunther, but I had to go through the motions of a legitimate interview. I got what you wanted in a hurry, but if I had left then the chauffeur might have smelled a rat and called Security. Hell, I had to ask him about everything but the color of his grandchildren’s eyes and then—”

  “Skip the details,” Damon said impatiently. “What did you find out?”

  “The mileage accumulated on the Secretary’s car since you-know-who disappeared, as of nine-ten this morning, was precisely seven hundred and forty.”

  “Seven-four-oh,” Damon repeated. “Thanks, Chris. It seems a bit high but maybe not.”

  “Maybe not for what?”

  “Let you know. I’ve got a date with a road map.” Custer finally produced an oil company map from the rectangular burrow known as the copy boys’ desk. It covered the District of Columbia, Delaware, Virginia and West Virginia and was definitely frayed around the edges. Damon noted its age with faint suspicion as he spread it across DeVarian’s desk.

  “I don’t know how old the damned thing is,” Gunther said, “but it’ll serve our purpose.”

  “Old is no word for it,” DeVarian grumbled. “Lee must have used this to find his way to Gettysburg. Okay, Gunther, where do we start?”

  “We start with that mileage total.
Seven hundred and forty. Divide it by two. That’s, let’s see, that’s three hundred and seventy miles of one-way driving for four days. For each day, the one-way driving is . . . just a minute, Stan, I’m trying to remember my division . . . four goes into thirty-seven . . . it comes out ninety-two-point-five. Let’s say ninety-two miles is the one-way figure for whatever destination Sharkey was aiming at every night.”

  “It’s too high,” DeVarian said. “Doesn’t he use the official limo to go to work and back? You have to take that mileage into consideration.”

  “Yeh, I suppose we should. The Secretary lives in Chevy Chase. Give or take a few miles, depending on the route he’d take, that’s fifteen to twenty miles. We’ll be on the safe side and say it’s twenty. That cuts the nightly mystery trip down to about seventy miles. Okay, now we take the map. This one’s scaled fifteen miles to the inch. Let’s have the ruler, Stan. First we look for any military bases about seventy miles from Washington. What have we got to the south?”

  “Wait a minute. Why military bases?”

  “If Haines is holed up somewhere and Sharkey’s seeing him every night, a military base provides the maximum security. Dammit, if you’ve got one inch equaling fifteen miles, how many inches is seventy miles?”

  “You must have gotten great grades in arithmetic, Gunther. Seventy miles would be almost five inches.”

  “Five inches south of Washington. Not quite to Fredericksburg. Nothing remotely resembling a military installation in that direction.”

  “Try west—there’s my phone, excuse me. DeVarian. Yes, he’s right here. It’s Minneapolis, Gunther.”

  He handed the phone to the news superintendent. “This is Mr. Damon. Yes, we’ll accept charges. . . Cal? This is Gunther Damon. Did you find out anything?”

  DeVarian watched Damon’s face assume the exultation of a sweepstakes winner being notified of his luck. “Thanks one hell of a lot, Cal. No, I can’t tell you what it’s all about. Not yet, anyway. Maybe you’ll be reading something before long. You’re right, it’s the Haines story. That’s all I can say. Thanks again, boy.”