The President's Plane Is Missing

by Robert J Serling

  He put down the phone and faced DeVarian, but he suddenly was sober rather than beatific. “Brenden says nobody at the Minneapolis airport, including tower, has seen even a reasonable facsimile of an Air Force 707 for at least three weeks. Stan, the plane that came into Andrews seven hours after Air Force One took off had something to do with the plot, the plan, the mystery . . . whatever you want to call it. I know it, Stan. I’m sure of it.”

  “You mean you think Haines was aboard the old Air Force One? Coming from someplace instead of going someplace?”

  “No. Somebody else was on that 707. Somebody Haines wanted to see, and in secret. So badly that he staged the whole crazy business. The phony flight to Palm Springs. The disappearance. It still doesn’t add up, though. Why’s the disappearing act still going on? Why has he stayed hidden this long?”

  “You’re assuming again, Gunther. There could be twenty reasons for that older plane landing at Andrews.”

  “Then why did the log Pitcher saw list the originating point as Minneapolis? Why would the Air Force phony up a flight plan? To cover up where the plane really was coming from, that’s the only explanation. Let’s get back to that road map again.”

  The two men bent over the map. “Try west,” DeVarian suggested.

  “No soap, Stan. And look, if we go east for seventy miles we run right into Chesapeake Bay.”

  “That’s a possibility,” DeVarian said. “If he’s holding some kind of a secret conference, what better place than a boat anchored in the middle of a bay?”

  “Could be. If I remember my history books, that’s how President Cleveland got away with a secret cancer operation. Aboard some private yacht, because there was a financial crisis at the time and Cleveland wanted to avoid panic. But how the hell do we look for some boat? I don’t suppose IPS would spring for a helicopter . . . ?”

  “Maybe, but I doubt if it would do much good. We wouldn’t know what kind of boat or ship we were looking for, Gunther. He could be on a big cabin cruiser or some Navy vessel. Let’s go back to land. What’s to the north? Five inches would take us just above Westminster, Maryland, Stan. I don’t know of any military installation around there. Let me try northwest.”

  He moved the ruler slightly to the left. The five-inch mark rested almost squarely on the word “Thurmont.” Just to the left of this small Maryland town was a green area marked “Catoctin Mt. Pk.” Damon and DeVarian looked at the three words and then at each other.

  “Catoctin Mountain Park,” DeVarian breathed. “Ring a bell?”

  “A loud bell,” Damon said. “Catoctin’s where Camp David’s located.”

  “It can’t be Camp David. Jonesy checked that out.”

  “Let’s add up the exact mileage. The figures between the little red stars on the map. Forty-four from the center of Washington to Frederick. Another sixteen to Thurmont. That’s, uh, sixty. Add, say, five more from Thurmont to Camp David. Sixty-five.”

  “Sixty-five,” DeVarian repeated. “That’s awfully close to our hypothetical nightly drive of seventy miles. The extra five could be accounted for easily. Sharkey’s certainly been using the car around town the past few days. Going from State to the White House would be just one example. And we don’t know the exact distance from State to his house. Gunther, I wonder . . .”

  Damon slammed the ruler down on the bureau chief’s desk as if he had been been handling a hot poker. “I think I’m through assuming, Stan. I think I know.”

  “But Jonesy said Camp David’s deserted. No sign of life. He wouldn’t lie to us.”

  Damon shook his head, a gesture that was more one of sadness than disagreement. “He could have lied.”

  “You’re crazy!” DeVarian’s face was flushed. “There isn’t a finer reporter on any staff, wire service or newspaper. What you’re saying is that Malcolm Jones has known the President’s whereabouts for God knows how long and kept it to himself. He couldn’t pull that on us.”

  “Okay, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. We’ll send him back to Camp David. When we tell him what we’ve learned, he’ll be an old fire horse, smelling smoke.”

  DeVarian sat down heavily in his chair, as if the weight of Damon’s words had been like an unbearable, invisible burden added to the bureau chiefs body. “I almost hope he tells us we’re full of prune juice.”

  “He won’t. Haines is at Camp David. I’ll bet the rest of my salary for the year on it. Want me to call Jones?”

  “Yes,” DeVarian sighed. “Can we spare him for a few hours? Who’s at the White House?”

  “Al Spartan’s there. He can hold down the fort until we finish with Jonesy.”

  “Okay, Gunther. Go ahead.”

  “Right. Incidentally, there’s a very bright, sterling-silver lining in all this.”

  “So cheer me up.”

  “If we find Haines alive and presumably well, Freddie baby will have to get the hell out of the White House.”

  At this precise moment the object of Gunther Damon’s affections put down the blue volume titled “Assessment by the National Security Council of Communist China’s Intentions.” He had finally gotten around to reading it.

  Frederick James Madigan was breathing heavily. He stared at the black letters stamped on the document,TOP—SECRET-CLASSIFIED. The gears and cogs in his mind whirred and spun, then came to a halt of irrevocable decision. The Vice President pressed Mrs. Hahn’s button with the force of a man pushing down a plunger hooked to buried dynamite.

  “Mrs. Hahn, would you please call members of the Cabinet and advise them I want to see them at the White House . . . make it a 3 P.M. meeting. Also I want General Geiger present, and the CIA director. And tell Newt Spellman I want to see him immediately. And get me Frank Corris. I’m cancelling all my appointments for the rest of the day.”

  “Mai Jones, Evelyn,” Damon said to Mrs. Strotsky over DeVarian’s phone.

  “He’s not at the White House,” she said. “He phoned in sick this morning. Or his wife did.”

  “Jonesy’s sick,” Damon informed DeVarian, cupping the phone with one hand. “I’d better call him at home.”

  “Yeh,” DeVarian grumbled. “Goddammit, that leaves Al all alone there. Better . . .”

  He waited until Damon finished asking the switchboard to raise Jones at his house. “Gunther, we shouldn’t leave the White House staffed with one man. Anybody else we can send over?”

  “We’ve staffed it before with one man. I don’t have anyone else, Stan. Pitcher, maybe, but the White House scares the piss out of him for some reason.”

  “How about Harmon?”

  “That leaves State unmanned. I don’t want to take that chance. Let’s sit on it for a while. If Al needs help, we can do some shuffling. Maybe I can get Jonesy. . . ” DeVarian’s phone rang. “Take it, Gunther. It’s probably Jones.”

  Damon picked it up. “Jonesy, this is Gunther. How—oh, Anne. Is Jonesy able to come to the phone? Anne, what’s wrong? . . .”

  He listened, his brows narrowing into an expression of alarm and surprise. “Have you called the doctor? . . . What did he say? . . . Well, look, Anne, don’t worry. He’s upset about something. Tell him to take it easy and keep in touch with me, will you? Fine. He’ll be okay. I’ll talk to you later. . . No, I just wanted him to run up to Camp David again. But I’ll make other arrangements.”

  He hung up and turned to DeVarian, a shadow of puzzled concern crossing his face.

  “What was that all about?” DeVarian asked.

  “Jonesy apparently cracked up. Anne says he got up in the middle of the night and wouldn’t go back to bed. About 5 A.M., when she tried to talk to him, he started crying. She called their doctor and he said Jonesy’s smack in the middle of a nervous breakdown. Fatigue, probably. Fatigue, hell. It’s conscience. Stan, I’m going to Camp David myself. Right now.”

  “Gunther, you may not be able to get close to the place.”

  “If I can’t that’s about all the evidence I’ll need. It’s probably c
rawling with Marine sentries. I figure they’ll stop me at the turnoff from Route 15. That’s five miles away from the main camp site. I’ll find a phone and call you. You can go ahead with the story.”

  “What story, Gunther? You don’t have—”

  “The hell I don’t. Item one, Sharkey’s been going there every night. Item two, we know a certain plane landed at Andrews seven hours after Air Force One left. We don’t know who was on it but I’ll bet that someone is with the President right now. Item three, if I run into a platoon of Marines I’ll know they aren’t there on maneuvers. So I’m gonna rub those three little items together and start the biggest fire this town has ever seen.”

  “You may be starting an explosion, not a fire,” DeVarian warned. “Christ, Gunther, I told you before—we can’t afford to play around with TNT.”

  “We’ve got a legitimate story, Stan, and we’ve got to use it. For all we know, this could involve World War III. They’ll hand us the Pulitzer prize without bothering to look at another entry. We’ll have AP and UPI clients knocking down our door for contracts.”

  “Gunther,” DeVarian said with deliberate slowness, “assuming Haines is alive and at Camp David, there’s a pretty damned good chance he doesn’t want this story broken by IPS or anyone else.”

  Damon eyed him, cold fury replacing enthusiasm. “And you think that because a President of the United States doesn’t want a particular story, a newspaperman should be a polite, obedient and patriotic little citizen and whine, ‘Yes, sir, Mr. President’?”

  “This particular story might justify self-censorship if it comes down to that.”

  “Nothing justifies censorship unless the country’s at war. That’s the trouble with this damned town. Too many reporters becoming friendly with their news sources, and the first thing you know they’re protecting their friends instead of milking the sources.”

  “You wouldn’t admit there could be extenuating circumstances short of being at war?”

  “I might. Inevitably, government officials would use the phrase ‘National security is at stake.’ National security would justify censorship, self or imposed. But who defines national security? It’s too often a convenient rug for covering up dirt or somebody’s mistakes. Any official who doesn’t want the public to know the truth can fall back on ‘national security.’ Sure, I’d kill a story if I thought it would harm the country. But I’d want to be the judge of that harm, not the guy who doesn’t want the story used. Too many people pay lip service to freedom of the press. They’re all for freedom until they think they’re embarrassed or hurt.”

  “Gunther, just remember John Scali and the Cuban missile crisis. We could be in the same boat.”

  “Yeh, the ABC White House reporter. He was the go-between when the Russians wanted to plant a peace proposal with Kennedy. You think there’s a parallel?”

  “Isn’t there? He knew all about the secret negotiations and yet he kept quiet until everyone else had the story.”

  “Sure he did. A damned fine reporter and a patriot. But he didn’t have any choice. The minute the Russians contacted him, he had to cease being a reporter. He became a part of negotiations between two governments about to go to war. I’m not taking anything away from Scali. I know a few newspapermen in this town who would have written what he had in his hip pocket and said the hell with the Kennedy Administration. But remember, Kennedy didn’t ask him to stay quiet. He didn’t have to. Scali made his own decision. He did what he knew he had to do because the circumstances left an honorable guy no alternative.”

  “And you still don’t think there could be a parallel?”

  “No, I don’t. The Cuban crisis was black and white. We were either going to go to war with Russia or we weren’t. And the latter hinged on the success of secret negotiations. There wasn’t any real mystery about them. What do we have now? A screwball plot with no rhyme or reason. Maybe someday Haines can justify what he’s done to the country, but it’ll take a potful of arguments to convince me. Kennedy kept us from World War III. Haines, if he’s alive, has contributed nothing so far but the most screwed-up, bizarre mess in history. Sixteen deaths—hell, eighteen deaths with the flood—millions of frightened Americans, a collection of bewildered allies wondering what the hell is going on, a tinhorn politician trying to imitate a President, and the press is supposed to sit back and wait for Daddy Haines to come out of the woodwork? Dammit, Stan, he deserves to have this story broken before he gets around to sugar-coating it himself.”

  “But you said this story might involve World War III. So did Scali’s.”

  “I don’t know what this story involves. Not yet. Dream up the wildest possibility in human imagination and it could come close to the truth. But I can’t see how even the most farfetched explanation can be an alibi for what Haines has done. Whatever his reason, whatever his motive, whatever his excuse, the whole affair has been so obviously botched that it deserves to be laid right out in the open so every person in this country can see it. Every person in the world, for that matter. That’s why we’re digging on our own. And if we shoveled up scandal, betrayal, treason, insanity or even murder—so be it. That’s our job. The press didn’t send Air Force One out to destruction on some phony vacation trip. The press didn’t hide the President of the United States. The press didn’t put the country and the rest of his mixed-up world into a state of shock. Jeremy Haines did. So let him explain what we find out. Let him supply the alibis.”

  DeVarian sat there quietly, shaken by the fire of Damon’s impassioned arguments. “Just how would you handle the story?” he asked finally. “How would you write it? You don’t have a helluva lot to go on . . .”

  Damon’s voice cracked like an angry whip. “The world’s been asking for four days, ‘Where is the President of the United States?’ We’ve got enough to supply the answer. Not the whole answer, but part of it. Depending on what I find out at Camp David, our story will simply say IPS has strong evidence that President Haines is not only alive but at Camp David, for reasons as yet undisclosed. Then we’ll bring in the stuff about the other plane landing at Andrews. We know that for an absolute fact. Our story will speculate that whoever arrived on that plane may be conferring with the President. Obviously an extremely vital conference, probably with international implications. Dammit, Stan, I love my country as much as you do. We aren’t giving out the whole story. We don’t even know the whole story. Only the President can give us that. And so help me God, it’s time he did. What IPS will be carrying will force him into the open. And that will be for the good of the country.” DeVarian started to reply, stopped when his brain refused to dredge up any kind of a final counter-flurry, and surrendered. “Okay, Gunther. You win. Go to Camp David.”

  “Who was that on the phone?” Malcolm Jones asked his wife, dully.

  “It was Gunther. He just wanted to know how you were.”

  “That’s all he wanted?”

  She hesitated. “Well, he said something about your going back to Camp David. What’s that all about, Mai?”

  He did not reply. He went into the den and dialed a number.

  “Mr. Reardon’s office,” he said into the mouthpiece.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Secretary of State Sharkey was the last to arrive at the Cabinet meeting, two and a half minutes past the appointed time.

  He circled the big table and walked in back of the chair where the Vice President was sitting, tapping a pencil impatiently like a teacher annoyed at a pupil’s tardiness. James Sharkey was about to apologize, when both his brain and his eyes did a double-take.

  Each member had his own chair in the Cabinet Room, his individual title inscribed on a tiny brass plate attached to the rear of the high-backed furniture. When he left office, he could take the chair with him as a memento of Cabinet service. Now, as Sharkey moved behind the Vice President, he saw the plate on Madigan’s chair. He saw the words on the plate and he felt a little sick.

  “The President.”

  He
knew that Haines’s personal chair had been moved discreetly to a far corner of the room at the first Cabinet session following the crash, to avoid the obvious symbolism of an empty seat with its overtones of death. That bastard Madigan, the Secretary of State realized, this time had switched chairs and to Sharkey it was an ominous omen. He wondered if anyone else had noticed it.

  His eyes rested on the telltale plate only for a fraction of a second, but it was sufficient to let the Vice President know Sharkey had spotted this deliberate discarding of all humility. A remnant of his old insecurity brought a flush to Madigan’s face, but he managed to drape this momentary jab of guilt by glowering at the Secretary of State. Sharkey’s response was a glare of his own, their angry stares clashing like a pair of dueling swords. The Cabinet, not knowing what had prompted the silent but openly bitter exchange but sensing the antagonism as if it had an unpleasant odor, stirred uneasily. Madigan put down the pencil and folded his hands in front of him, leaning forward slightly and milking both drama and rapt attention out of the gesture. One elbow was resting on a large pamphlet with a blue cover and only Sharkey recognized it instantly. That classified NSC report on Red China. Madigan lifted his elbow, picked up the publication and waved it in front of him in the manner of a parade spectator brandishing a tiny flag.

  “Gentlemen, I have just finished reading a most interesting document. The one J hold before you. So interesting I’m amazed my attention was not called to it the moment I took office. So interesting and, I might add, so frightening that I felt it imperative to have the Cabinet go into immediate session for the purpose of discussing its import.”

  “Your attention was called to it, a few minutes after you became Acting President,” Sharkey said quietly but in a voice that dripped with hostility.

  Madigan slammed his fist on the table, so hard that two Cabinet members jumped. “You dropped a whole pile of papers on my desk and told me it was some stuff I should read when I got the time,” he retorted. “Well, Mr. Secretary, I found the time and I’m shocked. Literally and absolutely shocked that you did not advise me of what this document contained. The potential death warrant of our beloved country, gentlemen. A death warrant.”