LACKING VIRTUES

by Thomas Kirkwood

  So why the hell were they crashing as if they had been designed and built by a bunch of careless drunks?

  He would find out, the world would find out, but the important question was when. Right now he had his hands full just holding the company together. If he lost the support of increasingly skittish airline executives such as Allworth, he feared Boeing could go into a financial tailspin from which it would not recover – at least not in his lifetime. He had to be as strong as those wounded B-17s limping home from Stuttgart with two engines and half a wing blown off. He hadn’t led Boeing to the top to preside over its decline in his last year as chairman and chief executive officer.

  Allworth had flown in from Atlanta today for the meeting. He had insisted that no attorneys or witnesses be present, just the two chairmen, face-to-face.

  Larsen had agreed but had extracted a minor concession: that the meeting be held on the company yacht rather than at the Four Seasons Olympic Hotel, as Allworth had wanted. He did not divulge his reason for wanting to meet the Delta chief on the yacht because it was symbolic rather than substantive. It was on a similar boat that Delta and Boeing officials had broken the ice in the early seventies, a warming that led to billions of dollars of aircraft sales that would otherwise have gone to Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas.

  Allworth had called from Atlanta to ask what kind of clothes he should bring. Larsen laughed to himself. Don’t worry, Reid, he’d told him. You probably can’t get a wool sweater in Atlanta. But you and I are the same size and I’ve got enough to fill a 747.

  When Allworth joined him on deck, he was wearing his own wool sweater, not one of the two dozen Larsen had had sent to his hotel room. This was Larsen’s first sign that his friend of two decades, the man whose confidence he desperately needed to shore up the crumbling dikes, might have slipped beyond his grasp.

  A server, a pretty girl with a British accent, brought out a superb bottle of champagne and a platter of Beluga caviar, standard fare for the airline executives being wined and dined on the yacht. Allworth, a bon vivant of some repute, ignored both.

  This, thought Larsen, was the second bad sign.

  “Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

  “I’m all right, Hal. Thanks for meeting me alone. One does tire of all the lawyers and accountants.”

  “I should say so. Reid, before you get going with what you’ve come here to discuss, I hope you’ll let me have a few words.”

  “Of course,” said Allworth, the consummate southern gentleman when he wished to be.

  “Thank you. First, I want to repeat what I’ve been saying from the beginning. This debacle with our planes is the work of an outside element. Our only failure, if you wish to view it as such, has been our inability to convince the authorities of this fact. I think they’re coming around now. Warner called me this morning. I assure you we’re going to get to the bottom of this thing very soon. When we do, and when the responsible parties are put out of commission, the stigma the flying public has started to attach to our aircraft will vanish.

  “Second, Reid, we’ve had options for new aircraft canceled to the tune of forty-seven billion dollars. We’re suddenly finding ourselves in a position I thought impossible. The banks won’t lend us money. We’re on the verge of financial collapse.

  “I need my friends to stand behind me, Reid. Specifically, I need the support of men like yourself, the CEOs of the big domestic carriers. Together we’ve made jet air travel a way of life. Together we can overcome this crisis and move toward a bright future. Don’t cancel your options with us, Reid. Over the long haul, it would not be in Delta’s best interest. And over the short haul it would deal me and my company a terrible blow.”

  Allworth had been looking out over the water during the entire monologue, unwilling to meet Larsen’s eyes. Now he poured himself a glass of champagne and spread some Beluga on a cracker. “I hear you, Hal, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. If we were talking about my personal resources, it would be different. But we’re not, are we? We’re talking about my stockholders and employees. I’m their chairman. I have a fiduciary duty to them and owe them a special debt of gratitude for making Delta the fine organization it is. I cannot and will not let my airline sink because your aircraft have suddenly become unreliable.”

  “But, Reid, Boeing is not the cause of these crashes.”

  “I can’t take a position on that. The planes are crashing. That’s all that matters.”

  “For Christ’s sake, this is ridiculous. You of all people know we go overboard to make our aircraft safe. You know we don’t cut corners. You know we haven’t become a bunch of slugs overnight. We’ve been building the safest jetliners in the world for forty years. We still are, Reid. They are being sabotaged. Listen, here’s all I ask. Give me six months. I don’t care if you ground your Boeing fleet until the mystery is solved. I don’t care if you remain silent on your options for new planes as long as you don’t cancel them publicly. Because if you do Reid, I’m not sure we can continue with the Triple Seven program.”

  “Hal, it pains me to say this, but you seem out of touch with the level of panic out there.”

  “I am not out of touch.”

  “You are, and I’m going to give you an example. You’re upset I might cancel Delta’s options. But, Hal, I’ve come to cancel our fifty-three firm orders. The options . . . how could you have thought we would not cancel these? The flying public doesn’t give a hoot about anyone’s loyalty to Boeing. They don’t care about the past. All they want is to get where they’re going safely, and that means avoiding Boeing planes, period. So that’s what I’ve come to tell you, Hal. We’re pulling out of the Triple Seven deal.”

  “No you’re not, Reid. A contract is a contract. We’re going to hold you to it. That billion due Boeing next month is critical to us. You bought the planes. You can’t pretend you didn’t.”

  “Now let me ask you something, Hal. What are you going to do to make us honor our contract?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Legal action?”

  “You better believe it.”

  “Out of touch, Hal, you’re simply out of touch. I sympathize with you, but American business doesn’t run on sympathy. The rest of us in the industry are going to do what we must to protect our interests, just as you would in our shoes. Do you think a jury of people who fly, meaning any jury in the United States, is going to force us to buy planes they’ve come to perceive as murder weapons?”

  “Just a minute. I – ”

  “No. You let me finish. We didn’t enter into this deal to kill our customers and put ourselves out of business. I came here today as a friend, Hal. I came to give you the option of getting Boeing out of a lawsuit. Because, Hal, some members of my board actually want you to sue us. They want the cameras of the world’s media on our attorneys when they stand up and say, we at Delta have a higher duty to our passengers than honoring a piece of paper, the duty of protecting their lives.

  “What I’m going to tell you, Hal, should not come as a shock. We have shifted all one hundred and six of our future orders and options from Boeing to Airbus, and we will be hitting this fact hard in our next advertising campaign. However, Hal, if you drag us into court, that advertising campaign might not be necessary. There’s no way Delta could buy better publicity than to have you sue us for refusing to buy your aircraft.”

  Larsen got up, walked to the deck rail and stared into space for a long moment. When he turned around to give it one last pitch, Reid Allworth had gone below.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Steven’s first though when he saw the flash that someone had taken one hell of a photograph of a kiss.

  It was one of those September evenings in Paris when it’s still hot as summer, but a drab murky twilight settles over the city in the hour before nightfall. Maybe the photograph wouldn’t capture the heat of that sweltering evening, he thought, but it sure would capture the heat of his passion for this terrific girl.

  H
e wouldn’t mind knowing what her expression was, either. He just hoped he wouldn’t find out in some sleazy tabloid . . .

  Nicole had telephoned him at his flat the night before, his first contact with her since they had left Nice two weeks ago. It had been tough upon his return to Paris not to go looking for her, but that’s what she swore she wanted. Without Sophie’s assurances that he had nothing to worry about, that Nicole would come around on her own accord if he just waited, he might have committed a big blunder by trying to find her.

  But he hadn’t, and Sophie was right, as usual. On this, their first evening together after their enchanting time in the south, he and Nicole were sitting in a tiny outdoor café having a lovers’ quarrel over how they should continue their relationship in Paris. When he had finally heard enough about her fears of being seen with him, he said the hell with it, reached across the table and took her in his arms.

  She tried to push him away; she had been terrified of meeting him in public, let alone kissing him. Then she must have said the hell with it, too. Because all of sudden she stopped resisting and kissed him so passionately she knocked over his pastis. He heard the ice cubes hit the table and saw the flash in the same instant. They looked up in time to catch a glimpse of a teenager on a moped zooming off, his camera on a strap around his neck.

  He expected nasty recriminations, even the stormy end of their relationship. Instead, she uttered a sedate “merde” and said she had been ridiculous. She was 19 years old, she loved him – God how she loved him. Two weeks without him had been time in purgatory. What difference did it make if her father disowned her? Steven had been right, he had convinced her: you either listened to your heart or shriveled up like an old prune.

  He gave her directions to his flat, trying to hide his raging inner battle between horniness and conscience. What if he did ruin her life? It was beginning to seem like a real possibility.

  Well, he couldn’t worry about that when he was bursting with desire. He had to put his priorities in order, make sweet love to her, then wild love, then sort things out when the blood was again flowing to his brain.

  Besides, it was possible the photograph was nothing, the work of some rank amateur who didn’t even know who Nicole Michelet was. Or maybe the Japanese had committed a first and manufactured a defective roll of film. You never knew, stranger things had happened. He hadn’t burdened himself with excessive worry in the past. Why start now?

  As he watched her hurry to her Renault, it struck him that he wanted more than anything for their relationship to pick up where it had left off.

  He’d better force himself to think about what they were doing, he decided. If Nicole threw all caution to the wind, as she just appeared to have done, he was going to have to take charge to make sure they didn’t self-destruct. He was going to have to come up with a reasonable plan for managing their affair – a plan with an eye to the future.

  God forbid, he was thinking like his father and brothers.

  He paid the bill, got on his motorcycle and hit the throttle, imagining her skirt, blouse and panties strewn all over his living room. No chance they would make it to the bedroom.

  They didn’t, not until the second time. While they sat up in bed listening to the city come alive after dark, he broached the dreaded subject of caution.

  “I’ve been thinking, for a change,” he said. “It wouldn’t be right if you had problems because of me. Things are so good. I don’t want them tainted by any bad experiences. Know something, Nicole? You might not believe me, but I’ve never felt this way about anyone.”

  “I love you, I love you, I love you,” she said. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “Well, I’ve decided you were right about being careful.”

  She pulled the sheet up over her breasts and snuggled close. “And I’ve decided I was wrong. I don’t care anymore, Steven. Why should I give a damn what my father thinks? He’s the bigot, not me. That makes it his problem, right? Anyway, it’s only a matter of time until he finds out about us. Françoise knows, I’m sure she does. She’s just waiting to catch us so she can go to father with more than suspicions.”

  “Maybe she sent that kid with the camera.”

  “No. She couldn’t have known I was meeting you. I called from a friend’s house.”

  “Okay, whatever. But my point is this. We’re doing great as it is. Let them suspect, but why should we be stupid? No telling what your dad might do. He might have me deported. He might send you away. If I was a rich man it would be a different story. I’d say, come on, Nicole, let’s go live in Montreal or Florence or some other great place where he can’t touch us. But the way things are, I’m barely squeaking by on what I make at the club.”

  She laughed. “You’re learning to be a good Frenchman. You play down what you have so the tax man doesn’t come looking for you. You told me about your family. You had plenty of money in Nice. Why don’t we go live somewhere else? It would be fun.”

  His heart skipped a beat. Everyday life had become a mine field. It was like being elected to Congress. All your lies had to jibe, which meant you had to remember what they were.

  “Sure it would be fun,” he said, “but we can’t do it. What you saw me spending on the coast was a little nest egg from when my aunt died. But it’s gone now, bad exchange rate, bad spending habits. Meaning you and I have to be practical. I have to keep my job here, and you have to make sure you don’t get sent off to the salt mines. I’m broke, your dad isn’t going to support us and I’ve got this feeling we’d both be lousy at living under bridges.”

  “Then we’ll be practical,” she said. “Whatever you think is best.” She got up and walked naked to the kitchen. When she came back, she was carrying two glasses and a bottle of white Bordeaux he’d had chilling in his refrigerator – an expensive bottle Sophie had given him. Seeing Nicole like this, he was ready to tell her he was rich, postpone the discussion of practicality he had been postponing his entire adult life and take her in his arms again.

  She slid under the sheets and kissed him.

  God, everything about her was incredibly enticing. Most women looked a lot better dressed than undressed. Not so with Nicole. She was dazzling to start with, and the more she took off, the better she got. He was convinced he would still want to devour her on his deathbed.

  Why, he wondered, did he have to find love now, when he was in the middle of an assignment based on the rankest deception? He could almost hear himself after he got caught trying to convince her that you could love and deceive the same person with equal intensity. That was even more ludicrous than the argument, “Okay, so I’m having an affair, it doesn’t mean I love you any less than before.” Never mind that his argument was true.

  He had to tell her about Sophie and the scheme at some point. But when? And how? Jesus, you heard all the time about some poor bastard getting sucked deeper and deeper into something he thought he could get out of, sucked in until it wasted him. But until you experienced it yourself, you really didn’t know what it was like.

  He poured her a glass of wine, nothing for himself. He had to get some things handled, if not the big issue, then at least the small one of keeping things discreet. One sip of Montrachet and he knew he’d be rolling around with her again . . .

  “Nice wine for a poor man,” she said, laughing softly.

  “A gift from the tennis club.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Look, here’s the way I see it. If it’s true what you were saying, if everyone in France knows who you are now because of that Paris-Match spread, we either meet here or we meet somewhere they don’t know you.”

  “Such as?”

  “Switzerland, Italy.”

  “Steven! Françoise watches me like a hawk. I can’t just go jetting around the world. Unless, of course, I plan on not coming back. And you tell me that won’t work.”

  “Okay, what about this? You come here from time to time like I said. No problem with that, right?”

  “Right.”

&n
bsp; “And when we want to do something else together, we do it at night. Say we want to go see a movie. You buy a ticket, I buy a ticket, we have this plan for meeting at a certain time and place inside. Or we go to the opera, I get us two seats side by side and we sit there like we each went alone and don’t know each other. Then we come here separately afterwards, I cook a great meal and we pretend we’re in a New York restaurant. Then comes the dessert, which takes us to morning – ”

  “Oh, Steven.” She handed him the glass of wine he had refused and he drank it. Why not? He couldn’t do any worse than he was doing.

  “You don’t like my plan?” he asked sheepishly.

  “It’s worse than the one I was going to present to you at the café.”

  She poured them both more wine.