He was silent for a moment, then while a murmur of approval rose around the table, he spoke again. “Of course, you realize, gentlemen, we have no choice, I think, but to delay and reevaluate the Betsy project.”
“No, goddamn it!” Number One’s fist slammed into the table. “I won’t have any part of it! The Betsy is an American car and it will be built right here. All of it. I don’t intend to go crawling to goddamn foreigners to help us do what we taught them!”
In contrast with Number One’s vehemence, Loren III’s voice was calm, almost cool. “You’re being most unreasonable, Grandfather. I think Angelo has stated our position very clearly and fairly. We have no choice but to follow that path.”
“No fucking foreigners will have anything to do with this car as long as I’m alive!” Number One snapped. “It’s my company and my money and I will say what’s going to be done with it!”
Loren stared at his grandfather steadily. “You can’t do that any more,” he said quietly, almost patiently. “The time when a company could be run at the whim of one man who could dictate its life-or-death policy is over. Men like you, Henry Ford and Walter Chrysler belong to another time. You cannot make decisions based solely on your own equity and selfish vanity. There are thirty thousand employees of this company, many of whom have devoted their lives to it, and you have no right to play Russian roulette with their welfare and their future. They have earned as much right to this company as you have and deserve to get every consideration that you expect. We have no choice but to continue with the Sundancer.”
“Goddamn it! No!” Number One roared. He held his arms out in front of him. Quickly he undid the buttons of his jacket sleeves, revealing the shirt cuffs beneath. With a pull, he tore the cuff links from them and held them out toward them in his hand. They were gold and shining in his palm.
“Look at these cuff links!” he ordered in an angry voice. “They are models of the first Sundancer I ever built. That was fifty years ago. You talk of living in the past when all you want to do is cling to it!”
He snapped his arm violently, throwing the cuffs links away from him. The heavy links crashed into the casement windows. The fragile glass gave way with a tinkling sound and the cuff links disappeared outside.
He turned back to the silent room. His voice was calm and quiet now. “The Sundancer is dead, gentlemen. This meeting is over.”
Silently they filed from the room until only Angelo, Loren III and Number One were left. After a moment, Loren III got to his feet.
He looked down at Number One. “You know I don’t intend to let you get away with this. You can ride roughshod over all the others, but not me. I’m going to fight you on this with everything I have in me.”
Number One smiled. “You do just that,” he said in an almost pleasant voice. “But don’t come cryin’ to me when you get the shit kicked out of you.”
“I don’t intend to lose,” Loren III said. Now he sounded exactly like his grandfather. “Someone has to care about the responsibilities this company has assumed toward its employees over the years. And there’s one thing you seem to forget.”
Number One didn’t speak.
“Under the law, minority stockholders have some privileges. My sister and I own twenty percent of this company. And Anne has given me her proxy. Neither of us intends to allow you to destroy this company.”
“And I own eighty percent,” Number One said.
“No,” Loren answered calmly. “You vote eighty percent. You own only forty-one percent. There’s a big difference.” He turned and walked from the room.
Number One watched the door close behind his grandson, then turned to Angelo. “The kid’s developing some gumption,” he said almost respectfully.
Angelo studied him silently for a moment before he spoke. “He’s not entirely wrong. You’re going into an S-curve at three hundred miles an hour.”
Number One stared at him. “Who the hell’s side are you on anyway?”
Angelo didn’t answer. The telephone on the table in front of him began to ring. He picked it up.
“I have a call for you from the Bahamas, Mr. Perino,” the operator said.
He was puzzled. “Who’s calling me?”
There was a click on the line, a moment’s silence, then the operator came back on. “Miss Elizabeth Hardeman.”
He shot a look at Number One. “Put her on,” he told the operator.
“Angelo?” Betsy’s voice came on the line.
“Yes.” There was a faint hum in the wires like the sound of the surf breaking behind her.
“Angelo.” Her voice was strained and tense as if she had been crying. “This is the last time I’m going to ask you. Will you marry me?”
He tried to make a joke of it. “When?”
“No funnies, Angelo,” she said sharply. “I mean it. Right now. Right this minute. This is the last time.”
He still tried to keep it light. “I told you, Miss Elizabeth. I’m not the marrying kind.”
Abruptly the telephone went dead in his hand. Slowly he put it down. She sounded wild, almost as if she were stoned out of her mind. He looked across the table at Number One.
“That was Betsy,” he said, in a wondering voice. “I thought she was in France. What the hell is she doing in the Bahamas?”
Number One shot a strange look at him. “Didn’t you know?” he asked. “It was in all the papers.”
“I haven’t looked at a newspaper in weeks,” Angelo said, still bewildered.
“Too bad,” Number One said slowly, a note of sadness coming into his voice. “My great-granddaughter is getting married there tonight.”
Number One rolled his chair to the door. He opened it and looked back at Angelo still sitting at the table. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Angelo lit a cigarette as the door closed and sat there in the empty room. It wasn’t until the cigarette almost burned to his fingertips that he dropped it into a tray and left.
He came out of the building into the red-gold rays of the sun setting through the Detroit smog. He looked up at the building behind him. The cracked windowpane of the board room looked down at him with its single eye.
Impulsively, he turned off the path onto the lawn beneath the window, his eyes searching the ground beneath him. He found the first cuff link almost immediately, directly under the window among some pieces of glass. The second took almost fifteen minutes to find. It was lying hidden beneath a privet hedge. He picked it up and stepped over back on the cement walk.
He looked down at the cuff links in his palm. The sun brought out every exquisite detail of the artist’s design. The tiny rendition of the Sundancer was so real that it would take only a breath of imagination to give it life and have it go roaring into the evening.
His hand tightened so hard around the small gold cuff links that they were almost cutting into his palm. Slowly he walked down the path to his car.
Book Four
1972
Chapter One
The white January sun beat down on the salt flats, turning the miles in front of us into sparkling diamonds that would have blinded us if it weren’t for the shadowed glass of our crash-helmet visors. The only sounds were the whine of the turbine, the shriek of the wind and the rumble of the giant oversize tires biting into the earth between us. I held the wheel steadily in my hand, aiming the car at the horizon where the white sand met the blue winter sky.
Cindy’s voice came into my earphones as calm and as quiet as if we were cruising gently down some country lane. “Red line, sixty-eight thousand rpm; speed, three hundred eleven mph; turbine reactor temperature steady at twelve hundred degrees centigrade.”
Radio-control broke in over her voice. Duncan’s voice through the earphones had even more of a burr than usual. “Ye’re red-lining at sixty-eight thousand, laddie.”
“We already have it,” I said.
“All systems read normal,” he said. “Bring it up to seventy thousand and hold it there for one
minute. I’ll give you the time. Cindy, you set your clock to check me if radio is lost.”
“Wilco,” Cindy said. Her hand, holding the chronometer, came into view in front of me.
I opened the throttle. A fraction of a moment later, Duncan came back on. “Start minute. Red line seventy thousand.”
Cindy’s thumb pressed the button. I caught a brief glimpse of the sweep second hand beginning its trip around the clock. Then her hand disappeared as she drew it back. Her voice was matter of fact.
“Red line, seventy; speed, three twenty-five; temp, twelve hundred; time, fifteen seconds.” There was a pause, then she began again. “Red line, seventy; speed, three forty-five; temp, twelve hundred; time, forty-five seconds.” A moment later. “Sixty seconds.”
Again radio overrode her. “Sixty seconds! Bring it down, laddie. Slowly now.”
I was already easing off on the throttle. “Wilco,” I said. It wasn’t until we were down to under seventy miles an hour and coasting that I dared turn to look at her.
Despite the air-conditioned cockpit, her face was flushed and there was a fine patina of moisture over her upper lip. Her voice was breathless. “Do you know how fast we were going?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Three ninety-one,” she said. “I came twice.”
I grinned. “I would have come too but I was too busy.”
Duncan’s voice came dryly through the earphones. “Remember you’re on radio. Stop talking dirty.”
We laughed. Her hand found mine on the steering wheel. “Hey, baby,” she said. “What a car!”
I looked at her. “Imagine what we could do with this at Indy if it were eligible?”
End of track came up about a mile in front of us. I touched the brake pedal. That was all I had to do. The electronic brake pumping system did all the rest.
By the time I got out of the shower and dressed, they were already rolling the Betsy Formula One prototype up the track into its air-conditioned van, ready for its trip back to our own testing grounds.
Duncan turned toward me as I came out of the building, his eyes squinting through the sunlight. “It was a good drive, laddie.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Everything go A-one right?”
“Perfectly,” he said. “The director told me the helicopter shots should be clear as a bell and all the other cameras were working perfectly.”
“Good,” I said. “We were lucky with the weather.”
He nodded. “Well, the TV-commercial people should have no complaints. We’ve given them everything they asked for.”
I looked at him. “Was it any easier in the days before television?” I asked. “When all you had to do to introduce a new car was put it in the showrooms?”
He smiled. “At least we didn’t have to waste all our time doing things like this. Imagine the nerve of that director? Saying he wanted more dramatics in my voice while I was talking to you on the radio.”
I laughed. “No wonder I thought you were a little hammy.”
Cindy came out of the building. She walked toward us, her hair loose and shining in the sun. “Number One’s calling you from Palm Beach.”
I went back into the building and picked up the telephone. “I was just going to call you,” I said. “The Formula One did three ninety-one breezing.”
“Who was driving?” His voice was irritated.
“I was.”
He was silent. I could feel the explosion building. I held the phone away from my ear. “You stupid son-of-a-bitch!” he shouted. “Vice-presidents don’t go around driving test cars. When are you going to give up playing with toys?”
“I’m entitled to a little fun out of the job,” I said.
“Not with my money,” he snapped. “Why in hell do you think I gave you options on two hundred thousand shares of my stock? Not in order for you to kill yourself and put us out of business.”
I didn’t answer. The only reason he gave me those options was because he didn’t want to return the million dollars I advanced for the deposit on the Washington plant a few years ago.
“You keep out of those fucking cars, do you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “But I have a feeling you’ll be happy with the commercials. I’ll arrange to have them flown down to you as soon as they’re completed.”
“I can wait until I see them on television,” he said. “We have other problems.”
That was the understatement of the year. So far. The year was practically brand new. “Which one are you talking about?”
“My grandson,” he said shortly. “We finally heard from him.”
“Oh?” Loren III had been peculiarly quiet the last few months. I was wondering when it would break.
“I don’t want to talk about it on the phone,” Number One said. “You get down here right away.”
“But I’m due back in Detroit to give final approval on the new assembly lines.”
“Leave that to Duncan,” he snapped. “You get your ass down here!”
The phone blacked out in my hand and I put it down. Duncan and Cindy came into the room. “Number One happy with everything?” Duncan asked.
“Not everything. He wants me down there as soon as possible.”
Duncan looked at me. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. “He didn’t want to talk on the phone.”
The Scotsman was silent for a moment. “Do you think he found out?”
“Found out?” My head was some other place. “What?”
“The Sundancer project?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said. “At least he didn’t mention it. Something to do with Loren Three.” I looked at Cindy. “Get on the phone and call the airlines. Get me on the quickest connection to Palm Beach.” She nodded and went to the telephone as I turned back to Duncan. “You go into Detroit and okay the assembly lines for me. I want everything ready to start on the twentieth.”
Cindy covered the phone with her hand. “You’re too late for direct flights. The best connection leaves Salt Lake at six tonight; change planes at Chicago to Fort Lauderdale and drive up from there.”
“Okay. Confirm it.”
“No change in plans?” Duncan asked me. “Lines one and two, Sundancer standard, three and four, JetStar?”
“That’s the way they go,” I said. “You check with Tony and make sure he has everything ready out there. I want everything to go like clockwork.”
“It will,” the Scotsman said. “But—”
“But what?” I asked.
“Number One is not going to be happy when he finds out what you’ve done.”
I looked at him. “By the time he presses the starting button, it will be too late for him to do anything about it.”
It had all been worked out: 11 a.m. in Florida was 10 a.m. in Detroit and 8 a.m. in Washington. The gold telegraph key was already installed in the library of the Palm Beach house. The cameramen and photographers and news media were all alerted and ready to cover the ceremony. At exactly eleven o’clock, Number One would press the gold key on his desk, starting the assembly lines in Detroit and Washington at exactly the same moment. Fifty-five minutes later the first car should roll off each of the assembly lines and after that, a car every three minutes. On Lincoln’s Birthday, less than one month later, every Bethlehem dealer in America would present the new cars.
Cindy put down the phone. “You’re confirmed on the flights all the way through.”
“Good,” I said. “Thanks.”
She looked at me. “What do you want me to do? Go back to the test track?”
I shook my head. “No. You go into Detroit. You’ll be heading up the test group running checks on production-line cars.”
“What about Stanforth?” she asked.
Stanforth was the chief test driver. “He’ll stay on the Coast and run the group out there,” I said.
“Do I get a raise?” she asked, with a smile.
“What does Stanforth get?
”
“Thirty thousand,” she said.
“That’s what you get,” I said.
“He’s not going to like it. A woman getting the same salary as him.”
“Tough shit,” I grinned. “Didn’t he ever hear of Women’s Lib?”
She was fooling around with her stereo tape player when I came out of the bedroom. “I’m packed,” I said.
She looked up at me. “Would you like a farewell fuck before you go to the airport? It’ll help you sleep on the plane.”
I laughed. “Since when are you worried about my sleeping on planes?”
“Listen to this,” she said, turning the “play” switch on the machine.
The roaring sound of a whoosh of air mixed with the peculiar high whine of a turbine came from the far speaker and raced across the room toward me as it traveled through the different speakers. Suddenly her voice came from the center speakers. “Turbine reactor temperature eight hundred degrees centigrade.”
Duncan’s voice came thin and reedy from the far speakers. “Start on signal. Ten seconds … nine … eight.”
She turned the player off. “How do you like that?”
I stared at her. She never ceased to amaze me. I would have sworn she didn’t have the time. “How did you get it?”
She smiled a secret smile. “I had them make duplicates of the computer tape and the camera tapes. All I had to do was mix them.”
I was silent.
“Well?” she asked.
I grinned. “Okay. Come back into the bedroom.”
“No, there isn’t time,” she said. “If I have to set up in there, you’ll miss your plane. Let’s do it here on the floor.”
The Betsy (1971) Page 31