Trophy for Eagles

by Boyne, Walter J.

  He stopped, appalled at his echo of Stephan's discontent, biting his tongue in dismay at the cold, hard look that came over her. He reached over and stroked her arm.

  "Get your hands off me and get the hell out of this room. I'm no serving cow, waiting for the current King Bull to jump me."

  After a few apologies, he stayed in the room, ruefully remembering that they'd had a lot better honeymoons before they were married.

  *

  Sayville, Long Island/December 18,1934

  Charlotte Morgan Hafner was rarely sentimental, but tears welled as she realized that this snow-drenched Christmas was going to be the worst since the awful years after her first husband had been killed. Bruno was off on another of his trips to Germany and France; Dusty, poor bedeviled Dusty, was sequestered in Burbank working for Howard Hughes; and Patty was apparently determined to go on flying no matter what anyone said.

  When she'd first realized that she'd be alone, she'd been delighted, imagining that she would have a permanent wave, lie about in bed, and generally take it easy. Then she thought about the factory. Bruno had been systematically excluding her from work at the plant, and she used the opportunity to try to get back into the thick of things. Sometime in the last year he had completely revised the accounting department, hiring all new people. They were polite, but they followed his instructions to let no one look at the books. Not even a first-class Charlotte Hafner tirade with an aria of curses and a coda of tears had budged them. They were properly cowed and apologetic, and their manner told her that Bruno was doing something unorthodox. But they were adamant, and whatever it was would have to wait until Bruno returned and she could dig it out of him.

  She was unsettled by it. When Bruno had begun to become obsessive about the business, a few years ago, it had pleased her, for she was tired of the work, just as they had mutually tired of their sex life. She welcomed the chance to divert his interest, leaving her more time for Dusty. The irony was that Dusty too had long since become an indifferent lover.

  I must be some hot number, she thought. Losing an American husband to the Germans, a German husband to boredom, and an American lover to dope.

  She curled up on the couch, listening to Russ Colombo records on the Victrola, putting the squeeze on a box of chocolates to find the nuts and caramels. Once she had been addicted to sex and flying and chocolates. Now she was down mostly to chocolates.

  Charlotte tossed the box of candy across the room, knowing only too well that her real distress stemmed from the burning desire to somehow excel over Amelia Earhart, to get the recognition that the "Lady Lindy" got so effortlessly. Despite all Bruno's warnings, and her own very clear insight, it had supplanted everything else in her life save her love and concern for Patty, and her determination to help Dusty break his habit.

  She knew that helping Dusty change was by far her most difficult task. They had made good progress before Bruno sent him to California; Dusty was going longer between injections, and had begun to put back on a little weight. Now his latest letter admitted that he had relapsed. He romantically blamed it on his need for her, and there was probably some truth to the idea. As long as she was with him, nagging him for his own good, Dusty had the strength to quit. The problem was the close association with Bruno, who kept Dusty supplied so conveniently with drugs. The only real way out for them would be simply to leave, to start a new life somewhere away from Bruno.

  In some respects it would be easy. Patty was mature, and Charlotte no longer loved flying for flying's sake. The days when a flight above the clouds or aerobatics close to the ground had given her a near-sexual satisfaction had gone forever, vanished in the irritation over the adulation that Earhart had received for her flights across the country and from Hawaii. Bruno had explained to her time and again that Earhart had an advantage with her fragile delicate looks and vulnerable manner that was almost insuperable. Her husband, George Putnam, had a genius for promotion, and made Amelia unbeatable in the press.

  Bruno had tried to reassure her, telling her, "Among the professionals, you are the best—but you'll never beat her in the newsroom." But now, she had a story winner in her grasp—the new four-engine bomber. To her knowledge Earhart had never flown anything bigger than a Vega. Initially, Bruno was against her flying the bomber—said it was too big for her—but he yielded quickly to her argument that it was the one sure way to sell Congress. There was a strong Congressional sentiment, fed by careful briefings from the Navy, that anything bigger than the twin-engine Martin B-10s would be "too difficult for the average Air Corps pilot to fly." It was baloney, but it suited the battleship admirals perfectly. They wanted the Air Corps relegated to close infantry support and coast defense.

  Even within the Air Corps, there was a powerful faction that wanted smaller airplanes, simply because you could buy more of them. When Bruno had told her that he was entering a four-engine plane in the bomber competition, she saw the possibilities for herself at once. She would demonstrate the plane at Wright Field, and then get one on loan—or have the company build one especially for her if necessary—and set all the women's records for speed, distance, and altitude. She could probably do it all in two or three flights. Then she could put her helmet in the locker and concentrate on the chocolates—and on curing Dusty.

  The only genuine difficulty was persuading Patty to quit her own career. In the end she gave up and simply promised to support her every way she could. Maybe Patty could be her copilot on the bomber—that would be something, a mother-and-daughter team setting records. Having a daughter was one thing that damn Earhart couldn't do, for sure. Charlotte had always wondered if Amelia wasn't a man in disguise.

  *

  Downey, California/February 15, 1935

  Bandfield glanced over his Los Angeles Times,, covertly watching Patty planning her flight, her desk awash with maps, plotters for drawing the course lines, and tables to predict her fuel consumption. He loved her deep absorption in any flying task. Her lips would compress as tightly as a recalcitrant clam and her ordinarily smooth brow would furrow into ivory corrugations as her whole body became a tightly wound coil of total concentration.

  The quarreling honeymoon had set the tone for most of their first month of marriage. She made it into an elaborate game of marital diplomacy that left her in complete possession of the field. Their compromise had been that she was going to manage her own flying career, doing exactly what she wanted to do when she wanted to do it, and he was going to help her to the exact degree that she required.

  Beyond that she was now a perfect wife, still very eager in bed, maintaining their little ranch house without help, and cooking well enough but not so expertly as to prevent making eating out a regular pleasure. Tonight, she was planning her record transcontinental run, doing all the figures herself, refusing to let him help until she was finished. Then she was glad to have him make any corrections.

  He went back to the Times. The newspapers were filled with gloom and doom, at home and abroad. The Depression was getting worse instead of better, and things were heating up in Europe. Mussolini was claiming that ninety thousand Ethiopians were massed on the border of Italian Somaliland, threatening to invade! The newsreel scenes of II Duce strutting and posturing were laughable, yet the, League of Nations seemed to buy his preposterous claims.

  "Did you see that they convicted Hauptmann? I wonder if Slim will come back from Europe now."

  She looked up, pensive. "He would if the press would let him alone. Sometime I'd like to meet his wife."

  Yeah, me too, Bandfield thought. He had corresponded with Lindbergh over the past few years, mostly about the RC-3, but always with a little personal stuff mixed in. Lindbergh seemed to be drifting rapidly to the right—unless it was himself drifting to the left. Bandy had written something about the purges in Russia not being much different from the arrests Hitler was making in Germany, and Lindbergh had taken violent offense, claiming that the differences in scale and cause were enormous. He maintained that Stalin
was eradicating whole sections of the country because he felt they were a political threat, while the Germans were simply solving some of the problems caused by the war.

  Bandy felt a little guilty, because he knew he was at least in part baiting Slim—he realized it was bad practice. The situation at Roget Aircraft was critical now. Douglas was simply eating up the market, so that even mighty Boeing was giving up on commercial aircraft. He might need Lindbergh to give him the nod in some domestic competition.

  It was probably a forlorn hope. He hadn't helped in the past, and with all their arguments, it was even more unlikely that he'd help in the future. Fuck him.

  He put down the paper and reached for his Spanish text. Major Caldwell was insisting that he have a reasonable proficiency in German and Spanish. The Spanish came easy, but the German was tough. Thank God they'd decided he didn't need to bother with Chinese.

  *

  Farmingdale, Long Island/May 8, 1935

  The final assembly bay looked like a disaster-area dormitory, with iron cots and surplus Army mattresses and blankets lining the walls. Fully clothed workers were asleep in some of them, oblivious to the glare of the overhead lights and the machine-gun rattle of the riveting guns. At the far end, an improvised kitchen served three hot meals a day, with coffee and sandwiches at all hours.

  Armand Bineau, arms aching, forced his wheelchair past the desk where he had spent almost eight years serving Hafner Aircraft as chief engineer. In the old days, Hafner used to let him alone to do his work, rarely making a suggestion. For the last two years, though, Bruno was into everything, always wanting documentation, always insisting on "improvements." Hafner knew just enough about aircraft design to be dangerous. He'd never had the engineer's capacity to keep the entire concept in mind, to see that good ideas, perhaps even great ideas, sometimes didn't work as a part of the whole.

  Ironically, the reverse was true with the present airplane. When Wright Field had announced the competition for a "multiengine" bomber, it had been Hafner who had insisted on interpreting the specification to permit four engines. There had been long arguments—in the past, "multiengine" had meant only two or three engines, and that was how Martin and Douglas were interpreting it.

  As the plane took shape on Bineau's drafting table, as the figures began to add up, two things became apparent to him. One was that his health was going, his heart unable to take the hours and Hafner's harassment. The other was that Hafner had been right about building a four-engine plane. They'd heard that Boeing was following the same path, but it was only an industry rumor. Both companies had clamped tight security on the work areas.

  The heart attack had not been a surprise—his doctor had been predicting it for years—but it came at an awkward time, just when he was forcing Hafner to face reality. All of the engineering changes had boosted the new airplane's weight by more than two tons—equivalent to the bomb load—and every ounce of it could be attributed to Hafner's insistence on change, on "improvements."

  When Bineau confronted Hafner with the overweight problem, the German had flared up in a wild fury. Bineau remembered for the hundredth time the insane look in Hafner's eyes. Years before, Bineau had polished a single stainless-steel propeller blade and placed it in his office as a decorative sculpture. Hafner had seized the propeller and walked to the case where models of all the aircraft designed by Bineau were stored. He had raised the propeller blade and smashed it into the cabinet, sending glass flying and mashing the jewellike models into dust. Bineau was powerless to stop him, and the pointless destruction had triggered his attack, sending him to the hospital.

  Bineau patted his breast pocket in frustration. The cigarette pack that had been found there for more than thirty years was gone, a victim of his doctor's new regimen. No smoking, no drinking, and no more than ten hours of work per week.

  He pulled a sheaf of drawings off the desk, sighing. They were of the control locks, a typical example of Hafner's interference. Historically, the Army had always used external control locks on the surfaces of big airplanes. Simple blocks of wood with felt protectors, they kept the ailerons, elevators, and rudders from banging around in a high wind. Hafner had insisted on installing internal locks, operated from the cockpit, saying that the airplane was too big for the standard locks to be used. The installation took a lot of engineering man-hours, and added more than a hundred pounds.

  He put the drawings back, aware that none of it mattered now. The airplane was ready to fly, with Dusty Rhoades and Charlotte as the test pilots. Bineau had pleaded with Bruno to hire professional test pilots, but he had refused.

  "Look, Armand, the Navy has already got the attention of Congress about how difficult big airplanes are to fly. If we have Charlotte fly it right from the start, we'll gut their argument."

  Any hope that he might have had of persuading Bruno was undercut by Charlotte's own insistence on being the pilot. "If I can fly a Gee Bee, I can sure fly this," she said.

  A summer storm threatened to delay the first flight, but the day dawned bright and clear, a fresh, salt-tinged breeze caressing the field. The airplane was enormous, towering over the swarming ground crew, more than twenty people absorbed in their individual tasks. Bineau watched enviously as Rhoades reached up to grab the sides of the belly hatch under the cockpit, swing his legs forward, and ease into the fuselage; a decade ago he could have done the same thing, but now he'd never see the inside of the airplane. Charlotte was right behind him, swinging up like a trapeze artist.

  "That woman is a miracle," Bineau whispered.

  They were comfortable together in bed or in a cockpit. Dusty motioned her to take the left seat.

  "You make the takeoff. I'll be here to help if you need me."

  To her surprise, the big bomber handled easily, needing only a firm hand on the controls. The takeoff and climb-out had been very little different from the transport's, and it stayed in the turns she made, steady as a bowling ball in the gutter, until it was time to roll out.

  They flew conservatively for thirty minutes, and Charlotte made a perfect three-point landing.

  When they got out, Charlotte pulled Hafner aside. "It's a great airplane. Give us a few hours of takeoffs and landings, and we'll dazzle Wright Field with this thing. The papers will have a field day, and you'll turn Congress around."

  He said, "You win. And I guess you'd better let me know what records you're planning. No sense arguing about this."

  Bruno's emotions were obviously mixed. "You charmed them out of their boots with the A-11 and the transport. You can do it again. It's sort of a tradition now." He wondered how they'd feel about it in Germany if the Air Corps wound up buying the airplane.

  The bomber turned out to be the worst-kept secret in military history. A vacationing newsman had watched the first flight in disbelief, and turned out a feature about "the Hafner Aerial Arsenal" that made the wire services. By the time the test program was well underway, the field was clogged with reporters and newsreel men. The initial comments from Washington were adverse because Congressman Dade from Nashville pilloried the Air Corps for intruding on the Navy's mission. But by the end of May, the "Aerial Arsenal" had accumulated more than forty relatively problem-free test hours and the best press backing any American warplane had ever received.

  In Downey, Bandy, Patty, and Roget sat through a double feature to watch for a second time the Paramount newsreel which showed Hitler and what seemed like all sixty million Germans saluting, shots of nubile starlets traveling on the Queen Mary, a fashion show, and the big Hafner bomber. There were only about ninety seconds of it on film, but they were absolutely devastating. The huge silver plane, with its finely tapered fuselage and four slender nacelles, flashed by in a high-speed low-level pass, then peeled up to land and park with light planes perched under each wing to emphasize its size. At both showings, the audience broke into spontaneous applause when the announcer said, "And here's a surprise—the giant Aerial Arsenal is flown by a lady pilot." Charlotte dropped down out
of the cockpit and embraced Bruner Hafner as the scene faded out.

  The three were silent as they drove back to the factory, terribly aware that Hafner Aircraft's fortunes were rising while Roget Aircraft's were declining. Patty felt awkward, falling between the stools of pride in her mother and concern for Bandy. Finally Hadley said, "Has anyone heard how Armand is doing?"

  "He's recuperating. Charlotte wrote that Bruno pretends to be so worried about him that he won't let him hang around the factory at all. My guess is that he just wants to ease Armand out, for some reason."

  Bandy said, "Caldwell's asked me to spend June and July in Dayton, flying the new crop of fighters. I'll be there during the bomber competition. I'll try to get a line on it, and let you know how it looks."

  Patty froze. "Two months! I thought this was going to be like a reserve assignment, a few days every year. What gives?"

  "I don't know. If we don't get some more orders for RC-3s, I may apply for active-duty status."

  Bandfield's comment wasn't offhand. Roget Aircraft was once again hanging in the balance, its once blue skies tinged with red ink.

  *

  Sayville, Long Island/June 22, 1935

  Bruno Hafner put the last suitcase into the Duesenberg's trunk and yelled: "Come on, Charlotte, we're late. Half the newsreel industry is waiting at the field for us to leave."

  Charlotte ran out, a blond Myrna Loy dressed in white whipcord jodhpurs and jacket, a matching white helmet in her hand. She was wearing her favorite red leather boots. Murray followed her with two more suitcases.

  "Jesus, we're only going to be out there for a week! You didn't need to bring the whole wardrobe."

  "The hell I don't. You'll have me set up every day with the papers, and I'll have to wear something different all the time."

  "Murray, you take care of things here."

  "Things" meant mostly Nellie, Bruno's dachshund, and Murray knew it.