"Yes. What else do you offer?"
Kassly's face lit up. "Well, we always recommend a protective vault. My personal favorite is the Grant model. I can show you some literature—"
"Is the Grant the most expensive?"
"Why yes, but—"
"Then make it two Grants."
Later in the violet sachet-scented leather-bound comfort of Kassly's office, Bandfield watched without expression as the funeral director ticked off all of the things Bandfield had agreed to, from the open floral carriage to the eight limousines to the children's choir. Kassly's hands were trembling, but his eyes sparkled as he said, "You've done a magnificent job, Mr. Bandfield; I know your mother-in-law would be—" He hesitated and raised his eyes heavenward."—is pleased."
Bandfield brought out his checkbook. "The one thing my wife was insistent on was a complete forest of white roses for her coffin, and red roses for his. I don't want just a few floral arrangements, I want both coffins and the background to be a sea of roses."
"Don't worry about a thing."
"Understand me now—there can't be too many, but I'll be upset if there are too few. Lots of roses!"
"Lots of roses."
Two days later, Bandfield stood listening to the Reverend Gerald Robins's eulogy and admiring the way the red-faced prelate tiptoed around the fact that he was praising a woman and her lover in her husband's home. Everett Kassly had taken him seriously. The two closed caskets were covered with white and red roses, and the room was banked with huge quantities done in every conceivable manner, from straight bouquets to woven blankets.
The problem was that the home was far too small. Patty had had no idea of the affection in which Charlotte was held by the work force at the Hafner factory. The crowd filled up the large living room where Patty had insisted the caskets be placed and flowed out past the porches onto the lawn.
Praying was difficult for Bandfield, but he went through his small portfolio of remembered prayers and lifted a few others from some books the Unitarian clergyman had scattered about. His principal difficulty was addressing the memories. Charlotte had been beautiful, lusty, full of life, quick to laugh and quick to anger. Dusty . . . long ago, Dusty had been handsome and strong, with a good Irish wit. Lately he had suffered, but he had been coming back. It was hard to reconcile the two of them with the little bits of burned bone and gristle that he knew were wrapped and folded within the handsome Berkshire caskets. It was a mistake to hold funerals for pilots, he thought; the earth should just be heaped over where they crash, letting them lie amalgamated with the wrecks of their airplanes. He wondered what other profession demanded the steady toll of lives for participation—the police probably, firemen perhaps, a few others. Did people pursue these jobs because of the danger or in spite of it?
Patty squeezed in beside him. He patted her hand. "You okay?"
"Yes, but I've had some more bad news. Eleanor Bineau called. Armand is sinking, and she doesn't think he'll make it."
"God, how awful. Anything we can do?"
She shook her head, and he tried to change the subject. "Charlotte would have been so pleased to know so many aviation celebrities would show up."
Patty nodded. Amelia Earhart was there, clearly as a favor to Patty. There were dozens of other famous flyers—Bernt Balchen, Jimmy Mattern, Bobbie Trout—but Patty was touched even more by something else.
"Look! How pleased Charlotte would have been!" With a small wave of her hand she pointed to the rear of the crowd, where the entire work force of the factory, painfully dressed up in their Sunday best, were on hand.
"She would have loved it!" Bandy replied.
There were dozens of floral offerings which reflected the imagination and taste of the flying community, everything from huge wings made out of blood-red roses to towering horseshoes of flowers that would have flattered a Kentucky Derby winner.
The ride to the cemetery turned into a logistic nightmare when more than a hundred cars followed the hearse. Charlotte and Dusty had been committed to their last resting place together before the last car had parked. The minister had kept the service mercifully brief.
As Patty got back in the limousine she said, "Now comes the fun part, the part Charlotte would have loved."
They returned to the house. While they had been at the cemetery a huge crew had removed all the funeral flowers and replaced them with flowering shrubs in pots. A band was almost ready to play, and huge tables, groaning with food, were already set up. In every corner were tubs of ice packed with Veuve Cliquot champagne.
"Mother always said that there was no place like a funeral to really enjoy yourself, and she always wanted Veuve Cliquot—the widow—served at her own."
Bandfield squeezed her hand and followed her in. The crowd's tone had changed. Gone were the murmured "So sorry" and "You have my deepest sympathy" set-piece speeches. Instead the noise level began its steady rise as glasses clinked and nicknames were shouted in greeting.
"You've done a great job, Bandy. Thanks. She would have enjoyed it."
"You too. I hope it's helped you."
Patty was smiling as she drifted off to work the crowd. Bandfield thought to himself, The only way this could be improved would be to have Bruno's head served with an apple in his mouth.
***
PART III
DESPERATE ODDS
***
Chapter 10
Karlsruhe, Germany/March 26, 1936
He was quietly pleased by the respectful glances the old soldiers were giving his Great War decorations. Unlike the new ribbon around his neck for the Blue Max, they were slightly worn and made a handsome contrast with his perfectly tailored brand-new Luftwaffe uniform. Lieutenant Colonel Bruno Hafner settled comfortably back in his seat to watch the master at work once again.
As he had been every night of his whirlwind tour of Germany, Adolf Hitler was engaged in a miracle of oratory. Like a great conductor, he transformed the multilegged, single-voiced animal of an audience into a steaming, sweating pipe organ that exultantly played his new tune: honor had been restored to Germany! The March 7 remilitarization of the Rhineland, conceived by Hitler and carried out over the objections of his military advisers, had redeemed the glories of Sedan and Tannenberg. The guttural voice, so implicit with threat and promise, sank to a low throbbing, a masturbatory keening that crawled into the souls of the bright-faced, cropped-haired Nazis jamming the hall.
Hafner sat in detached amusement. Charlotte had finally persuaded him that daily baths were essential; she would have had her work cut out for her here. He held a cologne-soaked handkerchief to his nose, watching the crowd rather than listening to the speech.
"What I have done, I did according to my conscience." There was a collective sob. The words honor, honor, honor came crashing down, turning the shabby potbellied listeners into convulsively cheering knights, ready for the Thousand-Year Crusade.
The moment was coming. Hitler closed, as he had each night, with a pious touch: "And should unnecessary sorrow or suffering ever come to my people because of my actions, then I beseech Almighty God to punish me."
The end came with the characteristic flourish of head and arm, the multiple cheers, the endless volleys of "Sieg Heil!" Hafner was on his feet cheering with the rest of them, until the sweat-soaked Hitler broke for the wings. As soon as he did, Hafner hustled outside, anxious to see the next part of the spectacle. Right on cue, mirror-silver in searchlights, the latest triumph of Nazi technology, the Zeppelin LZ 134, the Hindenburg, appeared. It hung, silent, phallic, ominous, a great gray dumpling awash in the rain-soaked clouds, threatening not with its weaponry—it carried none—but with an implicit incendiary threat that it, like the Nazis, might suddenly go up in flames.
Joseph Goebbels, knowing the limited deductive capacity of his audience, hammered home the association of the old and the new. The whitewash of the searchlights splashed an iridescent set of circles dancing from the huge dark letters forward, spelling out the magic name
of Hindenburg all the way aft to the gleaming black-red-and-white swastika insignia on the gigantic tail fins. It said, more clearly than any poster, that Germany was awake and powerful in the partnership of Reich President Hindenburg's tradition and Hitler's leadership. Yet the cheers became less frantic; with Hitler gone, a more imperious call came from the beerhalls.
Hafner was glad that the Luftwaffe group seconded to the tour would have a night's respite. Hitler was going back to Berlin to orchestrate the plebiscite on his actions in the Rhineland.
As he pulled his boots off in the hotel room, Hafner mused on the whole crazy business. The man the great Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg und Beneckendorff had dismissed as "the Bohemian corporal" had done what no one else had dared to do—rearmed Germany and torn up the Versailles Treaty. And he had done it with an empty bluff, a few regiments of soldiers, a few squadrons of mostly unarmed airplanes.
He flopped on his bed exhausted. The business of being an expert had turned into an endless day-and-night round of backbreaking work and travel.
Hitler's close-run gamble had turned out to be a personal gold mine for Hafner. On three separate occasions, calls had come in to him, one each from Generalleutnant Wever—the little man was on a fast track; he'd been a colonel last year!—from Milch, and even from Goering himself.
The Luftwaffe had fielded three Staffeln—two fighters and one dive bomber—to cover the handful of jackbooted troops marching across the bridges into the Rhineland. Hafner had been assigned the task of getting the flying units on a wartime footing. It had been a joke; they were so unprepared that Hitler Youth footing would have been more like it. But when Wever called, worried about ammunition, Hafner had managed to get a truck filled with links for the fighter squadron's guns all the way to the new base near Cologne, Koln-Butzweilerhof. When Milch had called, frantic that the Heinkel fighters of Jagdgeschwader 134—the Horst Wessel wing—needed gunsights, he had stripped the training units and had them installed in eight hours. And when Goering called, needing an answer to the Fuehrer's question whether the Junkers Ju-52 squadrons standing by could fly to Paris with a bomb load, he had been able to tell him yes—just barely!
The result had been this plum of a trip, with its unexpected side benefit. Little Dr. Goebbels had opposed the Rhineland initiative initially, but had quickly come around when he saw that Hitler was adamant. To make up for this uncharacteristic gaffe, he had seen to it that Hitler's triumphal sweep around the country was well attended by good-looking young movie actresses.
Hafner had met one, Lili Behrens, and they had immediately fallen into bed and into love. She was not the approved tall blond Nordic type, but instead dark, sinewy, and thoroughly delicious.
Now Germany was complete, for she promised to fulfill all his needs. She was as good in bed as Charlotte, and might well prove to be as faithful and useful as Murray Roehlk. Best of all, Hitler himself had pronounced her an "artiste" and was backing her career. Hafner suspected that Goebbels might have provided a little career backing on the UFA casting couches, but that was all to the good. Altogether, a fine week's work.
He took a quick bath and put on a dressing gown, as he tried to sort out whether or not the fast-moving events—the Rhineland, Italy's fight in Ethiopia, Germany's leaving the League of Nations—were good or bad for him. The pyramidal expansion of forces would help, but a war before Germany was prepared would be disastrous. He'd been on the losing side once before. The only thing to hope was that Hitler was as smart as most people said he was, that he'd keep them out of war until 1943. That would be perfect. The big bombers would be ready, and the long-range fighters, not just built, but with crews trained to use them.
Hafner shifted his thoughts from the future to the past. He had never really left Germany, never left the military. Versailles had sent him to America as surely as it had carved western Poland out of German soil. Now that he was back, he could see that it had been for the best. He could never have learned in postwar Germany what he had learned in postwar America. He had kept in the forefront of the Lindbergh boom, and now he had much to offer the Fatherland.
Nor could he have become wealthy in Germany. America had made him rich. He felt a brief sorrow that his parents had not lived to be with him. He would like to have restored their house and their fortunes.
He shook his head impatiently at the remembrance of the American press's pious condemnations of the Nazis. The Nazi tactics had been pioneered in the gangs that ruled Chicago and New York; they were different from the Brownshirts in Munich and Berlin only in motivation. In America it was money, pure and simple. In Germany it was politics.
There was a tapping at the door. Lili.
*
Downey, California/September 6, 1936
"It's good to have you back, Bandy, even for a little while. How are you finding Wright Field as a place to work?"
"I'd work there for nothing, Hadley, if I had to. The bureaucracy drives me crazy, but the Army people are first-rate. I'm sure you used to feel the same way."
Roget pulled Bandfield over to the window and pointed down onto the factory floor. "It doesn't look much different from last year, does it?"
"No. Same old problems, I guess?"
"Yeah—no money, slow pay from the government, and Douglas beating us out of every order for a transport."
Bandfield shrugged his shoulders. "Nobody ever said that the airplane business would be easy."
"I thought we were getting a little reprieve last year after Charlotte's accident."
Bandfield silently agreed. The Air Corps had awarded Roget Aircraft a contract for eighteen RC-3s to be used for military cargo and passenger service. It was a godsend, but the work was just about finished now and there didn't seem to be anything else on the horizon.
"Take a look at this." Hadley tossed a copy of the Times over to Bandy. "That's one record Patty didn't make this year."
There was a two-column spread announcing that Beryl Markham had flown solo from England to Nova Scotia.
Bandfield nodded. "Patty knows her, you know. She and Stephan met her when they took a tour of Africa. Patty says Beryl would have raped Stephan if she hadn't kept a firm hand on him."
The thought bemused him. Had she kept the same firm hand on Stephan that she used to keep on him, always tucked in his pants? Probably. Their relationship had changed dramatically since Charlotte's crash, and it was largely his fault. The obsession with Hafner was completely destroying his life.
Patty was offended by his preoccupation, and properly so. She had come to her own accommodation to the idea of her mother's death, had grieved deeply and then bounced back. He hadn't been able to help her at all—quite the reverse. Within a few weeks of the accident—the murder—she had tried in every way to get him out of his frustrating depression.
Their sex life had virtually ended. He was not impotent, they could come together for some banal relief, but the rollicking enjoyment was gone in his own despair.
She had insisted that his obsession with revenging himself on Hafner, and thus avenging Millie's death, was abnormal, and he had agreed to see a psychiatrist. Long, expensive sessions had not helped. Patty was turning from him to her own career, seeking from flying what he could no longer give her.
He shook the thoughts away. "This is the important stuff." He tapped his finger on a headline: "Fighting Intense at Alcazar." "Have you heard about Americans volunteering to go fight for the Loyalists?"
"Get that out of your head, Bandy, that's your old man talking. We have problems here that are more important than a bunch of spies fighting each other."
"It's more than that, Hadley," Bandfield said, ignoring the slur. "Caldwell's been briefing me, and the Germans and Italians are helping Franco out. I've got the urge to shed this paperwork and go do something useful."
Hadley was no dummy. "So that's it. You'll go to Spain and work yourself out of your depression, eh? Bandy, you're nuts. You've got to snap out of this. Don't go thinking about doing any fighti
ng. That's a young man's game. You'd get over there and some squarehead would shoot your ass off."
Bandfield tuned him out as Hadley launched into one of his endless dirty stories, this one something about the British army wearing red coats so that the blood from wounds wouldn't scare people, and the Italian army wearing brown pants for a similar reason. Roget was annoyed when he didn't get the customary pro-forma laugh, and raised his voice.
"If you want to do something, sell one side or the other a whole bunch of airplanes. We've gone from bad to critical here."
The remark brought Bandfield back to the sorry present. "Who would have believed it, Hadley? That accountant guy came with a resume from the bank that was good as gold, and references from some of the best people in town."
"Yeah, they should have been good—the schnook wrote them all himself."
During the last year, Bandfield had acquiesced to the new arrangement with Patty, submerging himself in a flurry of work attendant to the tidal wave of publicity that had deluged Patty's record setting. The good part was the income—she had contracts to make more money in 1936 than Roget Aircraft was going to earn. Every magazine carried pictures of her, usually dippy-looking pastels, enthusiastically endorsing Ivory Soap, Congoleum floors, Johnson's wax, and Auburn cars. She had refused to do cigarette advertisements, despite an offer from Camels that had made both their heads swim.
He had resigned himself to trailing his wife around, answering questions about her life, her breakfast-food preferences, whether she really drove an Auburn, or if she really used Pond's. He also had to ward off the handsome male would-be movie stars who had swarmed out of their back-alley dormitories just to get photographed as background in her publicity tours, and who all tried to interest her in their "careers."
To help out, he had hired a bright young man, Gerald Rosson, three years out of Columbia University, as their "chief accountant." That meant he supervised two clerks and took the load off Bandfield's back.
He'd also taken approximately $62,000 in cash before departing for parts unknown.
Trophy for Eagles Page 41