When the pilot went out of sight, McNeely drifted over to Fair-lie’s little circle, his mind going back to Fairlie’s quietly explosive statement about not running for reelection. It was the kind of statement which, if made in heat, meant nothing; but made in deliberate calm, on the basis of obvious lengthy consideration, it meant everything. McNeely stood with the statement undigested, like a lump in his chest that wouldn’t go up and wouldn’t go down. Politics at the very top was the most fascinating game in the world and McNeely, a championship player, selfishly wanted it to go on: but Fairlie was dead right and intellectually McNeely could only accept that it was time to quit playing games.
A stray cool vesper brought the distant flut-flut-flut to his ears and he turned, searching the sky. Presently it appeared between the mountains, a dragonfly of a helicopter with its skinny tail in the air: a Bell Sioux 13R, the DC-3 of helicopters, the military workhorse since Korea.
McNeely hurried back to Cord, the copilot on the engine housing.
“Did you guys call for a Thirteen?” McNeely shouted to make himself heard.
Cord looked up. His head swiveled, he focused on the incoming chopper, he shook his head and cupped his hands around his mouth to shout down. “We only got two big ones aboard. Maybe the other one was out airborne someplace.”
It could cause a problem. The Sioux was a reliable machine but it carried only three passengers. Two passengers if you insisted on having two pilots.
He threaded the cluster of Secret Service men and buttonholed Rifkind and moved him over next to Fairlie. “That’s a three-passenger chopper,” McNeely said.
The Navy helicopter descended slowly, expertly in the thin high-altitude air; it settled on its skids at the far end of the deck beyond the grounded Huey.
The group walked forward; Fairlie was saying, “It’s all right, what the devil, I’ll go along with Meyer and Liam. The rest of you can go down to Madrid by car.”
Rifkind said, “No sir. You need more coverage than just me.”
“Now come on, Meyer, there’ll be an army of Spanish police to mother-hen me the minute we land.”
“I’m sorry sir. You need at least two of us with you at all times. Preferably four.”
“You’re giving me orders, Meyer?”
“No sir. I’ve got my own orders, that’s all.”
They stopped just outside the circle of the slow circling rotors. The pilot was coming out to meet them, stooping low under the blades, a Negro lieutenant in Navy fatigues. He was fifteen pounds overweight, had a neat trimmed black-on-black moustache and slightly bulbous cheeks the roundness of which was accentuated by the wad of gum he was chewing. He emerged, stood up and rendered a crisp salute. “Mr. President-elect.”
Cord had come over from the crippled chopper. “Where’s the mechanic, Lieutenant?”
“Be along on the second machine,” the black lieutenant said. He removed his fatigue cap to reveal a completely bald head; wiped his pate with his sleeve and replaced the cap.
McNeely turned. “What second machine?” He had the lieutenant’s face on a bias toward the light and saw the ridge of a dark scar that ran along the jawline.
The lieutenant was chewing with the open-mouthed insouciance of the chronic gum addict. “Fleet didn’t have a Huey to send, sir, so they ordered two Thirteens out. The other one will be along in a few minutes—they had to wait for the mechanic to get his gear. Captain said you’d probably want a second machine for the gentlemen from Secret Service.”
Fairlie was nodding, reaching for his briefcase which was in one of the aides’ hands. “That’s fine then. Meyer, pick yourself a side-man and the three of us will ride this one. Liam, you come along in the second helicopter with two more of the boys. That soothe your feathers, Meyer?”
McNeely was swiveling on his heels. “Where’s Anderson?”
Cord said, “He went to find a socket-wrench set.”
“He’s got a hell of a sense of timing.”
Fairlie was moving toward the idling chopper. “Never mind, I’ll ride with the lieutenant here.”
“But Anderson knows the route—he knows the landing spot, the timing.…”
“Is he the only pilot alive? Good Lord, Liam, give the information to the lieutenant here and let’s take off—we’re more than half an hour late as it is.”
Rifkind had turned toward the black lieutenant. “I’ll have to look at some ID.”
“Sure.” The lieutenant took out his documentation and Rifkind flipped through it and handed it back. Rifkind was a man who stuck to the letter.
Cord had his two ratings over at the new chopper filling its fuel tanks from a gasoline cart. The lieutenant went over to the Huey with Cord and for a minute the two Navy officers stood plotting course on Cord’s charts, after which the black lieutenant folded them and carried them forward, nodding briskly to Rifkind, popping a new stick of gum into his mouth.
They climbed aboard, Fairlie and Rifkind and Rifkind’s number two, and the black lieutenant who strapped in and talked into a microphone and acknowledged responses from his earlappy headset. The ratings topped up and withdrew the gasoline hose and capped the tank, and Fair lie leaned forward to wave at McNeely.
McNeely gave him thumbs-up and the chopper lifted off a few feet, swung back and forth with a pendulant uncertainty, got its bite in the air and soared away. McNeely stood in the whipping down-draft and watched its graceful tilt and sway toward the mountain pass.
The chopper dwindled with distance. Haze absorbed it over the mountains.
Cord stood beside him, a scowl deepening, and with a sudden growl Cord turned and yelled at the ratings who were trundling the gasoline cart away across the ramp. “Hey. Go on back there and find out what the hell’s holding up Lieutenant Anderson.”
There was a brief discussion among the five remaining Secret Service agents as to which two would ride with McNeely. The reporters had already begun to scatter toward the parking lot and their hired cars.
Within a few minutes McNeely heard another helicopter and turned to watch it emerge from the haze, pushing between the peaks.
Cord was at McNeely’s shoulder. “That’s funny. I thought he said they couldn’t get the other Huey.”
And one of the ratings was running full tilt up the deck stairs, shouting. McNeely couldn’t make out the words. The rating ran halfway forward across the deck and stopped, red-faced and out of breath, and made himself heard:
“… tenant Anderson back there—I think he’s dead, sir!”
Certainty hit McNeely an abrupt physical blow. The Secret Service agents were running but McNeely grabbed Cord by the arm. “Never mind him. Get on your Goddamned radio and let me talk to Fleet. Now!”
1:43 P.M.Continental European Time Fairlie had experienced it before but the sensation was always disturbing: the bubble canopy extended down to the level of your feet and it was as if there were nothing under you but air.
The chugging racket of the engine made conversation difficult; none of them spoke very much. The black lieutenant had a sure hand on the controls, one gloved fist on the cyclic stick and the other on a smaller lever at the left, both feet gently heel-and-toeing the pedals. The air was pungent with oil smoke and the spearmint aura of chewing gum.
He watched the jagged upheaval of the Pyrenees slide by beneath. Pamplona off somewhere to starboard—he thought of the running of the bulls; he had been there for it once, the Fiesta de San Fermin, summer of ’64. His first and last bullfights: he had found he disliked them intensely. It wasn’t the blood that angered him, it was the predestined formality of the slaughter. Spanish bullfighting and Spanish-style dancing had that in common: they had dehumanized these activities, shaped them into rote mannerisms—the bullfight and the flamenco dance had not changed in hundreds of years, they were static rituals, there wasn’t a scintilla of creativity in them anymore. That worried him because it implied a key to the Spanish character which he did not comprehend. He was not altogether confident of his ability to persuade Perez-Blasco of anything at all, but he hoped the man was not a bullfight aficionado or a flamenco buff. Impossible to understand a nation of people who were satisfied with art forms that had ceased developing at the time of Velazquez and El Greco.