Stephen Leigh - Card Sharks

Three days after the accident we held a memorial service out on the flight line. The Navy hymn. The missing man formation. Margaret was there, in sunglasses, somber, serene and distant. I stood next to Rowe. He and I had been in the hands of the investigating board since the hour of the accident. I hadn't slept more than a total of four hours. At that point, I didn't think I'd ever sleep again.

When it was over, I caught up with Margaret, who was hurrying toward her car. "Don't run away from me, goddamnit!"

"All right, Ed." She turned toward me, waiting. "What do you want?"

"I'm in trouble."

"I heard. Why you?"

"They think they've found the cause of the accident. It was in Enloe's life support system, which I was supposed to check."

"But didn't?"

"No."

She shook her head. It might have been sympathy. "What's going to happen?"

"I'm going to be in a lot of trouble."

"With the program …"

"Oh, it's finished. They'll investigate for two years and realize there's nothing wrong with concept. But there's no more money. Especially since the Russians are grounded, too."

"I'm sorry, Ed. I mean, I'm sorry for you. This was your dream." Then she said something that didn't shock me until much later. "What the hell, Ed: they were aces. It wasn't as though human beings were the ones going into space."

"I never cared about that. I worked for Dr. Rowe."

She started to laugh. "Yes, Dr. Rowe. When you get a chance, ask him why he hired you."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Talk to Rowe. He's got all the answers."

Without a kiss, without another word, she got in her car and drove off.

I found Rowe cleaning out his office. An air policeman stood guard outside.

"I had an interesting conversation with Margaret Durand."

Rowe smiled for the first time in days. "Oh, yes, Peggy Durand. I'm going to miss her."

"She told me to ask you why you hired me. She seemed to think it was important.

The smile stayed on his face, but his eyes closed. He sank into his chair. "You know, a few years ago I began to have dreams. Visions of the future. Winged spaceships taking off from runways and flying into orbit. Space tugs landing on the surface of the moon." He swiveled his chair to look out at the desert. "Even things like aces and jokers being treated with respect."

"None of that seems very likely, now."

He turned back to me. "Oh, that's the hell of it, Ed. I also dreamed that I would try to make this happen. That I would build the first winged spaceship … but that it would fail. Fail horribly. And all because of some young Judas named …" He stopped himself. "Never mind."

He said this nonsense with such conviction that I began to get chills. "Well," I said, playing along for the moment, "why didn't you do anything about it? You brought me in here … you threw me together with Peggy …"

"You can't change things, Ed. That's what hurts the most. I thought I could. I hedged my bets." He laughed bitterly. "I even put my most prized possession on that ship, hoping … It didn't make a damn bit of difference."

"What am I supposed to say? That I'm sorry?"

"It wasn't up to you." He was trying to make me understand. "It will happen, you know. The good part of the vision, those winged spaceships. I can still see them. But Enloe and Guinan had to die first."

There was a knock at the door. George Battle was there to take us away.

It wasn't until days later, sitting in confinement in Los Angeles, awaiting transfer to Washington, that I realized Rowe had made quite a confession to me. He, too, was an ace … with the power of foresight. Actually, given the nature of the power, I should say he was a joker.

Did he take comfort in knowing that eleven years after the X-11A disaster SpaceCom would be formed? That in thirteen years a whole squadron of Hornets would be flying into orbit — Hornets whose design was based on the X-11A? I hope so. He was a good man caught, like all of us, in the world created by the wild card.

He was the real victim.

(From The Albuquerque Journal, Saturday, January 28, 1967:)

X-11A DESIGNER DIES

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA (AP). Wilson Rowe, the engineer who designed and oversaw the ill-fated X-11A rocket plane program, has died here of cancer at the age of 62. He had been living in seclusion for the past several years following charges of sabotage that were lodged against him and his team.

(From The True Brothers by Tom Wolfe, 1979:)

Yeager quit testing rocket planes in 1954 and returned to operational flying in Korea. Four years later he was back in the United States, commanding a squadron of F-100s at George Air Force Base, fifty miles away from Tomlin, when the X-11A blew up.

It caused a colossal panic, with newspapermen and congressmen leading a pack that bayed through the woods about wild card treachery and communist sabotage. This was the End of Everything.

The first soul to be dragged off the sled was the 11A's intense young flight director, Edgar Thayer, who was actually sentenced to prison for "gross negligence." He served ten years in the Federal lockup in Lompoc, California, only to die in a car crash as soon as he got out.

Thayer's mysteriously timely death led to the revival of a few wild theories, however. It had been rumored, the True Brothers said, that someone else had screwed up Woody Enloe's equipment. Tomlin flight operations weren't like some goddamn Hitler bunker … lots of people went in and out of there that day. Sure Thayer should have checked … but who cut the hose in the first place?

None of the Brothers could ever understand why nobody but Thayer and Rowe got called to testify. What about Battle, the head of security? He was a weaselly sonofabitch. What about Margaret Durand, the flight nurse? She was every True Brother's choice for Space Age Mata Hari, but she just vanished! Disappeared into the mist!

Yeager, of course, wasn't about to turn himself into some kind of bounty hunter. He spent a few weeks with the panel investigating the accident, came to his own conclusions, then went off to the Sierras in search of golden trout.

At the party the night the first Hornet took off, however, it was Yeager who raised a toast to the True Brothers who should have made it, Woody Enloe and Casey Guinan….

"May I copy these?" Hannah asked. "If you don't mind…."

Dearborn was staring out of the window at the light-speckled night landscape of the city. She could see the reflection of his drawn face in the glass. "They were good men, and they all died. So young …" The sadness in his face and voice brought sympathetic tears to her own eyes. Hannah blinked them away.

Dearborn sighed and turned back toward Hannah. "I guess maybe I was the lucky one, after all," he said, and his laugh was bitter and short.

"Mr. Dearborn — " Hannah began.

"Take the papers," he told her. "Keep them, publish them, burn them. I don't really care. I don't really care at all anymore."

"I can't believe that you're falling for this garbage."

David was standing with hands on hips alongside Hannah's desk. Blue light from her Macintosh's monitor made his face seem almost spectral. Hannah saved the file and looked up at him. "David, I know it's far-fetched. I don't like it either but it all hangs together in a bizarre way: the old arson plot of Lansky and van Renssaeler, Faneuli infecting all those jokers in Kenya, the fire there, Durand being part of the X-11A disaster — "

"I thought you had a list of pyros," David interrupted. "Instead you're chasing shadows."

Hannah glared at him. "Don't be condescending. I have checked out the list. Simpson and I interrogated a few of them this afternoon."