Top Gun (6 page)

But now Uncle Steve was also betraying Blaize Greene’s memory by making peace with Don Harrison; by becoming partners with
his father’s usurper.

Greene saw an opening and stepped in close, driving his elbow into Buzz’s ribs. He knew instantly that he’d hit Buzz too hard,
even before his friend cried out, falling to his knees and clutching at his side.

“Goddammit, Robbie…,” Buzz grumbled as Greene helped him to his feet.

“I’m sorry, man.” Greene shook his head. “Look, that’s enough sparring. I’ll see you later. I’ll pay for the beers tonight
to make it up to you. Right now I’m going to go work out on the heavy bag. I’m feeling a little too mean today. I’m not fit
for human company.”

(One)

The International Air Transport Committee annualtrade show

Sunshine Convention and Exhibition Center

Los Angeles, California

12 November, 1973

Steven Gold knew that the 1ATC trade show was the number-one event in the industry. It was here that the aviation industry
offered for sale to the American and foreign airlines everything to do with the commercial air-transport business: jetliner
fuselages, engines, avionics, door-latch assemblies, seat-upholstery fabrics, in-flight catering equipment, personnel uniforms,
and so on. The trade show had a carnival atmosphere. The vendors spent heavily on elaborate promotions and lures designed
to attract the airline purchasing agents to their exhibits. As Gold wandered the maze of aisles formed by the hundreds of
elaborate booths, he saw give-aways, sweepstakes, and hucksters dressed up as clowns, birds, and in World War I flying gear;
and the largest concentration of platinum-blond “spokes models” in low-cut sequined gowns outside of Hollywood. The manufacturers’
sales and marketing departments began preparing for the IATC extravaganza months in advance. Everybody who was anybody in
the commercial aviation business was here, but as Gold bleakly returned to GAT’s huge booth in a prime spot in the hall, he
wondered if anybody in the history of the world had felt so out of place as he did just now.

Gold glanced at Don Harrison, who was standing like the king of the mountain on a raised platform in GAT’s multilevel booth.
Don was busy chatting with several airline vice presidents. Evidently, one of the prosperous-looking guys had told a joke:
Don and the others were all laughing uproariously.

Sons of bitches.
Gold thought grimly. Nobody had said two words to
him
all morning, and the times he’d tried to intrude into ongoing conversations, things got strangely quiet. He felt like a wallflower,
and felt doubly foolish about his sorry situation because Don had told him his presence at the trade show wasn’t necessary.
It was Gold who had insisted upon coming. It was his way: when things weren’t going well. Gold liked to throw himself wholeheartedly
into the fray.

And things definitely
weren’t
going well, Gold now brooded. He was loitering in front of the GAT booth, his shiny plastic exhibitor’s badge pinned to the
lapel of his custom-tailored, three-piece blue flannel suit, standing around playing pocket pool with himself and rocking
on his heels like a goddamned department-store floorwalker. It had been a tumultuous five months since he’d turned in his
Air Force uniform for executive’s pinstripes, and he was having a tough time getting used to the civilian world. For instance,
not even in your own office could you just
order
that things be done according to standard operating procedure. No way, pal. Even with your own staff, you had to “communicate,”
“negotiate,” be “considerate,” and “compromise.” If you didn’t, the hippy-dippy bastards would up and quit on you, for chrissakes.

Gold smiled grimly. He would have liked to see somebody on his staff try to quit him in the
Air Force….

He was comfortable dealing with the DOD military-aviation market because he was an old hand at finding his way through that
particular jungle, but the civilian air-transport business was virgin territory. Don Harrison had told Gold he needn’t concern
himself with that side of the business, but Gold was damned if he was going to be satisfied with half a loaf: Pop had mastered
all aspects of the aviation business, so Herman Gold’s son was going to do the same, even if it killed him.

And so here Gold was attending this trade show, feeling bored and out of place, wandering the hall until even the would-be
starlets in their form-fitting glitter gowns had begun to pale.

And there wasn’t one armament or combat avionics vendor in the whole fucking convention center.

“Hello, amigo.”

Steve turned. “Tim?” He smiled tenatively. “Tim Campbell?”

“None other, amigo.” Campbell grinned.

“Damn, it’s been a long time!” Gold exclaimed.

Campbell was in his early seventies. He was short and stocky, but still looked as randy as an old billy goat. Campbell had
a full head of gray, auburn-tinged hair that he wore in a Beatles cut, and modishly bushy sideburns. His clothes were 1960s-era,
dandified English mod as well: his tan and green windowpane-plaid, double-breasted suit had wide lapels and a nipped-in waist;
his tie was a riotous maroon and yellow paisley pattern; his snakeskin boots had zippers on the sides. Campbell may have dressed
like a backwater used-car salesman, but he was one of the richest men in America.

And maybe the world,
Gold amended to himself as he took in Campbell’s diamond-encrusted wristwatch and the glittering rocks set in his pinky ring
and his tie’s stickpin: the gems were big enough to double as airfield landing lights.

“So, you liking the airplane business, amigo?” Campbell asked.

“Still too soon to tell,” Gold replied.

Campbell nodded. “I always knew you’d follow in your father’s footsteps.”

“You knew more than I did.”

“Well, now, amigo.” Campbell smiled fondly. “Who’s known you longer than me?” He reached up to pat Gold’s cheek. “Come on,
say it just once like you did way back when?”

Gold blushed. “Uncle Tim,” he murmured.

Campbell nodded, pleased.
“You
may have forgotten how I used to bounce you on my knee, but
I
haven’t, amigo….”

Gold nodded, remembering back over thirty years to when Tim Campbell was Pop’s close friend and business partner. In those
days. Skyworld Airlines had still been a part of Gold Aviation and Transport, but at some point Tim Campbell and Herman Gold
had suffered a falling-out. Steve Gold didn’t know the details. He’d been a little kid when it happened, and Pop had never
talked about it, but whatever it was that had caused the disagreement, its result had been a split in GAT as the two men went
their separate ways. Pop had retained control of the aviation design and construction portions of the GAT empire, while Campbell
had taken control of the airline. Since then, Campbell had branched out. In addition to his interest in Skyworld, Campbell
owned a sizable portion of Amalgamated-Landis Aircraft Corporation, which was exhibiting here at the IATC trade show. Campbell
also had other extensive, diversified holdings in America and abroad. Like a spider sitting in the center of its web, Campbell’s
reach extended to all corners of the globe, which explained why this little old man with the Moe Howard haircut and the bad
suit turned up as a regular cover boy for the nation’s business magazines.

“Those were the good ole days, all right,” Campbell said. “But we can’t hold back the clock.” He paused. “You know how sorry
I was when your father passed away?”

“Of course, Tim.”

“First Hull Stiles dying, and then your father.” Campbell shook his head. “I guess Father Time is breakin’ up that ole gang
of mine….”

Gold sighed. Hull Stiles had been another of Pop’s friends and business partners; a fellow barnstormer pilot who had come
in on the ground floor of Gold Express, helping Pop to establish the fledgling freight and mail air-transport business.

Campbell briskly decreed, “But we can’t dwell on the past, can we, amigo? How’s business here at GAT?”

“Like everywhere, I guess.” Gold shrugged. “It isn’t a seller’s market. President Nixon’s Watergate troubles combined with
the Arabs’ oil embargo has sure put the brakes on the world economy.”

“It’s all politics, amigo,” Campbell said philosophically. “The politics of oil, and the dirty politics in Washington. I reckon
ain’t nobody’s been harder hit than the airlines now that the price of kerojet has skyrocketed.”

“Is that what you ‘reckon’?” Gold teased. Tim Campbell had been born in Providence, Rhode Island, and knew how to speak perfectly
well, but during a sojourn in Texas revolving around the oil business, Campbell had cultivated this half-cowpoke, half-good-ole’-southern-redneck’s
manner of speech.

“You funnin’ me, boy?” Campbell winked to show he was aware of the joke.

“Just a
mite,
Tim.” Gold grinned. “But seriously, you’re right about the rise in the price of jet engine fuel shaving the airlines’ already
slender profit margins.”

Campbell nodded. “And when a fella feels like he’s got a hole in his pocket, he’s in no mood to buy,” he moped. “Amalgamated-Landis
has a paper airplane it’s been floating past the airlines, with no luck.”

“That’s too bad,” Gold said. A paper airplane was a jetliner concept still on the drawing boards that a manufacturer promoted
to the airlines in order to gauge potential customer reaction before committing the enormous sums required to turn a concept
into a prototype. A major trade show like this one was the perfect place to try to get such a ball rolling.

Campbell said, “Of course, I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, seeing as how you’re now the competition, but what the
hell, blood’s thicker than water, and we’re almost blood, right, amigo?”

“Yeah, sure, Tim.” Gold wondered what Campbell’s angle was; “Uncle Tim” always had an angle.

“I think I’m going to have A-L concentrate on the military end of the stick,” Campbell was confiding. “I’ve had it with building
airliners. In that game, there’s only one rule: survival of the fittest, just like in the jungle. Your daddy taught me that—”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Stevie,” Campbell chided. “Don’t kid a kidder. You tryin’ to tell me you don’t know how your father won the competititon
between his GC-909 jetliner and my Amalgamated-Landis AL-12, back in the 1950s?”

Gold shrugged. “I always assumed the 909 got bought by the airlines because it was the better plane…. No offense, Tim.”

“That’s rich.” Campbell laughed. “Oh, that’s too rich!” He glanced around as if he was worried about being overheard, then
took a step closer to whisper, “Your father scuttled my airplane.”

“Scuttled it? How?”

“He used his CIA contacts,” Campbell whispered.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Campbell hesitated, studying Gold. “You mean to say you really don’t know?”

“Know
what?”
Gold demanded, exasperated.

Campbell shook his head. “You go ask your business partner.” He nodded to himself. “Yeah, you go ask Don Harrison how your
father got his buddies in Washington to see to it that my jetliner got its wings clipped.”

“I
will
ask,” Gold said defiantly, thinking there was no way his father could have done something underhanded.

“I hope you do, amigo. It’ll be a good lesson for you in your new line of work.” Campbell winked. “But now
you
tell
me
something: In this fucked-up economy, it’s plain there ain’t no manufacturer gonna scare up a launch customer for a new airplane
’less that manufacturer is willing to take on extensive seller financing.”

“Well, I suppose you’re right,” Gold agreed, a “launch customer” was that initial airline that could be persuaded to place
a large order for a new jetliner, thereby legitimizing it to the rest of the industry.

“Tell me, amigo,”—Campbell was watching Gold’s eyes—“is seller financing what GAT has in mind in order to peddle the Pont
500?”

Gold hesitated. The Pont 500 jetliner was the latest product of the long association between GAT and the European aviation
consortium Skytrain Industrie. This new version of the Pont was a smaller, fuel-efficient airplane ideally suited for short
hops. It was the right jetliner at the right time in this era of escalating fuel costs, and was selling well in Europe. GAT
had a large financial stake in the Pont 500, and hoped to get the airplane accepted by airlines in the United States.

But that was GAT’s business, and no one else’s. Gold thought. Old family friend or not, Gold wasn’t about to be reveal company
sales strategy to Tim Campbell.

“I really can’t say, Tim—”

“Can’t or
won’t?”
Campbell pounced, eyes glittering.

“Can’t because I don’t know,” Gold replied, lighting a cigarette to hide his unease at lying. “You see, Don is handling the
commercial jetliner side of the business. For the few months since I’ve joined up, I’ve been concentrating on the military
market.” Gold remembered reading somewhere that the best lies had a healthy dose of truth mixed into them.

Campbell was nodding, but Gold couldn’t tell if he was convinced. “Well, thanks anyway, amigo,” Campbell said. “Now I got
to be moseyin’ on.”

Gold was relieved. “Good to see you again….”

“Uh-huh.” Campbell looked amused. “I have me a feelin’ we’ll be seein’ a lot of each other in the future, amigo. Now, don’t
you forget to ask Don about the GC-909/AL-12 competition.”

“I will,” Gold promised.

Campbell nodded, looking satisfied. “Yeah, it’s ’bout time you had your eyes opened now that you’re playin’ with the big boys….
You give my regards to your sister, and your lovely mama….”

Gold waited until Campbell was gone and then beelined it into the GAT booth, intent upon finding Don, and finding out what
Tim had been referring to concerning the jetliner competition. One of the GAT sales executives told Gold that Don was off
checking out the competition. Gold left the GAT booth, hurrying as best he could along the narrow, crowded aisles, looking
for Don at the Boeing and Lockheed booths; then fighting his way through the crowd to the Brower-Dunn exhibit, where a B-D
sales rep told Gold that he’d just missed Don, who’d mentioned that he was heading over to the Pratt & Whitney booth.