Top Gun (8 page)

Gold, his head beside Linda’s on the pillow, could hear the resentment building in her voice as she once again lost her way
in the past. He raised himself up on one elbow to look down at her. “You’re just upsetting yourself,” he warned. “You yourself
told me it was history, right?”

“Right.” She nodded, mollified.

“Let’s not talk about it any more if it upsets you. Okay?”

“Okay.” She smiled. “Anyway, you must have the picture by now. We realized our ambitions meant more to us than our marriage.
Of course, we were still young—”

“Wrong!” Gold corrected her. “You were merely younger.”

“Oh, right,” she said, chuckling. “I forgot I was talking to Barrie’s original role model for Peter Pan.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that some things really
never do
change,” she countered, amused, and then gestured toward the bedroom doorway. “Like, for instance, when are you going to
break down and buy some furniture?”

Gold shrugged. Pop had bought up a bunch of Malibu oceanfront back during the Second World War, when people were worried about
the Japanese invading California. Herman Gold had put up houses on most of the lots, including this house with its three bedrooms
and a double garage, one of the largest on the beach. Herman Gold’s estate had left this house to his son, but Steve Gold
had been living in it for several years previous to that, ever since he’d been reassigned to the Los Angeles Air Force Station.
Despite the length of time Gold had been living here, the only real furniture in the house was the stuff in the bedroom. The
other rooms were empty of furnishings, except for some rattan-woven rugs on the teakwood floors, and, in the living room,
some beach chairs, a liquor cabinet, and a wall unit to hold Gold’s extensive stereo equipment and the TV.

“I bought furniture once,” Gold joked. “A set of custom bucket seats for my Corvette…”

“And this bed.” Linda added.

“Well, sure, this bed,” he agreed.

She sat up, reaching across Gold in order to retrieve her watch from the night table. Her breasts brushed his chest as she
grabbed the watch, and Gold stroked the small of her back. She sighed, wiggling under his touch. Gold could feel himself thickening
in response; his erection was nudging insistently at her thigh.

“My God!” she exclaimed. “It’s almost four o’clock! What’s happened to the afternoon?”

Gold smiled. Hours ago they’d left the trade show to get some lunch, and then one thing had led to another until they’d ended
up here. Linda had followed him to Malibu in her own car, a “71 silver Mercedes 280 SL ragtop.

Gold reached for her, murmuring, “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

She patted his bobbing erection. “Hold that thought.”

“Why don’t
you
hold it?”

“Because I have to use your phone,” she fretted, snaring the telephone from the night table and putting it like a wall between
them on the bed. “I’ve got to call my housekeeper and tell her when I’ll be home. I promised my boys I wouldn’t be late this
evening.”

She paused in her dialing. “What’s that sour look for?”

“Nothing, I guess…”

“Spit it out, buster.”

“It’s nothing really,” Gold said reluctantly. “I guess it’s just that I grew up with housekeepers….
My
mom was hardly ever home.”

“Hey,” she began, looking very serious as she hung up the phone. “Let’s get one thing straight right now. I’m a
superior
mother.”

“I’m sure you are,” Gold placated.

She stopped him. “No offense, cutie, but I don’t need you to be sure, because
I’m
sure. I have made some
supreme-o
sacrifices for my kids. When the network wanted to bump me up to be their Paris correspondent—a job my professional peers
would have killed for—I turned it down because I didn’t want to raise my kids outside of the U.S.A., and because as a single
parent I didn’t want to be apart from them for months at a time. It was for the sake of my kids that I decided to leave New
York: I wanted them to have a goddamned backyard to play in. It was for them that I decided to try my hand at free-lancing,
so that I could be there for them.”

Gold held up his hands in surrender. “Okay! You’ve convinced me! I apologize.”

Linda smiled, calming down. “Apology accepted.”

Gold listened as she made her call, telling her housekeeper in fluent Spanish that she would be home in about an hour, depending
on the traffic. When she’d hung up, Gold moved the telephone back to the nightstand, saying, “You know, it’s funny you talking
about being there for your kids, and your kids being there for you. I just found out something about my own father I never
knew. Before I ran into you this morning, Tim Campbell put this bug in my ear about something he and Pop were involved in
a lot of years back. Campbell told me to ask Don Harrison about it, so just before we left the trade show—while you were finishing
up your note-gathering—I managed to collar Don long enough to get the story.”

“Story about what?”

Gold paused. “This is probably going to piss you off, but I’ve got to say it: What I’m about to tell you now is not for publication.
It’s totally off the record, or whatever the phrase is, okay?”

Linda spread her arms wide, her breasts rising, her nipples looking rouged against her pale skin “In case you haven’t noticed,
I don’t have my notebook and pen,” she said coolly. “But would you like to frisk me for a wire?”

“Come on, Linda. You know what I mean.”

“I suggest you thoroughly explore all the usual hiding places…” She went up on her hands and knees to present him with her
heart-shaped bottom.

Gold lunged and bit her on the ass. She squawked in outrage, spinning away to the foot of the bed and facing him.

“Now that I have your attention,” he began, exasperated. “Once upon a time we tried not to keep secrets from one another,
but this is different. I’ve got responsibilities to the company. I need to know the ground rules on what I can tell you concerning
GAT, and what I can’t.”

Linda thought about it. “Fair enough, considering what I do for a living, and the book I’m currently working on,” she admitted.
“How’s this: Unless you tell me otherwise, or I specifically ask, I’ll always assume that our conversations are off the record.”

“Okay…” Gold reached for his cigarettes. “As I was saying, this all took place back in the fifties, when GAT and Amalgamated-Landis
had individually come up with the industry’s first jetliner prototypes, and both firms were competing for orders from the
airlines. It was about this same time that the CIA and the Air Force approached my father about the possibility of GAT designing
and building a high-altitude spy plane that could be used over the Soviet Union….”

He hesitated, watching Linda, wondering just how much detail about this to go into with her, because it was this same spy-plane
project that had broken up their romance back when Gold had been a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. Gold had been set
to leave the military in order to settle down with Linda in Los Angeles, but then the CIA had tapped him, borrowing him from
the Air Force in order to put him in charge of the spy-plane pilot-recruitment program. The day he’d backed out of his promise
to resign from the Air Force without being able to tell Linda why—the spy-plane project was ultra top secret—was the day she’d
stormed out of his life.

“I remember the Mayfly MR-1 spy plane program very well,” Linda was saying. “Especially the flap when the Russians managed
to shoot one down, and how embarrassed Eisenhower and the country was when the Reds put our pilot who’d been captured alive
on trial for espionage.”

“That’s right,” Gold said. “Well, anyway, it was GAT who built that spy plane for the government. Back then, as always, GAT
had the best research-and-design department, and at that point the company already had a long history of working with the
government on top-secret—or, more to the point, clandestine—programs concerning aeronautical espionage.”

“What does this have to do with GAT’s jetliner competition against Amalgamated-Landis?”

“Everything.” Gold sighed. “The AL-12 jetliner was luring away the airlines from the GAT GC-909, the production costs for
which had been enormous. My father was financially over extended. If the GC-909 didn’t emerge triumphant in this competition,
GAT was finished. Meanwhile, concerning the spy plane, Pop knew that he had the government over a barrel. GAT had the best
engineering talent in the industry for that sort of project. If GAT couldn’t—or
wouldn’t
—build the spy plane, the CIA would have to go without.”

“And?”

“And so Herman Gold cut a deal. He agreed to build the spy plane if the CIA used its influence with the Civil Aeronautics
Board to get CAB to reconsider its prior approval of the AL-12’s design specs.” He shook his head. “As you can imagine, the
news scared the airlines right off the AL-12 and right into the waiting arms of GAT. The GC-909 was a success. The AL-12 was
sucker-punched into history. Amalgamated-Landis’s perfectly good airplane suffered such a tarnished-by-innuendo reputation
that it never even made it into production. End of story.”

“Wow…,” Linda said slowly. “Double-wow… That’s a best-seller’s worth of airline industry dirt right there.”

“Hey!” Gold exclaimed accusingly.

She winked. “Just kidding, cutie.”

Gold nodded, feeling bad.

“Hey, come on now,” Linda comforted. “It was a long time ago, and your father just did what he had to do in order to save
his company.”

“I guess.”

“And from what I know about Tim Campbell, that guy’s no angel.” She took Gold’s hand. “Steve, it was business, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Gold replied. “It’s just that I grew up with this image of Pop as always being on the up-and-up. A guy
in a white hat, you know? But I guess I never really knew him. We started to communicate once the Air Force transferred me
to L.A., but there was so much ground to cover between us, and so little time….”He trailed off.

“And now it’s too late,” Linda finished for him.

Gold frowned, angry and frustrated. “I can’t help thinking about all that wasted time when I was growing up and could have
gotten to know my father. What the hell use is hindsight when we can’t go back to amend our mistakes?”

Linda kissed him. “Sometimes you can.”

(One)

Gold Aviation and Transport

Burbank, California

12 February, 1974

Don Harrison was seated at the head of the table in the empty executive conference room. The room was windowless and darkly
paneled, illuminated by brass wall sconces and ceiling fixtures with green glass shades, and dominated by the massive, rectangular
mahogany conference table surrounded by leather chairs. The conference room had always reminded Harrison of the interior of
the New York Public Library. Herman Gold had favored this men’s-club look with lots of brass, dark wood, and antiques. Harrison
preferred a lighter touch, and eventually intended to have the conference room redecorated, but today he had more important
matters on his mind.

The door opened, and Steve Gold entered the room with a thick stack of folders under his arm. Harrison and Steve chaired this
weekly meeting of department heads and project managers scheduled to begin in twenty minutes, and Harrison felt the lengthy
meeting progressed more smoothly when he and Steve could take a few minutes beforehand to set the agenda.

“Good morning.” Steve settled into the chair at the opposite end of the table.

Harrison glowered. “Why do you always choose to sit down there?”

Steve glanced up from shuffling papers. “Pardon?”

“Why don’t you sit beside me for once?” Harrison said irritably. “Say, here on my right?”

“Because I’m not your right-hand man,” Steve replied agreeably. “I’m your partner.”

“But it would look better to the others if we weren’t facing each other like opposing forces.”

“The others care more about how we act together than where we sit,” Steve countered, lighting a cigarette.

Harrison shook his head. “I still say it speaks volumes the way you insist upon sitting down there, like…”He thought about
it. “… like an opposing king on a chessboard.”

“Why think of it that way?” Steve shrugged. “Why not think of us as, say, a pair of aircraft engines? You’re on the starboard
wing and I’m on the port wing, simple as that. We’re not opposing one another, we’re working in tandem.” He winked at Harrison.
“At least, that’s the way I see it. Now, can we get on with this?” He glanced at his watch. “The others are going to be here
soon.”

“All right,” Harrison said grudgingly. He wasn’t sure how much his perceptions were being tainted by his own foul mood, or
if Steve was pulling his leg concerning all of that tandem-engine stuff…. He glanced at his agenda sheet. “What’s happening
with the GXF-66?”

Steve said, “Well, as you know, the Stiletto suffered a temporary setback last month—”

“Yes,” Harrison cut in impatiently. “Tell me something I don’t know!”

“My mistake,” Steve said gently. He was gazing inquisitively at Harrison as if to ask:
What the fuck is your problem this morning?

“Go on,” Harrison said, regretting his harsh tone as he ducked the unspoken question in Steve’s eyes. Harrison knew he had
a bad habit of venting his anger on others when the person he was really mad at was himself.

“As I was saying,” Steve continued, “I was hoping to clinch the deal directly with the Air Force, but the Department of Defense
intervened, requiring us to enter the Stiletto into the interservice Lightweight Air Combat Fighter competition. My contact
has since notified me that the DOD has received competing submissions from General Dynamics, Dunn-Brower, Amalgamated-Landis,
Grumman, and McDonnell Douglas.”

“How many of those are paper airplanes?” Harrison asked.

“I know for sure that Dunn-Brower’s and Amalgamated’s are paper, but the others… ?” Steve shrugged. “It’s been no secret that
the Air Force and the Navy have for some time been looking to fill their niche for a cheaper fighter. Those two branches of
the military could have been funding research on any number of projects in addition to ours.”