“When I first sent down to pick up these files, I simply had not the faintest idea—truthfully—that it would displease you even the least bit.
“So, all I need to know, just one word of assurance that these unhappy and unfortunate days are behind us,” concluded a relieved Hughes, wanting to believe the best. “I am just as willing to assume the blame for the misunderstanding. I dont seek or even want to share that. I only want to know the episode is behind us.”
And so it was. But the really wrenching episodes were yet to come.
The Hughes-Maheu marriage was definitely on the rocks. Its special intimacy had been maintained by direct correspondence, and now that was over.
Maheu’s only direct link to Hughes now was the telephone. But while Hughes could call Maheu, Maheu could not call Hughes. He could only call the Mormons, who more and more often told him that Hughes was busy, asleep, eating, not well, or simply unavailable. And the calls from Hughes, in times past all too frequent, first dwindled sharply, then stopped.
Unable to reach Hughes, his calls not returned, his memos not answered, unwilling to sit by his silent telephone like a jilted lover, tired of dialing the penthouse at all hours of the day and night in a futile effort to break through, an angry and frustrated Maheu finally theatened to leave Las Vegas on an extended vacation.
It was the beginning of a final bitter exchange, letters of lost love they dictated to each other through the Mormons.
“I plan to leave immediately for Europe and join my wife, who is already there, for an indefinite period,” Maheu told Hughes, after weeks without word from his boss.
“Unless I hear from you to the contrary, I will assume I have your full blessing. I literally hate myself for not having left yesterday with my wife. For over ten years I have promised her a trip to Europe, but have never been able to fulfill my commitment because of my sincere desire to help you with one problem after another.
“Howard, if I cannot get answers from you in matters as important as TWA, Air West, LAA, I really don’t know why I should continue worrying about these things alone.
“After all, in the last analysis, the only person who stands to get hurt is yourself and ultimately, however devastating the results may be, they will have very little to do with me personally or my future life. If I do not get answers from you I am stymied.
“I have no reason to believe that I will hear from you for the next two or three months,” concluded the cast-aside pen pal. “It appears, therefore, that this might be the propitious time for me to take a much needed vacation, and perhaps this will enable me to stop having these sleepless nights.
“In sincere friendship, Bob.”
Maheu’s threat to go AWOL finally broke Hughes’s silence. In his first memo to Maheu in weeks, the recluse—trapped in his penthouse, unable to make good his own escape, about to lose his own wife (who had finally filed for divorce), beset by financial crises, and in failing health—lashed out bitterly at his deserting lieutenant.
“I don’t think the rebuke and hostility expressed in your last message is one damn bit justified,” replied Hughes through his aides.
“I have been very ill lately. I have had a personal problem of the enth magnitude involving my wife. And I simply have not been able to keep abreast of the inflow of all these communications. This is not the fault of my staff, it might be my fault, but really it is nobody’s fault but just a fault of the system. I am trying to carry the load of 25 normal men.
“The matters to which you refer are still in the pipeline to me,” continued the wretched recluse. “If you think this entitles you to go into a fit of rage and sail off to Europe then it certainly is, in my opinion, a peculiar way of demonstrating this loyal, everlasting friendship we have been talking about.
“You may have a lot of political friends and a lot of people who profess to be your friends, but I don’t think you have so damn many left who are really, truly reliable friends of yours that you can afford to throw away the one who may be the most reliable and most important of all, namely me.
“If you think you can dispense with me as a friend, go ahead and sail on off to Europe and enjoy yourself,” added Hughes, hurling a bitter bon voyage at the man he planned to dump overboard. “Please regard it as the end of what I have considered to be a true and loyal and personal friendship.”
It was not so much losing Maheu as the thought of losing control over him that drove Hughes crazy. For years he had been unable to let Maheu free for a day, for a night, for even a few hours, could hardly bear to let him sleep, and now, even as he withdrew behind his Mormons and plotted to escape his alter ego, Hughes could not contemplate letting Maheu escape his control.
But Maheu was not really ready to ship out.
“I am sure that you know that in the last analysis I could not find it within myself to leave for Europe or to be unavailable to you at a time like this for one damn moment,” he assured Hughes. “Let us say, therefore, that if the message to which you refer has done nothing more but to reopen communications it perhaps was not in vain.
“I can assure you that if I were not concerned and if I did not care about your well being, I sure as hell would not have spent as many sleepless nights as I have during the last several weeks. Your staff can testify as to the number of telephone calls they have received from me at 3 and 5 AM when I was wide awake because of my deep concern.
“Howard, I do not particularly appreciate your statement relative to my friends and contacts,” Maheu continued, heatedly defending his fidelity to his jealous partner. “You better believe that I have them, but it has been many years now since I have thought of them only as they relate to you. I am deeply hurt that you have not recognized this yourself and that I have to be the one to tell you.
“In sincere friendship, Bob.”
Hughes was not mollified. That threatened trip to Europe—he couldn’t let go of it.
“In view of the numerous expressions of loyalty and undying friendship, that the remainder of your business career will be with me and that if we did come to a parting of the ways, I would not have to worry about another Dietrich, or another Ramo or Wooldridge,” the billionaire replied through his Mormons, “it is very difficult for me to reconcile these expressions with the fact that whenever we have some little misunderstanding—the next thing I receive is a threat to take an extended vacation.
“When displeased, your reaction is to desert the ship and let it go to hell. You tell me that my affairs are in a dangerous condition, which I don’t seem to realize—instead of telling me how to correct them. I get nothing but a goodbye note on your way to Europe.”
And so it came down to that. The “Dear John” letter. With all of his dark suspicions that Maheu was seizing power, stealing his money, plotting a coup, it was instead the pain of rejection, the terrible fear that Maheu would leave him before he could leave Maheu, that at the end gripped Hughes.
“Howard, I am sure that you have a life-size picture of my trouncing off to Europe at a time like this,” Maheu quickly responded, desperately trying to reassure his boss. “I would like for you to give me one example of when I have left you in a moment of need.
“I also think it would be difficult for you to say that I have never been prepared to take, personally, all the calculated risks in order to accomplish what it is that you wanted. Hell Howard, if some of the things which I did in order to extricate us from the ABC matter, or to accomplish what we wanted done in the AEC situation, ever surfaced I could never go to Europe because I would be spending the rest of my life in jail.”