“The news announcer went on to say that there was no doubt whatsoever but that this explosion will far exceed anything ever set off around here.
“Bob, I think this is just disgraceful! Please let me hear from you if you are not too sleepy.”
The awakened Maheu, accustomed to his commander’s night fears and less awed by pronouncements from the video oracle, remained unruffled.
“We are quite confident that we will be successful in obtaining a 90 day delay,” he reassured his boss, pledging eternal vigilance. “This whole situation is so damned important that I beg of you not to hesitate to call upon me further this morning. We can rest at a later date. As a matter of fact, Howard, please, and I sincerely mean it, never consider me as a guy who wants to sack out when there is business to be conducted. Fortunately the good Lord has blessed me with an unusual constitution.”
Ready to stand watch in the night, Maheu was also busy by day, rounding up political allies while he assigned the resourceful John Meier to line up scientific support.
Meier, an inspired con artist who claimed two Ph.D.s but never actually got past high school, proved as adept at recruiting antibomb scientists as he was at swindling Hughes out of millions in bogus mining claims.
Nobel Prize laureate Linus Pauling soon joined the “Boxcar” protest, as did longtime nuclear foe Barry Commoner, whom Meier flew to Las Vegas to man the barricades from the comfort of a complimentary suite at a Hughes-owned hotel.
“We’re making a lot of progress,” Maheu reported to the penthouse. “Today the Vice-President requested data which is already on its way to his office. We have the State of Utah up in arms and their effects will be felt in Washington starting tomorrow. We are beginning to receive the data (wires from scientists) which Governor Laxalt requested. He now wants Governor Reagan to join in our efforts.”
Hubert Humphrey, Ronald Reagan, Paul Laxalt. Linus Pauling and Barry Commoner. Progress indeed.
The sense of triumph, however, was short-lived.
Maheu, having gathered the support of thirty “prominent scientists,” publicly announced his peace plan the next week. It drew an immediate and complete rebuff from the AEC.
“Boxcar,” the government agency declared, was a “weapons-related experiment, designed to improve the nation’s nuclear armament capacity”—specifically, to develop a warhead for the then-envisioned antiballistic missile system. A moratorium was out of the question.
“Any delay of the scheduled test,” the AEC maintained, “would have an adverse effect on national defense.”
Hughes was enraged. Not only had the peace been broken but his patriotism had been called into question.
“Where do they come off waving the American flag in my face and implying that I am some kind of bumbling idiot who, in his ignorance, might sabotage a one billion dollar defense installation?” he demanded.
“Me, who has done more for defense than the N.T.S. [Nevada Test Site] ever dreamed of. After all, only two nuclear weapons have ever been used, and the N.T.S. did not exist at that time. My equipment has been used extensively in World War #2 and in Korea and in Vietnam.”
Moreover, Hughes was convinced that the AEC had lied. As an arsenal of democracy, he was not only privy to classified information but had actually helped develop the ABM.
“I am right on top of the entire anti-missile program for this country,” he explained. “We have actively bid on these projects since the first one about seven years ago. Actually, we had a large part of the first system that proved at all successful.”
The claim of national defense was, to his mind, entirely without foundation.
“Of course, we must be careful not to place ourselves in the position of disclosing military secrets,” cautioned the billionaire. “But I can tell you, based on actual Defense Dept. technical information legally in my hands, that this last AEC statement is pure 99 proof unadulterated shit.
“If you want to know the plain blunt truth, it is that these explosions are not needed for anything,” Hughes continued, now certain of his foe’s malevolence. “The AEC is only making an issue out of this because, if they do not, and if they stop blasting, then it will be demonstrated for all to see that all of this destruction and damage and all of these violations of ordinary decent conduct were totally without purpose.
“You take it from me that these tests have no valid military purpose! This is not conjecture or supposition, this is fact! I can even prove it!”
At commission headquarters in Washington, AEC officials were equally suspicious about, but considerably less certain of the hidden Hughes motives. Rumors that he was plotting to block the “Boxcar” test had been filtering in for days, including one report that the mysterious recluse had readied “a fleet of aircraft to follow the radioactive cloud” if the bomb was detonated.
Already the agency had received an unprecedented rash of letters and telegrams inspired by the Hughes protest, and officials worried about moves he might make in the political arena. In a constant flow of confidential cables between Las Vegas and Washington, they traded tidbits of fact and speculative theories concerning their strange adversary.
One “eyes-only” report claimed that his agents had offered bribes to several scientists in return for antibomb statements, another lamented that “Hughes’s fears concerning contamination and ground shock remain unpredictable,” while a third suggested that Hughes might be “kept in an agitated state by people connected with the Hughes Biomedical Foundation in Florida, with the hope that Hughes would abandon his Las Vegas interests and consider moving to Miami.”
All the while, the countdown at Pahute Mesa continued, as test-site workers began to cork the bomb shaft in final preparation for the big blast.
And now, after a week of illusory peace, with only four days left until the scheduled detonation, the battle of the bomb was finally joined in earnest.
Badly shaken by the rejection of his moratorium, Hughes resumed direct command of the campaign, forsaking sleep for the duration, ready to make any alliance, try any strategy, pay any price in his desperate bid to stave off nuclear attack.
His first instinct was to buy his way out of trouble. Despite his anger at the AEC, he would offer the agency a straightforward business deal.
If he couldn’t get the test delayed for free, he would gladly pay for a postponement: “I am willing to supply any funds required for additional overtime or other expenses involved.”
Would the delay set back the ABM project? Hughes would also finance a rush job “to achieve a completion of any weapons program based upon this test at the original target date for completion.”
Finally, he had a true inspiration. He would simply cover whatever it might cost to move the bomb test elsewhere. Preferably to a new site then being built in Alaska.
“If cost is disturbing the AEC,” wrote Hughes, “I feel so intensely about this thing, I will even pay the cost of moving this test to one of the other sites, out of my own pocket.
“I dont even know what the cost would be, and I would be at the complete mercy of the AEC, who would probably charge in everything under the sun, including the last three year’s payroll. But I will still pay it to resolve this problem, which, if it is not solved, is going to change the entire course of the remainder of my life.
“They have plenty of time to set up the test in Alaska.”
Yes, Alaska was the perfect place to banish the bomb. Moving expenses be damned. Indeed, Hughes had long been pushing the frozen wastes of the far north as an alternative test site, and he had gained some powerful allies.