“That’s where Howland Island comes in,” Mantz said. “And to answer your question, Howland Island is a desolate dab of nothing in the middle of nowhere, half a mile wide and one mile and a half long, covered with seagull shit.”
“Just what is Franklin Roosevelt’s interest in a bird-shit repository?”
He threw a hand in the air, rolled his eyes. “Hell, I don’t know the politics, or the military ramifications, not really. But Howland and a couple other little islands are just about the only land between Hawaii and the Marshall Islands.”
“So what?”
“The Marshall Islands belong to the Japanese. There’s talk of the Japs and military expansion in the Pacific. This is all over my head, Heller, but even for somebody who doesn’t read anything but the funny pages, it’s not hard to figure: Uncle Sam musta needed an excuse to build a runway on Howland.”
“And Amelia was it.”
Down on the field was a flurry of play, and the crowd groaned in agony. Runs on hits by Lou Chiozza and Joe Moore had the score Giants 3, Cards 1.
Mantz said, “I heard G. P. say the government shelled out over three hundred grand, sending the Coast Guard dragging five-ton tractors over reefs and shoals…just as a courtesy to this famous civilian aviatrix, to aid her on her world flight.”
I had to smile at what seemed like outrageous string-pulling and manipulation of the government on G. P.’s part. “That doesn’t sound like a sellout to me, Paul. Sounds like you scratch my back, I scratch your back.”
“It didn’t bother me, either, at the time. G. P. wasn’t even that secretive about it. Oh, he’d say, ‘Now this is confidential,’ but he got a kick out of telling how he’d conned the taxpayers into paying for Amelia’s landing strip.”
Hubbell was down there striking Cards out so quickly, it was hard to keep track.
“So,” I asked, “why does it bother you now?”
Mantz’s eyes narrowed. “This change of direction in flight plan—the first try was east to west; but now, all of a sudden, it’s west to east.”
“Yeah—Amelia told me it had to do with ‘changing weather conditions.’”
He smirked and shook his head. “That’s the story G. P.’s handing the press—‘a seasonal change in wind patterns.’ It’s baloney—hardly any ‘seasonal change’ happens in weather along the Equator, and zero change in wind direction. Prevailing wind’s always east to west, the opposite of wind in the northern and southern hemispheres…. Hell, that’s why she chose flying east to west, in the first place!”
I was barely following him. “I don’t know beans about flying, but it seems to me, bucking the prevailing wind is stupid.”
“That’s as good a word for it as any. And switching the flight plans to west to east meant everything from the previous attempt had to be scrapped—creating all kinds of problems, adding huge expense in a situation where scrimping would seem mandatory.”
“What kind of added expense and extra problems?”
“Fuel, oil, spare parts, and personnel, in place for the east-west flight, had to be moved—for example, a mechanic dispatched from London to Karachi had to be assigned to somewhere else, Rangoon maybe, or Singapore. Credentials had to be reacquired, charts replotted, creating hours of work for engineers and mechanics at Lockheed.”
“Well, what do you make of that?”
Dizzy Dean was back on the mound.
“I’m not sure. I never got a straight answer from either Gippy or Amelia on the reason for reversing the direction of the flight. The only way I can figure it is, it’s got to be a directive from the same government quarters that funded the second try.”
“Is that where the money came from? Uncle Sam?”
Dean hurled a fastball (what the papers called his fireball) at Lou Chiozza, or to be more exact, at Chiozza’s head. Narrowly missing a beanball was a disconcerting experience, and Chiozza picked himself up from the dust, chastened.
“Well,” Mantz said, “Gippy and Amelia sure as hell didn’t come up with the dough, at least not all of it, not nearly. And listen, from the start, the military’s been on this like ants at a picnic. You don’t fly across the Pacific—particularly not when part of the plan is to land on a flyspeck like Howland Island—without the cooperation of Navy tenders, seaplanes, and personnel.”
“You said it yourself—Amelia has the President and First Lady in her pocket. She could pull that off.”
Chiozza struck out.
“Heller, U.S. naval policy is that no nonmilitary flights get any assistance, whatsoever, with the exception of emergency aid. Every pilot in America knows that. Listen, Manning was a Navy captain, and Noonan is a lieutenant commander in the naval reserve, for Pete’s sake.”
“That’s not surprising, is it? The military is where pilots get trained, for the most part.”
Dean hurled his fireball at Jimmy Ripple’s head. The crowd roared in delighted approval; another Dizzy Dean beanball show was under way!
“Sure most pilots get their training in the military,” Mantz said, “but does that explain why Amelia was driven around in a naval staff car? Or why we were given carte blanche at Luke Field in Honolulu, an Army-Navy airfield? Heller, Army Air Corps personnel dismantled the Electra in Honolulu and crated it for shipping back to Lockheed in Burbank, and we used a Navy hangar at Oakland Airport.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
His face was clenched with urgency. “Come back to California with me. I’ll point you in the direction of some other people who, like me, were part of the inner circle and then got closed out, suddenly. You need to do some snooping around both Burbank and Oakland—”
“Whoa. I don’t want this job, Paul.”
Jimmy Ripple struck out.
“Why not?”
“If the government’s in on this, if this is a military matter, if Amy’s agreed to…to, what? Participate in some espionage mission of some kind? Then that’s their business, and hers.”
Mel Ott stepped up to bat, waiting for his fireball.
“But I don’t think she even knows it’s a government effort,” Mantz said. “Or at least she doesn’t realize to what extent.”
Dean hurled the ball at Ott’s head, Ott jumped out of the way, cursing. The umpire said nothing, did nothing.
“I think this is all Gippy’s doing,” Mantz went on bitterly. “I mean, Christ, Heller, you know Amelia! You’ve heard her speak, you were her bodyguard on that lecture series!”
“What’s your point?”
“She’s a goddamn pacifist, for cryin’ out loud! She’s not gonna willingly cooperate with the military.”
Ott struck out.
“People make all kinds of deals with the devil,” I said, “if they want something bad enough. And I know how bad she wanted this flight.”
“I tell ya, if you can come up with proof that Gippy sold her out, I can get word to her, early in the flight.”
Hubbell was back on the mound. No beanballs for him. He just played his game.
“And what,” I said, with a single dry laugh, “she’ll turn around and come home? Do you always fly without a parachute, Mantz? Do you always land on your head?”
His mouth twitched a grimace. “She needs to know she’s being used.”
“Let’s suppose she is. Being used. Do I want to take on the military or the feds or whoever? No. Let Dizzy Dean argue with the umpire. I don’t need that kind of grief.”
“He’s put her in harm’s way, Heller. If she doesn’t make it home, Gippy murdered her. Or the same as.”
“I don’t think much more of that bastard than you do, Paul. I’m sure he’s made all kinds of, yes, deals with the devil…but I still don’t see him working against Amelia, hoping she’ll crash in the ocean. Not with those stamps on board, anyway.”
“…Somebody’s been following me, Heller.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I had a shadow ever since I got to St. Louis.”