Truman headed for the stairway, but then saw Fowler and the Pickerings and turned and walked toward them. After a moment, Harriman followed him.
“Senator,” Truman said, smiling. “How nice of you to come to see us off.”
“Your Majesty’s loyal opposition could do no less,” Fowler replied.
Pickering saluted. Truman nodded and smiled at him.
“I’m sorry he didn’t have more time at home, Mrs. Pickering,” Truman said.
“A little time is better than none, Mr. President,” Patricia Pickering replied.
“How nice to see you, Patricia!” Harriman exclaimed, putting out his hand.
Her face was stony, and she ignored the greeting and the hand.
The smile vanished from Harriman’s face, and he turned and walked directly toward the stairway.
“Jesus, Pat,” Pickering said.
“Mr. President,” Patricia Pickering said, “I’m not among Averill Harriman’s legion of female admirers. . . .”
“I somehow sensed that,” the President said.
“I’m one of those old-fashioned women who think husbands should not sleep with other people’s wives, and if they can’t manage that level of decency, they should at least not flaunt their infidelity in their wife’s face.”
“I’m married, oddly enough,” Truman said, “to a woman who shares that philosophy. I’m going to have to get you and Bess together, Mrs. Pickering.” He paused, and added: “It was nice to see you again.”
He started toward the Independence.
Pickering looked at his wife.
“Was that necessary?”
“I thought so,” his wife replied.
They looked at each other a moment.
“Bring Pick home, Flem,” she said softly.
“I’ll damned sure try, honey,” he said.
She nodded, then wrapped her arms around him.
She stayed that way a moment, then raised her face to his and kissed him.
Then he walked quickly to the steps to the Independence, where George Hart was waiting for him.
As soon as they had gone through the door, the steps were pulled away and there came the sound of an engine starting.
[SEVEN]
There were no layovers. The Independence stopped at San Francisco, but just long enough to take on fuel and food, and to give the President and his aides time to deal with the messages that had come in for him while they were flying across the country. No one got off the airplane.
There was a Presidential compartment and two others— one occupied by General Bradley and the other by Ambassador Harriman—on the Independence and there was a steady stream of visitors to all three. Pickering did not expect to be summoned to any of the meetings, and he wasn’t. He wasn’t at all sure why Truman had ordered him to make the trip, and he suspected that Harriman would probably do his best to have the President ignore him.
At San Francisco—not surprisingly, it was Trans-Global’s headquarters—there were four Trans-Global Lockheed Constellations, one of which sat, its engines idling, at the end of the runway when the Independence took off for Hawaii.
Pickering thought that not only was it a far more graceful-looking aircraft than the Presidential Douglas, but it was also a hundred miles an hour faster. He wondered why the President wasn’t furnished with the fastest aircraft available, and then he thought, again, how wise Pick had been in insisting that Trans-Global buy the Lockheeds, rather than take advantage of the surplus Air Force Douglas transports available so cheaply.
He then thought that the war was making a good deal of money for Trans-Global. The Air Force had not only contracted for as many contract flights as Trans-Global could make aircraft available for but also was filling every seat made available on the regularly scheduled flights, and there were now far more of those than there had been when the war started.
That was the good news, Pickering thought. The bad news was that Chief Pilot Pickering wasn’t around to see how well his airline was doing. Worse than that, Pickering was growing less and less confident that Pick would be found. He refused to allow himself to dwell on the details of why that was likely, even probable, as all of them were unpleasant to contemplate.
He had no idea how he was going to deal with Patricia if his growing fears turned out to be justified.
From San Francisco, the Independence flew across the Pacific to the Barber’s Point Naval Air Station, which is about fifteen miles from Honolulu.
As they were making their approach to the airfield, Pickering idly wondered if they would wake the President—there were beds in all three compartments—for the landing. The question was answered immediately after the airplane stopped moving when Truman, obviously freshly shaved, appeared in the rear compartment and went around making small talk with everyone there