Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [102]
“Bob, where is your ‘lead from strength’ philosophy?
“I didn’t win the Senate hearing conflict by a defensive attitude,” continued Hughes, recalling his “Spruce Goose” triumph twenty years earlier. “I did it by charging Sen. Brewster with corruption—with trying to bribe me in a room in a Washington hotel.
“Bob, if you dont take some measures to debunk the present attempt to reduce the issue to a simple question of whether to support the red white and blue, national defense, patriotism, etc., or whether to follow Mr. Hughes and be a traitor, I am sure we will not only lose the battle, but I will be subpeonaed.
“And if that subpeona is ever issued, all hell will not help me then. If we attempt to have the subpeona withdrawn in a red-hot controversy like this, I will lose every shred of stature that I may possess in this country, and everybody will charge that I bought the subpeona off.
“You are not the one who may be dragged out of bed and subjected to embarrassment, public disfavor, and disparagement.
“I want something done about this.”
Maheu killed the subpoena threat in Washington, but he could do nothing to halt the relentless countdown in Nevada.
As his battle against the bomb entered its final days, the frantic recluse, sleepless in his penthouse bunker, wavered between fevered extremes, one moment gripped by visions of doom, the next worried that the explosion would prove anticlimactic.
“I am positive this blast is not going to leave any visible damage whatever,” he fretted. “The dam is not going to break, and the movement of ground and buildings is bound to be less than people expect after all of the dire predictions we have been making.
“I can just see the newspaper interviews after the blast: ‘Why, I hardly noticed it at all!’ ‘I stood there waiting for the earth to come to an end, and all of a sudden it was all over. I hardly felt it at all!’
“Then they will have pictures of the dam with a caption: ‘The same old dam!’ ‘No cracks at all! Not even one little crack!’ ”
Those fools, those blind fools. The bombing would, of course, be awful. Every bit as horrible as Hughes had ever dreamed. It was just that it might not have the visible effects ordinary people could see, only the hidden impact apparent to him alone.
“I am afraid our stock is going to fall after that blast,” wrote Hughes, now distraught over the anticipated dud. “We are going to look like the old lady alarmists of all time.”
Precisely. It was a question of potency. Hughes had come to identify so completely with his feared rival, the bomb, that he could now no more accept a fizzle than a holocaust. If he failed to block the impending blast, not only would his fears be ridiculed—even as he suffered its unseen horrors—but his own invisible power would be deemed as feeble as the bomb’s.
“If the explosion goes ahead, we will simply be chalked up as a failure,” wrote Hughes. “It will simply be said that we do alright on small issues, but when the chips are really down, like the Bomb-test, then the hair on our balls is simply not long enough to accomplish a winning result.
“So, that makes it even more important than ever that we leave no stone unturned in our efforts to stop it.”
With just forty-eight hours to go before the doomsday detonation, ambassadors from the Hughes empire descended on the nation’s capital, talking tough with the AEC, conspiring with the vice-president, seeking an audience with the commander in chief.
“I suppose you know I have not been to sleep at all,” scribbled the exhausted recluse. “So, I am going to wait up now until we hear something.”
All day Wednesday and into the predawn hours of Thursday, Hughes continued his grim vigil, frantically maneuvering to block the blast still scheduled for Friday morning.
“I am no peacenik and I dont want to champion that cause,” he wrote. “I just want to delay this blast long enough to bring some really heavy pressure to bear in Washington so we can obtain a