Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [181]
“Frankly this scares the hell out of me, Bob,” he concluded, despite his dark suspicions not yet ready to make the final break. “I am fearful that one of these disagreements we have may one day reach a dead end.”
If Hughes was afraid that his relationship with Maheu was coming to a dangerous dead end, the Mormon aides who encouraged those fears were afraid that Maheu would discover their whispering campaign.
“We hope you will consider our security as seriously as we consider yours,” the frightened attendants wrote their boss from the room next door. “The thing that really bothers us is that we gave you a confidential message about the organization that Bob has built up and you immediately pass the entire message on to Bob, and in even stronger language.
“Bob is a smart guy and would be able to figure out in a second where this information came from. They have things locked up real tight here and if they know where an open gate is, they will soon close it. We would just as soon remain personna grata with the entire organization. We will be more useful to you and it will be safer for us.
“You must remember that so long as you live we come under the mantle of your protection, but if anything should happen to you, we would be at the mercy of somebody,” added the conspiring nursemaids, less than sanguine about the long-term prospects of their bedridden boss.
“You have assured us that we have nothing to worry about, and we don’t—as long as you are healthy enough to function, but after that what?”
The atmosphere of double-dealing and dangerous intrigue grew more intense just one week later when Hughes discovered that Maheu had secretly slipped back into Nevada, and was hiding out at his country retreat in nearby Mt. Charleston. Far worse, he had used one of the loyal Mormons to deceive Hughes into thinking he was still in obedient exile.
Hughes flew into a jealous rage. Maheu had violated his harem, his polygamous immediate family, and Hughes was even more angered by the seduction than by Maheu’s defiant homecoming.
First he turned on the hapless Mormon.
“Roy,” he wrote, “there is no use of us fencing or manoeuvering about this any longer.
“For Maheu and his people to be evasive with me and cover up for one another is serious enough. But when this practice penetrates into my own, personal, most trusted staff, it is a great deal worse.
“Roy,” he continued, lecturing the faithless aide, “my relationship with you and your group must be on a basis of such complete trust that I do not ever have to pause, consider, reflect, or wonder—not even for a fraction of a second—not ever—and not about anything.
“If I cannot have this kind of ‘Stock Exchange’ trust with my own top echelon inner sanctum, how can I ever hope to have loyalty from more remote executives?”
Next Hughes turned on Maheu. His secret return, his penetration of the palace guard was final proof of his clandestine takeover.
“Re your whereabouts—I dont want to debate this until I get settled at my destination,” wrote Hughes, still frantically plotting his escape, now desperate to move his headquarters out from under Maheu before Maheu could steal the empire out from under him.
“I only hope everybody accords my forthcoming trip the same security and secrecy that was given your movement to Charleston Peak.
“Bob, I dont say you intentionally fail to inform me of things, I just say you have created such a spirit of loyalty to you and your group of people that it simply amounts to an ‘organization-within-an-organization.’
“I perhaps could live with this. You have said you must inspire loyalty to get the job done.
“But when my immediate, personal group of five very most trusted senior executives, men who have been with me for many, many years, who have been granted by me authority to place my signature to commitments