Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [191]
“The Nevada operations,” noted Holliday with a businessman’s icy scorn, “are not profit-oriented or cost-conscious.”
Hughes, encouraged in his suspicions by the whispering Mormons, drew a darker conclusion. He became increasingly convinced that Maheu was, in fact, stealing him blind.
He never confronted Maheu directly with the accusation, but their pen-pal relationship was now becoming more of a poison-pen relationship, and as the bitterness reached a dangerous breaking point the whispering Mormons made their big move. They cut Maheu’s communication lines to the penthouse.
First the Mormons convinced Hughes that Maheu should, like all other executives, transmit his messages exclusively through them.
“Bob,” wrote the billionaire to his estranged henchman, “I’ve decided not to ask you to write me any more messages in longhand and sealed envelopes. I know this is time consuming for you, and my men think I dont trust them. So, in the future, except in rare instances, I prefer you dictate your reply to my messages via telephone to whichever of my men happens to be on duty.
“I shall continue to send you most of my messages in writing, simply because it is much quicker and more accurate.”
It was not long, however, before the Mormons also persuaded Hughes that Maheu could not be trusted to receive, much less keep, the billionaire’s own handwritten memos. Without warning, Hughes suddenly dispatched one of his attendants to retrieve from Maheu all the old correspondence.
Maheu, who was still unaware of the larger forces moving against him, instantly recognized the dangers of losing direct contact with Hughes and lashed out bitterly in a futile effort to restore his unique access.
“If, for some reasons known only to you, I cannot be trusted as the depository of these reference documents, then I categorically tell you that as far as I am concerned, you and your entire program in Nevada can go to hell,” he angrily told Hughes, risking a complete break in his desperation to regain lost ground.
“Howard, I am so hurt and so mad that you may never be able to make amends. I beg of you to release me of my obligations, because I have a belly-full of the chicken-shit operation within which I am living and from which I would like to get released.
“Howard, whether you realize it or not, you cut and cut deep. I want out.
“Will you please do me a great favor. Will you kindly relieve me of my obligations and appoint someone else to be your top man in this area.”
It was the kind of bluff that had worked before. Maheu was certain that Hughes could not get along without him. But this time around Hughes would not be bullied.
“If you want to be relieved of your present assignment, then, regretfully, I will not object,” he coolly replied.
“If, on the other hand, it is your intention to march out of here taking the entire upper echelon of executives along with you in a grand-scale industrial executive strike, then you will have to face up to this sweeping gesture of disloyalty and treachery in your own conscience, but without my slightest consent thereto.
“If you intend to convert this into a power-play of some kind, aimed not at a considerate plan of separation designed to impose the minimum hardship upon me, but instead aimed at a carefully devised strategy calculated to pose a threat over my head sufficient to extract an apology and humble pleading for reconciliation, if this is your objective, please be frank. You, yourself, have said that we should not play games.
“Something has struck me phony about this requested abrogation from the beginning.”
Maheu stood his ground. He saw the fear behind Hughes’s rage and did his