Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [211]
Hughes had planned to give the president only $50,000 more, and give another $50,000 to his opponent, George McGovern, but now he decided to turn over the entire hundred grand to the needy Nixon. Just like an angel out of heaven.
All Bennett asked in return was that the president call Hughes on Christmas Eve to wish him a happy birthday. Although Nixon was preoccupied with planning the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam, he agreed to call his benefactor. It would be their first direct contact.
As it turned out, however, Hughes had more urgent business to handle on his birthday. On December 23, one day before he turned sixty-seven, Howard Hughes was routed from his Nicaraguan penthouse by a massive earthquake that leveled most of Managua.
He was sitting naked in his lounge chair at 12:30 A.M. when the quake struck. He had just finished a twenty-four-hour film festival and called for another movie when the first violent shock toppled a heavy soundtrack amplifier that nearly crushed him. A Mormon rushed in and caught the speaker just before it hit his frail boss.
The room was still heaving, the lights had gone out, and chunks of plaster were falling from the ceiling, but Hughes remained calm. In fact, he refused to leave. “We’ll stay right here,” he told his frantic aides, and again asked for his movie.
The Mormons, certain the entire hotel was about to collapse, coaxed Hughes onto a stretcher and started to carry him down nine flights of stairs, but Hughes suddenly demanded they go back. He had forgotten his drug box.
The billionaire spent the night huddled under a blanket in the backseat of a Mercedes while the aftershocks continued, the earth split open across the city, buildings crumbled, fires raged out of control, and the death toll mounted to more than five thousand.
At sunrise, the Mercedes drove through the devastation, down streets clogged with rubble and dead bodies, past thousands of dazed homeless victims, taking Hughes to the safety of Somoza’s country palace. Secluded in a plush cabana alongside the dictator’s swimming pool, Hughes for the first time showed fear. He insisted that a blanket be draped across the windows, afraid that someone might see him.
That night, in the chaos of Managua’s airport, Hughes was loaded onto a private Lear jet and flew back for the first time in two years to America, landing just after midnight on the day before Christmas at Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Where the IRS was waiting for him with a subpoena. Instead of a birthday call from the president, Hughes was greeted by a surprise party of revenue agents. The tax probe that Intertel had instigated against Maheu, the runaway investigation that had already reached into the White House, had finally turned against Hughes himself.
Trapped in his hangared jet, surrounded by tax men demanding to board the plane, Hughes frantically maneuvered to escape the subpoena. His aides called Chester Davis. The gruff attorney ordered the agents to hold off until he contacted IRS headquarters in Washington. They agreed to wait, but only for half an hour.
Twenty minutes later, a triumphant Davis called back. He said he had spoken to IRS Intelligence Chief John Olsiewski, who reportedly roused Commissioner Walters out of bed, and told the agents in Fort Lauderdale they would soon get orders to scuttle their mission.
At 2:15 A.M. the district chief called from Jacksonville. As Davis had predicted, he told his men to back off, forget the subpoena, stay off the plane, and instead merely let a customs inspector read Hughes an IRS statement requesting a voluntary interview.
The besieged Hughes resisted even that. Through the closed door of the jet the waiting agents heard a shouted conversation, and then one voice rising above the others, screaming “No, no!”
Finally, however, the customs man was allowed on board. He made his way to the back of the darkened plane and turned a flashlight on a bearded old man whose face was half hidden by a black hat pulled down past his ears. The agent handed him the IRS interview request and asked