Pursuit Chapter 22

Chapter 22

No matter how many times Katie MacArran would hear the words, they would never fail to stir her.

“Airship up!”

The speaker was Lt. Commander Charles Rosendahl, United States Navy, in temporary command of the Airship Republic, formerly the R-100, and at his order, the great dirigible lifted from her mooring mast and began to rise slowly into the air.

Far beneath the gondola, Katie could see the crowd shrinking in size as the airship gained height. Amongst those present to see them off from Cardington were Lord Beaverbrook, Winston Churchill, Sir Alan Cobham, and Barnes Wallis, the latter of whom actually looked as if he had tears in his eyes. Also present was practically every member of R-100's assembly team, easily recognized by the huge banner they were holding aloft, “Good luck, Duchess Katie!” And as Captain Rosendahl gave the order to start engines, the throng let go a thunderous cheer.

Katie, for her part, was not lulled by their enthusiasm. The furs below were only caught up in the emotion of the moment; their cheers did not reflect a solid change of opinion. Though she might no longer be the object of universal derision, The Duchess of Strathdern was still not the public’s darling. The furs of Britain had only adopted a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude with her; they would give her a chance to prove that the R-100 was worth saving...but before she could win her way back into their esteem, she would have to PROVIDE that proof.

Which was just fine with Katie. She needed all the motivation she could get to pull this off..

That also pretty much encapsulated the reaction from the banks when she had once more sought out additional capital for the project; they would give her a chance, but she had BETTER deliver. Towards that end, Katie had settled on Guaranty Trust as her prime backer, an American company to be sure, but one with strong ties to the U.K. Moreover, Guaranty did a great deal of business in gold, which meant she could ‘keep everything under one roof’ once the metal started coming out of Iso.

The only downside was that Guaranty was closely associated with Morgan Financial, they of the “Depression, WHAT Depression?” school of thought. Even so, it did not come close to outweighing the company’s advantages.

Surprisingly, there had been no opposition to her venture from Iso Mining and Extraction’s chief rival in New Guinea, Bulolo Gold Dredging. It was the mountain goat, now standing beside her in the Republic’s gondola, who had offered the most probable explanation:

“Don’t forget Katie,” Jim Spanaway had told her, “Gold is a fixed value, not a market value commodity. No matter how much gold you bring out of Iso, it won’t depress the value of Bulolo’s turnout one bit.”

When Jim had first learned of her plans, he’d been even more aghast than Eamon Mack, suggesting that perhaps she was even more in need of confinement to a sanatorium than her grandfather.   That attitude had irrevocably changed when Katie had shown him the assay report from the Iso valley. Unlike Eamon, Jim had a solid background in mining, and he’d grasped the report’s significance at once. “Good God,” he’d said, shaking his head in awe rather than disbelief, “if somehow you DO pull this off, you’ll not only be able to take back Combs Mining Machinery, you’ll be able to expand it.”

The clincher had come when Katie had told the goat just who she had hired to manage the Iso mine. Jim had goggled at her for a second, then thrown back his head and roared with laughter.

“Oh my GOD! Drigo Chavez? That’s it Katie, count me in.”

It was then that Katie had learned that Drigo Chavez was not in his late fifties as she assumed. The coati was actually circa 67 years old.

But then again, so was the pine-marten femme standing on her other side.

“Magnificent!” declared Katie’s dear friend, Mary DuCauroy, Duchess of Bedford, as the earth continued to fall away beneath the airship.

“Indeed,” declared her husband, turning away from the window for a second, “But I daresay, I’m rather curious about something Your Grace. Why have you chosen to rename the R-100 the Republic?”

Katie shrugged. “You’ll have to ask the Viscount Lord Londonderry. It was one of the conditions set down by the Air Ministry in the agreement to let me take possession of the R-100; she must be given a new name. Why they made that stipulation, I have no idea.”

“Ah yes,” said the pine marten, nodding in understanding. At his age, he was no stranger to the quirkiness of Whitehall policy. “But why The Republic? Not exactly the most British of names, if I may say so.”

Katie chuckled. “That was simply a matter of expediency, Your Grace. If you think about it, the name, R-100 reworks very easily into the first five letters of REPUBLIC. The ‘R’ stays as it is, the dash converts easily to an ‘E’, the ‘1' changes easily to a ‘P’ and so on.

“Ah,” said the Duchess Mary,. “So it was simply an easy re-paint, then?”

“Yes.” Katie nodded. “Exactly that.”

There had been no question of inviting the Duke and Duchess of Bedford to join her on what Katie thought of as the last cruise of R-100. When the airship lifted off from Lakehurst following her refit, only then in Katie’s mind would she be the Republic, an airship lifted by helium rather than hydrogen, and with an interior as utilitarian as that of any U.S. Navy dirigible.   But for now, as far as the pinto mare was concerned, she was still the R-100 -- still the ne’-plus-ultra in luxury airship accommodations.

After the way they had stood by Katie in her struggle to save the dirigible, it was only right that the Duke and Duchess get to sample the R-100's amenities for the last time.

Even if she was still borne aloft by hydrogen.

In spite of that fact, Katie had found it remarkably easy to hire a crew to take the airship across the Atlantic. With the Depression raging, almost all of R-100's original compliment had been unable to find work elsewhere. With practically no exceptions, they had signed on at once. What gaps there had been were easily filled by airshipfurs from the US Navy, which Washington had been only too happy to supply. They would get a chance to study the R-100 in action, right off the bat.

The one big problem had been finding someone to command the R-100. Her original skipper had perished on the R-101. For the initial flight, Commander Rosendahl would take the helm but once the refit was completed, she would need to hire a captain of her own.

As a matter of fact, Katie had already hired him. In point of fact, he’d been her first choice right from the start.

But he was not on board today...and with good reason. If Lord Casterley had discovered who she’d chosen to command the R-100 BEFORE the airship had left Britain....

Well, fortunately, he hadn’t.

“C’mon’ said Katie, motioning towards the door, “Best leave Commander Rosendahl and the boys to their work.”

She turned, and led the way out.

When they entered the passenger lounge, they found Nevil Shute Norway there, deep in conversation with Sofia Casandonte. When they got to Lakehurst, it would be the Australian Rabbit who would be overseeing the refit. As for the Ibiza Hound femme, she’d been retained as ‘temporary consultant.’ (It had been Sofia who had first detected the flaw in the R-100’s original tail-cone design, after all.)

Katie smiled and sat down to join them, along with Jim Spanaway and the Duke and Duchess of Bedford.

They had a lot to talk about.

The first order of business was obtaining the dredges and hydraulic extractors to bring into Iso. Based on Katie’s report, Jim Spanaway had set about determining which of Comb’s Mining Equipment’s several models would be best for that purpose, and now he had an answer for her.

“I would start with a pair of 2500 dredges.” he said.

“Not a 3500?” asked Katie, surprised. The mountain goat shook his head.

“In that remote an area, two medium-heavy dredges are better than a single large one. That way if one breaks down, you’re not out of business until the spare parts arrive. And besides, as you well know, the 2500 is the most reliable gold-dredge Combs manufactures.”

“Okay,” said Katie, deferring to his judgement. In the time since she had last seen him, Jim had managed to establish surreptitious contact with a junior member of Combs’ board of directors, a Bighorn ram named Mark Frost, who had become fed up to the tips of his horns with all the nonstop, pointless bickering. It was Mark who kept Jim up-to-date on the latest goings-on inside the company.

“One of our customers canceled an order for three 2500s just a week ago,” Jim was telling her, “and the company is desperate to unload them. They’re just sitting in a railroad-warehouse in Portland, Oregon, accumulating storage fees. If we play our cards right, we can probably get them almost at cost.”

“And the catch is?” asked Katie, who knew by now that there’s ALWAYS a catch.

“The catch is that we’ll probably have to buy all three of them.”

“Then do it,” said Katie, who had also learned not to agonize over decisions. “And what about the extractors?”

“Them we’ll have to buy new from the factory, “ said Jim, with a small, goatish sigh, “and I would strongly suggest doing it on a ‘hold for customer pick-up basis’. DON’T contract with Combs’ for their transport and delivery. Hire someone else. One of the board members Colin brought in put his son in charge of shipping and receiving last year, and since then the whole department’s gone all to Hell. In fact, that’s the reason the order for those dredges was canceled in the first place. They were supposed to go to Portland, MAINE, not Portland, Oregon.”

It was next decided that the dredges and extractors would go from Portland Oregon to Manila by cargo ship, rather than aboard the Republic, which would not be able to carry everything at once anyway. Besides there would be much more needed to get the mine up and running besides those items. Katie and Jim spent much of the voyage making out a shopping list of the necessities for getting the Iso mine working. When she wasn’t in the midst of this, Katie spent almost all her time discussing R-100's pending overhaul with Nevil Norway and Sofia Casandonte.

And she had plenty of time in which to address these matters. It being winter, taking the Republic on the North Atlantic route to New Jersey, was out of the question. Instead, the airship turned south, following roughly the same course Katie had taken during her flight to The Horn, and crossing from Dakar to the Zeppelin station at Recife, Brazil, where the airship spent two days taking on fuel and provisions.

And that was not all she took on. Shortly after the airship touched down in Recife, another passenger boarded her.

He was a smallish, ginger, tabby-cat with close cropped fur. And when he stepped aboard the dirigible, the first to greet him was Commander Rosendahl, who met his successor as captain with a crisp salute.

“Welcome aboard Captain Nobile.”

The feline almost broke down and wept. It was the first time in almost three years that anyone had addressed him by that title.

Katie had found him in a small pension in Salerno, Italy, where he’d been living in semi internal-exile since the crash of the airship Italia in the arctic.

The choice of Umberto Nobile for captain of the Republic was Katie’s most controversial decision yet. In official disgrace since the Italia disaster, held fursonally responsible by the Fascist government, and with his reputation destroyed by the Italian press, Captain Nobile seemed about the least likely choice for commander of the Republic.

And he said as much when Katie first approached him, “Why me, Signorina Duchessa?”

“Because,” the mare had told him, with her lower jaw setting into a firm square, “I don’t give a flying lizard’s ass WHAT the Fascist press says about you, Signor Nobile. I still haven’t forgotten that unassisted landing you made on the ice with the Norge. There’s only two airship captains I know of with that kind of skill...and I don’t think Hugo Eckener is available right now.”

Getting Umberto Nobile to accept the post of captain of the Republic was the easy part. The hard part was keeping it under wraps. Katie’s arch nemesis, Lord Casterley was an ardent admirer of Mussolini, and had reportedly bought the official Fascist verdict regarding Nobile, lock, stock and barrel. She could imagine the headlines in The Evening News and the Daily Mail if His Lordship ever found out -- at least before Nobile had proven himself, as she had no doubt that he would.

With that in mind, Katie’s official reason for her visit to Italy had been to see Sofia Casadonte about taking on that consultant’s position, which was true. Even then, it hadn’t been easy. Nobile was then under the intermittent eyes of OVRA, the Italian Secret Police, and had been in the process of negotiating with the Soviet Union regarding the offer of a job as chief consultant to their airship program.

Fortunately, the Fascist government seemed to have temporarily lost interest in the feline, and ironically, the Soviets’ enthusiasm for starting a dirigible program had cooled considerably in the wake of the R-101 calamity.

Just the same, Katie’s visit to Salerno had been officially nothing more than a courtesy call on an old friend, a lark thought up on the spur of the moment. And even now, only a select few on board the Republic, Katie, Sofia, Captain Rosendahl, the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, and Jim Spanaway knew that Umberto Nobile had been brought aboard as anything more than just another consultant. The rest of the crew remained blissfully ignorant of his purpose.

When the airship lifted off from Recife again, Captain Rosendahl invited Signor Nobile into the Gondola strictly as what appeared to be a matter of courtesy. As it was well known that the mink had been hoping to make the first arctic crossing by airship in the Shenandoah before her untimely crash -- and before Nobile had succeeded with the Norge -- none of the crew gave matter a second thought.

Meanwhile, back in the passenger section, Duchess Mary of Bedford had taken over the proceedings.

“Right,” she said, drawing herself up and addressing Katie and the others, “You lot have done nothing but talk business and engineering ever since this airship left Cardington...and for the last day, all you’ve done is go over what’s already been settled.” She put her paws on her hips and continued, “Well, enough is enough, I say. For the rest of this voyage, Mrs. Spanaway and I. think that everyone should stop making shop-talk and have some time to relax.”

“Especially you, James.” said Mary Spanaway, Katie’s former nanny goat. Judging from the expression on Jim’s face, Katie was certain he was going to raise a storm of protest. But the mountain goat only nodded his meek assent.

“Any time Mary calls me ‘James’”, he later confided to Katie, “there’s no point in arguing with her.”

Nor, as it turned out, was there any point in arguing the matter with Mary of Bedford. The rest of their journey was conducted as a leisure cruise...or else.

And it turned out to be just the tonic that Katie needed. Since the day she’d made the decision to acquire the R-100, she’d had barely an easy moment. Now she was finally able to unwind, and in that easy atmosphere she actually came to several more decisions than she’d been able to before. None of these ideas were voiced to her fellow travelers, though. There’d be time enough for that when the airship reached Lakehurst.

As the R-100 moved northward, along the South American coast, large crowds turned out to greet her, everywhere she appeared. Days were spent relaxing, watching the scenery, enjoying the R-100's excellent cuisine, ( Her original chef was still aboard, on his way to a job at the posh, new Hotel De Anza in San Jose California) and talking non-stop about everyone’s favorite subject -- flying. At one point Sofia expressed an interest in entering a plane in the Thompson Trophy race, only to be gently dissuaded by Katie.

“Uhh, sorry Sofia...that’s a ‘males-only’ race.”

“Aren’t you going to fly again in the Schneider?” asked Mary of Bedford, looking somewhat disappointed.

“No, not this year.” said the Ibiza hound femme her voice tinged with sadness and regret.

“General Balbo won’t allow her to enter again.” said Katie, by way of explanation.

“What?” demanded Mary, clearly affronted by this misogyny, “What the Devil for? I daresay Miss Casadonte more than proved herself in the ‘29 Schneider.”

“Hey, don’t look at me.” Katie answered, raising her hooves defensively at the pine-marten femme, “I’M the one who wouldn’t take no for an answer when they tried to keep me out of the Dole Derby, remember?”

“It is not because I’m female.” said Sofia, hastening to explain, “It is because General Balbo has decided to concentrate all of Italy’s resources behind a single aircraft this year, the new Macchi-Castoldi MC 72. He is allowing no other entries besides this plane.”

Actually that probably wasn’t entirely true. Yes, there might be only one Italian entry this year, but after her fine showing in the previous Schneider-Cup, Sofia Casadonte should have been a prime candidate to pilot her...except, as Sofia’s father Giuseppe had once pointed out, Signor Mario Castoldi was the type who’d take a Tommy-gun to his new race plane before he’d let a female into her cockpit.

Still, it hadn’t been a total loss for the Casadontes. Only a month previously, Giuseppe had been ‘loaned’ by Aero-Caproni to the MC 72 team, where he now served as chief troubleshooter. With him on the job, Katie was certain that there was to be no repeat of 1929, when Castoldi had not been able to work the bugs out of his planes in time for race day. THIS year’s Schneider-Cup was going to be duel to the finish.

Ironically, for a while it had looked as if the 1931 Schneider might come off with no BRITISH entry in the field. Rocked back on it’s heels by the Depression, His Majesty’s Government simply didn’t have the resources to fund the construction of a new racer.

Enter the Lady Pamela Fenwick.

A fennec-vixen and heir to the vast Fenwick Foods empire, she had been horrified by the prospect of the Italians taking the Schneider unopposed -- and resolved at once to do something about it, offering to pay for the construction of a new British race-plane out of her own pocket. Nothing if not frank in her opinions, Her Ladyship had thence let it be know that this was as much a slap at Britain’s Labour Government for ‘the noxious doctrine that we are a second rate power’ as it was an act of patriotism.

It was this attitude that had also led Lady Pamela to become one of the earliest advocates of saving the ‘capitalist ship’ the R-100. Thoroughly occupied with the Schneider Cup by then, she’d been able to offer little more than a letter of support. Katie, for her part, didn’t hold it against the fennec vixen. As far as she was concerned, Lady Fenwick was absolutely correct in sparing no effort to keep Britain from giving up the Schneider by default. Had the piebald mare been in a position to do so, she would have added both her funds and her skills as an aircraft designer to the effort.

AND a pilot; Sofia Casadonte wasn’t the only one in the passenger lounge who dearly wished to fly in the Schneider-Cup.

Oh, what a contest that would have been – Katie flying the new Supermarine S-6B, and Sofia at the controls of the Macchi-Castoldi MC-72. She could see then now in her minds eye, hurtling towards the finish line neck and neck, the crowd cheering wildly as they battled for the lead.

“Someday,” the pinto mare vowed, silently to herself, “Someday.”

She turned to Sofia Casadonte.

“Whatever happens, it’s going to be a helluva race this year.” she said, and the Ibiza hound femme could only wag her tail in agreement.

“Don’t you wish you could be a fly on the wall when Lady Fenwick and General Balbo finally meet face-to-face?” she asked, narrowing her eyes in sly relish. Right up until Pamela Fenwick had made her offer, the Italian lynx had been publishing editorials in the Fascist press, all of them practically accusing the British team of cowardice

“Oh yes!” cried Katie, clapping her hooves with delight. “What a story for the Observer!”

“Hear! Hear!” chimed in Mary of Bedford, “You should have to run three extra editions, dear.”

When the laughter finally subsided, Katie reached forward and placed a hoof atop the Ibiza Hound femme’s paw.

“Listen, Sofia...let’s us make a promise right here and now. No matter what happens at Calshot, whether it’s Britain or Italy that takes the Schneider, let’s agree that there’ll no hard feelings between US...okay?”

“No hard feelings...ever.” Sofia agreed raising a paw, “Whatever happens, we will still be friends.”

The two of them joined in a sisterly embrace.

After which Sofia added, puckishly, “...even AFTER the M.C. 72 humbles your S-6B, once and for all.”

“Oh, yeah?” neighed Katie, pretending to bristle. “Sez YOU!”

At this, Mary of Bedford rolled her eyes and went quickly to find a cup of tea.

When the R-100 arrived in Lakehurst, the only ones waiting to greet her were the US Navy Ground crew and a pawful of reporters. This was not because there was no interest by the American public in the R-100, but rather because Admiral Moffet, the head of the US Navy’s airship program had elected not to open the airship station for her arrival.

That, and the fact the it was 20 degrees outside today.

When Katie descended the stairway from the mooring mast, the admiral, a tenacious looking fox, was waiting there in furson to greet her, as was an avuncular blue-tick hound named Paul Litchfield, president of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber company, parent organization of the Goodyear/ Zeppelin company, who built the Navy’s airships

“Welcome to Lakehurst, Your Grace.” said the admiral, shaking her hoof.

“Thank you, Admiral.” said Katie.

“A pleasure to finally see the R-100 for myself,” said Litchfield, when it was his turn. Looking upwards at the airship, he added, “I understand you were part of her design team, Your Grace. You’re to be congratulated. She’s a magnificent piece of work.”

“Thank you, Mr. Litchfield.” said Katie, smiling, “and may I present Mr. Nevil Shute Norway, chief stress engineer for the R-100 project? He’s the one who will overseeing her refit.”

Leaving Nevil Norway and Admiral Moffet to supervise the task of moving the R-100 into one of the two airship sheds, Katie went with the others to the mess hall to address the reporters.

Here, she was pleasantly surprised to discover that the attitude of the fourth estate in America towards the R-100...and towards Katie herself, was far, far more congenial than it had been on the other side of the Atlantic. In retrospect it was hardly surprising. No one in America saw anything untoward about Katie’s arrangement with the U.S. Navy, and the crash of the Shenandoah had never provoked a hue and cry against the American airship program, the way the R-101 disaster had against it’s British counterpart.

Furthermore, British peer or not, there were many Americans who saw Katie as one of their own. As one of the reporters would later tell his editor, “You take one look at that mustang mare with the one blue eye, your hear the twang of the sagebrush in her accent, and you think, ‘How the hell could this horse NOT be a true-blue American?   Another one put it somewhat more earthy tones, “How many stuck-up Lady Snobbingtons have YOU have ever heard say, ‘not hardly’?”

Furthermore, Katie’s plans for the R-100 didn’t exactly run counter to the grain of the American frontier spirit.

Not hardly.

In her remarks to the gathering of reporters, Katie dedicated a great deal of what she said to thanking the both the United States Navy and the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.
“I promise you both, here and now,” she said, turning to address Commander Rosendahl and Paul Litchfield, “That I will never forget the U.S. Navy and Goodyear’s timely aid in helping me to rescue the R-100 from the scrapyard.. And if the occasion should ever arise when I can return the favor, count on it, I will.”

It was a vow the pinto mare would one day fulfill in spades...especially where the Navy was concerned.

Katie waited exactly one day before plunging headlong into the effort to convert the R-100 into the Republic...and that was only to see that the airship’s crew was properly paid, and bid farewell to the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, who were continuing on to the sunnier climes of California, and from there to a two week holiday on Spontoon Island.

“It’s a pity you can’t come with us dear.” said Mary, wistfully clasping Katie’s hooves as she and her husband prepared to board their train in Penn station. “You’d simply adore Spontoon Island. It’s a grand, grand place.”

“I’ll make it there one day, Your Grace,” Katie told her, raising two fingers in semi-solemn assurance. “You have my word on it.”

That was another promise the pinto mare would one day fulfill...and one directly related to the next question a reporter would ask her, seven years later, when she finally kept it.

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