Free Trevayne by Robert Ludlum

about himself. He had been told he was a major salesman, but it didn’t take a high degree of salesmanship to corner markets inwhich the product was so sought after. Instead, other gifts came into play. The first, perhaps, was the soft-science of administration. He wasn’t just good; he was superb, and he knew it. He could spot talent and place it under contract—at some other company’s loss—in a matter of hours. Gifted men believed him, wanted to believe him, and he was quick to establish the weaknesses of their current situations; to hammer at them and offer viable alternatives. Creative and executive personnel found climates in which they could function, incentives which brought out their best work under his aegis. He could talk to union leadership, too. Talk in ways it readily understood. And no labor contract was ever signed without the precedent he’d fought for in the company’s first expansion in New Haven—the productivity clause that locked in wages with the end result of assembly-line statistics. The wage scales were generous, outstripping competition, but never isolated from the end results. He was called “progressive,” but he realized that the term was simplistic, misleading. He negotiated on the theory of enlightened self-interest; and he was totally convincing. As the months and years went by, he had a track record to point to; it was irrefutable.
    The most surprising asset Andrew found within himself was completely unexpected, even inexplicable. He had the ability to retain the most complex dealings without reference to contracts or notes. He had wondered briefly if he possessed a form of total recall, but Phyllis shot down that conceit by pointing out that he rarely remembered a birthday. Her explanation was, he felt, nearer the truth. She said he never entered any negotiation without absolute commitment, exhaustive analysis. She gently implied that this pattern might be traced to his observation of his father’s experience.
    It all would have been enough—the airlines, the expansion, the production network that began to extend throughout the Atlantic seaboard. On balance, it should have appeared that they had gone as far as they could hope for; but, suddenly again, the end was nowhere in sight.
    For on the night of October 4, 1957, an announcement was made that startled mankind.
    Moscow had launched Sputnik I.
    The excitement started all over again. National and industrial priorities were about to be altered drastically. The United States of America was relegated to second status, and the pride of the earth’s most inventive constituency was wounded, its people perplexed. Restoration to primacy was demanded, the cost inconsequential.
    On the evening of the Sputnik news, Douglas Pace had driven out to Andy’s home in East Haven, and Phyllis kept the coffee going until four o’clock in the morning. A decision was reached that ensured the Pace-Trevayne Company’s emergence as the Space Administration’s largest independent contractor of spheroid discs capable of sustaining rocket thrusts of ultimately six hundred thousand pounds. The decision was to concentrate on space. They would maintain a bread-and-butter margin with the airlines, but retool with space objectives, anticipating the problems to merge with the larger aircraft surely to be demanded in the late sixties.
    The gamble was enormous, but the combined talents of Pace and Trevayne were ready.
    “We reach a remarkable period in this … most remarkable document, Mr. Trevayne. It leads directly into the area of our concerns—the President’s and mine. It is, of course, related to March of nineteen-fifty-two.”
    Oh, Christ, Phyllis. They’ve found it! The “game,” you called it. The game that you despised because you said it made
me
“dirty.” It began with that filthy little bastard who dressed like a faggot tailor. It began with Allen.…
    “Your company made an audacious move,” continued Big Billy Hill. “Without