Refuge of Scoundrels

About the Book

The REFUGE OF SCOUNDRELS is a patriotic bunker where men and women hide their lust for power but work in the patriotic pursuit of improvements to military aviation.  What drives their libidos, however, is as important as what takes place in the hostile skies of aerial combat or in the halls of the Pentagon.  

The story begins when a navy pilot fails in his attempt to land on an aircraft carrier during bad weather.  The scary ordeal moves him to devote his life to tame that often-fatal maneuver.  Naïve pursuit of his goal unleashes more than a Navy development program.  He can not foresee either the rivalry that will develop between the Navy and the Air Force, nor the schemes and intrigues that powerful companies will launch to get at the spoils of a lucrative government contract.

The novel is built on the follies and ambitions of 21 men and women and ranges over decades filled with bureaucratic bungling and the failures of modern technology.  It flashes back to the Korean War during which an Air Force major’s wife is sleeping with one of his young squadron mates.  Their commander flies into Russian air space in a drunken stupor.  His wing man, the major is obliged to follow him and see him safely home.  His silence about the incident results in rapid promotion but when he becomes a general he still fears that the officer who satisfied his wife’s unquenchable urges knows of his potentially career destroying folly.  

The wife’s lover, when he retires, goes to work as a marketing executive for a company that becomes the Navy’s contractor.  He finds that the lessons he learned in bed are more useful than blackmail.  He smoothly seduces a key Pentagon employee who has access to all the information he needs from secret Navy files.  The fact that they fall in love is an added bonus for their skullduggery.

The characters in this story operate with mixed motives.  Some are mere pawns who faithfully carry out their roles without a hint of the master schemes that are swirling around them.  Others have no thoughts beyond the satisfactions of their flesh.  The wily executive who builds his career spinning in the revolving door between government and industry needs a mistress in Washington to supplement his wife in California.  The preening dandy of a production manager with a conventional old-fashioned wife has an affair with one of his employees to bolster his flagging libido.  That enterprising lady with college ambitions for her daughter seizes an opportunity to move her services up the corporate ladder to the company president.  It’s a move that in the end destroys the program.

Strong wills have little time for facts.  An admiral, once a brash fighter pilot who has carried a life-long unrequited love for his protégé navy pilot’s wife, rushes the program into tests.  It costs him his life.  A company president drives his employee’s with profane diatribes that force them to commit illegal acts while he skillfully dodges personal responsibility for financial disasters.  His wife is driven to drink but he lives on for future opportunities to exploit the system.

There is a slimy senator’s aide who lurks behind the action.  He carefully deploys his beautiful girl friend with men who can provide him with key information and together they realize their ambition to make him a congressman.

Love, lust, jealousy, greed and unbridled ambition rule this caste of scoundrels.  Their integrity is continuously challenged.  The novel though it is about a Defense program gone bad is really about their experiences.  The tone is satiric and the sex is explicit.  It begins on a serious note but the conclusion is cynical.

About the Author

Fred van Pogust’s writing is devoted to proving that the characters of the technical world are worthy of as much fictional attention as is lavished on professors of English or lawyers. He has pursued his quest through 47 states and 32 countries but ended up in southern New Jersey.