A Century of Progress (25 page)

Dried and dressed again, he sat for a while in shade, then crouched his way back to the western edge of the cornfield to resume his surveillance of the airstrip. He sat there wondering to himself just why he’d picked this particular site for rendezvous. But he knew why, if he wanted to admit it. It was an airfield, and that increased the chance that a certain pilot would be at the meeting . . .

He was still there, in what he had thought was an almost concealed and certainly inconspicuous position, when the man in coveralls came bouncing toward him across the field in a small truck.

The man pulled up nearby and stuck his head out the truck window. “You still here?” he yelled at Norlund. “No bums! Get moving, or I call the sheriff.”

Norlund was on his feet, and about to start insisting in one way or another on his rights, when he heard the engine. It was a sturdy airborne blatt of sound that he’d heard before, now steadily growing closer. Raising his eyes, Norlund was sure from the very first glimpse of dark outline against cloud that he could recognize the Vega’s shape.

Norlund ran, leaving a shouting voice behind him. The truck followed and then overtook him, but the proprietor of the airfield was not about to run down someone in the middle of a runway, at least not on his own field when his first customer in some time was perhaps about to land.

The Vega landed into the wind, on the cross runway. Norlund ran on to meet it as it taxied in along the grass strip, toward the hangars and what passed here for an operations shack. He could recognize the color scheme of Holly’s aircraft now.

She was climbing out of the aircraft, her head and shoulders in flying clothing already through the hatch that opened directly over the cockpit, when she saw Norlund running toward her. She paused for a moment, then looked away and went on with what she was doing. Then, completely out of the hatch and sitting on the wing, she looked back and her movements came to a halt. Norlund thought that her body was even thinner than before.

Very near the aircraft now, he slowed to a walk, then stopped. Holly, her face a study in wonder, dropped to the grass to confront him.

“Hello, Holly.”

She said it quietly. “Oh my God. It is your voice.”

Still, some minutes passed before she could totally accept him as the elderly Alan Norlund she had known. As they walked off down the field together away from the man in coveralls, seeking privacy for conversation.

Holly suddenly came up with the theory that he was really the son of the man who’d been hauled off on New Year’s morning at the point of death.

“No, it’s me. You say Jeff has told you something about the people we’re working with, some of the things that they can do. Well, they can do a lot. It’s me all right. And God, I’ve missed you.” He reached out and took her arm as they kept walking.

“I believe it is you. I believe it is. Oh, Alan.”

It was difficult not to keep his eyes on her, but at the same time he had to keep looking warily around at the almost empty field, and up into the empty sky. “And now I’ve got to get to New York in a hurry, so you’re going to have to give me another ride. But I can’t promise we won’t be shot at again—”

“I’m ready. The plane’s ready.”

“—so this time I can’t ride up in the cockpit, much as I’d like to. I’ll have to be in the cabin, and be ready to use the gear back there.” Norlund stopped suddenly. “Where’s Jeff? Who told you this was the Jupiter site?”

“A man named Harbin told me, on the phone. Alan, there are some things I’ve got to tell you about Jeff.”

Norlund drew a deep breath. “I’ve really got you into a bloody mess, haven’t I?”

She gave him a twisted smile. “Not you. Let me tell you about what’s been happening in New York.”

He was suddenly alarmed. “What day is it today? Where’s the
Graf
?”

“It just left Germany this morning. Take it easy. We’ve got time.”

Just after takeoff Norlund was busy in the Vega’s cabin, monitoring local radio traffic, trying to get some news. One voice after another was coming out of the speakers, when one of them abruptly struck him as familiar. He didn’t really think it belonged in the Thirties, but at first he couldn’t place it. It was only some Des Moines radio announcer, sportscasting a baseball game involving the Chicago Cubs.

With the voice coming, as it were, out of left field at him, Norlund needed a full minute to identify the owner. Ronald Reagan.

It was nearly sunset on the same long summer day when Holly set the Vega down on what looked like an abandoned airstrip, or possibly just an accidental stretch of flat, packed sand. They were on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan now. An hour ago, as they started across the lake, they had passed within sight of Chicago, well to their south and below broken clouds. As far as Norlund could tell by using the equipment in the cabin, the enemy did not have them under observation. One of the things the equipment could do was make the Vega hard for a sophisticated searcher to detect.

The region where they were landing was sparsely inhabited, mostly dunes and cottages and occasional small towns. The landing strip was surrounded by dunes and a second growth of forest, and a couple of abandoned-looking shacks stood near it. As Holly taxied toward one of these, a man came hurrying out of it with what looked like a huge bundle of dull-colored cloth in his arms.

That cloth had not been fabricated in the twentieth century, Norlund soon decided. When the three of them spread the almost weightless folds of it over the parked aircraft, and tied it down, the Vega virtually disappeared from sight. At a few yards’ distance it appeared to be a small sand dune of irregular shape.

The code name of the man who ran this small site on his own was Hannibal, and he was small and rather plump, with gray curly hair that made him look at first glance older than he was. He welcomed Holly and Norlund in and asked them what they needed; headquarters had called to say he should give them every possible assistance.

“If there’s nothing more urgent to be done at the moment,” said Holly, “I’d like to start by cleaning up a little.” And her face indeed looked filmed with grime.

“
You’ve
got to clean up?” Norlund’s voice sounded hoarsely tragic, as if he were pleading for his life. He looked at Holly, and she at him, and suddenly the two of them began to laugh.

The shacks were better equipped inside than their exteriors suggested. Norlund soon got a real bath, and an offer of a shave—but he decided he’d let his youthful brown beard grow for a while, if it turned out that Holly didn’t mind. And there were some clean clothes that fit tolerably well.

She was fiddling with Hannibal’s local radio when Norlund rejoined her in the main room of the shack. The agent had gone to town on a trip for more supplies.

“They say now that the weather in New York doesn’t look good for Sunday,” Holly greeted Norlund as he entered. “They’re saying now that maybe the
Graf
won’t try to tie up there at all. Possibly it’ll go to Lakehurst instead, or more likely right on to Akron or Chicago.” Akron had a well-equipped airship facility.

“That’s good.” Norlund nodded; he hadn’t been relishing the possibility of having to conduct an aerial battle above Manhattan’s crowded streets. He had vague hopes that Chicago, with its dirigible mooring mast right at the edge of uninhabited water, would be different if the fight should take place there.

“Hello,” he said to Holly now, as if this were really the first moment of their reunion. She got to her feet. And then he was kissing her.

A little later, with a kerosene lamp lighted in the shack against the night outside, they started talking business. Holly was saying: “I was always surprised that Roosevelt ever invited him to come here.”

“I expect our people, Ginny Butler’s people, in Washington and Berlin had some hand in that. Apparently it’s extremely damned difficult to ever get at Hitler in Berlin, in any timeline.”

Holly digested this, or tried to. “I should imagine. If we—when we get him, how big a change is it going to make?”

“Enormous, so I’m told. More than the assassination of almost any other leader in world history. National Socialism just collapses in timelines where he’s removed from the center of it.”

“I should think there’d be no shortage of other bastards, ready to take over.”

“Oh, there are, and they try. But—” Norlund gestured futility. “It all splinters. Adolf has a power of influencing people that’s fortunately very rare. It comes along once a century or so. Napoleon . . . Oh, there are still good chances of some kind of major war in Europe, up to the point where nuclear weapons are introduced—”

“
What
kind of weapons?”

“Oops. Said something I shouldn’t have. I ought to bite my tongue.” But he was two-thirds joking. Here was Holly, with him, and for the moment Norlund could feel no real worry about anything.

In a little while, after an informal and hearty meal, Norlund and Holly were out in the summer night, strolling along the beach. Norlund was speaking.

“You see, the plan all along has been to use your plane. That’s why our people installed all that special stuff in the cabin. But the idea was to use our own trained pilot—she didn’t make it.” His sealed orders had informed him that that was to have been Agnes’ job. He still didn’t know what had happened to her, back at the base. “And with two trained weapons specialists aboard: myself and a kid called Andy Burns. Andy didn’t make it either.”

“And now there are the two of us. We’ll make it.”

And still later, lying in the sand, they were inescapably talking business again. They began with how tomorrow they would install an intercom in the plane so that it would be possible to talk freely between cockpit and cabin. Gradually the conversation became distracted.

Holly began, “I wish . . .”

“What?”

She raised herself on one elbow in the sand, staring out at the moonlit lake. “What are we going to do afterwards? Is there a getaway plan?”

Norlund could hear the waves lap-lapping. “Anywhere we might go in this decade,” he said at last, “we’d be wanted terrorists at best.”

“I suppose.” Holly sounded thoughtful. Doubtless she was having difficulty trying to apply that label to herself.

“On the other hand, I’m sure that Ginny Butler will be glad to see us.” He had by now told Holly just about everything that he himself knew about Ginny Butler. “If we can pull off a thing this big we’ll probably be offered honorable retirement right away. Or desk jobs somewhere, after a vacation. Anyway, a career of fighting Hitler doesn’t strike me personally as all that bad.”

“But if we kill him now—”

“Other timelines. Other times, other people who are just as bad if not so famous. It’s not all assassinations, understand. I couldn’t follow any plan, any career, that consisted of just that. There are a lot of ways of fighting.”

Holly was silent for a time. Then: “Sounds like you’re telling me there’s no end to it.”

“No War to End All Wars. There really isn’t, as far as I can see. Let me tell you sometime how the Forties were, the first time I lived through them. That’s why I’m here now.”

And they began on practical tactics. Norlund cautioned, “I want to make sure you understand, we’re not going to be shooting at just a gasbag. The
Graf
will have an escort when it gets here.”

“You don’t mean just the Army planes . . .”

“I mean something a whole lot worse than that, from our point of view. I mean Hitler’s angels. You know in all timelines he’s a bastard to try to kill. Brandi’s people, from the future, protect him with the best that they can send.”

“I see.”

“And even if we do get the
Graf
, Hitler’s still likely to get away. You’ve probably heard something about it on the radio, or read about it: they’re carrying a little Junkers seaplane slung under the keep. A two-seater; just room for Hitler, and his favorite pilot, Hans Baur . . .”

Holly stopped him, putting out her hand and turning Norlund’s face up to the moonlight. She studied him for a time, then asked, “What are you trying to tell me, Alan? That you want to drop this and head for South America?”

“No. Although I wish we could.”

“How far away is South America?”

He thought over the meaning of her question. “Not far enough,” he had to admit.

“Then let’s forget about it and get on with the job.”

Hannibal brought in an up-to-date newspaper next morning.

HITLER TO SKIP NEW YORK

 . . . President Roosevelt kept in Washington ‘temporarily’ by the press of business . . . Vice-President Garner has boarded a special train to Chicago . . . the city’s Jewish population demonstrates . . .

HOLLY STILL MISSING

No trace has yet been found of the Lockheed Vega monoplane in which the young aviatrix disappeared. Within days after the deaths of her estranged husband and her son in Germany in a crash that was claimed as accidental . . .

TWENTY YEARS AGO NEXT WEEK

THE WORLD WAR BEGAN

NAZIS TORTURED POET

TO DEATH, SAYS WIFE

 . . . details of the killing of the poet Erich Muehsom . . .

FLAPPER REIGN OVER,

PSYCHOLOGIST SAYS

 . . . nation going conservative . . .

PORTLAND BREAKS

WATERFRONT SEIGE

 . . . trucks, guarded by police, moved gasoline through the ranks of the strikers . . .

50 PERSONS SHOT

IN TWIN CITY RIOT

HUGE WAVE FELLS SCORES

AT CONEY ISLAND

REDS HUNTED DOWN

IN CALIFORNIA CENTERS

 . . . by police and vigilante wrecking crews . . . in the agricultural sections it was persistently reported that ranchers and citizens would “take care” of Reds in their own way where legal technicalities interfered . . .