Amerika (33 page)

I waved at the figure leaning out the open co-pilot’s window. Couldn’t tell who, but he waved back. Then I motioned vigorously to starboard at the approaching police boat and he gave me a vigorous thumbs-up. They knew what to do and did it almost immediately, revving up the starboard engines even higher to swing the plane away from the intersecting track of the police boat.

Time for me to do my part as well. I went below to where the mechanic sat, hands still tied, tape over his mouth, but now wide awake and angry as hell.

I stripped off my coveralls, put on my captain’s cap, yanked the man to his feet, knelt behind him and pressed the tip of my puny little penknife against his jugular vein.  The best I could do for a weapon under the circumstances, and I prayed he would think it the tip of a menacing commando knife instead.

With my other hand, I reached around and ripped off the electrical tape covering his mouth. And even though he didn’t understand English, my whisper in his ear made my intentions clear as I shoved him forward and hissed, ‘Get moving Fritzie, and no funny stuff.’

Just before we got topside, I untied his hands, shoved hard and he went stumbling over to the wheel and flopped into the seat. I quickly pocketed my knife, not wanting the world to see what was happening. He sat there, stupefied. I smiled my winning smile and saluted him

‘Auf wiedersehen.’

The WHOOP-WHOOP of the police boat siren drove me across to the sponson, where with two quick slashes of my knife, I cut the line that had been holding us. The launch lurched away to starboard as the Yankee Clipper continued its swooping turn to port. We were going at least thirty knots by now, and if I didn’t watch it, Fatt would take off with me hanging on like a wing walker.

I crouched down and made my way toward the open hatch. Nawrocki was shouting something at me, but I couldn’t hear him over the engine roar. His hands grabbed me, I was inside, the hatch slammed shut and the scream of the engines muted to a dull roar.

The PanAir boat arced away in the distance, and so did the police boat, now a dwindling speck of frustrated authority as the clipper reached her takeoff  speed,  and  the  drumming,  slapping  thrum  of  steel  on  water suddenly disappeared as she lifted off the water and flew.

I turned away from the window and was startled to see Ava and Ziggy and Frau Jäger standing there staring at me like I was the main attraction in a carnival side show.

Ava said, ‘You sure know how to have a good time.’

I smiled weakly. ‘It’s not over yet.’

An Army lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap

General George S. Patton, Jr.

T
he
Yankee Clipper’s
flight deck felt like a church on Sunday.

Everybody calm and collected, engines humming, systems working perfectly. Mason and Stone, nodded their casual ‘hello’s’ to me like I’d just returned from the bathroom instead of having barely escaped the jaws of the Gestapo. That’s the Navy for you. Nothing impresses them but their own faces in the mirror when they shave. Fatt was no different. As I settled into the co-pilot’s seat and he said, ‘Long time no see, kid.’

Two could play that game. ‘Figured I’d drop in and see how you and the boys were doing.’

‘Oh, we’re hunky-dory.’

‘By the way, that hard left turn left you took left the Gestapo and the Portuguese cops in the dust.’

‘Pleasure was all mine.’ He grinned and wiggled the yoke. ‘Time to do paperwork. You have the aircraft, captain.’

‘Before you go...’

‘Yes?’

‘We  got  away  okay,  but  we  both  know  they’ve  radioed  ahead  to Baltimore by now. They’ll grab the professor the minute we land.’

‘Ah, yes...’ He eased his bulk back down. ‘You have a point.’

‘A big point.’

‘But the Sons of Liberty have an even bigger point.’

‘Which is?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve spent the past six months being strung along by Patton and his gun-toting, country boys, and I’ve learned the hard way that when it comes to dealing them they’re like moonshiners; you find out what you need to find out when you need to and not a second sooner, less the revenuers find out and go after you. I guess that’s rubbed off on me because now it’s my turn to make like a moonshiner and zip my lip.’

‘Well, somebody didn’t because that Bauer damn well knew what we were up to at the hotel.’ ‘The kraut guy in the leather trench coat?’

‘Waiting for us with open arms.’

‘I wish I hadn’t heard that.’ Fatt sighed. ‘Well, kid, we both know there’s no such thing as a perfect secret. All you can do is do your best.’

‘The Gestapo won’t stop until they get him.’

‘They can’t catch him if they can’t find him,’ he crooned.

‘But he’s on this plane, and when we land in Baltimore they’ll be waiting for him. Don’t you understand?’

‘That’s what they’re planning to do but that’s not what’s going to happen.’

‘Because?’

He leaned over and punched me on the shoulder. ‘Fly the plane. I’ll be right back.’

‘Before you go, Mr. Secret Agent, what the hell’s in that guy’s luggage?’ Fatt smiled. ‘I haven’t a clue.’

‘C’mon!’

‘Honest, I don’t know. But I’ll lay you odds it ain’t underwear.’

I took the left seat as ‘watch officer,’ checked the autopilot and made a quick visual of the instruments while waiting for Allison, our third officer to take my co-pilot’s seat.

The Purser’s intercom light lit up.

‘Flight deck, Carter here.’

‘Chickens tucked into the henhouse, captain.’

‘Where’d you put
Frau
Jäger?’

‘She and Miss James are in the special compartment.’

‘Perfect.’

The ‘special compartment,’ located just ahead of the VIP tail suite, could accommodate two overnight passengers, plus it had a privacy curtain to shield them from the prying eyes of their fellow passengers. If ‘Frau’ Friedman was careful, he might even be able to take off his wig and cool down a bit.

I said, ‘So, who’d you kick out to make that happen?’

‘Nobody. I lied on the original manifest. Even found a spot for Mr. Ziegler. Just ahead of them in Stateroom G.’

‘Nawrocki, remind me to give you some kind of medal when we get home.’

‘Scotch would be better.’

‘Done.’

Instead of Lieutenant Allison, the massive bulk of Orlando flopped into the co-pilot’s seat dressed in the ‘Summer-whites’ uniform worn by Pan Am station engineers. Lufthansa management in Lisbon didn’t know from first base when it came to Pan Am hierarchy, and one sight of a man this big filling out a uniform that official-looking they must have locked their heels and saluted.

‘All set with the luggage?’ I said.

Orlando grunted. ‘Heavy as hell, but easy as pie. You?’

‘Piece of cake.’

He laughed. ‘You are one crazy guy.’

‘Only when I have to be.’

He leaned closer and said quietly, ‘So, what went wrong back there?’

‘Nothing on our side of the equation. We had the professor made-up perfectly and Ava played her exit scene in the lobby like a movie star.’

‘So why the Keystone Cops? It doesn’t make sense.’

Suddenly I felt a little woozy; the way you do when you’re driving a car in the winter and you hit a stretch of black ice and suddenly your butt tells you that you’re not in contact with the road anymore. Then the rest of your body chimes in as you start sliding sideways, like now, and I heard myself saying, ‘Because somebody on our side must have tipped off Bauer.’

‘How you figure?’

‘This was no accidental meeting. Bauer and the cops were waiting for us outside the hotel. That stuff about him meeting his wife and getting an Iron Cross was a bullshit cover story. I think he’s been onto us ever since we left Baltimore, maybe even before. In fact I’m sure of it. Why else would he have been on the damn plane in the first place?’

‘Unless he really was getting a medal.’

‘I’m telling you that’s bullshit.’

‘So who’s feeding him the intel?’

I thought about it for a while but got nowhere. ‘Could be anybody. Couba Island’s a big place filled with lots of crazy people. All it takes is one rotten apple to be working for the bad guys while acting like a loyal Son of Liberty.’

We sat in silence. Nothing more to be said. But the equation had changed and the rules of the game too. When there’s a Judas in your midst, you watch what you say and keep your eyes and ears twice as wide open.

Puffy cumulus clouds passed us in a serene procession, unconcerned with our plane or our dilemma as we made our way through a calm blue sky filled with nervous passengers eager to escape Europe at war.

Orlando said, ‘What happens when we refuel at Horta?’

‘Fatt’s got something up his sleeve, but he’s not saying.’

‘Remind me again how we find ourselves at six thousand feet over the Atlantic Ocean with a nuclear physicist on board, instead of back in Key West, eating fried chicken at the Sugar Cane Club.’

‘That day will come again, I promise.’

‘When, do you suppose?’

‘General Patton said Professor Friedman could change the course of history. The way things are going, we need to do just that.’

‘Then the chicken.’

‘Then a whole lot more than that.’

‘What about Carter Aviation?’

‘It’ll be there when we’re finished.’

‘Finished with what?’

‘Whatever it is they’ve got up their sleeve that made them put machine guns in the
Dixie Clipper.
’

We resumed our silence, lulled by the muffled roar of four powerful engines working in perfect synchrony.

‘How’s she handling?’ Orlando said, moving to a place where there might be answers instead of questions.

‘Slow, but steady as a rock.’

‘I know someone just like that.’

‘Jasmine?’

He scratched his head. ‘You’d think her being a nightclub singer she’d be flighty and all, but she’s just the opposite when she’s not on stage.’

‘You two really read scripture together?’

His eyebrows lowered in warning. ‘Anything wrong with that?’

‘Try to make a little love between the Gospels of St. Mark, why don’t you?’

A long pause. ‘We don’t always read scripture.’

He grunted and levered his way out of the seat. The curtain slid back and he was gone. Seconds later Allison slid into the co-pilot’s seat, fussed with the seatbelt, fiddled with the ventilation port, and finally sat back, hands folded in his lap and stared straight ahead. I did too. Horta was six hours away. Plenty of time to guess what the hell was going to happen once we landed.

The good news is that brilliant sunshine glared off Horta’s small white buildings. The bad news was prevailing winds had shifted and it meant for a tricky landing, but one that Fatt pulled off like he was doing it in his sleep. I watched him out of the corner of my eye during those last few seconds before the plane lost flying speed. His hands and feet moved faster than I could follow, as he perfectly anticipated the right moment to let her have her head and stop flying.

As we began the slow, one-mile taxi to the shelter of the harbor, Fatt said  matter-of-factly,  ‘Think  you  can  handle  a  big  girl  like  this  all  by yourself?’

‘As pilot-in-command?’

‘Indeed I do.’ He killed the two inboard engines to save fuel. ‘Well?’

I quickly compared the Boeing’s performance characteristics with the four-engine Sikorsky, my previous command. While nowhere near the size of the Boeing, she was surprisingly the same in all the important categories. So much so that I ventured a cautious, ‘I think I can do the job.’

‘Think or know?’

‘I know I can. Why?’

He pointed out the port window. ‘That’s why.’

I followed his gesture and saw the silvery shape of another Boeing 314 clipper tied up at the dock. At first glance I assumed the east-bound flight for Lisbon and said so. Fatt grinned and proceeded to light a cigar. He slid open the window to vent the smoke.

‘That baby ain’t going east, she’s heading west just like we are.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘As far as Lufthansa’s concerned, she’s on a survey flight to - let me see if  I  remember  this  right  -  ‘to  explore  alternate  routing  options  that maximize service and minimize operating costs.’ Trippe came up with the idea. A right clever man, even though he is our boss.’

‘But Pan Am does that all the time.’

‘Exactly. That’s why none of the Nazis will give a damn that a non- revenue clipper is bobbing in their harbor, when in fact you’re looking at Plan B waiting to happen.’

Then it dawned on me. ‘That’s the
Dixie Clipper
?’

‘One in the same, flyboy, and you’re flying her to Couba Island along with Ava, that little twerp of an agent, and the good
Herr Doktor
Professor too.’

‘But it says
Atlantic Clipper
on the nose.’

‘All part of the game, my friend. Ready to play?’