Amerika (34 page)

Passengers and crew jammed the reception room as they waited for the convoy of taxis to whisk them up to the Pan Am Club for some refreshments while maintenance refueled and serviced the
Yankee Clipper
. Ever the dutiful first officer, I mingled with the crowd, one eye peeled for the approach of a Gestapo agent to slap handcuffs on me, the other on Ava and
Frau
Jäger, who stood off to one side, chatting like old friends.

Ziggy circled the mob like a nervous bee flitting from flower to flower without bothering to taste the pollen. His confident attitude had vanished ever since we our Lisbon escape. I couldn’t blame him. After all, as crazy as his show business world was, it had a certain stability to it compared to the unexpected twists and turns happening now.

Like when I felt a tug at my arm and Ava said just loud enough for me to hear, ‘Head for that door over there.’

In the press of people, our absence went unnoticed as we slipped inside a darkened room. As soon as the door closed, somebody flicked on the light and I saw myself looking back at me. A dark-haired, brown-eyed man, exactly my height, same jaw line, same brow, same worry lines between his eyebrows. Almost the same smile as he grinned and saluted.

Like a scene from out of Alice in Wonderland, I saw Ava and Frau Jäger and Ziggy, too, like Alice in the Looking Glass staring at their exact doubles. Captain Fatt stood to one side, grinning like the cat who ate the canary.

The woman who dressed and acted exactly like Ava said, ‘Hello, Miss James.’

‘Peggy, you look divine - Sam, meet Peggy Page, she does all my stunts. Isn’t she a gorgeous ringer?’

I nodded stupidly.

‘And Tom Delaney here is playing you. Tommy, long time no-see, partner.’

He adjusted his Pan Am cap, smiled and snapped off a smart salute.

‘Always wanted to play an airline pilot.’

Ava said, ‘Enjoy it while you can. You’ll be flying in a Gestapo holding cell after you reach Baltimore.’

He shrugged. ‘Only until they figure out I’m Tom Delaney, not Sam Carter. Then it’s back to Hollywood. By the way, you coming back after this gig?’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’

‘The gang misses you.’

‘I miss the gang - Ida, is that you beneath all that makeup, darling?’

The
Frau
Jäger look-a-like nodded somberly, staying in character.

Ava swooped over and kissed her cheek. ‘Ida taught me everything I know about movie acting. Including how to steal a scene.’

She punched Ida’s shoulder lightly, turned and faced the group. ‘Curtain up, kids. Break a leg, write if you get work, okay?’

She turned out the light, and one by one, our doubles slipped out into the crowd undetected and on their way to board the
Yankee Clipper.

When the lights came back on I said, ‘You were in on this all along?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

She examined one of her fingernails.  ‘Sam, be a good boy and shut up and listen to Captain Fatt, who has something to say.’

‘Don’t get sore, Sam. I told you the Sons of Liberty play their game close to the chest. Hell, even I wasn’t sure what I’d see when I came in this room.’ He laughed. ‘Damnation, but they sure are spitting images of you folks. Especially the Professor. Don’t you think so, doc?’

Friedman nodded. ‘I was shocked and still am.’

‘Well, you can relax and change back into a man again. You’ll be flying to Couba Island without having to keep up your lady routine.’

‘I am a poor actor, I’m afraid.’

Ava said, ‘But you’re a great scientist, and I’m glad you’re working for our side now.’

He looked shocked and then recovered and grinned weakly. ‘You are correct. I am no longer in the service of the Third Reich.’

Ziggy patted his shoulder. ‘From now on you’re in the service of the good old red, white and blue.’

Friedman looked puzzled. Ziggy stabbed the air as he spoke, as if pitching a film, ‘The American flag, freedom of speech, equality, liberty, of thee I sing - all of that glorious stuff Americans celebrate when they love their country and aren’t ashamed to let people know about it.’

‘In Germany they do the same thing.’

Ziggy’s exuberance disappeared. ‘Like hell they do. They march around with hobnail boots, and use swastika’s to ram Hitler’s message down everybody’s throats.’

Friedman accepted this assault calmly, as if observing a chemical reaction. ‘You have family in Europe,
Ja?’

‘Damn right I do.’

‘Not a good time to be separated from those you love.’ Ava said softly, ‘What about your family, professor?’

‘My wife and children are in my luggage.’

My look of surprise made him add, ‘A figure of speech, captain. I mean my life’s work is in there.’

Fatt clapped his hands together. ‘Cocktail party’s over, kids. Sam, you’ve got a plane to fly, crew’s waiting. I’ll fly my mob to Baltimore and watch the Gestapo go nuts when they find out
Frau Jäger
is a real dame after all. I’ll join up with you later at Couba.’

He swung his bulk in the professor’s direction. ‘In the meantime, Professor, you take good care of yourself, hear?’

‘I will try.’

He nudged me playfully. ‘Don’t let this joker who thinks he’s a pilot give you a bumpy ride.’

‘I am confident we will arrive safely.’

He turned his happiness cannons on Ava. ‘Those actor pals of yours are dead ringers. Great job.’

She gave a small salute. ‘We aim to please.’

‘Your mom will bust a button when she finds out you pulled this off without a hitch.’

‘We aren’t home yet. But thanks to Captain Carter…’ She kissed my cheek, ‘We’re getting closer and closer.’

I leveled off the
Dixie Clipper
at three thousand feet. Any higher and the headwinds would start shoving us backwards, or so it seemed from the first set of performance numbers Duvall, my flight engineer, gave me. Like the others, he was a Navy guy. To be honest, they were all starting to look the same to me. But I’ll give them this; they were competent as hell, especially considering they had to learn the ins and outs of the Boeings so quickly.

I checked his numbers. ‘She’s on a drinking binge, isn’t she?’

‘And we’re barely breaking one-ten as it is.’

‘What’s our ETA?’

‘Next year, if we’re lucky.’

‘Seriously.’

Duvall leaned back and shouted back to the navigator, who wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it up.

‘He’s calling for a twenty-one-thirty hour landing on Lake Salvador.’

‘We have the fuel?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘If we get better wind conditions, yes. If not, no dice.’

The last thing I wanted to do was to set down somewhere and re-fuel. A  plane  this  size  would  cause  a  sensation  with  anybody  who  saw  it, especially the Nazis. Even though Juan Trippe had arranged with his Luftwaffe buddies to grant us unrestricted airspace access with an ‘open flight plan,’ the compliance jerks would start asking questions and worse, come on board and poke around.

We had about eighteen hours before Fatt’s Yankee Clipper landed in

Baltimore and the Gestapo realized they’d been had. Between now and then I had to get us to Couba Island. I got up and theatrically dusted off the left hand seat.

‘First officer Lewis, you have the aircraft. I’m making the rounds of the patients.’

‘Aye, aye, doctor.’ My co-pilot levered his wrestler-sized bulk out of his seat and took over mine. He and Orlando would make great dancing partners.

‘What’d you fly before?’ I said.

‘Multi-engine patrol boats.’

‘What do you think of the Boeing?’

‘Love it.’ He rolled his shoulders and stretched. ‘First plane I ever fit in.’

When I arrived in her lounge the three of them huddled together like lost souls in a sea of empty seats. Frau Jäger minus her wig, but still wearing her dress, Ziggy staring tensely out the window while Ava casually leafed through a magazine.

I said, ‘Sorry no steward service, Madam.’

Ava didn’t even look up from her reading.

Ziggy stirred himself and said, ‘That’s okay, cap, I know my way around a galley. Here, help yourself.’

He gestured to a small tray on the table filled with neatly cut, crust-less sandwiches and a selection of relishes and freshly cut vegetables.

‘You did all this?’ I said.

‘Busy hands are happy hands.’

‘My compliments.’

‘It wasn’t easy. This plane may be pretty on the outside, but it sure isn’t on the inside. It’s like a flying basement.’ He turned back to the window.

‘Nothing but blue sky and pretty clouds out there.’

‘Let’s hope it stays that way.’

Friedman said quickly. ‘Is there a chance we might be pursued?’

‘I was referring to the weather, not the Gestapo.’

That seemed to calm him down, but no doubt about it, this was one troubled man. Maybe haunted is a better word for the way he was acting; as if he’d witnessed something horrible but had no words to express it. I sat down beside him and said, ‘Look, it’s over. You made it out. From now on you’ve got nothing to worry about, okay?’

He looked at me like I was five years old. In a kind way, but definitely as my superior.

‘Someday that may be so. But not today, or tomorrow either. Not for a very long time.’

I risked the question. ‘So tell me what it is you do, or did, that makes everybody and his brother want you, including the Gestapo.’

‘And the SS,’ he said and then fell silent.

‘Well?’

He hesitated for a moment, looked at us one by one, and then said quickly, ‘I was involved with the atomic bomb project.’

This was a man who helped kill my family. I waited for my anger to fade before I said slowly, ‘Just how involved?’

He spread his hands and examined them instead of answering. ‘I should have left with Einstein, Bohr, and the others. They knew Hitler was mad. They begged me to join them in America but no, I had my project and what’s more, I was -’ he pinched his fingers closed - ‘this close to having it succeed. And besides, the SS had direct orders from Himmler to leave me alone.’ He blinked behind his thick glasses. ‘I’m Jewish, you see.’

Ziggy smiled and said, ‘
L’Chaim
, professor.’

‘You as well?’

‘Born and bred.’

He sighed. ‘Your American world is much different than our German one.’

I said, ‘Unless you’re a nuclear physicist named
Herr Doktor
Friedman.’

‘That was true once, but no longer. Once the uranium was successfully weaponized into bomb material and others could replicate my work, they had no use for an old Jew who knew too much. Before you rescued me I was days away from being sent to the camps.’

Ava said, ‘Why’d they let you go to Lisbon?’

‘Berlin keeps up appearances. If I hadn’t shown up for the conference, my colleagues would have started asking questions, and sooner or later the newspapers would have started asking them too. But my days were numbered. I haven’t been involved with the project for over a year. They cut me out long before they began dropping them on...on innocent people.

‘And when  I saw the  newsreels,  heard them  bragging about  how many thousands of Americans they destroyed, about how the next thousand years belonged to the Third Reich, I decided that I knew too much, and that what I did know must be put to use to help defeat these monsters. I had secret communications with my friends in America and...’ he fingered the black material of his dress. ‘And here I am.’

I said, ‘What kind of man would build a bomb like that?’

‘A man like me, and many others like me, although I assure you we never thought of it in those terms.’

‘You damn well knew what the end result would be.’

He regarded me for a long while before answering. ‘Some scientists never see the forest for the trees. I was one of them. And I am sorry.’

‘Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Never mind.’

He leaned forward.  ‘If it’s any consolation, there will be no more bombs, at least for a little while.’

‘Why?’