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“I think of it as sort of a chess game. Now, another time we need is how long it will take to drive the ambulance from Eschborn to Rhine-Main.”
“Depending on the time of day, an hour to an hour and a half.”
“And what time of day would the airplane take off?”
“That we could control,” Cronley said. “To a degree.”
“How big a degree?”
“After the airplane is refueled and the passengers loaded, we could arrange for the takeoff to be delayed, say, two hours. But we couldn’t arrange for it to take off before it was ready.”
“What about this? Could we arrange for the airplane to be ready to take off at . . . I don’t know what I’m asking here.”
“You mean, could we arrange for the airplane to take off at, say, ten o’clock in the morning? Make that eleven—three hours after I took off from here at, say, seven? Plus an hour to get to Rhine-Main from Eschborn. Yeah. We would just have to delay it from taking off the night before. That could be done.”
“How?”
“By getting on the Collins and talking to the SAA Constellation.”
“I didn’t know the Argentine airplanes have Collins radios. Our kind of Collins radios.”
“I’ll make sure the one that’s coming here for Orlovsky does.”
“You can see where we have a lot of work to do.”
“I think that’s what’s known as an understatement.”
“Well, we have until nine o’clock to work on it.”
“Until nine? What happens at nine?”
“You call Mrs. Colonel Schumann and say, ‘Good morning, Mrs. Schumann, what can I do for you this morning?’ That’s what happens at nine.” Hessinger stood. “Let’s go to the office and get this started.”
“What about Major Wallace? We can’t let him see what we’re doing.”
“If he went to the Signal Battalion officers’ club last night, he won’t come into work until ten, if then.” He paused. “Leave money for the waiter. I read an Army Regulation that officers aren’t supposed to take gifts from enlisted men.”
[ TWO ]
0905 4 November 1945
“Hello?”
“Good
morning. How did you sleep?”
“You heard from Colonel Frade? We can go to the monastery?”
“No word from him yet. Would you like to meet in the dining room before we go to Pullach?”
“You mean for lunch?”
“I meant now, for breakfast.”
“Meet me in the dining room at twelve-thirty.”
Click.
