"I know, I know," Indy broke in. "When does the real word get out?"
"All in good time. Right now whoever it was that forced down the flying boat, the whole bloody lot you already know about, is still convinced the artifact is, or may be, real. That means they'll try to unlock its secrets. Failing that, as only you and I know they will, they'll try to move it to a highpaying buyer. So long as that pattern is followed, Indy, it remains our very best opportunity to start identifying people."
Indy raised an eyebrow. "That's your problem, Thomas. All that cloakanddagger dashing about isn't my game."
"But you're very good at it. Your background suits the situation perfectly, you know. And we do need somebody willing to become a target for this gang, whoever they are. You'll have to keep on the alert, just like any M.I. operative."
"I'll ignore your lumping me with spies and assassins, if you don't mind," Indy retorted. Then, in a more serious tone, "Do we have anything more on those saucer things?
I'm not even certain as to how to describe them. I've heard saucers, discs, crescents, a whole porridge of names."
"Tell me, Indy, what do you think of them?"
"Assuming that they're real and they perform as we've been told?"
"Yes."
"Well, all I can say is that they're really remarkable."
"Do I detect a note of subtle evasion there, Indy?"
"Not at all. Listen, Thomas, not being fully informed doesn't justify drawing conclusions based on a lack of data.
You can go dead wrong in a hurry that way."
"I'd like you to remember the name of an American you'll be meeting up with soon," Treadwell said abruptly.
"What's that got to do with those machines?"
"More than you may think. The name is Harry Henshaw. He's a colonel in your military flying force. Brilliant man, really. He's in technical intelligence. That means he's everything from a test pilot to an investigator of anything and everything that flies. He's part of our team. Hands across the sea, that sort of thing.
And right now he is turning heaven and earth upside down trying to find anything and everything in the present, and in the past, that may relate to disc shapes in flight."
"What's his opinion?"
"The things are real. They fly as we've heard. Blistering speed and all that."
Treadwell went infuriatingly silent. "And?" Indy pressed. "Are they, in his opinion, ours, or," he looked upward, "theirs? Whoever and whatever they may be."
"Too early for conclusions, but he leans to a huge leap forward in aerodynamics, not something flitting about in space."
"Why?"
"You'd better find out from Henshaw directly. By the by, he's given me a message for you. One with which I concur completely, I might add."
"Sounds serious."
"It is," Treadwell said. "Henshaw said for you to watch your step and to keep your eyes open. No matter how smart we think we've been, the people we're trying to identify know more about us than I like."
Indy's eyes narrowed. "How?"
"Henshaw suspects—no; he's convinced there's a traitor in our little group.
Which means as well, Indy, that you would be wise not to let your own people know too much of what we've discussed."
"My people are fine," Indy said defensively.
"I hope so." Treadwell was unruffled by Indy's sudden change in mood. "I dearly hope so. But I'll tell you this much from my own experience. You will always be surprised in this game."
3
Willard Cromwell lifted the bourbon bottle in a slow, deliberate motion to his lips, neatly surrounding the mouth of the bottle with his own, and took a long, gurgling swallow. He brought down the bottle slowly, smacked his lips, belched, and with the ease of long practice replaced the cork. His powerful hand banged the bottle on the table of the living room in the isolated farmhouse Indy had rented for a month.
They felt they were in the middle of nowhere, the fields and farmhouse nestled along the banks of the Maquoketa River in eastern Iowa. But for the moment his companions seemed fascinated with Cromwell's every move.
Cromwell had flown as a squadron commander in Britain's Royal Flying Corps against the best of the Kaiser's sharpshooters in their Albatross and Fokker and Rumpler machines. Flying the wickedhandling Sopwith Camel, he'd twisted and whirled through enough battles to send sixteen of Germany's finest spinning earthward, giving up their lives for the Fatherland in the Great War raging across the continent. Then some snotnosed young replacement, terrified by his first taste of combat and watching his comrades burning to death as their planes whirled crazily earthward, had panicked in the midst of battle and flown wildly through a huge dogfight. Cromwell saw him coming, knew he stood no danger from another Sopwith, but could hardly have imagined that the fearfrozen young man would in desperation have squeezed the triggers of his Vickers machine guns. And kept down the trigger handles, spewing fragments of death in all directions, friend or foe notwithstanding.
What the Germans could not do, a spindling youth in terror managed quite well, placing three of his bullets into the legs and one arm of Willard Cromwell.
He made it back to his home field only moments before he passed out from loss of blood. Four months in hospital, every single day of that time cursing the unknown blithering idiot who'd brought him down. Cromwell didn't know if that madman survived the battle. "Bloody good luck if he didn't, because I'd like to finish him off with my bare hands," he snarled at his visiting fellow pilots.
Cromwell earned goodnatured laughter for his toothy profanity, but he accepted the laughter along with the whiskey smuggled into hospital to him. Then he could walk again, a bit stiffly, and he had a magnificent long burn scar on his arm from the incendiary bullet that had nearly done him in. He insisted on returning to the fight, but fighters were out. "You're rather scrunged up, you know," his squadron commander told him. "A bit sticky trying to match the young men in maneuvering, eh? But I'm with you, Willard. I'm posting you to the navy."
Cromwell nearly choked. "You're putting me aboard a bloody ship?" he howled. He smashed his cane across the other man's desk, scattering papers and personal items throughout the office. "Never!"
"Come off it," his commander said affably. "No warships or ground duty for you, old man. You're being given command of a flying boat. It's an important job, Captain. You may not shoot down many aeroplanes, but see what you can do with a few of the Hun submarines, would you?"
Off to Coastal Command, to special training for the cumbersome huge machines. Not one to wallow—like his seaplane bomber in the air—in his own rotten luck, he applied himself to what could be either a lump of an assignment or, he judged well, a rare opportunity. No need to hone his piloting; he was one of the best. But now he learned the idiosyncrasies of heavy machines and the special touch they required. He spent his ground time with the mechanics and became as adept as any man with a wrench and wiring. He learned to repair and rebuild and in the process he became the equal of any aeronautical engineer.
All this, of course, to "see what he could do with a few of the Hun submarines." Most attacks against German Uboats were made in a careful, level approach for bomb dropping, which had the unfortunate result of providing the German gunners on the sub deck with an excellent steady target for their weapons.