Cronley laughed. And then he had a series of thoughts.
He’s now treating me as an equal.
Well, maybe not as an equal.
But as a fellow professional soldier.
What did he say about “knocking our rings”?
Maybe this is what this is all about.
Maybe I am destined to be a professional soldier.
God knows with the Squirt gone — Jesus Christ, she’s probably being buried today! — I can never go back to Midland.
“Well, put your new jacket on, and I’ll get Kurt Schröder in here,” Wilson said.
“My new jacket?” Cronley asked, and then understood. “The jacket with the wings.”
“Affirmative. I don’t want Kurt to think I’m turning the Storches over to someone who can’t fly.”
“Yes, sir.”
I’ll put the jacket on as ordered, but as soon as I get back to Kloster Grünau and can find a razor blade, the wings come off.
PART III
[ONE]
A short, muscular blond man in his late twenties came into Wilson’s office. He looked very much, Cronley thought, like Willi Grüner. Even though this man was wearing baggy U.S. Army mechanic coveralls, which had been dyed black, it was easy for Cronley to imagine him in a Luftwaffe pilot’s uniform, with a brimmed cap jauntily cocked on his head.
“You sent for me, Colonel?” he asked, in heavily accented but what seemed like fluent English.
“This is the officer who’ll be taking over the Storches,” Wilson announced, and then added, “Kurt, I told you that was almost certainly going to happen.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Cronley, this is Kurt Schröder, the man I’ve been telling you about.”
Schröder bobbed his head courteously at Cronley.
“Cronley may be able to use you and your men,” Wilson said. “Why don’t you tell him something about yourself and them?”
“Yes, sir. Sir, I was a pilot in the Luftwaffe, where I flew the Fieseler Storch. The men—”
“Das ist alles?” Cronley interrupted.
“Wie, bitte?”
“The Storch was the only aircraft you flew in the Luftwaffe?” Cronley continued in German.
Schröder’s surprise at Cronley’s fluent German showed on his face.
Good, Cronley thought. What I want to do is get you off-balance.
“No, sir. I was primarily a fighter pilot. I flew mostly the Messerschmitt BF-109, but also the Focke-Wulf Fw-190.”
“Does the name Major Hans-Peter Freiherr von Wachtstein ring a bell with you, Schröder?”
Schröder’s face showed he recognized the name, but was afraid of the ramifications of any answer he might give.
“The Focke-Wulf Fw-190 pilot who received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross from the hands of Der Führer himself?” Cronley pursued.
Schröder, now visibly off-balance, exhaled audibly and told the truth.
“Sir, I had the honor of serving in Baron von Wachtstein’s squadron in the defense of Berlin.”
Well, that should be recommendation enough, but as soon as I get back to Kloster Grünau, I’ll get on the radio and ask ole Hansel about him.
“Schröder, I may have use for you and your men,” Cronley said. “But before I can offer you the job, you’ll have to be vetted by another officer. What I propose to do now, with Colonel Wilson’s permission, is take you to see him.”
“Kurt,” Wilson said, “I’ve explained our pay arrangements. Cronley is willing to do the same.”
“Yes, sir. May I ask where we’ll be going?”
“No,” Cronley said simply.
“We’ll be going in the Storch?”
“Yes.”
“Excuse me, but how can I fly you anywhere if I don’t know where we’re going?”
“I will be flying the Storch,” Cronley said. “Why don’t you top off the tanks while I have a final word with Colonel Wilson?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And while you’re at it, put two or three jerry cans of avgas in the backseat.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jim, who was that Luftwaffe hero you brought up?” Wilson said when they were alone. “Or is that classified?”
“Yes, sir, probably. I met him in Argentina. Good guy. He’s now flying South American Airways Constellations between here and Germany. I’m going to check out Schröder with him and an officer back at Kloster Grünau.”
“And the name of this other officer? Or is that classified, too?”
“That’s probably classified, too, sir. Will you settle for ‘a former senior officer of Abwehr Ost’?”
“That’s likely Oberst Ludwig Mannberg. Or maybe General Gehlen himself.”
When Cronley didn’t reply, Wilson added, “Apropos of nothing, I was the aerial taxi driver who flew Major Wallace to accept General Gehlen’s surrender.”
Cronley nodded. “That being the case, sir, I’m going to run Schröder past Mannberg first, and then maybe past the general, too.”
“You’re good, Cronley. I now understand why Mattingly put you in charge of Kloster Grünau.”
“He put me in charge because he had no one else, sir, and because the guy who should be running it, Tiny, passed up a commission for the good of the service.”
“Modesty becomes you, but that’s not the way it was. What I said before, that you’re good, was a sincere compliment. Now comes the fatherly advice of a senior officer, welcome or not.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Prefacing this with the immodest announcement that I am, by thirteen months, the senior officer of the Class of 1940—in other words, I got my silver oak leaves thirteen months before the second guy in ’forty got his — and thus know what I’m talking about…”
He stopped, collected his thoughts, and then went on: “The disadvantages of getting rank and or authority and responsibility before your peers get it are that it (a) goes to your head, and (b) makes people jealous, which (c) causes them to try like hell to knock you back to their level by fair and — more often — foul means.
“The advantages of getting rank, et cetera, mean that you can do things for the good of the service that otherwise you could not do. And that’s what we professional soldiers are supposed to do, isn’t it? Make contributions to the good of the service? Lecture over.”
“Thank you, sir,” Cronley said softly.
“Get out of here, Cronley. Hie thee to thy monastery!”
Cronley came to attention and saluted crisply. Wilson returned it as crisply. Cronley executed an about-face movement and marched to the office door.
[TWO]
Two machine gun jeeps were blocking the road, and Cronley had to make two low-level passes over what was to be his runway — very low and very slow passes, with the window open so they could see his face — before the jeeps started up and moved out of the way.
He put the Storch down smoothly, taxied to the end of the “runway,” and shut down the engine.