“I would never have guessed. I thought she was smoking those funny cigarettes.”
“Well, now I know where not to go when I need a little sympathy,” Marjie said, but she was smiling.
Clete put his arm around her shoulder and led her to the station wagon.
[FOUR]
Almirante Marcos A. Zar Airfield
Trelew, Chubut Province (Patagonia), Argentina
1725 22 October 1945
Cronley shot three touch-and-gos on the Trelew runway, practicing what Dieter von und zu Aschenburg had told him was the trick to land on snow and ice. There was neither snow nor ice on the Trelew airfield, which made Cronley curious.
The fourth time he touched down, he completed the landing roll and turned onto a taxiway. When he’d reached the terminal tarmac, he stopped the SAA Lodestar beside the red Lodestar, and shut it down.
“Well, Kapitän von Dattenberg,” he said, in German, “it looks as if I have once again cheated death.”
Von Dattenberg’s face showed surprise, even shock, at the remark, but didn’t respond.
“As Cletus Frade taught me when he taught me how to fly, ‘Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.’”
“I thought those were very good landings,” von Dattenberg said.
“You don’t have much of a sense of humor, do you?”
“I suppose I don’t.”
Hans-Peter von Wachtstein, accompanied by two men in army uniforms, Thompsons slung from their shoulders, approached the airplane.
“I hope those guys are the Húsares de Pueyrredón who Oberst Habanzo left here,” Jimmy said. “And that Hansel is not under arrest. Otherwise, we’re going to find ourselves in a cell somewhere, or standing against a wall.”
The joke went right past von Dattenberg.
“Who else could they be?” von Dattenberg asked, and then, after realization came, said, “Elsa—Frau von Wachtstein—told me you have a strange sense of humor.”
“Did she really?”
And what else did Elsa the Great tell you about me?
Jimmy unfastened his shoulder harness and got out of the pilot’s seat.
“Well, if we’re going to get shot, let’s get it over.”
—
When Jimmy Cronley opened the door, Hans-Peter von Wachtstein was standing beside the two Húsares.
“The sergeant here,” von Wachtstein said in German, “was so glad to see the Húsares de Pueyrredón captain on my plane that I thought he was going to cry.”
“How so?” Cronley said.
“There’s seven Húsares, including him, and about fifty Armada Argentina people. He was sure it was only a matter of time until the navy people remembered where they had put the ammo for their weapons and retook the base.”
“‘Remembered where they had put their ammo?’” Cronley parroted.
“No kidding. When the Húsares sergeant disarmed the guards, only the commanding officer had a loaded gun, a pistol. None of the sailors had ammo in their rifles—”