"A bar I sometimes come to, Herr Standartenf?hrer. It has been my experi-ence that fast horses attract beautiful women."
"Ah-ha!" Goltz said.
Peter originally planned to take Goltz to the men's bar at the Plaza Hotel for a drink. The decision to go to The Horse was impulsive.
He wondered if he was being clever. He didn't know how closely he was being watched by either the Argentine BIS or Oberst Gr?ner's agents, but there was no doubt that he was frequently under surveillance. Given that, if someone had seen him enter The Horse with Cletus Frade, or saw him do that again with Cletus tonight, or at some other time in the future, there would be some confu-sion if he was also seen entering The Horse with Standartenf?hrer Goltz.
The more likely reason for his change of mind, he decided, was that he sud-denly needed a drink. Maybe two drinks. Not more than two, which would be foolish in Goltz's company. But he wanted a drink, and right then, not fifteen minutes later when they would reach the Plaza Hotel.
What happened at El Palomar had disturbed him. For one thing, though Kapitan Dieter von und zu Aschenburg was as good and experienced a pilot as Peter knew, he had a very hard time getting Lufthansa flight 666 off the ground. For several very long seconds before the Condor finally staggered into the air, it looked as if he would run out of runway.
There was no wind; the wind sock hung limply from its pole atop the con-trol tower. Dieter, he had reasoned, was probably counting on some wind for his takeoff roll, and there was none.
That was bad enough, but when Peter got in the Mercedes beside Goltz he remembered Dieter's gesture, the hand signal to land or be shot down he was likely to get if the Condor was intercepted by one of the B-24s the Americans had given to the Brazilians.
And that triggered a sudden very clear memory of Hauptmann Hans-Peter von Wachtstein of Jagdstaffel 232 making the same gesture from the cockpit of his Focke-Wulf 190 to a B-17 pilot near Kassel.
The B-17 had almost certainly been hit by antiaircraft either before or after he dropped his bombs on Berlin. The damage to his fuselage and wings did not come from machine-gun fire. He had lost his port inboard engine-the prop was feathered-and his starboard outboard engine was gone. The starboard wing was blackened from an engine fire.
He was staggering along at less than a thousand feet, trying to keep it in the air until he was out of Germany. He probably knew that he wasn't going to make it home, but was hoping he could make it to-Belgium or the Netherlands, where there was at least a chance the Resistance would see him go down and take care of him and whoever was still alive in his crew.
Peter throttled back and pulled up beside him and gave him the land or be shot down signal. By then he had no desire to add one more aircraft to his shot-down list by taking out a cripple.
The pilot looked at him in horror, then very deliberately shook his head from side to side, asking either for an act of chivalry on Peter's part, or mercy. Peter repeated the land or be shot down signal, and then the question suddenly became moot. The B-17's starboard wing burst into flame and then crumpled, and the B-17 went into a spin. Twenty seconds later, it crashed into a farmer's field and exploded.
Until Dieter made the land or be shot down signal, Peter had been able to force from his mind the memory of the B-17 pilot slowly shaking his head from side to side. Now it came back.
The B-17 pilot, he thought, was probably a young man very much like Cletus. Well, maybe not exactly. Cletus was a fighter pilot, but a pilot. A pilot like himself, and Dieter. He had no doubt that Dieter would like Clete if he knew him, and vice versa.
Why the hell are we killing each other?
G?nther jumped out from behind the wheel and held the door open for Standartenf?hrer Goltz. Peter stepped out of the other side of the Mercedes and led Goltz into The Horse.
"One has the choice, Herr Standartenf?hrer: One can sit at the bar, or at a table; or one can go into the balcony. The view is better from the balcony, but at the bar one might have the chance to strike up an acquaintance with one of the natives."
Goltz thought that over.
"1 think the balcony, Hans," he said. "I want to have a word with you that won't be overheard."
Peter followed him up the stairs to the balcony, where Goltz selected a table by the railing. A waiter appeared immediately and took their order. Resisting the temptation to order a whiskey, Peter ordered a beer. After a moment's inde-cision, Goltz ordered whiskey.
When the waiter left them, Goltz looked unabashedly at the women at the bar below.
"The sometimes painful cost of duty," he said. "Look at that one!" "The natives are attractive, aren't they?"
"Spectacular! I could spend the next three days with my nose buried in those breastworks!" Peter laughed.
"If it makes you feel any better, Herr Standartenf?hrer," Peter said, "it has been my experience that ninety-nine percent of the native females carry a sign you don't at first notice around their necks reading, 'Look, But Do Not Touch!'"
"Really?" Goltz replied, sounding genuinely disappointed. "It may be their Spanish heritage," Peter said. "I always thought we were on the wrong side in Spain. I have been reliably informed that the Spanish Communists believed in free love. That was not true of the ladies who sup-ported El Caudillo. (*General Francisco Franco, the Spanish fascist leader, was known as "El Caudillo," "The Leader," much as Adolf Hitler was known as "Der F?hrer.) Like their Argentine cousins, they believed in saving it for the marriage bed."
"And you couldn't overcome that unfortunate situation?"
"The competition to fly a Fokker on a supply run to Germany was fero-cious, Herr Standartenf?hrer. The girls who hang around the bar at the Hotel am Zoo, or the Adlon, are far more appreciative of, and generous to, dashing air-men resting from the noble war against the communist menace."
"I've noticed that. Some of the girls I've seen in the am Zoo and Adlon even seem to prefer shallow young Luftwaffe lieutenants to more senior, and better-looking, SS officers."
"I am sure the Herr Standartenf?hrer is not speaking from personal experience, about the ladies of the Adlon preferring shallow Luftwaffe lieutenants to senior officers of the SS."