Major Johansen and Cronley saluted as the convoy drove off the compass star.
Cronley got back in the Storch and fired it up as ground crews moved fire extinguishers into place for the starting of the Constellation’s engines. The Follow me jeep flashed its lights as a signal it was ready for Cronley to follow him.
The fuel truck and Major Johansen’s staff car followed the Storch to the threshold of a runway.
The Constellation, running on two engines, came down the taxiway and lined up with the runway.
As Cronley got out of the Storch, the Constellation started the other engines and ran them up.
And then started to roll.
Jimmy watched it take off.
And suddenly felt very much alone.
—
He showed the fuel truck crew where the tanks were. Topping them off took no more than a few minutes, but by the time they were finished, the Constellation was out of sight.
That reinforced Jimmy’s feeling of being very much alone.
He turned to Major Johansen.
“Thanks for everything, Major,” he said, and saluted.
“Have a nice flight,” Johansen said. “And come back. The next time, I promise not to meet you like you’ve just robbed a bank.”
“I just may take you up on that, sir.”
Ninety seconds later, he reported, “Rhine-Main Departure Control. Army Seven-Zero-Seven rolling.”
As he broke ground and pointed the nose of the Storch south, he thought that he could easily make Munich in less than two hours. It was about 300 kilometers from Frankfurt am Main to Munich, and the Storch cruised at about 170 kilometers per hour.
Then he remembered that Frade had ordered him to try to confuse the FBI about his destination.
He said, “Shit!” and reached for the microphone.
“Rhine-Main Area Control, Army Seven-Oh-Seven. Change of flight plan. Close out Direct Rhine-Main Schleissheim. Open Direct Rhine-Main Eschborn for passenger pickup.”
It was a flight of only a few minutes, and it took him over Hoechst.
Right down there is where Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Schumann and their children have their quarters.
What the hell was I doing, screwing a colonel’s wife? A married woman with children?
Well, it may have had something to do with the fact that in a twenty-four-hour period, I had been married, my wife was killed, and the President of the United States pinned captain’s bars on me.
Not to mention what happened at the mouth of the Magellan Straits.
I was understandably under an emotional strain. That just might have had something to do with my stupidity.
On the other hand, I do have a tendency to do amazingly stupid things, don’t I? As well as an extraordinary ability to justify whatever dumb fucking thing I may have done—such as fucking somebody I shouldn’t be fucking, as Clete so aptly put it.
Well, at least Rachel’s down there and I’ll be in Munich or at Kloster Grünau.
And ne’er the twain shall meet, as they say.
“Eschborn, Army Seven-Oh-Seven, at fifteen hundred feet, three miles south. I am a Storch aircraft, I say again, Storch aircraft. Request straight-in approach to Runway Thirty-five. I have it in sight.