“I was thinking that right after you show Major Orlovsky Message Two, that we fly down there. You and me in one Storch, and Dunwiddie in the other.”
“Flown by Kurt Schröder?” Gehlen asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“May I suggest,” Mannberg said, “that when you land at the Army airfield in Munich, a German flying a Storch is going to draw unwanted attention? I don’t believe Germans are supposed to be flying American Army airplanes.”
His tone suggested that he was trying to explain something very simple to someone who wasn’t very bright.
“He has a point, Jim,” Gehlen said.
“Nor am I supposed to be flying Army airplanes. And we’re not going into the Munich Army airfield. There’s a strip of road inside the compound that General Clay used when he flew there in an L-4, a Piper Cub. If he got a Cub in there, Schröder and I can get Storches in. And while he’s there, Schröder can tell the Engineers what they have to do to make the strip better. Maybe find some building we can use as a hangar, or at least to keep the Storches out of sight.
“So far as anyone asking questions about Schröder flying, I don’t think that’s going to happen, and even if it did, Dunwiddie can use his CIC credentials to keep from answering questions. That’s what I did. It worked.”
Gehlen looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “Well, if there is nothing else, I suggest that I show Major Orlovsky Message Two, and then that I go inspect the Pullach compound.”
[ THREE ]
The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound
Pullach, Bavaria
The American Zone of Occupied Germany
0945 5 November 1945
Cronley found without trouble the stretch of road he intended to use as a landing strip. But then he made a low pass over it to make sure there was nothing on it to impede his landing. There was.
An enormous Army truck was parked right in the middle. It had mounted on it what to Cronley, who had grown up in the Permian Basin oil fields, looked like an oil well work-over drill.
What the hell?
His passenger quickly assessed the situation and over the interphone calmly inquired, “What are you going to do now?”
“General, I’m going to make another pass over the strip. People will be looking at us. When they do, you and I are going to wave our hands at them, hoping they understand we want them to move that truck.”
Cronley switched to AIR-TO-AIR and with some difficulty managed to relay that order to Kurt Schröder and Tiny Dunwiddie in their Storch.
It all proved to be unnecessary.
When Cronley began what was going to be his hand-and-arm-waving pass over the road, he saw the truck had already been moved off.
He landed. Schröder put his Storch down thirty seconds later.
A jeep rushed up to them. It was being driven by Lieutenant Colonel Bristol, the Engineer officer in charge of the Pullach compound building project. Lieutenant Stratford, the ASA officer sent by Major Iron Lung McClung to install the Collins/SIGABA system, was with him.
Bristol and Stratford got out of their jeep and were standing beside Cronley’s Storch when he climbed out.
“Oh, it’s you,” Bristol said.
“Sir, why do I think you’re disappointed?” Cronley asked.
“Absolutely the contrary,” Bristol said. “When I saw two idiot pilots wanting to land on what is not a landing strip, I was afraid General Clay had come back.”
“General Gehlen, this is Colonel Bristol, the Engineer officer in charge of setting up the compound.”
Bristol, in a Pavlovian reflex to the term “general,” popped to attention and saluted. After a just perceptible hesitation, Gehlen returned it.