FROM VINT HILL TANGO NET
1250 GREENWICH 5 NOVEMBER 1945
TO VATICAN ATTENTION ALTARBOY
COPY TO BEERMUG ATTENTION ALTARBOY
POLO ATTENTION POLO
FOLLOWING BY TELEPHONE FROM TEX 1235 GMT 5 NOV 1945
BEGIN MESSAGE
THANKS TO OLD MAN BANKING PROBLEMS SOLVED EARLIER THAN EXPECTED STOP DEPARTING MIDLAND CASH IN HAND 1300 GMT STOP TEX
END MESSAGE
END
TOP SECRET LINDBERGH
—
Cronley handed the message to Dunwiddie, then did some arithmetic aloud: “It’s six thousand miles, give or take, from Midland to Buenos Aires. At three hundred knots, give or take, that’s nineteen hours. Factor in two hours in Caracas for refuel and another two hours for maybe a bad headwind, that’s twenty-three hours. That’ll put them into Jorge Frade at twelve hundred Greenwich—fourteen hundred our time—tomorrow.”
“Thank you for sharing that with us,” Dunwiddie said.
“Which means that twenty-four hours after that, best possible scenario, forty-eight hours after that, worst scenario, or thirty-six hours after that, most likely scenario, Major Ashton will get off a South American Airways Constellation in Frankfurt. To which I say, Hooray!”
“You really want this guy to come, don’t you?” Tiny asked.
“This will probably shock you, Sergeant Dunwiddie, but I am really looking forward to having Major Ashton relieve the unbelievably heavy burden of this command from my weak and inadequate shoulders.”
Cronley turned to Lieutenant Stratford.
“Now, when Major Ashton gets off that Constellation in Frankfurt, we have to get him here without anyone knowing we’re doing so. The way we’re going to do that is meet the airplane with a three-quarter-ton ex-ambulance. The bumpers of that vehicle identify it as having come from the motor pool of the 711th QM MKRC.”
“The what?” Stratford asked.
“The 711th Quartermaster Mess Kit Repair Company.”
“I have the strangest feeling you are not pulling my chain,” Stratford said.
“We’re not,” Dunwiddie said.
Cronley went on: “Sequence of events. We hear, from the SIGABA aboard the Constellation, when it takes off from Lisbon, when it will arrive in Rhine-Main. I then get in one of our Storches and Kurt gets in the other one. We fly to the airfield at Eschborn . . .”
“I know where it is,” Stratford said.
“. . . where the ambulance, having been stashed somewhere safe, has gone to meet us—”
“‘Stashed somewhere safe’?”
“That’s where you come in,” Dunwiddie said.
“I get in the ambulance,” Cronley continued. “We drive to Rhine-Main. Major Ashton gets in the ambulance. We drive back to Eschborn. We get back in the Storches and take off. The ambulance then departs for where it had been stashed.”
“You want me to stash your ambulance for how long?”