“The Air Corps loaned you a C-45?”
“I thought we might need one.”
“Which means two Air Corps pilots get to know a lot more than I’m comfortable with?” Wilson said. “Or at the very least will ask questions we can’t have them asking.”
“Oddly enough, Colonel,” Wallace said, “those thoughts occurred to me, too. So as soon as we landed here . . .”
He sounds like a colonel dealing with a lieutenant colonel who has annoyed him.
“. . . I loaded the C-45 pilots into two of your puddle jumpers and had them flown back to Fürstenfeldbruck. You can fly C-45s, right?”
Wilson nodded.
“So can I,” Cronley blurted.
Wallace looked at him.
“I find that very interesting. If true, it may solve one of our problems. But first things first. How did he do in flight school?”
“He’s almost as good a pilot as he thinks he is.”
“In other words, in your professional judgment, he could safely land an L-5—or an L-4 or one of those newly painted airplanes out there in the hangar—on some remote field or back road in Thuringia, load someone who probably won’t want to go flying aboard, and take off again?”
“Yes, he could,” Wilson said.
“I’m really sorry to hear that,” Wallace said. “It would have been better if I could have told him, ‘Sorry, you flunked flight school. I can’t let you risk getting either Mrs. Likharev or the kiddies killed.’”
“If I didn’t think I could do it, I wouldn’t insist on flying one of the Storchs,” Cronley said.
“You wouldn’t insist, Captain Cronley?” Wallace asked sarcastically.
I am being put in my place.
In a normal situation, he would be right, and I would be wrong.
But whatever this situation is, it’s not normal.
In this Through-the-Looking-Glass world, allowing myself to be put in my place—just do what you’re told, Cronley—would be dereliction of duty.
“Yes, sir. Sir, while I really appreciate the assistance and expert advice you and Colonel Wilson are giving me, the last I heard, I was still chief, DCI-Europe, and the decisions to do, or not do, something are mine to make.”
“You’ve considered, I’m sure, that you could be relieved as chief, DCI-Europe?” Wallace asked icily.
“I think of that all the time, sir. As I’m sure you do. But, until that happens . . .”
“I realize you don’t have much time in the Army, Captain, but certainly somewhere along the way the term ‘insubordinate’ must have come to your attention.”
“Yes, sir. I know what it means. Willful disobedience of a superior officer. My immediate superior officer is the director of the Directorate of Central Intelligence, Admiral Souers. Isn’t that your understanding of my situation?”
Wallace glowered at him for a long fifteen seconds.
“We are now going to change the subject,” he said finally. “Which is not, as I am sure both you and Colonel Wilson understand, the same thing as dropping the subject. We will return to it in due course.”
Wallace looked at him expectantly.
He’s waiting for me to say, “Yes, sir.”
But since I have just challenged his authority to give me orders, I can’t do that.