“Whatever we tell him, he’s not going to believe,” Wallace said.
“We fly the bodies to Kloster Grünau,” Max said. “Where we put them in caskets and bury them with the full rites of the Russian Orthodox Church. The ceremony, and the bodies in the caskets, are photographed. Photographs to be shown to Colonel Likharev.”
“The nearest field hospital is the Fifty-seventh, in Giessen,” Tiny reported. “There is an airstrip.”
“Photographs to be taken to Argentina by Captain Dunwiddie,” Wallace said.
“If Mrs. Likharev, or the oldest boy, survives, Dunwiddie takes her, or him, or both and the photographs of the funeral, to Argentina,” Cronley said.
“Tiny,” Wallace said, “have Colonel Wilson arrange for a Signal Corps photographer to be here from the moment the Storchs take off. When he shows up, put the fear of God in him about running his mouth.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Our story to Colonel Likharev,” Cronley said, straight-faced, “would have more credibility if one of us—Max, Kurt, or me—got blown away and Tiny could show the colonel a dozen shots of our bloody, bullet-ridden corpses.”
“You’re insane, Cronley,” Wallace said, but he was smiling.
Ostrowski, shaking his head, but also smiling, gave Cronley the finger.
Kurt Schröder’s face showed he neither understood nor appreciated the humor.
“Moving right along,” Wallace said. “Best scenario, everybody is standing intact on the hangar floor. Objective, to get them to Argentina. Question: How do we do that?”
“Simple answer. Load them in either the Twin Beech or the Gooney Bird, fly them to Rhine-Main, and load them aboard a South American Airways Constellation bound for Buenos Aires,” Cronley said.
“Now let’s break that down,” Wallace said. “What are the problems there?”
“Well, we don’t know when there will be an SAA airplane at Rhine-Main,” Cronley said.
“Tiny, maybe—even probably—Hessinger has the SAA schedule. Find out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Medium-bad scenario,” Wallace went on. “The next SAA flight is not for three days.”
“Can we fly them into Eschborn—and we can, in either airplane, I’ve seen Gooney Birds in there—and stash them at that hotel for the brass—the Schlosshotel Kronberg in Taunus?”
“Yeah,” Wallace said.
“Even if one or more of them is ‘walking wounded’?” Cronley asked.
“And what if Mrs. Likharev is on the edge of hysteria?” Ostrowski asked.
“And that, the walking wounded, and the possibility of Mother being hysterical, raises the question of how do we care for them while they’re en route to either Rhine-Main or Eschborn?” Wallace asked.
“Get a nurse from the aid station here when we get the ambulances,” Cronley said. “No. Get a nurse and a doctor.”
“Why both?”
“Couple of reasons. The nurse, because the presence of a woman is likely to be comforting to Mrs. Likharev if she is hysterical, or looks like she’s about to be, and the doctor to sedate her, or the kids, if that has to be done.”
“I don’t like the idea of taking a doctor—and that’s presuming we can get one—and a nurse to either Rhine-Main or Eschborn,” Wallace said.
No one said anything for a long moment.
“What about having Claudette Colbert go to Frankfurt, or Eschborn?” Dunwiddie asked. “Have her in either place when our plane gets there?”
“Permit me a suggestion,” Ludwig Mannberg said. “Have both a doctor and a nurse in the hangar when the Storchs return, to take care of every contingency. If any of them are seriously injured, he could determine whether it would be safe to take them to the hospital in Giessen, or even to the Army hospital in Frankfurt . . . what is it?”