“Which means we can’t ask her to reschedule,” Wallace said.
“Kurt,” Cronley said, “I guess we better go wind up the rubber bands.”
Schröder’s face showed he had no idea what Cronley meant.
“Didn’t you have model airplanes when you were a kid?” Cronley asked.
Then he mimed winding the rubber bands in a model airplane by turning the propeller.
Schröder smiled, wanly, and then gestured for Cronley to precede him out the door of the radio room.
[FIVE]
Hangar Two
U.S. Air Force Base, Fritzlar, Hesse
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1510 19 January 1946
“Well?” Wallace asked, when Cronley finished his walk around his Storch.
“I don’t think anything important fell off,” Cronley said. “Is Tiny in the control tower?”
Wallace nodded.
“Where he has dazzled the Air Force with his DCI credentials,” Wallace said. “When you call, they will clear you—both of you—to taxi from the tarmac outside to Taxiway Two, then to the threshold of Runway One Six for immediate takeoff.”
“I see the pushers are here,” Cronley said, pointing to Tiny’s Troopers, who were prepared to push the Storchs from the hangar. “So I guess I better get in, and then you get the doors open.”
“I need a couple of minutes in private with you, Schröder, and Ostrowski first,” Wallace said.
“What for?”
“Over there,” Wallace said, pointing to a door in the rear wall of the hangar. “Now.”
Oberst Mannberg was already in the room when Cronley, followed by Ostrowski and Schröder, entered. Wallace closed the door.
“If you’re going to deliver some sort of pep talk,” Cronley said, “I’d just as soon skip it, thank you just the same.”
“Shut up for once, Jim,” Wallace said, and then he said, “Okay, everybody extend your right hand, palm up. I’m going to give you something.”
When the three had done so, Wallace dropped what looked like a brown pea into each palm.
“Pay close attention. Cronley, don’t open your mouth before I finish. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Those are L-pills,” Wallace said. “Inside the protective rubber coating is a glass ampoule. When the ampoule is crushed by the molars of the mouth, sufficient potassium cyanide will be released to cause unconsciousness within three seconds, brain death within sixty seconds, and heart stoppage and death within three minutes. That process is irreversible once begun. Any questions?”
No one had any questions.
“I will not insult anyone’s intelligence by asking if you understand the purpose of the L-pills.”
“We had something like this in the East,” Schröder said.
“Almost identical, Kurt,” Mannberg said.