"Mother, where the hell are we going?"
"Maintain radio silence, goddamn it!"
Sixty seconds later, the needle was unmistakably headed back toward the peg.
Goddamn it! Now what?
Archie edged the nose to the right.
The needle dropped farther.
He edged the nose to the left.
The needle started to rise.
He held that course.
The needle continued to rise.
And then the needle began to drop.
What the hell! Is that goddamned transmitter moving, or what?
He moved the nose and the needle stopped dropping, then began to slowly rise.
"Mother, there's an--"
"Radio silence, goddamn it!"
"--airplane, a great big sonofabitch, at eleven o'clock, maybe two thousand above you."
Archie looked up and found it.
"Chicks, follow me, above and behind."
The needle was now almost at the maximum peg.
Archie edged back on the stick and advanced his throttles.
It's a Constellation, that's what it is.
Another one. The Marine full bull colonel and the guy who looked like Howard Hughes had flown into Sidi Slimane in one.
But this one isn't one of ours! There's no bar-and-star on the fuselage!
"Mother, what the hell is that? No American insignia."
"Above me and behind. And for the last fucking time: radio silence!"
Archie caught up with the Constellation and drew parallel to it.
He saw that painted on the three vertical stabilizers were identical flags, the design of which Archie could not remember ever having seen.
The fuselage was boldly lettered SOUTH AMERICAN AIRWAYS.
Archie pulled next to the cockpit, and a voice--an unquestionably American voice--came over his earphones: "Hello there, Little Lockheed. Where the hell have you been? I was getting a little worried you were lost."
"What the hell is going on here?" Archie blurted.
"The general idea," the voice said calmly, "is that you are to escort us into Portuguese airspace and keep the bad guys from shooting us down."
"Are you American, or what?"
"The bad guys can be recognized by the Maltese crosses on their wings and fuselages," the voice said. "You seen anything like that flying around up here?"
"Negative."
"Okay. Get above and behind me. You might want to put one or two of your little airplanes below and ahead of me on this course. I'll let you know when you can go home. Probably in twenty minutes or so."
[TWO].
Room 323, Hotel Britania
Rua Rodrigues Sampaio 17
Lisbon, Portugal
1845 28 September 1943
The reception of South American Airways Flight 1002 at Lisbon's Portela Airport had been strange.
Clete Frade had turned the P-38 Lightnings loose as soon as he was sure he was inside Portuguese airspace, then tuned one of the radio-direction-finding sets to the signal he was told would be transmitted from the Collins in the American Embassy.
He found that signal without trouble and homed in on it. When he tuned the second RDF to the frequency of the transmitter on Portela Airport, he didn't get a signal for a long time, and when it finally came on it was weak.
He was by then close enough to try contacting the Portela tower by radio, and that worked immediately. A crisp, British-accented voice quickly gave him the weather and the approach and landing instructions.
The landing was uneventful, and on the landing roll, the fuel gauges showed that he had enough fuel--more than two hours--remaining with which he could fly to Madrid or, for that matter, to Sidi Slimane.
That means we had a substantial tailwind.
And that means we will probably have a substantial headwind on the way home.
An ancient pickup truck with a FOLLOW ME sign in Portuguese, Spanish, and English had met them at the end of the landing roll and led them to the terminal. There, a farm tractor had pulled a wooden stairway--obviously brand new, painted in SAA red, and with the SAA legend on it--up to the airplane.
Two buses pulled up. A Portuguese immigration officer then came on board the Constellation and told the passengers to deplane and board the buses. When that had happened, more Portuguese came aboard and thoroughly, if courteously, examined the Constellation.
Then the crew--which included the extra SAA pilots and flight engineers, for a total of twelve people--went down the stairs, boarded the buses, and were taken to an office at the rear of a terminal building.
The aircraft's documents, plus the passports and flying certificates, were not only carefully examined but also photographed. And then finally the crew members themselves were photographed, as prisoners are photographed, in frontal and side views while holding chalkboards with their names handwritten on them.
Then their luggage was searched rather thoroughly.
And then they were released.
"Welcome to Portugal, gentlemen," a smiling immigration officer had said, and pointed to a door.
They went through it and found themselves in the passenger terminal.
There was no one in it except for two policemen sitting together, their legs crossed and extended, in a row of passenger waiting chairs.
There was a currency-exchange booth, closed, and even a new South American Airways ticket counter--the paint was fresh--but it, too, was closed. There was a brass bell on the counter--beneath a sign in Portuguese, Spanish, and English reading RING FOR SERVICE--yet banging on it proved fruitless.
Outside, there were three taxis, a Citroen and two Fiats, all small. Fitting twelve men--ten of them large--and their luggage into and on top of them was time-consuming. And then there was the problem of paying for the cabs when they arrived at the hotel.
Frade was reasonably certain that either Dulles or someone working for Dulles would be waiting at the hotel. He didn't think Dulles would have wanted to be seen in public with the "Argentines."
The hotel expected them. An assistant manager was summoned and he paid the cabdrivers. Then he bowed them into the hotel, where they went through the registry process. The desk clerk kept their passports, explaining that they would be returned when they checked out.
Frade didn't like that much, but there was nothing he could do about it. Finally, he was handed a room key and two bellboys--and they were actually boys; they looked to be no older than twelve--bowed him onto an open elevator and took him to the third floor and down a corridor.
They bowed him into the room. He gestured for them to go first, then followed them.
"May I offer my most profound congratulations, Capitan," Colonel A. F. Graham, USMCR, called in Spanish, "on your transatlantic flight, and also comment on how handsome you are in that splendiferous uniform?"
"Hear, hear," Allen W. Dulles said.
Graham, in civilian clothing, was sitting with Dulles at a dining table. There were two bottles of wine on the table and a cooler held a bottle of champagne.
Frade was surprised to find the both of them. He wondered idly how Graham had traveled to Portugal.
"Handsome doesn't have any money to tip the bellboys," Frade said in Spanish, then walked to the table.
Dulles took a wad of currency from behind the handkerchief in the breast pocket of his somewhat baggy gray suit, peeled off several bills, and handed them to one of the bellboys. Then he extended about half of the money he had left to Frade.
"That should hold you for a little while," Dulles said.
"Thank you," Frade said, and picked up one of the wine bottles.
"That's Monte do Maio," Dulles offered. "Something like a Merlot. Very nice. Baron de Rothschild owns the vineyard."
Frade poured wine into a glass, took a healthy sip, and then another.
Dulles asked, "How was the flight?"
"We made it," Frade said.
Graham stood up and began to unwind the wire-bound cork of the champagne bottle.
"Did you actually, just before you took off, tell your passengers to put their heads between their knees and kiss their asses good-bye?" Graham asked.
"Who told you about that?"
"A Jesuit priest," Dulles said. "And, as you should know, Cletus, while they have mastered the art of obfuscation, Jesuit priests never lie."
"How the hell do you know Welner?" Clete blurted.
"That's one of the things we need to talk about," Dulles said. "But let's wait until the colonel opens the champagne."
"We have a lot to talk about," Frade said.
At that moment, the cork came loudly out of the bottle and sailed across the room. Graham filled three glasses and passed two of them around.
"What are we celebrating?" Clete asked as they clinked glasses.
"You've been selected for the Naval Command and General Staff College," Graham said. "How about that?"
"With respect, Colonel, I'm not in the mood."
"To Cletus," Dulles said.
"Cletus," Graham said, and raised his glass.
"And to us," Dulles said, looking at Graham.
Graham touched Dulles's glass with his.
"Oh, how sweet it is to be proven right," he said.
"Amen," Dulles said.
They took a sip of the champagne.