In the morning Macurdy had a message from Von Lutzow to be at his office at 0815. He arrived just after eight, and the WAC clerk-typist sent him in at once. When he entered, Von Lutzow stood and shook his hand.
“The bad news first,” he said. “Paul Berntvoll is Acting C.O. while the general’s away. You’ve probably heard his reputation. If he ever saw your debriefs, he’d want you put away somewhere, or at least off loaded on a Section 8. So I’m not going to propose the mission you want, because anything like that would require his signature, and we wouldn’t get it.”
Unexpectedly, Von Lutzow grinned. “The good news is, I’m writing it as an extension to your existing mission orders, instead That sort of thing’s not uncommon, but so far as I know, it’s always been initialed by the general or his acting. I’m justifying it on the basis of the general’s oral agreement with you. You did kidnap an alien for him-MacNab’s debrief verifies that and you lost it due to enemy fire, the flak that holed your tank. Then there’s the timing you mentioned in your earlier debrief-Anna’s verifies it, incidentally, and specifies a datethat the aliens would be shipped to Von Rundstedt’s command on or about May 10th. Which makes action urgent.”
Macurdy’s gaze had sharpened. “Bemtvoll will shit a brick if he finds out.”
“Right. And as the general’s acting, he will find out. It’ll reach his desk this afternoon; that’s standard routing.” Von Lutzow smirked. “But it’ll be late this afternoon, I’ll make sure of that, and I happen to know he’s leaving at 1500 hours. He’s been seeing a daughter of General Postlethwaite, and she’s taking him home to meet her mum this weekend.”
“What will you do when he gets back?”
Von Lutzow’s smile went lopsided. “I wont be here. You need a pilot, and MacNab’s too sick. So I’m it. By the time we get back, the general should be here. ” He grinned. “I’ll admit I’m not as good a navigator as MacNab, but who is? I can get you there, get you down, and get you back That’s all you need.”
“Meanwhile, you need to round up whatever you need muy pronto. Today. I’ve already arranged a ride in a gooney bird to Casablanca tonight, and with any luck, we’ll get another one to Naples or Salerno tomorrow. When Berntvoll finds out about this on Monday, he’ll be pissed–may even radio a stop on it to our offices in Algiers and Naples. I don’t actually expect him to, because of your oral agreement with the general, but I can’t be sure, so I want us on our way to Bavaria by then.”
Macurdy was impressed: Von Lutzow was as wild as Doe Alden or Captain Szczpura. And with Von Lutzow out on a limb for him like this, damned if he was going to worry about the navigating.
He did though, a little.
Meanwhile he’d picked up his mail: two letters from Mary and one from his parents. He saved Mary’s for last, savoring them, realizing how much he loved her.
Macurdy had known almost nothing about Von Lutzow’s p but on their flight south, the young major talked about himself. He’d graduated in civil engineering from Northwestern in 1932, and flying the Stearman biplane his father had bought him three years earlier, had spent three summers on a barnstorming tour. He’d worked literally hundreds of small towns from New England to New Mexico, taking people for ten-minute “rides in the sky,” mostly at fifty cents each, had flown stunts for cash at county fairs, and occasionally hauled some well-to-do passenger to a meeting somewhere, on business or amours.
In the off seasons he’d tried prize-fighting; he’d been a lightheavy on the Northwestern boxing team. “I only had nine pro fights,” he said. “I discovered my limitations early. But I hung around boxing gyms and worked as a sparring partner a lot learned and improved-and it was interesting. I thought of it as collecting characters and experiences for the stories I’d write someday.” He laughed. “You’re one of them.”
“M mother, of course, was having a breakdown about the way I especially the fighting.” Laughing again, Von Lutzow touched his nose; it had been broken, that was apparent though not conspicuous. “And Dad was doing pretty well, considering the times, so when I quit, he paid to get it fixed; it looke worse than yours. He also lined me up with an engineering job. But respectability got old, and in the fall of ’40, when the draft started, I enlisted. And because I’d done two years of ROTC in college, they sent me to OCS.”