The wings of the last P-3 8 on the right of the V dutifully dipped to the left and then to the right. “Tangerine Leader,” Whittaker went on, “exercising due caution, move up behind Tangerine Six, until such time as you have your nose up his ass.
Tangerine Leader’s P-38, which had begun obediently to ease up behind Tangerine Six, now moved to the center of the V, and then back to the point. “Let that be a lesson to you, Tangerine Leader,” Whittaker said.
“Never try to fuck with a couple of old fighter pilots. “Score one for the Navy,” Tangerine Leader said, chuckling. “We have enough benzene to stick with you for maybe two hours. We were already up here when they sent us looking for you. Hope that helps.”
“We’re glad to have you,” Canidy said, meaning it. German fighter aircra from fields in Normandy and Brittany patrolled the Atlantic off the western coast of England.
“What are a couple of old fighter pilots doing flying that thing?”
” One of us stole a car,” Canidy said,” and we are being punished. The P-38s left them over the Atlantic when they were about halfway between Brest and Cape Finister on the western coast of Spain. Two and a half hours later, without incident, Canidy put the C-46 down at Lisbon.
THREE I Arrecite Field Lanzarote, Canary Islands 1800 Hours August 19,1942
Fine, Wilson, and Nembly had been taken in the back of one of the trucks to an ancient stone barracks on Lanzarote, and held in a sparsely furnished basement room long enough for Wilson and Nembly to conclude that whatever Fine was up to, it wasn’t going to work. They were going to be interned for God alone knew how long. There was no breeze in the room and the air was hot and humid. They were fed, three times, on speckled blue porcelain-over-tin plates. The first meal was sausage and peppers, a chunk of bread, and coffee. The second meal was ground meat and peppers, a chunk of bread, and coffee. The third meal was identical to the first. When the door to their basement room opened again, Wilson cracked, “Gee, I hope they serve peppers for a change.” But this wasn’t another meal. It was-a tall, aristocratic-looking officer in a well-cut uniform, who announced that he was Colonel di Fortini. Di Fortini went to each of them in turn, formally and expansively shook their hands, and told them, in vaguely British-accented English, that he was very happy indeed to have the pleasure of meeting them. Then he politely asked if he could have a word in private with Stanley S. Fine, took him to a corner of the room, and, whispering confidentially, said that he was sure Fine was aware of the arrangement made between certain mutual friends of theirs. Fine gave him forty thousand dollars. Colonel di Fortini very politely said he understood the figure agreed upon was fifty thousand dollars. Fine told him he had given the other ten thousand dollars to the officer who had met them on landing. Colonel di Fortini said that whatever Fine had given anyone else was between them, the figure that he had agreed to was fifty thousand dollars. There was something unreal, almost comical, about the conversation. All he has to do, Fine thought as he took another ten-thousand-dollar stack of bills from his money belt and handed it to di Fortini, is help himself I couldn’t do a damned thing if he did. As Fine stuffed his shirt over the remaining forty thousand dollars in his money belt, di Fortini carefully distributed his five ten-thousand-dollar stacks of currency in his tunic pockets, then shook Fine’s hand again. Then he gestured dramatically toward the door.
Fine told him that it would be necessary to work on the engine, and that he would be most grateful if the colonel could arrange for a ladder to do so. “Your mechanical irregularity has been detected and corrected,” di Fortini said, “by our very best workmen. It was a loose oil line.” Fine said that he would like to have a look at the engine anyway, just to be sure there was nothing else wrong. “That will be unnecessary,” di Fortini said.