Secret Honor

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I know.”

  “It almost certainly saved your life,” von Deitzberg said. “I hope you appreciate that.”

  “I do.”

  “No matter what the investigation of your husband’s role in the Goltz matter reveals, perhaps you could still be useful to me here.”

  “I’m sure I could,” Inge said.

  “In that circumstance, it would be important for me to believe that you would do whatever I told you to do without question.”

  “Of course.”

  “Get on your knees, Inge, please.”

  She dropped to her knees.

  “Now walk to me on your knees,” von Deitzberg ordered softly. “The truth is, despite the unkind things I said before, I really do find you sexually attractive.”

  By the time she reached him, he had freed his erect organ from the fly of his new suit.

  XVI

  [ONE]

  Luftwaffe Flughafen No. 103B

  Augsburg, Germany

  1755 16 May 1943

  When Peter von Wachtstein returned Claus von Stauffenberg to the hospital, it was half past four. At that time, he had thought the trip to Augsburg would take him less than an hour; Augsburg was only eighty kilometers or so from Munich.

  He had not counted on having to pass through three road checkpoints. They were apparently intended to keep rationed foodstuffs from being moved illegally. He had no difficulty passing through them—no rural Bavarian policeman was about to subject a Horch driven by a Luftwaffe major to an intense search for a couple of chickens or three kilos of sausage—but at each one, he had to wait his turn in line until he reached the inspection point.

  When he finally reached the gate to the Augsburg airfield, a Luftwaffe enlisted man, who was wearing a too-large uniform and looked as if he should be in high school, waved him to a stop. “Your identification please, Herr Major.”

  Peter produced it.

  “Herr Gefrieter,” the young man called, and a Luftwaffe corporal, who looked old enough to be the kid’s grandfather, stuck his head out of the guard shack. “We have Major von Wachtstein, Herr Gefrieter,” the kid said.

  The ancient corporal came out of the guard shack slinging his Mauser rifle over his shoulder. He gave the Nazi salute. “Guten Abend, Herr Major,” he said with a smile. “With the Herr Major’s permission, I will stand on the running board and direct the Herr Major to Hangar IV-A.”

  “Thank you,” Peter said.

  Hangar IV-A was across the field from the main section of the airfield. They had to drive slowly around the end of the north-south runway to reach it; Peter was afraid the old corporal might fall off the running board. When they got close to the hangar, Peter saw that it was of heavy concrete construction and built for some depth into the ground.

  You can’t just push aircraft in and out of that hangar, he thought. At least not easily. I wonder if anyone ever thought of that when they designed this thing.

  He tried to get a better look, but the hangar’s windowless steel doors were closed.

  The corporal showed him where to park the car.

  “How will you get back to the gate, Gefrieter?” Peter asked. “Or are you going to wait for me?”

  “I will walk, Herr Major,” the old man said, as if the question surprised him. “There is the entrance, Herr Major. They expect you.”

  “Let me see if I can get you a ride,” Peter said.

  The corporal looked as if he didn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Wait here,” Peter said.

  “Jawohl, Herr Major.”

  Peter pushed open the door to the hangar.

  Inside, behind a desk, was an Oberfeldwebel (staff sergeant), a lithe man in his mid-twenties. On the desk lay a Schmeisser submachine gun. He rose to his feet when he saw Peter.

  “Major von Wachtstein?”

  “Right. Sergeant, I don’t want the corporal who brought me here to die of old age or exhaustion hiking back to the gate. Can you get him a ride?”

  “Yes, Sir,” the sergeant said with a smile.

  “Thank you,” Peter said. “I guess you expected me?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Well? What’s this all about? Who am I supposed to see?”

  “Through the door, Sir. There’s an officer inside who wants to see you.”

  Peter pushed open the door, went down a flight of stairs, and then pushed open another door.

  The hangar was larger than he had imagined. And it held four aircraft of a type he had never seen before. Peter walked toward the closest one, oblivious to everything else in the hangar.

  It looks like something from the future!

  It has to be a fighter! It’s larger than a Focke-Wulf or a Messerschmitt, but it’s too small to be a bomber!

  And it’s sleek! My God, is it sleek!

  There were four heavy barrels protruding from the nose of the machine.

  Those aren’t machine guns, they’re machine cannons!

  Twenty-millimeter machine cannons.

  No! Thirty-millimeter cannons!

  Where the hell is the engine, the propeller?

  He looked around the hangar at the other three aircraft. He could see one of them more clearly than the others. It was bathed in the glare of work lights, as mechanics crawled over it. A man wearing a sheepskin high-altitude flight jacket and trousers—obviously a pilot—was standing with his hands on hips talking to a mechanic standing on a wing.

  There’s no engine or propeller on that, either!

  What is this, a pusher? He knew that experimental aircraft, called “pushers,” because their propellers were mounted at the rear, had been tested without much success by all the belligerent powers. The idea was to lessen aerodynamic drag at the nose.

  He walked to the side of the aircraft and looked toward the rear. And for the first time took a closer look at what he had assumed were droppable fuel tanks suspended beneath the wing.

  Those aren’t fuel tanks!

  What the hell are they?

  Peter bent and looked into the forward opening of whatever the hell this thing that looked like a fuel tank was. He had no idea what he was looking at. He walked around the wing tip and looked in the rear opening of whatever the hell this tubular-shaped object was. There was a pointed, round object projecting three inches or so out of the opening. It disappeared inside the body of the object.

  “Major von Wachtstein,” a pleasant voice inquired courteously. “Do you suppose you could spare me a moment or two of your valuable time?”

  Peter stood up and looked over the wing at the pilot he had seen a moment before. He knew the neatly mustachioed, smiling face beneath the pilot’s cap perched irreverently—fighter pilot’s style—atop his head.

  A Pavlovian reflex took over. He popped to attention. His heels clicked as he snapped his hand crisply to the brim of his uniform cap.

  “I beg the Herr General’s pardon,” he said. “I did not see the Herr General.”

  “Hansel,” Generalmajor Adolf Galland, the youngest general officer in the military service of Germany, said, returning the salute with a casual gesture in the general direction of his brimmed cap, “you were always a lousy soldier. Not too bad a pilot, but a lousy officer.”

  And then Galland held his arms wide. This exposed at Galland’s neck the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Swords and Diamonds, Germany’s highest award for valor.

  Peter understood that he was now expected to approach the General, who had every obvious intention of embracing him.

  He did so.

  “It’s good to see you, Hansel,” Galland said, and then put his arms around him.

  “It’s very good to see you, Sir,” Peter said.

  “Normally, when I send for someone, t
hey come on the run,” Galland said. “Not stopping to take in the sights.”

  “I beg the Herr General’s pardon,” Peter said. “I had no idea—”

  Galland punched him in the arm. “Ach, Hansel!” he said fondly, smiling. “Aren’t you going to ask me what it is?”

  “What is it, Sir?”

  “It just may be the airplane that wins this war for us. Officially, it’s the Messerschmitt ME-262A1.”

  “Those are the engines?” Peter asked, pointing.

  “Those are the engines,” Galland confirmed. “Turbojet engines. Junkers Jumo 004B-4s.”

  “There’re no propellers?” It was both a statement and a question.

  “No. Not conventional propellers. There’s a kind of a propeller inside the engine. It—they—force air out the rear with tremendous force.”

  “It’s amazing! How many of them do we have?”

  “Not nearly enough yet.”

  “How fast will it go?”

  “Almost nine hundred K.”

  “Nine hundred kilometers?” Peter asked incredulously. “In level flight?”

  “Almost,” Galland said, and then abruptly changed the subject: “What brings you here, Hansel? I tried to find you. The word was that you were in Argentina.”

  “Yes, Sir, I was.”

  “And then, today, I get word from Berlin that you will be meeting someone from Canaris’s bureau here. A Korvettenkapitän Boltitz?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “You’re involved in that slimy business, Hansel? How did that happen?”

  “I didn’t volunteer, Sir.”

  “No, I didn’t think you would volunteer for something like that,” Galland said. “I’ll get you out of it, Hansel. I need you here.”

  Peter didn’t reply.

  “You haven’t forgotten how to fly?”

  “I’ve been flying a Feiseler Storch,” Peter said.

  “Karlsberg!” Galland called, raising his voice.

  A Luftwaffe captain, also wearing high-altitude sheepskins, appeared. He was wearing both pilot’s wings and the insignia of an aide-de-camp to a general officer, and he held another set of bulky high-altitude sheepskins under his left arm.

  “You remember Hansel, Johann?”

  “Yes, Sir, but I never thought I would be saluting Hansel,” Hauptmann Karlsberg said, touching the brim of his uniform cap.

  “The Herr General can call me ‘Hansel,’ Herr Hauptmann,” Peter said. “You can’t.” He smiled, returned the salute, and put out his hand. “Hello, Johann, how are you?”

  “Sometimes I wish we were back in Spain,” Karlsberg said. “You know who else is here, Peter? Willi Grüner.”

  “He knows,” Galland said. “Put on the gear, Hansel. The bird over there is a two-seater. We’ll take a hop.”

  “Jawohl, Herr General,” Peter said happily.

  Peter stuffed his legs through the heavy sheepskin trousers, and then Galland held the jacket for him.

  “The higher these things fly, the more efficient they are,” Galland said. “Fuel consumption is lousy near the ground. So the cold-weather gear—and oxygen—are necessary most of the time.”

  Peter nodded his understanding.

  “Have them roll out Two One Seven, Johann,” Galland ordered.

  “Jawohl, Herr General. Just Two One Seven, Herr General?”

  “You’d like to come along, would you?”

  “Whatever the Herr General desires.”

  “OK, Johann,” Galland said with a smile, and turned to Peter and winked. “Come on, Hansel, I’ll show you around the cockpit.”

  When they reached the two-seater, Galland waved Peter up the ladder against its side. It was immediately apparent that the two-seater arrangement was a jury rig. Only the front of the two in-line seats had a full instrument panel. The rear seat had a stick and rudder pedals, a second oxygen mask, a microphone/earphones facemask, and little else.

  Galland motioned Peter into the front seat. There was barely room to get in.

  Galland seemed to read Peter’s mind. “We put the backseat in here,” he said. “The factory said it would take three months to do it ‘properly.’”

  The instrument panel looked familiar, not very different from the ME-109F’s. The airspeed indicator was larger, and was red-lined at 1,200 kilometers per hour; the red line on the ME-109 had been at 850. And there were controls and indicators completely new to Peter.

  He heard large electric motors, and the hangar doors began to slide open. A tow truck appeared, and a moment later there was a slight jolt as it connected to the plane’s single front wheel.

  Galland’s explanation of the controls and their functions was not nearly as detailed as Peter would have liked, but he told himself it didn’t matter; once they were in the air, their purpose would quickly become apparent.

  The plane began to move. The hangar floor was below the surface of the tarmac, and it was an effort for the small tow truck to pull the plane up the ramp. They were towed to the end of the runway, where two trucks awaited them.

  “It’s not supposed to,” Galland’s voice came metallically over the earphones, “but more often than not, it takes auxiliary power to get the engines going. You can’t jump in one of these, throw the Master Buss, crack the throttle, and hit ENGINE START.”

  Ground crewmen from the trucks plugged a thick cable into the fuselage. Peter saw that Karlsberg, in a second ME-262, was on the threshold ten meters to the left behind him.

  “Wind it up, Peter,” Galland said. “Brakes locked. Check for control freedom after you’ve got it running.” He pointed out the applicable controls in the order they would be used.

  On orders, Peter depressed the LEFT ENGINE START lever. There was a whining noise, slow at first, then increasing in intensity to a roar.

  “Throttle back,” Galland ordered. “Let it warm slowly. Start the right.”

  “Two One Seven and Two Two Three ready for takeoff,” Galland’s voice came over the earphones.

  “You are cleared for takeoff from Two Eight at your discretion. The winds are negligible. There is no traffic in the area. Air Warning Status, Blue.”

  “To your right, Hansel, under a protective cover, is the rocket firing switch. Get your engines to takeoff power—it’s marked on the gauges—release the brakes, then fire the rockets. It steers surprisingly well, but watch it when you break ground. Sometimes it veers to one side or the other.”

  “Jawohl, Herr General.”

  “Don’t lift off until I tell you,” Galland said. “If you don’t have sufficient velocity, it’ll mush.”

  “Jawohl, Herr General.”

  “Controls all right?” Galland asked.

  Peter felt the stick move through its range, and the rudder pedals moving, as Galland checked the rear seat controls, then tested his own. “Controls free,” he reported.

  “Ready, Johann?” Galland called over the radio.

  “Ready, Herr General,” Karlsberg replied.

  “Two One Seven rolling,” Galland said. “OK, Hansel, let’s see if you can still fly.”

  The runway lights came on.

  Oh, that’s nice. That means it will be totally dark in an hour, and I will have to make my first landing in this thing in the dark.

  What the hell, you’re a Luftwaffe fighter pilot, aren’t you? You can fly anything with wings, anywhere, anytime.

  Peter advanced both throttles until their indicator needles touched the green line on the dials. He released the brakes, felt the plane just barely start to move, then pushed the protective cover over the rocket fire button out of the way and pushed the red button.

  There was a cloud of billowing white smoke as both of the rockets ignited. Peter expected the plane would immediatel
y accelerate rapidly. It did not. But a moment later, as he lined up the nose of the accelerating aircraft on the centerline of the runway, he became aware that he was being pushed slowly, but with great force, back against his seat.

  He saw the airspeed indicator jump to life at about 70 kilometers, and then the needle continued to move upward very quickly. He felt life come into the controls.

  A moment later, Galland ordered: “Lift it off.”

  Peter dropped his eyes to the airspeed indicator. It was indicating more than 120 kilometers. He edged back on the stick. The rumble of the landing gear ceased almost immediately, and he felt that he was flying.

  “Gear up,” Galland ordered.

  The gear came up very quickly.

  There was a tendency for the aircraft to turn to the right. Peter made the necessary corrections without thinking about it.

  “Drop the rockets,” Galland ordered.

  Peter pressed that button. He glanced out the window. The ground was dropping away quickly, and as he watched, the runway lights died.

  Runway lights were turned on only when aircraft were taking off or landing. Otherwise, they served as lovely target markers for B-17 bombardiers.

  This sometimes caused problems for fighter pilots trying to find their fields after radios or antennae had taken one or more .50-caliber Browning bullets, or were not functioning for some other reason.

  He saw Karlsberg’s ME-262 slightly behind and just a little above him. And then there was backward pressure on the stick. He fought it at first, then realized it was coming from Galland, pulling backward on the backseat’s stick. He gave in to it.

  The nose rose at an impossible angle.

  Christ! What’s he trying to do, put it in a stall?

  There was no stall. With the nose approaching straight-up, the ME-262 continued not only to climb, but at an ever-increasing velocity.

  Peter looked over his shoulder. Galland was smiling at him. “Put on the mask, Hansel,” he said. “We’ll be going through three thousand meters very soon.”

  Peter pulled the clammy rubber mask over his mouth, twisted the valve, and felt the oxygen on his face. He looked at the altimeter. The needle seemed to be almost spinning around the dial, and as he watched, it indicated 3,000 meters. “This is fantastic!” he said.