“No, Sir.”
“There are two schools of thought about that, you know,” Henderver said as he picked up his sheepskin jacket and waved at the door. “One is that a little activity of that sort calms a man down and makes him a better pilot. The other is that one should neither drink nor fuck for at least twelve hours before flying, because it slows down the reflexes.”
Peter laughed dutifully.
“Well, smile,” Henderver said. “Trudi will be here, I’m sure, when we get back.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Tonight we are going to combine more stick time for you with an experiment with droppable fuel tanks. Phrased simply, that means, presuming we can get the bitch off the ground with all that weight, we will go to seven thousand meters. If we haven’t exhausted the auxiliary fuel getting up there, we will exhaust what’s left and then jettison the tanks. If we run out of fuel on the way to seven thousand, we will jettison the tanks at that time. In either case, the tanks will crash through the roof of either an old people’s home or a children’s hospital.”
“What I really like about you, Friedrich, is your cheerful way of looking at things.”
Henderver laughed.
Thirty minutes later—just as he thought he was going to run out of runway—Peter finally felt life come into the controls of the two-seater ME-262 and managed to lift it off.
The tanks were jettisoned as they reached 6,500 meters.
“Well, that seemed to work,” Henderver said. “And here we are at altitude with nearly full main tanks.”
“Which will now crash through the roof of an old people’s home, right?”
“And give Herr Goebbels one more opportunity to provide photographic proof of the Amis murdering innocent Germans,” Henderver said.
General Galland was in the hangar when the doors closed and the lights went on.
Henderver and Peter climbed down from the cockpit of the ME-262. Both gave the General the military, rather than the Nazi, salute when they walked over to him.
“How did it go?” Galland asked.
“I don’t want to know how much over maximum gross weight we were,” Peter said. “I had a hell of a time getting it off the ground.”
“We need better engines, General,” Henderver said seriously, and then added, in a lighter tone, “On the other hand, we got to a little over sixty-five hundred on the auxiliary fuel.”
“Tell me, Hansel,” Galland said. “If the Reichsprotektor, Herr Himmler, asked you personally to trust him about something, would you?”
“Sir?”
“Watch yourself, Hansel, that’s a trick question.” Henderver said.
“The bad news, Hansel, is that you’re out of the ME-262 program….”
“Sir?”
“And—depending how you feel about Argentina—the good news is that you’re going back over there.”
“I don’t understand, Sir.”
“General, we need him,” Henderver said.
“According to Herr Himmler, the Reich needs him more in Argentina,” Galland said. “He wouldn’t tell me why. He asked me to trust him, which translates to mean he would be happier if I didn’t register outrage with the Führer.”
“I vote for registering outrage, General,” Henderver said.
“So do I, Sir.”
“Well, you’re a nice guy, Hansel, and a good pilot, and this is going to break Trudi’s heart, but this is one time I don’t think I should get in a fight with our beloved Reichsprotektor.”