[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 Citroën 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, Capitán,” 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.