Trophy for Eagles (48 page)

"Ach, Bruno, don't be too quick to judge. It's hard to like Hitler and too easy to underestimate him. That's why he's Chancellor. They underestimated him." He looked around quickly and said, "And that's why I'm here. You can laugh about Addie and
unser
Hermann all you want—but they are going to rearm Germany, and in a way that will make the world tremble."

Udet watched Hafner closely, trying to gauge his reaction. He
could offer nothing in the way of money or luxury to compare with
what Hafner could enjoy in the United States. But the old martial drums, the banners, the combat, they might snare him.

Even sitting, Hafner towered over Udet like a huge gorilla. He
looked skeptical, openly testing the smaller man.

"Do you think the other politicians will let them? Christ, the
Nazis are riffraff, brawlers! They won't last six months in civilized
society. They are good only to protest, not to wield power and have
responsibilities." It was the party line he had heard from his relatives; he thought differently himself.

"They've already lasted six months, Bruno, and Hitler is taking complete control. Goering's put twenty thousand people in concentration camps. There will be more. They burned the Reichstag and had Papa Hindenburg suspend the constitution. Don't worry about
this bunch lasting—Hitler will only leave the Chancellery feet first!"

Bruno tossed the Steinhager down and poured himself another.

"But it's not all bad. You've been living well over here, and I've
been doing well, too, even though Germany was on its arse! Hitler's
our Mussolini. He's getting things moving, pumping money into the economy."

Udet looked up at the huge man looming over him, deciding to turn the tables on him, "If you dislike the Nazis so, why did you
agree to work with Goering last year? I'm here to talk business, and I
have to know if you are sincere. I know that you are an American
citizen, you have an American wife, a big factory, lots of money. It's
hard for me to believe you are serious. I'm not sure what I would do
in your position."

I'm very sure what you would do, Hafner thought. He then
backed off, relaxing so that his bulk seemed slowly to diminish as a
frightened cat finally lets its hair settle down.

"You said it for me. I'm a German, first and last. I think Hitler will get things into shape in Germany and then bring back the monarchy. We fought for the Kaiser once—we'll fight for him again."

Udet's voice was determined. He had to be sure that Hafner understood, that he would be dependable. "No, there will never be
another Kaiser, there will be no stupid bag of Napoleonic pretenders
like those the French tolerate. Hitler will use the aristocracy for as long as he has to, another year perhaps. Then, all of them, princes, nobles, they are all kaput. And after the aristocracy, the Jews."

Hafner nodded. "That's part of it for me too. The Jews destroyed us in 1918, when they bought up Germany during the inflation." The Steinhager had eroded his reserve. "My family lost everything.
I went by my house last year, and do you know who is living there?
In my house?"

Udet noted with approval that Hafner had grown so intense that he'd forgotten himself. Good. A fanatic was easier to manage.

"A Jewish doctor and his fat wife, an ass like an apple barrel!
There was a little hook-nosed yid coming out the gate on a bicycle.
Out of my gate!"

Udet relaxed. The commoner was taking over. He had Hafner. Over time, he would make an ally of him. If not, he could be
disposed of. It was important to use him—or at least prevent Goer
ing's using him.

Steinhager and the memories of his house stirred the old patriotism in Bruno. "What am I supposed to do, crawl back in a Fokker D VII?"

"No. We want you to stay right where you are."

"We?"

"Right—we, Hermann and I and Milch and Kesselring, and yes, even Hitler. We want you to keep doing what you are doing, but
keep us informed. You don't have to be a spy and put on a false
mustache and steal secrets from safes. Just be a pipeline for tech
nical information—new airfoils, new alloys, trends in what is going
on, assessments of strength. We can get most of it out of the
magazines, but we want you to be the filter, the judge of what we
interpret."

Hafner was nonplussed. He could do this for a while, but even now Charlotte was asking questions about his trips to Germany. And the Air Corps people were not fools—they could track the
source of most ideas that were really supposed to be kept secret. It
wasn't what he wanted to hear. The way Goering had sketched it out
last year, he would sell his businesses and go back to Germany to live. With his money and a commission, it would be better than during the war. He could perhaps be a lieutenant colonel for starters. And sooner or later, he'd buy up his old house, live like a king, do some decent flying. It was time to bargain.

"What's in it for me?"

Udet paused, then told him a long, involved joke about a
Fraulein
who didn't need anything because she didn't drink, didn't smoke, and had her own pussy. "You don't need any money. You don't need any women. But you do need to be a soldier."

Hafner felt the hook ease in, secure him. Udet was quite correct.
Besides, there was the matter of Charlotte and Rhoades, which severely needed rectification.

"Germany is ten years behind in the air. Versailles crippled us.
We're gaining, but Goering wants you to act as an overseas research laboratory, as we did in Russia at Lipetsk, where we built a factory and trained people. You can use American dollars to experiment, to
design airplanes, and get the results to us."

"No, Ernst, I don't like it. I don't want to be some kind of
verdammt
spy, pussyfooting around, pretending. Besides, how long
do you think I could get away with it? The Air Corps is not stupid—they could smell out any technology I got to you."

Udet, his head nodding yes as it always did, said, "You don't have
to do it for long. We'll have to come out in the open with the
Luftwaffe next year or the year after. By then we'll have the new
airplanes on the line. You can come back then and run an aircraft factory."

"No! I'll be a technical adviser, but I want a
Geschwader
to command. If there's going to be any combat, I want to be in on it."

"Ja,
Bruno, I know what you mean. But let me tell you something. Like Hitler or not, he's a smart bastard, too smart to start a
fight with America. He was a
Frontsoldat,
he knows what it's like.
He's going to demand that the Rhineland be reoccupied, get the
African colonies back, get an agreement with Poland for a corridor."

Having disposed of Europe, Udet drank. "But the main thing is Russia. He hates the Reds as much as he hates the Jews, says they are the same thing. So you won't be doing anything to be ashamed of in America. You'll be helping it, really."

Bruno sat back. It wouldn't matter. The old loyalties came first. Russia. There would be a hunting ground! They could shoot airplanes as the English shoot grouse, spend all day potting and then lay them up in rows at night. He pounded his knee.

Udet's voice was becoming increasingly military, crisper, more
demanding.

"We'll start with Curtiss." An order, not an offer.

"What do you mean?"

"I'll get you a private demonstration, let you fly one of the Curtiss
dive bombers. You can put a five-hundred-pound bomb in a pickle barrel dive bombing. As I said, it's better than artillery, cheaper, more flexible, faster. You'll see."

Udet's hands sent his pen flying.

Hafner blurted out his real thoughts.
"Jawohl,
but it's not the
answer, Ernst. You need big bombers for England. You couldn't fly
the Hawk across the Channel and then back with a bomb load."

Udet handed Hafner the sheet of paper. It showed Hafner, huge,
his nose an eagle's beak, straddling the fuselage of a diving Curtiss
Hawk as a cowboy straddles a horse. There were crosses on the fuselage and a huge swastika on the rudder. He had even remembered Hafner's personal insignia from the war, a winged sword.
Bullets were pouring in a stream from the nose of the Hawk and a bomb was being slung from its belly. Down below was a target, a
circle of concentric rings. In the center was a word in tiny print. It was "Boredom."

Hafner nodded his head. "Good, Ernst. You know your subject."

He folded the drawing and put it in a breast pocket. "But you don't know your bombers! You should be building big airplanes, with four engines, and maybe four-thousand-pound bomb loads. That's what I'm going to do next, though nobody knows it."

Udet shook his head slightly, mild as always in his disagreement.
He preferred to charm his way out of arguments.

"You sound like our purist, Colonel Wever! Big bombers are expensive. We don't want to fight England, or France for that matter. We just want dive bombers to fly along with our tanks, to break through in Russia. No more trenches! And if France and
England just leave us alone—and Hitler is sure they will—we can
settle matters in the east."

His voice was slurred. "You and I, Bruno, we will be the new Junkers, the new ruling caste. We'll have the estates, the forests. You'll see."

Hafner sat back. That would be decent. An estate in the country. Maybe he would be von Hafner after all! It had amused him when
Dusty Rhoades used to call him "Baron." Maybe Rhoades wasn't so
far off at that.

The two men got to their feet, Udet stumbling a bit. Hafner put a $5 bill on the table and winked at the fat waitress.

She had been pleased and surprised to have two real Germans drinking in her restaurant until she glanced at their plates. Neither man had eaten much. She palmed the fiver and then shook the Steinhager bottle. It was empty, and it comforted her. Maybe they were old war comrades who just wanted to drink.

***

Chapter 8

Downey, California/July 17, 1933

Ted Mahew's blessed out-of-the-blue order for the new transport was a lifeline to solvency. The order meant the bank would talk to them and that they could offer people meaningful jobs instead of part-time work.

They had decided to call the airplane the RC-3, to take advantage of the publicity Douglas had already gained on its competing DC-1.
The new contract meant that they had to triple their production-line employment immediately, and double their engineering staff. From the instant their first small help-wanted advertisement was phoned
in, before it ever appeared in the paper, they were deluged with
applicants.

The outpouring made Bandy feel like Midas. He had known that
California was a pool of talent, but he had had no idea that he could
choose from the very best talents—engineers, stress analysts, engine
men, production-line workers. It was hard not to hire them all, but he kept it down to a minimum, phasing them in over time, so that they were needed badly before they came on board. He got his
greatest pleasure from sending wires to the good people he'd worked
with in the past and offering them big salaries and bigger responsibilities, a surefire approach.

The small crew of veterans who had started with Roget Aircraft at
Downey were nervous at first, but then welcomed the newcomers
when they recognized their talent. The joy of having in hand a
contract that promised work for at least two years and maybe more
sent morale sky-high, and long hours meant nothing. A few of the older men, transferring from other industries, were interested in
forming a union, and were amazed when Bandfield was sympathet
ic to the idea, his father's old politics surfacing. He had watched
many other factories live off the substance of their workers, devour
ing their overtime, only to dismiss them all summarily when a
contract went sour. Roget Aircraft was going to be different. Hadley
wasn't convinced that it was a good idea, but Bandy gave the new
union every encouragement.

The factory had a sharpened sense of vibrancy and discipline as
parts came down the tributary aisles to join other parts in the general
march to the main assembly line. The staccato banging of the
riveters, the shrill rise and fall of the drill presses, the continual
reciprocal movement of the lathes all had new tempos and new meanings. Bandy felt a kinship with a symphony orchestra conductor, who played no instrument but made everything happen.