“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.”