A Man and a Plane: An Alternate Germany

by Joseph T Major

  Then he lifted his glass of champagne and said, "It's almost midnight! And now, as they do when they fire off the rockets: Ten! Nine! Eight!"

  Glasses were hoisted all across the room, and the chorus joined in, "SEVEN! SIX! FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE!"

  And then from one and all:

  "HAPPY NEW YEAR!"

  BOOK EIGHT

  A CASTLE IN THE HILLS

  INTERLUDE

  The White House, Washington, D.C., U.S.A., Tuesday, December 31, 1940

  "Wormwood," President Roosevelt said as he put a drop into the drink. "They banned it, but I find that just a drop makes all the difference."

  It was a private party: the President and President-elect could have summoned the leaders of his party, who had turned to him when there was no other apparent candidate. He could have had his top military advisors; his campaign had been on the basis of the danger in the world. He could have had the intellectual elite of the country; his wife would gladly have brought them.

  She did ask one friend, and he did ask one military advisor. They brought their spouses, of course; but they had something else in common.

  Now Roosevelt spun around, rolled his chair to the table with the glass balanced in his lap, and said, "Are you sure you won't have anything?"

  The tireder, wiser younger woman who was the First Lady's friend, even her pilot, raised a glass of mineral water. "My father drank himself to death, Mr. President --"

  "Oh Amelia, can't you call me 'Franklin'?"

  "He drank himself to death. It was a terrible example. Besides, if the weather's good tomorrow, I'm going flying with George, get the new year started right," said Amelia Earhart Putnam. Beside her, "George" -- George Palmer Putnam, husband, publisher, and honored guest, smiled. The airplane they would fly had a new model of autopilot, and he had heard of a new club that had an initiation ceremony involving the use of an autopilot.

  "Aw, come on, Amelia, just this once? A little wine?" Adelaide Durant Rickenbacker was having a little white wine -- it was good for her heart, and her eyes, she had heard, and she sniffed her glass delicately.

  "I think not, dear," her husband said. "I'm only having the one myself."

  "Yes, indeed," the President said. "And here's to General Rickenbacker's second star! And none better deserved!"

  "Hear hear," they all said, and drank.

  The President went on, "Now I admire Rick because he's honest. He has the misfortune to be a Republican, and I know he was one of those who campaigned for Taft up to last month.

  "But he is honest. He says what he means, reports accurately and completely what he sees. Everybody talks to him because he is 'Cap'n Eddie', the Ace of Aces; he is a hero, and they trust him. He tells me what I need to know, what I need to hear, not what someone else thinks I want to hear."

  The President looked down at the table, where their New Years' feast was spread. "You can't imagine how . . . isolated I feel sometimes. I have to know what is happening. We live in a dangerous world now, and with Japan, Italy -- like it or no, war may come to us at any time."

  They all fell silent. After a moment, Rickenbacker said, "Thank you, sir."

  The President went on, "George, do you know anyone at Viking? Has Sinclair turned in his new book?"

  Putnam seemed bewildered. "I could find out. Why do you ask?"

  Roosevelt leaned back and took a drag on his cigarette before removing the holder from his mouth. "Ah, now that takes a little explaining. Rick, Adelaide, earlier this year Upton Sinclair -- you know, he wrote The Jungle about the meatpacking industry, and cousin Teddy set up the Food and Drug Administration as a result -- wrote another book. It's called World's End and it's about a progressive young man who survives the War and decides to do good.

  "I got a letter from him the other day."

  His wife interrupted. "No, Franklin. I got the letter, because Mr. Sinclair thought if he wrote to you his letter would get lost, or tied up in the office work. I passed it on to you."

  President Roosevelt accepted the correction. "Eleanor gave me the letter. Sinclair explained the plan of his work in it, for my information. He is writing a novel, a series of novels, about contemporary events. His hero, this Lanny Budd, would meet all the powerful men of today -- Churchill, Richthofen, Mussolini, Stalin -- and he would observe the wars in China, in Spain, and in Poland, the unrest in Germany, in France."

  Then he leaned forward and punctuated his point with thrusts of his cigarette holder. "And he would do so as a special Presidential Agent. My Presidential Agent! He wanted me to approve my appearing in the book.

  "I thought that was a good idea, having a special confidential agent who would go about and see things, and report on them. Too good an idea to waste on a novel. But I can't have a layabout art salesman, like this man in the book. I need someone who has authority, someone who has an independent presence, someone people can talk to, will talk to."

  He looked into Rickenbacker's eyes. "In short, I need you. Rickenbacker, your country needs you."

  Rickenbacker looked stunned. He fell back on protocol, saying desperately, "Sir, Mr. President --"

  "If you're going to be my Presidential Agent you should call me 'Franklin' and I can call you 'Rick'."

  "Sir, if you haven't noticed I have an airline to run. And a racetrack."

  Roosevelt waved his hands in dismissal. "Rick, this will be no more than a few days every now and then. Indeed, I want you to travel on behalf of that airline and that racetrack. Publicize them. And while you're doing that . . . keep your ears open, ask questions. Then tell me about it."

  The president now looked almost avuncular. "I can assure you that if you have any problems with the government you will find help in, shall we say, very high places," he said, in a conspiratorial tone.

  "Well, I'll think about it," Rickenbacker said. Then he changed the subject. "You know, in all the time I went to all these events, I never quite figured out how to eat this liver stuff --"

  "Paté," Adelaide said. "You scoop it up on crackers, like this." And she took some. That wrenched the conversation into dining.

  CHAPTER 42

  Myrtle Bank Hotel, Kingston, Jamaica, Monday, February 24, 1941

  The tall Yank said to the man at the front desk, "On the beach? Thank you."

  He shook his head as he walked back through the hotel's corridors, on the way to the beach behind the hotel. He had driven from the airport to this park, where this gargantuan Victorian mass of gingerbread sat amid wonderful natural beauty. It was warm . . . an Ohio summer, seemed like. February was a month for sledding down hills, laughing and throwing snowballs at the other kids, shoveling off walks and driveways. Sitting on the beach in February sounded . . . wrong.

  The resort hotel was nice, though. Best one in Kingston, they said. Have to take Adelaide here some time. Perhaps that was why the man he had come to see had come here now; it was off-season, and he could rent more rooms and have privacy, which God knew he longed for. Rickenbacker knew he longed for it.

  There. A bright spot against the white beach, a gaily-colored umbrella and some chairs. Rickenbacker began walking towards it, feeling the unaccustomed sensation of warm sand under his shoes.

  There were the two men, in bright-colored shirts and shorts -- shorts, in winter! -- sipping tall cool ones, and looking out over Kingston Harbor at their ease. Come to think of it, he could use something to drink.

  The younger man shifted, then saw him. "Ach, Eddie. Look, Father, it's Herr Rickenbacker, come to see you." Young Manfred Eduard von Richthofen -- Graf von Richthofen now, Rickenbacker never quite understood all this fuss about titles -- pulled his shirt closed, covering the still-raw scar on his belly where the Reds had wounded him.

  His father raised his sunglasses and turned one bright blue eye on Rickenbacker. "Eddie! Sit down. Have a drink. Lemonade? Or something stronger?"

  "Whatever you're having."

  "Waiter! A lemonade for my friend here! And let me get you a chair."


  Richthofen got out of his chair, went over to a stack of them nearby and removed one, which he opened, emitting a cloud of sand. He placed the chair by the table just in time for the waiter to deliver three glasses of cool lemonade. Rickenbacker took one and sat down, still finding something not quite fitting in the summery refreshment.

  Manfred went on, "I'm flying this afternoon, and my boy here --" he tipped his head towards him, "is passing the stuff up."

  "I wish to overcome my own problems without such a crutch. Father, when you were in pain during the War, you did not resort to such things, and neither should I."

  The father and son had evidently had this argument before. "But then there was a shortage of everything. That certainly isn't the case now."

  "Manfred Edward, your strength and determination speak well of you. And Manfred, you've raised your boy very well. He certainly isn't like Randolph," Rickenbacker said.

  "Shhh," Manfred said. "The hotel register says 'Michael Judge' and we're sticking to that story."

  Rickenbacker looked out over the glittering bay. All his signals were wrong, and he had to get his mind off that subject. Was someone swimming out there? "Why all the secrecy, anyway? Fake name and all that. Next thing you know it'll be passwords and whatnot."

  "I don't want to be pestered. Nothing's changed since the twenties, at least not in that regard. At least I don't look like myself."

  Young Manfred said, "Father, last year I saw that portrait of you and I think it renders you very well."

  "The boy flatters his father."

  "Yeah, but why that name?" Rickenbacker said.

  "There's a judge on our coat of arms. And 'Michael' keeps the first initial, so if someone calls out my name and I react, I can say, 'Sorry, wrong name,' and it will be halfway plausible," Manfred said

  "Heh-heh. Heh-heh," Young Manfred chortled mechanically at the joke.

  "But I've been so rude. What are you doing here?"

  Rickenbacker wiped off his brow. "I'd like you to come to the board meeting in Miami later this week. I want the board to buy some more DC-3s. You're a good salesman. I know Donald will be happy if you can persuade them, help me persuade them, and it helps you too."

  Manfred took a sip of his drink. "Takes a lot of trouble to uproot this Jasta and relocate the ground crew. Do you have a DC-3 we can fly there?"

  "We?"

  Manfred pointed out at the red ball floating in the water. "Randolph is discovering the potentials of Jamaican rum and Jamaican activists. Did you know they worship Haile Selassie here? And there's his pilot, out swimming in the bay. It's time for lunch, let's eat. We had better come in anyhow or we'll all be sunburned. CARMEN! LUNCH!"

  The ball began to move in to shore, revealing itself to be a red bathing cap on the fair head of Carmen von Richthofen. Rickenbacker looked away. "The bathing dresses women wear these days are so immodest. Manfred, how can you let your niece expose herself like that?"

  "How can I stop her? If you think that is bad, you should go to Sylt, on the North Sea. There, that would be considered badly overdressed."

  Young Manfred reached for his cane. "No, I can get up by myself," he said, though the volley of grunts and the achingly slow motion involved seemed to gainsay his assertation. By the time he got to his feet his cousin had arrived.

  "What is it, Uncle?" Carmen said. Manfred was modestly looking out to sea, ignoring the sun-warmed flesh that appeared over her suit, and the legs below.

  "We're flying to Miami, what day after tomorrow?"

  "Yes," Rickenbacker said. "I have to speak in Birmingham then, and the board meeting is Friday."

  "We're going to show that even a woman can fly that plane -- Eddie, where are you going? I thought we were going to have lunch."

  Rickenbacker had got to his feet and was walking away, muttering about women these days. After a moment he remembered himself and waited for his godson (at least in his view) to catch up.

  Behind them Carmen said, "Fly a DC-3! When will it arrive here? That sounds wonderful!"

  The dining room was cool and dark, the windows opening upon the tropical vista of light and warmth making a fine contrast. The diner might expect traditional British cuisine, but United Fruit chose to offer the guests at its Jamaican resort a varied menu. And so the tall man could eat, when he wasn't complaining.

  "That God--" Rickenbacker began, then broke off. More quietly he resumed, "That Roosevelt. Do you know what he did to me?" And he described his new position as "Special Personal Representative of the President".

  "If he had offered me the job first, and then mentioned the promotion, I could have turned it down, turned them both down," Rickenbacker went on. "But he got me the second star, and then made the offer. That bas-- he obligated me. When it was being the special envoy to you, Manfred, it was different. This is a general task now, I have to tell him about everything."

  Manfred pushed the remnants of his lunch around his plate with a fork. The warm weather was reducing his appetite, which he conceded was not altogether a bad idea. "If you have his ear . . . I may pass on to you, then, some of the comments the Herren Schacht and Erhard, and Herr Dollfuss's economic advisor Herr von Mises, have made about his economic policies. He may not like hearing that, though."

  "Yeah, if you can give me some hard facts and figures. Wish I could have done that when the New Deal was going full throttle."

  "Rickenbacker, you aren't the only 'Special Representative' here," Randolph said. He looked at his small rum sour as if weighing whether to finish it right away or order another one first. "What do you think I am doing for Father? I don't put everything I see in the papers."

  "Hard job, Randolph," Rickenbacker sighed. "I understand the situation now.

  "The President wants to reconcile Russia to the Polish occupation. I think he wants to set up some confederation of independent states there -- these two ex-Russian mandates associating with Russia, not Poland. I think he's making a mistake. Let Russia stew in its own juice. Japan's getting to be the problem."

  "But you told him so," Randolph said.

  "Yes I did, and I really think it went in one ear and out the other. What do they think in Germany about the Polish situation?"

  Manfred exhaled, a sigh of resignation, and said, "In Germany, the 'Polish situation' is the old borders. Some of our politicians still think that we should have the prewar frontier again, get back West Prussia, what they call the 'Corridor'. Particularly since the Poles now have all this land to the East.

  "Not that that seems to have sated them. The last meeting I had with the Polish ambassador, before I resigned, he raised the problem of Masuria -- that's the southern part of East Prussia. They still think it should be Polish.

  "They did so poorly at first in the recent war because they had refused to cooperate with us. I could understand their position if it had been a prospect of cooperating with Goebbels, or the late Herr Hitler. But they aren't in power and I think it would take a grand disaster for them to have a chance at power. Like losing a war and then going broke, which I pray won't happen again. "

  "They don't trust von Papen," Randolph said. "Waiter, another rum sour."

  "Nobody does."

  Rickenbacker yawned. "Well, I reckon it's time for bed. This sure is a nice place."

  The charming dinner party had repaired to "Mr. Judge's" suite, as "Miss Judge" had a nearby room and "Mr Frederick Spencer" was over in the other wing. If any reader of air adventure magazines had noticed the two great aces, he hadn't said anything.

  "The people at Douglas should have the plane here tomorrow, and we can get some practice in before flying to Miami," Manfred said. "Good night, Carmen."

  Randolph had departed about an hour ago, saying he had to do a color piece on these people who worshiped Haile Selassie. Manfred Eduard had listened like a wide-eyed little boy to the old foes' stories, and only reluctantly gone to bed under doctor's orders.

  "I'm off to Birmingham in the morning, more business, and then I'll
see you in Miami. . . . Women these days," Rickenbacker went on, reserving his comment until Lothar von Richthofen's daughter had exited the room.

  "You didn't seem to feel that way about Earhart."

  "That's different!" Rickenbacker then got up and went out.

  Now alone, Manfred went to the window and looked out over the ocean. It was calm, peaceful even. The pirates who had plundered Spanish gold and come here to spend it on women and liquor had passed into history.

  If only their modern imitators would do that.

  The customs shed was uncomfortable under the noontime sun, even the wintry noontime sun. Manfred had a diplomatic passport -- it had been a war between modesty and convenience when Papen had informed him that his status would be continued, but memories of an English customs and excise man who had lost a father and three brothers in the War and still took it personally tipped the balance. So he was spared searches, forms, and all the minutae of transiting borders. Such it had been, he had heard, before the War, when no one cared who came or went. But no one else had such passport ease, not even "Special Agent" Captain Churchill.

  Hence the problem. "What the hell, boy?" the Customs man said.

  The confrontation was taking place over the registration counter. Randolph looked sober. When he did things without a few under his belt, it portended worse. His jaw was set and against the bright Florida sunlight he looked the image of his father, defying the Mahdi's men in Africa. "I said, I am taking the option of making a mark, giving my thumbprint, instead of signing," he insisted, quite belligerently. His pen was in his hand as if it were some arcane weapon.

  The customs agent, a man with all the marks of a local, was rather at a loss, particularly because of the contradictory nature of the request. Cautiously, as if dealing with a madman, he said, "But you just wrote all over the form, boy!"

  "Give me the stamp pad!"

  Manfred came over to the counter and looked. The customs form had a box headed "Race". He had watched as his son and niece had piously written a "W" for Weiss, or "white", there. But this one was scrawled over in hurried Churchillian prose: