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Page 52.
 Walther sat on the edge of the door with his feet swinging down. He beckoned for the lieutenant to come closer, which the lieutenant did. Walther spoke softly in German with the lieutenant, while secretly passing across a wad of Reichmarks. “Listen, Eugène, don’t be tedious. He’s a deserter, like we are. Nobody likes the stupid war. Go buy yourself a bottle of nice cognac, and think only of civilization, ja?” The lieutenant nodded, glancing up at Tim. The transaction was concluded shortly, and the lieutenant said: “Major Malone, kindly get that passport updated before returning to this French colonial territory, oui?”
“Oui,” Tim said with hollow forcefulness. He returned a snappy military salute. “I sure will, Sir, and thank you very much. Vive la France.”
“Vive la France,” the lieutenant said. He told his squad. “Allons, let’s continue looking for our felon.” The mixed entourage wheeled or walked away together. As the colonial unit rumbled off into the night, Tim drew a deep shuddering gasp of relief. He wiped sweat from his forehead and asked Walther: “What were you telling him, in German yet?”
Walther nodded with a wicked grin. “It’s ironic, yes? We are German deserters who should be working for the Fuhrer but we aren’t. He is a Frenchman but he is an Alsatian, of German descent. Did you see his name tag? Rittermann. He’s as German as we are. Yet he is at heart a loyal Frenchman who wants to puke at having to work for the Vichy regime, and he cannot wait for the Tapetenhänger to lose the war.”
“The what?”
“The wallpaper hanger. Hitler. The greasy little vagrant from Austria who isn’t even German.”
“To hell with it,” Willi said, “where is my beer?”
“The important things,” Walther said as he slammed the door shut.
They sat at their meal again and toasted each other with foaming glasses while they ate their couscous. “To a speedy victory for Churchill and Stalin and Roosevelt,” Willi said.
“No politics,” Willi admonished, as if afraid his cousin might say too much.
“What do you think of Stalin in the U.S.A.?” Walther asked Tim, ignoring Willi.
Tim thought for a second. “Well, officially we are allies. Then again, we’ve been worried about the Red Scare for a long time, or at least the wealthy people are, so maybe we’ll be at each other’s throats with Uncle Joe after the war.”
“I believe so,” Walther said, “and Uncle Joe will send his Cossacks to eat the German people alive, mark my words. This Hitler son of a bitch had to go wake up the Russian bear. Damn that idiot!”
“I do agree with you there,” Willi said. “Now we’ve got to get some sleep. Where is Malone, do you suppose?”
“Good question.”
“Yes,” Tim said, “thanks for saving my skin. So who is this Malone?”
Walther belched happily and pointed his beer glass. “Robert Malone, my friend, is an American spy and a gambler. Don’t tell him I told you so, but we know. In your American idiom, he is a crook, but a nice one. “
Willi added: “We run our freight routes, and we see a lot. Malone is definitely working for the Allies. He is even more crooked than we are. We salute him. We help him.”
“That’s right,” Walther said. “Malone comes and goes on missions very secret that we do not ask about. He likes us. Well, maybe he likes our beer, which we bring from Leopoldville and Lomé. You know, Belgian beer can be good, but there is nothing like good German brew made by folk who know how.”
Tim saw a map lying nearby and pulled it close. It was a compact navigational map in a plastic sheath, with faint black china-marker lines on it from a host of previous flights. Lomé, he saw, was the capital of formerly German-owned (now British) Togoland, while Leopoldville was the capital of the Belgian Congo.
“Very conveniently,” Willi said, “we have Malone’s papers, and those of his beautiful lady friend. He had to run an errand on the other side of town a few days ago and did not want to be caught with the wrong papers. We flew off to Nouakhchott and back, and now we have to pick them up to take them back to Leopoldville.”
“That’s where you are going?” Tim asked. He was shocked at the distance.
“It will get you far from here, fast,” Walther said soberly. Tim had to agree. About Malone, Willi continued: “I believe he is checking on movements of the Vichy Legionnaire regiments in this area, what’s left of them after they were misused in Finland and Tunisia and God knows where else.”
“The Balkans,” Walther said authoritatively. He turned to his cousin. “Can we get moving?”
“Yes.” Willi glanced at his watch. “About four hours to daylight and we must take off. Where can he be? He was supposed to meet us here, he and his woman, Régine Clery.”
“Another man’s woman, borrowed for a few days. Nice one, too. Sort of Anita Berber with at least some clothes on.” Walther referred to a notorious 1920s Weimar Berlin socialite drug addict, cabaret dancer, bisexual, alcoholic, androgyne, and tragic beauty notorious for going about naked, who’d died very young. “A lost world,” Willi said wistfully as if speaking of something a thousand years ago, a thousand kilometers away.
Walther nodded. “Before Hitler. We were eating from trash cans, but we still had it better than this.” He scratched his stubbled cheek, as if to poke himself back to reality. “I do want to get my sleep. I’ll pilot the first leg. You want to go look for Malone?” He explained to Tim: “Malone runs all sorts of errands. Tonight he is here with a dazzling Belgian woman who loves her drugs. Heroin, cocaine, you name it, she drowns her misery when Malone isn’t schtupping her. We need to pick them and the drugs up and take them with us.”
“Where to?”
“The Belgian Congo.”
“Yes,” Willi said. “If we leave him here he will be mad at us. We need his business.” Willi strapped on a holster with a Wehrmacht Luger. “You want to come with me, Tim?”
Tim did not want to leave the safety of the plane. His ankles were swollen and they hurt. Walther saw them and gasped. “You’re in bad shape.” He dug out a First Aid kit with Nazi marking and rubbed a sulfa ointment into the wounds. He then wrapped them in white gauze. “Go with Willi. I’ll stay here to guard the plane. We’ll nurture your ankles back from the dead, don’t worry.”
“That feels better already,” Tim said as he clambered barefoot to the ground. “Just get us out of this country as fast as possible.”
“Ja-ja,” Walther said. “We do this every few hours. Meanwhile, about Malone, you’ll be back in an hour, and I will have the engine running.”
“I’ll drive,” Willi said to Tim. “You have Malone’s papers and the lieutenant is the gendarme in charge tonight. You have nothing to worry about.” He offered a second Luger, which Tim assumed was Walther’s. “Please.”
“Okay,” Tim said, strapping the heavy gun on with its canvas waist belt. “You do all the talking if Monsieur le General stops us again.”
“I’ll go get the truck,” Willi said as he trotted off toward the restaurant.
Walther said in the cockpit above: “I promoted him to Colonel. You make him a general. He should be Charlie Chaplin." Both Germans laughed at the famous comedian who was the field marshal among so many comedians mocking Herr Hitler.
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