“I’d call that some serious dumb luck!” Davies observed with a grin. The Texan was seated beside Donelson, their chairs slightly to the left of where Thorne still sat. “Reuters’ll be going loco on the other side of The Channel right about now… two Flankers splashed on our first day, followed by their AWACS and tanker not long after, and now we finish up the ol’ ‘one-two’ with Ritter droppin’ in on us! I’ll lay money down some asshole at Fliegerkorps is getting his nuts roasted big time for sending his unit our way!”
“There’s an alternative to consider,” Donelson observed slowly, pausing. “Reuters might’ve sent him in on purpose as a plant.”
“I wouldn’t imagine there’d be too much chance of that,” Thorne interjected, dismissing the idea out of hand as he glanced up from the small, leather-bound diary that’d been confiscated from the prisoner in question. It’d been inside his flight suit as Ritter had gone into the water, and as such Thorne was now forced to turn the soaked pages with extreme care.
“You’re certain of that, Max?” Donelson wasn’t insulted by his immediate rejection of the idea… she’d not considered it all that likely either, and had merely sought a little consensus.
“I had considered it for a moment,” he admitted after a long pause, “but look at the facts as they…” he halted, rephrased the next sentence in his mind, then continued “…as they would have occurred back in Realtime: Ritter was commanding ZG26 just as he is now, and his unit’s performance in The Med and in Russia during ‘41 and ‘42 was good enough to earn him a promotion or two and a spot on the General Staff. He was a major-general by 1944, and a junior advisor with Hitler’s entourage. He was also one of the first against the wall with Von Stauffenberg after the failed bomb plot. He was one of the pricks that managed to get the guy and his bomb into the same room as Adolf in the first place! There were rumours that paperwork discovered after the purges placed him high in the leadership of the ‘new’ German government if they’d succeeded. Either of you really think he’d be working with the Nazis to such an extent he’d allow himself to get shot down, just so we could capture him?”
“I wouldn’t like to try for ‘a little bit shot up’ in a hostile environment either just so I could bail out… I’ll tell you that straight!” Davies admitted with a lop-sided grin. “As I found out on Saturday myself, it’s far too easy to get your ass shot off completely!” He shrugged, then added thoughtfully: “Pity those bastards didn’t nail Hitler with that bomb plot. We could’ve ended the war a year earlier with someone sane in charge.” His grin broadened momentarily and became a little malicious. “Probably would’ve pissed the Ruskies off too!” Despite almost a twenty years of ‘peace’ between United States and the CIS following the end of the Cold War, some old prejudices still died hard within the US military.
“Yeah… a negotiated peace wasn’t on Stalin’s agenda at all.” Thorne agreed with a thin smile. “I don’t know that ‘pissin’ off the Ruskies’ would’ve been a great idea at that point, though! Those guys lost twenty million against the Krauts — two million at Leningrad alone — and they weren’t about to forget that. Had the western alliance struck a peace pact with Germany, you might well have seen US and Soviet troops fighting for the Elbe rather that shaking hands across it… would’ve been real good for the world during the fifties and sixties if the Iron Curtain had started at the English Channel!”
“Come on…!” Davies scoffed lightly. “The Russians weren’t that good!”
“Yeah, well they weren’t that bad either… sheer weight of numbers alone could well have been enough. The Krauts threw everything they had at them and couldn’t even slow them down!” He shook his head in a dismissive gesture. “In any case, the whole thing was completely academic then, and its doubly so now! Lieutenant-Colonel Carl Ritter has dropped into our laps. Fine… ‘Good deal’, as they say in your country, Jack. We just need to work out what to do with the arsehole.”
“Pardon my ignorance, people,” Kransky chimed in from his seat at a table on his own, toward the rear of the room, “but could someone please tell me who this Kraut son of a bitch is?” Although more coarsely voiced than words Trumbull would’ve chosen, the question echoed similar thoughts in his own mind.
“Carl Werner Ritter: born 1905 and died (in Realtime) in August of 1944,” Thorne began, grinning apologetically for not previously filling the two new Hindsight members in. “On the face of it, a damn good pilot and commander, and career Luftwaffe all the way. Other than that, not much can be said about him…” he allowed the sentence to trail off until Kransky was on the verge of another question “…except… he has one single important and very significant thing about him that interests us: our sources back in Realtime believed he’s the biological father of one Kurt Reuters, ex-Bundeswehr and current Reichsmarschall of the Wehrmacht.” Thorne positively beamed at being the centre of the two men’s attention, and at the spectacle of it all as expressions of stunned disbelief flashed back at him in an instant. “That pretty much answer your questions…? Yes…? Excellent…! Ideas, anyone…? Bueller…? Bueller…?” Neither Trumbull nor Kransky were capable of asking anything more at that moment, something Thorne considered quite an achievement in itself, knowing the pair as he did.
“Why not just hand him over to the proper authorities and let him take his chances like any other downed flier?” Davies was a capable man, but Thorne was sometimes exasperated by his ability to narrow his focus on some issues.
“I think Max has other ideas for this feller’s potential,” Eileen Donelson observed softly, regarding the grin that spread across Thorne’s face with interest.
“I reckon we can turn him,” Thorne spoke slowly, his gaze as steady as his tone was serious.
“Are you nuts?” Davies was shaking his head now, mildly incredulous. “Have you forgotten who we’re talking about?”
“Not at all… I just don’t see why that should make any difference…”
“Of course it makes a fuckin’ difference! He’s Reuters’ father, Goddamnit! If you want to really turn him, you’ll probably have to give him the same spiel you handed Trumbull, here! You’ll have to tell him what we’re really about!”
“Probably, but…”
“What’re you going to tell him about Reuters?”
“What the fuck do you think I’m gonna tell him about Reuters, y’ great pillock…?” Thorne shot back with mild derision. “Throw him some ‘Luke, I am your father!’ bullshit? Do I look like Darth Fuckin’ Vader to you?” Save for Trumbull and Kransky, who could never get the joke, everyone grinned at the remark, Davies included. They were all close and knew how Thorne operated, and that morning he was in a particularly good mood for a change. Jack Davies had a good idea of the reason for the good humour, having been woken up unexpectedly by the noises next door during the middle of the night, and he wasn’t going to take offence… although he still had to admit he was more than a little envious.