He went back to his seat at the head of the table.
'Reunification…cannot be wasted.' It was the newest member of the Council, Schiller, who spoke. The others looked up in surprise. They had not expected the newcomer to speak so soon. 'Grob Mitzer, our friend, my closest friend, gave his life for this chance. So have countless others, thousands upon thousands who have waited, and many have died, in South America and Africa and other hideous, secret parts of the world. They have, throughout their exiles, sent us money and resources to help us fuel our movement. Our Fuhrer is right. Delay means termination. I, like many of you, have so much to lose if this goes wrong. I don't want them to brand me a bully-boy because I'm a National Socialist, to discredit me through their media. But the prize is worth the risk.'
'Well spoken,' applauded Frick. 'Bravo. Well spoken. We are all respected. We all have positions of influence. But as anarchy increases, so we will be expected to use that influence. Klaus Buhle, through his papers and television interests, can sow the seed for us. He can defend us, can separate us from the past, from the concentration camps and lost wars. He can compare Germany with what it was in the 30's. The National Socialists led us out of depression then, and the National Socialists can do it again. We're not warmongers, but liberationists. Fighting for the values of our heritage. The media will make us respectable.' He already knew that Mitzer's record was under scrutiny, but that could wait. Buhle was bringing that situation under control. 'Against the anarchists, and the communists, that is the only way they can portray us. And with your names leading the party, how can we be taken as warmongers and murderers?'
'That's if the riots and bombings continue,' said Swingler, one of the old crowd. 'The police say they have everything under control.'
'They always say that,' replied Frick. 'They have no idea what's going on.' He didn't add that he was responsible for much of the terrorist acts, and that he would ensure they continued. 'These things always run on longer than people imagine.'
'Even so,' Swingler persisted, 'it's the Lucy Ghosts who'll haunt us. It's their money that made this possible. When they return, their records will brand them as war criminals. Associate with them and we'll be attacked as Nazis.'
'We leave them where they are. Until we're in power.'
'But they want to come back now.'
'They must wait their turn.'
'They've waited a long time. In their swamps and forests, hidden from the world.'
'Then they'll have to wait longer.'
'But we spent millions on destroying their records. We…'
'Willi Kushmann spent millions. Wasted money. I had the highest regard for him, but he was a dreamer. Now's the time to be practical. Realists. The only way to bring back the Lucy Ghosts is to prepare a Germany that wants them back. Help win this fight and we'll have them back sooner than you expect.'
Ch. 55
They never completed the train journey to Penn Station.
Adam insisted they leave the AmTrak Crescent at its penultimate stop in New Jersey. They ate an early lunch, packed their bags and stepped off the train at 1.19 p.m. Adam was impressed; the train, after nearly thirty hours and one thousand miles, was only two minutes late.
They heard the final 'All aboard' as they left the station and took a cab to Teterborough Airport. It was some distance and they refrained from talking throughout the one hour trip.
Teterborough serves private aircraft with the same intensity that Le Guardia and Kennedy serve the commercial routes in and out of New York. As executive jets and smaller piston engined aircraft fly the final approach to Teterborough's runways, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan are only five miles away.
'Almost touch them with my hand,' thought Jenny Dale as she looked out on the skyscrapers, then turned her attention to flying the small, six seater, twin engined Piper Seneca onto the final approach. She had maintained two thousand feet for the last five miles.
'Cleared to land,' crackled the tower operator over her headset.
'Roger.' She eased back on the twin power throttles and pushed the mixture and prop levers fully forward.
She looked to her right once again, savoured Manhattan outlined against the afternoon sky. She pushed the yoke forward and the plane's nose dipped as it started downward towards the runway.
Jenny Dale, dark haired, tall with a buxom figure, and twenty-nine years old, was a ferry pilot from Dagenham in Essex. She had been flying for twelve years, had studied with her father who flew Concorde as a senior British Airways captain, and soloed on her seventeenth birthday. Flying was in her blood; she was the son her parents never had. After she gained her private pilot's licence, she was an instructor at a flying school at Biggin Hill before sitting for her commercial ticket at the age of twenty-one. By then she had accumulated over two thousand hours.
But commercial flying in bloody great buses in the sky never appealed to her. She was an adventuress and she soon turned to ferrying. The easiest way to deliver a plane someone has purchased is to fly it there. As most light aircraft are either made in the United States, or sold on the second hand market there, she learnt to fly the Atlantic in small planes. The northern route from Canada to Europe often included landing in Greenland and Iceland. It was a difficult journey, especially in the winter months when the vagaries of intemperate and often violent weather meant that remote airports could be closed down within minutes.
It was an exciting, yet dangerous life, but one that suited her nature.
She greased the Seneca onto the runway and cleared left, towards the small, but busy terminal and the parking ramps in front of it.
'To the top,' she told the refueller, 'and that includes the ferry tanks inside.' She opened the double rear doors and pointed out the two 45 gallon tanks which were her emergency supply if an airport closed down on her. They were lashed together, upright and side by side, between the rear four seats. A series of switches and fuel locks allowed the pilot to change tanks in mid flight.
She left the refueller and walked into the terminal.
'Hello,' said the Englishman as she helped herself to a mug of courtesy coffee at the desk.
'Hi,' she smiled back.
'You going across the pond?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'Where?'
'Manchester.'
'Could do with a lift.'
'Not insured for it.'
'Worth a thousand pounds to you.'
'Why?'
'Just fancy it. Never done it before and we fancy the trip.'
'We?'
'My friend,' he pointed to where the woman sat, 'and me.'
'People try and get drugs through this way. We're told not to do it.'
'I'm a soldier.' He showed her his passport and warrant card. 'Not a drug dealer.'
'Can't you manage more than a grand? I'm just a simple working girl, you know.'
'Fifteen hundred?'
She nodded. 'Okay. Be ready to go in half an hour. She'll have to sit in the back. Bit cramped, but I need the heavier weight up front. Weight and balance of the plane.'