Dave Dawson with the Eighth Air ForceBowen, Robert Sidney
General
Dave Dawson with the Eighth Air Force
Bowen, Robert Sidney
World War, 1939-1945 -- Juvenile fiction
With a look of scorn and loathing for the dead man, he got to his feet
and went over to the prostrate form of the man referred to as Herr
Baron. The false face still looked the same, and the Yank air ace
tried not to look at it as he went through the pockets of the man's
uniform. What he found so amazed him and angered him that for a moment
he trembled with loathing and blazing anger. Herr Baron's papers,
all strictly official and military, showed that he was an American
colonel in the Yank Air Forces, that he was commanding officer of such
and such group, but that of recent date he was attached to Air Forces
Intelligence in England.
"The dirty--!" Dawson began, and then words failed him.
He put a hand to his forehead, and closed his eyes tight for a moment.
Like Freddy Farmer, he was almost inclined to believe that all this
just hadn't happened. That he was having a wild, crazy dream, and
that he would wake up soon to find that everything was all right.
But it wasn't a dream; it was cold, stark truth, incredible as it
seemed. Three Nazis of no less than Herr Himmler's brood, yet two
carried perfect identification as Englishmen. And the third, definite
identification as a colonel serving in the U. S. Army Air Forces.
"But it just doesn't make sense!" Dawson muttered, and stared at Herr
Baron's picture with the official Air Forces stamp imprinted on it.
"How in the world did he get away with it? If I could tell that his
face was faked, anybody else could have spotted the same thing. I don't
see how the--"
He cut the rest short as something peculiar about the man's left tunic
lapel caught his eye. He reached out a hand and felt of the lapel. His
heart leaped, and in the next instant he had whipped out his jackknife
and was slashing at the lapel seams. When he had cut an opening big
enough, he thrust his fingers inside and felt a thin inch by inch and
a half leather-covered book. He pulled it out to see that it was a
worn address and memo book that had several pages missing. And when
he thumbed through those that were left it was to discover that they
were filled with countless numbers. Some of them in groups, and some
of them but a single number. All were written in a fine hand with a
needle-sharp indelible pencil.
"Code, of course," he grunted. "British Intelligence will break it down
soon enough, and--"
Dawson stopped and sat up straight.
"Speaking of British Intelligence," he grunted, "what's Freddy doing on
that telephone? Making a date with the operator?"
As there was only one way to get the answer to his question, he got to
his feet, went over to the side door and pushed it open.
"Hey, Freddy, what--?" he began, and stopped short.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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