“I will be damned,” Clete said.
“I’m Ford,” the tall captain said, “and this ugly old man is Commander Tony Armstrong, USN. You really don’t remember ever seeing either of us, sir?”
Clete shook his head.
“But you do remember having been on what is now your grandfather’s Flying Brothel?” Armstrong asked.
“‘Tempelhof approach control, this is Navy 7077 . . .’” Commander Ford recited.
“Jesus!” Clete said, as he put together the pieces.
“And then we flew you—and Boltitz and von Wachtstein and those two German kids—from Berlin to Brazil,” Armstrong said, “to Val de Cans U.S. Air Force Base.”
“The . . . Flying Brothel . . . then had U.S. Navy markings, and the pilots were Navy officers,” Clete remembered, out loud.
“Under orders never to talk to their passengers,” Ford said. “Nice to see you again, Colonel.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Clete asked.
“Yeah,” Ford said. “I guess we’re going to have to. The reason we were flying Navy 7077—the Brothel—was because we worked for Admiral Souers. . . .”
“Doing what?”
“This is classified Top Secret–Presidential, Colonel Frade. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Whatever the President asked him to do.”
“Like what, for example?”
“You’re not cleared for that, generally, but, for example, picking up a jarhead light bird in New Orleans and flying him to Berlin because the President wanted to talk to him. Getting the picture?”
“Got it,” Clete, vividly recalling that surprise trip and secret meeting with Truman, replied with a chuckle.
“Apparently,” Ford went on, “the President told the admiral that your grandfather had bought the Flying Brothel from Howard Hughes, and Hughes was going to provide a crew from Lockheed to fly it down here for him. The President said the Lockheed crew was likely to see things he’d rather they not see, so why not send those nice guys who do flying jobs for the admiral—who knew how to fly the Brothel and how to keep their mouths shut—instead. And here we are.”
“Does my grandfather know about this?”
Both men shook their heads.
“But the admiral told me,” Ford said, “to tell you that you could tell him if you thought it was a good idea.”
“Anything else?”
“Cutting to the chase,” Armstrong said, “we are under orders to render any service Lieutenant Colonel Frade may ask of us.”
“So please don’t send us to Rio to catch a slow boat to China—a slow-flying boat to Miami—Colonel,” Ford said. “It looks like the fun here is just about to start.”
“What about the rest of your crew?” Frade asked. “How much do they know? How much can they be told?”
“They’re all assigned to the Naval Office of the President—we are, too, by the way—and all of them have all the exotic security clearances. I have complete trust in them.”
This is not what I expected, Clete decided.
But as my beloved grandfather is wont to say, “Don’t complain, just play whatever cards the dealer gives you.”
“I’ve got a couple of Top Secret–Presidential operations going here,” Clete said. “One of them you don’t really have to know about, but I’m going to tell you a little about it. You two only. Don’t share this with the rest of your crew. Understood?”