Trophy for Eagles (47 page)

A week later, Bandy and Roget were in the factory early, install
ing a huge paper poster on which was drawn the outline of the
now-famous Hafner Skyangel. Beneath, in bold black letters, was
written: "LIKE THIS, ONLY BIGGER AND BETTER!!!!"

*

Buffalo, New York/June 22, 1933

The Heidelberg Hof restaurant had prospered during Prohibition,
when discreet payoffs to local politicians had enabled it to run a full bar without any problems. Now it was a little on the tatty side, with
peeling prints of wholesome peasants frolicking in the fields and
tonsured monks tippling at their wine casks.

Ernst Udet hardly fit the image of Germany's leading living ace. A survivor of the war, an aerobatic champion, a filmmaker—the
chubby-cheeked flyer sat poking at his plate, trying to separate the gristly slices of smoked pork loin from the greasy sauerkraut, his
normal cherubic smile vanished. He picked up a stack of white bread and thumbed through it as if it were a deck of cards.

"Well, it's not Horcher's, is it? My God, Bruno, how can Americans make millions of cars and not be able to make decent bread? How do you stand it?"

Bruno laughed. "I never eat it, just as I never drink the cold piss they call beer. If you stick to steaks and lobster and scotch, you can
get by."

Udet's movements were mongoose-quick, in odd contrast to his soft, wryly humorous manner of speech. Underneath his courteous manner, he watched Hafner closely, trying to determine if and where he could fit into the scheme of things. Germany needed airmen now, but Udet did not require any more rivals. It was difficult enough just getting along with Goering and his cronies.

He patted his pockets for matches, pushing the earthenware bottle
to Hafner as he lit his cigarette. "Can't fly on one wing; have
another Steinhager." Hafner poured the clear liquor into the tall thin-walled double shot glasses.

Udet tossed his back and smacked his lips. "Just like the good old
days, eh, Bruno?"

They had been good days, even in late 1918, when to their amazement they found that Germany, victor over Russia, was suddenly losing the war. "But times have changed. Then I was thin and had hair. Now, ach." He ran his hand over a balding dome just fringed with hair.

Hafner smiled. Erni was heavier, but that was not the big change.
In 1918, he had been a little gamecock, sure of himself, netting
trophies of aircraft and women with equal abandon. And even with
sixty-two victories, Udet had been by far the best-liked ace. Von
Richthofen had been aloof, a taskmaster, a visionary battle leader who seemed to know that he was doomed to die soon in combat. Goering had been a tyrant, perhaps of necessity, for he had taken over the Richthofen
Geschwader
when the German air force was short of everything but courage. But Udet—everyone had loved
Udet, who had taken seriously flying and killing only. The rest—
squadron discipline, dress, saluting—had meant nothing to him.
The enlisted men particularly, already beginning to be infected with
Bolshevik ideas, had respected him.

He was changed—aged and uncertain. He seemed to be unsure of what to say and how to say it.

Hafner watched him closely. He thought he knew why Udet had
asked to see him. The Nazis had always said they would rearm Germany, and judging from the inquiries for arms his warehouse in New Jersey had been getting, they had already started.

"Remember how we had to put wooden wheels on the airplanes on the ground, and change to rubber tires before a flight? Or fly out to drain the oil and scavenge the copper from a crashed British plane?"

"It's different now, Bruno. Things are looking up. We'll be flying
new planes in a few years, with plenty of tires and all the oil and copper we need."

The flicker of Hafner's eyebrows showed his skepticism. Udet
caught it, and tried to analyze it. His slow and sometimes hesitant manner gave him a chance to think before he spoke. He fiddled with the matches again, to gain time. A smart fellow, he thought; I didn't remember him that way. He was always charging out to get
the enemy, going into combat every day. Even gave some victories
away. That was suspicious!

Udet spoke. "I'm sorry I missed you last year in Germany. I was
shooting a film in Greenland.
SOS Iceberg.
You saw it?"

Hafner shook his head. "Sorry. Has it played in the United States?"

"No, and you are lucky. It is a terrible film, almost killed me. I had to crash a Moth into the freezing water near an iceberg. I damn near drowned."

Udet snubbed his cigarette out, lit another, and poured more Steinhager. He pulled a long, slender green leather folder out of his coat pocket and put it on the table, along with a pen. Udet was an inveterate doodler, a caricature artist. He sketched an enormous fat man, bulging out of the cockpit of an airplane, pudgy fingers bejeweled, his arm extended in a Nazi salute. Tossing it over to Hafner he asked, "Did
timer
Hermann take good care of you?"

"Ja.
Good likeness, Ernst. God, is he fat! I wouldn't have recog
nized him if he hadn't been all decked out in a general's uniform, with poor stupid old Loerzer at his side."

Both men knew that it was only fair that Goering kept Bruno
Loerzer at his side. In 1915 arthritis had crippled Goering, reducing
him from a dashing infantry lieutenant to a convalescent, destined
to be a supply officer in some garrison town. Loerzer had gotten him
into flying, first as an observer, then as a pilot. From that point on, they had been inseparable, managing to get assigned to the same unit, if not the same aircraft, until their successful combat records made them commanders of different fighter units—Loerzer had
Jasta
26 and Goering
Jasta
27.

Udet and Goering had been more rivals than friends, and Loerzer always took Goering's part. But all three men had liked Hafner, and
he had provided a friendly link among them.

"Apparently you are some sort of fair-haired knight with Goering.

He often talks about you, which is rare; he usually talks about himself. What's the story?"

Hafner smiled to himself. The story was simple: he had made a hero out of Goering and never mentioned it afterward. It was just after the war had ended on that bitter November 11, when the politicians had sold the soldiers out, and Goering was ordered to surrender their aircraft, their precious, hoarded Fokkers, to the French at Strasbourg. Goering, already shaken by a brush with a revolutionary "Soldiers' Council," was uncertain how to comply. Hafner had pulled him aside and said, "Let's go—and everyone crash on landing. We'll comply with the terms of the Armistice—but give them shit."

The Fokkers had whirled low across the field in impeccable
formation, wheels just brushing the grass, wingtips interlocked, to
show the French that these were not amateurs arriving. Then a soaring chandelle climb and they had landed like clowns, crashing
their airplanes one by one. Hafner had dug in a wingtip, sending his
Fokker cartwheeling and destroying it. Others ran into each other or into the line of trees that edged the field. When they were finished, the furious French had nothing but kindling on their hands.

The act had made Goering a hero anew, at a time when Ger
many sorely needed new heroes. But Hafner's role was still a secret.
It would remain that way. "We just got along. He needed friends; I
was one."

"Ja,
even now, even with all his phony charm, Hermann is not easy to work with." He thought to himself, And he needs friends more than ever, more than he knows. "But he's doing a good job even if he eats and drinks too much, and ..."

He moved his hands as if he were shoving a hypodermic needle in
his arm.

"Dope? Does the Fuehrer know?"

Udet laughed, dragging deeply on the cigarette. "There's not much Uncle Addie doesn't know, because those swine around him
tell him everything. They're like a ladies' sewing society, all gossip. I
hate them."

Hafner was unsettled. He'd gone to Germany last year to meet the
leading men in the German military because Udet had sent him a
message pleading that he do so. Udet was sending a mixed signal,
telling him of deficiencies in the leadership he was expected to support. Was he trying to confuse him deliberately? Testing him, perhaps? Well, he thought, I've nothing to hide, I'll tell him what I think.

Udet went on. "Goering was badly wounded in the Munich putsch," Udet explained, "and picked up the morphine habit while
he convalesced. He controls it, and even with it, he's the best of the
lot. God, you should see some of them—crazy Hess, that filthy Streicher."

Hafner decided to call the bluff.

"If you hate the Nazis, Ernst, why are you here? Why are you working with them?"

Udet let the cigarette smoke roll out of his nostrils in a long, lazy
stream, eyeing Hafner steadily, as if the remark made profound sense.

"And what was I to do? I don't hate Germany. And how long do
you think I can go on making a living picking up handkerchiefs with
my wingtip and flying under bridges?" He was quiet a moment, and
then said, "And especially doing this." He drank a Steinhager, and poured another.

Hafner was proving to be a little too sharp, a little too smart. He
could be dangerous. But he could also be a good ally. In all the
turmoil of the emerging air force, allies were absolutely necessary.
With Hafner's connections to Goering and Loerzer, he could be invaluable.

"Goering has promised me the rank of colonel when they announce the new air force, and he'll put me in charge of aircraft selection."

Hafner felt his interest quicken. He had his own ideas on the
airplanes a great power needed, and they were a break with past
thinking. Perhaps Udet could be convinced.

Udet said, "That's why I asked you to come here. After two years
of trying, I'm finally getting to buy a Curtiss Hawk, the dive-bomber. They call them Hell Divers, and they are like flying artillery."

Hafner was silent, absorbing all of Udet's remarks, analyzing the
quiet fury that was now obviously blazing beneath the genial surface. They had both been hammered in the fires of war. He wondered how Udet had been affected. He knew that his own standards of judgment and morality had been forever changed. He
had probably killed forty or fifty men in the air, and perhaps twice
that many ground strafing. He could not be sure about the number, but he was very sure that he had enjoyed doing it. Once you operated on that level, once you had established an internal ethic that killing was a pleasure, almost nothing else in life fit in. He remembered his boyhood days, when he would go to church on Good Friday, convinced that his sins were going to pull the thunder and lightning directly down on him. During the war he realized there was no one looking down, no God to judge him. You could do whatever you could get away with. Was Udet the same?

Udet was staring at him, wondering where his mind was.

Hafner snapped back to the present and said, "I know the airplane. It must be obsolete, or the U.S. government wouldn't have permitted its sale. It doesn't compare with my own A-11."

"Ah, maybe so, but as an aircraft type it is superb! There was an
American film last year,
Hell Divers,
a good film, showing how the
American Navy uses dive bombers. I had it shown to the Fuehrer, and finally got permission to buy some demonstrators."

Hafner had seen the film; it was excellent, but hardly a basis on
which to make state armament decisions. He filed the remark away.
If he was ever in a social situation with Hitler, he'd bring up his own
film-flying with Howard Hughes.

"We'll build our own, of course. I have already talked to Henschel and to Junkers. But the Curtiss is a start. I don't think the Americans know what they have."

The fat waitress, her dirndl riding up over huge thighs, had been hovering, happy to have real Germans in the restaurant. Udet pleased her with a lewd grin and then waved her away. He decided to be direct.

"Tell me, what did you think about our new Chancellor?"

"If you asked me last year if he ever had a chance to be elected, I
would have said no. He is terribly impressive, messianic—but so
common."

A mixed expression came over Udet, successively reflecting humor, fear, and embarrassment. He was both a commoner and
common himself, and so was Hafher for that matter. But Bruno was
like so many Germans, enamored of the Hohenzollerns who had done them so much harm, just because they'd been invited to dine
with them, or spent a weekend hunting in some baronial preserve. It
was a medal mentality.