CHAPTER 27

As the Condor wobbles out to sea, both chutes open with a pop and a jerk, Dorothy’s 100 feet lower.

Harry partially loses his grip on Ira, but hangs on with one hand. “Can you see what looks like your uranium building, Ira?”

“Over there, by the water, toward downtown, those three warehouses joined together. By the elongated shape of the structure, I am certain. It has to be the one.”

Harry fumbles with the Minox, aims, says, “Say cheese,” and clicks the shutter.

“I’d take another, but I’d need my other hand to advance the film.”

“One, yes sir, one photograph is fine.”

Due to their additional heft, Harry plus 60 kilos (132 pounds), they float by Dorothy, who blows them a kiss as they drift downward.

Dorothy, the secret paratrooper.

If they survive the night, they’ll have to have a chitchat about her duties other than as a schoolmarm.

“Sir!” Ira screams, waving his free arm.

Another Messerschmitt Bf-109 is racing toward them from the west, straight and level, guns blazing, bullets zinging by them.

“Duck,” he tells Ira.

“Duck where, sir?”

Damn good question. Before Harry ducks, he looks up at Dorothy. She has taken from her purse an automatic pistol that dwarfs her hand. Maybe an American service-model Colt .45.

She is firing, not aiming, simply emptying the gun ahead of the German fighter. Harry is thinking she’s panicking; he can hardly blame her.

The Messerschmitt flies between them, a deafening hurricane blowing Harry and Ira sideways. As they recover to the vertical, the Nazi fighter flattens out above the water and lands on it as if it were the Clipper, despite doing 300 miles per hour and not being a seaplane. It vanishes in an erupting froth of water and aluminum.

Just ahead of Dorothy, Harry and Ira land on the lower portion of the Tower of Belém, which Harry regards fondly as an asymmetrical wedding cake. Built as a fortress from 1514–1520, it was the starting point of explorers who set out to discover the trade routes. A tourist attraction now, it still has a practical use, he thinks.

Harry runs underneath Dorothy, catching her, breaking her fall.

Holding her as they collapse together, he says, “When did you become such a deadeye?”

“It was child’s play. I fired ahead of him and let him fly into my bullets. One lucky bullet was all that was required to do the job. Hitting the pilot or a vital part of the engine.”

Her chute falls to the ground, covering them.

“Harry, don’t,” she says.

They are across from Salazar’s World Exhibition, the Esposição do Mundo Português. Everyone is clapping their hands, thinking it’s all part of the extravaganza.

Free of Harry’s embrace, Dorothy lifts the silk and they come out from under it. They blow kisses to the cheering onlookers and walk to the sidewalk. A parachute stunt and downed airplanes; he’d applaud too.

“If we had a wrist radio like Dick Tracy’s, we could call your brother.”

“There is no such thing and there never will be, but there is such a thing as a phone booth, Horatio Alger.”

They go to the first one they spot.

David Booth turns up in 10 minutes in a 1937 Ford.

“You sell cars along with major appliances, Dave? Buicks and Fords?” Harry says, in the car, giving him the Minox and relating Ira’s story fast.

“One more thing, Harry, sir,” Ira says in the car. “Are you familiar with Reinhard Heydrich?”

“By golly, I am. Now that you mention it, we have met. Informally.”

“He flew in from Berlin and visited, terrifying us.”

“Really?” Harry says.

“The man is a beast, a monster. He is ordering more powder, on a faster deadline, on a crash program basis. Hitler and Himmler approved. If this was meant for London, the next batch is earmarked for the United States.”

Harry smiles. “Reinhard and I discussed that among other stuff.”

Dorothy says, “Ira, honey, be truthful, are you really dying or not?”

“No, no. The sores. I have many allergies. I was very careful as I know more than anyone the power of this terrible material in large dosages.”

Dorothy says, “The Germans are holding your family hostage in the camps?”

He shakes his head. “Friends and relatives. Even neighbors who we only knew in passing, in saying hello at the grocer’s, like that. The Nazis are thorough at every diabolical thing they do. At least a hundred people I know of. I know they’re already dead. The last letters they sent said all was well. I know they were forced to.”

“How?”

“How they wrote, the phrasing. Speaking of hometowns that weren’t ours and cousins who did not exist. That stopped. They must have been found out. Now the letters are forgeries. Good forgeries, but forgeries just the same. Then they stopped altogether.”

“I am so sorry about your brother and the rest of your family,” Dorothy says.

Ira begins crying. “He sacrificed himself so that the world could know.”

“Driver, I’ll double your fare if you step on the gas,” Harry tells David, who has been uncharacteristically silent.