A little more than two hours later, after both teams had reported back and no major wrinkles had developed in the fabric of Hannibal Smith's latest plan... at least not yet... the nine men sat in the living room of the A-Team's suite, making short work of LeBeau's latest collection of appetizers and listening to the nearly crystal-clear reception from Murdock and Kinch's bugs.
"Clear as a bell, and totally wireless..." Kinch nodded, clearly pleased. "Well, I'll be."
"You should see what they can do with detonation packs," Carter told him. "You could fit enough to wipe out a whole supply depot in your pants pocket, and still take out a railroad bridge on your way home. Technology has really improved since the forties."
"Maybe we should enlist for the next war."
"I'll pass, thanks," Newkirk put in. "But do drop me a postcard."
The boxy receiver had a little less style than their old coffee pot, maybe, but then again their percolator with the red light on the base and the speaker in the filter basket had never been able to pick up from a dozen different transmitters. When B.A. flipped a toggle switch, the input changed from room to room. Nothing going on in the main salon. Nothing in the garden. But in Hochstetter's office, a voice was coming through the microphone loud and clear. So loud, in fact, that B.A. reached to turn the volume down.
"Hear the difference?" Hogan asked Hannibal.
"I take it that's the real thing."
Murdock knocked his left ear with the heel of his hand. "Man, that is painful... let's go back and take that one out, Kinch; the one thirty feet down the hall can cover."
"We could probably hear him fine if we just opened the window."
"Why am I only hearing of this now?" the major's voice roared.
"We... we wanted to be certain, Herr Major..." The softer... much softer... voice of the other person in the office with him was barely audible. "Before disturbing you..."
"I find the fact that one of my aides has disappeared extremely disturbing, Rutger! How long does it take you to discover that a man has vanished? You check all the dresser drawers and behind the sofa cushions before you make such a report, ja?"
"I like a thorough search," Hogan nodded.
"In case it has escaped your notice, Rutger, Rudolf was meant to be the bait... if the bait is gone, the trap has sprung, and I must leave this place before whoever it was that took Rudolf comes back for me!"
"Not good..." Hannibal shook his head. "Just exactly what we don't want."
"I want my car prepared and ready to depart by ten o'clock tonight! I will accept no excuses! You will ensure that my bags are packed and in the trunk of that car, or you will be in the trunk of that car, Rutger! You think that would be a pleasant way to travel?"
"No... no, Herr Major..."
"Then if you do not wish to find out, you do as I say and you do it quickly! You will also arrange to transport the gold; I do not know how long I will be away from Buenos Aires."
Face's ears had no trouble picking up on that word. "Gold...?" he repeated eagerly.
"Ex-Nazis don't carry their bankroll in their wallets," Hannibal said. "They're not interested in the stuff that folds; they want something a little more substantial. Currencies can collapse; other commodities don't."
"Like gold." That was one of Face's favorite words; he didn't mind saying it again. "You think we might be able to pick up a bonus on this job, Hannibal? I wonder how much he's talking about."
"While you're busy wondering that, Face, you might also take a minute to wonder who it rightfully belongs to," Hannibal reminded him.
"That's right," Hogan nodded. "Whatever he was getting paid in the Gestapo, I guarantee you it didn't come in that kind of currency. That had to come from somewhere... or someone... else. One of the occupied countries, most likely. Banks in Poland or France."
"Haven't we got our hands full with the one kidnappin'?" Newkirk asked. "Here we are talkin' about gold and we don't even have the major yet."
"Spoilsport," Face grumbled.
"I like to keep our options open," Hannibal said. "If we get the chance to liberate the gold as well as box up the major, we'll see what we can do. I always hate to leave a mess behind; we should clean up as well as we possibly can."
"That's the best idea I've heard all day," his lieutenant said with satisfaction. "You can put me in charge of that part of the plan, Hannibal; I'll give it everything I've got."
"Oh, I know you will... but that's not what we came down here for, and we are going to make sure we've got the major sewn up before we start getting greedy."
"'Greed' is a word that's often over-used..."
"Okay, substitute 'avarice' if you like. But we're still concentrating on the major first."
Hogan liked the sound of that. "If he's planning to take off in that limo, he'll need a driver."
"Right."
"What if we helped him out and found one for him... I mean, since he's already short-handed?"
Hannibal grinned. "You think he hasn't got one on staff already?"
"I think he'll like ours better."
"I think you're right."
oo 0 oo
Both the switch and the splice that had been placed on the garage alarm were still in place and functioning. B.A. preferred to use the switch; he deactivated the alarm and climbed in through the window as Hannibal had done the night he'd planted the tracking device under the hood of the limo. This time he was after something a little larger. He waited in the dark for the main door to open and the liveried driver to enter. It was nine o'clock; they had one hour. The driver had a little less. As soon as he opened the left-hand door of the limo to get behind the wheel, B.A. came up behind him and swiftly and almost silently took him out of commission. There was a slight clank of gold chains, but only B.A. was conscious to hear it. When he gave a hushed call of "get in here, fool!" towards the open window, Face climbed in to join him.
"I ordered a forty regular," he muttered as he knelt to help Baracus undress the driver. "The sleeves'll be too long."
"You want me to stretch your arms out for you?" B.A. growled.
"Uh, no... that's okay; I'll manage."
"Thought so."
Once again, he was stuck with the rotten part of the operation, Face sulked. He discarded his own dark blue pullover and started to don the driver's button-down shirt. Why him? There was always a reason, or an excuse, and this time it had been that they couldn't take the chance of Hochstetter recognizing one of Hogan's men at the last second. Otherwise, it could be Carter in here right now, lucky enough to be getting undressed in the dark and putting on someone else's clothes that smelled like cheap aftershave... but no; let's get Face to do it. And then he had to go back into the house and meet up with Hannibal and the rest... nothing to it, just walk through the house like he belonged there, a house loaded with paranoid Nazis ready to shoot first and ask questions later. And somewhere around here there was a fortune in gold that nobody was even looking for. Where was the justice in that?
"You gonna move faster or am I gonna have to help you?" B.A. demanded. "You ain't gonna like it if I have to help you!"
"I'm moving!"
He'd been right; it was a bad fit. The cap wasn't right either; it slid down a little too far over his forehead. Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing; it would keep his face out of sight a little better. "How do I look?" he asked B.A.
"Like a fool dressed up as a driver. Now come on!"
He sighed. "I had to ask..." He took a quick look in the side mirror of the limousine… then took the cap off and brushed the front of his meticulously blow-dried blond hair off his forehead with his right hand and held it, taking a closer look. He was not losing his hair… was he?
"Move it, Face!"
"I'm coming, I'm coming!"
oo 0 oo
He rejoined LeBeau and Newkirk, one-half of the rest of the inside team, at the end of the hall where Hochstetter's office was located. One change from Kinch's and Murdock's earlier trip into the house: the office door was now locked.
There was just one problem with the lock, and it wasn't the standard problem one might expect: two men suddenly brandished lockpicks in their hands; just like a quick-draw in a Western movie, without the bang.
"I'll flip you for it," Newkirk offered.
"With what; your two-headed coin? You're a cheap, pathetic excuse for a burglar." Face pointed down the hall. "Hey, did you just hear something down there?"
Newkirk raised his gun and turned to look… that was all the time Face needed to edge him out of the way, drop to his knees in front of the lock and insert his own pick. "Oh, I'm cheap and pathetic, am I?" Newkirk hissed when he realized he'd been bested, giving Peck an answering jostle in return.
"If the orthopedic shoe fits, Granny..." Face was still in a foul mood from the forced quick-change in the garage and there was no more appealing target for his wrath than the chronically-annoying Englishman... he was even kind of glad Newkirk was there, for a change; at least this time he had a use for him. Face turned his attention to the lock… it wasn't the most elaborate one he'd ever had to pop, a standard pin tumbler set-up, but it wasn't exactly a luggage clasp either. It took concentration, keen hearing, sensitive fingers… skills he'd been honing to a fine edge ever since his misspent youth. He knew exactly what he was doing.
"You see this here dial, Louis?" Newkirk's voice came over his right shoulder. "This is called a 'chronograph'… you don't see this on just any watch, but sometimes they have 'em on the posh ones."
"Do not break my watch…" Face squeezed out between his clenched teeth. Damn… he'd swiped it again. But if Newkirk thought he was going to abandon the lock, he was crazy.
"Really? What does it do?" LeBeau asked conversationally, playing along with the game.
"Well, it's just a fancy word for a timer, that's all," Newkirk continued casually, as if he were presenting an informal seminar on personal timepieces. "Clocks to a fraction of a second, with marvelous accuracy. Only problem is, what we'll need to time this job is an hourglass."
Face felt his hand start to shake just enough to make the pick slip off the first pin, short of the shear point. Steady there, fella… he's trying to rattle you… don't give him the satisfaction… On his second try he felt the pin click into place; that was followed by the next pin, and the next. When the fifth one slid into position, the knob turned and the door opened. Nothing wrong with that time.
Newkirk buffed the watch crystal on his sleeve before tossing the Rolex back to Face. "You looked almost like you knew what you were doin' for a moment there."
"Thanks; I'll cherish that."
Empty and dark, the office appeared cavernous. The three of them were barely inside when Hogan and Hannibal joined them from the corridor. LeBeau shone his flashlight over the row of file cabinets in the back of the room. "This looks like the public library of the Second World War."
"We've heard the story and we know how it ends, remember?" Hogan asked.
Newkirk, taking a cursory look at the cabinets himself, chuckled when he saw the one at the end of the row. "I should think you'll want to have a look at this, sir."
Four heavy shoulder-high five-drawer units stood side by side. The index card mounted in the bracket on the first one read 1937-1940, the second one was labeled 1941-1943, the third 1944-1945. The fourth cabinet had no dates on the label. There was just one five-letter word to describe its contents.
HOGAN.
Hogan couldn't contain a short burst of laughter. "Well, well, well… a whole file cabinet just for little old us?"
It was locked, of course, but Newkirk resolved that in short order and pulled open the middle drawer with some difficulty to find that it was literally packed. Not one additional sheet of paper, envelope or folder could possibly have been wedged in there without bursting the dovetails in the ends of the wooden drawer, and it stood to reason that the other four probably looked about the same. Countless documents, maps, and dog-eared corners of photographs poked out of the compacted hodge-podge. "Blimey; never threw anythin' away, did he?"
"Looks like you were a full-time job for this guy," Hannibal observed. "I've heard of obsessions, but this runs a little outside the margins."
"What would he even want with all this?" LeBeau wanted to know. "Why keep it in the first place?"
"You know Hochstetter," Hogan said. "If there were no such thing as obsessive compulsion, he wouldn't have a personality at all."
He didn't seem interested in taking a closer look; just moved away to the window to take a glance towards the garage to make sure the coast remained clear. Hannibal, though, was a little more on the curious side. He couldn't resist taking hold of the protruding edge of a curling eight-by-ten photograph and leveraging it out of the drawer.
It was a color photo of Hogan and his men… the rudimentary color processes of the mid-1940's had faded somewhat, but not entirely. And it was a "candid" shot… that was a nice way of saying it probably had been taken without their knowledge from some distance, a clandestine addition to the Gestapo's gallery of suspects.
They stood in front of a ramshackle barracks, but the passage of time wasn't just evident in the setting, or the fading color of the photo. Hogan, dark hair combed to the side, wore a leather airman's jacket and cap with insignia; he had the military bearing of the officer he was, along with the rugged good looks of a matinee idol. Kinchloe wore his three-up/one-down on the sleeve of his uniform jacket and looked like he'd just stepped off the gridiron. There wasn't a crease on Newkirk's angular face; he stood trim and wiry in the royal-blue uniform of the RAF corporal he had once been. At his elbow, a youthful LeBeau sported a red beret with a Croix de Lorraine under the stripes on his sleeve, and Carter looked on with solemn concentration, hands wedged firmly in the pockets of the sheepskin jacket with the Air Force emblem on the shoulder.
It was like looking at a page from a history book, or a still from an old movie that you couldn't quite recall having seen; something so far in the past that it was no longer clear in your memory. But Hannibal knew those men. They were more than a footnote to military history served up to the honor students at West Point; these were men who had fought hard and long against the worst the Third Reich had been able to throw at them, defied the odds, risked their lives, and willingly stayed behind as they helped scores of others escape from the confines of Luft Stalag Thirteen. Five men who had voluntarily spent some of the best years of their youth behind barbed wire, watching others go free. That kind of man didn't come along all that often; here were five of them all in the same place.
Hannibal found himself wishing he'd been just a few years older when the United States had entered that war. He would have considered it an honor to be in that picture with them.
"How are we doing for time?" Hogan asked from the window.
Face checked his watch... might as well; at the moment he was wearing it. "I've got twenty-one twenty hours."
"Time you were in position, then," said Hannibal. "Get the car and get it into position at the head of the driveway near the front door, where you'll be picking up your passenger. B.A. will still be by the garage if you run into any trouble there. Try not to run into any trouble... it would be a lot better to do this quietly."
No kidding. "I'll see what I can do."
"Then you stop the car at the end of the driveway, where Hogan and I will join you."
"And if he gives me any trouble between the head of the driveway and the end...?"
"Use your initiative."
"Terrific."
"Carter and Murdock will be in the area standing by. There's one of B.A.'s bugs in the limo. If they hear you run into trouble, they're armed and they'll move on your position. What can happen in a hundred feet?"
"I get the terrible feeling I might be just about to find out, with a rabid Nazi in the back seat."
"Face, you worry too much."
"Someone has to do it."