Skipper, Kowalski and Marlene stood grimly assembled before McSlade. None of them had said a word after the initial protests. They'd been caught red handed. Skipper and Kowalski had just been congratulating themselves on discovering the origin of the blackmail note and evidence of embezzlement when Frances Alberta walked down the corridor. At least she hadn't caught them searching her office, but she had caught them right in the middle of a suspicious conversation being held in English. Alberta had been in there a long time before they were instructed to enter and Kowalski had no idea what she'd said, but he had a feeling it wasn't good for them. He doubted that she believed his excuse that they were discussing like that because he'd wanted to get an honest report out of Captain Knife that wouldn't be overheard.
"You're quite the linguist, Captain Knife." McSlade spoke. "Your accent is perfect and you seem completely at home with the various slang terms and idioms." McSlade's gaze turned on Kowalski, "Yours is pretty good as well." He whispered something to Alberta that Kowalski interpreted as "Not". "I assume you were testing him, Inspector?" At least Kowalski was out of this, "What is your conclusion?" Well, maybe Kowalski wasn't so lucky. Betraying a teammate Skipper knew was no small burden…
"Captain Knife passed with flying colours." Kowalski replied. Apparently for Kowalski, it was. All he gave Skipper was a flash of an apologetic look.
"I thought so." McSlade spoke.
"I can explain…" Skipper began.
"Yes, I suppose it would be good to know."
"I…" Skipper paused, "I studied in America. Before the war."
"Yeah, studied what?" Kowalski scoffed before realizing that wasn't exactly helping, "I mean, clearly the Captain is a man of academia and learning."
"What did you study, Captain Knife?" Alberta asked.
"Uh, y'know, just what people normally study in America." Skipper replied getting the sense he was only digging himself in deeper, "Science and stuff... I didn't finish." He added before Kowalski reached the point of being unable to restrain the urge to call him a fraudulent disgrace to the scientific community.
"What do you think, Alberta?" McSlade asked, "Do you think he fits the bill?"
"Perfectly." She replied.
"We're looking for someone who can pass as an American, or a Brit would be fine too." McSlade explained, "I think you might be just the man." Skipper breathed a silent sigh of relief, "I have no idea what the job would entail, but I was told to keep an eye out for someone like you. Frankly, I think it's just a last effort on his part to get his career back on track after that kidnapping incident. He's looking for some spy or another and thinks that a fellow countryman in need would draw him out, at least I think that's what he's up to."
"I've stayed away from my men too long already," Skipper quickly replied, feigning regret, "I was planning on flying out tonight if I could find a plane and a pilot…"
"That was the other thing I'd wanted to speak to you about." McSlade interrupted, "You know Pinky?"
"Everyone knows Pinky." Marlene commented.
"I'll be flying out there today, you're welcome to tag along." Skipper quickly replied that he'd be honoured to.
"Pinky was my next stop too." Kowalski added quickly. McSlade reluctantly allowed him to come too. Things couldn't have turned out better.
"You aren't much of a brother, are you?" Kitka spoke. Blowhole had been trying start a conversation with her for hours, ever since Kowalski had left the two of them at the local inn and told them to stay put, but she just kept reading that infernal book. Still, this was better than her previous monosyllabic replies.
"What do you mean I'm not much of a brother?" Blowhole protested, looking hurt.
"Well, your sister's in this mess because of you." Kitka replied. Blowhole loved the way she was always so matter of fact. "You could have stopped the marriage."
"I don't run my sister's life, it was her mistake to make."
"You'd take that attitude with some like Hans?" Kitka countered.
"Well, no, I didn't realize what he was like at the time, I thought he was just inept and arrogant and a little over friendly, but I never guessed he was, well, evil." He could have chosen those words a lot better.
"I didn't think you'd have a problem with that last part." Kitka all but sneered, picking up her book again. "I have heard the 'legend': Manfredi and Johnson, the two walking corpses, more machine and science experiment than men."
"I saved their lives!" Blowhole protested.
"I think they would rather you'd left them to die." Kitka picked up the book and resumed reading, then another thought seemed to occur to her, "And I'm sure the fact you were keeping them alive was secondary to your own curiosity." That seemed to be all she wanted to say.
"I know what I did was wrong, but that's why I'm trying to help bring Doris back for Kowalski." Blowhole was all but pleading at this point, "I'm trying to prove that…"
"You can't just forgive the bad someone's done because they do one good thing, in the same way we don't generally expect to forget the good someone did because they did something bad. I don't forgive people. And I don't believe you really care about Kowalski in the least, you just hate Hans." Kitka snapped, Blowhole once again went to protest, but she cut him off, "If Skipper was here, right now, unarmed, you wouldn't hesitate to do what Hans did to him, would you? All for what? Your eye?" Kitka returned to her book.
"So why are you here?" Kitka looked up, "I know revenge when I see it, that's why you're here." Blowhole accused, "You're no better than me; at least I'm open about it…"
"You lost your eye in a fair fight against Skipper, he did nothing out of line." Kitka snapped. Her eyes burned with a hatred that warned Blowhole he'd crossed the line, "I deserve revenge, unlike you. I'm not going to pretend its right or moral, but he has to pay." Blowhole, perhaps not wisely, decided to push it a step farther.
"Why, because one of the team was your high school sweetheart who broke up with you?" Kitka just looked at him for an uncomfortable silence, then shook her head.
"A year ago all my dreams were going to come true, I'd just been given this ring." She looked down at a sparkling bit of diamond on her finger, "Then he tore it all down, destroyed everything, because that's what he does." Blowhole let her quietly return to her book. Unless he'd read her wrong, he had a feeling the two of them had something in common, dreams ruined by Skipper.
"Two of the planes brought down in Force's thunderstorms were from Pinky's outfit." Skipper had addressed the pair. "Then McSlade goes and visits Pinky. Anyone else see something suspicious here?" Skipper remembered Kowalski giving some completely unintelligible statistic that he ignored, continuing regardless, assuming that it was backing up his earlier statement. "Kowalski, I want you to check the planes present against the records, find out if any of them could have been one of the damaged planes, just fixed and repainted. Marlene, you're job's obvious, get information out of Pinky and McSlade. Kowalski, while everyone's watchin' you and on their best behaviour, I'm going to take a look around, see if there's anything interesting."
He liked to keep the vague and open ended objectives for himself. It gave him more room to follow his gut. At that moment all he was following was his gut. So far he'd found nothing to indicate Pinky was doing anything but attempting to cover up his mass smuggling. He found suspicious documents in droves, but they all pointed to that and nothing but that. Really, the more supplies Pinky stole from his own side, the better for Skipper, so he might as well have found less than nothing.
What caught Skipper's eye was a bit like the glint of binoculars in the woods, a flash of light that wasn't supposed to be there. In this case, it came from a box. It was a small box, too small for someone to be hiding in there with a pair of binoculars, who's label claimed was full of used, broken parts ready for disposal. That was what troubled him, because the parts that had caught his eye looked shiny and brand new. Skipper picked one of them up. Sure, he couldn't make heads or tails of what it was, but it looked like it was in one piece and it was so new he could even see the marks left over from when it was manufactured. He checked the box for any other label that would explain the presence of all brand new parts in a box labelled used and broken next to a bunch of other stuff ready for disposal. Skipper's gut told him to look at his watch. He had ten minutes till his plane left.
Skipper could hear a familiar voice faintly from outside the small office-like space he was in, out in the main hangar.
"… It's pretty simple, that's the genius of it…" Only one man he knew always had to include the word 'genius' in describing his own inventions.
"And none of the parts you discarded will go to waste because they're exactly the ones we need for…"
"Exactly, and with the new modifications you should see a 16% increase in…" Skipper stepped out into the hangar just as Kowalski was just starting to get into the dull statistical stuff. "Skipper!" Kowalski greeted cheerfully, "See this engine…"
"Could I talk with you in private, a moment?" Skipper interrupted. Kowalski's new friend thanked him for the advice and left.
"Perfect timing as always Skipper," Kowalski beamed, "You're just in time to see…"
"Yeah, to see you helpin' the enemy war effort."
"Sorry sir." Kowalski replied sheepishly, "It was only a few modifica… well, actually I redesigned about half of it. I'm an inventor, I've gotta invent!" Apparently that didn't fly with Skipper.
"… And stepping out of character like that. Your arrogance could have gotten us all killed if he'd recognised you." Kowalski nodded. "Well, did you find anything useful, at least?" Kowalski winced, "Alright, start packing, we fly back to McSlade's in an hour."
"I'm sorry, sir, but he just left." Explained the worried aid for the second time, "I have no idea where he went, he just walked out and left. He said it was personal business, nothing that would concern…"
"That was what he said the night he tried to take out that base single handed." Skipper countered.
"It's the anniversary of his fiancée's… disappearance, surely you of all people know that." The lieutenant countered accusingly. Skipper hated to turn up claiming to be on Hans' authority, but he'd tried three other identities none of which the Falcon had granted an audience to. The famed air ace seemed to be almost a recluse, flying out when he was told to but otherwise avoiding leaving the airfield. That, and that they'd been caught searching the Falcon's office (after climbing through the window) and needed a way to explain themselves, "Surely you can understand…"
"You three search his office and quarters again and question anyone you come across," Skipper ordered Kowalski, Private and Rico who immediately disappeared, "Arlene, I want you to take down the lieutenant's answers. Where did he go?" Skipper demanded once again.
"I don't know, he left ten minutes ago, the colonel said he was driving into town." The aid replied, starting to reach the end of his wits.
"Did he say when he'd be back?"
"No, he didn't."
"Was there anything unusual about him?" the soldier looked awkwardly down at the floor then answered.
"Yes, there was. He seemed oddly determined, but we haven't received any orders today, the weather isn't very good. I asked him about it and he said he was going to finish something or set something at rest or something like that." He paused, "He hasn't been his self the last couple of days. He asked me a couple of days ago to quietly circle a description around some of the men he trusts." The lieutenant winced, realizing then that he was as of now no longer one of those men, "It was pretty generic though, I mean, you'd even fit it." Skipper paused. "But…"
"Thank you lieutenant." Skipper cut him off. He called Kowalski, Private and Rico back – they'd found nothing aside from a handwritten note with the description the aid had referenced – and the five of them left. "Why does everything always have to get so much more complicated?" Skipper snapped as he slammed on the gas, racing back towards town.
"I thought you said that's what makes this job fun?" Private asked.
"Not this time." Skipper corrected.
"Is the Falcon the one we were supposed to pass the information to?" Marlene asked.
"I don't know." Skipper replied, "But I know he's after me."
"Skipper, that description could fit anyone your height with black hair and blue eyes…" Kowalski began.
"'Eah, why 'e be af'er oo?" Rico concurred.
"Because that unauthorized mission that cost him his fiancée failed because of me." Skipper replied, "Now thanks to him deciding to pick now of all times to go after revenge I'm going to have to lie low for a while… Rico, give me directions to the nearest safe house you can think of."