The Gemini Divergence (43 page)

“No one’s asking you… No one ever asks
you.”

Gus and Jack get a closer glance at the two
mystery men as they waited in line at the register to pay, as the
mysterious men’s table was very near the check out.

Then out of the blue Gus blurted, “Guten Tag
Herr Schwerig, how are you today?” then waited for a reaction.

Schwerig and Graff looked stunned, and slowly
turned to see who was addressing them.

Back at the RAF clerks table, the clerk
noticed the new conversation that had started between Gus and
Schwerig, “Oh my! Look now… Those American servicemen are talking
to some Germans.”

The old sergeant rolled his eyes as he
relented, “Not this again… it’s always this grand conspiracy with
you… The war was over fifteen years ago… can’t you let it go?”

Schwerig, in his usual cool and calm self,
responded to Gus and Jack, “And who do I have the honor of
addressing this evening?”

Gus and Jack stepped out of line and walked
over to the table.

Gus replied, “Technical Sergeant Gus Danuser,
U.S. Air Force,” then held out his hand.

Schwerig ignored Gus’s hand and looked at
Graff and started to laugh as he sarcastically stated, “Oh my, ‘a
sergeant’, for what am ‘I’ bestowed with this graceful
blessing.”

Graff started to laugh in response to
Schwerig’s facetious and snooty remark.

The old RAF sergeant disgusted at Schwerig’s
remarks, “Your theory aside… that is no way for someone to address
a sergeant of any service. I don’t care if that Jerry may have been
an officer.”

“Be quiet, I’m trying to hear the rest of
their conversation.”

Disgusted at the clerks retort, the old
sergeant started to explain his disdain for the clerk’s attitude,
drowning out Gus and Schwerig’s ongoing conversation.

Gus did not appreciate Schwerig talking down
to him either, so he responded glibly, “Oh I’m just the stupid
sergeant that was on the bomber that discovered your hideout in
Antarctica, and I was there to launch the balloon that you ran into
over White Sands, and there the next day at Roswell to clean up
your mess. It was also us in the B-36 over Davis-Monthan that
turned its turret guns on a couple of your guys.”

“I’m the one that sighted them with the view
finder,” interjected Jack as he sat next to Graff, then picked up a
fork and started to eat from Graff’s plate in an extremely
confident and rude comical gesture, “I was there those other times
too… Oh! Gus you forgot the elephant cage.”

Graff responded with a facial expression of
silent disgust as two men from another table, which Gus had not
noticed before, started to stand, but Schwerig silently gestured
for them to stay.

“Oh, yes,” Proudly stated Gus, “It was also
Jack and I that pressed the button on the device that ruined your
day over French Frigate Shoals a few years past… That was quite a
light show. You should have seen it from the ground…Were you there?
I’ll bet that sucked… Sure was pretty though.”

For once Schwerig was truly dumbfounded, but
he quickly responded in his usual cynical tone, “Well Sergeant
‘Gus’, it appears as though we have been silent dancing partners
for quite some time… Tell me, what brings you to Argentina?”

“Well, you know those funny looking skinny
planes that your observers have been watching us operate from NTS
the past few years?”

“Yes.”

“We’re down here using them to make sure that
you boys skedaddle, like you’re supposed too, from Fuerte
Esperanza. You know, that El Impenetrable base with no roads going
to it, or a runway to land on. The one that has more parking pads
than the entire Argentine military has helicopters. I’m sure that
you’re familiar with it. We have been watching you boys move from
there to your new, ‘
secret hideout’,
in Parral, Chile for
some weeks now.”

Schwerig silently began to show signs that he
was growing evermore agitated.

“And how is it, may I ask, that you and your
friend were able to recognize us, when we have never met before?”
asked Schwerig.

“I recognized the both of you from
photographs of the Holloman Accord signing.”

Schwerig mutely displayed antipathy as he
glanced toward Graff for his reaction, then he smiled again at Gus
as he feigned, “Oh, they took photographs that day?” Then he
facetiously continued, “How wonderful.”

Graff leaned over and whispered something to
Schwerig. Then Schwerig thought for a second and queried Gus,
“Where are you boys off to tonight? There are so many things to do
in Buenos Ares.”

Gus Suddenly felt frightened and carefully
responded, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe we’ll just go home now.”

Schwerig took a sip of wine then smiled and
quipped, “Perhaps that is best. There are a lot of dark and
frightening things out there at night. One never knows what could
happen to a couple of naïve American farm boys with little
knowledge of local ways.”

At that Gus and Jack quickly glanced at each
other. In instant silent agreement, they turned and fled. Gus
tossed the cashier the money he already had in his hands as they
passed by on their way out the door.

Schwerig instantly turned and signaled the
two men that were waiting silently at the other table to go get
them and finish them off. They quickly got up and followed Gus and
Jack out the door.

The RAF clerk had been trying desperately to
quiet his sergeant friend and hear the conversation between Gus and
Schwerig, and now he saw Gus and Jack running away as Schwerig’s
goons followed, “I say, shut up and look at that… they’re fleeing.
You talked right over their whole conversation you oaf!”

“I wonder why they’re chasing them?” pondered
the sergeant.

“Well, we’ll never know now… I heard
something about ‘found them in Antarctica’ and ‘cleaned up your
mess at Roswell’.”

“Oh no, this is only going to feed your
theory, isn’t it?”

“Well why are they suddenly chasing
them?”

“I don’t know… why don’t you go ask those
Jerry officers?”

“Do ‘you’ feel like being chased out into the
street like those young Yanks?”

“Not particularly… No.”

“Well then…”

Once outside, Gus and Jack saw a cab a little
way down the street. So they ran to the cab and jumped into the
back.

Gus told the driver, “Just drive!” As he
handed the man some money, while Jack locked the door and looked
behind them as he cried, “Here they come.”

The driver didn’t understand the command, so
he again repeated in Spanish a request for directions.

Then the back door window suddenly shattered
as one of the pursuing men’s arms thrust in through the window in
an attempt to unlock the door.

Jack turned to Gus, who was already exiting
the other side of the cab, so Jack quickly followed.

As they ran across the busy city street,
doing there best to avoid getting hit by a passing car, the other
men rounded the cab to continue pursuit.

A traffic cop whistled frantically at all of
them and started shouting for them to stop. But they continued
until they reached a fence line that was bordering a park on the
far side of the street.

Jack and Gus quickly bounded over the fence
and continued into the trees of the park. Their pursuers had a
little more trouble overcoming the obstacle, but persisted in their
chase.

As Gus and Jack were running down a park
walkway, they came across some street punks standing around a fire
in a steel oil barrel. Some of the youths were spray painting
graffiti on the brick wall behind them.

As they approached the burning barrel their
pursuers overtook them again.

One jumped on Gus and they fell through a
wooden fence into the grass, the other followed Jack, who ran
around the barrel and kept it between his foe and himself, quickly
darting back and forth to keep the obstacle between them.

The street youths were shouting while they
tried to figure out what was going on, which only added to the
pandemonium.

In the confusion, Jack yanked a paint can
from the hands of one of the street punks and sprayed it across the
fire towards his assailant.

His improvised flame thrower instantly
scorched the face and upper body of the man following him, who then
fell to his knees crying in pain.

Upon hearing his comrade crying out in agony,
the man that had been struggling with Gus let go and started to
walk towards his friend.

Gus immediately picked up a piece of wood
from the broken fence and struck his assailant over the back of the
head, after which the man then fell to his knees.

Once Gus and Jack again made eye contact,
they continued their desperate flight into the Buenos Ares
night.

Jack asked as they ran, “Do you know where we
are going?”

Gus responded, “I think so, If I remember the
map right, our embassy is in that group of buildings on the other
side of the park.”

“Do you know which one?”

“No.”

“Great.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No.”

After they emerged from the park, the first
building they came to looked like it was under construction and
there was no front door, so they ran inside.

Once inside, they looked back across the
street towards the park and saw that their assailants were still
after them.

After they saw that there were no other exits
they began running up the stairs.

When the German men arrived inside the
building they paused to listen and heard Gus and Jack ascending the
stairs. In reaction; they quickly pursued them up the stairway.

Floor after floor they climbed until they got
to a level that the staircase was just lying on the floor, having
not been installed yet.

They stood for a moment dumbfounded as to
what they should do now.

As Gus stared through the hole in the ceiling
where the staircase should be installed, Jack cried out from the
next room, “Hey Gus. Come in here.”

When Gus came into the room he discovered
that Jack had come across a dumb waiter or maintenance elevator
shaft with a pair of ropes descending into the darkness.

Gus asked, “Up or down?”

Jack thought for a moment, then they could
hear the men speaking in German down the shaft and the rope
suddenly shook, showing that the men were holding it at a lower
level.

“Up,” responded Jack as he started to climb
the ropes.

Gus quickly followed.

They could then hear the men shouting
excitedly from lower in the shaft.

After they had climbed to the next floor,
Jack cut the rope and pulled the loose section through the pulley,
letting the other end fall into the darkness.

As Jack wound the rope around his forearm he
walked from window to window looking for an escape.

Finally he saw something and opened a
window.

Gus went to see what Jack had found.

“I’m going to lasso that chimney on the next
building.”

“Then what?” asked Gus in a tone that
suggested that he didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Then we cross,” said Jack as he grinned one
of his crazy smiles.

It took him a couple of attempts but finally
he lassoed the chimney and pulled the rope taught, fastening it to
a support beam inside of the room.

Without another word Jack climbed out of the
window and hanging upside down, traversed the rope to the other
roof.

Once on the other roof, he signaled for Gus
to follow.

Gus hesitated for a moment, until he heard
the men’s voices on the floor beneath. At that he quickly climbed
through the window and followed Jack’s escape.

After Gus climbed across, Jack cut the rope
and let it fall.

They stood for a moment.

Gus pondered, “Do you think we left enough
rope for them to cross?”

“Hope not,” answered Jack, “I should have cut
it shorter on the other side, but I didn’t think of it till
now.”

Just then one of the windows on the lower
floor of the other building shattered and the staircase that had
been lying on the floor came jutting out of the window until it
crashed through a window on the building that they were now
standing on.

Gus asked, “Why didn’t I think of that… Why
didn’t you think of that?”

Jack jested, “I’m just the stupid side
kick.”

Suddenly their pursuers ran across the
makeshift bridge onto a lower floor of the building they were on
the roof of.

Jack exclaimed, “Shit!” While Gus yelled,
“Let’s go.”

They took off running across the roof tops
down the block, as the townhouses on this block were all the same
height.

When they got to the last building, they
could see the American Embassy across the street.

As they looked for a way down, they noticed
one of the assailants standing below them on the street corner
catching his breath.

Gus stated, “Well I guess we’re not walking
across the street now. Got any ideas Jack? …Jack?”

When Gus looked behind him, he could see that
there was a large flagpole mounted onto the roof, and Jack was
unthreading it from the bottom.

Gus helped him finish unthreading it and then
lower it to lie on the roof.

Gus asked, “Do you think this is long enough
to span between these two buildings?”

“No,” replied Jack.

“Then what were you planning on doing with
this pole?”

Jack points over the brim of the building to
a swimming pool on the inside of the Embassy wall, and professed,
“We are going to pole vault across the street into that pool.”

Gus exclaimed, “Are you crazy?”

Jack looked disgusted as he quipped, “I
notice that you frequently use the words J
ack
, and
crazy,
as synonyms.”