366 | John W. Warner IV Bea sat, sharing cold chocolate. Lovely mist today, smells like Black Forest pine. I read a report in my spare moments stating that Himmler presented you with the SS Death Head ring. Wear it sometimes? Porsche leered. I keep it in my tie pin and cufflink drawer. Official occasions only. You were in the SS too. Wheres yours, may I ask? I was a dragooned member, kidnapped. Threw it into a pond in Norway. The woodland spirits liked that. Hmmff. For the best. Bea opened one of Poppels personal ffles that she found in the chart room. The Generalmajor really liked to keep scraps and bits from the battlefronts. She found a Moscow Pravda newspaper clipping from March with the photos of two female pilots. These two birds flew the Yak-1 fighter. Damn.. .cant read what it says. Porsche examined it with his reading glasses. I learned a little on my trips to. Russia ten years ago. I think its saying.. .that these two are decorated fighter pilots, Katya Budanova and Lydia Litvyak. Many kills between them apparently. Impressive for women. Ill be damned! Knew the Russians had some imagination. Poppel wrote here they must be desperate for pilots. The hell with him, we women can handle it all. Oh, I hear via songbirds you plan to build Volksautos in Brazil after the war. So? My family deserves to profit on my and Ferrys genius. Anyway, inexpensive lightweight cars will help those of little means. In addition to Europe, my plan is to automobilize the third world countries for the sake of progress. Racing will flourish. Jolly good, I suppose. Oh by the way, had a go in your fancy tan Panzer back in the desert at Siwa Oasis. We lobbed so-o-o many tungsten core shells at You what? exclaimed Porsche, mouth at utmost capacity. Not bad, shot well, swam better, but we broke down after forty minutes or so. Damned hot in that tin can. Basically impregnable. Beastly old thing. The Afrika Korps has a price on our heads you know, Gwafa and I. Madame, you.. .you and I seem to be inextricably linked in some unusual and irritatingly cosmic way, but now Im exhausted trying to make any real sense of it, not anymore. He sighed. That idiot Hitler, I told him we should copy the Russian T34 and make it better, but he insisted on a complicated heavy tank of German design. Hes