Any period of time will pass if you'll just wait long enough, and so eventually it was eight o'clock in the morning, and the two air aces had paused before Room Twelve Hundred at the Air Ministry. They had paused by unspoken mutual consent. And now as their eyes met they both grinned, and lifted their right hands with the middle fingers crossed over the indexes.

"Here's for luck, or something," Dave Dawson murmured with a wink.

"Quite," Freddy Farmer echoed. "At least, I hope it won't be bad luck."

For a couple of seconds more the two youths hesitated, and then Dave Dawson took a deep breath, turned the door knob, and pushed the door open. He entered the small outer office with Freddy Farmer right at his heels. A Flight Lieutenant seated at the small desk took one swift look at their American Air Force uniforms and recognized them at once.

"Good morning, Captains," he said with a smile. "I'll tell Air Vice-Marshal Leman, and Colonel Welsh, that you are here."

Both Dave and Freddy instantly stiffened and went wide-eyed. It was Dawson who found his tongue first.

"What's that, Flight Lieutenant?" he got out. "Did I hear you say Colonel Welsh? You don't mean Colonel Welsh, chief of the U.S. Armed Forces Intelligence?"

"That's exactly who I mean," the Flight Lieutenant replied. "He arrived in England by bomber yesterday. Just a moment, please, and I'll let them know you're here."

The Flight Lieutenant went over to a huge solid oak door, knocked on it, and then stepped through and closed it behind him. Dave and Freddy chose that moment to gape puzzle-eyed at each other.

"Well, what do you know!" Dawson finally breathed. "Colonel Welsh, who had us hauled out of the R.A.F. in the first place!"[2]

"I know," the English youth echoed. "Fancy, meeting him here in London. Well, I guess that certainly means that something new has been cooked up for us. Good grief! His name was the farthest from my mind!"

"You and me both!" Dawson said with a nod. "And it sure does mean that plenty's on the fire, if Colonel Welsh is over here. But it'll be good to meet him again. He always rated tops with me."

"Quite!" the English youth murmured.

And that's as far as he got. At that moment the Flight Lieutenant opened the huge solid oak door, and motioned for them to come into the inner office. They did, with Dawson leading the way, and so it was his hand that was grasped first by the thin-faced officer in the uniform of a U.S. Infantry Colonel.

"Well, Dawson, I'm certainly mighty glad to meet you again!" the Colonel greeted him. "And you, too, Farmer. Neither of you has changed a bit."

"Thank you, sir," Dawson smiled back at him. "And it's good to meet you again. This is certainly one big surprise."

"Quite, sir," Freddy echoed as he, too, shook hands with the Colonel. "I hope you had a nice flight across."

"A perfect hop," the senior officer said. "But I'm forgetting my manners. Air Vice-Marshal Leman, let me present Captains Dawson and Farmer. But perhaps you've already met?"

The good looking Air Force officer, who had sat smiling behind a desk that seemed to fill half the room, got up instantly and came around it with his hand outstretched.

"No, but I've certainly heard no end of things about you two," he said as he shook hands with both boys. "But who hasn't, for that matter?" he continued with a chuckle. "Including Adolf Hitler, of course. There, have chairs, Gentlemen. I can see it in your faces that you are wondering no end what this is all about. Well, Colonel, I fancy you'd better do the talking for us, eh?"

The senior American officer smiled, nodded, and then waited until everybody was comfortably seated in chairs.

"I've a job for you," he presently told the two youths bluntly. "And I want to say right here that it is probably the toughest assignment you ever received. Feel like taking a crack at something really tough?"

Dave Dawson leaned forward on the edge of his chair, and nodded eagerly. All thoughts of leave were gone from his brain now. Just the sight of Colonel Welsh had changed everything all around. He was more than ever anxious for action.

"The tougher it is the better I'll like it, sir," he said with a grin. "Speaking for myself, of course."

"Oh, you're jolly well speaking for me, too!" Freddy Farmer spoke up quickly. "Besides, you'd have to have me along to watch out for you, you know."

Everybody chuckled at that remark, and then Colonel Welsh's thin face became very grave and serious.

"I really meant that, just the same," he said with a grim nod. "This one is really tough, and your chances of pulling it off successfully are about one in six million, roughly speaking."

"The odds have been pretty big against us in the past, sir," Dave said quietly. "But where are we heading this time, or shouldn't I ask yet?"

"You may, and I'll answer it," Colonel Welsh replied. "This time it's Russia."

That brought both youths up stiff and straight on the edges of their chairs.

"Russia?" Dave gasped out.

"Russia?" Freddy Farmer echoed incredulously. "Good grief!"

"That's right, Russia," Colonel Welsh repeated. "But just where in Russia, the good Lord Himself alone knows. To be perfectly frank, it's quite possible that I'm sending you after no more than a handful of Russian air. That's why I say the odds against your success are about one in six million. However, if by any possible chance you do pull this one off, why then—"

The American Intelligence Chief paused and made a little gesture with his hands.

"Why then," he continued a moment later, "Civilization will owe you a far bigger debt of gratitude than it does now, even."

Neither of the boys said anything. They just sat quietly, with their eyes fixed on the senior officer, and waited for him to continue. However, when the Colonel spoke again it was not to the boys. He addressed himself to Air Vice-Marshal Leman.

"On second thought, sir," he said, "perhaps you'd better tell your part of it first. Then I'll take it up from there."

The senior R.A.F. officer shrugged and nodded.

"Very well, if you like, Colonel," he said. And then, turning to the two air aces, he began, "This all started back in the summer of 1939, just before Hitler started into Poland. Of course, anybody with half an eye, or half an ear, could have both seen and heard things that would have left no doubt of what the Nazis had up their sleeves. We of Intelligence knew perfectly well that no amount of appeasement would change Hitler's plans one single bit. We knew that the man was no more than a mad dog, and that only a bullet in the brain could stop him. However, the Government in power at the time thought otherwise, and tried to—Well, all that blasted business of the Munich meeting is dead history now. So it doesn't help anything to bring it out into the light again."

The R.A.F. Intelligence chief paused for breath and to clear his throat. Then he made a little gesture with one hand and continued.

"What I'm trying to bring out," he said, "is that though there was hope in certain quarters that something could be done to stop Hitler at that time, and without bloodshed, we of Intelligence were carrying on as though we were actually at war. Or at least on the brink of war, which of course we were. Anyway, our agents were all over Europe gathering every bit of information possible, and making underground contacts that might prove useful when, and if, the guns started firing. Well, one of my agents—and we'll call him Jones for the moment—had a rare bit of luck. It was one of those things that happen say once in a hundred years. It happened as a result of no effort of his part, either. It—well, it was simply a bit of absolutely lucky coincidence.

"This Jones, having completed a small mission in Prague, in Czechoslovakia, was on his way by train to Krakow, Poland, when right at the borders of Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, the train was wrecked. Split rails caused the wreck, and some sixty odd persons were killed. Fortunately, Jones was in one of the three cars that remained on the track, and he received no more than a severe shaking up. Well, it so happened that a Nazi trade mission on the way to Moscow was aboard the train, and two of its members were killed. That, of course, made it more than just an ordinary train wreck. According to Jones the whole place was alive with Nazi officials in no time at all. Actually the exact location of the wreck was a good mile within the Polish borders, but that didn't bother the Nazis any. They regarded it as German ground and took complete charge of everything at once. The Polish officials objected, but that's all the good it did them. Incidentally, the thing did not appear in the public prints, but as a matter of record that wreck was the first of the so-called border incidents that terminated with the Nazi invasion, and slaughter, of Poland."

Air Vice-Marshal Leman paused again, and sat staring off into space as though choosing the words he would speak next. And when he did speak again there was just the faintest trace of bitter disappointment in his voice.

"Whether the wreck was an accident, or was deliberately planned," he continued, "will never be known. However, the Nazis instantly took it as an act of sabotage and, in true Nazi fashion, started arresting people left and right. They arrested people who were actually on the train, as well as a lot of the male inhabitants of a small village that bordered that stretch of track. And anybody who even so much as offered a single word of protest was immediately clubbed half to death, and definitely regarded by the Nazis as one of the perpetrators of the so called crime against the Third Reich. Well, you can imagine what a madhouse that place was, with passengers dead and dying, others trying to do what they could for the injured, and the Nazi brutes pounding roughshod over everything and everybody. It was indeed a perfect pre-view of what was to come on a much more gigantic scale.

"Well, Jones, being no more than shaken up a bit, joined those who were doing what they could to help the injured. He came upon one man who was pinned under the shattered end of one car. The man was conscious, but he was bleeding at the mouth, and his chest was horribly crushed. Jones took him for a German, but that didn't make any difference at the time. He started trying to get the pieces of the shattered car off the man and drag him free in case fire broke out. It was a pretty hopeless task. The slightest movement made the pinned man's face go grey with pain, and finally he begged Jones—and in perfect English, mind you—just to let him stay where he was. The intense pain of being rescued was too much for him. And no sooner had he spoken the plea than the surprising thing happened. The injured man whispered for Jones to bend close, and listen to what he had to say. Jones did just that, and the man said that he was a Russian by birth but had lived most of his life in Germany. He said that he had discovered a horrible plot to wipe the Soviet Republic from the face of the earth. That he had learned every detail of Hitler's mad plan to conquer and enslave the entire world!"

The R.A.F. officer stopped short and smiled almost apologetically.

"I know what you must be thinking," he said to the two air aces, who sat motionless and just a little bit wide-eyed. "You're thinking that perhaps I've gone a bit balmy, or that I'm reciting a bit from one of those crazy war stories that are being so widely read these days. But that's not true. All this actually did happen. In short, over a month before the war actually started, one man pinned under a wrecked railroad train just inside the Polish border knew every detail of Hitler's entire war plan. And what's more, he gave half of that invaluable information to the British Intelligence agent I've called Jones!"