"A couple, Colonel," Dave replied. Then with a shrug, "The first may strike you as stupid."
"How can I say, until you ask it?" the Intelligence officer demanded as the Yank air ace didn't go on.
"These officers we're to contact—" Dawson said presently—"is there any way we can make sure that each is the one we believe him to be? In other words, we've just got six names, Colonel. I haven't read them yet, but it's possible that neither Freddy nor I know the men from Adam as far as looks are concerned."
"A mighty good question, Dawson," Colonel Welsh said with an emphatic nod. "Just shows you've got your eye on the ball right at the start. Contact the officer, show him my letter of authority, and demand his identification. It will be a copper disc with some numbers stamped on it. Every set of numbers will add up to forty-one—the year, incidentally, of Pearl Harbor. If the numbers don't add up to forty-one, then he is not your man."
"And if they don't add up to forty-one, sir?" Freddy Farmer asked, and leaned forward.
Colonel Welsh's lips stiffened, and an agate-hard glint came into his eyes. He pointed to the letter of authority Freddy held in his hands.
"Use that to have the man placed under close arrest at once!" he said harshly. "And get in radiophone communication with me as soon as possible. If the man tries to evade arrest, tries to escape—shoot him dead on the spot! Yes, that's an unusual order, but this is an unusual mission. Now, the other question, Dawson? What is it?"
"When we reach Natal, sir," Dave said, "what do we do? Fly back and report to you?"
"No," the senior officer said with a shake of his head. "I'm allowing three days for you to make this stop-over flight to Brazil. That should get you in Natal by the fourteenth, the fifteenth at the latest. Put up at the Pan-Am Hotel. I will join you there on the fifteenth. I'll have another little mission for you when I get there. Well, any other questions?"
Dawson and Farmer looked at each other. Then they looked at Colonel Welsh, and each shook his head. The senior officer stood up, and as though the gods had waited for that exact instant, the Vultee's Wright-Cyclone outside broke forth with its song of mighty power.