Or Even Eagle Flew Read online

  From Master of Alternate History Harry Turtledove

  As Britain faces the full fury of the Nazi war machine, hope comes in the form of American volunteers called the Eagle Squadrons. As these units join their RAF cousins during the Battle of Britain, famous woman aviator Amelia Earhart (who survived her world-circling flight) emerges as a rallying point for those willing to stand against fascism.

  Or Even Eagle Flew

  Harry Turtledove

  Or Even Eagle Flew

  Copyright © 2021 Prince of Cats Literary Productions

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-952825-12-5

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-952825-13-2

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  Cover design by Kind Composition

  Cover Art copyright © 2021 Paul Guinan

  Interior layout and design by Kind Composition

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  Prince of Cats Trade Paperback Edition 2021

  Published by Prince of Cats Literary Productions

  New Jersey, USA 2021

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  Other Titles From Prince of Cats Literary Productions

  Chapter One

  The train from Cleveland to Montreal chugged to a stop at the border between the USA and Canada. The woman near the front of the car picked up the Plain Dealer she’d bought before she got on. The war news from the Low Countries and France was just as lousy now as it had been when she first looked at it a few hours before. She frowned and put the paper back on the seat beside her.

  She’d just fished Gone with the Wind out of her purse instead when two uniformed American customs men walked into the car from the one ahead of it. They paused in the aisle by her. “Let me see your papers, ma’am,” one of them said.

  “Oh, for Chrissake, Otis!” the other one exploded. “That there’s a dame, case you didn’t notice. She ain’t gonna run off to England to fly planes for the stupid King.”

  “Never can tell,” the first customs man—Otis—said. “She kinda looks like Charles Lindbergh, know what I mean?” He turned back to the woman. “Your papers.”

  Without a word, she handed him her passport. She’d heard the comparison with Lindbergh before, and didn’t care for it (she happened to know he didn’t, either). She liked his isolationist, America First politics even less.

  Otis opened the passport to the page with her name and photo. “Putnam, Amelia E.,” he read, and scribbled on a sheet in his clipboard. “Purpose of visiting Canada, Mrs. Putnam?”

  “Visiting friends,” she answered, looking up at him over the tops of her reading glasses. Except on a few formal documents like this, she didn’t use her husband’s—now her ex-husband’s—last name. It came in handy here; her own would have caused problems.

  “‘Visiting friends.’” Otis wrote that down, too. He handed back the passport. “Enjoy your stay.”

  “Thank you.”

  As the customs men walked down the aisle, the other one said, “See? Told ya so.”

  “Ah, shut up,” Otis told him.

  They checked more passports, and lingered longest with two men in their twenties: one tall and carrot-topped, the other medium-sized, with a Clark Gable mustache.

  The customs men gave the young Americans a much tougher time than they had the woman.

  Amelia Earhart—the name she used almost all the time—smiled to herself. If the smile seemed sour, then it did, that was all. Those young fellows weren’t dames, after all. It was reasonable, even to a customs man, to think they might know something about flying.

  They had to get their suitcases down from the overhead rack so the inspectors could paw through them. They passed muster, though; the customs men went on to inflict themselves on the next car back from the locomotive.

  Pretty soon—not soon enough to suit A.E., but pretty soon—the train got rolling again. The redhead and the guy who wished he were Clark Gable both let out muffled whoops when they crossed into Canada. “They aren’t as smart as they think they are!” said the guy with the red hair.

  They sure aren’t, A.E. thought. She picked up Gone with the Wind again. Scarlett was eating grits and dried peas with Aunt Pittypat, and swearing to herself she’d never touch them again once she had money. A.E. kept reading as the train rolled on to Montreal.

  Chapter Two

  When they reached the station, she grabbed her own small suitcase—she hadn’t thought the customs men would search it, and they hadn’t—and hurried to the cab rank. Quick as she was, those two young men were quicker. They piled into a taxi and roared away.

  Well, there were more. “Where to, Madame?” asked the driver after she got into his Chevy.

  “The Mount Royal Hotel, please.” Something in the way the man looked and talked made her add, “Uh, s’il vous plait.”

  He opened his eyes a little wider and smiled. “Vous parlez français?”

  “Je regrette, mais un petit peu.” A.E. had taken French in school, then forgotten most of it till she had to dust it off to try to talk with French officials in Africa on her round-the-world flight. She was glad to get in a little practice here; where she planned to go, she’d need all she had and then some.

  “C’est meilleur que rien,” the cab driver said. A.E. nodded. Even a little was better than nothing. The cabby put the car in gear and started for the hotel.

  The Mount Royal wasn’t far from the station. One thing stood out, though, even in that short distance: unlike the United States, Canada was a country at war. At least half the men on the street wore khaki, RCN navy blue, or the slightly brighter blue of the RCAF.

  People here looked worried, too, in a way Americans didn’t. In the USA, the European war was a noise in another room, nothing to get excited about. Canada was in it up to her eyebrows, and it wasn’t going well. Short-pants kids on corners sold newspapers whose headlines, in English and in French, shouted about how badly it was going.

  No more than fifteen minutes after the taxi left the station, it pulled up in front of the Mount Royal. “Sixty cents, ma’am,” the driver said—in English, to make sure he wasn’t misunderstood.

  “Here.” A.E. gave him a US dollar bill; she hadn’t had the chance to change any money. He took it without a word. American and Canadian money were as near on a par with each other as made no difference. When he started to make change, she told him, “Don’t bother.”

  “Merci beaucoup!” he exclaimed, pleased back into his first language. He hopped out of the car, hustled around to open her door for her, and hauled her suitcase out of the trunk. A bellhop took it from him before A.E. could.

  She checked in, got her key, and rode the elevator to the third floor. The key, which had 327 stamped into it, worked in the lock of the room whose door had
that number on it. The bellboy set the suitcase on the bed. She gave him a quarter: US again.

  It fazed him no more than the greenback had bothered the taxi man. He touched a couple of fingers to the edge of his pillbox cap in an almost military salute. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “You need anything here, ask for Lyon Sprague. That’s me.” He tapped his chest.

  “I will. Thanks,” she said. Lyon Sprague decamped. A couple of minutes later, so did A.E. She’d half-hoped someone would have been waiting for her in the lobby. No such luck though. Instead of summoning the elevator, she walked down the stairs.

  Somehow, she wasn’t all that surprised when she discovered the redheaded young man and his friend with the mustache there ahead of her. “No messages for either one of us?” the tall redhead was asking the desk clerk. “No letters? Not for either one of us?”

  “I am very sorry, Monsieur.” The hotel man spread his hands in a good facsimile of regret. “I cannot give you what I do not have.”

  “Nothing from Colonel Sweeny?” the guy with the mustache persisted. A.E. nodded to herself. Yes, they’d all shown up at the Mount Royal Hotel for the same reason.

  But the desk clerk shook his head. “Nothing from anyone,” he said firmly. He did unbend enough to point towards a very small man sitting on a sofa looking at a magazine about flying planes. “You might inquire of him. He has been asking after messages, too.” By the way a muscle in his cheek twitched, the little guy had been less polite than these two.

  The redhead and the man with the mustache went over to the short fellow. A.E. drifted that way, too. When the man on the sofa stood up, she saw he wasn’t even five feet tall.

  “Desk clerk says we’re all in the same boat,” the redhead said.

  “Yeah—the Titanic,” the short guy said with a sour laugh. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Vern Keough. Shorty, they call me—can’t imagine why. I’m a pilot and a parachute jumper out of New York. I used to be five nine till I landed on my head a couple of times.”

  “Gene Tobin—Red, if you want,” the tall man said, shaking with the short one. His buddy was Andy Mamedoff. They were both pilots from Los Angeles.

  A.E. came up to them. “I think I may be in that boat with you, too,” she said.

  They looked her over. She’d seen that look too many times before. You can’t be. You’re a woman, it said. But then Mamedoff’s eyes widened. She’d seen that happen before, too. He had a few years on the other two, so he might have paid more attention when she was in the news a lot. “You’re—” he said, and didn’t go on.

  She nodded. “That’s right. I’m Amelia Earhart. I aim to fly for the Armée de l’Air, too.”

  “But you’re a woman.” Red Tobin pointed out the obvious.

  “I’m a pilot. I’m a darn good pilot,” she replied. “France is in deep enough, I bet they won’t care that I can’t pee standing up. And the Nazis are horrible enough, they need stopping from whoever can stop them.”

  “Well, you sure aren’t wrong about that,” Mamedoff said. “And if they do let you fly, the publicity will bring more flyers from the States.”

  A.E. nodded. “The same thing crossed my mind.”

  Shorty Keough said, “Now Colonel Sweeny better come through. Not like I’ve got cash burning a hole in my pocket.” Tobin and Mamedoff nodded at that. They wouldn’t be rich; they were just getting started in life. A.E. had a good deal more money with her than all three of them put together, odds were.

  Red chuckled without much humor. “When I started talking with Sweeny’s people back in L.A., they wanted me to fly for Finland against the Russians. But Finland went belly-up, so now it’s France against the Nazis.” He shrugged. “They’re all so-and-sos.” A.E. judged he would have said something stronger had she been another man.

  She nodded again anyhow. “They are. I don’t have much use for war and killing, but people like Stalin and Hitler won’t stop till somebody stops them.”

  “There you go!” Andy Mamedoff made as if to clap his hands.

  “We aren’t gonna be the ones who stop them unless Sweeny’s stuff shows up,” Tobin said. “I came this far on promises, but it’s not like we can get across the Atlantic on them.”

  Once more, A.E.’s head bobbed up and down. Thanks to the USA’s neutrality rules, going to fight in Europe’s latest war could cost Americans their citizenship. A.E. thought she could make a living anywhere in the world, but she had experience and a reputation these young men couldn’t hope to match.

  “If Sweeny’s stuff doesn’t show up …” Vern Keough made a fist. It wasn’t a very big fist, but it summed up what A.E. was thinking, too.

  A.E. went to the bar with the three young American men. They had a drink, then another one. While they drank, they called down curses on Charles Sweeny’s head. A.E. didn’t swear as foully or regularly as her new-met comrades-in-arms, but she had a knack for being funny and insulting without cussing. They seemed to appreciate it.

  “Didn’t know what you were like for real,” Red Tobin said. “You’re okay, though. Better’n okay.” The other two men from the States nodded.

  “Thanks,” she said. Acceptance warmed her more than the rye did.

  The bellhop called Lyon Sprague came up to them. He carried a tray with four envelopes on it. “You are the Messieurs Tobin, Putnam, Mamedoff, and Keough?” he said.

  “I’m not a Monsieur, but I’m Putnam,” A.E. said. To the Yanks, she added, “Married name.” The bellboy gave her a dubious look, but two dollars cured it. She got her envelope with the others.

  The envelope held a ticket on the night train to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a scribbled note. Stay in the station after other people leave. Talk about flying so our man will know you. Be loud.

  Everyone had a ticket to Halifax and the same note in almost the same words. “Well, hell,” Andy Mamedoff said. “If I’d known we weren’t gonna spend the night, I wouldn’t’ve checked in.” He made wings of his hands and mimed money flying away.

  “So it goes,” Red Tobin agreed. “And it has went. Only good news is, this joint ain’t fancy enough to cost a whole lot.”

  They took two cabs back to the train station. They might all have fit into one, but their luggage wouldn’t. A.E. rode with Tobin. “How much flying time do you have?” she asked.

  He laughed sheepishly. “Less than my logbook says I do, but enough to know what I’m doing. Like Shorty said back at the bar, I’ll fly in any air force except Hitler’s or Stalin’s.”

  “That sounds good,” A.E. said. It also sounded like a recipe for getting yourself killed, something she didn’t mention. Nobody became a fighter pilot in the hope of living a long, quiet life.

  Most of the people on the train to Halifax were Canadian soldiers in khaki. When they found out A.E. and her friends were American, they asked the same question over and over again: “Why isn’t the United States in the war?”

  “Don’t blame us,” A.E. and the men said, over and over and over again. She didn’t think it did much good.

  When the train pulled into Halifax, the soldiers and the Canadian civilians had places to go. The four Americans hung around on the platform. As instructed, they chattered loudly about planes and flying.

  After an hour or so, a short, squat man in a trench coat who’d jammed the brim of his fedora down low over his eyes walked up to them. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. He couldn’t have looked more like a movie spy if he’d come straight from central casting.

  “You are the Americans?” he asked in a heavy French accent.

  “Not us. We’re a church group from Melbourne, Australia,” Red said.

  A.E. kicked him in the ankle. “We’re the Americans,” she said quickly. “Don’t worry about him. He likes to make jokes.”

  The man in the trench coat shrugged. “It matters not. If he shoots down the Boches—if you all shoot down the Boches—that matters. Come with me, s’il vous plait.”

  He led them through back rooms at t
he station and through dripping alleys. He acted like a movie spy trying to shake off a tail. At last, in a bare room lit by a dim bulb, he opened a safe and handed each of them a manila envelope. “Travel documents and money,” he said.

  After A.E. opened the envelope’s metal clasp, she found it held 2,500 francs and a safe-conduct from the French consul-general in Montreal with her photo and physical characteristics. It stated she was of “indeterminate” nationality but should be permitted to enter France.

  Shorty Keough held up his new bankroll. “How much is this in dollars?”

  “About fifty,” the guy with the fedora answered unwillingly. “Now you should go to the harbor. The Guingamp sails at seven.”

  A.E. eyed her watch. It was already past three. By the time they got to the harbor, dawn was breaking. The Guingamp was a rustbucket freighter, part of a convoy bound for France. A.E. recognized the stench floating out of her hold. “I’ll be darned if she’s not hauling mules,” she said.

  “Whole lot of mules,” Red Tobin agreed.

  None of the sailors spoke English. The skipper did, a little. He had room for only two of them. Mamedoff and Keough stayed. A.E. left with Tobin. They found spaces on another, equally grimy, freighter, the Pierre L.D. A.E. got a cabin all to herself. It was just about big enough to turn around in, as long as you were careful. Red bunked in the same kind of cabin, only he shared it with three other guys.

  As soon as the convoy left the harbor and started zigzagging across the Atlantic, A.E. discovered a new reason to prefer flying. She had a strong stomach; she’d been airsick only a handful of times. The Atlantic’s roll and pitch, though, proved too much for her. She did not enjoy the first couple of days at sea very much.