Pitt remained seated and waved back at the cheering men below the window. His body was tired and numb but his mind was still active and running at full throttle. A title kept running through his thoughts until finally he muttered it aloud. "The Hawk of Macedonia."

Giordino turned from the doorway. "What did you say?"

"Oh nothing, nothing at all." Pitt let his breath escape in a long audible sigh. "Come on—I'll buy you that drink now."

2

2

When Pitt awoke, it was still dark. He did not know how long he had slept. Perhaps he just dozed off. Perhaps he had been lost under the black cloak of sleep for hours. He did not know, nor did he care. The metal springs of the Air Force cot squeaked as he rolled over, seeking a more comfortable position. But the comfort of deep sleep eluded him. His conscious mind dimly tried to analyze why. Was it the steady humming noise of the air conditioner? he asked himself. He was used to drifting off under the loud din of aircraft engines, so that couldn't be it. Maybe it was the scurrying cockroaches. God knows Thasos was covered with them. No, it was something else. Then he knew. The answer pierced the fog of his drowsy brain. It was his other mind, the unconscious one, that was keeping him awake. Like a movie projector, it flashed pictures of the strange events from the previous day, over and over again.

One picture stood out above all the rest. It was the photograph in a gallery of the Imperial War Museum. Pitt could recall it vividly. The camera had caught a German aviator posing beside a World War I fighter plane. He was garbed in the flying togs of the day, and his right hand rested upon the head of an immense white German shepherd. The dog, obviously a mascot, was panting and looking up at his master with a patronizing, doe-like expression. The flyer stared back at the camera with a boyish face that somehow looked naked without the usual Prussian dueling scar and monocle. However, the proud Teutonic military bearing could be easily seen in the hint of an insolent grin and the ramrod straight posture.

Pitt even remembered the caption under the photo:

The Hawk of Macedonia

Lieutenant Kurt Heibert, of Jagdstaffel 91, attained 32 victories over the allies on the Macedonian Front; one of the outstanding aces of the great war. Presumed shot down and lost in the Aegean Sea on July 15, 1918.