More on The Little Toy Dog

While most of The Little Toy Dog deals with the flyers’ imprisonment in Lubyanka, the part that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end occurred near the end of the book, during their transit back to the United States:

Meanwhile at nine-thirty that morning, the big Constellation from Amsterdam was letting down her landing gear on the approach to snow-covered Goose Bay Field. Bruce Olmstead had slept soundly across the Atlantic since, just before take-off, he had been given a sedative. John McKone had dozed fitfully. When they opened the plane’s door, there by the runway was a cluster of staff cars—in the lead, one flying the flag of a four-star general. For whom could this be? They had no brass like this aboard. At the foot of the ramp the two captains were greeted by the Wing Commander, a smiling bird colonel who told them to pile in, that car was theirs; the Air Force at Goose was giving four-star honors today to its two recovered goslings.

I guess one probably would have to have been in the military to realize the significance of this. Officers above the rank of Colonel are called flag officers because they get their own flags—one-star flags for Brigadier Generals up through four-star flags for Generals. When a flag officer is in his car, the car gets a flag mounted on it; when a car with a flag on it goes past everyone salutes that flag.