The Assassination Option

[ONE]

The sliding door from the corridor opened and Captain Chauncey L. Dunwiddie stepped inside.

The commanding general, United States Constabulary, was sitting at a twenty-foot-long highly polished wooden conference table around which were also seated more than a dozen officers, the junior of them a lieutenant colonel.

General I.D. White’s eyebrows rose in disbelief.

“What?” General White asked.

Captain James D. Cronley Jr. slid into the room.

“Oh, I now understand,” General White said. “You two decided the red Conference in Session light was actually advertising a brothel.”

Mrs. White slipped into the room.

“I didn’t hear that,” she said.

“Hear what, my love?”

“I insisted they make their manners,” she announced. “So that I would not have to hear you complaining that they hadn’t.”

“Why are they making their manners? We’re nowhere near Sonthofen.”

“They’re getting off in Munich.”

“I’ve seen Chauncey a total of twenty minutes,” he protested.

“Duty calls, apparently,” she said.

Tiny came to attention.

“Permission to withdraw, sir?”

“Granted.”

Tiny saluted, followed a half second later by Cronley.

The general returned them.

Cronley started to follow Mrs. White out of the conference compartment.

“Cronley!”

Captain Cronley froze in mid-step and then turned to face General White.

“Yes, sir?”

“The next time you want to talk to me, seek an appointment. I’ve told Colonel Davidson to put you ahead of everybody but my wife.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

[TWO]

The private train of the commanding general, U.S. Constabulary, rolled into what little was left of the bahnhof—it had been nearly destroyed during the war, and the recently started reconstruction had taken down what little had remained after the bombing — and stopped.

The door to the first car of the train slid open.

Two Constabulary troopers stepped onto the platform. One of them came to attention to the left of the door and the other to the right.

As first Captain James D. Cronley Jr. and then Captain Chauncey L. Dunwiddie came through the door, the troopers saluted crisply.

Captains Cronley and Dunwiddie returned the salute.

One of the troopers put a glistening brass whistle — which had been hanging from his epaulet on a white cord — to his lips and blew twice.

The train immediately began to move. The troopers went quickly through the door and it slid closed.

Captain Cronley addressed those waiting on the platform, Mr. Friedrich Hessinger and Miss Claudette Colbert.

“How nice of you to meet us. And now that you have seen the evidence of the high regard in which Captain Dunwiddie and myself are held by the U.S. Constabulary, I am sure we will be treated with greater respect and deference than you have shown in the past.”

“Well, I’m awed,” Miss Colbert said.

“You got us to come down here to watch you get off the train?” Mr. Hessinger asked incredulously.

“What happened,” Tiny said, “is that Colonel Wilson was showing us the communications on the train, and asked if there was anyone we wanted to call. Our leader said, ‘Let’s get Freddy on the phone, and have him pick us up at the bahnhof. Save the price of a taxicab.’ So he did.”

“A cab would have cost you fifty cents!” Hessinger complained.

“‘A penny saved is a penny earned,’” Cronley quoted piously. “Isn’t that true, Miss Colbert?”

“And ‘A fool and his money are soon parted,’” she replied.

Their eyes met momentarily.

He forced the mental image this produced of Miss Colbert in her birthday suit from his mind.

Nose to the grindstone, Cronley!

“Is Major Wallace in the office?” he asked.

“Probably for the next five minutes,” Freddy said. “He really hates missing Happy Hour at the Engineer O Club, and that starts at five o’clock.”

“I may have to ruin his evening,” Cronley said. “We’ve got a lot to do and we’re going to need him.”

“For instance?” Freddy asked.

“I’ll tell you at the office,” Cronley said, “when I tell him.”

“For instance,” Tiny said, “we’ve got to get the Storchs to Sonthofen first thing in the morning, which means I’m going to have to go out to Kloster Grünau and set that, and some other things, up. Do I just take the Kapitän?”

“I can drive you out there,” Claudette said.

“Do it. We’ll need the Kapitän in the morning,” Cronley ordered.

[THREE]

Major Harold Wallace was checking to ensure the door to Suite 507 was securely locked when Cronley and Hessinger came down the aisle.

“What would it take to get you to miss Happy Hour at the Engineer O Club?”

“Not much, as I have something to tell you,” Wallace said. “I didn’t know if you were coming back here today or not.”

He unlocked the door and waved Cronley and Hessinger into the office.

As soon as Cronley was in the office, he said, “Maybe I can save us both time. What would you say if I told you I need your help with getting Mrs. Likharev and offspring over the border?”

“The first thing that pops into my mind is that you have FUBAR something somehow.”

“Not yet. But that’s probably inevitable.”

“And the second thing is that you don’t want me to mention this to Colonel Mattingly. True?”

“True.”

“One of the things I thought you might be interested in hearing is that Colonel Mattingly was on the horn a couple of hours ago—”

“You haven’t answered my question. Can I tell you what problems I have without Mattingly hearing about any of them?”

“I thought that question had arisen and been disposed of,” Wallace said, just a little sharply.

“Sorry,” Cronley said, and a moment later, added: “I apologize.”

Wallace nodded, then said, “The officer in question was on the horn a couple of hours ago. It has come to his attention that General White has returned to Germany, specifically, that he flew into Rhine-Main, where a large number of friends and others met him, and then, after making his manners to General Smith, set off for Sonthofen on his private train. He was curious as to why he was not (a) informed of this, and (b) was not invited to the arrival at Rhine-Main or to ride on the train.”

“And he thought you might know?”

“That, and he wondered if Tiny, because of his relationship with the general, knew about this, and didn’t think he would be interested.”

“Tiny knew about it because I told him. I don’t know if he would have told Mattingly or not… he probably would have, being the good soldier he is… but he didn’t have the time.”

“And who told you?”

“Hotshot Billy Wilson.”

“The plot thickens. What the fuck is going on?”

Cronley told him all that had happened.

During the recitation, Cronley saw that Hessinger was unable to keep his face from registering surprise, concern, alarm, and disbelief. Or various combinations of the foregoing.

“But, I just thought of this,” Cronley concluded. “Mattingly not getting invited may be innocent. I mean, nobody consciously decided, ‘Let’s not tell Mattingly.’”

“Explain that.”

“General Smith, who knew he was coming, either presumed Mattingly knew, or more than likely, didn’t give a damn about who was going to be at Rhine-Main or on the train. Anyway, after he told Hotshot Billy—”

“Why would Smith tell Hotshot Billy?”

“They were coconspirators in the Let’s Save a Train for General White business. Wilson told me Smith was disgusted with all the three stars fighting like ten-year-olds over who gets a train, and decided they would get the proper message if two-star White showed up with one.

“Try to follow my reasoning: Smith told Wilson, expecting that Wilson would… as he did… spread the word around in the Constabulary. He didn’t tell Mattingly because he figured Mattingly was in the Farben Building and would know. Did Smith tell Greene? I don’t know. Probably not. So if Greene didn’t know, he couldn’t tell Mattingly. And if he did know, he didn’t tell him because he thought he would already have heard.”

Wallace grunted.

“General White asked where Mattingly was.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he asked me where he was.”

“You were on the train?”

“Tiny and I just got off it.”

“As soon as Bob Mattingly hears that you and Tiny were on that train — and he will — you’re the villains, you know that? The master politician will decide he’s been out-politicked by two captains he doesn’t much like anyway. And he’s one ruthless sonofabitch. I’ve seen him in action. Christ, I actually wondered if he wrote that Cronley’s been fucking Mrs. Rachel Schumann letter to Dick Tracy.”

“If I’m putting you on the spot now, asking for help and don’t tell Mattingly…”

“You are. But after our little chat the other day, I did some thinking of my own.”

“About what?”

“About why I’m here running what you so accurately describe as a ‘phony CIC Detachment.’”

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not? It’s true. So why am I here doing it? Two reasons, the most important probably being that ol’ Bob can throw me to the wolves you mentioned. ‘I’m really surprised that Major Wallace didn’t learn that Cronley was doing black masses, running a brothel, making bootleg whisky, and burying people in unmarked graves at Kloster Grünau. Maybe being a Jedburgh doesn’t really qualify someone to be an intelligence officer.’”

He looked at Cronley as if expecting a reply, and when none came, went on: “Reason two: If I was in the Farben Building doing what I should be doing…”

“Which is?”

“Intelligence. Advising Greene. Or maybe General Clay. This may come as a shock to you, but when I was not being a heroic Jedburgh, parachuting behind enemy lines à la Errol Flynn or Alan Ladd, I was a pretty good intelligence officer. A better one than Bob Mattingly. And, while I was wallowing in self-pity, I wondered why I never got a silver leaf, or an eagle. And wondered if it was because good ol’ Bob Mattingly liked me where I was, as a major. I did the work, and he got the credit.”

Cronley’s mouth went on automatic.

“If you were good in the OSS, you can bet your ass El Jefe knows it. Which is why—”

“I’m here running a phony CIC outfit, so that I can step in and replace you when you FUBAR everything?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I thought about that, too, and what I decided to do, Captain Cronley, is make goddamn sure you don’t FUBAR anything. So tell me your problems vis-à-vis getting Mrs. Likharev and her children across a border. I have a little experience in that sort of thing.”

“Thank you.”

“Which brings us to Friend Freddy,” Wallace said. “Who has been sitting there like a sponge, soaking all this in.”

“Sir?”

“Are you willing to deceive Colonel Mattingly and anyone else who gets in our way? Or are you thinking of some way you can cover your ass?”

“You have no right to think that about me!” Freddy flared.

“Correct answer,” Wallace said. “Fortunately for you. I always hate to use the assassination option, even when it’s called for.”

“So do Cronley and I,” Hessinger said.

Wallace’s eyebrows rose.

“One day we’ll have to exchange secrets,” he said. “But not now. Before Brunhilde walks in from wherever she is…”

It took Cronley a moment to realize he was talking about Claudette Colbert.

“She’s driving Tiny out to Kloster Grünau,” he said.

“… we have to decide about her. Do we bring her into this? Yes or no. If yes, how far? Only so far as needed? Or total immersion? Freddy, you first, you’re junior. If I ask Jim first, you’re liable to go along with whatever he says.”

“What did you say, ‘total immersion’?” Hessinger said. “Yes. All the way.”

“May I ask why you have such confidence in the lady?”

“She has ambitions. We can help her achieve them.”

“And you don’t think she’d expose us?”

“No. But even if she did, we’d still have that option you mentioned.”

“Jim?” Wallace asked.

“I agree with Freddy.”

“Tiny, I presume, is a given?” Wallace asked.

“Captain Dunwiddie has one weakness for our line of work,” Freddy said. “His family, his education at Norwich, has inculcated in him the officer’s honor code.”

“You’re saying that’s bad?”

“I’m saying that he might not be able to do some of the things we may have to do.”

“I’d say we might have to explain to him the necessity of doing some of the things we may have to do,” Cronley said.

“Well, what’s your call?” Wallace said. “In or out?”

“In. With that caveat,” Freddy said.

After a just perceptible hesitation, Cronley said, “In.”

“That brings us to Ostrowski and Schröder,” Wallace said. “What makes you think that both — or either — are going to volunteer to go along with this?”

“I think both will, but we need only one volunteer.”

“You’re not thinking you can carry this off, moving the woman and the two kids, using just one Storch, are you?”

“No. Two Storchs. One of which I will fly.”

“And what does Billy Wilson think of that idea?”

“I think I overcame most of his objections. Most of which centered around both Max and Schröder being more experienced pilots than me.”

“And?”

“Tomorrow, I go back to flight school at Sonthofen.”

“Are you willing to listen to further argument, from other people with experience in this sort of thing?”

“Who do you have in mind?”

“Me, for one. And General Gehlen and Colonel Mannberg. I was about to suggest that we invite the general for dinner. By the time he could get here, Brunhilde should be back.”

“Freddy,” Cronley ordered, “get on the phone and ask General Gehlen if he and Colonel Mannberg will join us for dinner.”

Hessinger picked up the secure telephone.

“This brings back many memories,” Wallace said. “Most of them unpleasant, of planning operations like this in London. Specifically, one of the first lessons we learned. Painfully. And that is, unless everyone with a role in an operation knows everything about it, it will almost certainly go wrong.”

[FOUR]

When Claudette Colbert returned from driving Dunwiddie to Kloster Grünau, Cronley greeted her the moment she closed the door. “Dette, we’re going to have a meeting. I want it to be formal. Set it up in my office. I’ll be at the head of the table. Put General Gehlen at the other end…”

“I get the idea.”

“Major Wallace will be joining us.”

“Got it.”

“And, for the future, as soon as you can, arrange with your former buddies in the ASA to make absolutely sure it’s not bugged, with emphasis on my office.”

“Done,” she said. “I mean, already done. I arranged for that when I came here. It was last swept just before we went to pick you up at the bahnhof, and they’ll sweep it again at 0500 tomorrow.”

“Great! You are a woman of amazing talents.”

“Of all kinds,” she said.

She looked around the room to make sure no one was looking at her, and then, smiling, stuck her tongue out at him in a manner which she intended to be, and which he interpreted to be, somewhere between naughty and lascivious.

When General Gehlen and Colonel Mannberg arrived ten minutes later, the conference table was already set. There was a lined pad, three pencils, and a water glass before each chair. There was a water pitcher in the center of the table, and a small canvas sack, which was stenciled all over, in bright yellow, “BURN.” In front of Cronley’s chair was a secure telephone.

Gehlen had brought former Major Konrad Bischoff with him.

Mannberg and Bischoff were in well-tailored suits and looked like successful businessmen. Cronley thought, for the umpteenth time, that Gehlen looked like an unsuccessful black marketeer.

I guess Bischoff saw Mannberg in his nice suit and figured, what the hell, if he can do it, why not me?

Claudette, who was sitting to Cronley’s side with her shorthand notebook in front of her, looked at Cronley questioningly.

“Miss Colbert, will you set a place for Major Bischoff? Konrad, this is Miss Colbert, our new administrative officer.”

Bischoff nodded at her curtly and sat down. Claudette got a lined pad, three pencils, and a water glass and set them before him.

“Before we get started, General,” Cronley said, “I know you’ve met Major Wallace, but I don’t know how much you know about him.”

“Actually, Jim,” Gehlen replied, “the three of us, Ludwig, Konrad, and I, were very much aware of the irony when Major Wallace flew into Elendsalm to accept our surrender. We’d been hoping to… have a chat… with him for years. We almost succeeded twice, once in Norway and again in Moravia. But failed. And now there he is, all smiles, coming to chat with us.”

“You didn’t mention that, General, either at Elendsalm or here,” Wallace said, smiling.

“At the time, Major, it didn’t seem to be the appropriate thing to do.”

“And here?”

“Jim never shared with me what you’re really doing here, and I thought it was best…”

“To let the sleeping dog lie?”

“Sleeping tiger, perhaps. We always thought you were far more dangerous than a dog.”

“I’m flattered.”

“And are you now going to tell us what you’ve been really doing here?”

“I don’t expect you to believe this, General, but nothing. What I’m doing now is working for Jim. But we don’t want that to get around.”

“Understood.”

“That out of the way,” Cronley said, “let’s get started. First things first. Major Wallace was telling me earlier that the OSS learned… painfully, he said… that if all parties to an operation are not involved in all aspects of its planning, the operation goes wrong.”

Cronley saw Gehlen and Mannberg nod just perceptibly in agreement.

“So to make sure that doesn’t happen here, how do we handle that?”

Hessinger raised his hand.

Resisting with effort the temptation to say, “Yes, Freddy, you may. But don’t dawdle in the restroom, and remember to wash your hands,” Cronley asked, simply, “Hessinger?”

Hessinger stood up.

“Since Major Wallace brought that up, I have given the matter some thought,” he said. “What I suggest is the following: That we have a… how do I describe this? I will rephrase. I suggest that Miss Colbert take minutes of this meeting. Every member of this group… which brings us to that. What is the group? I suggest the group consists of those present, plus, of course, Captain Dunwiddie. And either or both Max Ostrowski and Kurt Schröder, presuming they volunteer for this operation.”

“Tiny is in the process of finding that out,” Cronley interrupted. “I think they both will.”

“Very well,” Hessinger said. “We define the group as those present, plus Captain Dunwiddie, and possibly, to be determined, Schröder and Ostrowski. When Miss Colbert types the minutes of this meeting — in one copy only — she will append at the end the names of the group… every member of the group, including those who were not present. Every member of the group will sign by his name, acknowledging that he is familiar with the contents.

“Then, tomorrow, when Captain Dunwiddie comes here, he will read the minutes — which will be, twenty-four hours a day, in the custody of Miss Colbert or myself — and sign them, acknowledging that he is familiar with everything.

“If he has something to add — hypothetically, that Ostrowski does not wish to participate — Miss Colbert or I will type this up as Annex 1 to the minutes, again appending the names of all members of the group, who, when then they read Annex 1, will sign again to acknowledge they are familiar with the added information. Und so weiter through what I suspect will be Annex 404.”

Hessinger looked as if he had something else to say, but decided against saying it. He sat down.

After twenty seconds, Wallace said, “That’d work.”

Gehlen said, chuckling, “Freddy — Feldmarschal von Moltke — where were you when I needed a really smart general staff officer to find a simple solution to answer a complex problem, and all I had was Ludwig?”

Mannberg smiled, then applauded, and a moment later, so did Bischoff, Wallace, and Cronley.

My God, Fat Freddy is actually blushing!

“Miss Colbert,” Cronley said, “item one, in your transcript of these proceedings, will be the adoption of Mr. Hessinger’s ‘How to Keep Everybody Who Needs to Know Up to Speed’ plan.”

“Yes, sir,” Claudette said.

“May I suggest, Jim,” Gehlen said, “that item two be a report of your trip to Frankfurt?”

“Yes, sir. But I think I’d better begin that with a report of my meeting with Colonel Wilson. As I think everybody knows…”

“And when do you think you’ll have these aerial photographs of places where the Storchs could touch down?” Major Wallace asked.

“I didn’t ask, which was stupid of me,” Cronley replied. “But I would guess that a Piper Cub with the film aboard — I told you at least two Constabulary Cubs from the Fourteenth would be used? — was at Sonthofen before the train got there. And I wouldn’t be surprised if when Wilson picks me up at Schleissheim in the morning, he has prints with him.”

“I’d like a look at them,” Bischoff said. “Actually, what I’d like to do is get copies of them to Seven-K.”

“And if they were intercepted some way, don’t you think the Russians would thereafter wonder why the Americans were so interested in obscure Thuringian fields and back roads that they shot aerials of them?” Wallace asked sarcastically.

“Good point,” Gehlen said.

“You have common maps, presumably?” Wallace asked.

What the hell is a common map?

Oh. Seven-K and Bischoff have identical maps.

“Yes, of course we do.”

“Presumably with… imaginative… coordinates?”

Gehlen chuckled.

What the hell does that mean?

“Of course,” Bischoff said tightly.

“Then I suggest that the thing to do is get the pilots who shot the aerials to match them to a standard map, and then we change those coordinates to the imaginative ones. Would that be the thing to do, General?”

“Presuming the imaginative coordinates have not been compromised.”

“You think it’s worth taking the chance?”

“I don’t think we have much choice.”

“Okay with you, Jim?”

He’s asking my permission to do something, and I don’t have a fucking clue what that something is.

“Absolutely.”

Wallace reached for the secure telephone.

“Major Wallace,” he said. “Authorization Baker Niner Three Seven. I say again, Baker Niner Three Seven. Get me Lieutenant Colonel Wilson at Constab headquarters in Sonthofen.

“Colonel, this is the Bavarian office of the German-American Tourist Bureau. It has come to our attention that you have been taking pictures which might be suitable for our next ‘Visit Beautiful Occupied Bavaria’ brochure…

“Well, that would depend on who you might think it is…

“Congratulations, Hotshot! You have just won the cement bicycle and an all-expenses-paid tour of the beautiful Bavarian village of Pullach…

“No. I haven’t, actually. I’m parched. But as soon as I get off the phone, in other words, after you answer, truthfully, a couple of questions, I intend to quickly remedy that situation…

“The first is, I need to know, presuming they came out and you have them, if you’ve thought of matching the photos taken this morning to a GI map? My boss has been wondering…

“Yes, as a matter of fact I am talking about him. But I thought you were the one everyone calls ‘the Boy Wonder.’”

Wallace turned to Cronley.

“Colonel Wilson wishes me to remind you that he’s done this sort of thing before, and knows what’s required. He will bring what’s required when he picks you up in the morning.”

He turned back. “Final question, Bill. On a scale of one to ten, what’s our chances of carrying this off…?”

“That bad, huh? Well, it’s been nice chatting with you. Green Valley out.”

Cronley’s mouth went on automatic. He parroted, “‘Green Valley’? What the hell is that?”

“A code name from another time,” Wallace said. “My code name.”

“I had the feeling you knew one another,” General Gehlen said. “You said ‘that bad.’ Colonel Wilson doesn’t think much of our chances?”

“Colonel Wilson said I should know better than to try to estimate the chances of an operation being successful.”

“What did he mean by that?” Cronley asked. “Why not?”

“The only pertinent question to be asked is, ‘Is it necessary?’ And you’ve already made that decision, haven’t you?”

“Yeah, I have,” Cronley said, as much to himself as in response to Wallace’s question.

“Konrad,” General Gehlen asked, “once we get them, how long is it going to take to get the coordinates of possible pickup sites to Seven-K?”

“That would depend, Herr General, on whether we send them by messenger—”

“Which would be slower in any event than by radio, even if we knew where Rahil is,” Mannberg interrupted.

“But would present less of a risk of interception,” Bischoff argued.

“It would take too much time,” Gehlen said. “The time element here is critical. Rahil is greatly exposed moving around Poland or Bohemia, Moravia—”

“General,” Wallace interrupted, smiling, “that’s Czechoslovakia again. The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia is history. You lost the war.”

“Indeed, we did. What I meant to say, Green Valley, was that Seven-K is greatly exposed moving around that part of the world with a Russian woman and two Russian children with the NKGB looking for them.”

“Well, if you think they’re in what used to be Moravia, people other people are looking for are sometimes very hard to find in Moravia. Even by…”

Gehlen shook his head, and smiled.

“Searchers directed by Major Konrad Bischoff of Abwehr Ost,” he said.

“We heard you were personally directing the searchers,” Wallace said.

“Perhaps if I had, we would have met sooner than we did,” Gehlen said. “What happened was that my man normally in charge of important searches, Oberst Otto Niedermeyer, wasn’t available, so Kon—”

“You’re talking about the guy I met in Argentina?” Cronley blurted.

“I’m sure we are, Jim,” Gehlen said.

Jesus, this intelligence business is really a small world, isn’t it?

“So Konrad got the job of… trying to arrange a conversation with Green Valley,” Gehlen concluded.

“And damned near succeeded,” Wallace said. “There I was, all by my lonesome in a muddy field in picturesque Králický Sněžník. I could actually hear your motorcycles coming up the valley, and no sign of anything in the sky to get me the hell out of there. I was about to kiss my… rear end… goodbye, when there was Billy Wilson coming down the valley in his puddle jumper, about ten feet off the ground.”

“We saw him,” Bischoff said. “We were looking for a Lysander—”

“A what?” Cronley asked.

“A British ground cooperation aircraft, Jim,” Gehlen explained. “With short field capability. The OSS used them often in situations like Major Wallace’s.”

“Which we expected to land, and then get stuck in the muddy fields,” Bischoff explained.

“But instead you got Hotshot Billy in an L-4, with oversized tires,” Wallace said. “He touched down and I got in and away we went.”

“We were amazed when you got off the ground,” Bischoff said. “You flew right over us.”

“Which brings us to that,” Wallace said.

“Excuse me?” Gehlen said.

“Once Bill Wilson landed that Piper Cub, I was in it in about twenty seconds, tops, and we took off,” Wallace said. “That’s not going to happen with Mrs. Likharev and her two kids.”

“Point well taken,” Gehlen said.

And now these guys are sitting around, cheerfully remembering the day Wallace almost, but not quite, got caught behind enemy lines.

Almost like friends.

Almost, hell, really like friends.

Thank God that I got Wallace involved in this.

“It’s entirely possible, even likely,” Gehlen said, “that the Likharev children, and perhaps even Mrs. Likharev herself, have never been in an airplane before.”

“And the children will see they are about to be separated from their mother and handed over to strangers,” Mannberg added.

Cronley actually felt a chill as the epiphany began to form.

Oh, shit, it took me a long time even to start figuring this out.

I never even questioned how come an OSS veteran, a major, a Jedburgh, who had been Mattingly’s Number Two, got himself demoted to commanding officer of a CIC detachment with no mission except to cover DCI.

Jesus, there were three majors in the XXIInd CIC in Marburg. It would have made much more sense to send any one of them to a bullshit job in Munich, and it makes no sense at all for them to have sent somebody like Wallace, who — what did he say that he should be doing, “advising Greene or maybe General Clay”?

Who is “them” who sent Wallace here?

“The obvious corollary of that is that Mrs. Likharev, already distressed by her situation,” Gehlen said, “will be even more distressed at the prospect of her being separated from her children.”

Mattingly?

Wallace knows (a) that what he was ordered to do here is a bullshit job, and (b) who ordered him here.

So why did he put up with it?

Because what he’s really doing here is keeping an eye on me and Gehlen and company.

And Gehlen knows that. That’s why he told El Jefe he’d rather not have either Mattingly or Wallace at DCI. He’d rather have me. So El Jefe had Wallace assigned to the bullshit job.

Why?

To keep Gehlen happy.

And to put Wallace in a place where he’d have plenty of time and opportunity to keep an eye on both Gehlen and me.

And since Wallace has to know this, that means he’s working for Schultz, has been working for Schultz all along.

“They, the Likharev woman and the children, will have to be tranquilized,” Bischoff said matter-of-factly.

“I can see that now,” Wallace said sarcastically, “the Boy Wonder here, hypodermic needle in hand, chasing Russian kids all over some Thuringian field, while your agent tries to defend him from their mother.”

So that’s what you think of me, “the Boy Wonder”?

Why not?

You know what a fool I am.

“There are other ways to sedate people,” Gehlen said, chuckling. “But getting the Likharevs onto, into, the airplanes is a matter of concern. I suggest we think about — not talk about — the problem while we have our dinner.”

“I suggest,” Wallace said, “that until we get the aerials, and their coordinates, from Bill Wilson tomorrow, there’s nothing much to talk or think about. One step at a time, in other words.”

“Concur,” Gehlen said, and stood up.

“I should have my notes typed up by the time you get back,” Claudette Colbert said.

“While I appreciate your devotion to duty, Claudette,” Wallace said, “that’ll wait until tomorrow, too. You stick your notes in the safe and come to dinner with us.”

And what’s your real role in this, Claudette?

Did my innocence and naïveté really cause you to throw your maidenly modesty to the winds?

Or did someone tell you that I tell females with whom I am cavorting sexually everything they want to know?

And if so, who told you that? Is Fat Freddy part of this?

Or have you been working for Wallace all along, and he told you to get to me through Hessinger?

[FIVE]

“Fuck it,” Captain James D. Cronley Jr. announced and swung his legs out of bed.

He was in his underwear. He found the shirt he had discarded when he went to bed, and then his uniform trousers. He pulled on socks, made a decision between Shoes, Men’s Low Quarter, Brown in Color, and Uribe Boots, San Antonio, Texas, choosing to jam his feet into the latter.

Then he walked to his door, unlocked it, and went down the corridor to Suite 522, where he both pushed the doorbell and knocked at the door.

A full ninety seconds later, Major Harold Wallace, attired in his underwear, opened the door.

“If you’re looking for Brunhilde, Romeo, she’s in 533,” Major Wallace said.

“I’m looking for you, Colonel,” Cronley said.

“Colonel? How much have you had to drink, Jim?”

“Not a drop. Not a goddamn drop.”

“What’s on your mind at this obscene hour?”

“I have some questions I need to have answered.”

“Such as?”

“How long have you been working for Schultz?”

“How long have I what?”

“I think you heard me, Colonel.”

“I think you better go back down the corridor and jump in your little bed.”

“I’m not going to do that until I get some answers,” Cronley said.

Cronley gestured with his hand around the room. “And to put your mind at rest, Colonel, about the wrong people hearing those answers, I told Brunhilde to have the ASA guys sweep your suite for bugs after dinner and again at midnight.”

“And if I don’t choose to answer your questions?”

“Then we’re going to have trouble.”

“You’re threatening me?”

“I’m making a statement of fact.”

“Your pal Cletus warned me not to underestimate you,” Wallace said, and waved him into the room.

Wallace sat in an armchair, and motioned for Cronley to sit on a couch.

“Okay. What questions have you for me?”

“Let’s start with how long you’ve been a colonel.”

“What makes you think I am a colonel? Where the hell did you come up with that?”

“If you’re going to play games with me, Colonel, we’ll be here a long time.”

Wallace looked at him for a long thirty seconds before replying.

“Why are you asking?”

“I figure if I get a straight answer to that, straight answers to my other questions will follow.”

“And if I give you a straight answer, then what? You tell the world?”

“You know me better than that.”

“I guess I knew this conversation was coming, but I didn’t think it would be this soon. Been doing a lot of thinking, have you?”

“Since just before we went to dinner. I’m sorry I didn’t start a lot earlier. So, what’s your answer?”

“I was promoted to colonel the day after Bill Wilson pulled me out of Králický Sněžník. It was April Fools’ Day, 1945. I guess that’s why I remember the exact date. Is that what tipped you off?”

“Wilson’s a starchy West Pointer. You called him ‘Hotshot.’ He doesn’t like to be called Hotshot. So how were you getting away with it? Maybe because you outrank him? And if that’s true…”

“You figured that out, did you, you clever fellow?”

“It started me thinking about what else I didn’t know.”

“For example?”

“You brought up ‘my pal Cletus.’ Does he know what’s going on here?”

“What do you think?” Wallace said sarcastically.

“You met him before — him and El Jefe — before the day you came to Marburg with him and Mattingly, to pick up Frau von Wachtstein?”

Wallace nodded.

“In — the middle of 1943, I forget exactly when — Wild Bill Donovan decided that David Bruce, the OSS station chief in London, should be brought up to speed on what was happening in Argentina. Things that could not be written down.

“Bruce couldn’t leave London, so he sent me, as sort of a walking notebook. I spent three weeks there with Cletus and El Jefe. Which is how, since we are laying all our secrets on the table, you got in the spook business.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When we got back to OSS Forward — the Schlosshotel Kronberg in Taunus — that night, after picking up Frau von Wachtstein, we — Mattingly, Frade, and I — had a private dinner. Toward the end of it, Mattingly mentioned the trouble we were having finding an officer to command Tiny’s Troopers, who were going to provide security not only for Kloster Grünau, but for the Pullach compound when we got that up and running.”

“Why didn’t you just get Tiny a commission?”

“All I knew about Tiny at the time was that he was a first sergeant who’d got himself a Silver Star in the Battle of the Bulge. I didn’t know he’d almost graduated from Norwich. And I certainly didn’t know he called General White ‘Uncle Isaac.’ I’m now sure Mattingly did, and knew that Lieutenant Dunwiddie would ask questions First Sergeant Dunwiddie couldn’t ask. Mattingly likes to be in control.”

“You don’t like him much, do you?”

“Mattingly is a very good politician. You need people like that. I was telling you how you got in the spook business.”

“Sorry.”

“So Cletus said, what about Jim Cronley? What they’ve got him doing is sitting at an unimportant roadblock in the boonies, or words to that effect, to which Mattingly replied, that wouldn’t work. You’d need a Top Secret — OSS clearance to work at Kloster Grünau. You didn’t have one, and he couldn’t imagine anyone giving you one. Mattingly said he was surprised that you even had a Top Secret — CIC clearance, or words to that effect.

“This seemed to piss ol’ Cletus off. I don’t think he likes Mattingly much anyway. Cletus said, ‘Well, I’ll bet you his Uncle Bill would give him one.’ And Mattingly bit. ‘His Uncle Bill? Who the hell is his Uncle Bill?’

“He’s not really his uncle. But Jimmy calls him that.

“And Mattingly bit again.

“What’s Cronley’s Uncle Bill got to do with Top Secret — OSS clearances?

“‘Just about everything,’ Cletus said. ‘I’m talking about General Donovan. He and Jimmy’s father won World War One together.’

“I was looking at Mattingly. I could see on his face that he was weighing the advantages of having Wild Bill’s nephew under his thumb against the risks of having Wild Bill’s nephew under his thumb, and as usual was having trouble making a major decision like that. So he looks at me for a decision, and since I had already decided — wrong decision, as it turned out — that you couldn’t cause much trouble at Kloster Grünau, I nodded. And that is how you became a spook.”

“Did Cletus know you were a colonel?”

“Sure.”

“So why were you pretending to be a major?”

“When David Bruce set up OSS Forward, he knew it would be facing two enemies, the Germans and the U.S. Army. Colonel Mattingly is very good at dealing with U.S. Army bureaucrats, if properly supervised. I provided that supervision and dealt with the enemy. It was easier to do that if people thought I was a major.”

“And then, when DCI came along…”

“The admiral thought that I was the guy who should keep an eye on Gehlen.”

“And the chief, DCI-Europe?”

“And the chief, DCI-Europe, and Schultz thought I could do that better if everybody thought I was a major. It never entered anybody’s mind that Little Jimmy Cronley would be the one to figure this out, and then Little Jimmy does. Or figures out most of it. And tells me, touching the cockles of my heart, that he has decided to trust me and needs my help. So I confess to him what I think needs to be confessed, and hope that’s the end of it.

“And then you appear, in the middle of the goddamn night, and tell me you’ve been thinking. As I said, Clete warned me not to underestimate you, but I did. And, this taking place in the middle of the night, I told you more than I should have. Frankly, the assassination option occurred to me.”

“You wouldn’t tell me that if you planned to use it.”

“At least not until after we get Mrs. Likharev and kiddies across the border,” Wallace said. “Any more questions?”

“Where does Claudette fit in all this?”

“I haven’t quite figured that out myself,” Wallace said. “I’m tempted to take her and Freddy’s version, that she wanted out of the ASA…”

“She’s not working for you?”

Wallace shook his head.

“… and was willing to let Freddy into her pants as the price to be paid to get out.”

“Freddy’s not fucking her,” Cronley said.

“He said with a certainty I find fascinating.”

Cronley didn’t reply.

“One possibility that occurs to me is that you know Freddy has not been bedding Brunhilde because you are.”

Again, Cronley didn’t reply.

“Well, that went right over my head,” Wallace said. “You’re a regular fucking Casanova, aren’t you, Boy Wonder? Fucking Brunhilde is pretty goddamn stupid for a number of reasons.”

Then Wallace saw the look on Cronley’s face.

“Okay. So what else is there that you don’t want to tell me?”

Cronley remained silent.

“Goddammit, Jim. Answer the question. What else do you know that I should?”

Cronley exhaled audibly.

“You’re not going to like this,” he said.

“Understood. That’s why I insist you tell me.”

“I suspect — suspect, not know — that Gehlen was responsible for that gas water heater explosion.”

“Gehlen had Tony Schumann and his wife killed, is that what you’re saying?”

Cronley nodded.

“Why would he order that?”

“Because the Schumanns were NKGB agents.”

“That’s preposterous!”

“It’s true.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“You know that the NKGB was waiting for Likharev when he went to Buenos Aires?”

“Yes. So what? The Soviet Trade Mission to the Republic of Argentina knew we had him, they knew we were sending people to Argentina, so they started watching the airport. That’s what Cletus thinks, and I agree with him.”

“They knew exactly when he would arrive in Buenos Aires,” Cronley said. “They probably had six, eight, maybe ten hours to set up that ambush. The ambush involved a lot of people, at least a dozen. They even used Panzerfausts. A lot of planning had to be involved. They weren’t just keeping an eye on the airport on the off chance that Likharev would show up.”

Wallace considered that a moment.

“How could they possibly know exactly when he would arrive?”

“Because I told Rachel Schumann and she told her — their — handler.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“After we loaded him on the plane at Rhine-Main, I went to the Park Hotel… next to the bahnhof?”

“I know where it is.”

“And Rachel came to see me there.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because the Boy Wonder called her. The Boy Wonder had just loaded an NKGB major — this was before Clete turned him, and we learned Likharev’s really a colonel — on an airplane, and the Boy Wonder thought he was entitled to a little prize for all his good work. Like some good whisky and a piece of ass.”

“You were fucking Rachel Schumann?” Wallace asked incredulously.

“In hindsight, in a non-sexual sense, Rachel was fucking me. At the time, I thought it was my masculine charm. And I thought all her questions about Kloster Grünau were simply feminine curiosity. So, when she showed up at the Park Hotel for fun and games, I proudly told her what I had just done. And thirty minutes later, she left. She had to go home, she said, to her husband.”

“So when we heard what had happened in Buenos Aires, I put two and two together. The only way the Russians in Buenos Aires could have heard the precise details of when Likharev would get there was because they had gotten them from Rachel. And I’d given them to Rachel. The only other people who knew the details were Tiny and Hessinger, and I didn’t think either one of them would have tipped the NKGB. So I finally gathered my courage and fessed up.”

“To Gehlen?”

“Gehlen, Tiny, and Hessinger. Gehlen wasn’t as surprised, or as contemptuous, as I thought he would be. He said that he’d always wondered what Colonel Schumann was doing on that obscure back road in Schollbrunn, the day I shot up his car, why he had been so determined to get inside Kloster Grünau right then.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, he talked me out of my solution to the problem.”

“Which was?”

“I wanted to shoot both of them and then tell General Greene why I had. General Gehlen said the damage was done, and my going to the stockade, or the gallows, would accomplish nothing. And so, coward that I am, I accepted his advice.”

After a long moment, Wallace said, “We joke about the assassination option, but sometimes…”

“So I’ve learned.”

“You’re sure…?”

“The other thing I’ve learned is never to be sure about anything.”

“And Tiny? And Hessinger? Are you sure they can be…”

“Trusted? As sure as I am of anything.”

“What does Brunhilde know about this?”

“I don’t know what she knows, but I’m presuming she knows everything.”

“And do you think she might somehow try to use this knowledge to further her intelligence career?”

“I don’t know she wouldn’t, but how could I be sure?”

“You can’t. Have you told her what you’ve been thinking?”

“No.”

“You ever hear that the bedroom is usually where the most important secrets are compromised?”

“I guess I’m proof of that, aren’t I?”

“That argument could be reasonably made,” Wallace said drily.

“Colonel,” Cronley began, and stopped.

“What, Cronley?”

“Sir, the only thing I can say in my defense is that I very seldom make the same mistake twice.”

“I’m glad you said that,” Wallace said. “Both things.”

“Sir? Both things?”

“I’m glad you seldom make the same mistake twice, and I’m glad you said ‘Colonel.’”

“Sir?”

“For one thing, you are hereby cautioned not to say it out loud again,” Wallace said. “But don’t forget it. Now that my secret — that I’m the senior officer of the DCI present for duty — is no longer a secret to you, remember that when you have the urge to go off half-cocked. Get my permission before you do just about anything. For example, like forming an alliance with Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin of the Strasbourg office of the DST to investigate Odessa. I have a gut feeling that somehow that’s going to wind up biting you in the ass. And if your ass gets bitten, so does mine.”

“You want me to try to get out of that?”

“To coin a phrase, that cow is already out of the barn. But I want to hear everything that comes your way about that operation.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So long as you don’t FUBAR anything that would necessitate your being relieved, the longer, in other words, everybody but you — correction: you, Hessinger, and Dunwiddie — believes you to be the chief, DCI-Europe, the better. So conduct yourself accordingly, Captain Cronley.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, you didn’t mention Gehlen.”

“An inadvertent omission. Gehlen knows. But let’s keep him in the dark a little. He’s smarter than both of us, but I don’t think he should be the tail wagging our dog. And unless we’re very careful, that’s what’ll happen. That which-tail-should-wag-whose-dog analogy, by the way, came from the admiral, via Schultz.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything else?”

“Can’t think of anything, sir.”

“Then go to bed, Captain Cronley.”