The Assassination Option

[ONE]

Cronley watched through the windows of the terminal building as the passengers debarked from the Military Air Transport Service Douglas C-54 “Skymaster,” which had just flown — via Gander, Newfoundland, and Prestwick, Scotland — from Washington.

The procession down the ladder and into the terminal building was led by a major general, two brigadier generals, some other brass. Then came four senior non-coms, and finally a long line of women and children. They were “dependents” joining their husbands, called “sponsors,” in the Army of Occupation.

When the dependents came into the terminal, they were emotionally greeted by the sponsors in a touching display of connubial affection.

Cronley’s mind filled with the memory of his explaining the system to the Squirt at Camp Holabird the day they were married. The day before the drunken sonofabitch in the eighteen-wheeler ran head-on into her on US-1 in Washington.

He forced his mind off the subject.

No one was coming down the stairway.

What did you do, Polo? Miss the goddamn plane?

And then Lieutenant Colonel Maxwell Ashton III appeared in the door of the aircraft. In pinks and greens. He was on crutches. His right leg and left arm were in casts.

He stared down the stairs. Then, apparently deciding the crutches would be useless, he threw them down the stairs.

Jesus, he’s going to try to hop down the stairs!

“Go get him, Tiny,” Cronley ordered. “Before he breaks his other leg.”

“They won’t let me out there,” Dunwiddie protested.

“Show them the goddamn CIC badge and go get him!”

“Right.”

“And you go with him, and get the crutches,” Cronley ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Maksymilian Ostrowski said, and headed for the door.

Ostrowski was wearing, as Cronley was, a U.S. Army woolen olive-drab Ike jacket and trousers with “civilian” triangles sewn to the lapels. Dunwiddie was in pinks and greens.

Cronley, after thinking about it overnight, had decided to have Ostrowski fly the second Storch from Kloster Grünau to Rhine-Main to meet Ashton. For one thing, Schröder had reported — not surprisingly, since Ostrowski had been flying Spitfires and Hurricanes — that it had taken less than an hour for him to be convinced the Pole could fly a Storch. For another, Ostrowski spoke “British English” fluently. When he called the Rhine-Main control tower, that would not cause suspicion, as Schröder’s heavily German-accented English would.

But the real reason he had ordered Ostrowski to fly the second Storch was to test his theory that he could — DCI-Europe could — get away with not only flying the Storchs that were supposed to be grounded, but having them flown by a German and a Pole, and hiding both behind CIC credentials to which they were not entitled.

It would either work or it wouldn’t. If they suddenly found themselves being detained by outraged Air Force officers — or for that matter, outraged Army officers — calling for somebody’s scalp, better to have that happen now, when Ashton was in Germany. A newly promoted lieutenant colonel might not be able to do much against the forces aligned against DCI-Europe, but he would have a lot more clout than a newly promoted captain.

Tiny, flashing his CIC wallet, and with Ostrowski on his heels, got past the Air Force sergeant keeping people from going onto the tarmac, and without trouble.

The young sergeant might have been dazzled by the CIC credentials, Cronley thought. But it was equally possible that he had been dazzled by an enormous, very black captain he knew he could not physically restrain from going anywhere he wanted to.

As Tiny started up the stairs, two at a time, another man appeared in the airplane door. A stocky, somewhat florid-faced man in his late forties, wearing the uniform of a U.S. Navy lieutenant.

He was somehow familiar.

Jesus Christ! That’s El Jefe!

The last time Cronley had seen Lieutenant Oscar J. Schultz, USNR, he had been wearing the full regalia of an Argentine gaucho, a billowing white shirt over billowing black trousers; a gaily printed scarf; a wide-brimmed leather hat; knee-high black leather boots; a wide, silver-coin-adorned leather belt, and, tucked into the belt, the silver scabbard of a horn-handled knife the size of a cavalry saber.

El Jefe had once been Chief Radioman Oscar Schultz of the destroyer USS Alfred Thomas, DD-107, hence the reference El Jefe, the chief. Schultz had been drafted into the OSS by then-Captain Cletus Frade, USMCR, when the Thomas had sailed into Buenos Aires on a friendly visit to the neutral Argentine Republic. And also to surreptitiously put ashore a radar set and a SIGABA communications system for the OSS.

Frade thought he needed a highly skilled, Spanish-speaking (El Jefe had done two tours at the U.S. Navy base at Cavite in the Philippines) communications and radar expert more than the Thomas did, and General William Donovan, then head of the OSS, had not only agreed, but had had a word with the chief of naval operations.

Two days later, the Thomas had sailed from Buenos Aires without Chief Schultz. Schultz set up shop on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, Frade’s enormous ranch, where Cronley had met him, and where he had quickly acquired both the regalia of a gaucho and a Rubenesque lady friend, who became known as “the other Dorotea,” the first being Señora Dorotea Frade.

More importantly, he had become an important member of “Team Turtle,” the code name for Frade’s OSS operation in Argentina. So important that he had been given a direct commission as an officer.

What the hell is El Jefe doing here?

Before the question had run through his mind, Cronley knew the answer.

Admiral Souers, knowing that Polo would refuse the assistance of a nurse, even a male nurse, although he really needed it, had ordered Schultz up from Argentina so that he could assist and protect Polo while he traveled to Germany and then back to Argentina.

That noble idea seemed to be destined to become a spectacular disaster.

As Tiny bounded up the stairway, El Jefe, seeing an enormous black man headed for his charge, started bounding down them to defend him.

Cronley recalled Cletus Frade telling him that El Jefe enjoyed the deep respect of the gauchos of the estancia, despite his refusal to get on a horse, because he had become both the undisputed bare-knuckles pugilist of the estancia and the undisputed hand-wrestling champion. Gauchos add spice, Cletus had told him, to their hand-wrestling fun by holding hands over their unsheathed razor-sharp knives.

Captain Dunwiddie and Lieutenant Schultz had a brief conversation near the top of the stairs. Then, suddenly, as if they had practiced the action for months, they had Polo in a “handbasket” between them and were carrying him — like the bridegroom at a Hebrew wedding — down the stairs, across the tarmac, and into the passenger terminal.

Cronley was surprised that no one seemed to pay much attention.

“Welcome to occupied Germany,” Cronley said, as Schultz and Dunwiddie set Ashton on his feet and Ostrowski handed him his crutches. “Please keep in mind that VD walks the streets tonight, and penicillin fails once in seven times.”

Ashton shook his head.

“Thanks,” he said to Dunwiddie, Schultz, and Ostrowski. “Where’s the colonel?”

“Which colonel would that be?”

“Mattingly.”

“I don’t know. I hope he’s far from here.”

“The admiral said I should see him as soon as I got here. I’ve got a letter for him. What do you mean you hope he’s far from here?”

A letter? From Souers to Mattingly? Why does that scare me?

“We’re going to have to have a little chat before you see him,” Cronley said. He gestured toward the door. “Your ambulance awaits.”

“I don’t need an ambulance.”

“You do unless you want to walk all the way across Rhine-Main airfield.”

“What’s all the way across the field?”

“The Storchs in which we are going to fly to Kloster Grünau — the monastery — to have our little chat.”

“How they hanging, kid?” Schultz demanded of Captain Cronley.

“One beside the other. How about yours?”

“I don’t have to tell you, do I, about how lousy I feel about what happened to the Squirt?”

“No. But thank you.”

“I really liked that little broad,” Schultz said. “Mean as a snake, but nice, you know?”

“Yeah,” Cronley said.

“You know, Jim, that you have my condolences,” Max Ashton said. “Tragic!”

Cronley saw the sympathy, the compassion, in their eyes.

[TWO]

Lieutenant Colonel Maxwell Ashton III tapped the remnants of his steak on his plate with his knife and fork and then announced, “Not too bad. Not grass-fed on the pampas, of course, and — not to look the gift horse in the mouth — this red wine frankly does not have the je ne sais quoi of an Estancia Don Guillermo Cabernet Sauvignon. But one must expect to make certain sacrifices when one goes off to battle the Red Menace on foreign shores, mustn’t one?”

He got the dutiful chuckles he expected.

“Colonel Frade came to see me shortly before El Jefe and I got on the airplane—” Ashton began to go on.

“In Washington?” Cronley interrupted. “Cletus is in Washington?”

“He was there briefly en route to Pensacola, Florida, where he will be released from active service in the United States Marine Corps. I appreciate your interest, but I would appreciate even more your permitting me to continue.”

“Sorry.”

“Colonel Frade was kind enough to offer a few suggestions vis-à-vis my trip here. He recommended that should Colonel Mattingly not be able to find time in his busy schedule to meet me at Frankfurt, so that I might give him Admiral Souers’s letter—”

“Why did he think Mattingly was going to meet you at Rhine-Main?” Cronley interrupted again.

Ashton ignored the interruption and went on, “I should ask whoever met us to take us to the Schlosshotel Kronberg, where we could rest in luxurious accommodations overnight, to recuperate from our journey. Then, the following morning, I could go to the I.G. Farben Building to meet with Colonel Mattingly, deliver the admiral’s letter to him, and perhaps meet with General Greene and possibly even General Smith.

“Following that meeting, or meetings, Colonel Frade suggested we then reserve a compartment on a railroad train charmingly entitled ‘the Blue Danube’ and travel to Munich to meet with you, Captain Cronley, your staff, and General Gehlen, preferably at the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, which he assured me would provide El Jefe and myself luxury accommodations equal to those of the Schlosshotel Kronberg.

“Instead… as someone once said, ‘the best-laid plans gang aft agley,’ which I suspect means get royally fucked up… Captain Cronley meets us at the airport, tells me he has no idea where Colonel Mattingly is, but that he hopes wherever he is it is far away. He then stuffs me into the really uncomfortable backseat of a little airplane and flies me through every storm cloud he could find to a medieval monastery in the middle of fucking nowhere.”

Cronley smiled, but he recalled seeing — a dozen times, more — Ashton wince with pain as the Storch had been tossed about by turbulence during the flight from Frankfurt.

“Now, one would suspect,” Ashton went on, “that, in normal circumstances, this deviation from the plan would annoy, perhaps even anger, your new commanding officer. These are not normal circumstances, however.

“I was given the opportunity, first while lying in my bed of pain in Walter Reed, and then whilst flying across the Atlantic, and finally as I flew here from Frankfurt, to consider what the circumstances really are.

“To start, let me go back to the beginning. The admiral came to see me at Walter Reed. Bearing my new silver oak leaves. He told me they were intended more as an inducement for me to stay on active duty than a recognition of my superior leadership characteristics.

“I then told him I didn’t need an inducement to stay on active duty, as I was determined to get the bastards who did this to me.”

He raised his broken arm.

“He immediately accepted my offer, which I thought surprised him more than a little. Not immediately, but right after he left, I began to wonder why. The cold facts seemed to be that not only was I going to have to hobble around on crutches for the next several months, but — more importantly — I was in fact no more qualified to take over Operation Ost from Colonel Frade than Jim was to handle Operation Ost in Germany.

“Certainly, I reasoned, although I had heard time and again that finding experienced people for the new DCI was going to be difficult, there had to be two or three or four experienced spooks — Colonel Mattingly — like senior spooks — who had joined the ranks of the unemployed when the OSS went out of business, who would be available. And Colonel Frade had made the point over and over that not all members, just an overwhelming majority of officers of the conventional intelligence operations, were unable to find their asses using both hands.

“I came up with a theory immediately, but dismissed it as really off the wall.

“And then I was given the letter — the carefully sealed letter in the double envelope — to deliver to Colonel Mattingly. ‘What,’ I wondered, ‘does the admiral wish to tell Colonel Mattingly that he doesn’t want me to know?’

“When I thought, at length, about this, my initial off-the-wall theory started coming back, and each time it did it made more sense.

“The conclusion I reached, after considering everything, is that Admiral Souers has decided that you and I, Jim — and of course Captain Dunwiddie — are expendable. I have also concluded that Colonel Frade — whatever his limitations are, no one has ever accused him of being slow — is, if not party to this, fully aware of it.”

“How do you mean ‘expendable,’ Colonel?” Dunwiddie asked.

“Available for sacrifice for the greater good,” Ashton said. “Consider this, please. To whom does Admiral Souers — with absolute justification — owe his primary loyalty?”

“The President,” Cronley said softly. “Oh, Jesus!”

“Who must be protected whatever it takes,” Ashton said.

“Why are you telling us this?” Dunwiddie asked.

“Well, after thinking it over, I decided that — as far as I’m concerned — it’s all right. What we’re doing is important. But I decided that it would be dishonest of me, now that I’ve figured it out, not to tell you. Before we go further, in other words, I wanted you to have the opportunity to opt out.”

“‘Before we go further’?” Dunwiddie parroted.

“What I’ve decided to do is live with the possibility, actually the probability, that Operation Ost is going to blow up in my face, and that when that happens, Souers, as he should, is going to throw me to the wolves to protect the President. And for that matter, Eisenhower and Smith. That’s one of the things I’ve decided.”

“And the others?” Cronley asked.

“That if Operation Ost blows up in my face, it’s going to be because of a bad decision of mine. Not because Mattingly or General Greene ‘suggest’ something to me and I dutifully follow their suggestion to do — more importantly, not to do — something and it blows up.”

“For instance?” Cronley asked softly.

“For instance, Colonel Frade suggested to me that I should act ‘with great caution’ in dealing with our traitor. I don’t intend to heed that advice. My first priority is going to be finding out who the sonofabitch is, and then putting out his lights. I don’t care if he spent three years holding Gehlen’s hand on the Russian front, and has Joe Stalin’s girlfriend’s phone number, he’s a dead man.”

“By traitor, you mean the man who let the NKGB know we were sending Colonel Likharev to Argentina?” Cronley asked.

“With all the details of when and how,” Ashton confirmed. “Gehlen has to be taught that he’s working for us, and that our deal with him is to protect his people from the Russians. The deal didn’t include protecting his people from us. He has to be taught, right now, that we won’t tolerate a loose cannon.”

“There are people in Gehlen’s organization who are working for the NKGB—”

“You already had figured that out, huh?”

“And we’re working on finding out who they are.”

“‘We’re’ meaning you and Gehlen, right? Isn’t that what’s called sending the fox into the chicken coop to see what happened to the hens? Frankly, Jim, I thought you had more sense than that.”

“You will be astonished, Colonel, when I tell you how little sense I have had.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Shortly after I returned from Argentina, I met a woman. The wife of the CIC-Europe IG. Shortly after that—”

“Wait a minute! You’re talking about this woman whose water heater blew up?”

Cronley nodded.

“There has to be a point to this narrative of your sexual exploits.”

“I told her about Colonel Sergei Likharev, then known to us as Major Konstantin Orlovsky, about whom she had heard from her husband and was curious. And the night I put him on the plane to Buenos Aires, I told her about that.”

“And she ran her mouth?”

“I don’t think they call it running the mouth when an NKGB agent reports to her superiors the intelligence she was sent to get.”

Ashton looked at Cronley for a long moment.

“You’re saying the wife of the CIC IG was an NKGB agent?” he asked incredulously.

“We’re saying that both of them, the IG, too, were NKGB agents,” Dunwiddie said.

“And the water heater explosion?”

“My orders from Colonel Frade, about finding and dealing with the leak, were to get out of General Gehlen’s way when he was dealing with it. I complied with that order.”

“And didn’t tell Mattingly, or Greene — for that matter, Frade — about your suspicions?”

“They weren’t suspicions. The only way the NKGB could have learned about our sending Likharev to Argentina, and when and how, was from my loving Rachel,” Cronley said.

“And, as the general pointed out,” Dunwiddie said, “a day or two after we caught Likharev sneaking out of here, Colonel Schumann showed up here and demanded to be let in. It took shooting his engine out with a .50 caliber Browning to keep him out. The general suggested Colonel Schumann’s interest in Kloster Grünau was because he suspected we had Orlovsky/Likharev.”

“My God!” Ashton said.

“Gehlen further suggested that how Jim planned to deal with the situation wasn’t practical.”

“He said it was childish,” Cronley corrected him.

“And this impractical, childish situation was?” Ashton asked.

“I was going to shoot both of them and then go tell Mattingly why.”

“General Gehlen said Jim going to the stockade…”

“Or the hangman’s noose,” Cronley interjected.

“… made no sense.”

“You didn’t even consider going to Mattingly and telling him what you suspected? You just—”

“You’re going to have to learn that when you tell Mattingly anything…” Cronley interrupted.

“I’m going to have to learn?” Ashton interrupted. “I don’t think I like you telling me anything I have to do.”

“… Mattingly will look at it through the prism of what’s good for Colonel Robert Mattingly,” Cronley finished.

“Did you just hear what I said, Captain Cronley?”

“Yeah, Colonel Ashton, I heard. But you better get used to it. That won’t be the last time I’ll tell you what I think you have to do. Don’t get blinded by those silver oak leaves. What the hell makes you think you can get off the plane and start telling us what to do? You don’t know enough of what’s going—”

“Enough,” Tiny boomed. “Goddamn it! Both of you, stop right there!”

He sounded like the first sergeant he had so recently been, counseling two PFCs who were doing something really stupid.

And then, as if he had heard what he said, and was now cognizant that captains cannot talk to lieutenant colonels as if they are PFCs doing something really stupid, he went on jocularly, “In the immortal words of the great lover of our revolutionary era, the revered Benjamin Franklin, ‘We must hang together, gentlemen, else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.’”

Ashton glowered at him for a long moment.

Finally he said, “Actually, Jim, I must admit the little fellow has a point.”

“Every once in a great while, he’s right about something,” Cronley said, and then added, “I was out of line. I apologize.”

“Apology rejected as absolutely unnecessary,” Ashton said.

After a moment, he went on. “So what’s next?”

“Before we get to what’s next,” El Jefe said, “I have a request.”

“For what?”

“Is there a .45 around here that I can have?”

“Why do you want a .45?” Dunwiddie asked.

“Well, when people try to kill me, I like to have something to defend myself.”

When there was no reply, El Jefe went on.

“This Colonel Mattingly of yours may think a gas leak took out this CIC colonel and his wife, but I don’t think the NKGB is swallowing that line. I think they may want to come back here and play tit for tat.”

“They already have,” Cronley said. “A week ago, Ostrowski killed two of them. They already had a wire garrote around Sergeant Tedworth’s neck.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” El Jefe said, “but following that, it was really heads-up around here, right? Double the guard, that sort of thing?”

Cronley and Dunwiddie nodded.

“So I think what these Communists will do is wait until you relax a little, and then try it again. At least that’s what the Chinese Communists did.”

“The Chinese?” Ashton and Cronley said on top of one another.

“When I was a young sailor, I did two hitches with the Yangtze River Patrol. The Chinese Communists were always trying to kill us. What they did was try. If that failed, they waited patiently until we relaxed a little and then tried again. And again. Most of the time, that worked. We used to say we got double time for retirement because the Navy knew most of us wouldn’t live long enough to retire.”

“Interesting,” Dunwiddie said. “That’s how the Apaches operated.”

“Two things, Captain Cronley,” Ashton said. “When you get Lieutenant Schultz a .45, would you get me one, too?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And one last question. If you didn’t want to go to Colonel Mattingly with it, why didn’t you go to General Greene and tell him what you suspected — all right, knew — about Colonel Whatsisname and his wife?”

Dunwiddie answered for him: “General Gehlen said that the Schumanns were sure to have contingency plans — ranging from denial through disappearing — in case they were exposed. He said he didn’t think we could afford to take the chance they were outwitting us. Jim and I agreed with him.”

“So you went along with having Gehlen clip them,” Ashton said.

“We don’t know that Gehlen had them clipped,” Cronley said.

“You don’t know the sun will come up in the morning, either. But you would agree it’s likely, right?”

When Cronley didn’t reply, Ashton said, “I suggest, operative word, ‘suggest,’ that our next step is to meet with General Gehlen.”

“I respectfully suggest our next step is getting the .45s,” El Jefe said. “Then we can go talk to this general.”

“Every once in a great while, the chief’s right about something,” Ashton said.

[THREE]

CIC Special Agent Friedrich Hessinger and a very large, very black sergeant with a Thompson submachine gun cradled in his arms like a hunter’s shotgun walked into the officers’ mess.

Captain J. D. Cronley, Captain Chauncey L. Dunwiddie, First Sergeant Abraham Lincoln Tedworth, and a man in a naval officer’s uniform were sitting at the bar drinking coffee. A lieutenant colonel sitting in a chair, with his en-casted leg resting on a small table, also held a coffee cup.

The sergeant smiled and, without disturbing the Thompson, saluted.

“Those captain’s bars look good on you, Top,” he said.

Dunwiddie returned the salute.

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” he said. “Thanks, Eustis.”

“And these stripes?” Tedworth asked, pointing to his chevrons. “How do they look on me?”

“Every once in a while, the Army makes a really big mistake,” the sergeant said.

“That will cost you, Eustis. Sooner or later that will really cost you,” Tedworth replied. “Now, get over to the motor pool and tell them to have an ambulance, with a couch, ready in ten minutes. We’re going into Munich.”

“And then come back here?”

“Wait there until I send for you.”

“You got it, Top.”

When he had gone, Cronley said, “Good man.”

“Yes, he is,” Dunwiddie agreed. “When he’s told to do something, he does it. Not like some fat Kraut-Americans, like the one I’m looking at.”

Hessinger held up both hands, a gesture that meant both that he didn’t understand and that he surrendered.

“Captain Cronley, did you, or did you not, tell Fat Freddy to arm himself before driving out here?”

“I recall saying something along those lines to Special Agent Hessinger, yes,” Cronley said.

“‘Sorry, sir. No excuse, sir’ will not be a satisfactory excuse, Sergeant Hessinger,” Dunwiddie said.

Hessinger hoisted the skirt of his tunic. The butt of a Model 1911A1 .45 ACP pistol became visible above his hip.

“Say ‘I apologize’ to Freddy,” Cronley said, laughing. And then he added, “Come here, Freddy, I want to see that holster.”

Hessinger complied.

“Where the hell did you get that?”

“I had a shoemaker make half a dozen of them,” Hessinger replied. “They call them ‘Secret Service High Rise Cross Draw Holsters.’ There was a schematic in one of the books on General Greene’s sergeant major’s shelf.”

“Colonel Ashton, Lieutenant Schultz, meet Special Agent Hessinger, sometimes known as ‘One Surprise After Another Hessinger,’” Cronley said.

They shook hands.

“Your funny accent,” El Jefe said. “What are you, German?”

“I was. Now I am an American.”

“Can I have a look at that holster?” Ashton asked.

Hessinger hoisted the skirt of his tunic again and said, “They also work under an Ike jacket, Colonel.”

Schultz took a good look, and then asked, “Who would I have to kill to get one of them?”

Hessinger didn’t say anything, but he looked at Dunwiddie.

Cronley laughed.

“I have enough for everybody,” Hessinger said. “I thought we would need more than one, so I had the extras made for us.”

Cronley laughed again and then asked, “Freddy, how long have you been carrying a .45 in that Secret Service holster?”

“Ever since Tedworth caught the Russian,” Hessinger said. “The first Russian. I thought the NKGB might try to kidnap one of us, and then try to make a swap. You didn’t think about that?”

No, goddammit, I didn’t.

One more entry in the stupid column.

Cronley saw El Jefe scribble something on a piece of paper and hand it to Ashton.

What the hell is that?

“Freddy,” Cronley asked, “you just said ‘we’ and ‘for us.’ How strongly do you feel about that?”

“When I was growing up, my father told me you couldn’t choose your parents, but you should choose your associates. Then I was drafted and found out you can’t choose either,” Hessinger said. “Why do I think there is a question behind that question?”

“Because you’re not nearly as dumb as you look?” Dunwiddie asked.

“Now that you’re an officer, you’re not supposed to insult junior enlisted men,” Hessinger said. “Isn’t that right, Captain Cronley?”

“Absolutely. That’s two apologies you owe Fat Freddy, Captain Dunwiddie.”

“And one, I would say, Captain Cronley, that you owe the sergeant,” Ashton said.

“Excuse me, Colonel,” Hessinger said. “We do this all the time. What it is is that they’re jealous of my education.”

“Did I mention that Hessinger is a Harvard graduate, Colonel?” Cronley asked.

“I’ll try not to hold that against you, Sergeant Hessinger,” Ashton said. “We all have a cross to bear, and your Harvard diploma must be a very heavy one.”

There were chuckles all around. Even Hessinger smiled.

“Why did you ask me what you asked before?” he asked.

“Freddy, what if I told you Colonel Ashton believes, and so do Tiny and me, that if Operation Ost blows up in our face, everybody from Admiral Souers on down is going to throw us to the wolves?”

“That surprises you? In Russian literature there are many vignettes of the nobility throwing peasants out of troikas to save themselves from the wolves. Which is of course the etymological source of that expression.”

“What’s a troika?” El Jefe asked.

“A horse-drawn sleigh,” Dunwiddie furnished.

“Three horses, side by side,” Hessinger further amplified, using his hands to demonstrate.

“If we can turn from this fascinating lecture on Russian customs to the subject at hand, stemming the tide of the Red Menace?” Cronley asked. “Freddy, we’ve decided that if getting tossed from this three-horse buggy is the price that we have to pay for trying to protect Operation Ost and the President, okay, we’ll take our lumps.”

Hessinger was now paying close attention.

“And, further, we have decided that if we get tossed from the buggy, it will be because we fucked up somehow, not because we blindly followed the friendly suggestions of anybody — Mattingly, Greene, or even the admiral — on how to do the job.

“And, we have concluded that despite our best efforts, the odds are we’re going to wind up over our asses in the snow with the wolves gnawing on our balls. Both the colonel and I have decided, with Captain Dunwiddie concurring, that we have to ask you whether or not you wish to join the lunatics or whether you should return to the bona fide CIC and chase Nazis.”

“In other words, Tubby,” El Jefe said, “there’s no reason you should get your ass burned because these two nuts think they’re Alan Ladd and Errol Flynn saving the world for Veronica Lake and Mom’s apple pie. You want to take my advice, get as far away from this as soon as you can.”

“Thank you just the same,” Hessinger said, “but I don’t want your advice. What I do want is for you, Jim, to tell me what I have done to make you think you had to ask me that question.”

“What does that mean, Tubby?” El Jefe asked. “Are you in, or are you out?”

“Don’t call me Tubby.”

“Why not? It fits.”

“They can call me ‘Fat Freddy’ or whatever they want. They’re my friends. You’re not. You can either call me ‘Sergeant Hessinger’ or ‘Mr. Hessinger.’ Got it, Popeye the Sailor Man?”

“Enlisted men aren’t supposed to talk to officers like that, Freddy,” Dunwiddie said.

“When I’m in my CIC suit,” Hessinger said, pointing to the blue triangles on his lapels, “nobody’s supposed to know I’m an enlisted man.”

“Mr. Hessinger’s got you, Captain Dunwiddie,” Cronley said, and added, “Yet again.”

“May I infer, Mr. Hessinger, that you wish to remain allied with us, despite the risks doing so entails?” Ashton asked.

“Yes, sir. He didn’t have to ask me that.”

“No offense intended, Freddy,” Cronley said.

“Offense taken, thank you very much,” Hessinger said.

“At this point, I would like to introduce an intelligence analysis I received a short time ago,” Ashton said. “Would you read this aloud, Captain Dunwiddie?”

Ashton handed Dunwiddie a small sheet of paper.

That’s what El Jefe handed him.

“‘If Jim wants to let him go, overrule him. Trust me. We need this guy,’” Dunwiddie read.

Hessinger looked at El Jefe for a long moment, and then said, “Thank you, Lieutenant Schultz.”

“Just the honest judgment of an old chief petty officer, Mr. Hessinger.”

“You can call me Fat Freddy, if you like.”

“Thank you. Fat Freddy, if you ever call me ‘Popeye the Sailor Man’ again, I will tear off one of your legs and shove it up your ass.”

“Moving right along,” Ashton said, “what I think we should do now is go to Munich and meet with General Gehlen.”

“Stopping along the way wherever Fred has stashed the other five .45 holsters he said he has,” El Jefe said. “I want one.”

“They’re in the Kapitän,” Hessinger said. “I thought you would need them, so I brought them out here with me.”

[FOUR]

Ashton had trouble getting off the couch, which had been bolted to the floor of the ambulance, and then had more trouble getting out of the ambulance and onto his crutches. The ground behind the ambulance’s doors was covered with frozen snow ruts. Ashton looked to be in great danger of falling, but bluntly refused Schultz’s and Dunwiddie’s offer of “a ride”: “When I need help, I’ll ask for it.”

So the others followed him very slowly as he hobbled on his crutches through the snow from the curb to the small, tile-roofed building.

“Who is this guy?” Schultz demanded of Cronley, “and what’s he got to do with us?”

“What guy?”

“The military government liaison officer.”

Cronley motioned for El Jefe to come close, and then whispered in his ear, “We really can’t afford this getting out, Popeye, it’s something we really don’t want Joe Stalin to find out. It’s me. One more brilliant move to deceive and confuse our enemy.”

“Wiseass.”

Hessinger plodded through the snow and opened the door for Ashton. Then he held it for Cronley, Schultz, and Dunwiddie.

Former Major General Gehlen and former Colonel Mannberg were in the living room of the building, sitting in armchairs reading the Stars and Stripes. Both rose when they saw Ashton come in.

Ashton made his way to Mannberg and awkwardly held out his hand to him.

“General Gehlen, I am Lieutenant Colonel Ashton.”

“I’m Reinhard Gehlen,” Gehlen said. “This is Ludwig Mannberg, my deputy.”

Cronley thought: I would have made the same mistake. Good ol’ Ludwig looks like what Hollywood movies have taught us senior German officers look like. And the general looks like a not-very-successful black marketeer.

But that does it. Gehlen gets some decent clothes.

“Well, I hope that’s not a harbinger of future confusion,” Ashton said.

“Sometimes, Colonel, confusion in our profession is useful, wouldn’t you agree?” Gehlen asked.

“Max,” Cronley ordered, “sit down before you fall down.”

“I’m sure you’ve noticed, General, that every once in a great while Captain Cronley does have a good idea.”

He hobbled to an empty armchair and collapsed into it.

“This is Lieutenant Schultz,” Cronley said.

“El Jefe?” Mannberg asked.

Schultz nodded.

“How did you know they call me that?” he asked, on the edge of unpleasantly.

“Otto Niedermeyer is one of your admirers,” Mannberg said in Spanish. “He warned me not to arm-wrestle with you.”

“Did he tell you I also cheat at chess?” El Jefe asked in Spanish.

“Not in so many words,” Mannberg said in German.

“In English, Colonel,” El Jefe said, in English, “we have a saying—‘It takes one to know one.’”

Mannberg laughed.

Very clever, Cronley thought. They haven’t been together sixty seconds, and already they know how well the other speaks German, Spanish, and English. All of these guys are far more clever than I am.

“Ludwig,” Cronley said, “see if you can guess where Colonel Ashton got his Spanish. Say something in Spanish, Max.”

“I have need of the bathroom. Where is it?” Ashton said in Spanish.

“Interesting accent,” Mannberg said. “Not pure castellano, but close. Is that the Argentine version?”

El Jefe went to Ashton and pulled him out of the armchair.

“Through that door,” Cronley said. “First door to the right.”

“Actually, it’s Cuban,” Ashton said, and then switched to English. “If you will hand me my goddamn crutches, I can handle it from here. But while I’m communing with nature, see if Captain Cronley has any medicine.”

“What kind of medicine?” Cronley asked, with concern in his voice.

“Almost anything that comes out of a bottle reading ‘Distilled in Scotland’ will do,” Ashton said, as he began to lurch across the room.

When he was out of earshot, Gehlen said, “Interesting man. I like his sense of humor.”

“Don’t be too quick to judge him by that,” Cronley said. “He’s very good at what he does.”

As the words came out of his mouth, Cronley thought, What am I doing? Warning Gehlen about the man he’s now working for? That’s absolutely ass-backwards!

“He would not have been selected as Cletus Frade’s replacement if he was not very good at what he does,” Gehlen said.

So what’s the truth there?

Ashton is very good. That’s true.

But it’s also true that he was selected as an expendable who can be thrown to the wolves.

“That’s true, of course,” Cronley began. “But there is another, frankly unpleasant, possib—”

“Freddy,” El Jefe interrupted him, “I’m not feeling too well myself, so while you’re getting the colonel’s medicine, how about making a dose for me?”

He looked at Cronley. “How about you? A little medicine for you?”

El Jefe didn’t want me to get into that subject — for that matter, any subject — with Gehlen while Ashton is out of the room.

And he’s right.

And Gehlen and ol’ Ludwig certainly picked up on that.

And Tiny did.

And, of course, Fat Freddy.

I just had my wrist slapped in public.

And deserved it.

“A splendid idea,” Cronley said. “I wonder why I didn’t think of that myself?”

Because I’m stupid, that’s why.

Ashton hobbled, far from nimbly, across the room and again collapsed into the armchair.

Hessinger handed him a glass of whisky, straight, and then offered a bowl of ice cubes. Ashton waved them away and took a healthy swallow of the scotch.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I had an idea just now. That sometimes happens to me when I am in that circumstance and have nothing to read while waiting for Mother Nature to turn her attention to me. And since I am drunk with the power with which Admiral Souers has invested me, we’re going to try it. I ask your indulgence.

“There will be no briefing of Lieutenant Schultz and myself in the usual sense. Instead of each of you, junior first, taking turns telling El Jefe and me what has happened in the past — which of course the others already know — we are going to reverse the procedure…”

Where the hell is he going with this?

“… specifically, General Gehlen is going to start by telling us of the most recent development in our noble crusade against the Red Menace — which not all of you, perhaps none of you, will know. Then, I will ask and all of you may ask, questions to fill in the blanks in our knowledge. This is known as ‘reverse engineering.’ General Gehlen, please tell us all what you would have told Captain Cronley had he walked in here just now, and Lieutenant Schultz and myself were nowhere around.”

Gehlen, a slight smile on his lips, looked at Cronley, who shrugged.

“Very well,” Gehlen said. “I would have said, ‘Jim, we’ve heard again from Seven-K.’”

“Aha!” Ashton said. “We’ve already turned up something I know nothing about. What is Seven-K?”

“It’s a her,” Cronley said. “A/K/A Rahil.”

“And who is Seven-K A/K/A Rahil?”

“An old acquaintance of the general’s and Ludwig’s,” Cronley said, smiling at Gehlen.

Ashton picked up on the smile and, literally visibly, began to suspect that his leg was being pulled.

“Tell me about the lady,” Ashton said.

“Tell you what about her?”

“Why was she sending you a message?”

“She wants fifty thousand dollars,” Gehlen said. “Another fifty thousand dollars.” He paused, and then, anticipating Ashton’s next question, added: “She’d probably say for expenses.”

“You’ve already given this woman fifty thousand dollars? For what?”

“Expenses,” Cronley said, smiling.

“What’s so goddamn funny?”

“Funny?”

“You’re smiling.”

“With pleasure, because your idea seems to be working so well,” Cronley said.

“I told you to tell me about this woman.”

“Well, for one thing, she’s Jewish,” Cronley said.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You ever heard of the Mossad?”

“This woman is Mossad? A Mossad agent?”

“And also a Podpolkóvnik of the NKGB,” Gehlen said.

“A what?” Ashton asked.

“More probably, General, by now a Polkóvnik,” Mannberg said. “That massive wave of promotions right after the war?”

“You’re probably right, Ludwig,” Gehlen said, and then, to Ashton, added: “The NKGB jokes that one either gets promoted or eliminated.”

“What’s that you said, General, ‘Pod-pol’ something?” Ashton asked.

“A Podpolkóvnik is a lieutenant colonel,” Gehlen explained. “And a Polkóvnik a colonel.”

Ashton, visibly, thought something over and then made a decision.

“Okay,” he said. “I find it hard to believe that you’re pulling my leg. On the other hand, with Cronley anything is possible. If you have been pulling my chain, the joke’s over. Enough.”

“We have not been pulling either your chain or your leg, Colonel,” Cronley said.

“You have just heard from a woman who is both a Mossad agent and an NKGB colonel. She wants fifty thousand dollars — in addition to the fifty thousand dollars you have already given her. Is that correct?”

Gehlen and Mannberg nodded. Cronley said, “Yes, sir.”

“Where is this woman located?”

“The last we heard,” Gehlen said, “in Leningrad. But there’s a very good chance she’s en route to Vienna.”

“Why?” Ashton asked, and then interrupted himself. “First, tell me why you have given her fifty thousand dollars.”

“Because she told us she would need at least that much money to get Polkóvnik Likharev’s wife and sons out of Russia,” Gehlen said.

“Jesus Christ!” Ashton exclaimed, and then asked, “You think she can?”

“We’re hoping she can,” Gehlen said.

“Where the hell did you get fifty thousand dollars to give to this woman?”

Gehlen didn’t reply, but instead looked at Cronley.

“In Schultz’s briefcase,” Ashton said, “there is fifty thousand dollars. The admiral gave it to me just before we got on the plane. He called it ‘start-up’ money, and told me to tell you to use it sparingly because he didn’t know how soon he could get you any more. That suggests to me that the admiral didn’t think you had any money. Hence, my curiosity. Have you been concealing assets from the admiral? If not, where did this fifty thousand come from?”

“From me, Polo,” Cronley said. “I came into some money when… my wife… passed on. A substantial amount of cash. Cletus pulled some strings with the judge of probate in Midland to settle the estate right away. I gave a power of attorney to Karl Boltitz — he’s going to marry Beth, the Squirt’s sister — and he got the cash, gave it to Clete, Clete took it to Buenos Aires, and then when he sent Father Welner over here, got him to carry it to me.”

“Fifty thousand dollars?” Ashton asked incredulously.

“Just for the record, I’m loaning that fifty thousand, repeat, loaning it, to the DCI. I expect it back.”

“Cletus didn’t tell me anything about this.”

“Maybe he thought you didn’t have to know,” Cronley replied.

“And now this woman wants another fifty thousand. What are you going to do about that?”

“Whatever General Gehlen thinks I should.”

“You’ve got another fifty thousand?”

“Father Welner brought me something over two hundred twenty thousand.”

“Does Mattingly… does anybody else… know about this?”

Cronley shook his head.

“Do you realize how deep you’re in here?”

Cronley nodded.

“I asked before,” Ashton said. “Do you think this woman can get Likharev’s family out?”

“Nothing is ever sure in our profession,” Gehlen replied.

Ashton made a Come on gesture.

Gehlen took a short moment to collect his thoughts.

“I’ve learned, over the years, when evaluating a situation like this,” he said, “to temper my enthusiasm for a project by carefully considering the unpleasant possibilities. The worst of these here is the possibility that we are not dealing with Rahil at all. One of the reasons there was that wave of promotions to which Ludwig referred a moment ago was because there were a large number of vacancies. Fedotov purged the NKGB—”

“Who?” Ashton interrupted.

“Pyotr Vasileevich Fedotov, chief of counterintelligence. He purged the NKGB of everyone about whose loyalty he had the slightest doubt. Rahil certainly was someone at whom he looked carefully.

“Now, if she was purged, we have to presume that Fedotov learned of her relationship with me.”

“Even if she was not purged, General,” Mannberg said.

“Even if she was not purged,” Gehlen agreed, “it is logical to presume that Fedotov knows of our past relationship.”

“Which was?” Polo asked.

“We got Russian Zionists out of Schutzstaffel concentration camps for her, and in turn she performed certain services for Abwehr Ost. I doubt that Rahil told Fedotov the exact nature of our relationship, certainly not during the war, or even in any postwar interrogations, if she was purged. But we have to presume he knows there was a relationship.

“What I’m leading up to here is that even before the NKGB found us at Kloster Grünau, they suspected we were in American hands, under American protection, in other words…”

“I think they knew that was your intention, General,” Mannberg said. “To place us under American protection. All they had to do was find out where we were. And I believe von Plat and Boss gave them both. We don’t know when either von Plat or Boss were turned.”

“Who are they?” Ashton asked.

“We’re getting off the subject,” Gehlen said.

“Who are you talking about?” Ashton pursued.

“Polo, are you sure you want to go there?” Cronley asked.

Ashton nodded.

Cronley looked at Gehlen.

“Jim,” Ashton said, “you don’t need General Gehlen’s permission to answer any question I put to you.”

Cronley shrugged.

“Oberstleutnant Gunther von Plat and Major Kurt Boss of Abwehr Ost surrendered to the OSS when the general did,” Cronley replied. “Boss was SS, a dedicated Nazi. Von Plat was Wehrmacht. We were just about to load Boss on a plane for Buenos Aires when Cletus and Father Welner turned Polkóvnik Likharev. Likharev told Cletus these were the guys who’d given him the rosters he had when Tedworth caught him sneaking out of Kloster Grünau. Clete told us.”

“Where are these guys now?” Ashton asked.

“No one seems to know,” Cronley said.

“You mean they got away? Or that you took them out?”

Cronley didn’t reply.

“Polo, the next time Cronley asks you if you want to go somewhere, why don’t you turn off your automatic mouth and think carefully before you say yes?” Schultz asked.

Well, that’s interesting, Cronley thought. El Jefe just told Polo to shut up.

Told. Not politely suggested.

And Polo took it. He looked as if he was about to say something, but then changed his mind.

And that suggests that Cletus sent El Jefe here to do more than help Polo get on and off the airplane.

And that raises the question what did El Jefe do for Clete in Argentina?

Once El Jefe got the SIGABA set up, it could have been maintained by some kid fresh from the ASA school. But El Jefe stayed in Argentina.

And was directly commissioned.

Just for running the SIGABA installation? That doesn’t make sense.

If Clete had to take somebody out, or do something else really black, who would he ask to help?

A nice young Cuban American polo player who had never heard a shot fired in anger, much less fired one himself?

Or a grizzled old sailor who had served not only in the Philippines but also on the Yangtze River Patrol?

Why didn’t Clete tell me what was El Jefe’s actual function?

Because you don’t talk about things like that to someone who doesn’t have the need to know.

So what’s El Jefe’s mission here?

Whatever it is, it’s not to keep his mouth shut when Polo does, or asks, something stupid.

He’s here to keep Polo out of trouble.

No.

More than that. El Jefe is here to see — and probably to report to the admiral — what’s going on here.

So what’s he going to report?

That Captain James D. Cronley Jr. is indeed the loose cannon everyone says he is?

That I’m dealing with a Mossad/NKGB agent and haven’t told the admiral anything about it?

“Returning to the worst possible scenario,” Gehlen said, “there is a real possibility that what the NKGB decided when we contacted Seven-K was that it might give them a chance to get their hands on me.”

“How would they do that?” El Jefe asked.

“In her — what we presume was her — last message, she twice referred to a Herr Weitz who was demanding more dollars.”

“Who’s he?” Ashton asked.

“I don’t know anyone of that name, and neither does Oberst Mannberg. But in our previous relationship I met twice with Rahil in the Café Weitz in Vienna. That’s why I suggested she may be headed for Vienna.”

“Where Fedotov’s people may be waiting for you at the Café Weitz when you go there to give her the fifty thousand dollars,” Mannberg said.

“Where Fedotov’s people may be waiting for me when I go there to give her the fifty thousand dollars,” Gehlen parroted in confirmation.

“I’m just a simple sailor, General,” El Jefe said. “You’re going to have to explain that to me. Why couldn’t you get her the money through an intermediary? How’d you get her the first fifty thousand?”

“Through an intermediary,” Gehlen said. “But we can’t do that again.”

“Why not?”

“Because she wants to make sure, or at least that’s what I’m expected to believe, that she is afraid this is a scheme to kidnap, or at least compromise, her. She said, to — in Jim’s charming phrase—‘cut to the chase’—”

“To hell with Jim’s charming phrase,” Schultz cut him off. “I just told you, I’m just a simple sailor. Take it slowly, step by step.”

Has the general picked up that El Jefe is now giving the orders?

You can bet your ass he has!

Gehlen nodded.

“As I’m sure you know, one of the great advantages the Allies had over us was that you had broken our Enigma code. We — and I include myself in ‘we’—were simply unable to believe you could do that. I had only heard rumors of your SIGABA system, rumors I discounted until Jim showed me the one installed at Kloster Grünau. And now here.”

He pointed to a closed door.

“The Soviet systems are by no means as sophisticated as either,” he went on. “They have therefore to presume that whenever they send an encrypted message, someone else is going to read it. So they use what could probably be called a personal code within the encrypted message. Making reference to something only the addressee will understand. ‘Herr Weitz,’ for example, immediately translated to ‘Café Weitz’ in my mind. Sometimes it takes a half dozen messages back and forth to clarify the message, but it works.”

“I’m with you,” El Jefe said.

“Rahil — or whoever is using her name — expressed concern that we might be trying to entrap her, and that the only proof she would accept that we were not would be for me to personally deliver to Herr Weitz the additional fifty thousand dollars he was demanding.

“Subsequent clarifying messages seem to confirm this interpretation. She wants me to meet with her, to give her the money, in the Café Weitz in Vienna.”

“No way,” Cronley heard himself saying.

“Excuse me?” Gehlen said.

Ashton and Schultz looked at him in mingled surprise and annoyance.

Is that my automatic mouth running away on me again?

Or am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing, commanding Operation Ost?

With overwhelming immodesty, the latter.

So I have to do this.

“The general is not going to meet with whoever’s going to be waiting for him in the Café Weitz. I’m not going to take the chance that the Russians’ll grab him.”

“You’re not?” Ashton asked, sarcastically incredulous. “Who the hell…”

El Jefe held up his hand, ordering Ashton to stop.

“… do I think I am?” Cronley picked up. “Until you relieve me — and I’m not sure you have that authority — I’m chief, DCI-Europe…”

And probably out of my fucking mind!

“… and as long as I am, I’m not going to take any chances of losing the general.”

“So how, hotshot, are you going to get this Russian lady the fifty thousand she wants?” El Jefe asked.

“I’ll take it to her,” Cronley said.

And how the hell am I going to do that?

“How the hell are you going to do that?” Ashton demanded. “Have you ever even been to Vienna?”

“No. But I know where the bahnhof is, and that a train called the Blue Danube goes from there to Vienna every day at 1640.”

“Oh, shit!” Ashton said disgustedly.

“Let him finish,” El Jefe said. “Let’s hear how the chief, DCI-Europe, wants to handle this.”

“Ludwig, do you know what this lady looks like?”

“I know what she looked like in 1943,” Mannberg said.

“Okay, so Ludwig, Lieutenant Max, and I go to Vienna,” Cronley said.

And do what?

“Who is Max… what you said?” El Jefe asked. “That Polish-Englishman who flew us to the monastery?”

“Right.”

“And what’s he going to do?”

“Guard Colonel Mannberg. I don’t want him grabbed by the Russians, either.”

“Can he do that?” El Jefe asked. “More important, will he want to?”

“He killed the two NKGB guys who had the wire around Tedworth’s neck,” Cronley said. “Yeah, he can do it. And he wants to do more than he’s doing right now.”

“You mean, more than flying the Storch?”

“Actually, he’s not supposed to be flying the Storch. Officially, he’s in charge of the Polish guards at Kloster Grünau.”

“Just so I have things straight in my mind, Captain Cronley,” Ashton said. “You have this guy who’s not in the service — technically, he’s a displaced person, employed as a quasi — military watchman, right?”

“Right.”

“Flying an airplane you’re not supposed to have?”

“Right.”

“And now you want to involve him in a delicate, top secret DCI operation?” Ashton asked. And then he went on, “Why are you smiling, Schultz? You think this is funny? Cronley doing this, doing any of this, on his own — which means absolutely no… authority? You think that’s funny?”

“I was thinking it reminded me of when we were starting up in Argentina,” Schultz said. “When Clete realized we needed some shooters to protect us from the Nazis, what he did was ask Colonel Graham to send some Marines down from the States. Graham told him to write up a formal request and send it to General Donovan.

“Clete never wrote a formal request, of course. What he did do was put gauchos — most of them had been in the cavalry, I’ll admit — from Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo on the job. Then he sent the OSS a bill. Nine dollars a day, plus three dollars for rations and quarters, per man. The OSS paid without asking him a question. By the time the war was over, we had three hundred some gauchos in ‘Frade’s Private Army’ on the payroll. If the OSS was willing to pay for hiring necessary civilian employees in Argentina, more than three hundred of them, I don’t think the admiral will much care if Jim hires a few here.”

“Are you telling me you’re in agreement with what he’s proposing?”

“I haven’t heard everything he’s proposing, but so far he’s making a lot of sense,” Schultz said. Then he turned to Cronley: “Okay, you, the colonel here, and that Polish-Englishman are in Vienna. Where did he learn English like that, by the way?”

“He was in England with the Free Polish Air Force. They were sort of in the RAF.”

“So that’s where he learned to fly?” El Jefe said. “So what do you do in Vienna?”

I’m making this up as I go along. Doesn’t he see that?

“We go to the Café Weitz. Colonel Mannberg by himself, Max and me together.”

“Why?”

“Mannberg so he can see Rahil, or she him. Max to protect Mannberg in case it is the NKGB waiting for him. After that, we play it by ear.”

“Wrong,” El Jefe said with finality.

Uh-oh.

Well, I got pretty far for somebody who is making it up as he goes along.

“You can’t go, because by now the NKGB knows what you look like,” El Jefe said. “I don’t want to have to tell the admiral that you’re on your way to Siberia. Or send you home in a body bag. So I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ll go with the Polish-Englishman. Or the English-Polack. Whatever he is. And then we’ll play it by ear.”

“Oscar, I was there when the admiral told you he didn’t want you getting into anything you shouldn’t,” Ashton said.

“Then you must have been there when he said I was running things but not to tell anybody unless I decided we had to,” Schultz said. “And when the admiral said you were not to even think about running the whole operation until you were off those crutches. I’m going to Vienna. Period. Okay?”

“You know the admiral’ll be furious when he hears about this.”

“Then let’s make sure he doesn’t hear about it until after we pull it off, and Mrs. Whatsername and the kids are in Argentina. Then we’ll tell him and maybe he won’t be so furious.”

“My God!” Ashton said.

“How do we get to Vienna?” Schultz asked.

“On the train,” Cronley said.

“Is it too far to drive? I’d like to have wheels in Vienna.”

“It’s not far, Lieutenant Schultz,” Gehlen said. “It’s about a six-hour drive. The problem is—”

“Why don’t you try calling me ‘Chief,’ General? I’m more comfortable with that.”

“Certainly. Chief, the problem is crossing the borders. Austria has been divided among the Allies. The American Zone of Austria abuts the American Zone of Germany. Permission, even for Americans, is required to move across that border. And then, like Berlin, Vienna is an island within the Russian Zone of Austria. Permission is required to cross the Russian Zone.”

“Permission from who?” El Jefe asked. “The Russians?”

“Freddy?” Cronley said.

“I don’t know if this applies here,” Hessinger said, “but if someone from the Twenty-third CIC wants to go to Vienna, I would cut travel orders. Major Wallace went there a couple of weeks ago. I cut travel orders for him, and then took them to Munich Military Post, who stamped them approved. You need that to get on the train. That would work for Captain Cronley, but Oberst Mannberg and Ostrowski?”

“Because they’re not American, you mean?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not a problem,” Schultz said.

“Not a problem?” Cronley parroted.

“I have goodies in my briefcase, in addition to the start-up money,” Schultz said. He went into his briefcase and rummaged through it. He came up with a plastic-covered identity card and handed it to Cronley.

On one side was Schultz’s photo. Above it were the letters DCI. Below it was the number 77, printed in red. On the other side was the legend:

“After we put Colonel Mannberg’s — and the English-Polack’s — pictures on one of these, do you think this Munich Military Post is going to ask them if they’re American?” El Jefe asked.

“Very impressive,” Cronley said. “Do I get one of these?”

He handed the card to Gehlen.

“I’ve got twenty-five of them,” El Jefe said. “I can get more, but I thought that would be enough for now.”

“If I may?” Gehlen said.

“Go ahead.”

“I can make a small contribution. Seal the cards you brought in plastic.”

“How are you going to do that?” Schultz asked.

“Abwehr Ost’s special documents facility survived the war,” Gehlen said. “Amazingly intact.”

“Survived where?” Schultz asked.

“Here in Munich. In a sub-basement of the Paläontologisches Museum on Richard-Wagner Strasse.”

“I thought that was pretty much destroyed,” Hessinger said.

“Not the sub-basement,” Mannberg said. “But just about everything else.”

“We’re back to getting something to drive in Vienna. What I’d like to have is a couple of cars — I’m too old to ride around in a jeep in this weather — and maybe a small truck — like that ambulance you had at the airport.”

“That’s no problem,” Cronley said. “We have half a dozen of them. I don’t know about cars. If we ask the Ordnance Depot for cars, they’ll want to know why we want them.”

“No, they won’t,” Schultz said. “I’ve got another letter from the admiral in my briefcase. This one directs all U.S. Army facilities to provide DCI-Europe with whatever support we ask for.”

He produced the letter and passed it around.

“That’ll do it,” Hessinger pronounced. “I recommend you get Fords or Chevrolets, not German cars.”

“Why would you recommend that?” Cronley asked.

“Because there’s no spare parts for the German ones.”

“So what’s left to do?”

“Except for getting the cars, cutting the orders, and getting these ID cards filled out, I can’t think of a thing,” Hessinger said.

“Except wait to hear from Rahil,” Gehlen said. “That would be useful.”

“The one thing I didn’t expect you to be, General, is a wiseass,” Schultz said.

“Life is full of surprises, isn’t it, Chief?” Gehlen said.

Cronley saw they were smiling at each other.

And that Mannberg and Ashton, seeing this, seemingly disapproved.

Screw the both of you!