Top Secret

[ONE]

Special Agent Friedrich Hessinger was sitting at a small table in a far corner of the dining room when Cronley walked in.

A waiter followed Cronley to the table and took their order. When he had gone, Hessinger asked, “How did it go with Mrs. Colonel Schumann last night?”

“I bought her dinner and then we went to bed.”

“You weren’t listening when I told you that would be dangerous?”

It took a moment for Cronley to take his meaning.

“Screw you, Freddy.”

“A little joke,” Hessinger said. “But you should watch what you say. You should have said, ‘After dinner she went to her room. And then I went to mine.’”

“Fuck you.”

“You shouldn’t talk to me that way. Officers are not supposed to say unkind things to enlisted men. It hurts our feelings. And then we can go to the inspector general to complain. You know our IG, right? Colonel Schumann?”

Delighted with his own wit, Hessinger was smiling broadly.

“And today what are Mrs. Colonel Schumann’s plans for you?”

“I’ll call her after we eat and see how I can be of service.”

“Do that. We can’t afford to have her pissed at you.”

Cronley didn’t think Rachel was pissed at him, but he did suspect that the bloom had begun to come off their roses, so to speak.

After dinner, when they had gone to his room, there had been maybe ten minutes of athletic thrashing about on his bed, followed by maybe sixty seconds of breath-catching. Then Rachel had matter-of-factly announced that she’d better get back to her room, “Tony will probably call.” She had then dressed as quickly as she had undressed and left.

That was probably, he decided, his punishment for his refusal to take her to Kloster Grünau. His reaction to her leaving had been one of relief. Although Ole Willie had answered the call of duty, the cold fact seemed to be that since he now accepted that he really shouldn’t be fucking Rachel, he really didn’t want to.

There were a number of reasons for this, high among them that the late Mrs. James D. Cronley Jr. had startled him by returning to his thoughts while he and Rachel were having dinner. While he didn’t think the Squirt was really riding around on a cloud up there playing a mournful tune on her harp while looking down at him with tear-filled eyes as he wined, dined, and prepared to fuck a married woman who had two children — he wasn’t completely sure she wasn’t, either.

It had also occurred to him that maybe Rachel had also been thinking of her children, or more accurately, as herself as the mother of two children who should not be fucking a young captain. Maybe, he thought, she had for the first time really considered the consequences of their getting caught.

“She wanted me to take the Kapitän and drive her to Kloster Grünau,” Cronley told Hessinger. “She said she would love to be able to tell her husband that she got into the monastery after he couldn’t.”

“Taking her to Kloster Grünau would be even more stupid than taking her to bed. What did you tell her?”

“That I had been ordered to stay in Munich until I heard from Colonel Frade.”

“And she believed you?”

“She didn’t like it, but she believed me.”

“I asked you what do you think she’ll want you to do for her today?”

“Probably take her to the Pullach compound. She wants to see how the Engineers are coming with the service club.”

“A lieutenant and three sergeants from the ASA in Frankfurt were on the Blue Danube last night. Major McClung sent them to install a Collins radio and a SIGABA in the compound. The lieutenant wanted to know where you wanted him to put it. I told him you would let him know.”

“Where did McClung get a SIGABA and a Collins?”

“I guess Colonel Frade brought them with him from Washington.”

“He didn’t say anything to me.”

“Maybe he had other things on his mind. I don’t think you should let Mrs. Colonel Schumann know about the radios when you’re in Pullach.”

“You don’t trust her?”

“She’s a woman. Women like to talk. She gets together with the girls at the CIC/ASA Officers’ Ladies Club. ‘You won’t believe the fancy radio I saw when I was checking on the club in the Pullach compound.’”

“Okay. Point taken, Freddy.”

“I wish she wasn’t going to the Pullach compound at all. But when I asked Major Wallace, he said we don’t want to make Colonel Schumann unhappy, which he would be if Mrs. Colonel Schumann was unhappy because she couldn’t go to the compound.”

“Well, I agree with you. I’ll see what I can do with Mattingly.”

“I don’t think he’ll want to make Colonel Schumann unhappy, either. Where do you want the radio?”

“Where would you recommend?”

“Your quarters. In a closet in your room where nobody can see it.”

“You going to tell McClung’s lieutenant, or should I?”

“You go out there and tell him. Officers don’t like enlisted men telling them what to do.”

“I never heard that.”

“I am constantly amazed at all the things you have never heard.”

“Officers don’t like smart-ass sergeants reminding them how dumb they are, either.”

“I can’t help being a smart-ass sergeant. I went to Harvard.”

“Did I ever tell you I wanted to go to Harvard?”

“No.”

“They wouldn’t let me in.”

“Why not?”

“My parents are married.”

“That’s funny. I like that. But enough of this camaraderie — since they wouldn’t let you into Harvard, I will tell you that means no more friendly good-fellowship…”

“I never heard that.”

“I am not surprised. Let’s get back to business. How do you plan to get the NKGB-er from where he is now onto the Argentine airplane?”

“Before or after we bury him — maybe before we execute him — we load him onto a Storch. And then, obviously, I fly him to Frankfurt.”

“We come back to Frankfurt in a minute, Jimmy. Let’s talk about the burying of him.”

“Okay. I don’t have much experience in this sort of thing, and happily defer to your expertise.”

“Fortunately for you, we have an expert in this sort of thing — his name is Gehlen — at Kloster Grünau. What I propose to do is work this plan out between you and me. And then, when we agree on what we think should be done, we bring General Gehlen in on it. That okay with you, Jimmy?”

Cronley thought that it was strange — even funny — that Hessinger, whom he thought of as an overeducated clerk, had even come up with a plan. But he liked him, and didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“Fine,” Cronley said. “Go ahead.”

“The problem is that we have to do something that will look like the real thing to different groups of people. We have to fool not only the Germans who the NKGB has turned — and since we don’t know who they are, that means all the Germans — and just about all of Dunwiddie’s men.”

“Why do we have to fool Tiny’s people?”

“Because if they know what’s really going on they will talk about it, and there goes the secret.”

“Point taken.”

“We can’t do this with just Dunwiddie and Technical Sergeant Tedworth, so the first thing we have to do—”

“Why can’t we do it with just Tiny and Tedworth?”

“Who’s going to dig the grave and carry the body to it? And then fill it up again?”

“Okay.”

“We’re going to have to get five more of Tiny’s people involved.”

“Five? Just to dig the grave and—”

“Three to dig the grave and two to drive the ambulance.”

“What ambulance?”

“The one we’re going to send to that airfield near Frankfurt, the one by the senior officers’ club.”

“Eschborn? Why are we going to send an ambulance… Oh, you mean one of the transport vehicles?”

“Of course. Why would we send an ambulance to Eschborn?”

“Freddy, why are we going to send anything to Eschborn?”

“Because that’s the way we’re going to get the NKGB-er onto Rhine-Main airfield. Nobody’s going to look for a Russian agent in the back of an ex-ambulance with 711TH QM MKRC painted on its bumpers. But I am getting ahead of myself. We start with H hour, like they started D-day at Normandy.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Let me explain. We have things over which we have no control. One is when the Argentine airplane will leave Frankfurt. Another is when we shoot the NKGB-er. There we have a problem, as that has to happen in the dark, after we have the grave dug. So that is one piece of information we have to have. Three pieces. One, how long it will take to dig the grave. Two, how long it will take to carry the body from the chapel to the grave. And three, how long it will take to fill in the grave.

“So we start with H hour. That will be when we shoot him. In that connection, I suggest that there be three shots. With a.45 pistol. They’re very noisy. One shot to wake everybody up and, thirty seconds later, two more shots so everybody knows what they heard was shooting.

“Now, as I started to say, the next number we need, what we have to find out, is how long it is going to take to dig the grave. When you get back up there, and I suggest you do this in the dark, take the gravediggers out in the country someplace and have them dig a grave. In the dark. Simulating as much as possible what they will do when they actually dig the grave. Say that takes an hour. Add a half hour. That means the shooting would take place at H hour minus one-point-five. You understand all this?”

Cronley nodded.

“There are a lot of other blanks to fill in,” Hessinger went on. “For example, how long does it take to fly from Kloster Grünau to Eschborn?”

“We better figure on three hours.”

“Then, presuming you would take off from Eschborn as soon as you could, when you had enough light to see the runway… You understand where I’m going with this?”

“Yeah, I do. And I’m impressed, Freddy.”

“I think of it as sort of a chess game. Now, another time we need is how long it will take to drive the ambulance from Eschborn to Rhine-Main.”

“Depending on the time of day, an hour to an hour and a half.”

“And what time of day would the airplane take off?”

“That we could control,” Cronley said. “To a degree.”

“How big a degree?”

“After the airplane is refueled and the passengers loaded, we could arrange for the takeoff to be delayed, say, two hours. But we couldn’t arrange for it to take off before it was ready.”

“What about this? Could we arrange for the airplane to be ready to take off at… I don’t know what I’m asking here.”

“You mean, could we arrange for the airplane to take off at, say, ten o’clock in the morning? Make that eleven — three hours after I took off from here at, say, seven? Plus an hour to get to Rhine-Main from Eschborn. Yeah. We would just have to delay it from taking off the night before. That could be done.”

“How?”

“By getting on the Collins and talking to the SAA Constellation.”

“I didn’t know the Argentine airplanes have Collins radios. Our kind of Collins radios.”

“I’ll make sure the one that’s coming here for Orlovsky does.”

“You can see where we have a lot of work to do.”

“I think that’s what’s known as an understatement.”

“Well, we have until nine o’clock to work on it.”

“Until nine? What happens at nine?”

“You call Mrs. Colonel Schumann and say, ‘Good morning, Mrs. Schumann, what can I do for you this morning?’ That’s what happens at nine.” Hessinger stood. “Let’s go to the office and get this started.”

“What about Major Wallace? We can’t let him see what we’re doing.”

“If he went to the Signal Battalion officers’ club last night, he won’t come into work until ten, if then.” He paused. “Leave money for the waiter. I read an Army Regulation that officers aren’t supposed to take gifts from enlisted men.”

[TWO]

“Hello?”

“Good morning. How did you sleep?”

“You heard from Colonel Frade? We can go to the monastery?”

“No word from him yet. Would you like to meet in the dining room before we go to Pullach?”

“You mean for lunch?”

“I meant now, for breakfast.”

“Meet me in the dining room at twelve-thirty.”

Click.

Apparently, the bloom is even further off the rose than I originally thought.

“What I would suggest,” Sergeant Hessinger said, “is that I stay here and think about what we are going to do with the NKGB-er, and you take the Kapitän and drive out to Pullach and see the ASA lieutenant. And while you’re driving out there, and while you are driving back, you think what you can do to make Mrs. Colonel Schumann happy. Right now I have the feeling she doesn’t like you very much.”

[THREE]

Cronley’s Opel Kapitän stopped at the outer roadblock to the compound. It was guarded by three Polish guards armed with carbines and dressed in black-dyed U.S. Army fatigues.

One of them walked up to the staff car, took a good look at Cronley, then signaled to the others to move the barrier — concertina barbed wire nailed to a crude wooden framework — out of the way. When they had done so, he signaled that Cronley could enter.

That won’t do, Cronley decided as he drove slowly to the second roadblock.

That guy saw a staff car and a man in uniform and just passed me in. He should — at least — have asked me for my identification.

And that concertina wire has to go, too. If we’re going to pretend that what’s going on in here is an industrial development organization, the entrance can’t look like a POW enclosure.

And maybe get those Poles some different uniforms. So they look like cops, not soldiers.

And, obviously, the sooner I get some of Tiny’s people down here the better.

Two hundred yards down the road, there was another checkpoint. More Poles in dyed fatigues, but also an American soldier, a stocky technical sergeant armed with a.45 as well as a carbine.

He walked up to the Kapitän and waited for Cronley to roll down the window.

“You from the CIC?” the sergeant asked.

“That’s what’s painted on the bumpers, Twenty-three CIC,” Cronley replied.

“Where’s Captain Cronley?” the sergeant asked.

Obviously, the sergeant does not think I could be a captain.

Well, there are very few twenty-two-year-old captains.

“My name is Cronley.” He produced his CIC credentials.

The sergeant saluted. Cronley returned it.

“Sorry, Captain.”

“I look so young because I don’t drink, smoke, fornicate, or have impure thoughts,” Cronley said. “I’m actually thirty-six.”

The sergeant laughed.

“Yeah, you are. Sir, there’s a Signal Corps lieutenant looking for you.”

“Where is he?”

“At your quarters.”

“My quarters?”

“You’re going to be the CO of whatever this is, right?”

Cronley nodded.

“Then your quarters are right next door to the general offices. You know where that is?”

Cronley nodded again.

“There’s a sign on it. Says ‘Military Government Liaison Officer.’ In English. And in German.”

“I think I can find it. Thanks.”

Three minutes later, having passed through the third, inner checkpoint — this one manned by three Polish guards and two American soldiers — he found a Signal Corps lieutenant he thought was the one looking for him. He and three soldiers were sitting in a three-quarter-ton truck parked in front of a small house. It was next to the larger building on which was a sign identifying it as the GENERAL-BÜROS SÜD-DEUTSCHE INDUSTRIELLE ENTWICKLUNGSORGANISATION.

If these guys came on the Blue Danube train from Frankfurt, where did they get the truck?

The sign on the smaller building was only slightly smaller.

—

Clever intelligence officer that I am, I guess that’s what Mattingly decided they should call the commanding officer. You really wouldn’t want to hang a sign that read OFFICE OF THE CIC OFFICER IN COMMAND OF THIS OPERATION WE DON’T WANT ANYBODY TO KNOW ABOUT.

Cronley pulled the Kapitän in beside the truck and got out. The lieutenant got out of the truck and walked over to the staff car. So did the men with him. They were all sergeants, he saw, a sergeant, a staff sergeant, and a technical sergeant.

“You’re from the Twenty-third?” the lieutenant asked.

Cronley nodded.

“Where’s Captain Cronley?”

“You’re looking at him.”

The lieutenant’s eyebrows rose.

That’s two people in a row who can’t believe that sweet-faced Little Jimmy Cronley could possibly be a captain.

No. Not two. Five. Two of the sergeants look incredulous. The older one, the tech sergeant, looks disgusted.

And I really can’t get indignant, because they’re right; I shouldn’t be a captain.

More important, I really have no business being put in charge of this place.

When did Frade say Major — what’s Polo’s name? — Major Maxwell Ashton III is going to get here?

“Sir, I’m not trying to be difficult,” the lieutenant said, “but have you got some identification?”

Cronley produced his CIC credentials.

“I look younger than I am,” Jimmy volunteered, “because I don’t drink, smoke, fornicate, or have impure thoughts.”

I didn’t even think before that came out of my mouth.

Maybe what I really should be is a Special Services comedian, entertaining the troops.

The lieutenant and the tech sergeant laughed.

“Maybe I should try that,” the lieutenant said. He put out his hand. “Sir, my name is Stratford”—he pointed at the sergeants one at a time—“and this is Tech Sergeant Mitchell, Staff Sergeant Kramer, and Sergeant Fortin.”

Cronley shook their hands. None of them said a word.

“Sir, we’ve got a system for you,” Stratford said. “I guess you know that?”

Cronley nodded.

“I think you also know what kind of a system,” the lieutenant said. “The one classified Top Secret.”

“I’ve been wondering where you got it,” Cronley said.

“Major McClung…” He paused, asking with his eyes if Cronley knew who he meant.

“Iron Lung. Also known as ‘the Whisperer.’”

That got smiles from the two junior sergeants, a look of displeasure from the tech sergeant, and an uncomfortable smile from Lieutenant Stratford.

“Major McClung,” Stratford went on, “had one system in the vault with the crypto machines. There was a sign on it, ‘Not to Be Issued Without Specific Authorization from CO, ASA Europe.’ I guess we now have that authorization. You have the access code, right? Otherwise we’re just spinning our wheels.”

“I have the access code for the SIGABA at Kloster Grünau, if that’s what you mean,” Cronley said.

“Major McClung told us we’re not supposed to say out loud either of the two things you just said out loud,” Technical Sergeant Mitchell said.

“Thank you, Sergeant Mitchell, I’ll keep that in mind,” Cronley said, then turned to Stratford. “What do you mean, without the code we’ll be spinning our wheels?”

“Well, we can install those unnamed devices, but they won’t work without the access code. Major McClung didn’t give it to us.”

“Probably because he didn’t have it,” Cronley replied. “How long is it going to take you to get these nameless devices up and running?”

“Not long. The ASA guys here in Munich — the ones who are going to move in here — put up the antennas with the antenna farm they’re going to use. They were not told what they were for and know better than to ask. They ran a buried cable over there.”

He pointed between the headquarters and liaison officer buildings. Cronley saw a coil of heavily insulated cable.

“So all we have to do is run that into wherever you want these installed in your building.”

“Let’s do it.”

“Before we do: Major McClung said he thinks you know how to operate these things, but not how to maintain them. True?”

“True.”

“All of us have Top Secret clearances…”

“What about Lindbergh?”

“Lindbergh?”

“Top Secret — Lindbergh.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Major McClung has. He’s got one. That’s the clearance we work under here.”

“So where does that leave us, sir?”

“I don’t know. You were saying?”

“The major said you can have us — one of us, several of us, or all of us — for as long as you need us.”

“To keep these nameless devices running, as well as install them?”

Lieutenant Stratford nodded.

“The system here,” Stratford said, “and at that other place we’re not supposed to say out loud. I thought you might want to make up your mind about what you’re going to need before we install these things.”

“Well, that’s very nice of Major McClung,” Cronley said. “Let me think about it.”

And he did so out loud: “So, if I said just one of you would be enough to set up the system here, and at the other place, the rest of you could wait in the truck and would not know what actually happened to those things we’re not supposed to talk about?”

“That’s the idea. I could probably offer a helpful suggestion if I knew what was going on here and at the other place we’re not supposed to say out loud. But you can’t tell me, right?”

“No, I can’t,” Cronley said. “Or… Two things. There is actually another place with a system. And I’m making up my mind just how much I can tell you.”

“I understand.”

“Decision made. I’ll keep everybody. If it turns out I don’t need everybody, I can…” He stopped. “If it turns out I don’t need everybody, I’ll still have to keep everybody.”

“Because everybody would know all about these things we can’t say out loud?” Lieutenant Stratford asked, smiling.

Cronley nodded.

“Your call,” the lieutenant said.

“How is the Whisperer going to feel if I keep all of you?”

“I got the impression it’s really your call, that you get whatever you think you need, including all of us.”

“All of you, then. They call that redundancy. It’s important that these things work over the next ten days.”

“Okay, let’s get them up and running. You show us where you want them.”

“I really wish I could tell you more,” Cronley said as they walked to the door of what was going to be his quarters.

Before he actually reached the door, he realized that he was going to have to do exactly that.

[FOUR]

When Cronley pushed open the door and walked into the building, he saw desks, tables, chairs, and filing cabinets fresh from a Quartermaster Depot. Corrugated paper was still wrapped around the legs of the metal furniture.

When he opened a door on the right side of the room, he found a stairway going up. He took the steps two at a time, and the lieutenant and the sergeants followed him.

They found themselves in a large room. There was more furniture, including a bed and bedside table, also obviously fresh from a QM warehouse. There were three doors leading out of the room. One door led to a bathroom, and the others onto closets, one of which was a small room.

Lieutenant Stratford and his sergeants looked at him expectantly.

Well, I might as well get this over with.

“Let me have your attention,” Cronley began. “Before we get started, a couple of questions and then a little speech. You know that Major McClung, who knows what’s going on here, has volunteered your services for indefinite TDY. I can’t tell you for how long that will be, but figure on ninety days. Anyone have a problem with that? And before you ask, no, you can’t bring your Schatzis down here from Frankfurt.”

That earned some chuckles.

“Anyone want to go back to Frankfurt?”

No one responded.

“Next question: You first,” he said, pointing to the junior ASA man, Sergeant Fortin. “How do you feel about black people?”

“Sir?” the sergeant said. The question was obviously confusing.

“Simple question, Sergeant Fortin. How do you feel about black people? More specifically, how would you like to have a black first sergeant?”

“A black first sergeant?”

“The Pullach compound will be guarded by a reinforced company of soldiers from an anti-tank battalion of Second Armored. They’re all black, including their first sergeant, who is six feet four and weighs maybe two-eighty. When provoked, he can be one mean sonofabitch. Since I have no intention of setting up a separate white guy/black guy operation, now that you’re going to be here, this big black guy will be your first sergeant. Do you have any problems with that?”

“Sir, I don’t know.”

Cronley did not hesitate: “Okay. Go wait in the truck. If you tell anyone what you saw here, or think you saw here, you’re going to find yourself on a slow boat to the Aleutian Islands, where you can count on counting snowballs for the next couple of years. Go.”

Fortin started for the stairwell.

“What about you, Sergeant Kramer?” Cronley asked the younger of the staff sergeants. “You have problems with working under a black top kick?”

Fortin, almost to the stairwell, turned.

“Sir?”

“What?”

“How does this black first sergeant feel about white guys?”

“Valid question,” Cronley replied. “I look at him as my best friend. As far as I know, the feeling is mutual.”

“He’s a pretty good soldier?”

“He made first sergeant at twenty-one when all the other non-coms in his company were killed or wounded. He comes from an Army family. His great-grandfathers were Cavalry soldiers who fought Apaches and Comanches in the West, and two of his grandfathers riding with the Ninth Cavalry beat Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders up San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. That answer your question?”

“I’ll stay, sir.”

“Because of what I said?”

“Sir, Major McClung said what you’re doing here is important. That, and what you said about this black guy being your best friend. And what the hell, we’re all in the same Army, right, sir?”

“Yes, we are.” Cronley turned to Kramer and Mitchell. “Either of you have any problems about First Sergeant Dunwiddie?”

Both said, “No, sir.”

“Okay. Welcome to the General-Büros Süd-Deutsche Industrielle Entwicklungsorganisation. In English, that’s the General Offices of the South German Industrial Development Organization. Now — and really pay attention to this — what follows is classified Top Secret — Lindbergh. The use of deadly force has been authorized to preserve the secrecy of anything connected with this operation.

“This organization formerly was known as Abwehr Ost. I will now tell you what Abwehr Ost was and what it’s doing now. Shortly before the war was over…

“… Any questions?”

Staff Sergeant Kramer chuckled.

“Did I say something amusing, Sergeant?” Cronley snapped.

“No, sir. I was just thinking, now I know how you people got away with shooting up the IG’s car.”

“How’d you hear about that?”

“I was in the CIC/ASA motor pool, sir, when they dragged it in. Colonel Schumann’s driver was still in shock.”

“And?”

“So I asked him what had happened, and he said they were in the Bavarian Alps on some back road Schumann insisted they take and they came across a CIC detachment — in a monastery — that Colonel Schumann had never heard of. So he decided to have a look. A lieutenant told him that he couldn’t come in—”

“That was me,” Cronley said.

“And the colonel said, ‘Don’t be absurd. Go around him.’ And then three of the…”

“Of the what?”

“He said ‘three of the largest, meanest-looking… Negroes’—that’s not exactly what he said, sir, if you take my meaning — he’d ever seen let loose with a pedestal-mounted.50 cal Browning.”

“This story is all over the ASA, is it?”

“Yes and no, Captain Cronley,” Lieutenant Stratford said. “Has everybody heard it? Yes. Is anybody going to talk about it, except within the ASA? No. The same afternoon they dragged Colonel Schumann’s staff car into the motor pool, Major McClung went down there and told everybody that nobody had seen a shot-up staff car. The ASA is in the business of keeping secrets.”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt this, sir,” Staff Sergeant Kramer said.

“I’m glad you did,” Cronley said. “It reminded me of something else I need to say. I don’t know how this idiocy got started, but the Army pretends that cryptographers and radio operators — hell, clerk typists — don’t read or understand what they’re typing, encrypting, decrypting, or transmitting or receiving.

“I don’t go along with that. So long as you’re here, I not only expect you to read whatever we send or receive over these devices, but to understand what’s being said. If you don’t understand something you’ve handled, ask. Everybody got that?”

There was a chorus of “Yes, sir.”

“Okay. Get a desk and chair from downstairs. We’ll set these things up in the larger of these two closets.”

The three non-coms went to the stairwell, then down it.

“Permission to speak, sir?” Stratford said when they were out of earshot.

“I went to Texas A&M, Stratford. Not West Point. You don’t have to ask my permission to say anything.”

“Yes, sir. I wanted to say that was very impressive. You handled that very well.”

Cronley didn’t reply.

Stratford said: “Tell me. Did this enormous first sergeant of yours go to college?”

“As a matter of fact, he did.”

“Norwich?”

Cronley nodded.

“Me, too. When I heard that line about the Buffalo Soldiers beating Teddy Roosevelt up San Juan Hill, I knew it had to be Dunwiddie. He was a rook — a freshman — when I was in my senior year. But you pay attention to rooks who are as big and black as Dunwiddie.”

“I’m really glad to hear you know Tiny, Stratford.”

“How come he’s not an officer?”

“Because he got screwed out of his commission by a white officer.”

[FIVE]

The ASA technicians had the Collins and the SIGABA set up far more quickly than Cronley expected they would.

Sergeant Kramer, who had changed his mind about staying, looked up from the desk.

“All we need now, sir, is the access code and the name you want to call this station.”

“Let me sit down there, please,” Cronley said.

“I’m a pretty good typist, sir.”

“As the result of a month’s detention when I was in the sixth grade, so am I. I often think that typing is the most valuable skill I brought into the Army.”

The sergeant laughed and stood. Cronley took his chair.

There was a telephone dial on the front of the SIGABA. Cronley dialed in the access code. Green indicator lights illuminated. A message appeared on the screen: ENTER STATION ID.

“What shall we call our little station?” Cronley wondered aloud. “Where are we? Munich. What comes to mind when you hear Munich? Hitler’s beer garden. Beergarden? Better, Beermug.”

He began typing.

A strip of paper began to snake out of the SIGABA, as simultaneously the message was typed on a roll of paper by the teletype typewriter that was part of the SIGABA/Collins system.

When he had finished typing, and the teletype typewriter stopped clattering, Cronley tore the paper tape free and fed it back into the SIGABA. Then he tore what the teletypewriter had printed from the machine, read it, and then handed it to Sergeant Kramer.

“Pass it around when you’re finished,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir.”

“Sergeant Mitchell, right? Cronley asked the technical sergeant.

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re senior, so you get the dirty job. You are hereby appointed Classified Documents NCO. I don’t suppose you have a weapon?”

“A.45. In the truck, sir.”

“Not doing you much good there, is it? Go get it. When you have it, I will give you this, which you will keep on your person until I can get my safe moved here from Kloster Grünau. I will then give you the combination to the safe. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The SIGABA began to whir.

“Hold off on getting your pistol until we hear what Vint Hill has to say,” Cronley ordered.

The teletypewriter began to clatter. When it fell silent, Cronley tore off the message, read it, and handed it to Mitchell.

“After you’ve read that, go get your pistol,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir.”

“We will now see if the decrypt function works,” Cronley said.

He took the tape, found the encrypted message, tore it off, pushed a key that caused another green light — this one indicating EN/DECRYPTION FUNCTION ACTIVATED — to come on, and then fed the tape into the machine.

The teletypewriter began to clatter:

“Now let’s see if it works the other way,” Cronley said, and began typing again.

The newly appointed Classified Documents NCO came back into the room — now armed with a Model 1911A1.45 ACP in a leather holster dangling from a web belt — in time to see the end of the tape swallowed by the machine.

He leaned over and watched the teletypewriter chatter out a copy of Cronley’s reply:

Vint Hill’s reply came almost immediately:

“Oh, yes, there is,” Cronley said out loud. “The important part.”

He began to type again:

“Who the hell are they?” the staff sergeant blurted, and then added: “Sorry, sir.”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” Cronley said.

And again there was an almost immediate response:

“Okay. Done. That’s what we needed,” Cronley said, and then began to type:

Everybody in the room was looking at him, wondering what was to come next.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, plunge ahead.

He looked at his watch.

It’s quarter to twelve.

Oh, shit!

“Okay. This will be quick, as I have a social engagement — taking a lady to lunch — that I can’t get out of.

“First things first. From this moment, whenever I’m not here, there will be somebody in this room. Somebody with a pistol. No one is to get into this closet except you three, Special Agent Hessinger, First Sergeant Dunwiddie, Lieutenant Stratford, and me. Plus whoever Dunwiddie or the lieutenant thinks should be allowed in here. Understood?”

There was another chorus of “Yes, sir.”

“Captain,” Sergeant Mitchell asked, “you going to tell us who those other people on the net are?”

“Absolutely,” Cronley said. “Vatican is the monastery. Tex is Colonel Cletus Frade, USMC, our commanding officer and the officer in charge of Operation Ost, and that station is in Buenos Aires. Polo is Major Maxwell Ashton the Third, Frade’s deputy, and that station is in Mendoza, which is in the foothills of the Andes Mountains on the border between Argentina and Chile, where we operate the relocation program. Major Ashton will shortly — I hope within a matter of days — be coming here to take over command of the compound. Sailor is in Berlin, in what used to be Admiral Canaris’s home until the Nazis found out we had turned him. You should know — everyone should, for that matter — that the Nazis sent Canaris to a concentration camp, tortured him, hung him dead, leaving his naked corpse to rot. They confiscated all his property. When Second Armored went into Berlin, the OSS took over his house. And, finally, Ranger is Frade when he has this system mounted in whatever airplane he’s flying.”

He looked around. “Any questions?”

“Sir, this Marine colonel has got a Collins/SIGABA on his airplane?” Staff Sergeant Kramer asked dubiously. “It’s not an aircraft system.”

If I answer that question, there will be more, and I will be late for my lunch with Rachel and the bloom will really be off our rose.

On the other hand, if I don’t answer it, or answer it less than fully, these guys — and they’re all smart, they wouldn’t be in ASA unless they were — will decide I’m handing them a line of bullshit. And I can’t afford that.

So fuck Rachel. Figuratively speaking, of course.

“At Polo is a guy, Master Sergeant Siggie Stein, who is not only Major Ashton’s deputy but our commo chief. He figured out a way to install the Collins/SIGABA system on aircraft.”

“Sir, this sergeant is this major’s deputy?”

“The way things work around here is the best man for a job gets it, regardless of his rank…”

Fifteen minutes later, he decided that for once he might have made the right decision.

What I had was a lieutenant and three sergeants — all good people; McClung sent me the best he had — who had suddenly been put on indefinite Temporary Duty doing they knew not what in the middle of nowhere.

They were understandably less than thrilled.

After telling them everything, I now have, I think, a lieutenant and three good non-coms who are looking forward to being part of Operation Ost.

And maybe, just maybe, they may have decided that the baby-faced captain isn’t such a candy-ass after all.