Top Secret

[ONE]

There was a colonel and a formidable-looking woman almost certainly his wife sitting at the table next to where Rachel had been waiting for him for almost an hour.

When Rachel blows up — and why else would she still be waiting for me, if not to blow up? — the colonel and his lady are going to get an earful.

“Mrs. Schumann, I’m so sorry to be late—”

“Don’t be silly, Special Agent Cronley,” Rachel said. “Special Agent Hessinger was kind enough to come by and tell me you were unavoidably detained. And the colonel made it perfectly clear to me that your entertaining me until he gets here depended on the press of your duties. Say no more. Please sit down.”

That was obviously intended for the ears of the colonel and his formidable lady.

Rachel is, after all — maybe above all — a colonel’s lady. Like Caesar’s wife, colonels’ ladies have to be above suspicion. They shouldn’t be suspected of, for example, fucking young officers.

Maybe that’s what’s behind the bloom coming off the rose. Rachel has had time to think about what we’ve been up to. And wants to stop.

That’s what it has to be. I got lucky again.

“Thank you,” Cronley said, and sat down.

He had just adjusted his chair and reached for the napkin when he felt her foot searching his crotch.

[TWO]

“Sweetheart,” Mrs. Rachel Schumann said to Captain James D. Cronley Jr., “don’t be offended, but you need a shower.”

They had been in Suite 527 perhaps two minutes, just long enough for them to be partially disrobed. That was, Rachel had pulled her dress over her head, and then pulled Jimmy’s trousers and shorts down to his ankles. She was now on her knees, with his member in her hand.

It was the smell, or perhaps the taste, of the latter that she apparently found offensive.

“Go on,” Rachel went on. “I don’t know what you were doing all morning with that Russian of yours, but you smell like him. Don’t worry. I’ll be here when you come out.”

Obviously, his naïve hope of an hour before that he had gotten lucky again and was going to be able to get out of their relationship before it exploded in his face was just that, a naïve hope born of desperation.

Rachel got to her feet. Jimmy stepped out of the trousers and shorts gathered at his ankles. He walked to the bathroom, shedding his Ike jacket as he reached it. He went into the bathroom, took off the rest of his clothing, and got into the shower.

As the cold water poured down on him, the conclusion he was forced to draw was that Rachel was bonkers.

There were a number of facts to support this theory, starting of course with the simple fact that she had enticed him into the relationship. It was not his Errol Flynn — type woman-dazzling persona that had made him irresistible to her, which would have been nice to believe, but something else, and that something else was that she was not playing with all the cards normally found in a deck.

Now that he thought about it, he had known that something was wrong from the beginning. He had again thought of this — that Rachel was irresponsible, which is a polite way to say bonkers — at lunch.

Shortly after his lunch had been laid before him, the colonel and his formidable lady who had been at the adjacent table finished their lunch and left. With no others close to them, Rachel decided she could speak freely.

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that when you were at the Pullach compound with your Russian friend, you found someplace we can go?”

“I was out there alone, Rachel. Major McClung sent an officer down with some communications equipment and I had to show him where it was to be installed.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to go to your room here. Do you always eat so slowly?”

“Going to my room would be dangerous. Maybe we could go to yours.”

“What are you talking about, dangerous?”

He had then explained, in great detail, why going to his room would be dangerous, and to her room, only slightly less so:

His room, Suite 527, was at the far end of the fifth-floor corridor, the interior end, so to speak. Away from the front of the hotel. The rooms at that end of the corridor, suites 501 and 502, the windows of which looked out upon Maximilianplatz, were permanently reserved for the use of Brigadier General H. Paul Greene, chief, Counterintelligence, European Command, and Colonel Robert Mattingly, his deputy. Neither officer was in Munich.

Suites 503 through 505 came next. Suite 503 was assigned to Major Harold Wallace, and 504 and 505 had been set aside for the use of senior officers of the ASA/CIC community visiting Munich. Such as Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Schumann, who had been placed in Suite 504.

The two-door elevator bank came next, replacing Suite 506. Next came Suite 507, which served both as the offices of the XXVIIth CIC Detachment and quarters for Special Agent/Sergeant Friedrich Hessinger.

“So going to either my room or yours, Rachel, would be dangerous…”

“We have to go somewhere, sweetheart.”

“… my room more so because to get to it, when we got off the elevator, to get to my room, 527, we would have to walk past the door to 507, which is where Major Wallace and Special Agent Hessinger work. They often leave the door open, and they frequently leave the suite for one reason or another. Our chances of being seen going from the elevator to your room, 504, would be much less as we wouldn’t have to walk past 507.”

“Well, we can’t go to my room, silly boy. What if Tony came back early and walked in on us?”

Since Cronley knew that the northbound Blue Danube, the only way he knew that Colonel Schumann could get to Munich from Vienna, didn’t arrive until 1640, he didn’t think this posed as much of a threat as Rachel did. But it was possible. And he didn’t think arguing about it would be wise.

They had gone to his room, slipping undetected down the corridor past Suite 507’s closed door. Getting back on the elevator — in other words, again passing Suite 507, without attracting Freddy Hessinger’s attention — was something he had not wanted to think about.

Cronley stayed in the shower until he realized he was shivering and only then, reluctantly, added hot water to the stream to get rid of his chill.

So, what do I do now?

The first problem is getting Rachel out of here without getting caught.

No. That’s the second problem. The first is getting back in bed with her and performing as she expects me to.

And what else?

As he warmed himself in the shower, and then as he dried himself, he considered all of his options, all of the potential disasters that could — and were likely to — happen.

And then he summed it up, in sort of an epiphany:

The worst thing that’s going to happen is not that Tiny Dunwiddie and Freddy Hessinger will learn that I’m incredibly stupid and an asshole, or that Mattingly will know that he’s been right all along about me being grossly incompetent, or that Clete will learn that I’m a three-star shit for fucking a married woman before, almost literally, the Squirt was cold in her grave. It will be that I’ve failed to follow the oath I took the day my father pinned my gold bar onto my epaulet at College Station.

I swore to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help me God.

And if the Soviet Union isn’t a foreign enemy of the United States, who is?

And speaking of God, how does that go in “The Book of Common Prayer”? I’ve said it enough. But for the first time in my life, I know what it means…

“Almighty and most merciful Father,

“We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep.

“We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.

“We have offended against Thy holy laws.

“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done…”

Guilty on all counts. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

Except for the last.

I am not going to leave undone those things I know have to be done.

I am going to protect Major Konstantin Orlovsky from getting shot and buried in an unmarked grave because that’s a convenient solution to the problem for Colonel Mattingly.

I am going to convince that NKGB sonofabitch that it’s his Christian duty to do what he can for his wife and children by turning.

I am going to get him on a plane to Argentina, and then I am going to make sure that General Gehlen does whatever he has to do to get Orlovsky’s family out of Russia.

And after that, what?

I don’t really give a damn. It doesn’t matter.

Back to the immediate problem: getting Rachel out of here without getting caught.

No. I got that wrong again.

First, getting Ole Willie to stand up and do his duty, which may be a hell of a problem, and then getting Rachel out of here without getting caught.

He wrapped a towel around himself and walked into the bedroom.

He looked for his Ike jacket, intending to hang it up, then saw it was hanging on the back of a chair, with his trousers and shorts folded neatly on top of it.

I guess Rachel did that to pass the time. Or just to be nice.

Rachel was in the bed, with a sheet drawn over her. Her clothing was neatly folded on a chaise longue.

“Did you ever play doctor when you were a little boy?” Rachel asked.

“Excuse me?”

“‘You show me yours and I’ll show you mine’?”

She threw the sheet off her.

He walked to the bed and dropped the towel.

She reached for him.

A few seconds later, another philosophical truism from his days at College Station came to him: A licked prick has no conscience.

[THREE]

“Lieutenant, what would I have to do to get you to give me half a dozen jerry cans of avgas to take with me?” Cronley asked.

“Why would you want to do that?”

“This airplane seems to run better if I put avgas in it.”

“In other words, it’s a CIC secret?”

“My lips are sealed. Two elephants and a rhinoceros could not drag that secret from me.”

“The avgas is no problem. The cans are.”

“I can get them back to you in a couple of days.”

“Why not? Let me have your ID, so I can write down to whom I am loaning six jerry cans and thus placing my military career in jeopardy.”

Jimmy reached into his Ike jacket for his credentials, which he always carried in the left inside pocket. The folder wasn’t there.

“What the hell?” he said.

A quick, somewhat frantic search found the credentials in the right inside pocket.

Thank God!

A CIC agent losing his credentials is a mortal sin.

Right up there, for example, with getting caught fucking a CIC colonel’s wife.

Mattingly would be almost as delighted with the former as he would be with the latter.

They must have fallen out when Rachel hung my uniform up.

He handed them over.

Ten minutes later, he told the Schleissheim tower that Army Seven-Oh-Seven was rolling.

[FOUR]

Army Seven-Oh-Seven taxied very slowly to the tent hangar beside the chapel and stopped. The pilot got out.

“I was getting worried you weren’t going to be able to make it back,” First Sergeant Chauncey L. Dunwiddie greeted Captain James D. Cronley Jr. “It’s getting dark.”

“I noticed. I could barely see some of the cows I chased in the fields between Munich and here. And the runway was just about invisible as I landed.”

“Well, to coin a phrase, all’s well that ends well.” He handed him a SIGABA printout. “This came for you.”

“I can’t read it in this light.”

“Then get in the ambulance. In the back. There’s a dome light. Lights.”

Cronley got in the back of the ambulance and found the dome light switch. Dunwiddie got behind the wheel.

Cronley looked at the printout:

Cronley folded the message and put it in his pocket.

“I don’t get that back?”

“I’m considering showing it to Major Orlovsky.”

Cronley then handed Dunwiddie a large manila envelope.

“One good turn deserves another,” he said. “This is for you.”

“What is it?”

“Fat Freddy Hessinger’s step-by-step instructions for the accomplishment of our noble mission.”

Dunwiddie removed the sheath of paper the envelope contained, then announced, “I can’t read this up here.”

“I was about to suggest you come back here, where, as you pointed out, there are dome lights.”

“But you decided that you would rather go to the bar and have a little something to cut the dust of the trail, and I can read it there?”

“You are a splendid NCO, First Sergeant Dunwiddie, always anticipating the desires of your commander.”

Dunwiddie started the engine and drove down the road.

“Curiosity overwhelms me. How does Fat Freddy suggest we handle our noble mission?”

“He thinks we should, as Step One, determine how long it will take to dig and then fill in a grave. He says we should determine that by actually digging a grave and then filling it in.”

“Jesus, I never thought about that. We have to know that, don’t we?”

“Indeed we do. Fat Freddy also suggests that we use a.45, which is noisy, for the execution. Three shots. First shot to wake people up, then thirty seconds later two more shots, to provide confirmation that somebody’s shooting something.”

“Someone,” Dunwiddie corrected him automatically as they bounced down the road. “Fat Freddy really thinks of everything, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does. He regards our problem as sort of a chess game.”

“You ever play chess with him?”

“The last time, Fat Freddy whipped my ass in seven moves.”

“I don’t even want to think about how often he’s whipped mine.”

“Wait till you read Fat Freddy’s Operations Order. He solves problems I never even thought of.”

“Do you think, maybe, that it’s time we stopped making fun of Fat Freddy?”

“So ordered,” Jimmy said.

[FIVE]

A number of problems that neither Captain Cronley nor First Sergeant Dunwiddie had suspected would arise vis-à-vis grave-digging arose when the test grave was actually dug.

The first step had been the recruitment of the gravediggers. There were three criteria for selection. First was that there be three diggers, two to dig and one to be a spare. The second was the character of the diggers. They had to be responsible senior non-commissioned officers who could be told what was going on, and who could be relied upon to keep their mouths shut about it now and in the future. Third, the diggers had to be physically up to the task. Digging a hole six feet deep by ten feet long and four feet wide in the shortest possible time was obviously going to require a good deal of physical exertion.

First Sergeant Dunwiddie marched three such men into the commanding officer’s quarters. They were Technical Sergeant James L. Martin, who was six feet three inches tall and weighed 235 pounds; Staff Sergeant Moses Abraham, who was six feet two inches tall and weighed 220 pounds; and Staff Sergeant Petronius J. Clark, who was six feet four inches tall and weighed 255 pounds.

“I’m sure First Sergeant Dunwiddie has explained something of what’s going on here,” Cronley began. “But let me go over it again. I’m sure you’ve heard that we caught a man trying to get out of here. You may not know that he’s a Russian, a major…”

He stopped.

“Why do I think I’m telling you something you already know all about?” Captain Cronley asked. “Specifically, why do I think that Staff Sergeant Harold Lewis Junior has let his mouth run away with him?”

Everyone looked uncomfortable. No one replied.

“Before this goes any further, Tiny, get that sonofabitch in here!” Cronley ordered furiously.

When Dunwiddie hesitated, and looked as if he was about to say something, Cronley snapped, “That was a goddamned direct order, Sergeant Dunwiddie. Get that loose-mouthed little bastard in here. Now!”

Dunwiddie left the room.

Well, you really blew that, stupid!

Officers are supposed to maintain a cool and calm composure, and they absolutely should not refer to non-commissioned officers, no matter what they have done, as “sonsofbitches” or “loose-mouthed little bastards.”

He became aware that all three non-coms were standing at rigid attention.

“In case you’re wondering what’s going to happen next,” Cronley said, still furious, “I am going to hand former Staff Sergeant, now Private, Lewis a shovel, with which he will dig graves all day until I can get the sonofabitch on a slow boat to the goddamned Aleutian Islands, where he will dig graves in the goddamned ice until hell freezes over.”

There was no response for a full minute.

“Permission to speak, sir?” Technical Sergeant Martin barked.

After a moment, Cronley gestured and said, “Granted.”

“Sir, with respect, the sergeant suggests that the captain is going to need four shovels.”

“What in the name of Jesus H. Christ and all the saints of the Mormon Church from the Angel Moroni on down are you talking about?”

“Sir, the sergeant respectfully suggests that whatever the captain intends to do to former Staff Sergeant, now Private, Lewis, the captain should do to us, too.”

After a moment, Cronley said, “You’re all in this together, right? That’s your mind-boggling idiot fucking suggestion, Sergeant? That you’re the Three Goddamned Musketeers of Goddamned Kloster Grünau? All for one and one for all?”

“Sir, with respect, yes, sir, something like that.”

After another moment, Cronley said, “Okay, Sergeant. Now tell me what in your obviously warped mind it is that tells you I should do anything like that. It better be good.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, the sergeant requests the captain consider that the three of us, plus Private Lewis, and First Sergeant Dunwiddie were the only non-coms left after the Krauts kicked the shit out of Company C, 203rd Tank Destroyer Battalion in the Ardennes Forest.”

“You’re talking about the Battle of the Bulge?” Cronley asked softly.

“Yes, sir. And after that, sir, we have been sort of like the Three Musketeers, as the captain suggests. Real close. No secrets between us. But, sir, that doesn’t mean we share what we have with anyone else, just with each other. Harold — excuse me, sir—Private Lewis thought we should know about you running that Kraut sonofabitch off when he was tormenting the Russian and he told us. Sir, we wanted him to tell us. So we’re in this deep shit as deep as he is.”

Cronley looked at him a moment and then said, “Stand at ease.”

The three moved from attention to parade rest, which was not at ease.

“If we are going to have an amicable relationship in the future, you’re going to have to start obeying my orders,” Cronley said. “Or don’t you know what at ease means?”

They relaxed.

First Sergeant Dunwiddie and Staff Sergeant Lewis came into the room.

That was quick.

Dunwiddie had Lewis stashed somewhere close.

Why should that surprise me?

Staff Sergeant Lewis marched up to Cronley, came to attention, raised his hand quickly to his temple, and barked, “Sir, Staff Sergeant Lewis, Harold, Junior, reporting to the commanding officer as ordered, sir.”

Cronley crisply returned the salute.

“Permission to speak, sir?” Dunwiddie asked.

“Denied. You just stand there with Sergeant Loudmouth, First Sergeant, while I have a word with the Three Musketeers of Kloster Grünau.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Some of you may have noticed a few moments ago that I said unkind things about Sergeant Lewis, including questioning the marital status of his parents. Not only was I rude to each of you but I used profane and obscene language. I also used blasphemous language to describe our home here in Kloster Grünau. You may consider this an apology.”

There was silence for a long moment. It was broken by Staff Sergeant Petronius J. Clark, the largest of the Musketeers, whose deep voice would make most operatic basso profundo sound, in comparison, like canaries.

“Aw, shit, Captain,” his voice rumbled, “Tiny told us you was Cavalry before you got stuck with this intelligence bullshit. We’re Cavalry. We wouldn’t respect an officer who didn’t know how to really eat ass colorfully, like you just did.”

Cronley turned to Lewis.

“Tell me, Sergeant, how skilled are you with a shovel?”

“Sir?”

“A counter-question is not a reply, Sergeant.”

“Sir, I expect I’m about as skilled as anyone else.”

“First Sergeant, load the Three Musketeers and Sergeant Loudmouth and four shovels into an ambulance. We are going off into the night to dig a grave. Make sure we have flashlights.”

A number of things became apparent almost as soon as they reached a small pasture that was a five-minute drive from Kloster Grünau.

The first was that a pickax was going to be required. Cronley sent Staff Sergeant Abraham back to fetch two of them.

The second was that the Army expression “Flashlights go dead just when you need them” was right on the money.

As soon as Sergeant Abraham returned from Kloster Grünau, he was sent back for a supply of flashlight batteries and a tape measure.

While he was gone, Technical Sergeant Martin and Staff Sergeant Lewis labored hard, and rather ineffectively, at their digging in the light of the ambulance’s headlights.

When Abraham returned, Martin and Sergeant Lewis — now working in the faint light of the flashlights — took the tape measure and marked off the length and width of the hole to be dug, using rolls of medical adhesive tape conveniently found in the ambulance.

“Stand inside the adhesive tape,” Captain Cronley ordered. “When you get down a little deeper, you’re going to have to work inside the walls of the grave. You might as well get used to that.”

When Sergeants Martin and Lewis complied, it became immediately apparent that two men could not simultaneously labor to deepen a grave while both were inside the dimensions of said grave. Testing proved this was especially true when one of the gravediggers required the use of a pickax in his labors.

“Well, we’ll do it like a relay race,” Captain Cronley announced. “First, the pickax man will dislodge the soil. He will then exit the grave and the shoveler will enter, remove the loose soil from the grave, then exit the grave to be replaced by a man with the pickax. Und so weiter.”

This modus operandi proved far less effective in practice than in theory. Too much time was lost changing laborers. There would be additional lost time as the grave deepened — six feet being one hell of a hole — and the pickax man had to crawl out before the shoveler could climb in.

A modification of the relay-race method was adopted. Working as fast as he could, one gravedigger would wield the pickax and then shovel the loosened dirt out of the hole. He would repeat this cycle three times. By then, the gravedigger was sweating and panting heavily and had to be replaced.

He would then be helped out of the grave and, now shivering in the near freezing temperature, be helped back into the field jacket and shirt he had removed to facilitate his pickax and shovel wielding. As he did so, a fresh gravedigger would quickly remove his field jacket and shirt, and then enter the grave to repeat the process. Und so weiter.

By 2100, it had been determined it was going to take two hours and thirty minutes to dig a grave — much longer than any of them had thought it would — and forty-five minutes to fill it up.

The burial party then got back in the ambulance and jeep and returned to Kloster Grünau.

[SIX]

Captain Cronley, First Sergeant Dunwiddie, and Technical Sergeant Tedworth watched as the medic liberally daubed merbromin on the hands of the gravediggers. The topical antibiotic stained the wounds a bright red.

When Cronley first saw the blisters, he thought it was kind of funny. Enormous, muscular men with delicate hands. Then he got a better look at the blisters and had second thoughts.

These guys are not only in pain now, but have been in pain since probably after the first five minutes of furiously swinging the pickaxes and shovels.

And they hadn’t said a word.

He had then sent for Doc, the medic sergeant, who had been in the NCO club having “a couple of beers,” he’d said, when he arrived a hair’s-breadth from being royally drunk.

“Doc,” Cronley said, “I was about to suggest a bottle of Jack Daniel’s to comfort our afflicted brethren. Would that be medically appropriate?”

“Sir, that’s probably a very good idea. What the hell have they been doing?”

“Field sanitation. Digging latrines,” First Sergeant Dunwiddie answered for him.

“First Sergeant, get a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the bar, then send our walking wounded to bed,” Cronley ordered. “No. Change of plans. I’ll want a word with them after you leave, Doc.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the medic had, none too steadily, left the room, Cronley asked, “Why do I think that when Doc gets back to the NCO club, he’s going to say, ‘I don’t know what the captain had those guys doing. They claimed digging latrines, but I don’t believe that. They had the biggest blisters I’ve seen since Christ was a corporal. They were digging something.’

“And then do you think it’s possible that someone will guess ‘Maybe they’re digging a grave for that Russian that Sergeant Tedworth caught and they’re going to shoot?’ Everyone of course knows about the Russian because of Sergeant Loudmouth.”

“Oh, God!” Dunwiddie said. “I should have thought about that!”

“Let me catch up with Doc Lushwell, Captain,” Tedworth said. “I’ll tell him to keep his yap shut.”

“Thank you, but no thanks. If you think about it, what’s wrong with somebody guessing we’re going to shoot the Russian? If that word gets out — and I think it will — it will come to the attention of the Germans the NKGB has turned. Then they won’t be so surprised when they hear the shots when we ‘execute’ him.”

“Yeah,” Staff Sergeant Petronius J. Clark boomed appreciatively. “That’s how it would work all right.”

Then he blew gently on his red merbromin-painted hands and winced at the stinging sensation.

“Let’s carry that one step further,” Cronley went on. “Sergeant Loudmouth, please present my compliments to Major Orlovsky and tell him I would be pleased to have him attend me in my quarters.”

“Captain, you going to tell the Russian that we was digging graves?” Sergeant Clark asked dubiously.

“That’s exactly what I’m going to tell him. What are you waiting for, Sergeant Loudmouth? Go get Major Orlovsky.”

“With respect, sir,” Dunwiddie said. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

“No, Sergeant Dunwiddie, I do not. Go get the Jack Daniel’s and some glasses.”

[SEVEN]

Staff Sergeant Harold Lewis Jr. and two soldiers from das Gasthaus, as Cronley had called the cell in the basement of the former chapel, led Major Konstantin Orlovsky of the NKGB into the room. Orlovsky’s head was covered with a duffel bag. He had a blanket over his shoulders, held in place with straps. His hands were handcuffed behind him and his ankles shackled.

Cronley gestured for Lewis to take off the duffel bag.

“Good evening, Konstantin,” Cronley greeted him cordially. “Some things have come up that we need to talk about. I thought you’d be more comfortable doing so here, over a little Tennessee whisky and some dinner, than in das Gasthaus.”

Orlovsky didn’t reply.

“Sergeant Clark, would you be good enough to take the restraints off Major Orlovsky?” Cronley went on. “And then, after he’s had a shower, get him into more comfortable clothing?”

Orlovsky came back into the room, now wearing the German civilian clothing he had been wearing when Sergeant Tedworth had captured him as he tried to sneak out of Kloster Grünau.

“First Sergeant Dunwiddie, Staff Sergeant Clark, and I are delighted that you could find time in your busy schedule to join us,” Cronley said, waving him into a chair at the table. “Please sit down.”

Orlovsky obediently sat.

“What’ll it be, Konstantin?” Cronley asked. “Whisky? Vodka?”

“Nothing for me, thank you.”

“Pour a little Jack Daniel’s for the major, please, Sergeant Clark,” Cronley said. “He may change his mind.”

“I never change my mind,” Orlovsky said.

“We say, ‘Never say never,’” Cronley said. “Pour the Jack, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know what’s wrong with that disguise you were wearing?” Cronley said. “If you don’t mind me saying?”

Orlovsky said nothing.

“You’re too well nourished, too chubby, for a German. You should have figured out a way to make your skin look gray, for your cheekbones to be more evident. Forgive me, Konstantin, but what you look like is an American trying to look like a German.”

Orlovsky shook his head in disbelief.

Sergeant Clark put a glass before the Russian and then poured two inches of Jack Daniel’s into it.

“Ice and water, Major?” Clark boomed. “Or you take it straight?”

Cronley saw that Orlovsky had involuntarily drawn himself in when the enormous black man had come close to him, then recoiled just perceptibly when Clark had delicately poured the whisky with his massive, merbromin-painted hand.

Orlovsky was disconcerted to the point where he forgot that he never changed his mind.

He said, “Straight’s fine. Thank you,” then picked up the glass and took a healthy swallow.

“I saw you looking at poor Sergeant Clark’s hands. Aren’t you going to ask what he did to them?”

“No.”

“Tell the major how your hands got that way, Sergeant,” Cronley ordered.

“Digging that goddamned practice grave,” Clark boomed.

There was no response.

“Aren’t you curious about the phrase ‘practice grave’?”

“No.”

“We was digging a practice grave,” Sergeant Clark volunteered. “To see how long it’s going to take us to dig the real one for you.”

“Quickly changing the subject,” Cronley put in, “how does pork chops and applesauce and green beans sound for dinner?”

“That would be very nice,” Orlovsky said.

“Would you tell the cook that, please, Sergeant Clark?”

“Yes, sir,” Clark boomed, and marched out of the room.

“I suppose that happens in the Red Army, too,” Cronley said.

“What?”

“That senior sergeants like Clark, who have held their rank for some time, develop soft hands. I mean, so that when they are called on to perform some manual labor of the type they were accustomed to perform when they were privates, they’re not up to it. Those hands must really be painful.”

“Obviously.”

“Well, we’ve learned our lesson. The next time we dig your grave, we’ll be good Boy Scouts.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Boy Scouts is an American organization that one joins at age nine, as a Cub Scout, and remains in, generally, until the age of eighteen, or until the Scout discovers the female sex. Whichever comes first. Roasting marshmallows over an open fire is great fun, but for an eighteen-year-old it can’t compare with exploration of the female anatomy.”

Orlovsky shook his head in disbelief again.

“How did I get on that subject?” Cronley asked rhetorically. “Oh! I started out to say that the motto of the Boy Scouts is Be Prepared. That’s what I meant when I said the next time we dig your grave, we’ll be good Boy Scouts. By that I mean, we’ll be prepared. The gravediggers will have gloves to protect their hands.”

Orlovsky didn’t reply.

“Do you remember the first time you went on a successful exploratory mission like that, Konstantin? Perhaps with the young lady who eventually became Mrs. Orlovsky and the mother of your children?”

“You do not actually expect me to answer a question like that!”

“I wasn’t asking for the details, Konstantin. I’m an officer and a gentleman. That would be like asking a fellow officer and gentleman what exactly he did on his honeymoon, and how often he did it. Bad form. All I was asking was if you remembered.”

Orlovsky failed in his attempt not to smile.

“Captain Cronley, you are very good. If I did not know who you are, and what you are trying to accomplish, I would believe that you were an amiable lunatic.”

“I remember my honeymoon well. Probably because it happened so recently and was so brief. Do you remember yours? Or was it so long ago that you’ve forgotten? Or maybe not all that pleasant?”

Orlovsky’s face tightened. He looked at Cronley in cold anger.

“Dunwiddie, I seem to have offended the major, wouldn’t you say?”

“From the look on his face, sir, I would say that you have. I don’t think he likes being reminded of his honeymoon. Or, for that matter, his wife. Or his children.”

Orlovsky turned his coldly angry face to Dunwiddie.

“Well, Konstantin,” Cronley went on, “since I’ve offended you — unintentionally, of course, I just didn’t think that anyone would want to forget his honeymoon — let’s see if we can find something safe to talk about.”

“Please do,” Orlovsky said, meeting his eyes.

“But what? How about this? Do they have Boy Scouts in Russia? And presuming they do have Boy Scouts, were you one? Is that a safe enough subject for an amiable pre-dinner conversation between us?”

“At one time, there were Boy Scouts in Russia.”

“I didn’t know that,” Dunwiddie said. “Really? Or do you mean there was a Communist version of the Boy Scouts?”

“Both,” Orlovsky said. “Before the revolution there were Boy Scouts, on the British pattern. My father was one. So was the Czarevich Alexei, as a matter of fact.”

“The who?” Tiny asked.

“I think he means the son of the last emperor, Czar Nicholas the Second,” Cronley furnished. “If memory serves, Lenin considered him as much of a threat to Communism — the thirteen-year-old and his four sisters — as the czar, so he sent the Cheka to Yekaterinburg…”

“He sent the what?” Tiny interrupted.

“… where they were being held and on July seventeenth, 1918, blew the whole family away,” Cronley said, and then formed a pistol with his right hand and added, “PowPowPowPow.”

“Why am I not surprised that your memory serves you so well on this point?” Orlovsky asked icily.

“Do that again for me,” Tiny said.

“Lenin sent the Cheka, which is what they called the NKGB in those days, to Yekaterinburg, which is about a thousand miles east of Moscow, and where the Imperial family was being held, and then”—Cronley made a pistol again and pointed it at Orlovsky—“PowPowPow. Blew them all away and dumped the bodies in a well so they couldn’t be found. Have I got that right, Konstantin? You’re a proud member of the NKGB, right? You should know.”

“Go to hell, Captain Cronley,” Orlovsky said.

“I seem to have offended him again,” Cronley said. “So let’s get back to talking about the Boy Scouts. You say, Konstantin, that there is a sort of Boy Scouts in Russia?”

“The Young Pioneers,” Orlovsky said.

“The Young Pioneers? And were you a Young Pioneer?”

“I was.”

“And your son, is he a Young Pioneer?”

“He’s not old eno— God damn you to hell!”

“Sorry. Believe me, I know how painful it is to talk about someone in your family, someone you love, who you will never see again.”

“You sonofabitch!”

“Let’s get back to the Boy Scouts, the Young Pioneers. Do they have an oath, Konstantin?”

Orlovsky stared at him a long moment, then finally said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“An oath. ‘On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.’ Like that. That’s the Boy Scout oath. Do the Young Pioneers have an oath like that?”

“Yes, they do. We do. And a motto much like yours. We say ‘Always Prepared,’ not ‘Be Prepared.’”

“That’s not much difference. Tell me, how do you handle the God part?”

“The God part?”

“‘I will do my best to do my duty to God.’ That part. How is that handled in the atheistic Soviet Union’s Young Pioneers?”

“There is of course no reference to a superior being in the Young Pioneers.”

“Oh, I get it. You say, ‘I will do my best to do my duty to Josef Stalin and the Central Committee’?”

Dunwiddie laughed, earning him an icy look from Orlovsky.

“Isn’t that a little hard on Christians like you?” Dunwiddie pursued. “Or, maybe, you and the wife are raising the kids as good Communist atheists?”

Orlovsky didn’t reply.

“‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray Comrade Stalin my soul to take,’” Dunwiddie went on. “That the sort of prayers you teach your kids, Konstantin?”

After a long pause, Cronley said, “I don’t think Konstantin’s going to answer you, Tiny.”

“Doesn’t look that way, does it?”

“I will have nothing further to say about anything,” Orlovsky said. “I would request that I be returned to my cell, but I suspect that would be a waste of my breath.”

“One, we haven’t had our dinner yet, and two, you haven’t seen this,” Cronley said. He took Frade’s message from his pocket and tossed it onto the table. “Read it, Konstantin.”

For a moment, it looked as if Orlovsky was going to ignore the message. Then he unfolded it and glanced at it.

“You do not actually expect me to believe that you would show me a bona fide classified message?” Orlovsky asked.

“I thought he said he wasn’t going to say anything about anything,” Tiny said.

“NKGB officers, Sergeant Dunwiddie, like women, always have the option of changing their minds,” Cronley said. “Isn’t that so, Konstantin?”

Orlovsky shook his head in disgusted disbelief.

“Let me explain the message to you,” Cronley said.

“Wouldn’t that be a waste of time for both of us?”

“Well, chalk it up to professional enrichment,” Cronley said. “Didn’t they teach you in NKGB school that the more you know about your enemy, the better?”

“As I have no choice, I will listen in fascination to your explanation.”

“Great! Thank you so much. At the top there, it says ‘Priority.’ That shows how fast the message is supposed to be transmitted. ‘Priority’ is ahead of everything but ‘Urgent.’ ‘Urgent’ doesn’t get used very often. For example, so far as I know, the last time ‘Urgent’ was used was on the messages that told President Truman the atom bombs we dropped on Japan went off as they were supposed to. Got the idea?”

Orlovsky didn’t reply.

“Next comes the security classification. I’m sure you know what ‘Top Secret’ means. ‘Top Secret Lindbergh’ is a special classification dealing with anything connected with a special project we’re running. You may have heard that we’ve been sending members of Abwehr Ost to Argentina to keep them out of the hands of the NKGB…”

“I am a little surprised that you are admitting it,” Orlovsky said.

“Why not? For one reason or another, you’re not going to tell anybody I said that. That next line, ‘Duplication Forbidden,’ means you’re not supposed to make copies of the message. Copies of messages tend to wind up in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. I’m sure you can understand that.

“Next is what we call the signature blocks, who the message is from, when it was sent, how, and to whom. Tex is Colonel Frade, who sent this message via Vint Hill, which is a communications complex in Virginia. I’m sure that you know what Greenwich Mean Time is.”

Orlovsky nodded.

“Polo is Colonel Frade’s deputy, Major Maxwell Ashton the Third. They call him Polo because he spends his off-time in Argentina playing polo. Do they play polo in the Soviet Union?”

“Not so far as I know.”

“Hell of a game. The next line says Altarboy — that’s me — gets a copy at Vatican. That’s what we call Kloster Grünau. You know, because of the religious connection.

“Now, to the message itself. The first paragraph means that Colonel Frade arrived in Washington, D.C., at five in the morning Greenwich time. What it doesn’t say — we’re presumed to know this — is that he took off from Frankfurt, flew to Prestwick, Scotland, then across the Atlantic to Gander, Newfoundland, and from Gander to Washington. He was flying a Lockheed Constellation. You ever see a Constellation, Konstantin?”

“No.”

“Magnificent airplane! Four engines. It can carry forty passengers in a pressurized cabin for four thousand three hundred miles at thirty-five thousand feet at better than three hundred knots. You know what a knot is, right?”

Orlovsky, in a Pavlovian response, nodded.

“Impressive, if true,” he said.

“Well, you play your cards right, Konstantin, and maybe I can get you a ride in one.”

“I think that is highly unlikely.”

“The next paragraph, two, says he’s leaving Washington for Midland at eight o’clock Greenwich time. Midland is in Texas. Colonel Frade and I grew up there. My wife was just buried there, beside her father, who raised Colonel Frade from the time he was an infant… Oops, sorry. I forgot that talking about wives, especially dead ones, upsets you—”

“You sonofabitch! If you think that this… this constant reference to wives and families is going to permit you to change my mind about my doing my duty—”

“I wouldn’t even dream of trying,” Cronley said. “You wouldn’t believe anything I said about your duty to either God or your family.”

“Correct. And I don’t want to hear it.”

“I give you my word of honor as an officer and a gentleman that after I explain the rest of this message I will never again bring up your family, or mine, or God, in an attempt to get you to do anything.”

“Forgive me if I have trouble believing that.”

“I understand. It’s not like I’m a priest, right? I mean, a priest wouldn’t lie, but you can’t be sure that I wouldn’t, right?”

“Get it over with, please.”

“Now, the reason Colonel Frade is going to Midland is because he took his wife and their two kids to my wife’s funeral. And come to think about it, Hans-Peter von Wachtstein’s wife and their kid. Hans-Peter — we call him ‘Hansel,’ as in Hansel and Gretel — is Colonel Frade’s best friend. Before he started flying Constellations for South American Airways, he was a Luftwaffe fighter pilot. A very good one. Adolf Hitler personally hung the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross around his neck. That was before, of course, Hansel decided it was his duty to his God, his country, and his family to turn.”

“My God! You have absolutely no shame, no sense of decency!”

“Anyway, Hansel went with Colonel Frade to Midland for the funeral of my wife. As a friend. And what Colonel Frade’s going to do in Midland is pick up his wife and their kids, and Hansel’s wife and their kid, and fly them back home to Buenos Aires.

“Probably, they’ll fly from Midland to Caracas, Venezuela, and then straight down across South America to Buenos Aires. Where they expect to arrive at noon tomorrow, Greenwich time. That’s nine o’clock in the morning in Buenos Aires.

“Now, the last two paragraphs: Colonel Frade ordered Major Ashton to be prepared to go somewhere for a month. Somewhere is here. As soon as Colonel Frade explains to him what’s going on here, he’ll put him on the next South American Airways Constellation to Frankfurt. That could happen within hours, but within twenty-four hours, in any event.

“When he gets here, he’ll take over from me. What that will mean, I can’t tell you. Because I don’t know.

“In the last paragraph, Colonel Frade orders Major Ashton to have Father Welner—‘the Jesuit’—available. That really means ‘find out where he will be, so I can go to him.’ Colonel Frade can’t order the Jesuit around. He’s a very important priest. He’s Colonel Juan Perón’s confessor. You know who Colonel Perón is, right?”

“I neither know nor care.”

“Well, Argentina has a president… and now that I think of it, Father Welner is his confessor, too. But it’s generally agreed that Colonel Perón — he’s secretary of Labor and Welfare, secretary of War, and vice president — actually runs the country. Taking care of people like Colonel Perón keeps Father Welner pretty busy, and there’s no way of knowing where he might be in Argentina at any particular time. But once Major Ashton finds him, and then Colonel Frade talks to him, he’ll come on the next SAA flight. That will put him in here twenty-four hours — or forty-eight — after Ashton gets here. You understand?”

Orlovsky didn’t reply.

“Captain,” Tiny said, “you didn’t tell him why Father Welner is coming here.”

“I thought I did.”

“No.”

“Didn’t I tell you Father Welner is coming to see you, Konstantin?”

Orlovsky again shook his head in disgust, or resignation, or both.

“No, you did not. You also did not offer a reason why this holy man, this powerful Jesuit, this confessor to these very important people, would be willing to do anything an American intelligence officer would ask him to do.”

“Okay. Fair question. I said Welner is a powerful, important priest. I didn’t say he was a saint. He’ll understand that you are in possession of a lot of information the Vatican would like to have. And because the interests of the Vatican coincide with our interests here… Getting the picture?”

“So you are saying, admitting, that the holy man, this priest, is really nothing more than an intelligence officer for the Vatican?”

“Oh, no. First, he’s absolutely a priest. He has a genuine interest in saving lives and souls. Like yours. And those of your wife and children.”

“For God’s sake, why do you think I would believe anything he would say?”

“One look in his eyes, Konstantin, and you’ll see that the soul-saving comes first. Closely followed by his sincere interest in the souls of your wife and your kids. And, of course, keeping your wife and kids out of a cell in that building on Lubyanka Square. Or being sent to Siberia — like the family of Czar Nicholas the Second — and shot.”

Orlovsky shook his head.

“I’ve been trying to tell you that your willingness to die — to have us kill you — is the same thing as committing suicide. Suicide, as you know, is a mortal sin. And that you’re making this worse because your suicide will affect your family. And that we can change that whole scenario by getting you to Argentina, and then have General Gehlen try to get your family out of Russia. You don’t believe me. What we’re hoping is you will believe Father Welner.”

“What you are hoping is that you can turn me. Which is a polite way of saying turn me into a traitor.”

“And you’d rather be a hero? Maybe have a little plaque with your name on it hanging on the wall of that building on Lubyanka Square in Moscow? ‘In Loving Memory of Major Konstantin Orlovsky, who loved Communism more than his wife and children and committed suicide to prove it.’ Maybe, if they don’t shoot your wife and kids out of hand, and if they somehow manage to survive Siberia, she could someday take the kids — by then, they’d be adults — to Lubyanka and show them the plaque. ‘That was your daddy, children. Whatever else he was, he was a good Communist.’”

Orlovsky didn’t reply.

“Well, enough of this,” Cronley said. “I’m hungry. Sergeant Dunwiddie, why don’t you go find out what the hell is delaying our dinner?”

“Yes, sir.”

Staff Sergeant Clark and First Sergeant Dunwiddie returned to the room several minutes later, carrying plates of food.

“That will be all for the moment, Sergeant Clark,” Cronley said. “Except for the Tabasco. You forgot the Tabasco.”

“Sorry, sir. I’ll go get it.”

“Please do. I really like a couple of shots of Tabasco on my pork chops.”

Orlovsky looked at the plate of food before him and crossed his arms over his chest.

When Clark returned with the Tabasco, Cronley said, “Thank you. I’ll call for you when I need you.”

“Yes, sir,” Clark said.

Cronley shook the red pepper sauce onto his pork chops.

“I don’t know if you know Tabasco, Konstantin. I really do. But some people find it a little too spicy.”

Orlovsky didn’t reply.

Neither Cronley nor Dunwiddie said another word during the next fifteen minutes, during which they just about cleaned their plates. Orlovsky did not uncross his arms.

“Clark!” Cronley called.

Clark came into the room.

“Major Orlovsky will be returning to das Gasthaus now. Will you assist him in getting dressed?”

“Yes, sir.”

Five minutes later, Clark led Orlovsky back into the room. He was again shackled and handcuffed and had the duffel bag over his head.

“Good night, Konstantin,” Cronley said. “Sleep well.”

There was no reply.

Cronley gestured for Clark to lead him away, and Clark did so.

Two minutes later, as Dunwiddie poured coffee into Cronley’s cup, he asked, “Well?”

“I was tempted just now to call him back and ask him if he didn’t think not eating was cutting off his nose to spite his face, but I decided I’d already pushed him as far as I should.”

“Maybe too far?”

“I don’t know. I spent most of the time as we dined in stony silence wondering whether I was a very clever intelligence officer who knew how to break an NKGB officer or a very young, very stupid officer absolutely unqualified to mentally duel with a good NKGB officer. And, in either case, a candidate for the Despicable Prick of All Time Award.” He paused, and then added: “I really wish I didn’t like the sonofabitch.”

“So, what happens now?”

“Only time will tell. It’s now in the hands of the Lord. You may wish to write that down.”

“Actually, I think we did pretty good,” Dunwiddie said.

“Really?”

“You may wish to write this down. ‘Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just. And this be our motto: In God is our trust.’ It gets us off the hook, Despicable Prick — wise.”

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s from the last verse of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’” Dunwiddie said. “They didn’t sing that at Texas Cow College?”