Top Secret

[ONE]

A short, muscular blond man in his late twenties came into Wilson’s office. He looked very much, Cronley thought, like Willi Grüner. Even though this man was wearing baggy U.S. Army mechanic coveralls, which had been dyed black, it was easy for Cronley to imagine him in a Luftwaffe pilot’s uniform, with a brimmed cap jauntily cocked on his head.

“You sent for me, Colonel?” he asked, in heavily accented but what seemed like fluent English.

“This is the officer who’ll be taking over the Storches,” Wilson announced, and then added, “Kurt, I told you that was almost certainly going to happen.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Cronley, this is Kurt Schröder, the man I’ve been telling you about.”

Schröder bobbed his head courteously at Cronley.

“Cronley may be able to use you and your men,” Wilson said. “Why don’t you tell him something about yourself and them?”

“Yes, sir. Sir, I was a pilot in the Luftwaffe, where I flew the Fieseler Storch. The men—”

“Das ist alles?” Cronley interrupted.

“Wie, bitte?”

“The Storch was the only aircraft you flew in the Luftwaffe?” Cronley continued in German.

Schröder’s surprise at Cronley’s fluent German showed on his face.

Good, Cronley thought. What I want to do is get you off-balance.

“No, sir. I was primarily a fighter pilot. I flew mostly the Messerschmitt BF-109, but also the Focke-Wulf Fw-190.”

“Does the name Major Hans-Peter Freiherr von Wachtstein ring a bell with you, Schröder?”

Schröder’s face showed he recognized the name, but was afraid of the ramifications of any answer he might give.

“The Focke-Wulf Fw-190 pilot who received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross from the hands of Der Führer himself?” Cronley pursued.

Schröder, now visibly off-balance, exhaled audibly and told the truth.

“Sir, I had the honor of serving in Baron von Wachtstein’s squadron in the defense of Berlin.”

Well, that should be recommendation enough, but as soon as I get back to Kloster Grünau, I’ll get on the radio and ask ole Hansel about him.

“Schröder, I may have use for you and your men,” Cronley said. “But before I can offer you the job, you’ll have to be vetted by another officer. What I propose to do now, with Colonel Wilson’s permission, is take you to see him.”

“Kurt,” Wilson said, “I’ve explained our pay arrangements. Cronley is willing to do the same.”

“Yes, sir. May I ask where we’ll be going?”

“No,” Cronley said simply.

“We’ll be going in the Storch?”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me, but how can I fly you anywhere if I don’t know where we’re going?”

“I will be flying the Storch,” Cronley said. “Why don’t you top off the tanks while I have a final word with Colonel Wilson?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And while you’re at it, put two or three jerry cans of avgas in the backseat.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Jim, who was that Luftwaffe hero you brought up?” Wilson said when they were alone. “Or is that classified?”

“Yes, sir, probably. I met him in Argentina. Good guy. He’s now flying South American Airways Constellations between here and Germany. I’m going to check out Schröder with him and an officer back at Kloster Grünau.”

“And the name of this other officer? Or is that classified, too?”

“That’s probably classified, too, sir. Will you settle for ‘a former senior officer of Abwehr Ost’?”

“That’s likely Oberst Ludwig Mannberg. Or maybe General Gehlen himself.”

When Cronley didn’t reply, Wilson added, “Apropos of nothing, I was the aerial taxi driver who flew Major Wallace to accept General Gehlen’s surrender.”

Cronley nodded. “That being the case, sir, I’m going to run Schröder past Mannberg first, and then maybe past the general, too.”

“You’re good, Cronley. I now understand why Mattingly put you in charge of Kloster Grünau.”

“He put me in charge because he had no one else, sir, and because the guy who should be running it, Tiny, passed up a commission for the good of the service.”

“Modesty becomes you, but that’s not the way it was. What I said before, that you’re good, was a sincere compliment. Now comes the fatherly advice of a senior officer, welcome or not.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Prefacing this with the immodest announcement that I am, by thirteen months, the senior officer of the Class of 1940—in other words, I got my silver oak leaves thirteen months before the second guy in ’forty got his — and thus know what I’m talking about…”

He stopped, collected his thoughts, and then went on: “The disadvantages of getting rank and or authority and responsibility before your peers get it are that it (a) goes to your head, and (b) makes people jealous, which (c) causes them to try like hell to knock you back to their level by fair and — more often — foul means.

“The advantages of getting rank, et cetera, mean that you can do things for the good of the service that otherwise you could not do. And that’s what we professional soldiers are supposed to do, isn’t it? Make contributions to the good of the service? Lecture over.”

“Thank you, sir,” Cronley said softly.

“Get out of here, Cronley. Hie thee to thy monastery!”

Cronley came to attention and saluted crisply. Wilson returned it as crisply. Cronley executed an about-face movement and marched to the office door.

[TWO]

Two machine gun jeeps were blocking the road, and Cronley had to make two low-level passes over what was to be his runway — very low and very slow passes, with the window open so they could see his face — before the jeeps started up and moved out of the way.

He put the Storch down smoothly, taxied to the end of the “runway,” and shut down the engine.

“It would appear that I have cheated death once again,” he said to Schröder.

Schröder’s expression did not change.

“May I ask where we are?” Schröder said.

“No.”

Tiny walked toward the airplane. Cronley made a slight hand signal to him, which he hoped would make Dunwiddie salute him and — more important — play the respectful role of a non-com dealing with an officer.

Dunwiddie understood. He saluted crisply and Cronley returned it.

“Two things, Sergeant,” Cronley ordered. “Have your men push the aircraft off the strip, and then have them put a tarpaulin over it. And then get someone to escort this gentleman while he’s here.”

“Yes, sir,” Dunwiddie said, and gestured for one of the jeeps to come to them.

When the jeep stopped before him, Dunwiddie pointed to the machine gunner, a corporal, and ordered: “You will escort this gentleman until you are relieved.”

“You got it, First Sergeant.”

Dunwiddie pointed to the driver.

“You go to the barracks and get enough men to push this airplane up beside the chapel. Then put a tarp over it so it’ll be hard to see from the air.”

The jeep driver, a sergeant, nodded, and the moment the corporal had tied down his Browning and jumped free of the jeep, turned it around and drove off.

“You can get out now, Herr Schröder,” Cronley said in German.

They set out for the headquarters building, Cronley and Dunwiddie walking side by side. Schröder walked behind them as the corporal, now cradling a Thompson submachine gun like a hunter’s shotgun, followed him.

As they approached the building, Cronley saw General Reinhard Gehlen and Oberst Ludwig Mannberg standing just outside. That made moot the question he had had in his mind about how he was going to get one or the other of them out of the mess in order to explain the situation.

Cronley also saw on Schröder’s face that he recognized one of them. Or both.

“Good afternoon, Herr Cronley,” Gehlen said courteously.

“I hope my arrival didn’t disturb your lunch, sir.”

“It did, but the sound of a Storch coming in here caused my curiosity to overwhelm my hunger.” He looked closely at Schröder. “We know one another, don’t we?”

Schröder snapped to rigid attention, clicked his heels, bobbed his head, and said, “Herr General, I had the honor of flying the general on many occasions. In Poland and the East, Herr General.”

“I thought you looked familiar,” Gehlen said. “Schröder, isn’t it?”

Schröder bobbed his head and clicked his heels again.

“Herr General, I am flattered that the general remembers.”

“We don’t do that here, Schröder,” Mannberg said. “The war is over and we are no longer in military service.”

“Jawohl, Herr Oberst.”

“And,” Mannberg added, drily sarcastic, “it would follow that since we are no longer in military service, neither do we have military rank.”

“Corporal, take our guest around the corner, please,” Cronley said, “while I have a word with these gentlemen.”

Schröder went around the corner of the building with the corporal three steps behind him.

Gehlen looked expectantly at Cronley to see what he wanted.

“General, how would you feel about Schröder joining us here?”

“In connection with that Storch he just flew in here, you mean?”

Cronley nodded.

“The Storch, and another one, is now ours,” he said.

“I think he could prove quite useful. But I suspect you have some doubt?”

“Yes, sir. You think he can be trusted?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Could you tell me why?”

“Because right now he’s wondering whether he’s going to be put to work, or be shot for having seen too much,” Gehlen explained.

Cronley thought there was a hint of sarcasm in his tone.

“Exactly what has he seen?”

“Mannberg and myself,” Gehlen said, more than a little condescendingly.

Cronley felt a wave of anger rise. He recognized it and waited until he felt he had it under control before he replied.

“General, keeping in mind that three days ago I was a second lieutenant, you’re going to have to have a little patience when I ask what you and Oberst Mannberg, with your far greater experience, consider to be dumb questions.”

“The general meant no disrespect, Hauptman Cronley,” Mannberg said.

“Actually, quite the opposite, Hauptman Cronley,” Gehlen said. “My problem with you is that I’ve seen — and I mean seen here, not what you did in Argentina, but that also obviously applies — what a competent intelligence officer you are, and I sometimes forget there probably are… how do I say this?… certain gaps in your professional experience.”

“My professional experience can be written inside a matchbook cover with a thick grease pencil,” Cronley said. “And the gaps in it make a hole somewhat larger than the Grand Canyon. And I think you both are fully aware of that.”

Mannberg laughed.

“Is something funny?” Cronley snapped.

“Yes,” Mannberg said. “That colorful expression of annoyance, I’m afraid, did not translate very well into German.”

“I was speaking German?” Cronley blurted.

So I didn’t have my temper firmly in hand.

“You sounded like a Strasbourger on his fourth liter of beer,” Mannberg said.

“That’s bad.”

“But you made your point,” Gehlen said, “and it was taken, Hauptman Cronley. I apologize for not understanding. You were — as you should have been — concerned that taking Schröder here might pose security problems. When I so quickly suggested I didn’t think it would be a problem, you wondered — as you should have — how quickly I had made that decision. I thought it should have been obvious to you. My mistake. One of the gaps in your experience is that you have had no experience in the East.”

By East he means Russia.

Why are these guys so reluctant to say Russia?

Gehlen met his eyes a long moment, then went on: “Let me tell you what it was like in the East when Schröder was flying me and Mannberg around at the front. It was understood that under no circumstances could we fall into the hands of the Red Army. Specifically, Schröder knew that when we took off, there was an explosive charge aboard the Storch that I would detonate, or he would, if it appeared there was any chance at all that we were going to go down behind the Red Army’s lines.

“Even after the flight, or flights, Schröder understood that it was unacceptable for him to be captured with knowledge of the location of any Abwehr Ost detachment or the like. He gave his word as an officer to die honorably by his own hand in that circumstance.”

“Jesus Christ!” Cronley said softly.

“When you brought him here, and he saw Mannberg and me, he naturally assumed the same security protocol would be in place here. And I’m sure he knows the Red Army is looking for any former member of Abwehr Ost.

“Schröder knew the moment we saw and recognized one another that he would not be allowed to leave in possession of such intelligence. I had those facts, plus my knowledge that he was a courageous and trustworthy officer — as well as a very good pilot — in mind when I made what appeared to you to be a casual decision about whether he would be useful here.”

Gehlen let that sink in a moment, and after Cronley nodded, went on: “My mistake, Hauptman Cronley, was to forget about those gaps in your experience, and again, for that I apologize.”

“There’s no need to apologize, General,” Cronley said. “The problem as I see it is that I’m afraid we’ve only begun to learn how large those gaps, those many gaps, in my experience are.”

“And your decision about Schröder?” Gehlen asked.

“I suggest we take him inside, give him lunch, and welcome him to Kloster Grünau.”

Gehlen nodded, and then smiled.

“An expression Colonel Mattingly uses frequently seems appropriate here,” he said, and then quoted, “‘The true test of another man’s intelligence is to what degree he agrees with you.’”

“I’m flattered, sir,” Cronley said, and then raised his voice: “Corporal!”

The corporal appeared around the corner of the building a moment later, prodding Schröder ahead of him with the muzzle of his Thompson.

“Lower that muzzle, Corporal,” Cronley ordered. “Herr Schröder has been declared one of the good guys.”

A look of enormous relief flashed over Schröder’s face.

Not that I doubted what Gehlen said about Schröder wondering if he was about to be shot, but if I needed proof, there it was on Schröder’s face.

“Pass the word,” Cronley continued. “And then find First Sergeant Dunwiddie and ask him if he’s free for lunch.”

“Yes, sir,” the corporal said.

“Come with us, Schröder,” Gehlen said. “And while we have lunch, I’ll try to determine where you’ll be most useful around here.”

“So, what we’re going to do now,” Dunwiddie said, as the discussion about the airplanes and Schröder and his men died down, “is send a couple of trucks — probably it would be better to send four — to Sonthofen to pick up the other airplane, the mechanics, and the parts. Right?”

Cronley made a Time out signal with his hands and announced, “I’ve been thinking.”

“That’s always dangerous,” Tiny said.

“Kurt, now that you know what’s going on here, what about your men?” Cronley asked.

“What Hauptman Cronley is asking, Schröder,” Mannberg said, “is (a) whether you trust them to keep their mouths shut about what they might see here, and (b) whether they understand what will happen to them if they talk. We simply cannot have them talking, even to their wives.”

It took Schröder a good fifteen seconds to frame his reply.

“Two of them served with me in the East,” he began. “When I tell them the same security protocol we had there will apply here, they will understand. If they don’t wish to subject themselves to that protocol, I won’t bring them here.”

“And the third man?” Mannberg asked.

“He is a brother of one of the men who was with me in the East. If he is reluctant to accept the protocol, then I will not bring either of them here.”

“How long would it take you to hold this conversation, conversations, with them?” Cronley said.

“Do I understand that I am to return to Sonthofen with the trucks?”

“Answer my question, please.”

“Thirty minutes or so. No longer than that.”

“And how long would it take to tell them, ‘Say nothing to anyone, I will return here shortly’? With confidence that they would obey that order?”

“You’ve lost me, Jim,” Dunwiddie said.

“It would take me twice as long to say that than it did for you to say it. Because I would say it twice, to make sure they understood.”

Cronley nodded, then turned to Tiny.

“What’s going to happen now is that Schröder and I are going to fly back to Sonthofen. When we land, Schröder will deliver that little speech to his men. I will then get out of Storch One, and Schröder will immediately get in Storch One and fly back here. I will then get in Storch Two and fly it back here. When I land, you and Schröder and four trucks will go to Sonthofen, pick up the mechanics and the parts, and drive very slowly and carefully back here.”

When he saw that everyone was considering his remarks with what appeared to be little enthusiasm, Cronley provided amplification.

“If we fly Storch Two back here, that will (a) get it out of Sonthofen immediately, (b) eliminate the risk of it getting damaged while moving it by truck, and (c) questions will not be raised by anyone about a Storch with U.S. Army markings being driven down the roads to here.”

Gehlen and Mannberg nodded their understanding and acceptance. Schröder’s face remained expressionless.

Tiny asked, “And I’m going with the trucks? Why?”

“Because, Marshal Earp, you have your marshal’s badge with which you can dazzle anybody who wants to ask you about anything.”

“Marshal Earp?” General Gehlen asked.

“He was a famous American cowboy, General,” Mannberg said.

“A U.S. Marshal,” Cronley corrected him. “In the Arizona Territory before it became a state. He and his brothers and a dentist named Doc Holliday were involved in — I should say won — a famous gunfight in the O.K. Corral in Tombstone.”

“Actually, it wasn’t in the O.K. Corral, but near it,” Tiny further clarified.

Gehlen, Mannberg, and Schröder obviously had no idea what they were talking about.

“Ready to go flying, Kurt?” Cronley said.

Schröder stood.

Cronley handed him the zipper jacket Lieutenant Colonel Wilson had given him.

“Put this on,” he ordered. “If we find ourselves in the hands of the MPs or anyone else asking questions, your answer is you are under orders to answer no questions without the permission of Colonel Robert Mattingly, deputy commander, Counterintelligence, European Command. Got it?”

Schröder nodded, and then repeated, as if to fix it in his memory, “Colonel Robert Mattingly, deputy commander, Counterintelligence, European Command.”

“That’s it,” Cronley confirmed, and then turned to General Gehlen. “When I get back, I want to see our guest.”

Gehlen nodded.

[THREE]

The machine gun jeeps were already moving off the road when Cronley made his first pass over Kloster Grünau. He decided they had seen — or heard — the Storch approaching.

When he turned and made his approach, he saw that a small convoy — a lead machine gun jeep, the Opel Kapitän, two GMC 6×6 trucks, and a trailing machine gun jeep — was lined up on the road from Kloster Grünau.

Tiny’s ready to go, he thought. Why not? It’s a long ride to Sonthofen and back.

Only two trucks; Schröder must have told him he wouldn’t need four.

And then his attention was abruptly brought back to what he was doing — flying.

He was far to the left of the runway; winds had blown him off his intended track.

Well, I guess we’re going to need a windsock.

He corrected his approach and touched gently down where he had originally intended to land.

Not bad, Eddie Rickenbacker!

Especially for someone who professes to hate flying.

Who are you kidding? You love flying and really missed it.

He completed the landing roll, turned the Storch, and taxied to the convoy at the end of the runway. He saw Tiny and Schröder get out of the Kapitän.

Cronley shut down the engine and opened the window.

Schröder, smiling, made a gesture with his hand demonstrating Cronley’s last-second efforts to line up with the runway.

“I was thinking we might need a windsock,” Cronley said.

“I think that’s a very good idea.”

“On the way to Sonthofen, why don’t you tell Sergeant Dunwiddie here how to make one?”

“Why don’t you tell Tedworth how to make one,” Dunwiddie challenged, “while Herr Schröder and I are bouncing down the bumpy roads in the dark?”

“Because as an officer I am dedicated to preserving the privileges of rank,” Cronley said piously.

Dunwiddie smiled and shook his head.

“Speaking of officers,” he said, “Mattingly called. I didn’t think you wanted him to know what you were really doing, Charles Lindbergh, so I told him you were off in a jeep somewhere, and I would have you call him when you got back. That was about an hour ago.”

“Okay. Thanks. I’ll call him. Have a nice ride.”

I’ll call him after I see the Russian NKGB agent.

He nodded and smiled at Schröder, then in a loud voice called out “Clear!” and started the engine. He taxied back down the runway to where a dozen soldiers were waiting to push the Storch off the runway and out of sight.

Cronley found Mannberg in the officers’ mess bar. He was reading Stars and Stripes, the U.S. Army newspaper, over a cup of coffee.

Cronley sat beside him and said, “When you’re through with the Stripes, I’d like to see the NKGB agent.”

“Of course,” Mannberg replied, and laid the newspaper down.

Cronley could see that Mannberg was unhappy.

“I don’t want to interfere in any way with your interrogation,” Cronley said. “I just want to see him.”

“May I ask why?”

“I think I should.”

“Of course,” Mannberg said, and stood.

As they walked out of the bar, Cronley saw the zipper jacket Lieutenant Colonel Wilson had given him. It was hanging from a peg by the door.

Schröder must’ve left it there — returning it to me — when he came back from Sonthofen. It still has the Liaison Pilot’s wings.

To which neither of us is entitled.

Cronley took the jacket and put it on as they walked to what had once been the monastery’s chapel.

At least it’ll cover my captain’s bars, and if I speak German, the NKGB guy will think I’m another German.

Why is that important?

Because, on the rank totem pole, a U.S. Army captain is far down from Gehlen and Mannberg.

Unless he already knows Kloster Grünau is being run by me. Which he probably does.

Which means — Tiny’s people grabbed him before I returned from the States with my brand-new captain’s bars — that if he does know who I am, he thinks I’m a second lieutenant, which is really at the bottom of that totem pole.

To hell with it. My gut feeling is to wear the jacket; go with that.

There were four of what Cronley thought of as “Tiny’s Troopers,” plus two of Gehlen’s men, just inside the foyer of the former chapel. They were seated around a card table playing poker. Packs of cigarettes and Hershey chocolate bars were used as chips.

It was less innocent than it seemed. Cigarettes and Hershey bars were the currency of the land when dealing with the Germans, and could be used to purchase what little the Germans had to sell, including very often the sexual favors of the women.

Everybody quickly rose to their feet when the senior non-com among them, a staff sergeant, barked, “Ten-hut!”

The sergeant — who was uncommonly small for a trooper, not much over five-feet-two, the Army minimum height — casually held an M-3.30 caliber carbine in his hand. The others were holding Thompson.45 caliber submachine guns.

“At ease,” Cronley said. “I’m here to investigate rumors that gambling is taking place on the premises.”

“Ah, Lieutenant, you know we wouldn’t do nothing like that,” the sergeant said.

One of the troopers hissed, “That’s Captain, asshole!”

“Excuse me, Captain,” the sergeant said. “Sorry, sir.”

“You have an honest face, Sergeant. So I will believe you when you say you wouldn’t even think of gambling,” Cronley said. “And as far as that Captain business is concerned, I’ve only been a captain for a couple days. If you had called me Captain, I probably would have looked around to see who you were talking to.”

The troopers smiled and chuckled.

“I came to have a look at our guest,” Cronley said. “How is he?”

“He’s all right. I’ve got another two guys down there who peek at him every five or ten minutes or so,” the sergeant said.

And then he came to attention.

“Permission to speak, sir?”

Another Regular Army old soldier.

Why am I not surprised? Tiny would be very careful who he put in charge.

“Granted.”

“Sir, my orders from First Sergeant Dunwiddie are to do what Konrad here says about keeping that guy in the hole.”

He nodded toward one of the Germans, a pink-skinned man in his thirties.

Cronley looked at Mannberg, who said, “Konrad Bischoff, Hauptmann Cronley, former major. Interrogation specialist.”

Bischoff bobbed his head to Cronley.

“And…?” Cronley said to the sergeant.

“And, Captain, ever since I put that guy in the hole, he’s been… doing his business… in a canvas bucket. It smells to high heaven in there. Konrad says, ‘That’s part of the process,’ and not to change it. I’m really starting to feel sorry for that Communist sonofabitch, sitting there in the dark and—”

Cronley held up his hand to stop him.

What do I do now?

Say, “Fuck the Russian” or “Tough shit”?

That’d be the same thing as admitting the Germans are running Kloster Grünau, running Operation Ost.

They’re not. Or at least they’re not supposed to be running it.

If I override the order, I’m not only going to confirm Mannberg’s opinion that I’m getting a little too big for my britches, challenging the superior knowledge and the decisions of his “interrogation specialist,” but piss him off. And if I piss him off, I piss off Gehlen.

Bottom line, I’m supposed to be running Kloster Grünau.

“Let’s go see what you’re talking about,” Cronley said. “You, me, Herr Mannberg, and Herr Bischoff. Tell me how that works, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir. What Konrad got us to do is rig up a floodlight — six jeep headlights mounted on a piece of plywood, hitched to a jeep battery. We turn the lights on, then open the door. The Russian, who’s been sitting there in the dark since his candle went out… you know about the candles, Captain? They last about two minutes—”

“I know about them,” Cronley interrupted.

“Yes, sir. Well, the Russian, who’s been there in the dark for an hour at least, is blinded when the lights shine in his eyes. We can see him, but he can’t—”

“Okay, Sergeant,” Cronley interrupted again. “Let’s go.”

The sergeant led the way through the former chapel to a room behind what had been the altar, past crates of supplies where once, presumably, there had been pews full of hooded priests and monks.

Two troopers, both armed with Thompsons, were in the room. They popped to attention.

“What’s he doing?” the sergeant asked.

“Ten minutes ago, he was sitting with his back against the wall,” one of them, a sergeant, replied.

“Open the door,” the sergeant ordered.

He took two flashlights from a shelf, handed one to Cronley, and waited until the door had been opened. Then he started down the stairway. Cronley followed.

At the foot of the stairway, Cronley found himself in a small area, perhaps six feet by eight. To the left was a single heavy wooden door. It was closed with a piece of lumber jammed against it. Across from the door, the improvised floodlights rested against a brick wall.

The sergeant pointed to one of the men who had followed them down the stairs, gesturing for him to take the floodlights, and then to another man, ordering him to be prepared to remove the timber that held the door shut.

Then he stood by the door, unslung the carbine from his shoulder, and held it as if he expected to use it as a club if the prisoner tried to burst out of the room.

“Now!” he ordered.

The man with the floodlights moved to the door and turned them on. The man on the timber kicked it free and then jerked the door open.

Cronley could now see the cell and the man in it.

And he smelled the nauseating odor of human waste.

The NKGB agent, who had been sitting on a mattress, shielded his eyes from the light as he rose, sliding his back against the wall.

“Take your hand away from your face!” Cronley barked in German.

The man obeyed but closed his eyes.

That was involuntary, Cronley decided. That light really hurts his eyes. He’s not being defiant.

He could now see the NKGB agent’s face.

He was surprised at what he saw: a slight man, fair-skinned and blond, who appeared to be in his twenties.

A nice-looking guy.

What the hell did you expect? Somebody who looks like Joe Stalin? Or Lenin?

The NKGB agent finally managed to get his eyes into a squint. His eyes were blue.

“Get another waste bucket in there,” Cronley ordered in English. “And get that one out of there. This room smells like a latrine!”

The trooper who had kicked the timber out of the way said, “Sir, we were told—”

“Don’t argue with me, Corporal!” Cronley snapped. “Get that bucket out of there, and do it now. We’re not savages!”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s your name?” Cronley demanded, first in English, then in German.

The NKGB officer didn’t reply.

“We believe him to be Konstantin Orlovsky,” Mannberg said softly from behind Cronley.

“Major Konstantin Orlovsky of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs at your service, sir,” the NKGB officer said in fluent English. “And you are?”

That’s not English English, but it’s not American English, either.

“My name is Cronley, Major. We’ll talk again.”

He turned to the sergeant.

“Major Orlovsky’s waste bucket will be replaced at regular intervals. The next time I come down here, I want to smell roses. Got it?”

“Got it, sir.”

“Thank you,” Orlovsky said.

Cronley turned from the door and went quickly back up the stairs. Mannberg and Bischoff followed him.

As soon as they reached the room behind the altar, Bischoff asked, “Am I to assume, Herr Hauptman, that you are taking over the interrogation?”

You’re really pissed that the naïve young American countermanded your orders, aren’t you?

And, Mannberg, to judge from the look on your face, you’re pissed that I countermanded the orders of your “interrogation specialist” and did so in front of the black American enlisted men.

Too fucking bad!

“The assumption you should be working under, Herr Bischoff, is that you are conducting the interrogation under my direction. So far as what happened down there just now, vis-à-vis Orlovsky’s waste bucket, what I had in mind was something Herr Mannberg told me, something to the effect that causing pain — and I think making Orlovsky sit in a blacked-out cell forced to smell his own waste caused him pain — is usually counterproductive.

“And if memory serves, Herr Mannberg, you also said that’s even more true when the person being interrogated is a skilled agent. I think we agree that Orlovsky is a skilled agent. I think that before he sneaked in here, he knew Kloster Grünau was commanded by a very young American. With that in mind, I told him my name. What good would it do to pretend otherwise?”

“Your points are well taken,” Mannberg said.

He means that.

But he is also surprised.

“And now, you’ll have to excuse me, I have to get on the phone.”

And I want to get away from you while I’m still ahead.

In other words, before I say something else stupid.

[FOUR]

Kloster Grünau was connected to a secure radio network that had originally been established by the OSS during the war. It used equipment — primarily Collins Radio Corporation Model 7.2 transceivers coupled with SIGABA encryption devices — acquired from the Army Security Agency’s Secret Communications Center at Vint Hill Farms Station in Virginia.

During the war, the network had provided secure communications between OSS headquarters in Washington and important OSS stations around the world. Deputy OSS Director Allen Dulles had had one when he had been stationed in Berne, Switzerland. David Bruce, who had run the OSS organization attached to Eisenhower’s Supreme Command in London, had had another. Lieutenant Colonel Cletus Frade, who commanded Team Turtle, the OSS operation covering the “Southern Cone”—Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay — had another. And there had been a very few other stations in the network.

Despite the demise of the OSS, parts of the network remained “up.” Instant, secure communication between Germany and Vint Hill Farms was still possible, but since the OSS had been “disestablished” was never used.

There were now two stations in Germany. One had been set up immediately after the war by Colonel Mattingly in what had been Admiral Canaris’s home in the Berlin suburb of Zehlendorf. Mattingly had moved the station he had had with OSS Forward to Kloster Grünau the day before the OSS had ceased to exist.

Communications between Germany and Argentina, because of Operation Ost, were frequent.

There were no secure communications links between Colonel Mattingly’s office in the I.G. Farben Building in Frankfurt, Major Harold Wallace’s office in the Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel in Munich, and Kloster Grünau. Or between any of them.

One of the reasons was the “antenna farm” that the Collins transceiver needed. Since Mattingly did not want anyone to know the radio network even existed, he could not order that antennae be set up on the roofs of either the Farben Building or the Vier Jahreszeiten.

And since the less known by anyone about Kloster Grünau the better, he could not go to the Signal Corps and tell them to install a secure — encrypted — telephone line there. They would want to know why one was needed. And even if he told them why he needed one and pledged — or threatened — them to silence, a platoon of Signal Corps telephone linemen installing the heavy lead-shielded cable necessary for encrypted secure lines would cause questions to be asked about what was going on at the supposedly deserted former monastery.

These problems would go away when the South German Industrial Development Organization moved to Pullach. But for the time being, telephone calls had to be conducted in the presumption that someone was listening to what was being said.

“Mattingly.”

“Cronley, sir.”

“Thank you for returning my call so promptly, Captain. It can’t be more than two or three hours since I asked Dunwiddie to have you call me immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I hope you had a pleasant joyride through the countryside?”

“Colonel, I need to talk to you.”

“Odd, when I called before, I needed to talk to you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Among other things, I was curious how your flying lesson went.”

“I think it went well, sir.”

“And then I can hope that sometime in the near future, we may look forward to having our own aerial taxi service?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you give me an idea, just a ballpark estimate, of when that might be? In, say, two weeks?”

“Sir, the planes are at the monastery.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sir, I have the planes here now.”

“How did they get there?”

“I flew one of them and Schröder flew the other.”

“I don’t believe I know anyone by that name.”

“He and three mechanics came with the planes, sir.”

“Are you telling me you flew a German national to the monastery?”

“I wanted to run him past the general, sir. The general vouched for him. They were in the war together.”

“I’m tempted to say, ‘Well done,’ but I’m afraid of the other shoe that’s sure to drop.”

“We have the planes, sir. No problem. Tiny is on his way to Sonthofen to pick up the mechanics and the spare parts.”

“With great reluctance, I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt. My friend said it would probably take six or eight hours for him to properly instruct you. I’m finding it hard to understand how.”

“What he did, Colonel, was take me up, and put it into a stall and took his hands off the stick. When I recovered from it, I guess I passed his test.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Captain Cronley. But if you have the airplanes…”

“I have them, sir.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Our guest, sir.”

“What guest is that?”

“The one Sergeant Tedworth brought home.”

“I told Sergeant Dunwiddie to deal with that. Didn’t he tell you?”

“That’s what I want to talk to you about, sir.”

There was a significant pause before Mattingly replied.

“Yeah,” he said, finally and thoughtfully slow. “I think we should have — have to have — a little chat about that situation. And similar ones that will probably crop up in the future.”

Mattingly paused again, then continued, now speaking more quickly, as if he had collected his thoughts.

“What I’ll do, Cronley, is ask my friend if he can fly me into there for an hour or two. Him personally. We don’t want any of his pilots talking about monasteries, do we? Which means he’ll have to fit me into his schedule, which in turn means it’s likely going to be a day or two before we can have our chat.”

“Or I could fly into Eschborn first thing in the morning,” Cronley said.

“Eschborn?”

“Isn’t that the name of that little strip near the Schlosshotel Kronberg?”

The Schlosshotel Kronberg in Taunus, twenty miles from Frankfurt, was now a country club and hotel for senior officers. It had been, before the demise of the OSS, home to Colonel Mattingly’s OSS Forward command.

It was there that Second Lieutenant Cronley had been drafted into the OSS. At the time, he had been the newest, least qualified and thus least important agent in the XXIInd CIC Detachment in the university town of Marburg an der Lahn. His sole qualification for the CIC had been his fluent German. His sole qualification for the OSS, aside from his fluency in German, had been that it had come out that his father had served in World War I with OSS Director Major General William J. Donovan, who had told Mattingly he remembered Cronley to be a “nice, smart kid.”

Mattingly had frankly told Cronley that his being taken into the OSS was less nepotism than a critical shortage of personnel. There were few officers left to scrape from the bottom of the barrel for OSS service — the war was over and the wartime officers had gone home — and an officer was needed for a unique position Mattingly had to fill that would require no qualifications beyond his second lieutenant’s gold bar, his Top Secret security clearance, and the color of his skin.

Major General Reinhard Gehlen and what had been Abwehr Ost were being hidden from the Soviets in a former monastery — Kloster Grünau. They were being guarded by a reinforced company of 2nd Armored Division soldiers. They were all Negroes. They had no commanding officer, and one was needed. There were no Negro officers in the “intelligence pool” who spoke German, and the white officers in the pool who did were needed for more important duties.

At the time, Cronley thought that he was about to spend the foreseeable future in the middle of nowhere as the cushion between 256 black soldiers and about that many German intelligence officers and non-coms. The one thing he could be sure of, he had thought, was that for the rest of his military service — he was obligated to serve four years — he would be doing something even less exciting than washing mud off the tracks of tanks in a motor pool somewhere.

He had quickly learned how wrong his prediction was.

“You would feel safe flying a Storch there?” Mattingly asked.

“Yes, sir. No problem.”

“I seem to recall hearing my friend say that ‘there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots.’”

“I’m a young, very cautious pilot, sir. I can get into Eschborn with no trouble.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you at Eschborn at half past eleven tomorrow morning. Come as a civilian.”

“Yes, sir.”

[FIVE]

When Cronley went from his quarters to the senior officers’ dining room, he saw that only one place was set at the table. Dunwiddie was on his way to Sonthofen, which meant he wouldn’t be here for supper. No plates for Gehlen and Mannberg meant they had already eaten.

Without waiting for me, and thus expressing — without coming right out and saying anything — their displeasure with me for countermanding Bischoff’s order about not changing Orlovsky’s shit bucket.

And probably conferring on how they can tactfully remind Major Wallace and Colonel Mattingly of my youth and inexperience in the hope he will tell me to pay attention to my elders.

Well, fuck both of them!

Cronley went into the bar, found the Stars and Stripes where Mannberg had left it earlier, went back into the dining room, and ate alone. He refused the offer of a drink, or a beer, as he would be flying first thing in the morning.

The mess was run by Tiny’s mess sergeant and two of his assistants. Tiny’s mess sergeant supervised — declared — the menu, and his two sergeants drew the rations from the Quartermaster, divided them between what would be eaten in the two messes, and those to be given to the families of Gehlen’s men.

Gehlen’s men did the actual cooking and all the other work connected with the two messes and the NCO club, including the bartending.

The only news that Cronley found interesting in Stars and Stripes as he read it over his grilled pork chops, applesauce, mashed potatoes, and green beans was that the PX was about to hold a raffle, the winners of which would be entitled to purchase jeeps for $380. The vehicles, the story said, had been run through a rebuild program at the Griesheim ordnance depot and would be “as new.”

The first thing Cronley thought was that he would enter the raffle. A jeep would be nice to have on the ranch outside Midland, if he could figure a way to get one from Germany to Texas.

That thought was immediately followed by his realization that he was never going back to the ranch in Midland.

Not after what happened to the Squirt…

He realized he had to put the Squirt, the jeep, and Midland out of his mind.

The first thing he thought next was that while he knew he had seen a chart case in Storch Two, which meant there was probably also one in Storch One, he hadn’t actually seen a chart, and a chart would be a damned good thing to have when trying to fly to Eschborn.

The first time he’d flown into Sonthofen he had made a straight-in approach on a heading of 270, the course Colonel Wilson had ordered him to fly. The first time he’d flown back to Kloster Grünau, he’d had Schröder with him, and since that was before Schröder had been vetted by General Gehlen and he hadn’t wanted Schröder to know where they were going, Cronley simply had taken off and set a course of 90 degrees, the reciprocal of 270, and flown that until he saw Schollbrunn ahead of him. He knew where Kloster Grünau was from there. On his second flight from Sonthofen, he’d done the same thing; the second time it was easier.

Flying to Eschborn is not going to be so simple. I am going to need a chart of the route showing, among other things, the available en-route navigation aids and the Eschborn tower frequencies so I can call and get approach and landing instructions.

Come to think of it, I have never seen an Air Corps chart.

Are there Air Corps charts and Army charts? Or does the Army use Air Corps charts? And what’s the difference, if any, between military charts and the civilian ones I know?

Jesus, am I going to have to call Mattingly back and tell him that on second thought I’ve decided to put off flying into Eschborn until I think I know what I’m doing?

He got up quickly from the table and walked out of the room and then the building. He saw one of the machine gun jeeps making its rounds and flagged it down.

“Take me to the Storches,” he ordered.

“The what, sir?” the sergeant driving asked as the corporal who had been in the front seat scurried into the back.

“The airplanes,” Cronley clarified.

Getting to the map cases in the airplane turned out to be a pain in the ass. The troopers had done a good job putting them under tarpaulins so they would be less visible from the air. Untying the tarpaulins so that he could get under them was difficult in the dark, and once he got to the chart case and looked inside, he knew that he would not be able to examine what it contained in the light of his flashlight. Sticking the nose of the jeep under the tarpaulin to use the jeep’s headlights proved to be difficult and then ineffective.

Finally, he stuffed the charts back into the case, removed it from the Storch’s cockpit, and made his way out from under the tarpaulin.

“You want us to take the tarpaulin all the way off, Captain?”

“No, thanks. Just take me back to the mess.”

“Yes, sir.”

“No. Take me to the chapel,” he said. He thought: So I can see if they changed the shit bucket in Orlovsky’s cell, or whether Bischoff told them to ignore me.

Bischoff and the small, tough sergeant who had been in the room behind the altar were again sitting at the card table, playing poker with packs of cigarettes and Hershey bars for chips. There were two others at the table, both soldiers, neither of whom Cronley had seen.

The sergeant stood.

He nodded politely and said, “Captain.”

“What does it smell like down there?” Cronley asked.

“Well, Captain, it don’t smell like roses,” the sergeant said. “But it smells better… scratch that. It don’t smell near as bad as it did.”

“Show me,” Cronley said, and then added, “We won’t need you down there, Herr Bischoff.”

Major Konstantin Orlovsky of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs reacted to the opening of his cell door as he had the first time. Shielding his eyes from the headlights, he slid his back up the wall until he was standing.

“Take the light out of his eyes,” Cronley ordered, and then, “If you can, turn all but one of those headlights off.”

“I’ll have to rip them loose,” the sergeant said.

“Then do it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Everybody out of here but you and me, Sergeant, and then close the door.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you,” Orlovsky said.

Cronley didn’t reply.

When the door had creaked closed behind them, Cronley looked at the sergeant.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“Staff Sergeant Lewis, Harold Junior, Captain.”

“If I hear that you have repeated to anyone but First Sergeant Dunwiddie one word of what I’m about to say in here, Staff Sergeant Harold Lewis Junior, you will be Private Lewis, washing pots and pans for the Germans in the kitchen until I decide whether or not to castrate you with a dull bayonet before I send you home in a body bag. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir, Captain.”

“Okay. Now the question, Major Orlovsky, is, ‘What do I do with you?’”

Orlovsky didn’t reply.

“What the Germans want from you are the names of the people here who gave you those rosters Sergeant Tedworth took away from you. Once you give them the names, you’ll all be… disposed of.”

“That’s the scenario I reached, Captain Cronley.”

“It doesn’t seem to worry you very much.”

“Are you familiar with Roman poet Ovid, Captain?”

“I can’t say that I am. I’m just a simple cowboy. We don’t know much about Roman poets — for that matter, about any poets — in West Texas.”

Orlovsky smiled.

“Ovid wrote, ‘Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.’”

“Which means what? That you’re happy to be locked up in the dark, waiting to be shot?”

“Which means that my only worry is that I will be subjected to a painful interrogation — for you a useless interrogation — before I am shot. That I will be shot is a given.”

“Why useless? And why is you being shot a given?”

“So far as your first question is concerned, since I know I’m to be shot, why should I give you those names? And how could you be sure, if I gave you a name, or names, that they would be the names of the people you want? As to the second, what alternative do you have to eliminating me? You can’t free me, and you can’t keep me here for long.”

Cronley didn’t reply. He instead asked, “Where’d you learn your English?”

“In university. Leningrad State University. Why do you ask?”

“You speak it very well. I was curious.”

“And you speak German very well,” Orlovsky said, his tone making it a question.

“My mother taught me — she’s German. I’ll tell you what, Major: You think some more. Think of some way that you can give me the names I want in exchange for your life. And I’ll do the same. Maybe we can make a deal.”

“Why should I believe you have the authority to ‘make a deal’?”

“Because I’m telling you I do.”

“And what would Major Bischoff have to say about you making a deal?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. The Germans lost the war. I’m the honcho here. ‘Honcho’ is West Texas talk for ‘the man in charge.’”

“That’s a good deal of authority for a simple West Texas cowboy to have. Why should I believe you?”

“I don’t see where you have another option.”

He nodded at Orlovsky and turned to Staff Sergeant Lewis.

“I’m going, Sergeant. Bring people in here and make absolutely sure Major Orlovsky doesn’t have the means to pull the plug on himself.”

“Bischoff already thought of that, Captain.”

“Look again. And keep Bischoff out of here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good night, Major Orlovsky. We’ll talk again.”

“Good evening, Captain Cronley.”

[SIX]

When he had taken the chart case to his room and laid its contents out on his desk, Cronley quickly saw that Army Aviators used Air Force aerial charts, and that Air Force charts were essentially identical to the civilian charts with which he was familiar.

The case also contained a “knee-pad”—a clipboard onto which a chart could be fitted under a sheet of plastic. It had a spring clip on its underside so the board could be clipped to his pant leg — and not fall off — in flight.

He spent the better part of an hour planning his flight to Eschborn, using a grease pencil to write the critical data on the plastic over the chart, and then very carefully checking everything twice.

Then he took a shower and went to bed.

He went to sleep wondering what to think of his last conversation with Orlovsky. Was he really so resigned to being shot? Or was it a case of a skilled NKGB officer being able to use that to put a young and inexperienced officer in his pocket?

That raised the question of why he was putting his nose into something that could be — and more than likely should be — handled by Gehlen, Mannberg, and Bischoff without his interference.

The Squirt was lying asleep on her side on the couch along the right side of the Beech Model 18’s cabin. She was wearing Western boots with a skirt that had come pretty high up as she moved in her sleep.

Jimmy had always found boots on girls in skirts very erotic.

He dropped to his knees and touched the Squirt’s face tenderly with his fingertips.

Her eyes opened.

“What are you doing back here and not flying?” she said.

“I have designs on your virginal body.”

“Not so virginal anymore, thanks to you. Who’s flying the plane?”

“We’re at ten thousand feet over Midland making five-minute circles on autopilot.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I’m horny, is what I am.”

She sighed. “Me too, now.”

They kissed.

He put his hand up her skirt.

She put her hand to the front of his trousers.

“Well, look what I found!” the Squirt said, smiling.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” he said furiously as he awoke.

And then he wailed, “Oh, God!” in anguish.

And then he wept.

For a long time.

And then he went to sleep again.