Top Secret

[ONE]

The huge dining room looked just about full. Officers in their pinks and greens and a surprising number in the rather spectacular Mess Dress uniform, and their ladies, filled just about every table.

“In my professional judgment,” Lieutenant Colonel Cletus Frade, USMCR, said to Captain James D. Cronley Jr., AUS, as they stood in the doorway waiting for the attention of the maître d’hotel, “there are enough light and full bull colonels in this place to form a reinforced company of infantry. And they all seem to have brought two wives with them.”

“And you’ve noticed, I suppose, that you and I are the only ones not wearing the prescribed uniform. You think they’ll let us in?”

Frade was wearing his forest green Marine uniform and Cronley his olive drab — OD — Ike jacket and trousers. Both were “service” uniforms.

“We’re about to find out,” Frade said as the maître d’ walked up to them.

“We are the guests of Colonel Schumann,” Frade told him.

The maître d’ consulted his clipboard, then led them to a table in a large alcove on the far side of the dining room.

Colonel Robert Mattingly was sitting alone at a table with place settings for ten people. He was wearing Dress Mess — an Army dinner jacket — with lots of gold braid stripes and loops and lapels showing the wearer’s rank and branch of service, which in Mattingly’s case was the yellow of Cavalry.

Mattingly stood as Frade and Cronley approached. He put out his hand to Frade.

“The Schumanns and General Greene and his wife should be here any moment.” He looked at Cronley. “I really wish you had brought pinks and greens.”

“Sir, you didn’t tell me to.” Then he added, “Sir, I’m obviously out of place here. Maybe it would be better if I left.”

“Actually, Cronley, maybe that would be…”

Cronley saw that Clete had picked up Mattingly’s quick acceptance of his offer to leave and didn’t seem to like it.

“Just sit down and try to use the right fork,” Frade said to Cronley, then looked at Mattingly. “Do these people always get dressed up like this, or is it some kind of holiday I’m missing?”

“I’d say what they’re doing, Colonel — half of them, anyway — is making up for the good times they missed.”

“I don’t understand,” Frade said.

“Well, Colonel…”

That’s the second time Mattingly’s called Clete “Colonel.”

With emphasis. What’s that all about?

Ah, he’s reminding Clete he’s a light bird talking to a full bull colonel and should have said “sir.”

I wonder why Clete didn’t?

“… two months ago many of the officers here tonight — even some of the wives — were behind barbed wire in Japanese POW camps.”

“Really?”

“The story I heard was that General George C. Marshall asked himself, ‘What do I do with officers who’ve been behind barbed wire since 1942 when they’re finally freed?’ And then came up with the answer. He sent many of the ones from the Philippines and Japan here, and many of the ones from German POW camps to Japan.

“They get a command appropriate to their rank — nothing too stressful, of course — in Military Government or Graves Registration — there will be permanent military cemeteries all over Europe — or on staff somewhere. If they need medical attention, and a lot of them do, there are good Army hospitals here and in Japan. They get requisitioned quarters much nicer than what they’d get at Fort Bragg or Fort Knox. With cheap servants, not that cheap matters, as most of them got three years of back pay as soon as they got off the planes that flew them to the States. And nice clubs, with very low, tax-free prices. Getting the picture?”

“Fascinating,” Frade said. “I never thought about what would happen to them after the ‘welcome home’ parade.”

“General Greene told me the story when I was ordered to give up this place — it was headquarters for OSS Forward — so they could turn it into a club for senior officers.”

Cronley looked around the room. He couldn’t tell, of course, which of the officers in their dress uniforms had been prisoners. But no one in the room looked anything like the hollow-eyed walking skeletons in rags he’d seen in the newsreels of prisoners being liberated.

Or even like Elsa.

He had first seen Elsa von Wachtstein not a month earlier, carrying a battered suitcase in a refugee line approaching a checkpoint three kilometers north of Marburg an der Lahn. She was emaciated, her face gray, her hair unkempt — a thirty-two-year-old who looked fifty. But she was the daughter of Generalmajor Ludwig Holz and daughter-in-law of Generalleutnant Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein — both brutally killed for their roles in the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler in July 1944. Jimmy had last seen her in Buenos Aires, when she’d reunited with her brother-in-law — and now one of Clete Frade’s closest friends — Major Hans-Peter von Wachtstein.

“And speak of the devil,” Mattingly said as he got to his feet.

General Greene and a formidable-looking woman were walking up to the table.

Frade and Cronley stood.

“Good evening, General, Mrs. Greene,” Mattingly said.

General Greene shook his hand. Mrs. Greene nodded.

“Mrs. Greene, may I introduce Colonel Cletus Frade, USMC, and Captain Cronley?” Mattingly said.

She nodded, and then asked, “How is it you’re in olive drab, Captain?”

“Captain Cronley didn’t expect to be here tonight, Grace,” General Greene said.

“The dress code — it’s posted as you come in — says ‘Pinks and Greens, or more formal, after Seventeen Hundred.’”

“Grace, for God’s sake, ease up,” General Greene said.

I wondered before, Cronley thought, why Rachel, and not the general’s wife, was president of the Officers’ Wives Club. Now I know. If this pain-in-the-ass was, there’d be nobody else in it.

“Rules are rules and decorum is decorum,” Mrs. Greene said.

“You’re absolutely right,” Frade then said. “I’d have him taken outside and shot but I’m as guilty as he is. I’m not wearing a pink uniform either. I don’t even own a pink uniform.”

Both Mrs. Greene and Mattingly glared at him, she because she obviously was not used to being challenged, much less mocked.

Clete put away all that scotch! He’s plastered!

And Mattingly sees it.

This is going to be fun. Or a disaster.

“Actually, Colonel Frade,” Mattingly said, “the term is ‘pinks and greens.’”

Frade ignored him. He wasn’t through.

“Does this Army dress code prescribe female attire?” he asked.

“What do you mean by that?” she snapped.

“Just curious. In the Naval Service, officers don’t tell our ladies what to wear. And of course vice versa.”

Mrs. Greene’s mouth opened in shock, but she didn’t get to say whatever she had intended. General Greene, with relief evident in his voice, quickly announced, “Ah, here come the Schumanns and the McClungs.”

Colonel Schumann was wearing Mess Dress; Major McClung pinks and greens.

When everyone was in the now-crowded alcove, waiters closed doors, ones that Cronley hadn’t seen before, shutting off the alcove from the main dining room.

When all the male handshaking and female cheek-kissing was over, and they took their seats, Rachel was sitting across, but not directly across, from Jimmy. He just had time to decide he wasn’t going to get groped when he felt her foot pressing against his.

Momentarily, but long enough so there was no question of it not being by accident.

When a waiter appeared for their drink orders, Cronley tried to do the right thing. He really wanted a Jack Daniel’s, but knew he shouldn’t. On the other hand, he didn’t like scotch, so if he ordered a scotch, not liking scotch, he would drink it slowly.

“I’ll have a Dewar’s please.”

“Colonel Frade,” General Greene began the dinner conversation, “I’d recommend the New York strip steak. Very good. They bring it in from Denmark.”

“Why do they do that?” Frade asked.

“The club — clubs, plural — don’t want to be accused of diverting the best beef from the Quartermaster refrigerators to the brass, taking it out of the mouths of the enlisted men, so to speak, so they go outside the system and buy it in Denmark.”

“You look as if you don’t approve, Colonel Frade,” Mrs. Greene said. “Don’t they do things like that in the Naval Service?”

“In the Marine Corps, I was taught that officers can have anything in the warehouse after the enlisted men get first shot at it.”

Before his wife could reply to that, General Greene quickly said, “That strikes me as a very good rule.”

“General,” Frade asked, “did you ever notice that there’s loops on the top of Marine officers’ covers — the brimmed uniform caps?”

“As a matter of fact, I have.”

“When I was a second lieutenant, I was told that was to identify officers who might have had their hands in the enlisted men’s rations and make it easier for Marine marksmen in the ship’s rigging to shoot them.”

Greene, Colonel Schumann, and Major McClung laughed. Rachel Schumann and Mrs. McClung chuckled. Mrs. Greene’s eyebrows rose. Mattingly managed a wan smile.

“I’d be interested to hear, Colonel,” Greene said, “how you think the meeting went this afternoon?”

“Paul,” Mrs. Greene said, “I didn’t get all gussied up to come out to listen to you talk shop.”

Her husband ignored her. “Your thoughts, Colonel?”

“General, in the Marine Corps, we have another odd custom. We ask questions like that of the junior officer present. That way, since they don’t know what their seniors are hoping to hear, they have to say what they actually think.”

“We do the same thing, Colonel,” General Greene said, and his eyes went to Cronley. “Well, Captain, what impression did you take away from that long, long session this afternoon?”

Thanks a lot, Clete!

No matter what I say, it’s going to be wrong.

What the hell! In the absence of all other options, tell the truth.

“Sir, from the bottom of the totem pole, it looked to me like those people from the Pentagon are very unhappy that there’s going to be a new OSS. And/or that the Pentagon is not going to be running it.”

Greene nodded and then made a Keep going gesture with his hand. Cronley saw that Mattingly was looking at him, obviously worried about what he was going to say next.

“Sir, I had the feeling that they were really upset to hear that I have the monastery and will be in charge of Pullach.”

“I don’t understand,” Mrs. Greene said. “What monastery? What’s Pullach?”

“If the general answers those questions, Mrs. Greene, I’ll have to shoot both of you,” Frade said.

Iron Lung McClung laughed loudly.

“Jim!” his wife said warningly.

“Grace,” General Greene offered, “Captain Cronley is going to run a little operation in Pullach, which is a little dorf near Munich.”

These people tell their wives about what we’re doing?

How much do they tell them?

Probably everything.

Rachel seems to know everything that’s going on.

And Clete mockingly gave Boy Scout’s Honor that he had never told his wife anything.

So much for the sacred Need to Know.

“Why are the people from the Pentagon not pleased? Because he’s only a captain?” Mrs. Greene asked. “And if they’re not pleased, why is he going to be allowed to run it?”

“The simple answer, Mrs. Greene,” Frade said, “is because Admiral Souers says he will. And quickly changing the subject, where is our leader tonight?”

“Having dinner with Ike, Beetle, and Magruder,” Greene said.

“And here’s our dinner,” McClung said as a line of waiters approached the table.

Cronley felt Rachel’s bare foot on his ankle.

“And this admiral,” Mrs. Greene relentlessly pursued. “He can just give orders to the Army like that? An admiral?”

“Yes, ma’am, he can,” Frade said. Using his hands to demonstrate as he spoke, he went on, “This is the totem pole to which Captain Cronley referred, Mrs. Greene. We’re all on it. Cronley is at the bottom”—he pointed to the bottom of his figurative totem pole—“and Admiral Souers is here”—he pointed again—“at the tip-top. The rest of us are somewhere here in the middle.”

“Perfect description,” General Greene said. His wife glared at both him and Frade.

“I’ll tell you about it later, dear,” Greene said. “Now let’s have our dinner.”

“I think you’re right, Cronley,” Major Iron Lung McClung said several minutes later. “Magruder, Mullaney, Parsons, and Ashley — the Pentagon delegation — are all probably outraged that they won’t be taking over Pullach. But I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

“Sir?”

“Magruder’s not going to get anywhere at dinner tonight complaining to Ike or Beetle. Not with Souers there. And when Magruder and Mullaney get back to Washington, who can they complain to? Not Souers. And so far as Parsons and Ashley, when they’re at Pullach, the only one they can complain to about getting ordered around by you is Colonel Mattingly, and he’s not going to be sympathetic.”

“My only problem with that,” Mattingly said, “is that being in charge may well go to Cronley’s head. I’m going to have to counsel him to make sure that doesn’t happen. He’s more than a little weak in that area. He tends to assume authority he doesn’t have and to act first and ask permission, or even counsel, later.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Frade said.

“No, Colonel Frade, I am not kidding,” Mattingly said coldly. “He has a dangerous loose-cannon tendency.”

“Jimmy,” Frade said, “don’t let your being given command of the monastery or Pullach go to your head. Or turn you into a loose cannon. Say, ‘Yes, sir.’”

“Yes, sir.”

“Consider yourself so counseled,” Frade said, and then turned to look at Mattingly. “Jesus Christ, Mattingly!”

Rachel’s bare foot, which had been caressing Cronley’s ankle, suddenly stopped moving as Mattingly stood.

“I would remind you, Colonel Frade, that you are speaking to a superior officer,” Mattingly said furiously.

“Senior, certainly,” Frade said. “Superior, I don’t think so.”

“Ouch!” Iron Lung McClung said softly but audibly.

“What the hell set this off?” General Greene asked.

When there was no reply to what might have been a rhetorical question, Greene went on, “Junior officer first, Colonel Frade.”

“I found Colonel Mattingly’s gratuitous insult of Cronley offensive, General,” Frade said.

“Frankly, so did I. But it didn’t give you carte blanche to talk to Colonel Mattingly so disrespectfully.”

“No, sir, it didn’t. I spoke in the heat of the moment and therefore offer my apology.”

“Colonel Mattingly?” Greene asked.

“Sir?”

“I think you should accept Colonel Frade’s apology and then offer yours to Captain Cronley.”

With a visible effort, Mattingly said, “Apology accepted.” After a pause, he went on: “Captain Cronley, it was not my intention to gratuitously insult you. If you drew that inference, I apologize.”

Great.

But the minute Clete leaves Germany, I’m really fucked.

Rachel’s foot on his ankle began to move.

General Greene looked at Cronley impatiently, and finally Cronley understood.

He stood up, came to attention, and said, “Sir, no apology is necessary.”

He sat down.

“Sit down, please, Colonel Mattingly,” Greene said. “Whereupon, we will all promptly forget the last three minutes or however long that little theatrical lasted.”

There were chuckles.

“Can we get them to do it again?” Major McClung asked innocently. “Sort of a curtain call? I liked it.”

“Jim, for God’s sake!” Mrs. McClung said.

General Greene gave McClung a look that would have frozen Mount Vesuvius.

McClung seemed unrepentant.

Rachel’s foot found Jimmy’s ankle and instep again.

“Colonel Frade,” General Greene said as he cut into his Danish New York strip steak, “I’d like to ask you — you and Colonel Mattingly, but you first — what you consider the greatest threat to your operation between now and the time it comes under the new organization Admiral Souers mentioned.”

Is he tactfully reminding Clete that Mattingly outranks him?

What is that saying? “There are nice generals, and there are generals who are not nice, but there is no such thing as a stupid general.”

Clete didn’t hesitate before replying.

“So far as I’m concerned, and I’m not saying this to agree with Admiral Souers…”

Clete picked up on that “who’s junior?” implication.

He’s good at this.

“… the greatest threat to our nameless operation is that our Soviet friends are going to expose it. I say expose it because we would be fools to think they don’t know about it. It is just a matter of time before they penetrate Kloster…” He paused, looking for the name by looking at Cronley.

“Kloster Grünau,” Jimmy furnished.

“… Kloster Grünau. And the Pullach installation, which, because it’s not only not on a Bavarian mountaintop but close to Munich, will be an even easier target for penetration. I’m frankly surprised there hasn’t been a penetration of the monastery already.”

Cronley felt Mattingly’s eyes on him.

What’s he want?

Am I supposed to say, “Actually, now that you mention Russian penetration of my little monastery, I do have NKGB Major Konstantin Orlovsky locked up in a cell in what used to be the monastery chapel”?

Or keep my mouth shut?

“What about that, Captain Cronley?” Colonel Schumann asked. “Am I the only nefarious character you’ve caught trying to force his way into your monastery?”

Christ, now what do I say?

“Sir, you’re the only one I’ve had to discourage with a machine gun.”

My God, where did that come from?

General Greene laughed. Frade looked curious.

“Colonel Frade,” Schumann said, “I wouldn’t worry about anybody penetrating Cronley’s monastery. I know from painful personal experience that Cronley’s got it guarded by some of the toughest, meanest-looking Negro soldiers I have ever seen — they’re all at least six feet tall, and weigh at least two hundred pounds — who are perfectly willing — willing, hell, anxious—to turn their machine guns on anyone trying to get in.”

“Painful personal experience?” Frade replied. “I’d like to hear about that. And I guess I’ll see Cronley’s mean-looking troops when I go down there—”

“Excuse me?” Mattingly interrupted. “Colonel, did I understand you to say you’re going to Kloster Grünau?”

“Yes, you did.”

“May I ask why?”

“Yes, sir. Of course you may. Sooner or later, the Soviets are going to penetrate the monastery and/or the Pullach camp, no matter how many two-hundred-pound six-foot-tall soldiers with machine guns Cronley has guarding it.”

“Colonel, are you going to answer my question?” Mattingly demanded curtly.

“That’s what I’m trying to do, Colonel,” Frade replied, and then went on: “If all they find is that we are employing a number of former German officers and non-coms to assist General Greene in his counterintelligence efforts, so what? Where we would be in trouble would be if they discovered — or actually tried to arrest under their Army of Occupation authority — former members of the SS whose names they know and whose arrests they have already requested. Or if they got their hands on any paperwork that could incriminate us.”

He glanced at General Greene, and said: “Colonel Mattingly sent a great deal of the latter to me — Cronley carried it to Argentina — but I want to be absolutely sure he didn’t miss anything.”

He looked back at Mattingly: “So, to answer your question, Colonel Mattingly, what I plan to do at the monastery is get with General Gehlen and come up with a list of the ex-SS and everyone else with a Nazi connection that we have to get out of the monastery and Pullach and to Argentina as soon as possible. In other words, a list of those people we really can’t afford to have the Soviets catch us with, prioritized on the basis of which of them, so to speak, are the most despicable bastards. They go first. Oberst Otto Niedermeyer and I have been thinking about this for some time—”

“Who?” General Greene asked.

“He was Gehlen’s Number Two—”

“It’s my understanding that Colonel Mannberg is Gehlen’s Number Two,” Mattingly said.

“Niedermeyer tells me he was,” Frade replied. “And he’s the officer Gehlen sent to Argentina”—Frade paused and chuckled—“doubly disguised as a Franciscan monk and then as a Hauptscharführer.”

“I don’t understand,” General Greene said.

“When they got to Argentina and took off their monk’s robes,” Frade explained, “they identified themselves as Obersturmbannführer Alois Strübel and his faithful Hauptscharführer—”

“His faithful what?” Mrs. Greene asked.

Frade looked first at General Greene and then at Mrs. Greene before replying, “Sergeant major, Mrs. Greene.”

“Go on, please, Colonel,” General Greene said.

“Brilliant detective work by myself quickly discovered that Hauptscharführer Otto Niedermeyer was actually Colonel Niedermeyer. Gehlen apparently decided a sergeant major could nose around easier than a colonel.”

“So he lied to us,” Mattingly said.

“And I was shocked as you are that anyone in our business could possibly practice deception,” Frade said. “But, as I was saying, Gehlen sent Niedermeyer to Argentina very early on in this process to make sure we were going to live up to our end of the bargain. He tells me he was Gehlen’s Number Two, and I believe him. And I’m also convinced Niedermeyer was not a Nazi—”

“Why?” Mattingly interrupted.

“Could you just take my word for that, Colonel, and let me finish?”

“Go on,” Mattingly said.

“So I believe the list of the Nazi and SS scum Niedermeyer gave me, again prioritized according to what kind of bastards they are, is the real thing. I’d be willing to go with it as-is. But as some — including Otto Niedermeyer — have pointed out, Gehlen can be very difficult, so I am going to politely ask him to go over Niedermeyer’s roster.”

“I got the impression this afternoon,” Mattingly said, “that Admiral Souers wants to return to Washington as soon as possible.”

“He does,” Frade said.

“Then wouldn’t it make sense for you to give me this list of yours and have me deal with General Gehlen? There’s no reason for you to have to go all the way down there. It’s a four-, five-hour drive.”

When Frade didn’t immediately reply, Mattingly went on: “And, really, the monastery and the people there are my responsibility, aren’t they?”

Frade exhaled audibly.

“Admiral Souers planned to get into all of this with you tomorrow, but it looks like I’m going to have to get into it now.”

“Please do,” Mattingly said, rather unpleasantly.

Frade felt everyone’s eyes around the table on him.

“The reason I have to go to the monastery,” Frade began, “and to have a look at the Pullach installation is because Admiral Souers has ordered me to do so. And the reason he’s done that is because, for reasons of plausible deniability, he has transferred command of Operation Ost — just Ost, not the South German Industrial Development Organization — to the Special Projects Section of the Office of the Naval Attaché at the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires.”

“To what, where?” Colonel Schumann asked.

“When the OSS shut down, its assets — including me — in the Southern Cone of South America were absorbed by the Special Projects Section of the Office of the Naval Attaché at the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires. In other words, for the next sixty days, Operation Ost will be hidden there.

“That will allow General Greene and you, Colonel Mattingly, if — I actually should say ‘when, inevitably’—the Soviets breach the security of the monastery or Pullach, to credibly deny you know anything about Operation Ost. All you’re doing there is running a counterintelligence operation in which some former German officers and non-coms are employed.”

“That makes sense,” General Greene said thoughtfully. Then he chuckled. “Have a nice ride down the autobahn tomorrow, Colonel Frade. Maybe, now that you and Mattingly have kissed and made up, he’ll loan you his Horch for the trip.”

Frade smiled. “That would be very kind of him, but Cronley’s going to fly me in his Storch.”

That Mattingly was not amused was evident in his voice: “And how does Captain Cronley fit into this credible-deniability scenario?”

“In an operational sense, he will be the liaison between the monastery/Pullach, the Farben Building, and Buenos Aires.”

“Who’ll operate the link to Vint Hill Farms?” Major McClung asked.

“Cronley,” Frade said.

Well, Cronley thought, that answers the question “Does McClung know about the Collins and the SIGABA?”

Then, without thinking about what he was doing, Cronley leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his neck. When he saw that Frade, Mattingly, and Mrs. Greene were looking askance at him, he quickly lowered his arms, shifted in his chair, and moved it closer to the table. Rachel’s toes moved immediately to his crotch. After a moment, she withdrew, and then put her foot back on his instep.

“And I’m sure you have considered the possibility,” Mattingly said sarcastically, “that when the Soviets inevitably breach the security of Kloster Grünau or Pullach, they might wish to ask Captain Cronley what he knows about Operation Ost.”

“All Cronley has to do is say, ‘I’m the commanding officer of the guard company. Colonel Mattingly told me I don’t have the Need to Know what’s going on in the compound and am not to ask.’ And, as Mrs. Greene and others have pointed out, he’s only a captain. Captains are unimportant.”

“And you think he could handle pressure like that?” Mattingly asked. His tone made it clear that he didn’t think so.

“I do. But what matters is that Admiral Souers does.”

“I’m really getting tired of all this shop talk,” Mrs. Greene announced. “I want to dance.”

“Colonel Frade,” Colonel Schumann said, “do you think it would be useful if I took a look at your security arrangements for the Pullach operation? I know McClung is going down there in the near future, and I could go with him.”

“I think that’s a great idea,” Frade said. “And — I don’t know how this fits into your schedule, Colonel Mattingly — but how about us all meeting in Munich after I deal with Gehlen?”

Before Mattingly could answer, Rachel said, “Grace, if you and I went down there with them, we could see what will have to be done for the dependent quarters before people start moving in.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” General Greene said. “I’d like to see the Pullach compound myself.”

“We could take the Blue Danube,” Grace Greene said, smiling. “It has a marvelous dining car. And then we can stay at the Vier Jahreszeiten. I like the Vier Jahreszeiten. There’s nothing as nice in Frankfurt.”

Cronley thought both that it was the first time the general’s lady had smiled since she’d walked into the dining room and also that Frade’s face showed that he had no idea what the Blue Danube was.

Cronley did: Tiny Dunwiddie had told him what had happened to the private trains used by Nazi bigwigs. The Army Transportation Corps had gathered them up and assigned Hitler’s and Goering’s to Eisenhower and U.S. High Commissioner for Germany John J. McCoy.

The other super-luxury private trains had been given to General George S. Patton and other very senior American officers. Except for one. While other deserving three-star generals had been scrambling for trains for themselves, that one, Tiny had told him delightedly, had been “lost” by an old 2nd Armored “Hell on Wheels” officer in Bad Nauheim. When Major General I. D. White returned to Germany to assume command of the U.S. Constabulary, it would be “found” with Constabulary insignia painted all over it.

What was left of the first-class cars and the best dining cars had been formed into trains and put into Army service between the six hubs of American forces in Europe — Paris, France; Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich in Occupied Germany; and Salzburg and Vienna in “liberated” Austria.

The Paris — Frankfurt luxury train was dubbed the Main-Siener, making reference to the rivers that flowed through those cities, and the Berlin-Frankfurt-Munich-Vienna train the Blue Danube.

“Then it’s settled,” Frade said. “We’ll all meet in Munich the day after tomorrow.”

I’ll be damned, he did know what the Blue Danube was!

No. He just decided that if Mrs. Greene wanted to “take the Blue Danube,” whatever it is, she was unstoppable.

“And now,” Frade announced, “because Captain Cronley and I are going flying as the rooster crows tomorrow morning, I must beg that we be excused from this charming company.”

Before Cronley could stand, Rachel’s foot gave his instep a final caress, and when he shook her hand to say good night, she said, “Well, I guess we’ll see each other soon.”

[TWO]

As they entered the lobby, Clete said, “Don’t even look at the bar. We have more to talk about.”

“Oh, boy, do we.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Wait until we’re someplace no one can hear us.”

When they were in Clete’s room, he pointed to an armchair and then the bottle of Dewar’s.

“Sit,” he ordered. “And go easy on that.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel, sir.”

Clete smiled tolerantly.

“You ever notice, Jimmy, that when you really need a drink you can’t have one? God knows, after that goddamned dinner we’re both entitled to drain the bottle.”

Clete went to his luggage and pulled out a zippered leather envelope. He took from it an inch-thick sheath of papers, walked to Jimmy, and handed it to him.

“Sign where indicated.”

“What the hell is this, Clete?”

“On top is what they call a Limited Power of Attorney. It gives former Kapitän zur See Karl Boltitz of the Kriegsmarine the necessary authority to do all that he has to do to manage certain property of yours in Midland County, Texas.”

“What the hell are you talking about? My father has my power of attorney to run all the property I own.”

“I know. But as soon as the probate judge of Midland County, Texas, is satisfied that you were in fact married to the former Marjorie Ann Howell, you’ll own a lot more.”

Jimmy looked at him for a long time before replying, his voice on the edge of breaking, “I don’t think I ever knew it was ‘Marjorie Ann.’”

“It was. And under the laws of the Sovereign State of Texas, upon the demise of the said Marjorie Ann Howell Cronley, all of her property passed to her lawful husband, one James Davenport Cronley Junior.”

“Oh, shit!”

“Said property — the details are in those papers — includes two sections of land, including the mineral rights thereto, in Midland County, plus some cash in the First National Bank of Midland, including about two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars, representing her most recent quarterly dividend from the Howell Petroleum Corporation. And of course her Howell Petroleum stock. And some more. It’s all in there.”

“I don’t want any of it,” Jimmy said.

“You don’t have any choice.”

“Oh, God!”

“When the Old Man handed this to me, he said to tell you two things.”

“Really?”

“He said to tell you that everyone who matters knows you’d much rather have the Squirt and two dollars than this inheritance, but that’s the way the ball has bounced. And he said to tell you never to forget that for every dollar a rich man has, there are at least three dishonest sonsofbitches plotting to steal it from him.”

Jimmy wiped a tear from his cheek with a knuckle.

“That sounds like the Old Man,” he said, his voice breaking. Then he said, “Where does Boltitz fit in all this?”

“Very neatly. For one thing, he’s about to be your brother-in-law.”

“He’s going to marry Beth?”

Frade nodded.

“Yeah. You saw them. We can’t keep throwing cold water on them.”

Jimmy laughed.

“The Old Man told Beth they should take a page from you and the Squirt and elope. I thought Mom was going to kill him. What they’ll probably do is have a quiet wedding in Midland, and fuck what people say. Or a big one in Argentina — that’s what Dorotea was trying to sell when I left. Anyway, he’s going to be family, and since he’s out of a job, there being no demand for U-boat skippers, he’s going to need one. The Old Man is impressed with him and he told me — privately — that he’s thinking of putting him in charge of his tanker operations.

“In the meantime, Karl can learn about the family business under the watchful eyes of Mom, Beth, and your dad. Understand?”

“Makes sense.”

“The Old Man wants me to take over Howell Petroleum. The problem with that is I’m going to have to learn how to do that. And I can’t learn how to do that as long as I have Operation Ost to worry about. I promised Souers I’d stick around until the new Central Intelligence Directorate, or whatever the hell they’re going to call it, is up and running. And then there’s El Coronel, Incorporated, I have to worry about.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Everything I inherited from my father. And I have already learned that what the Old Man told me to tell you is true. For every peso a rich gringo like myself has, there are at least three dishonest Argentine sonsofbitches trying to steal it.”

Jimmy chuckled.

“So are you going to sign that power of attorney or not?”

Jimmy didn’t reply. He instead poured Dewar’s into two glasses, gave one to Clete, and then signed the paper. Then he wordlessly touched his glass to Clete’s, and they took a healthy sip.

Jimmy gestured to the power of attorney: “When I signed the one for my dad, it had to be notarized. What are you going to do about that?”

“The Old Man’s lawyers thought of that, too. They found out that a commissioned officer, such as myself, can witness the signature of someone junior to them, such as yourself. I’m surprised you didn’t know that, Captain Cronley.”

“I’ll be damned,” Jimmy said, as Frade scrawled Witnessed by C.H. Frade, LtCol, USMCR and then his signature below Cronley’s signature on the power of attorney.

Clete put the document in his luggage and then took the leather envelope and handed it to Jimmy.

“You get to keep that stuff. When you’re all alone in your monastery, feeling sorry for yourself, you can take it out and read it and tell yourself, ‘What the hell, at least I’m rich.’”

“Very funny. You through?”

“Yeah.”

Jimmy drained his glass and pushed it away. “Okay. Speaking of the monastery, Clete: Despite what everyone seems to think, all is not sweetness and light between General Gehlen and me.”

Clete’s eyebrows rose.

“I don’t think I’m going to like this,” he said.

“Tiny’s Number Two, Sergeant Tedworth, caught an NKGB officer sneaking out of the monastery—”

Clete silenced him with a raised hand.

“Let’s get all the details in from the beginning,” he said. “Tiny is who?”

“First Sergeant Chauncey Dunwiddie…”

“Well, Jimmy, I can understand why General Gehlen might be a little miffed that a twenty-two-year-old American captain who never saw a Russian a month ago decided he knows more about interrogating NKGB officers than Abwehr Ost experts. How do you even communicate with this guy? Sign language? You don’t know three words of Russian. What the hell were you thinking?”

“Konstantin speaks English. And German.”

“Konstantin? Sounds like you’re buddies.”

“I like him. Okay?”

“My God!”

“That — liking him — came after I decided that I wasn’t going to — couldn’t — stand around with my thumb up my ass watching while some Kraut kept him in a dark cell stinking from his own crap, following which he would be blown away. And knowing if anything came out about that, I’d be on the hook for it, not the Germans and not Mattingly.”

“Oh, so that’s it? You were covering your ass?”

“Fuck you, Clete!”

“What?” Clete said angrily. “Let’s not forget, Little Brother, that your big brother is a lieutenant colonel and you’re a captain. A brand-new captain.”

“Sorry. Make that, ‘Fuck you, Colonel.’”

Clete, white-faced, glared at him but said nothing.

“When Mattingly told Tiny to ‘deal with’ the Russian, all I had to do to cover my ass was look the other way and keep my mouth shut. He didn’t tell me to deal with it. He told Tiny. You think I wanted to take on Gehlen and Mattingly? And now you?”

“Then why the hell did you? Are you?”

“Write this down, Colonel: Because I saw it as my duty.”

“You can justify that, right?” Clete said coldly.

“First, it was my duty to Tiny. An officer takes care of his men, right? A good officer doesn’t let other officers cover their asses by hanging his men out to dry, does he?”

“That’s it?”

“Two, I decided that what ex-Major Konrad Bischoff — Gehlen’s hotshot interrogator — was doing to Major Orlovsky — the clever business of having him sit in a dark cell with a canvas bucket full of shit — wasn’t going to get what we wanted from him. Actually, I decided Bischoff’s approach was the wrong one.”

“Based on your extensive experience interrogating NKGB officers?” Clete said sarcastically.

“Based on what you said at dinner, you’re now the honcho of Operation Ost, so I’ll tell you what I told Mattingly when I thought he was the honcho. As long as I’m in charge of Kloster Grünau, I’m going to act like it. If you don’t like what I do, relieve me.”

Clete didn’t reply immediately, and when he did, he didn’t do so directly.

“Why, in your wise and expert opinion, Captain Cronley, is Major Bix… Bisch…”

“Bischoff. Ex-Major Konrad Bischoff.”

“Why do ex-Major Konrad Bischoff’s interrogation techniques fail to meet with your approval?”

“Because they haven’t let him see either that Orlovsky is smarter than he is — I don’t know why, maybe he believes that Nazi nonsense that all Russians are the Untermenschen—”

“Untermensch is a pretty big word. You sure you know what it means?”

Cronley ignored the question.

“Or that my good buddy Konstantin Orlovsky has decided that, except for a bullet in the back of his head, it’s all over for him. And in that circumstance he’s not going to come up with the names of Gehlen’s people that he turned. Names, maybe, if that’s what it will take to get out of his cell and shot and get it over with, but not the actual ones.”

“But you have a solution for all these problems, right?”

“Would I be wasting my breath telling you, Clete?”

“We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?”

“Look. When Mattingly called and told me to come here as soon as I could, I was talking to Orlovsky. I had just proposed to him that I arrange for him to disappear from the monastery—”

“Disappear to where?”

“Argentina. Where else?”

“My God!”

“And that, once he was there and gave me the names of Gehlen’s bad apples, and we found out they were in fact the bad apples, I would pressure Gehlen to get Orlovsky’s family out of Russia.”

“If I thought you were into Mary Jane cigarettes, I’d think you just went through two packs of them. Listen to yourself, Jimmy! You’re talking fantasy!”

“Maybe. But, on the other hand, if I turn Orlovsky back over to Bischoff, and we go down that road, what we’re going to have is no names of the real turned Gehlenites, and a body in the monastery cemetery that just might come to light if the Bad Gehlenites let the Soviets know about it. Which brings us back to me not willing to let Tiny Dunwiddie or myself hang for that.”

Clete thought that over for a long moment.

“What was the Russian’s reaction?”

“What he’s doing right now is thinking it over.”

“He didn’t say anything?”

“What he said was, ‘Why would you expect me to believe something like that?’ And I said because I was telling him the truth, that I wasn’t promising to get his family out of Russia, just that I would make Gehlen try. I also told him if he was a man, he’d do anything he could to help his family. Then he called me a sonofabitch, and that was the end of the conversation.”

Clete shook his head.

“But he’s thinking about it, Clete. I know that in my gut. He doesn’t give a damn what happens to him. But his family is different. He doesn’t want them shot or sent to Siberia. What I did was… sow the seed, I guess… to start him thinking.”

“And you really thought Mattingly would put Operation Ost at risk by trying to sneak an NKGB officer out of Germany? And that Gehlen would risk his agents-in-place by trying to get an NKGB officer’s family out of Russia? My God!”

“I thought I could sell both of them on the idea that if we turned Orlovsky — the NKGB didn’t send a guy who graduated from spy school two months ago to penetrate Operation Ost — we’d all be ahead.”

“That’s pretty sophisticated thinking for a guy who — if memory serves — was about to graduate from spy school about that long ago. But didn’t finish spy school because they needed his expert services here to run a roadblock.”

“Yeah, and I probably didn’t know much more about running that roadblock — or Kloster Grünau when they gave that to me — than you did about blowing up ships when you went to Argentina.”

“Well, some things haven’t changed. Your mouth still runs away with you, you’re not troubled with modesty, and you have a hard time even admitting the possibility that you can be mistaken.”

Jimmy didn’t reply.

“I’ll try to get you out of this, but don’t get your hopes up,” Clete went on. “I think you are probably going to spend the rest of your military career — how long are you in for?”

“Four years.”

“The next three years and some months counting toilet paper rolls at Camp Holabird. Or some other place where they send stupid young intelligence officers so they can’t do any more damage.”

“If you’re waiting for me to say I’m sorry, don’t hold your breath.”

“What time does the sun come up?”

“What?” Jimmy said, and then understood. “Half past six.”

“And it takes how long to get to the airfield?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Be waiting for me in the lobby at six. Good night, Jimmy.”

[THREE]

Cronley went to his room, took a shower, packed his bag, and went to bed.

There was a chance, he thought, that Rachel would somehow ditch her husband and come to see him. He had just decided that would be really stupid on her part and wasn’t going to happen when there was a knock at his door.

And there she was.

“This is not smart,” he greeted her.

“I know,” she said, and pushed past him into the room.

“General Magruder came back from dinner with General Eisenhower,” she said, “and asked Colonel Mattingly and my husband to join him for a drink in the bar. I passed. I said I was going to walk off all the food I’d had. We have no more than thirty minutes. That give you any ideas?”

She tugged off her shoes as she headed for the bed.

“Where were you?” Rachel asked, perhaps ten minutes later. “If you’d been here the first time I knocked, we’d have had an hour.”

“Talking to Colonel Frade.”

“About what?”

“Rachel, you don’t have the Need to Know.”

“Oh, sorry. I thought maybe you were talking about the Russian you caught at your monastery.”

“What Russian? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No,” she said, chuckling, “of course you don’t. Need to Know and all that.”

She looked at his face and then changed the subject.

“Maybe Tony will be called away somewhere and we can have a little time together in Munich.”

“That would be nice. Rachel, what if your husband starts looking for you and can’t find you?”

“That would be a disaster, wouldn’t it?”

She put her clothes back on as quickly as she — they — had taken them off, and left.