“Yes, sir. You have a reputation for being very good at what you do. You — and your inspector general — came very close to compromising the security of Operation Ost.”
“And it was decided that I be told what’s going on so that I’ll understand why I’m now to keep my hands off — keep my nose out of — your business?”
“Yes, sir. That and to provide assistance…”
“What kind of assistance?”
“Whatever we might need at some future date.”
“I don’t suppose I’m authorized to tell Schumann about this?”
“No, sir, you are not.”
“Does General Seidel know?”
“I’m not at liberty to answer that, sir. I can only repeat that you are not authorized to — you are forbidden to — tell anyone anything at all about what I have just told you.”
“Can I have that in writing?”
“Sir, the policy is to put nothing on paper.”
“That figures.” He grunted. “Okay. I’ll tell Schumann to back off.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Mattingly, I’m sure you appreciate that when I began to nose around, I was doing what I considered my duty.”
“Yes, sir. I fully understand that.”
“Unaware that you had — how do I say this? — friends in high places and were involved in anything like this, I gave you a hard time when over my objections you were appointed my deputy. And I was prepared when you burst in here just now to double down on giving you a hard time. No hard feelings?”
“Absolutely none, sir.”
“One last question. Who’s that admiral in the picture?”
Mattingly didn’t reply for a long moment. Finally he said, “General, when you hear, sometime in the next few months, that President Truman has established a new organization, working title Central Agency for Intelligence, and has named Rear Admiral Sidney William Souers to be its head, please act very surprised.”
Greene grunted again. He then stood and offered his hand.
“I didn’t hear a word you just said, Colonel. I imagine we’ll be in touch.”
“Yes, sir, we will.”
Mattingly raised his hand to his temple.
“Permission to withdraw, sir?”
Greene returned the salute, far more crisply than he had previously, and said, “Post.”
Mattingly started for the door.
“You forgot your pictures and the general orders,” Greene called after him.
“I thought the general might wish to study them closely before he burns them, sir.”
“Thank you.”
As Mattingly went through the doorway, he thought, He’s not going to burn any of that material. It’s going into his personal safe, in case he needs it later.
That doesn’t matter. Nothing in that stuff touches on Operation Ost.
And I think even Admiral Souers would understand why I thought I had to show it to him.
He had another tangential thought.
I wonder where Hotshot Billy Wilson is on this miserable German morning?
That’s next.
[THREE]
First Sergeant Chauncey L. Dunwiddie and Sergeant Friedrich Hessinger had been waiting for Cronley at the Munich airfield. Both had been wearing uniforms identifying them as civilian employees of the U.S. Army. Dunwiddie wore an olive drab woolen Ike jacket and trousers, with an embroidered insignia — a blue triangle holding the letters “US”—sewn to the lapels. Hessinger was more elegantly attired, in officer’s pinks and greens with similar civilian insignia sewn to its lapels.
Jimmy remembered there were rumors that the pudgy German was making a lot of money somehow dealing in currency.
“Welcome home,” Tiny Dunwiddie had said, as he reached in the Piper Cub and effortlessly grabbed Cronley’s Valv-Pak canvas suitcase from Jimmy’s lap.
Jimmy then climbed out, turned to the pilot, and said, “Thanks for the ride.”
“My pleasure, sir,” the lieutenant said, and saluted.
Neither Tiny nor Freddy had commented on the twin silver bars of a captain pinned to Cronley’s epaulets at the airfield — the reason the puddle-jumper pilot had saluted him — or in their requisitioned Opel Kapitän on the way to the hotel or during lunch in the elegant officers’ mess.
It was only after they had gone upstairs — and into Suite 507, above the door of which hung a small, neatly lettered sign, XXVIITH CIC DET. — that there was any clue that anyone had noticed the insignia.
There, Tiny had produced bottles of Löwenbräu and passed them out. As Freddy was neatly wiping gold-rimmed lager glasses, Tiny said, “When Mattingly called, he said ‘no questions.’ He said you could tell us some of what’s happened to you, or all of it, or none of it. He said he was going to call Major Wallace and tell him the same thing. So it’s your call, Jim. If I can still call you by your first name, Captain, sir.”
Despite Cronley’s clear memory of Admiral Souers giving the Engineer colonel a very hard time for sharing intelligence that should not be shared, he told Tiny and Freddy everything that had happened in Argentina and Washington.
“I’m not surprised that President Truman came to offer his condolences,” Freddy said when he’d finished. “From what I know of him, he is a fine gentleman.”
That came out in such a thick accent that Jimmy had to work hard not to smile. Or giggle.
Tiny said, “Sonofabitch! And the bastards sent you back before you could even go to her goddamned funeral!”
Jimmy was touched by Tiny’s emotional response; it was clear he really shared his grief.
“I stopped at the funeral home on the way to the airport,” Jimmy said softly. “I asked if I could see her. The funeral director guy… whatever the hell they call those people… said ‘No,’ and I said, ‘Fuck you, I want to see her,’ and he said, ‘No, you don’t. The remains were so torn up from the accident that there couldn’t possibly be open casket services, so the coroner didn’t sew the remains up after the autopsy. You don’t want to see her like that, believe me. Remember her as she was when she was alive.’”
“So, what did you do?” Tiny asked.
“I broke down is what I did. Cried like a fucking baby.”
And then, without warning, he broke down and cried like a baby.
Tiny wrapped his massive arms around him and held him until Jimmy managed to control his sobbing and shook himself free of Tiny’s embrace.
When he finally got his eyes to focus he saw that Freddy Hessinger was looking at him through incredibly sad eyes.
“What do you say we get in the Kapitän and go home?” Tiny asked gently.
Cronley nodded, and then followed Dunwiddie out of the room.
[FOUR]
When Cronley and Dunwiddie reached the compound, instead of driving through the gate, Dunwiddie had driven the Kapitän completely around the double barbed wire barriers around the perimeter.
Cronley wondered what that was all about but, before they had completed the round, decided Dunwiddie wanted both to show the troops that their commanding officer now had twin silver bars on his epaulets and to remind them once again that their first sergeant checked the security of the compound frequently and without advance warning.
Cronley had learned that behind his back the troops guarding Kloster Grünau referred to their first sergeant with the motto of the 2nd Armored Division, from which they had come—“Ole Hell on Wheels.”