A waiter in a crisp white jacket appeared and asked if the captain would like a drink.
“Jack Daniel’s, danke,” Cronley answered, and then wondered if that had been smart.
I’m going to have to deal with Mattingly when this happy CIC/ASA community bullshit is over. And the way to do that is stone sober.
The drink was delivered as two officers made their way to their seats at the head table. They were both majors, and he saw from their lapel insignia — a silver cross and a golden six-pointed star — that they were both chaplains.
I knew the Army had them, but that’s the first Jewish chaplain I’ve ever actually seen.
And why not a Jewish chaplain? There’s a hell of a lot of Jews in our happy little CIC/ASA community.
The Christian chaplain looked askance at Cronley’s whisky glass.
Why do I suspect you’re Baptist, Chaplain?
Even though he had very carefully nursed his Jack Daniel’s, the glass was empty before all the handshaking was over and everybody came to take their seats at the head table.
Mrs. Schumann took her seat beside him, steadying herself as she did so by resting her hand high on his shoulder.
He smiled politely at her.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you have very sad eyes?” she asked.
“I wondered the same thing about you,” he blurted.
And that’s the last of the Jack Daniel’s.
“Maybe we have something in common,” she said.
He smiled politely at her.
“Major McClung,” a voice boomed in his ear. He saw the mustachioed Signal Corps officer sitting next to him with his hand extended. “They call me ‘Iron Lung.’”
“Jim Cronley, Major.”
“Mattingly’s man, right?” McClung boomed.
Cronley nodded.
He looked down the table and saw Mattingly sitting at the far side of General Greene.
He felt Mrs. Schumann’s knee press against his.
The waiter appeared and placed drinks in front of the senior officers. And one in front of Cronley.
Well, I just won’t drink it.
General Greene stood up, tapped his scotch glass with a knife, and announced, “Chaplain Stanton will give the invocation.”
The Christian chaplain stood up, looked around impatiently, and then intoned, “Please rise!”
Everyone stood.
The invocation went on for some time. It dealt primarily with resisting temptation. Finally, he invoked the blessing of the Deity and sat down, and everyone did the same.
Mrs. Schumann leaned toward Cronley and whispered, “I thought he was never going to stop.”
When she leaned away from him and shifted on her chair, her hand dropped into his lap. She found his male appendage and took a firm grip on it.
Holy Christ! Now what?
After a moment, and a final squeeze, she turned it loose.
He recalled the advice of a tactical officer at A&M. During a lecture on the conduct to be expected of an officer and a gentleman, he had cautioned the class about becoming involved with a senior officer’s wife.
“It don’t matter if she jumps on you and sticks her tongue down your throat. Keep your pecker in your pocket. It’s like having a drunk guy on a motorcycle run into you when you’re doing thirty-five in a fifty-five-mile-per-hour zone. Right and wrong don’t matter. You’re at fault.”
He looked at Mrs. Schumann. She smiled and gave him a little wink.
He smiled back as well as he could manage.
He spent the rest of the meal with his legs crossed, sitting as close to Major Iron Lung McClung as he could, and not looking at Mrs. Schumann.
She made no further attempt to grope him until the affair was about to adjourn for farewell cocktails, and Mattingly came to stand behind him.
“I’m sorry I have to take you away from all this fun, Captain Cronley,” Mattingly said. “But we still have our business to take care of.”
“Yes, sir,” Cronley said, and stood.
So did Mrs. Schumann.
“It was very nice to meet you, Captain Cronley,” she said. “Perhaps we’ll see one another again.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She offered her right hand and quickly groped him with the left.
“My husband will be fascinated to hear I’ve met you.”
[FIVE]
When the Army had requisitioned the Schlosshotel Kronberg to house OSS Forward, the German staff had come with it. Now, the hotel manager greeted the former commander of OSS Forward warmly.
Thus, Cronley was not surprised when, despite the inhospitable sign — THIS IS A FIELD GRADE OFFICERS’ FACILITY — behind the marble reception desk, the smiling manager assured Mattingly that he would be happy to accommodate Captain Cronley and arrange for a staff car to take the captain to the Eschborn airstrip in the morning.
The room that the manager assigned Cronley was one of the better ones. A small suite, it was on the ground floor. French doors opened onto a flagstone patio overlooking the golf course.
In the sitting room, Mattingly waved Cronley into an armchair. He took the one opposite it, leaned forward, and waved his hand in the general direction of the main dining room.
“I’m sorry about all that. If I ever knew about that damned newly arrived luncheon, I forgot about it.”
“Well, it gave General Greene a chance to stick it to you, didn’t it?”
Mattingly’s face tightened.
“You do have a flair for saying things you really shouldn’t, don’t you, Jim?”
“Sir, no disrespect was intended. But it was pretty obvious the general was sticking it to you. And liked it.”
Mattingly considered that for a moment.
“Okay. That’s as good a point to start as any. Did you wonder why General Greene was enjoying, to use your colorful phrase, sticking it to me?”
“Yes, sir. I did.”
“I was assigned as his deputy commander over his objections. I didn’t have the opportunity, the authority, to tell him why until Admiral Souers gave me the authority when we were in Washington. I told Admiral Souers that I had to tell him, so that he could get Colonel Schumann off our backs. Greene has known about Operation Ost and what’s going on at Kloster Grünau only since I told him the day we got back.
“Greene didn’t like being kept in the dark. That’s understandable. But now Schumann has been told to back off.”
“He was told about Operation Ost?”
“Of course not. Greene just told him that Kloster Grünau is off-limits to him, and to forget about you, and you shooting up the engine in his car. With him in it.”
“He apparently told Mrs. Schumann.”
“They call that ‘pillow talk.’ It happens. I can only hope that Schumann told his wife not to spread it amongst the girls of the CIC/ASA Officers’ Ladies Club.”
“Do you think he did?”
“Probably. Tony Schumann is a good officer. But he’s also Jewish, which means that he won’t stop looking into the rumors that somebody is getting Nazis out of Germany to Argentina, and wondering if what’s going on at Kloster Grünau has something to do with that.”
“Jesus!”
“And General Greene knows what I’m probably thinking about in that connection. So, yeah, he found it amusing that I showed up, with you in tow, at that CIC/ASA Officers’ Ladies Club Welcome Newly Arriveds luncheon, to be met by Mrs. Schumann.