“I understand, sir.”
“Now, presuming you still take some orders, I don’t want you to leave this room until you get in the staff car that takes you to the airfield in the morning. There is room service. You will eat your supper and breakfast in the room. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t want you bumping into Mrs. Schumann. Your first encounter with her ended without anything untoward happening. I want to keep it that way.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mattingly got out of his chair and left the suite without saying another word.
Cronley looked at the closed door, and then wondered aloud, “Why the hell couldn’t I have stayed a nice young second lieutenant who only knew how to say ‘Yes, sir’ and wouldn’t dream of questioning my orders?”
Then he walked into the bathroom to meet the call of nature.
[SIX]
When Cronley came back into the sitting room, he pushed the curtains on the French doors aside and looked out. It was drizzling, a precursor, he thought, of the bad weather moving in. Defying the drizzle, four golfers were walking down the fairway with their caddies trailing after them.
He let the curtain fall back, having remembered that there was room service.
A little celebratory Jack Daniel’s is in order for the prisoner in Room 112.
After that confrontation with Mattingly, while things are certainly not ginger-peachy, Mattingly knows he can’t let Gehlen’s men shoot Orlovsky. At least right away.
He had just picked up the telephone when there was a knock at his door.
Shit! Mattingly’s back with something devastating to say to me.
He swung open the door.
Mrs. Colonel Schumann was standing there.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me in?”
“Mrs. Schumann, I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“Would you prefer that I cause a scene in the corridor?”
He backed away far enough for her to enter, leaving the door open.
She glanced at it. “If you leave the door open, someone’s likely to see me in here.”
“I don’t think us being in here behind a closed door is a very good idea.”
She moved quickly around him and slammed the door closed.
“I have no more interest in getting caught doing this than you do.”
“Ma’am, I think you’ve had a little too much to drink.”
“Just enough to find the courage to do this.”
She advanced on him. He retreated until his back was against the door.
Jesus, she’s going to grope me!
“Shut up and kiss me,” she ordered. “And for God’s sake, Jimmy, stop calling me ‘ma’am.’”
She raised her face to his.
And then she groped him.
[SEVEN]
Why do I really not want to open my eyes?
Maybe I’m thinking that if I just lie here keeping them closed I won’t have to face what I just did.
Cronley felt Mrs. Schumann’s fingers on his face and opened his eyes.
She was beside him in the bed, supporting herself on an elbow, looking down at him.
“What did you do, doze off?” she asked.
She had a sheet and blanket over her shoulders, but they did not conceal her breasts, her stomach, or her large patch of black pubic hair.
“What we just did wasn’t smart,” he said.
“Probably not. But we did it, and we can’t take it back.”
He looked at her, and then away, and now he saw their clothing scattered between the bed and the door to the sitting room.
“So tell me about those sad eyes,” she said.
He didn’t reply.
“They’re what attracted me to you. So tell me.”
“You really want to know?”
“I really want to know.”
“Okay. The day after we eloped, my wife was killed when a drunk hit her head-on with his sixteen-wheeler.”
“Oh, Jimmy, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“When did this happen?”
“Five days ago. No, four.”
“I don’t believe that. And if you think you’re being amusing, you’re not.”
“Boy Scout’s Honor, Mrs. Schumann. And if you don’t believe that, try this on for size: That same afternoon, the President of the United States, the Honorable Harry S Truman, pinned the Distinguished Service Medal, and captain’s bars, on me. And at nine o’clock — excuse me, let’s keep this military — at twenty-one hundred hours that same night, Colonel Mattingly and I got on the plane that brought us back here.”
“My God, you’re telling me the truth!”
“Yes, Mrs. Schumann, I’m telling you the truth.”
“And now I did this to you. Jimmy, I’m so sorry. If I had known…”
“Mrs. Schumann, it takes two to tango, as they say in Buenos Aires, where, putting your credulity to the test once again, I was three days before I got married.”
“You have every reason to be disgusted with me, but could you bring yourself to call me Rachel and not Mrs. Schumann?”
He looked at her and found himself looking into her sad eyes.
“Sure, Rachel, why not?”
“Jimmy, I am so very sorry.”
“Rachel, if you’re on a guilt trip, don’t be. You may have noticed I was an enthusiastic participant in what just happened.”
She smiled.
“I noticed. I feel a little guilty about… not knowing what happened to you. But not about what I did. Understand?”
“No.”
“Are you interested?” she said, then before he could reply added: “I think I should tell you.”
He still didn’t reply.
“Despite what it looks like, I don’t jump into bed with every good-looking young officer I meet.”
His face showed his disbelief.
“Or touch them under the table,” she went on. “Testing your credulity, this is the first time I’ve ever been unfaithful to my husband.”
“Is that so?”
“We grew up together. We got married when Tony graduated from college. I was nineteen. He went into the Signal Corps. His degree’s in electrical engineering. We had our two children, Anton Junior, who’s now fourteen, and Sarah, who’s now twelve, when we were stationed at Fort Monmouth—”
“Rachel,” he interrupted, “you don’t have to do—”
She silenced him by putting her finger to her lips.
“It’s important to me that you hear this. Tony was first a student and then an instructor at Monmouth. Then he went into the Army Security Agency, and we moved to Vint Hill Farms Station — do you know about Vint Hill, the ASA?”
Cronley nodded.
“And then the war came along, and somehow Tony moved into the inspector general business, first with ASA and then with the CIC. I guess you know about Camp Holabird? In Baltimore?”
He nodded again.
“We went there, and we had just found an apartment when Tony was assigned to Eisenhower’s Advance Party when Ike was sent to London. He made major, and then they sent him back to Washington, where he made lieutenant colonel. And then when the war was nearly over they sent him back here. He became involved in collecting evidence to be used against the Nazis when they were to be tried. I think his seeing what they did to the Jews was what did it.”
“Did what?”
“Make him decide to assert his Jewish masculine superiority by… stupping it to every German shiksa he can.”
“I don’t know what that means. Stupped? Shiksa?”