“No. They didn’t. We need to talk, and I don’t want anybody to hear what I have to say.”
“Well, that’s why I brought the ambulance.”
He started the engine, drove out onto the runway, and stopped.
“Thanks to my genius,” he said, “we can sit here in comfort while you share everything, and nobody can hear what you’re saying.”
Five minutes later, Cronley finished telling Tiny everything — with the exception of the intimate acts with Mrs. Colonel Schumann — he’d been thinking, even though halfway through the recitation he realized he sounded paranoid.
When Dunwiddie didn’t say anything, Cronley said, “What are you thinking, Tiny? That my captain’s bars have gone to my head? Or that I am paranoid? Or simply out of my mind? Or all of the above?”
Tiny shrugged his massive shoulders.
“What I was thinking was that I knew the first time I saw you that you were going to be trouble. To answer your questions, not in the order you asked them, Do I think you’re paranoid about Mattingly? I really wish I could, but I can’t.”
“You don’t?” Cronley asked in surprise.
“Did you ever wonder how he got to be commander of OSS Forward? And why Dulles, or whoever, gave him responsibility for Operation Ost?”
“He’s good at what he does?”
Dunwiddie did not reply directly. He instead said, “Being a colonel and Number Two to David Bruce in London is not bad for someone who before the war was a weekend warrior lieutenant in the National Guard, and made his living as a professor of languages at a university run by the Episcopal Church. And he’s a very young full colonel. You ever wonder about that?”
“The guy who gave us the Storches made light colonel at twenty-four.”
“General White told me about Lieutenant Colonel Hotshot Billy Wilson. Different situation from Mattingly.”
“How different?”
“Wilson got his silver leaf very early because even before Pearl Harbor, General White wanted small airplanes in the Army. Wilson almost single-handedly did that little chore for him. And then he did some spectacular things like flying Mark Clark into Rome the day it was declared an open city. And he’s a West Pointer. That didn’t hurt.
“Mattingly, on the other hand, got where he is by doing, ruthlessly, whatever had to be done in the OSS. And he’ll do whatever he thinks has to be done here. I’m not sure that he’d go as far as getting you run over by a truck, or assisting your suicide, to keep it quiet. But only because he knows the OSS guy in Argentina would certainly ask questions. Mattingly didn’t get where he is because he doesn’t know how to cover his ass.”
“You don’t like him very much, do you?” Cronley asked, gently sarcastic.
Dunwiddie looked at Cronley as if making up his mind whether to say something. Finally, he said, “Just before General White left Germany for Fort Riley, I had a few minutes with him.”
He saw the questioning look on Cronley’s face, and explained, “He and my father are classmates at Norwich. ’Twenty. Old friends. General White knew my father would expect him to check up on me, so he had Colonel Wilson fly him into Eschborn. OSS Forward was still alive then, in the Schlosshotel. We had a cup of coffee in the snack bar.
“During that little conversation, the general asked, ‘Chauncey, do I tell your father you still feel you made the right decision?’ I asked, ‘Sir, what decision is that?’ And he said, ‘To pass up your commission so that you could stay with the OSS Guard Company. Colonel Mattingly told me you said you saw that as the most important service you could render for the time being and getting your commission would just have to wait.’”
“I’ll be a sonofabitch!”
“What I should have said was, ‘Uncle Isaac, I hate to tell you this…’”
“Uncle Isaac?”
“‘… but Colonel Mattingly is a lying sonofabitch. I never said anything like that. He told me not to worry about my commission, that he’d keep on you about it.’ But I didn’t. My thinking at the time was I knew Uncle Isaac thinks Mattingly is a fine officer. So he was going to be surprised and disappointed if Little Chauncey suddenly came—”
“What’s with this ‘Little Chauncey’ and ‘Uncle Isaac’?” Cronley interrupted.
“I guess I never got around to mentioning that General White is my godfather. In private, he calls me Chauncey and I call him Uncle Isaac. His I. D. initials stand for ‘Isaac Davis,’ his great-grandfather. Or maybe his great-great-grandfather. Anyway, since I’m sure that Texas Cow College you went to taught you at least a little history, I’m sure you know who Isaac Davis is.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Isaac Davis on Easter Sunday, April sixteenth, 1775, fired, at Concord Green, Massachusetts, that famous shot heard ’round the world. That’s who Isaac Davis is, you historically illiterate cowboy.”
“No shit? He was General White’s great-great-grandfather?”
“No shit. As I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me, Captain, sir, I thought that even if General White thought there had to be some reason for me to have suddenly come out of left field to call Mattingly a lying sonofabitch, he was leaving for the States the next day and he wouldn’t have time to even ask Mattingly what the hell was going on or do anything about my commission. So I kept my mouth shut.”
“You should have told him, Tiny.”
“I thought about that when you mentioned Mattingly being worried about this OSS pal of yours…”
“Cletus Frade,” Cronley furnished.
“… in Argentina.
“But that’s what they call water under the bridge, Captain, sir. To return to your questions: Do I agree with your assessment of how he wants to handle the problem of Orlovsky? Yeah, I do. I think what Mattingly wants to do is be looking the other way while Gehlen’s people are interrogating Orlovsky and then shooting him in the back of the head.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“No. For two reasons. One, it ain’t right. And two, if that happens and it comes out, the entire Judge Advocate Corps of the U.S. Army is going to come after me.”
He met Cronley’s eyes, and then recited, “‘Article 118. Any person subject to this chapter who, without justification or excuse, unlawfully kills a human being, is guilty of murder, and shall suffer such death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.’ That’s not all of it, but you get the general idea.”
“Actually, they’d come after me, Tiny. I’m in command here.”
“That announcement answers your third question: Do I think your captain’s bars have gone to your head? Yeah, I do. But in a good sense. You’re thinking like a captain. You really grew up, Jimmy, doing whatever the hell you did in Argentina.”
Cronley said what he was thinking: “I wish you were wearing these captain’s bars, Tiny.”
“Yeah. But I’m not. Which brings us to what do we do about Orlovsky? Bearing in mind that whatever we do is liable to bring the Judge Advocate General’s Corps down on us, either for simple disobedience to a lawful order, or plotting mutiny — and plotting a mutiny is right up there beside Article 118 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 1928. ‘Death or such other punishment as a court-martial may decide.’”
“Maybe we should just cave.”
“That’s not an option, Jim. What are you thinking?”
“I don’t think that disorientation idea of Bischoff’s is going to work. Orlovsky is either not going to give us the names, or he’ll give us names of Germans who he hasn’t turned.”
“Agreed. Got a better idea?”
“Let’s try something else.”