“That’s quite enough, Marjorie!” her mother announced.
“Cool it, Squirt,” Cronley said. “I’m a soldier. I obey my orders.”
“I would like to send him back to Germany immediately, Miss Howell,” Souers said. “But unfortunately, that’s not possible. President Truman wants to see him before he goes back, and that’s it.”
“You’re going to explain that, right?” Cletus Marcus Howell said.
“What Colonel Mattingly suggested, and what we’re going to do, is put Lieutenant Cronley on ice, so to speak, until the President’s schedule is such that he can see him.”
“What does ‘on ice, so to speak’ mean, Admiral?” Marjorie said.
“Well, since we can’t put him in a hotel, or at Fort Myer, because J. Edgar’s minions would quickly find him, what we’re going to do is put him in the Transient Officers’ Quarters at Camp Holabird. That’s in Baltimore. Mattingly tells me junior CIC officers passing through the Washington area routinely stay there — it’s a dollar and a half a night — so he won’t attract any attention. Mattingly will arrange for them to misplace his registry card, so if the FBI calls for him they can say they have no record of him being there.”
“And how long will he be there?” the old man asked.
“Just until he sees the President. And on that subject, Mr. Howell, the President would like to see you there at the same time. And he would be furious with me if he later learned that your granddaughter and Mrs. Howell were here and I hadn’t brought you along to the White House for his meeting with Lieutenant Cronley.”
“And after he meets with the President, he gets on the plane to Germany?” Marjorie said.
Souers nodded.
“If Jimmy goes to Germany, I’m going to Germany,” Marjorie then announced.
“We’ll talk about that, dear,” Martha Howell said.
“If Jimmy goes to Germany, I’m going to Germany. Period. Subject closed.”
[TWO]
The artwork behind the bar at which Second Lieutenant Cronley was sipping at his second scotch was more or less an oil painting. It portrayed three soldiers wearing World War I — era steel helmets trying very hard not to be thrown out of a Jeep bouncing three feet off the ground.
Rather than an original work, it was an enlargement of a photograph taken at Camp Holabird in 1939. The U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, which had then reigned over Camp Holabird, was testing the new Willys-designed vehicle. Some GI artist had colored the photograph with oil paints.
Cronley had heard the rumor that it was at Camp Holabird that the vehicle — officially known as “Truck, 1/4 Ton, 4×4, General Purpose”—first had been dubbed “Jeep,” from the G and P in General Purpose.
He wasn’t sure if this was true or just lore. Or bullshit, like the rumors circulating among the student officers and enlisted men about My Brother’s Place, the bar directly across Dundalk Avenue from the main gate. That lore, or bullshit, held that an unnamed “foreign power” had a camera with a long-range lens installed in an upstairs window with which they were taking photographs of everyone coming out the gate.
That, the lore said, would of course pose enormous problems for the students when they graduated and were sent “into the field.”
His thoughts were interrupted when a voice beside him said, “Cronley, isn’t it?”
He turned and saw the speaker was a major.
“Yes, sir.”
The major offered his hand. “Remember me, Cronley? Major Derwin? ‘Techniques of Surveillance’?”
“Yes, sir, of course. Good to see you again, sir.”
“So they sent you back, did they, to finish the course?”
“Just passing through, sir.”
“From where to where, if I can ask?”
“Munich to Munich, sir. With a brief stop here. I was the escort officer for some classified documents.”
That bullshit came to me naturally. I didn’t even have to wonder what cover story I should tell this guy.
“Munich? I thought you’d been sent to the Twenty-second in Marburg.”
“Yes, sir. I was. Then I was transferred to the Twenty-seventh.”
Counterintelligence Corps units were numbered. When written, for reasons Cronley could not explain — except as a manifestation of the Eleventh Commandment that there were three ways to do anything, the Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the Army Way — Roman numerals were used. For example, the XXVIIth CIC Detachment.
“I’m not familiar with the Twenty-seventh. Who’s the senior agent?”
Is that classified? No. It’s not.
The XXIIIrd CIC Detachment and what it does is classified — oh, boy, is it classified! — but not the XXVIIth. The XXVIIth is the cover for the XXIIIrd.
“Major Harold Wallace, sir.”
“Wallace? Harold Wallace?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t think I know him.”
“I’m not sure if this is so, sir, but I’ve heard that Major Wallace was in Japan, and sent to Germany because we’re so under strength.”
Actually, before President Truman put the OSS out of business, Wallace had been deputy commander of OSS Forward. I can’t tell this guy that; he doesn’t have the Need to Know. And if I did, he probably wouldn’t believe me.
And, clever fellow that I am, I learned early this morning from Admiral Souers — who really knows how to eat someone a new anal orifice — that sharing classified information one has with someone who also has a security clearance is something that clever fellows such as myself just should not do.
“That would explain it,” Major Derwin said. “The personnel problem is enormous. They scraped the bottom of the Far East Command CIC barrel as they scraped ours here.”
“Yes, sir.”
As a matter of fact, Major, the morning report of the XXIIIrd CIC Detachment shows a total strength of two officers — Major Wallace and me — and two EM — First Sergeant Chauncey L. Dunwiddie and Sergeant Friedrich Hessinger. And we really see very little of Major Wallace of the XXVIIth.
“No offense, Cronley,” Major Derwin said.
“Sir?”
“It certainly wasn’t your fault that scraping the barrel here saw you sent into the field before you were properly trained. Did you find yourself in over your head?”
“Sir, that’s something of an understatement. No offense taken.”
On the other hand, this morning Colonel Mattingly patted my shoulder and said, “You done good, Jimmy.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the bartender, a sergeant who was earning a little extra money by tending bar. He inquired, “Is there a Lieutenant Crumley in here?”
Speaking of the devil, that’s Colonel Mattingly, calling to tell me the President can’t find time for me and that he’s sending a car to take me to the airport for my flight back to Germany.
And I probably won’t even get to say goodbye to the Squirt.
Shit!
“There’s a Lieutenant Cronley,” Jimmy called.
The bartender came to him and handed him a telephone on a long cord.
Jimmy said into it: “Lieutenant Cronley, sir.”
“Sergeant Killian at the gate, Lieutenant,” the caller replied. “There’s a civilian lady here wanting to see you. A Miss Howell. Should I pass her through?”