“Perfect description,” General Greene said. His wife glared at both him and Frade.
“I’ll tell you about it later, dear,” Greene said. “Now let’s have our dinner.”
“I think you’re right, Cronley,” Major Iron Lung McClung said several minutes later. “Magruder, Mullaney, Parsons, and Ashley — the Pentagon delegation — are all probably outraged that they won’t be taking over Pullach. But I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”
“Sir?”
“Magruder’s not going to get anywhere at dinner tonight complaining to Ike or Beetle. Not with Souers there. And when Magruder and Mullaney get back to Washington, who can they complain to? Not Souers. And so far as Parsons and Ashley, when they’re at Pullach, the only one they can complain to about getting ordered around by you is Colonel Mattingly, and he’s not going to be sympathetic.”
“My only problem with that,” Mattingly said, “is that being in charge may well go to Cronley’s head. I’m going to have to counsel him to make sure that doesn’t happen. He’s more than a little weak in that area. He tends to assume authority he doesn’t have and to act first and ask permission, or even counsel, later.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Frade said.
“No, Colonel Frade, I am not kidding,” Mattingly said coldly. “He has a dangerous loose-cannon tendency.”
“Jimmy,” Frade said, “don’t let your being given command of the monastery or Pullach go to your head. Or turn you into a loose cannon. Say, ‘Yes, sir.’”
“Yes, sir.”
“Consider yourself so counseled,” Frade said, and then turned to look at Mattingly. “Jesus Christ, Mattingly!”
Rachel’s bare foot, which had been caressing Cronley’s ankle, suddenly stopped moving as Mattingly stood.
“I would remind you, Colonel Frade, that you are speaking to a superior officer,” Mattingly said furiously.
“Senior, certainly,” Frade said. “Superior, I don’t think so.”
“Ouch!” Iron Lung McClung said softly but audibly.
“What the hell set this off?” General Greene asked.
When there was no reply to what might have been a rhetorical question, Greene went on, “Junior officer first, Colonel Frade.”
“I found Colonel Mattingly’s gratuitous insult of Cronley offensive, General,” Frade said.
“Frankly, so did I. But it didn’t give you carte blanche to talk to Colonel Mattingly so disrespectfully.”
“No, sir, it didn’t. I spoke in the heat of the moment and therefore offer my apology.”
“Colonel Mattingly?” Greene asked.
“Sir?”
“I think you should accept Colonel Frade’s apology and then offer yours to Captain Cronley.”
With a visible effort, Mattingly said, “Apology accepted.” After a pause, he went on: “Captain Cronley, it was not my intention to gratuitously insult you. If you drew that inference, I apologize.”
Great.
But the minute Clete leaves Germany, I’m really fucked.
Rachel’s foot on his ankle began to move.
General Greene looked at Cronley impatiently, and finally Cronley understood.
He stood up, came to attention, and said, “Sir, no apology is necessary.”
He sat down.
“Sit down, please, Colonel Mattingly,” Greene said. “Whereupon, we will all promptly forget the last three minutes or however long that little theatrical lasted.”
There were chuckles.
“Can we get them to do it again?” Major McClung asked innocently. “Sort of a curtain call? I liked it.”
“Jim, for God’s sake!” Mrs. McClung said.
General Greene gave McClung a look that would have frozen Mount Vesuvius.
McClung seemed unrepentant.
Rachel’s foot found Jimmy’s ankle and instep again.
“Colonel Frade,” General Greene said as he cut into his Danish New York strip steak, “I’d like to ask you — you and Colonel Mattingly, but you first — what you consider the greatest threat to your operation between now and the time it comes under the new organization Admiral Souers mentioned.”
Is he tactfully reminding Clete that Mattingly outranks him?
What is that saying? “There are nice generals, and there are generals who are not nice, but there is no such thing as a stupid general.”
Clete didn’t hesitate before replying.
“So far as I’m concerned, and I’m not saying this to agree with Admiral Souers…”
Clete picked up on that “who’s junior?” implication.
He’s good at this.
“… the greatest threat to our nameless operation is that our Soviet friends are going to expose it. I say expose it because we would be fools to think they don’t know about it. It is just a matter of time before they penetrate Kloster…” He paused, looking for the name by looking at Cronley.
“Kloster Grünau,” Jimmy furnished.
“… Kloster Grünau. And the Pullach installation, which, because it’s not only not on a Bavarian mountaintop but close to Munich, will be an even easier target for penetration. I’m frankly surprised there hasn’t been a penetration of the monastery already.”
Cronley felt Mattingly’s eyes on him.
What’s he want?
Am I supposed to say, “Actually, now that you mention Russian penetration of my little monastery, I do have NKGB Major Konstantin Orlovsky locked up in a cell in what used to be the monastery chapel”?
Or keep my mouth shut?
“What about that, Captain Cronley?” Colonel Schumann asked. “Am I the only nefarious character you’ve caught trying to force his way into your monastery?”
Christ, now what do I say?
“Sir, you’re the only one I’ve had to discourage with a machine gun.”
My God, where did that come from?
General Greene laughed. Frade looked curious.
“Colonel Frade,” Schumann said, “I wouldn’t worry about anybody penetrating Cronley’s monastery. I know from painful personal experience that Cronley’s got it guarded by some of the toughest, meanest-looking Negro soldiers I have ever seen — they’re all at least six feet tall, and weigh at least two hundred pounds — who are perfectly willing — willing, hell, anxious—to turn their machine guns on anyone trying to get in.”
“Painful personal experience?” Frade replied. “I’d like to hear about that. And I guess I’ll see Cronley’s mean-looking troops when I go down there—”
“Excuse me?” Mattingly interrupted. “Colonel, did I understand you to say you’re going to Kloster Grünau?”
“Yes, you did.”
“May I ask why?”
“Yes, sir. Of course you may. Sooner or later, the Soviets are going to penetrate the monastery and/or the Pullach camp, no matter how many two-hundred-pound six-foot-tall soldiers with machine guns Cronley has guarding it.”
“Colonel, are you going to answer my question?” Mattingly demanded curtly.
“That’s what I’m trying to do, Colonel,” Frade replied, and then went on: “If all they find is that we are employing a number of former German officers and non-coms to assist General Greene in his counterintelligence efforts, so what? Where we would be in trouble would be if they discovered — or actually tried to arrest under their Army of Occupation authority — former members of the SS whose names they know and whose arrests they have already requested. Or if they got their hands on any paperwork that could incriminate us.”