Suites 503 through 505 came next. Suite 503 was assigned to Major Harold Wallace, and 504 and 505 had been set aside for the use of senior officers of the ASA/CIC community visiting Munich. Such as Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Schumann, who had been placed in Suite 504.
The two-door elevator bank came next, replacing Suite 506. Next came Suite 507, which served both as the offices of the XXVIIth CIC Detachment and quarters for Special Agent/Sergeant Friedrich Hessinger.
“So going to either my room or yours, Rachel, would be dangerous…”
“We have to go somewhere, sweetheart.”
“… my room more so because to get to it, when we got off the elevator, to get to my room, 527, we would have to walk past the door to 507, which is where Major Wallace and Special Agent Hessinger work. They often leave the door open, and they frequently leave the suite for one reason or another. Our chances of being seen going from the elevator to your room, 504, would be much less as we wouldn’t have to walk past 507.”
“Well, we can’t go to my room, silly boy. What if Tony came back early and walked in on us?”
Since Cronley knew that the northbound Blue Danube, the only way he knew that Colonel Schumann could get to Munich from Vienna, didn’t arrive until 1640, he didn’t think this posed as much of a threat as Rachel did. But it was possible. And he didn’t think arguing about it would be wise.
They had gone to his room, slipping undetected down the corridor past Suite 507’s closed door. Getting back on the elevator — in other words, again passing Suite 507, without attracting Freddy Hessinger’s attention — was something he had not wanted to think about.
Cronley stayed in the shower until he realized he was shivering and only then, reluctantly, added hot water to the stream to get rid of his chill.
So, what do I do now?
The first problem is getting Rachel out of here without getting caught.
No. That’s the second problem. The first is getting back in bed with her and performing as she expects me to.
And what else?
As he warmed himself in the shower, and then as he dried himself, he considered all of his options, all of the potential disasters that could — and were likely to — happen.
And then he summed it up, in sort of an epiphany:
The worst thing that’s going to happen is not that Tiny Dunwiddie and Freddy Hessinger will learn that I’m incredibly stupid and an asshole, or that Mattingly will know that he’s been right all along about me being grossly incompetent, or that Clete will learn that I’m a three-star shit for fucking a married woman before, almost literally, the Squirt was cold in her grave. It will be that I’ve failed to follow the oath I took the day my father pinned my gold bar onto my epaulet at College Station.
I swore to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help me God.
And if the Soviet Union isn’t a foreign enemy of the United States, who is?
And speaking of God, how does that go in “The Book of Common Prayer”? I’ve said it enough. But for the first time in my life, I know what it means…
“Almighty and most merciful Father,
“We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep.
“We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.
“We have offended against Thy holy laws.
“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done…”
Guilty on all counts. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
Except for the last.
I am not going to leave undone those things I know have to be done.
I am going to protect Major Konstantin Orlovsky from getting shot and buried in an unmarked grave because that’s a convenient solution to the problem for Colonel Mattingly.
I am going to convince that NKGB sonofabitch that it’s his Christian duty to do what he can for his wife and children by turning.
I am going to get him on a plane to Argentina, and then I am going to make sure that General Gehlen does whatever he has to do to get Orlovsky’s family out of Russia.
And after that, what?
I don’t really give a damn. It doesn’t matter.
Back to the immediate problem: getting Rachel out of here without getting caught.
No. I got that wrong again.
First, getting Ole Willie to stand up and do his duty, which may be a hell of a problem, and then getting Rachel out of here without getting caught.
He wrapped a towel around himself and walked into the bedroom.
He looked for his Ike jacket, intending to hang it up, then saw it was hanging on the back of a chair, with his trousers and shorts folded neatly on top of it.
I guess Rachel did that to pass the time. Or just to be nice.
Rachel was in the bed, with a sheet drawn over her. Her clothing was neatly folded on a chaise longue.
“Did you ever play doctor when you were a little boy?” Rachel asked.
“Excuse me?”
“‘You show me yours and I’ll show you mine’?”
She threw the sheet off her.
He walked to the bed and dropped the towel.
She reached for him.
A few seconds later, another philosophical truism from his days at College Station came to him: A licked prick has no conscience.
[THREE]
“Lieutenant, what would I have to do to get you to give me half a dozen jerry cans of avgas to take with me?” Cronley asked.
“Why would you want to do that?”
“This airplane seems to run better if I put avgas in it.”
“In other words, it’s a CIC secret?”
“My lips are sealed. Two elephants and a rhinoceros could not drag that secret from me.”
“The avgas is no problem. The cans are.”
“I can get them back to you in a couple of days.”
“Why not? Let me have your ID, so I can write down to whom I am loaning six jerry cans and thus placing my military career in jeopardy.”
Jimmy reached into his Ike jacket for his credentials, which he always carried in the left inside pocket. The folder wasn’t there.
“What the hell?” he said.
A quick, somewhat frantic search found the credentials in the right inside pocket.
Thank God!
A CIC agent losing his credentials is a mortal sin.
Right up there, for example, with getting caught fucking a CIC colonel’s wife.
Mattingly would be almost as delighted with the former as he would be with the latter.
They must have fallen out when Rachel hung my uniform up.
He handed them over.
Ten minutes later, he told the Schleissheim tower that Army Seven-Oh-Seven was rolling.
[FOUR]
Army Seven-Oh-Seven taxied very slowly to the tent hangar beside the chapel and stopped. The pilot got out.