Mannberg, ole buddy, the general just handed you your balls.
Cronley said: “Sir, we have a saying, ‘play it by ear.’ I wouldn’t know what to suggest you tell him. I just thought he should see Message Two, and I thought — not from logic, just a gut feeling — that it would be better if you showed it to him. Okay, one reason: I think the major has had about all of me and Dunwiddie that he can handle right now.”
Gehlen nodded, then asked, quoting Cronley, “What else do you think we should do?”
“Some of it’s on Hessinger’s OPPLAN. But he didn’t get all of it, because he didn’t have all the facts.”
“For example?” Mannberg asked.
Cronley ignored him.
“The Pullach compound is just about ready,” Cronley said. “A platoon of Dunwiddie’s men are already on the road down there to both augment the Polish DPs—”
“The who?” Mannberg interrupted.
“The guards. They are former Polish POWs who didn’t want to return to Poland because of the Russians. As I understand it, General Eisenhower was both sympathetic and thought they could be useful. So they’ve been declared Displaced Persons — DPs — formed into companies, issued U.S. Army uniforms dyed black, and lightly armed, mostly with carbines. Sufficiently armed to guard the Pullach compound. No one has told me this, but I suspect the idea is that once Tiny’s people are in place, they’ll be removed. I’d like to keep them. I’m suggesting that Colonel Mattingly and General Greene would pay more attention to that idea if it came from you, instead of me. And I further suggest your recommendation would carry more weight if you began it, ‘When I inspected the Pullach compound…’”
“And when am I going to have the opportunity to inspect the Pullach compound?”
“I was thinking that right after you show Major Orlovsky Message Two, that we fly down there. You and me in one Storch, and Dunwiddie in the other.”
“Flown by Kurt Schröder?” Gehlen asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“May I suggest,” Mannberg said, “that when you land at the Army airfield in Munich, a German flying a Storch is going to draw unwanted attention? I don’t believe Germans are supposed to be flying American Army airplanes.”
His tone suggested that he was trying to explain something very simple to someone who wasn’t very bright.
“He has a point, Jim,” Gehlen said.
“Nor am I supposed to be flying Army airplanes. And we’re not going into the Munich Army airfield. There’s a strip of road inside the compound that General Clay used when he flew there in an L-4, a Piper Cub. If he got a Cub in there, Schröder and I can get Storches in. And while he’s there, Schröder can tell the Engineers what they have to do to make the strip better. Maybe find some building we can use as a hangar, or at least to keep the Storches out of sight.
“So far as anyone asking questions about Schröder flying, I don’t think that’s going to happen, and even if it did, Dunwiddie can use his CIC credentials to keep from answering questions. That’s what I did. It worked.”
Gehlen looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “Well, if there is nothing else, I suggest that I show Major Orlovsky Message Two, and then that I go inspect the Pullach compound.”
[THREE]
Cronley found without trouble the stretch of road he intended to use as a landing strip. But then he made a low pass over it to make sure there was nothing on it to impede his landing. There was.
An enormous Army truck was parked right in the middle. It had mounted on it what to Cronley, who had grown up in the Permian Basin oil fields, looked like an oil well work-over drill.
What the hell?
His passenger quickly assessed the situation and over the interphone calmly inquired, “What are you going to do now?”
“General, I’m going to make another pass over the strip. People will be looking at us. When they do, you and I are going to wave our hands at them, hoping they understand we want them to move that truck.”
Cronley switched to AIR-TO-AIR and with some difficulty managed to relay that order to Kurt Schröder and Tiny Dunwiddie in their Storch.
It all proved to be unnecessary.
When Cronley began what was going to be his hand-and-arm-waving pass over the road, he saw the truck had already been moved off.
He landed. Schröder put his Storch down thirty seconds later.
A jeep rushed up to them. It was being driven by Lieutenant Colonel Bristol, the Engineer officer in charge of the Pullach compound building project. Lieutenant Stratford, the ASA officer sent by Major Iron Lung McClung to install the Collins/SIGABA system, was with him.
Bristol and Stratford got out of their jeep and were standing beside Cronley’s Storch when he climbed out.
“Oh, it’s you,” Bristol said.
“Sir, why do I think you’re disappointed?” Cronley asked.
“Absolutely the contrary,” Bristol said. “When I saw two idiot pilots wanting to land on what is not a landing strip, I was afraid General Clay had come back.”
“General Gehlen, this is Colonel Bristol, the Engineer officer in charge of setting up the compound.”
Bristol, in a Pavlovian reflex to the term “general,” popped to attention and saluted. After a just perceptible hesitation, Gehlen returned it.
“I’ve been hoping I’d get to meet you, sir,” Bristol said.
“Very kind of you, Colonel. But I don’t think we’re supposed to exchange military courtesies.”
“My fault,” Cronley said. “I should have said ‘Herr Gehlen.’ But I have a lot of trouble remembering General Gehlen is no longer a general.”
“Cronley,” Bristol said, “general officers are like the Marines. Once a general, always a general. And especially in this case. When General Clay told me what’s going on here, he referred to the general as General Gehlen, and went out of his way to make sure I understood the general is one of the good guys.”
“Again, that’s very kind of you,” Gehlen said. “And of General Clay.”
“So welcome to your new home, Herr Gehlen. I hope you’ll let me show you around. Perhaps you’ll have a suggestion or two.”
“Since you brought up the subject, Colonel…”
“Yes, sir. What’s your pleasure?”
“Would it be possible to extend this runway a little? Actually, for some distance?”
“Well, that’s on my list, sir. And just now it went to the top of the list.”
“Would it be too much to ask that it be done before we leave? My friend Kurt Schröder”—he pointed at Kurt—“once told me you need more runway to take off than to land.”
“Herr General, wir können hier gut raus,” Schröder said.
Bristol’s eyebrows went up as he looked at Schröder, who was wearing the Constabulary pilot’s zipper jacket that Lieutenant Colonel William W. Wilson had given Cronley.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” he said. “I guess a lot of you CIC guys speak German. I guess you’d have to.”
An explanation, or a clarification, proved to be unnecessary, as there was an interruption: Dunwiddie, who was wearing his rank-insignia-less CIC uniform, was looking intently at Lieutenant Stratford, and vice versa.
Then Stratford put his hands on his hips and barked, “Well, you miserable rook, don’t just stand there slumped with your mouth open and your fat belly hanging out, come to attention and say, ‘Good morning, sir.’”
Dunwiddie said, “I’ll be goddamned — it is you!”