“Why did Dulles recruit you?”
“I speak Russian, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and a little Hungarian. That had a good deal to do with it. I’ve got sort of a flair for languages.”
“So do I.”
“Dulles told me,” Mattingly said.
“Did you parachute behind enemy lines?”
“Twice into France and once into Italy.”
“That’s what those stars on the jump wings mean?”
“Uh-huh. And speaking of uniforms, when we get to the castle, we’re going to have to get you some uniforms. You can’t run around Berlin looking like a doorman. And we’ll have to get you some identification.”
They were now out of Frankfurt, moving rapidly down a two-lane, tree-lined highway. The headlights picked out here and there where trees had been cut down to serve as barriers, and where wrecked American and German tanks and vehicles had been shoved off the road.
[FIVE]
Schlosshotel Kronberg Kronberg im Taunus, Hesse, Germany 1920 19 May 1945
Following Dooley’s Mercedes, Enrico steered the Horch around a final corner and suddenly the hotel was visible. The massive structure looked like a castle. It was constructed of gray fieldstone and rose, in parts, five stories high. Lights blazed from just about every window. There was no sign of damage whatever.
“Hermann the butler—I kept him on—tells me that when I ordered the lights turned on, it was the first time they’d been on since September 1939,” Mattingly said.
Frade now saw something both unexpected and somehow out of place. An Army sergeant, a great bull of a black man with a Thompson submachine gun hanging from his shoulder, was marching a file of soldiers—all black, all armed with M-1 rifles—up to the entrance. After a moment, Clete realized that the sergeant was changing the sentries on guard.
“Stop right in front, Enrico,” Mattingly ordered.
When they got out of the car, the sergeant bellowed, “Ten-hut” and saluted crisply. Mattingly returned it as crisply. Clete, at the last second, kept under control his Pavlovian urge to salute.
People in doormen’s uniforms should not salute.
Everybody got out of the two cars and started up the stairs.
As they reached the entrance, a huge door was pulled inward by a very elderly man who had trouble doing so.
“Thank you,” Mattingly said in German, then added to Frade, “Faithful retainers. There’s about two dozen of them.”
“They don’t want to leave?”
“We feed them, generously, so there’s some they can take home. There’s not much food anywhere in Germany.”
Mattingly led the party across an elegantly furnished foyer into a well-equipped bar.
Someone in the bar called “Attention” and everybody stood.
“At ease,” Mattingly called.
Clete guessed that there were thirty or more men. All but a few were in uniform, half of these adorned with the standard rank and branch insignia. The other half had blue triangles around the letters U.S. sewn to the uniform lapels and to the shoulders where unit insignia were normally shown. There were perhaps eight men in civilian clothing, some of it close to elegant, some of it looking like it had come from the Final Reduction racks at Goodwill.
Mattingly led them through the bar to a smaller—but not small—room holding a large circular table and its own bar. There was an elderly man in a white jacket standing behind the bar.
“Would you please ask the general to join us?” Mattingly courteously ordered the barman in German. “And then that will be all, thank you.”
He signaled for everyone to take places around the table.
“This room is secure,” Mattingly announced. “I have it regularly swept. The result of that is that you’ll have to pour your own drinks—Honor System. A quarter for whiskey, ten cents for beer. There is a jar on the bar.”
He pointed and then went on: “The rule is that when any German enters the room, you stop your conversation in midsentence and don’t resume talking until the German has left. And I don’t mean that you can change the subject. I mean not a word. Clear?”
He looked around at everybody to make sure he had made the point.
The door opened. A slight, pale-faced man with sunken eyes, very thin hair, and wearing a baggy, nondescript suit came in.
“What I said before does not apply to this gentleman,” Mattingly said to the table, then raised his voice and addressed the man entering the room: “Good evening, sir.”
The man walked to where Frade was sitting with Mattingly and wordlessly offered his hand.
“General Gehlen,” Mattingly said, “this is Colonel Frade.”
Frade hurriedly got to his feet and put out his hand. He was surprised at Gehlen’s firm grip as he said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, General Gehlen.”
“I understand, Colonel,” Gehlen replied, “that you have been taking very good care of my men.”
How the hell could he know that?
“I have to tell you, sir,” Frade said, “that I have about half of them confined.”
“I rather thought you might consider that necessary,” Gehlen said. “But you are forgiven, providing, of course, that you’ve brought the money.”
He’s making some kind of joke.
Mattingly’s face shows he understands the joke.
But what the hell is he talking about?
“Excuse me, General?” Frade asked.
“The money, Clete,” Mattingly said. “Graham’s half a million dollars. Please don’t tell me you don’t have it.”
Oh, shit!
“I wasn’t told to bring any money,” Frade said. “And that half a million I signed for—I thought those were funds for other OSS business. My wife’s got it put away in the safe in our house in Buenos Aires.”
“The best-laid plans of mice and men,” General Gehlen said.
“Clete, how soon can you get it here?” Mattingly asked.
“I was about to say on the next SAA flight to Lisbon. But that won’t work. The only SAA pilots I’d trust with it on are this rescue-the-diplomats mission.”
“Well, then you’ll just have to go get it,” Mattingly said. “That’s what, ten, twelve days at the most? I can have some money flown from London. Not that much. But enough to get started. You do have the money, right? You can get it here?”
Clete nodded, then said, “What’s it for?”
“That’s something else we’ll get into after we have a drink and our supper.”
VIII
[ONE]
The Private Dining Room The Garden Lounge Schlosshotel Kronberg Kronberg im Taunus, Hesse, Germany 1930 19 May 1945
“You’re not drinking, Clete?” Mattingly asked as he looked around the huge circular table.
Even with “everybody”—General Gehlen, Frade, Stein, Boltitz, von Wachtstein, Rodríguez, Delgano, Peralta, Vega, Dooley, and Mattingly—sitting around the table, there were enough empty chairs for twice that many people.
Clete had the irreverent thought that it looked like only half of the Knights of the Round Table had shown up for King Arthur’s nightly briefing.
“When are we flying to Berlin?” Frade responded, and when Mattingly’s face showed the answer confused him, he smiled benignly at Dooley and went on: “You’ll learn, Dooley, if they ever let you fly big airplanes, like Hansel and me, that it’s best to do so clear-eyed and not hungover.”