Top Secret Part 18

He smiled politely at her.

"Did anyone ever tell you that you have very sad eyes?" she asked.

"I wondered the same thing about you," he blurted.

And that's the last of the Jack Daniel's.

"Maybe we have something in common," she said.

He smiled politely at her.

"Major McClung," a voice boomed in his ear. He saw the mustachioed Signal Corps officer sitting next to him with his hand extended. "They call me 'Iron Lung.'"

"Jim Cronley, Major."

"Mattingly's man, right?" McClung boomed.

Cronley nodded.

He looked down the table and saw Mattingly sitting at the far side of General Greene.

He felt Mrs. Schumann's knee press against his.

The waiter appeared and placed drinks in front of the senior officers. And one in front of Cronley.

Well, I just won't drink it.

General Greene stood up, tapped his scotch gla.s.s with a knife, and announced, "Chaplain Stanton will give the invocation."

The Christian chaplain stood up, looked around impatiently, and then intoned, "Please rise!"

Everyone stood.

The invocation went on for some time. It dealt primarily with resisting temptation. Finally, he invoked the blessing of the Deity and sat down, and everyone did the same.

Mrs. Schumann leaned toward Cronley and whispered, "I thought he was never going to stop."

When she leaned away from him and shifted on her chair, her hand dropped into his lap. She found his male appendage and took a firm grip on it.

Holy Christ! Now what?

After a moment, and a final squeeze, she turned it loose.

He recalled the advice of a tactical officer at A&M. During a lecture on the conduct to be expected of an officer and a gentleman, he had cautioned the cla.s.s about becoming involved with a senior officer's wife.

"It don't matter if she jumps on you and sticks her tongue down your throat. Keep your p.e.c.k.e.r in your pocket. It's like having a drunk guy on a motorcycle run into you when you're doing thirty-five in a fifty-five-mile-per-hour zone. Right and wrong don't matter. You're at fault."

He looked at Mrs. Schumann. She smiled and gave him a little wink.

He smiled back as well as he could manage.

He spent the rest of the meal with his legs crossed, sitting as close to Major Iron Lung McClung as he could, and not looking at Mrs. Schumann.

She made no further attempt to grope him until the affair was about to adjourn for farewell c.o.c.ktails, and Mattingly came to stand behind him.

"I'm sorry I have to take you away from all this fun, Captain Cronley," Mattingly said. "But we still have our business to take care of."

"Yes, sir," Cronley said, and stood.

So did Mrs. Schumann.

"It was very nice to meet you, Captain Cronley," she said. "Perhaps we'll see one another again."

"Yes, ma'am."

She offered her right hand and quickly groped him with the left.

"My husband will be fascinated to hear I've met you."

[ FIVE ].

1310 30 October 1945 When the Army had requisitioned the Schlosshotel Kronberg to house OSS Forward, the German staff had come with it. Now, the hotel manager greeted the former commander of OSS Forward warmly.

Thus, Cronley was not surprised when, despite the inhospitable sign-THIS IS A FIELD GRADE OFFICERS' FACILITY-behind the marble reception desk, the smiling manager a.s.sured Mattingly that he would be happy to accommodate Captain Cronley and arrange for a staff car to take the captain to the Eschborn airstrip in the morning.

The room that the manager a.s.signed Cronley was one of the better ones. A small suite, it was on the ground floor. French doors opened onto a flagstone patio overlooking the golf course.

In the sitting room, Mattingly waved Cronley into an armchair. He took the one opposite it, leaned forward, and waved his hand in the general direction of the main dining room.

"I'm sorry about all that. If I ever knew about that d.a.m.ned newly arrived luncheon, I forgot about it."

"Well, it gave General Greene a chance to stick it to you, didn't it?"

Mattingly's face tightened.

"You do have a flair for saying things you really shouldn't, don't you, Jim?"

"Sir, no disrespect was intended. But it was pretty obvious the general was sticking it to you. And liked it."

Mattingly considered that for a moment.

"Okay. That's as good a point to start as any. Did you wonder why General Greene was enjoying, to use your colorful phrase, sticking it to me?"

"Yes, sir. I did."

"I was a.s.signed as his deputy commander over his objections. I didn't have the opportunity, the authority, to tell him why until Admiral Souers gave me the authority when we were in Washington. I told Admiral Souers that I had to tell him, so that he could get Colonel Schumann off our backs. Greene has known about Operation Ost and what's going on at Kloster Grnau only since I told him the day we got back.

"Greene didn't like being kept in the dark. That's understandable. But now Schumann has been told to back off."

"He was told about Operation Ost?"

"Of course not. Greene just told him that Kloster Grnau is off-limits to him, and to forget about you, and you shooting up the engine in his car. With him in it."

"He apparently told Mrs. Schumann."

"They call that 'pillow talk.' It happens. I can only hope that Schumann told his wife not to spread it amongst the girls of the CIC/ASA Officers' Ladies Club."

"Do you think he did?"

"Probably. Tony Schumann is a good officer. But he's also Jewish, which means that he won't stop looking into the rumors that somebody is getting n.a.z.is out of Germany to Argentina, and wondering if what's going on at Kloster Grnau has something to do with that."

"Jesus!"

"And General Greene knows what I'm probably thinking about in that connection. So, yeah, he found it amusing that I showed up, with you in tow, at that CIC/ASA Officers' Ladies Club Welcome Newly Arriveds luncheon, to be met by Mrs. Schumann.

"In a way, it was amusing. But it could have turned out the other way. She could very easily have not been as charming to you as she was. Some wives might be offended that a young officer had shot out the engine of their husband's car and act accordingly. You follow me?"

"Yes, sir."

"She could have asked, 'I'm curious why, Colonel Mattingly, after Captain Cronley fired a machine gun at my husband, he's here and not in the EUCOM stockade awaiting court-martial?'"

I wonder why she didn't?

Maybe Colonel and Mrs. Schumann aren't the happy couple everyone thinks they are.

Happily married women don't usually drink four martinis before lunch and then grope officers under the table.

"As you suggested, sir, Colonel Schumann probably told her not to ask questions about what happened at Kloster Grnau."

"What I'm worried about, Jim, is that you don't fully understand (a) the absolute necessity of maintaining the security of Operation Ost, and, more important, (b) that you're in a position where a careless act of yours can cause more trouble in that regard than you fully understand."

Here it comes.

"I must respectfully argue, sir, that I fully understand both."

"Then what the h.e.l.l did you think you were doing when you interrogated the NKGB agent? I told Dunwiddie to deal with that situation."

When Cronley didn't immediately reply, Mattingly went on, "Cat got your tongue, Captain? I'm surprised. You usually have an answer for everything at the tip of your tongue."

"I have an answer, sir, but I suspect you're not going to like it."

"Let's find out."

"For one thing, sir, Major Orlovsky is my prisoner, not General Gehlen's."

"Your prisoner?"

"And I didn't like the way he was being treated by Gehlen's man, Bischoff."

"What do you mean your prisoner?"

"Sir, Orlovsky was arrested trying to sneak out of Kloster Grnau by one of my men. Doesn't that make him my prisoner?"

"I am beginning to see where you're coming from," Mattingly said after a moment. "So tell me, Captain Cronley: What are your plans for your prisoner? What are you going to do with him?"

"I haven't quite figured that out, sir."

"Has it occurred to you that he may have to be disposed of?"

"If you mean shot, yes, sir."

"And, that being the case, it would be much better if he was disposed of by someone other than an American officer?"

"If Major Orlovsky has to be shot, sir, I'll do it. I'm not willing to turn that-or Major Orlovsky-over to Gehlen."

"It didn't take long for those new captain's bars to go to your head, did it?" Mattingly said furiously. "Just who the h.e.l.l do you think you are?"

"I'm the officer you put in charge of security of Operation Ost, sir."

"Captain, I am the officer in charge of security for Operation Ost."

"Sir, that's not my understanding."

"What is your understanding, you impertinent sonofab.i.t.c.h?"

"That you, sir, are in charge of the European functions of Operation Ost, that Lieutenant Colonel Frade is in charge of the Argentine functions, that the whole thing is under Admiral Souers, and that, far down on the Table of Organization, I'm in charge of security for European functions under you."

"And would you say that gives me the authority to tell you what to do and how to do it?"

"So long as your orders are lawful, sir."

"Meaning what?"

"That I don't think you have the authority to grant authority to Gehlen to take prisoners, to interrogate prisoners, and certainly not to shoot them."

"Maybe you do belong in the EUCOM stockade. For disobedience to my orders to you to let Sergeant Dunwiddie deal with the NKGB problem."

"If you put me in the stockade, sir . . ." Cronley began, then hesitated.

"Finish what you started to say," Mattingly ordered coldly.