Top Secret Part 35

"In the meantime, Karl can learn about the family business under the watchful eyes of Mom, Beth, and your dad. Understand?"

"Makes sense."

"The Old Man wants me to take over Howell Petroleum. The problem with that is I'm going to have to learn how to do that. And I can't learn how to do that as long as I have Operation Ost to worry about. I promised Souers I'd stick around until the new Central Intelligence Directorate, or whatever the h.e.l.l they're going to call it, is up and running. And then there's El Coronel, Incorporated, I have to worry about."

"What the h.e.l.l is that?"

"Everything I inherited from my father. And I have already learned that what the Old Man told me to tell you is true. For every peso a rich gringo like myself has, there are at least three dishonest Argentine sonsofb.i.t.c.hes trying to steal it."

Jimmy chuckled.

"So are you going to sign that power of attorney or not?"

Jimmy didn't reply. He instead poured Dewar's into two gla.s.ses, gave one to Clete, and then signed the paper. Then he wordlessly touched his gla.s.s to Clete's, and they took a healthy sip.

Jimmy gestured to the power of attorney: "When I signed the one for my dad, it had to be notarized. What are you going to do about that?"

"The Old Man's lawyers thought of that, too. They found out that a commissioned officer, such as myself, can witness the signature of someone junior to them, such as yourself. I'm surprised you didn't know that, Captain Cronley."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," Jimmy said, as Frade scrawled Witnessed by C.H. Frade, LtCol, USMCR and then his signature below Cronley's signature on the power of attorney.

Clete put the doc.u.ment in his luggage and then took the leather envelope and handed it to Jimmy.

"You get to keep that stuff. When you're all alone in your monastery, feeling sorry for yourself, you can take it out and read it and tell yourself, 'What the h.e.l.l, at least I'm rich.'"

"Very funny. You through?"

"Yeah."

Jimmy drained his gla.s.s and pushed it away. "Okay. Speaking of the monastery, Clete: Despite what everyone seems to think, all is not sweetness and light between General Gehlen and me."

Clete's eyebrows rose.

"I don't think I'm going to like this," he said.

"Tiny's Number Two, Sergeant Tedworth, caught an NKGB officer sneaking out of the monastery-"

Clete silenced him with a raised hand.

"Let's get all the details in from the beginning," he said. "Tiny is who?"

"First Sergeant Chauncey Dunwiddie . . ."

"Well, Jimmy, I can understand why General Gehlen might be a little miffed that a twenty-two-year-old American captain who never saw a Russian a month ago decided he knows more about interrogating NKGB officers than Abwehr Ost experts. How do you even communicate with this guy? Sign language? You don't know three words of Russian. What the h.e.l.l were you thinking?"

"Konstantin speaks English. And German."

"Konstantin? Sounds like you're buddies."

"I like him. Okay?"

"My G.o.d!"

"That-liking him-came after I decided that I wasn't going to-couldn't-stand around with my thumb up my a.s.s watching while some Kraut kept him in a dark cell stinking from his own c.r.a.p, following which he would be blown away. And knowing if anything came out about that, I'd be on the hook for it, not the Germans and not Mattingly."

"Oh, so that's it? You were covering your a.s.s?"

"f.u.c.k you, Clete!"

"What?" Clete said angrily. "Let's not forget, Little Brother, that your big brother is a lieutenant colonel and you're a captain. A brand-new captain."

"Sorry. Make that, 'f.u.c.k you, Colonel.'"

Clete, white-faced, glared at him but said nothing.

"When Mattingly told Tiny to 'deal with' the Russian, all I had to do to cover my a.s.s was look the other way and keep my mouth shut. He didn't tell me to deal with it. He told Tiny. You think I wanted to take on Gehlen and Mattingly? And now you?"

"Then why the h.e.l.l did you? Are you?"

"Write this down, Colonel: Because I saw it as my duty."

"You can justify that, right?" Clete said coldly.

"First, it was my duty to Tiny. An officer takes care of his men, right? A good officer doesn't let other officers cover their a.s.ses by hanging his men out to dry, does he?"

"That's it?"

"Two, I decided that what ex-Major Konrad Bischoff-Gehlen's hotshot interrogator-was doing to Major Orlovsky-the clever business of having him sit in a dark cell with a canvas bucket full of s.h.i.t-wasn't going to get what we wanted from him. Actually, I decided Bischoff's approach was the wrong one."

"Based on your extensive experience interrogating NKGB officers?" Clete said sarcastically.

"Based on what you said at dinner, you're now the honcho of Operation Ost, so I'll tell you what I told Mattingly when I thought he was the honcho. As long as I'm in charge of Kloster Grnau, I'm going to act like it. If you don't like what I do, relieve me."

Clete didn't reply immediately, and when he did, he didn't do so directly.

"Why, in your wise and expert opinion, Captain Cronley, is Major Bix . . . Bisch . . ."

"Bischoff. Ex-Major Konrad Bischoff."

"Why do ex-Major Konrad Bischoff's interrogation techniques fail to meet with your approval?"

"Because they haven't let him see either that Orlovsky is smarter than he is-I don't know why, maybe he believes that n.a.z.i nonsense that all Russians are the Untermenschen-"

"Untermensch is a pretty big word. You sure you know what it means?"

Cronley ignored the question.

"Or that my good buddy Konstantin Orlovsky has decided that, except for a bullet in the back of his head, it's all over for him. And in that circ.u.mstance he's not going to come up with the names of Gehlen's people that he turned. Names, maybe, if that's what it will take to get out of his cell and shot and get it over with, but not the actual ones."

"But you have a solution for all these problems, right?"

"Would I be wasting my breath telling you, Clete?"

"We'll have to wait and see, won't we?"

"Look. When Mattingly called and told me to come here as soon as I could, I was talking to Orlovsky. I had just proposed to him that I arrange for him to disappear from the monastery-"

"Disappear to where?"

"Argentina. Where else?"

"My G.o.d!"

"And that, once he was there and gave me the names of Gehlen's bad apples, and we found out they were in fact the bad apples, I would pressure Gehlen to get Orlovsky's family out of Russia."

"If I thought you were into Mary Jane cigarettes, I'd think you just went through two packs of them. Listen to yourself, Jimmy! You're talking fantasy!"

"Maybe. But, on the other hand, if I turn Orlovsky back over to Bischoff, and we go down that road, what we're going to have is no names of the real turned Gehlenites, and a body in the monastery cemetery that just might come to light if the Bad Gehlenites let the Soviets know about it. Which brings us back to me not willing to let Tiny Dunwiddie or myself hang for that."

Clete thought that over for a long moment.

"What was the Russian's reaction?"

"What he's doing right now is thinking it over."

"He didn't say anything?"

"What he said was, 'Why would you expect me to believe something like that?' And I said because I was telling him the truth, that I wasn't promising to get his family out of Russia, just that I would make Gehlen try. I also told him if he was a man, he'd do anything he could to help his family. Then he called me a sonofab.i.t.c.h, and that was the end of the conversation."

Clete shook his head.

"But he's thinking about it, Clete. I know that in my gut. He doesn't give a d.a.m.n what happens to him. But his family is different. He doesn't want them shot or sent to Siberia. What I did was . . . sow the seed, I guess . . . to start him thinking."

"And you really thought Mattingly would put Operation Ost at risk by trying to sneak an NKGB officer out of Germany? And that Gehlen would risk his agents-in-place by trying to get an NKGB officer's family out of Russia? My G.o.d!"

"I thought I could sell both of them on the idea that if we turned Orlovsky-the NKGB didn't send a guy who graduated from spy school two months ago to penetrate Operation Ost-we'd all be ahead."

"That's pretty sophisticated thinking for a guy who-if memory serves-was about to graduate from spy school about that long ago. But didn't finish spy school because they needed his expert services here to run a roadblock."

"Yeah, and I probably didn't know much more about running that roadblock-or Kloster Grnau when they gave that to me-than you did about blowing up ships when you went to Argentina."

"Well, some things haven't changed. Your mouth still runs away with you, you're not troubled with modesty, and you have a hard time even admitting the possibility that you can be mistaken."

Jimmy didn't reply.

"I'll try to get you out of this, but don't get your hopes up," Clete went on. "I think you are probably going to spend the rest of your military career-how long are you in for?"

"Four years."

"The next three years and some months counting toilet paper rolls at Camp Holabird. Or some other place where they send stupid young intelligence officers so they can't do any more damage."

"If you're waiting for me to say I'm sorry, don't hold your breath."

"What time does the sun come up?"

"What?" Jimmy said, and then understood. "Half past six."

"And it takes how long to get to the airfield?"

"Fifteen minutes."

"Be waiting for me in the lobby at six. Good night, Jimmy."

[ THREE ].

Cronley went to his room, took a shower, packed his bag, and went to bed.

There was a chance, he thought, that Rachel would somehow ditch her husband and come to see him. He had just decided that would be really stupid on her part and wasn't going to happen when there was a knock at his door.

And there she was.

"This is not smart," he greeted her.

"I know," she said, and pushed past him into the room.

"General Magruder came back from dinner with General Eisenhower," she said, "and asked Colonel Mattingly and my husband to join him for a drink in the bar. I pa.s.sed. I said I was going to walk off all the food I'd had. We have no more than thirty minutes. That give you any ideas?"

She tugged off her shoes as she headed for the bed.

- "Where were you?" Rachel asked, perhaps ten minutes later. "If you'd been here the first time I knocked, we'd have had an hour."

"Talking to Colonel Frade."

"About what?"

"Rachel, you don't have the Need to Know."

"Oh, sorry. I thought maybe you were talking about the Russian you caught at your monastery."

"What Russian? I don't know what you're talking about."