Empire and Honor (Honor Bound 7)
Page 19
“I don’t think so,” Cronley said.
“Where are we going?” Elsa asked.
“To Marburg, so I can get on the horn and call this Colonel Mattingly, whoever the hell he is.”
Elsa went to her suitcase and reached to pick it up. Cronley beat her to it, and effortlessly carried it to his jeep and tossed it in the backseat.
He gestured for Elsa to get in the jeep, and then got in himself. He started the engine and started to move the jeep. Then he fished in his tunic pocket and came out with a Hershey’s bar and handed it to her.
She looked at him as if he had just offered to meet her price.
He read her mind.
“My mother is German,” he said. “Okay?”
Then he revved the jeep and started off.
They were quiet for the first ten minutes or so of the trip to Marburg. Then he said, “Your Personalausweis says you’re thirty-two. Is that correct?”
“And I look fifty. Is that why you ask?”
He didn’t reply.
“I’m thirty-two,” she said after a moment. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-one,” Cronley said.
A boy, Elsa thought. He’s just a boy.
[FIVE]
Alte Post Hotel
Stadt Mitte
Marburg an der Lahn, Germany
1355 6 October 1945
The XXIInd CIC Detachment had requisitioned Marburg’s Alte Post Hotel, including the staff, for its headquarters and living quarters. It was in what the Americans thought of as the Old Town, on Steinweg, the ancient cobblestone road that led to the fortress on top of the hill.
Cronley parked in front of the hotel and led Elsa into the lobby, then to the door of the office of Major John Connell, the executive officer.
“What have you got there, Cronley?” Connell asked, looking askance at the German woman.
“This is Frau von Wachtstein, Major. She’s a Four on the Wanted List.”
Major Connell had been born in Philadelphia, as his parents had been, but he was Jewish, and he didn’t like people whose name appeared on the Wanted List.
“Why the hell did you bring her here? You should have taken her directly to the POW enclosure.”
“She’s a Four, Major,” Cronley said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“She is supposed to be ‘detained with courtesy’ and we’re supposed to notify some Colonel . . . a Colonel Mattingly . . . in Frankfurt.”
“What the hell? You said ‘Mattingly’?”