“Which means I’m going to have to go back to Munich. Maybe Wallace will be able to solve our problem. But maybe Wallace won’t be there.
“Which means I probably will have to go to Frankfurt.
“Which means you will be here dealing with the dossiers. When I’m at the Vier Jahreszeiten, I will tell Sergeant Hessinger to send his blonde back to the village and get these dossiers from wherever he got the one about your girlfriend. But as I suspect Gehlen’s people have better dossiers than G-2 does, you will get the dossiers from them while I’m gone. Got all that?”
“How am I supposed to get Gehlen’s dossiers?”
“Well, off the top of my head, asking General Gehlen might work.”
“General Gehlen personally?”
“If you ask anyone else, Herr—former Oberst—Mannberg, for example, I think ol’ Ludwig would go ask the general if he should give that Wet Behind the Ears Ami Leutnant the time of day, much less any dossiers from their files. If you ask General Gehlen first, it’ll save time.”
“And if General Gehlen says, in effect, go fuck yourself, Herr Leutnant Cronley, then what do I do?”
“Be firm.”
“Tiny, you can’t leave me alone to handle this.”
“Say ‘Post,’” Dunwiddie said.
“What?”
“Say ‘Post.’”
“Post.”
“Yes, sir!” Dunwiddie bellowed, then popped to attention, saluted crisply, performed a perfect about-face movement, and marched out of the room.
“I’ll be a sonofabitch!” Cronley said aloud, although he was now alone.
After sitting deep in thought for at least a minute, he got out of his chair and went to the building entrance.
Technical Sergeant Abraham L. (for Lincoln) Tedworth, who was nearly as large and almost as black as First Sergeant Dunwiddie, sat in an armchair with a Thompson submachine gun in his lap.
He stood as Cronley approached.
“Sir?”
“I need to see General Gehlen.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll give the general your compliments, sir.”
—
Five minutes later, Herr (formerly Oberst) Ludwig Mannberg walked into the office.
Mannberg, who had ranked high in the Abwehr Ost hierarchy, was wearing a finely tailored uniform from which the insignia had been removed. His breeches still bore the red stripe identifying members of the General Staff Corps.
He didn’t salute but he came to attention and clicked his heels.
“Herr Gehlen is not available,” he said, in perfect, British-accented English. “May I be of some assistance?”
I’m not going to let you get away with that, Herr Oberst.
“I need to know what information, perhaps the dossiers, Abwehr Ost has on these people,” Cronley said in German. He handed him TEX-0014.
“You speak German like a Strasbourger,” Mannberg said.