“Excuse me?”
Frogger popped to attention.
“Oberstleutnant Frogger, Wilhelm, Identity Number 19-700045.”
“Sit down, Frogger. I’m not through with you.”
“Oberstleutnant Frogger, Wilhelm, Identity Number 19-700045.”
“I’m not going to tell you again,” Frade said softly.
“Oberstleutnant Frogger, Wilhelm, Identity Number 19-700045.”
“You’re back in the plot for a bad movie, are you?”
“Oberstleutnant Frogger, Wilhelm, Identity Number 19-700045.”
“Then this is the place in that movie where the interrogator loses his temper and starts punching you? Or puts burning matches under your fingernails?”
“Oberstleutnant Frogger, Wilhelm, Identity Number 19-700045.”
“The place where the hero decides that his parents and he himself must die painfully and bravely for the good of the Thousand-Year Reich, the Fatherland, and of course the Führer?”
“Oberstleutnant Frogger, Wilhelm, Identity Number 19-700045.”
“And then the Berlin Philharmonic starts playing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles’?”
Frogger glowered at him.
As if leading the Berlin Philharmonic with both hands, Frade began to loudly sing: “ ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt . . .’ ” He stopped, then added in German, “Nice melody. But no, Willi, that’s not going to happen.”
Frade walked to the door and opened it.
“Major, will you please come in and handcuff Colonel Frogger? Put him in the car.” As Fischer entered, Frade pointed at the table. “And have someone bring all that stuff. He’s going to need it in the Aleutians.”
“Yes, sir,” Fischer said.
Frogger stiffened.
As Fischer approched, Frogger announced, “Under the Geneva Convention, I am entitled to an audience with the camp commander.”
Frade walked out of the room.
[THREE]
“Well, I’m not surprised that you gave up,” Colonel A. F. Graham said to Major Cletus Frade as they stood out of the sun in the cool shade of a magnificent magnolia tree and watched Fischer load Frogger in the backseat of the staff car. “That sonofabitch is tougher than he looks. But I wonder if maybe you quit a little too soon.”
“Colonel, I haven’t quit. I’m just starting.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“The Kraut who Roosevelt has stashed in the Hotel Washington.”
“You want to take him to Washington to see Hanfstaengl?”
Frade nodded. “By way of Fort Bragg.”
“What’s at Fort Bragg?”