Top Secret (Clandestine Operations 1)

“I’ll get into Germany. Trust me.”

“If you did, we couldn’t get married. There’s a rule about that, too. You can’t get married in Germany without permission, and they won’t give you permission to marry unless you have less than ninety days to serve in the theatre.”

“In the theatre?”

“That’s what they call it, the ‘European Theatre of Operations.’ The rules are designed to keep people from marrying Germans.”

“How do you know so much about this subject?” Marjorie asked suspiciously.

“Professor Hessinger delivered a lecture on the subject to Tiny and me one night when we were sitting around with nothing else to do.”

“Who the hell are they?”

“They are my staff,” he said, chuckling. “If you’re going to be an Army wife, Squirt, you’ll have to learn that all officers, including second lieutenants, have staffs. Hessinger and Tiny are mine.”

“If you’re trying to string me along, Jimmy, you’re never going to get to do what you tried to do a moment ago.”

“Hessinger is a sergeant. Tiny Dunwiddie is a first sergeant. Interesting guys.”

“I will play along with this for the next thirty seconds.”

“Hessinger is a German Jew who got out of Germany just in time, went to Harvard, and then got drafted. They put him in the CIC because he speaks German. He’s still got an accent you can cut with a knife.”

“Fifteen seconds.”

“Tiny is an enormous black guy. Two-thirty, six-three. He went to Norwich University in Vermont.”

“Where? Ten seconds.”

“Norwich is a private military college in Vermont, the oldest one,” Cronley said, now speaking so rapidly it was almost a verbal blur.

Marjorie giggled, which he found surprisingly erotic.

“Slow down,” she said. “You’ve got another thirty seconds.”

“. . . from which, rather than waiting to graduate and get a commission, he dropped out and enl

isted so he could get into the war before they called it off. He’s from an Army family. His ancestors were the Buffalo Soldiers who fought the Indians. Two of his great-grandfathers were in the Tenth Cavalry, which, Tiny has told me at least twenty times, beat Teddy Roosevelt up San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish American War.”

“And did he manage to get in the war before they called it off?” Marjorie asked, and then added: “Damn you. You’ve got me. You’re as good at that as my mother. But there better be a point to this history lesson.”

“Yeah, he got in the war. Silver Star, Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts serving with a tank destroyer battalion in the Second Armored Division. Plus first sergeant’s stripes when all the sergeants senior to him got killed or wounded. He’s one hell of a soldier.”

“But they still didn’t give him a commission? Why, because he didn’t finish college? Or because he’s Negro?”

“No. Because he was needed to run the company of black troops Colonel Mattingly has guarding the Gehlen compound. I said he’s a hell of a soldier. He takes that duty, honor, country business very seriously. He knows guarding General Gehlen and his people is more important than being one more second lieutenant in a tank platoon somewhere.”

“I get the feeling you really like this guy.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“So what about the Jewish sergeant with an accent you can cut with a knife?”

“Freddy’s hobby is reading. You never see him without a book of some kind in his hand. Including Army Regulations. And he remembers every last detail of anything he’s ever read. That’s why we call him ‘the professor.’”

“His hobby is reading? You’re suggesting he’s a little funny?” Marjorie waved her hand to suggest there might be a question of his sexual orientation.

Jimmy laughed.