“Get another waste bucket in
there,” Cronley ordered in English. “And get that one out of there. This room smells like a latrine!”
The trooper who had kicked the timber out of the way said, “Sir, we were told—”
“Don’t argue with me, Corporal!” Cronley snapped. “Get that bucket out of there, and do it now. We’re not savages!”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s your name?” Cronley demanded, first in English, then in German.
The NKGB officer didn’t reply.
“We believe him to be Konstantin Orlovsky,” Mannberg said softly from behind Cronley.
“Major Konstantin Orlovsky of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs at your service, sir,” the NKGB officer said in fluent English. “And you are?”
That’s not English English, but it’s not American English, either.
“My name is Cronley, Major. We’ll talk again.”
He turned to the sergeant.
“Major Orlovsky’s waste bucket will be replaced at regular intervals. The next time I come down here, I want to smell roses. Got it?”
“Got it, sir.”
“Thank you,” Orlovsky said.
Cronley turned from the door and went quickly back up the stairs. Mannberg and Bischoff followed him.
As soon as they reached the room behind the altar, Bischoff asked, “Am I to assume, Herr Hauptman, that you are taking over the interrogation?”
You’re really pissed that the naïve young American countermanded your orders, aren’t you?
And, Mannberg, to judge from the look on your face, you’re pissed that I countermanded the orders of your “interrogation specialist” and did so in front of the black American enlisted men.
Too fucking bad!
“The assumption you should be working under, Herr Bischoff, is that you are conducting the interrogation under my direction. So far as what happened down there just now, vis-à-vis Orlovsky’s waste bucket, what I had in mind was something Herr Mannberg told me, something to the effect that causing pain—and I think making Orlovsky sit in a blacked-out cell forced to smell his own waste caused him pain—is usually counterproductive.
“And if memory serves, Herr Mannberg, you also said that’s even more true when the person being interrogated is a skilled agent. I think we agree that Orlovsky is a skilled agent. I think that before he sneaked in here, he knew Kloster Grünau was commanded by a very young American. With that in mind, I told him my name. What good would it do to pretend otherwise?”
“Your points are well taken,” Mannberg said.
He means that.
But he is also surprised.
“And now, you’ll have to excuse me, I have to get on the phone.”
And I want to get away from you while I’m still ahead.
In other words, before I say something else stupid.
[ FOUR ]
Kloster Grünau was connected to a secure radio network that had originally been established by the OSS during the war. It used equipment—primarily Collins Radio Corporation Model 7.2 transceivers coupled with SIGABA encryption devices—acquired from the Army Security Agency’s Secret Communications Center at Vint Hill Farms Station in Virginia.