“Yes, ma’am.”
She offered her right hand and quickly groped him with the left.
“My husband will be fascinated to hear I’ve met you.”
[ FIVE ]
1310 30 October 1945
When the Army had requisitioned the Schlosshotel Kronberg to house OSS Forward, the German staff had come with it. Now, the hotel manager greeted the former commander of OSS Forward warmly.
Thus, Cronley was not surprised when, despite the inhospitable sign—THIS IS A FIELD GRADE OFFICERS’ FACILITY—behind the marble reception desk, the smiling manager assured Mattingly that he would be happy to accommodate Captain Cronley and arrange for a staff car to take the captain to the Eschborn airstrip in the morning.
The room that the manager assigned Cronley was one of the better ones. A small suite, it was on the ground floor. French doors opened onto a flagstone patio overlooking the golf course.
In the sitting room, Mattingly waved Cronley into an armchair. He took the one opposite it, leaned forward, and waved his hand in the general direction of the main dining room.
“I’m sorry about all that. If I ever knew about that damned newly arrived luncheon, I forgot about it.”
“Well, it gave General Greene a chance to stick it to you, didn’t it?”
Mattingly’s face tightened.
“You do have a flair for saying things you really shouldn’t, don’t you, Jim?”
“Sir, no disrespect was intended. But it was pretty obvious the general was sticking it to you. And liked it.”
Mattingly considered that for a moment.
“Okay. That’s as good a point to start as any. Did you wonder why General Greene was enjoying, to use your colorful phrase, sticking it to me?”
“Yes, sir. I did.”
“I was assigned as his deputy commander over his objections. I didn’t have the opportunity, the authority, to tell him why until Admiral Souers gave me the authority when we were in Washington. I told Admiral Souers that I had to tell him, so that he could get Colonel Schumann off our backs. Greene has known about Operation Ost and what’s going on at Kloster Grünau only since I told him the day we got back.
“Greene didn’t like being kept in the dark. That’s understandable. But now Schumann has been told to back off.”
“He was told about Operation Ost?”
“Of course not. Greene just told him that Kloster Grünau is off-limits to him, and to forget about you, and you shooting up the engine in his car. With him in it.”
“He apparently told Mrs. Schumann.”
“They call that ‘pillow talk.’ It happens. I can only hope that Schumann told his wife not to spread it amongst the girls of the CIC/ASA Officers’ Ladies Club.”
“Do you think he did?”
“Probably. Tony Schumann is a good officer. But he’s also Jewish, which means that he won’t stop looking into the rumors that somebody is getting Nazis out of Germany to Argentina, and wondering if what’s going on at Kloster Grünau has something to do with that.”
“Jesus!”
“And General Greene knows what I’m probably thinking about in that connection. So, yeah, he found it amusing that I showed up, with you in tow, at that CIC/ASA Officers’ Ladies Club Welcome Newly Arriveds luncheon, to be met by Mrs. Schumann.
“In a way, it was amusing. But it could have turned out the other way. She could very easily have not been as charming to you as she was. Some wives might be offended that a young officer had shot out the engine of their husband’s car and act accordingly. You follow me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She could have asked, ‘I’m curious why, Colonel Mattingly, after Captain Cronley fired a machine gun at my husband, he’s here and not in the EUCOM stockade awaiting court-martial?’”