He wondered whose idea that had been, and who had done it.
Then he saw Kurt Schröder and two of his mechanics working on the landing gear of the other Storch, Seven-One-Seven, which explained everything.
He shut down Seven-Oh-Seven, got out, gave Schr
öder a smile and a thumbs-up for the hangar, and then walked to where Dunwiddie was waiting. He got in the ambulance that was no longer an ambulance.
“The look on your face, Captain, sir,” Dunwiddie greeted him, “suggests that things did not go well with Colonel Mattingly.”
“No. They didn’t. We need to talk, and I don’t want anybody to hear what I have to say.”
“Well, that’s why I brought the ambulance.”
He started the engine, drove out onto the runway, and stopped.
“Thanks to my genius,” he said, “we can sit here in comfort while you share everything, and nobody can hear what you’re saying.”
—
Five minutes later, Cronley finished telling Tiny everything—with the exception of the intimate acts with Mrs. Colonel Schumann—he’d been thinking, even though halfway through the recitation he realized he sounded paranoid.
When Dunwiddie didn’t say anything, Cronley said, “What are you thinking, Tiny? That my captain’s bars have gone to my head? Or that I am paranoid? Or simply out of my mind? Or all of the above?”
Tiny shrugged his massive shoulders.
“What I was thinking was that I knew the first time I saw you that you were going to be trouble. To answer your questions, not in the order you asked them, Do I think you’re paranoid about Mattingly? I really wish I could, but I can’t.”
“You don’t?” Cronley asked in surprise.
“Did you ever wonder how he got to be commander of OSS Forward? And why Dulles, or whoever, gave him responsibility for Operation Ost?”
“He’s good at what he does?”
Dunwiddie did not reply directly. He instead said, “Being a colonel and Number Two to David Bruce in London is not bad for someone who before the war was a weekend warrior lieutenant in the National Guard, and made his living as a professor of languages at a university run by the Episcopal Church. And he’s a very young full colonel. You ever wonder about that?”
“The guy who gave us the Storches made light colonel at twenty-four.”
“General White told me about Lieutenant Colonel Hotshot Billy Wilson. Different situation from Mattingly.”
“How different?”
“Wilson got his silver leaf very early because even before Pearl Harbor, General White wanted small airplanes in the Army. Wilson almost single-handedly did that little chore for him. And then he did some spectacular things like flying Mark Clark into Rome the day it was declared an open city. And he’s a West Pointer. That didn’t hurt.
“Mattingly, on the other hand, got where he is by doing, ruthlessly, whatever had to be done in the OSS. And he’ll do whatever he thinks has to be done here. I’m not sure that he’d go as far as getting you run over by a truck, or assisting your suicide, to keep it quiet. But only because he knows the OSS guy in Argentina would certainly ask questions. Mattingly didn’t get where he is because he doesn’t know how to cover his ass.”
“You don’t like him very much, do you?” Cronley asked, gently sarcastic.
Dunwiddie looked at Cronley as if making up his mind whether to say something. Finally, he said, “Just before General White left Germany for Fort Riley, I had a few minutes with him.”
He saw the questioning look on Cronley’s face, and explained, “He and my father are classmates at Norwich. ’Twenty. Old friends. General White knew my father would expect him to check up on me, so he had Colonel Wilson fly him into Eschborn. OSS Forward was still alive then, in the Schlosshotel. We had a cup of coffee in the snack bar.
“During that little conversation, the general asked, ‘Chauncey, do I tell your father you still feel you made the right decision?’ I asked, ‘Sir, what decision is that?’ And he said, ‘To pass up your commission so that you could stay with the OSS Guard Company. Colonel Mattingly told me you said you saw that as the most important service you could render for the time being and getting your commission would just have to wait.’”
“I’ll be a sonofabitch!”
“What I should have said was, ‘Uncle Isaac, I hate to tell you this . . .’”
“Uncle Isaac?”