Top Secret (Clandestine Operations 1)

More important, talking family!

“From Kansas,” Dunwiddie said. “Manhattan, Kansas. Or Fort Riley. Same thing. We go to school in Vermont. Norwich.”

“Konstantin has no idea what you’re talking about, Chauncey,” Cronley said.

“My family is Cavalry,” Dunwiddie said. “Fort Riley has been a cavalry post for a long time, almost a hundred years. And we Dunwiddies have been there since they put up the first stockade. We’re Buffalo Soldiers.”

“Now you’re really confusing him,” Cronley said.

“When we were fighting the Indians, before our Civil War, 1861 to 1865, the Indians called us Buffalo Soldiers because of this,” Dunwiddie said as he ran his fingers over his scalp. “They said we had hair like buffaloes.”

“Cowboys and Indians,” Orlovsky said.

“Cavalry and Indians,” Dunwiddie said. “If it wasn’t for the Cavalry, the Indians would have run the cowboys out of the West.”

“How interesting,” Orlovsky said. “But you said you went to school in Vermont?”

“After the Spanish American War, 1898, especially after the Ninth Cavalry beat Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders up San Juan Hill in Cuba,” Dunwiddie continued his lecture, “the Army finally got around to admitting that maybe black people could be officers. But they had to be college graduates. So my grandfather, Joshua H. Dunwiddie, who had been first sergeant of Troop B of the Ninth Cavalry, took his discharge and Teddy Roosevelt got him into Norwich . . .”

“Which is?”

“. . . From which he was graduated in the Class of 1900 and commissioned a second lieutenant of Cavalry. My father is Norwich ’twenty, and I’m Norwich ’forty-five.”

“It’s a school, a military academy?”

Cronley offered: “We have a number of private military academies, Konstantin.”

“Of which Norwich is the oldest,” Dunwiddie said.

“I went to one of them, the Texas Agriculture and Military Academy,” Cronley added. “And General George C. Marshall, who is our senior officer, went to another of them, the Virginia Military Institute. General Patton, come to think of it, went to VMI before he went to West Point.”

“Anyway, we Dunwiddies go to Norwich. Where we learned to appreciate Vermont maple syrup, which is why, my mother having sent me a half dozen pints of it, you are now about to pour it on your waffles.”

Orlovsky smiled and chuckled.

“You said you’d gone to Leningrad State University,” Cronley said. “Is that where you got your commission?”

Orlovsky’s face showed he was wondering if the question was innocent. And then Cronley saw disappointment on it when Orlovsky realized Cronley and Dunwiddie had an agenda.

Is he sorry he fell for our charm, and didn’t immediately suspect an agenda?

Or maybe he’s disappointed in me personally.

That disorientation of Bischoff’s wasn’t entirely ineffective. He had a lot of time to think in that cell with no lights and no company but the smell of his own feces.

And then I came along and was nice to him.

And was even nicer today.

He thought he

had found a friend, and what he’s disappointed about is that he knows he should have known better.

And then Cronley saw what he thought was resignation.

“No,” Orlovsky said. “The Leningrad State University has no connection with the military or the NKGB. Actually, I was sent there by the NKGB. I took what you Americans would call a master’s degree at Leningrad. Then I took what I suppose you could call my doctorate at the Felix Dzerzhinsky Federal Security Service Academy in Moscow. When I graduated, I was commissioned.”

“As a second lieutenant?”