“Then he’ll go to Frankfurt and tell him in person.”
“Gehlen doesn’t want to go to Mattingly with this unless he has to. So before he does, he’ll try to reason with me. Or send Mannberg back to reason with me. I think it’ll take him two days—three, if we’re lucky—to realize I can’t be reasoned with. So we have that much time to get those names from Orlovsky.”
“And if he doesn’t give them to us?”
“I don’t know.”
“If he does, Jim, then what are you going to do with him, send him to Argentina?”
After a moment, Cronley said, “Now there’s a thought!”
“You didn’t think of that?” Dunwiddie asked incredulously.
Cronley’s face showed that he hadn’t.
“I’m so glad to hear that you’ve really thought this problem through,” Dunwiddie said. “Answered all the little ‘What if’s’ that came to mind.”
“I don’t think he’d believe me if I offered him Argentina,” Cronley said thoughtfully. “Why should he?”
“You have an honest face?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Cronley said, still thoughtfully. And then he ordered, “Get Tedworth on the phone. Tell him to bring Orlovsky back upstairs—at oh-five-hundred tomorrow. He should have had enough time to do some thinking by then. And at midnight, wake him up and feed him his lunch. Something nice, just so he thinks it’s lunch. I want to keep him confused about what time it is.”
[ FIVE ]
Commanding Officer’s Quarters
Kloster Grünau
Schollbrunn, Bavaria
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0505 1 November 1945
“Good afternoon, Major Orlovsky,” Cronley said as Staff Sergeant Lewis pulled the duffel bag from the Russian’s head.
Orlovsky, who was again barefoot and covered with the blanket tied around his body, didn’t reply.
“Captain, do you want me to take the cuffs off his ankles?” Lewis asked.
“Maybe that won’t be necessary,” Cronley said. “That will depend on the major’s reply to what I’m going to ask him.”
He waited until Orlovsky’s eyes had time to adjust from the darkness of the duffel bag to the light in the sitting room.
“Have you had a little time to think about what’s going to happen when they take you to NKGB headquarters in Berlin after they find you sitting tied up on the street by the Brandenburg Gate?”
“Of course I have,” Orlovsky said.
“You think they’re going to be just a little disappointed in you, allowing yourself to get caught here?”
Orlovsky didn’t reply.
“And wonder what information you shared with us?”
Orlovsky’s face remained expressionless.
“And I’m sure you’ve thought they are going to wonder if you really didn’t tell us a thing. And the unlikelihood that they will believe you when you assure them that you lived up to your obligations as an NKGB officer. And what that will mean for you. And I don’t just mean your being subjected to a lengthy interrogation.”