She gave him her hand and he shook it.
“General Greene asked me to pick you up and take you out to the Schlosshotel for the meeting.”
“That’s very kind.”
“My car is right outside,” Rachel said, quickly reclaiming her hand.
“Mrs. Schumann, I have to see about getting my tanks topped off.” He pointed to the Flight Planning/Weather room. “It’ll take me just a minute.”
“I’ll wait in the car. It’s a Chrysler Town and Country.”
“It’ll take me just a minute,” Cronley repeated, and then watched her as she walked out of the building.
What the hell is going on?
—
Cronley slid onto the front seat of the wooden-sided station wagon, closed the door, and turned to Rachel. She had the engine running, and started off.
Well, I guess I don’t get a welcoming kiss. Or a fond little grope.
What did you expect?
“We’re going to have to stop meeting this way,” Cronley said. “People will start to talk.”
She chuckled.
“Rachel, what the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know. Or I don’t know much.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
She nodded. “Tony got in very late last night from Kassel. This morning—he was going into work late, after lunch—we
were having breakfast when General Greene called. He told Tony to come out to the Schlosshotel right then. Tony’s driver had been told to pick him up for work at thirteen hundred, so with no staff car Tony asked me to run him to the hotel. When I was dropping him off, General Greene said he needed a favor. You were flying into Eschborn and needed a ride. So here I am.”
“What’s going on at the hotel?”
“All I know is that General Greene called the meeting. Putting you and Tony at the meeting . . .”
“And Mattingly?”
“I saw that enormous car of his in the parking lot . . .”
“His Horch?”
“Is that what it is? It suggests he’s part of the meeting. Putting you and my husband and Colonel Mattingly at the meeting makes me think it has to do with what you’re doing at wherever you are in Bavaria.”
“Kloster Grünau.”
“But that’s just a guess.”
“Good guess. Did anyone ever tell you you have very sexy knees?”
“Eyes off my knees and hands in your lap,” Rachel said, pulling down the hem of her skirt.
They were now on the rather narrow, curving two-lane road leading to the Schlosshotel from the airstrip.