Top Secret (Clandestine Operations 1)

“So far as I’m concerned, and I’m not saying this to agree with Admiral Souers . . .”

&nbs

p; Clete picked up on that “who’s junior?” implication.

He’s good at this.

“. . . the greatest threat to our nameless operation is that our Soviet friends are going to expose it. I say expose it because we would be fools to think they don’t know about it. It is just a matter of time before they penetrate Kloster . . .” He paused, looking for the name by looking at Cronley.

“Kloster Grünau,” Jimmy furnished.

“. . . Kloster Grünau. And the Pullach installation, which, because it’s not only not on a Bavarian mountaintop but close to Munich, will be an even easier target for penetration. I’m frankly surprised there hasn’t been a penetration of the monastery already.”

Cronley felt Mattingly’s eyes on him.

What’s he want?

Am I supposed to say, “Actually, now that you mention Russian penetration of my little monastery, I do have NKGB Major Konstantin Orlovsky locked up in a cell in what used to be the monastery chapel”?

Or keep my mouth shut?

“What about that, Captain Cronley?” Colonel Schumann asked. “Am I the only nefarious character you’ve caught trying to force his way into your monastery?”

Christ, now what do I say?

“Sir, you’re the only one I’ve had to discourage with a machine gun.”

My God, where did that come from?

General Greene laughed. Frade looked curious.

“Colonel Frade,” Schumann said, “I wouldn’t worry about anybody penetrating Cronley’s monastery. I know from painful personal experience that Cronley’s got it guarded by some of the toughest, meanest-looking Negro soldiers I have ever seen—they’re all at least six feet tall, and weigh at least two hundred pounds—who are perfectly willing—willing, hell, anxious—to turn their machine guns on anyone trying to get in.”

“Painful personal experience?” Frade replied. “I’d like to hear about that. And I guess I’ll see Cronley’s mean-looking troops when I go down there—”

“Excuse me?” Mattingly interrupted. “Colonel, did I understand you to say you’re going to Kloster Grünau?”

“Yes, you did.”

“May I ask why?”

“Yes, sir. Of course you may. Sooner or later, the Soviets are going to penetrate the monastery and/or the Pullach camp, no matter how many two-hundred-pound six-foot-tall soldiers with machine guns Cronley has guarding it.”

“Colonel, are you going to answer my question?” Mattingly demanded curtly.

“That’s what I’m trying to do, Colonel,” Frade replied, and then went on: “If all they find is that we are employing a number of former German officers and non-coms to assist General Greene in his counterintelligence efforts, so what? Where we would be in trouble would be if they discovered—or actually tried to arrest under their Army of Occupation authority—former members of the SS whose names they know and whose arrests they have already requested. Or if they got their hands on any paperwork that could incriminate us.”

He glanced at General Greene, and said: “Colonel Mattingly sent a great deal of the latter to me—Cronley carried it to Argentina—but I want to be absolutely sure he didn’t miss anything.”

He looked back at Mattingly: “So, to answer your question, Colonel Mattingly, what I plan to do at the monastery is get with General Gehlen and come up with a list of the ex-SS and everyone else with a Nazi connection that we have to get out of the monastery and Pullach and to Argentina as soon as possible. In other words, a list of those people we really can’t afford to have the Soviets catch us with, prioritized on the basis of which of them, so to speak, are the most despicable bastards. They go first. Oberst Otto Niedermeyer and I have been thinking about this for some time—”

“Who?” General Greene asked.

“He was Gehlen’s Number Two—”

“It’s my understanding that Colonel Mannberg is Gehlen’s Number Two,” Mattingly said.

“Niedermeyer tells me he was,” Frade replied. “And he’s the officer Gehlen sent to Argentina”—Frade paused and chuckled—“doubly disguised as a Franciscan monk and then as a Hauptscharführer.”