“What he’s doing right now is thinking it over.”
“He didn’t say anything?”
“What he said was, ‘Why would you expect me to believe something like that?’ And I said because I was telling him the truth, that I wasn’t promising to get his family out of Russia, just that I would make Gehlen try. I also told him if he was a man, he’d do anything he could to help his family. Then he called me a sonofabitch, and that was the end of the conversation.”
Clete shook his head.
“But he’s thinking about it, Clete. I know that in my gut. He doesn’t give a damn what happens to him. But his family is different. He doesn’t want them shot or sent to Siberia. What I did was . . . sow the seed, I guess . . . to start him thinking.”
“And you really thought Mattingly would put Operation Ost at risk by trying to sneak an NKGB officer out of Germany? And that Gehlen would risk his agents-in-place by trying to get an NKGB officer’s family out of Russia? My God!”
“I thought I could sell both of them on the idea that if we turned Orlovsky—the NKGB didn’t send a guy who graduated from spy school two months ago to penetrate Operation Ost—we’d all be ahead.”
“That’s pretty sophisticated thinking for a guy who—if memory serves—was about to graduate from spy school about that long ago. But didn’t finish spy school because they needed his expert services here to run a roadblock.”
“Yeah, and I probably didn’t know much more about running that roadblock—or Kloster Grünau when they gave that to me—than you did about blowing up ships when you went to Argentina.”
“Well, some things haven’t changed. Your mouth still runs away with you, you’re not troubled with modesty, and you have a hard time even admitting the possibility that you can be mistaken.”
Jimmy didn’t reply.
“I’ll try to get you out of this, but don’t get your hopes up,” Clete went on. “I think you are probably going to spend the rest of your military career—how long are you in for?”
“Four years.”
“The next three years and some months counting toilet paper rolls at Camp Holabird. Or some other place where they send stupid young intelligence officers so they can’t do any more damage.”
“If you’re waiting for me to say I’m sorry, don’t hold your breath.”
“What time does the sun come up?”
“What?” Jimmy said, and then understood. “Half past six.”
“And it takes how long to get to the airfield?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Be waiting for me in the lobby at six. Good night, Jimmy.”
[ THREE ]
Cronley went to his room, took a shower, packed his bag, and went to bed.
There was a chance, he thought, that Rachel would somehow ditch her husband and come to see him. He had just decided that would be really stupid on her part and wasn’t going to happen when there was a knock at his door.
And there she was.
“This is not smart,” he greeted her.
“I know,” she said, and pushed past him into the room.
“General Magruder came back from dinner with General Eisenhower,” she said, “and asked Colonel Mattingly and my husband to join him for a drink in the bar. I passed. I said I was going to walk off all the food I’d had. We have no more than thirty minutes. That give you any ideas?”
She tugged off her shoes as she headed for the bed.
—
“Where were you?” Rachel asked, perhaps ten minutes later. “If you’d been here the first time I knocked, we’d have had an hour.”