They were understandably less than thrilled.
After telling them everything, I now have, I think, a lieutenant and three good non-coms who are looking forward to being part of Operation Ost.
And maybe, just maybe, they may have decided that the baby-faced captain isn’t such a candy-ass after all.
XI
[ ONE ]
The Dining Room
Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten
Maximilianstrasse 178
Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1325 4 November 1945
There was a colonel and a formidable-looking woman almost certainly his wife sitting at the table next to where Rachel had been waiting for him for almost an hour.
When Rachel blows up—and why else would she still be waiting for me, if not to blow up?—the colonel and his lady are going to get an earful.
“Mrs. Schumann, I’m so sorry to be late—”
“Don’t be silly, Special Agent Cronley,” Rachel said. “Special Agent Hessinger was kind enough to come by and tell me you were unavoidably detained. And the colonel made it perfectly clear to me that your entertaining me until he gets here depended on the press of your duties. Say no more. Please sit down.”
That was obviously intended for the ears of the colonel and his formidable lady.
Rachel is, after all—maybe above all—a colonel’s lady. Like Caesar’s wife, colonels’ ladies have to be above suspicion. They shouldn’t be suspected of, for example, fucking young officers.
Maybe that’s what’s behind the bloom coming off the rose. Rachel has had time to think about what we’ve been up to. And wants to stop.
That’s what it has to be. I got lucky again.
“Thank you,” Cronley said, and sat down.
He had just adjusted his chair and reached for the napkin when he felt her foot searching his crotch.
[ TWO ]
Suite 527
Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten
Maximilianstrasse 178
Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1415 4 November 1945
“Sweetheart,” Mrs. Rachel Schumann said to Captain James D. Cronley Jr., “don’t be offended, but you need a shower.”
They had been in Suite 527 perhaps two minutes, just long enough for them to be partially disrobed. That was, Rachel had pulled her dress over her head, and then pulled Jimmy’s trousers and shorts down to his ankles. She was now on her knees, with his member in her hand.
It was the smell, or perhaps the taste, of the latter that she apparently found offensive.
“Go on,” Rachel went on. “I don’t know what you were doing all morning with that Russian of yours, but you smell like him. Don’t worry. I’ll be here when you come out.”