“Why? I thought you said I wasn’t going to be excluded from anything.” He paused. “Wait. You sonofabitch! You think I’m the one with the loose mouth?”
“No. I know you’re not. I am.”
“What?”
“After the plane left yesterday, I went to the Park Hotel. Mrs. Rachel Schumann joined me there.”
“You’re referring to Colonel Schumann’s wife? The IG’s wife?” Gehlen asked.
Cronley nodded.
“What was that all about? Her camera?” Tiny asked.
“At the time, I thought she came there to get laid . . .”
“By you?” Tiny asked incredulously.
“By me. I have been fucking her ever since I came back from the States. Until about an hour ago, I thought it was my manly charm. Now I think she’s a fucking Russian spy.”
“You’re really out of your mind, you know that? That woman a Russian spy? Maybe the colonel’s one, too, huh? Maybe they work as a team. Jesus, Jimmy! What the hell have you been drinking? Or smoking?”
“Did it ever strike you as a little odd, Tiny,” Gehlen asked, “that Colonel Schumann, the day Jim shot up his car, was here at all? What was the inspector general of Counterintelligence doing here, on this back road in the country? Why was he so insistent on coming in, when it would have been so much easier for him to return to Frankfurt and have General Greene order that he be admitted? That happened, you might recall, not before, but a day or two after Sergeant Tedworth arrested Colonel Likharev.”
“Who?” Tiny asked. “Oh.”
“We will soon know if that is actually his name. He fooled us for a while. I have the feeling he has not fooled Father Welner or Colonel Frade.”
“Sir, you’re saying that you believe Cronley?”
“Let’s hear the rest of the story of his romance with Mrs. Schumann, and then we can ask ourselves the question again.”
—
“You are one dumb sonofabitch, Captain, sir,” Dunwiddie said, shaking his head, when Cronley had finished relating the romance.
“Everything fits, Tiny,” Gehlen said. And then chuckled. “It destroys poor Jim’s picture of himself as being as irresistible as Errol Flynn. But it all makes sense.”
“So, what happens now?” Tiny asked.
“In the morning, I fly to Frankfurt and tell Colonel Mattingly,” Cronley said.
“No. That’s out of the question,” Gehlen said.
“Excuse me, General?”
“Think that through, Jim. If you are correct, and I think you are, the Schumanns have thought their exposure through and come up with a plan to deal with it. Those plans range from outright denial to flight. The latter we cannot afford.”
“And the alternative?” Cronley asked.
“You’re under orders from Colonel Frade not to get in my way,” Gehlen said. “Why don’t you just follow them?”
“What are your plans for your officers, the ones Likharev says are the ones he turned?” Tiny asked. “Actually, how do you know those are the real traitors, that from his deathbed Likharev isn’t going to get two Good Germans whacked, and get us to do it?”
“‘Us to do it’?” Gehlen said. “They’re my responsibility, Tiny. Not yours.”
“Ours, General,” Dunwiddie insisted. “I wouldn’t mind whacking them myself, but I’d have to be sure they are indeed trying to sink everybody else.”
“And I would like to shoot Colonel Schumann and his wife,” Cronley said. “So why don’t I do that first, and then go tell Mattingly why I did it?”