Switzer had with him a trim, dark-haired lieutenant colonel, who Cronley didn’t recognize.
Cohen seemed unconcerned and continued up the alley, then into the house. Cronley quickly followed, passing the DCI agent guarding the back door.
Ginger, holding the baby, came into the foyer.
“After that ambush at the train station, Jimmy, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again when they drove you away.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but here I am, if somewhat battered and bloody.”
The DCI agent at the door called out, “A Colonel Switzer to see you, Colonel.”
“Let him in. He’s one of the good guys,” Cohen said, then added in a loud stage voice, “Unless you’re here, Lou, to tell me what a disgrace I am to the CIC and to the Army in general.”
Switzer entered the room, trailed by the lieutenant colonel. Cronley thought he looked to be in his early thirties.
Switzer and Cohen shook hands, then embraced, patting each other on the back.
“Morty,” Switzer said, “this is my deputy, Frank Williams.”
“Colonel,” Cohen said to Williams.
As they shook hands, Cohen added, “This is Captain Cronley, in case you don’t know. And this is his fiancée, Virginia Moriarty.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Switzer said, taking her hand.
“And mine,” Williams then said, and shook her now free hand.
“Now that we’re all friends, Mo
rty,” Switzer said, “why don’t we have something alcoholic to celebrate your miraculous escape from spending the rest of your life in Leavenworth, the psychiatric wing thereof?”
Cohen chuckled.
“The bar would be this way,” Cohen said, making a sweeping gesture with his arm toward its door.
* * *
—
“So that’s where we’ve been and what we’ve been doing,” Cohen concluded his report to everyone in the safe house of what had happened.
Switzer cleared his throat. “If I may, Morty. I want everybody to understand that when General Makamson said he wanted Colonel Cohen and Captain Cronley taken to the lunatic ward for a thorough examination, he was damn dead serious.”
“I can understand that,” Ginger said.
“Thank you so kindly, my love,” Cronley said.
“I have a question for you, Captain Cronley,” Colonel Switzer said.
“Sir?”
“Do you also go along with Mort’s nutty idea that Himmler was starting a new religion?”
“Colonel, Himmler has started a Nazi religion,” Cronley said.
Ginger put in: “We were in Wewelsburg Castle yesterday. What I saw there convinced me that Himmler has indeed started something terrible. I have never felt such evil in my life. I wanted to scream and grab my baby and run for our lives.”
Switzer was silent, deep in thought.