“Yes, sir. And so do those two close friends of yours.”
“Point taken,” Jackson replied. “Okay.” He smiled. “If your man speaks, Justice Lawrence will be most curious about the Pole I brought with me. And much too polite to ask.”
“If Max says anything at all, sir, I suggest Justice Lawrence will wonder who the Englishman you have with you is. Max sounds like the King of England.”
“Even better,” Jackson said. “That will really trigger Sir Geoffrey’s curiosity.”
[THREE]
Farber Palast
Stein, near Nuremberg
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1150 21 February 1946
“Over here, sweetheart,” Janice Johansen called, as Cronley came down the wide staircase into the lobby.
He went to where she was sitting at a small table next to the closed door to the bar. With her was a rumpled, chubby man in his forties. He had an unkempt mustache and was wearing ODs with a War Correspondent patch.
“Say hello to my boss, sweetie,” Janice said.
The man extended his hand.
“Seymour Krantz,” he said. “My friends call me Sy.”
“Jim Cronley.”
“Janice has been telling me all about you.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Sy’s one of the good guys, sweetie.”
“Have a seat,” Sy said. “In ten minutes, the bar will open and we can have a breakfast beer.”
Cronley sat down.
“How did things go at the Palace of Justice?” Janice asked.
“Fine.”
“How did Jackson react to being told he now has a bodyguard?” Sy asked.
Cronley gave Janice a dirty look.
Sy saw it.
“They call that the boss–underling relationship,” Sy said. “Janice tells me everything, otherwise I send her home to cover vice presidential social events.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Let’s clear the air,” Sy said. “Sometime ago, a decision was made at the highest executive level of the Associated Press–Europe—in other words, by me—that the world really doesn’t have to know what DCI-Europe is up to. I happen to be one of the few people, like Harry S Truman, who thinks Uncle Joe Stalin is dangerous as hell, and I’m certainly—the AP certainly—isn’t going to fuck up anything he’s doing to fuck up Uncle Joe by letting the Russians know what he’s doing.
“As proof of that, I have known from the git-go that the OSS and now the DCI has shipped Nazis to South America as part of the deal Allen Dulles made with Generalmajor Reinhard Gehlen. And we haven’t written about it. What I did do was tell Janice to keep an eye on it, which brought her into your life. Getting the picture?”
Oh, boy! Here we go again.