Death at Nuremberg (Clandestine Operations 4)

“Is that what we’re calling it, ‘the Mansion’?”

“That’s what it is,” Hessinger said.

“Do it,” Cronley ordered.

“Miss Miller is who?” Cohen asked.

“Formerly one of General Greene’s finest. Now a DCI cryptographer, SIGABA operator, room debugger, und so weiter,” Cronley answered.

The waiter appeared pushing a rolling cart on which sat silver wine coolers holding enough Berliner Kindl beer to serve three bottles of each to everyone. He served theirs first, and left.

“Not to worry, Colonel,” Cronley said, “Hessinger will charge it to DCI under the ‘miscellaneous expenses, hospitality’ category. We are plying you with suds to get you and Janice to tell all.”

“I know what I want from you,” Janice said, “but what do you want from Morty here?”

“Only my friends get to call me ‘Morty,’ Miss Johansen.”

“Then let’s be friends, Morty,” she said. “What does Jim want you to tell him?”

Cronley held his hand up to keep Cohen from replying.

“When the waiter’s finished, Sigmund,” he said, “show him out, and then guard the premises from the corridor.”

“As you wish, sir,” the man with the Thompson said.

When they had left, Cohen said, “He sounds British.”

“Sigmund Karwowski served five years in Old Blighty as a Free Polish Army major,” Cronley explained. “When we recruited him, he was a watchman—private—in the Provisional Security Organization, guarding groceries in the Giessen Quartermaster Depot. Once the SIGABA is moved, I’m going to put him in charge of Judge Biddle’s security team. Good man.”

“The Poles really lost the war, didn’t they?” Cohen said.

“Turning the conversation to what happened to Bonehead?” Janice said.

“Okay, I’ll tell you,” Cronley said, and did so.

—

“Okay,” Janice said, when he had finished. “I’ll sit on it.”

“Thank you.”

“And now what are you trying to get out of Morty here?”

“I don’t think the colonel would like you to know that.”

“I’m about to continue my lecture on the real problem of Nazism,” Cohen said. “If you’re willing to restrain your journalist’s tendency to ask a question every fifteen seconds, you might find it interesting.”

“The ‘real problem of Nazism’? Lecture away, Morty.”

“You missed ‘Real Problem 101,’ Janice,” Ziegler said. “That was a visit with Kaltenbrunner, followed by Colonel Cohen telling us what a three-star bastard he really is. That was followed by the colonel saying, ‘You ain’t heard nothing yet.’”

“And you haven’t,” Cohen replied. And then continued: “There is a castle not too far from here near Paderborn I’d like to show you—”

“Wewelsburg?” Hessinger interrupted.

“Yes. What do you know about Wewelsburg Castle?”

“Not nearly as much as I would like to.”