“I’ll be all right.”
“Good,” Serov said. He then raised his half-full glass of Jack Daniel’s and
drained it.
He stood up and said, “A day unfortunately not to be forgotten,” and then walked out of the bar.
I am not stupid enough to drink myself into oblivion. I will slowly finish this one and go to my room, have a shower, and then go to bed, either with good ol’ Janice, or by myself. In either case I will probably later have nightmares about what Castle Wewelsburg is all about.
Cronley was, literally, staring into his empty glass when a voice saying “Captain Cronley?” brought him back to the here and now.
He looked at the speaker and saw it was the major with the familiar face he had seen when he came in the bar.
“You are Captain Cronley, right?”
“Yeah, but how do you know that?”
The major produced DCI credentials, identifying him as Anthony M. Henderson. Cronley now remembered, clearly, where they had met, in the Schlosshotel Kronberg, and who El Jefe had said he was, a War II OSS comrade in arms now in DCI.
“Now I remember you,” Cronley admitted. “Just passing through Nuremberg, are you?”
Henderson smiled. “Harold Wallace sent me down here to see what you needed. I’m DCI-Europe’s new inspector general. May I sit down?”
“Why not? Help yourself to the Jack Daniel’s. I’m through for the night.”
“Thank you. I will,” he said. “Bad day? I couldn’t help but notice you and your friends didn’t look as if you were having a good time.”
“Ask away.”
“Excuse me?”
“Ask the next question. ‘I couldn’t help but wonder who . . .’”
“Consider it asked.”
“What you saw, Major, was me doing just what Sun-tzu recommended. ‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.’ The U.S. colonel was Mortimer Cohen, who commands the CIC at the War Trials. The Russian polkovnik was Ivan Serov, formerly of the NKGB.”
“What was that all about?”
“Major, with all respect, what I suspect is that Colonel Wallace sent you down here to see what I’m up to, particularly what I’m doing wrong.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I think the acronym is CYA.”
“And you think that he would not be pleased to learn what you were up to with Colonel Cohen and Polkovnik Serov?”
“He is rarely pleased with anything I do.”
“He wasn’t pleased when you got Bob Mattingly back from Polkovnik Serov?”
“He wasn’t pleased with the way I did it.”
“Oscar was.”
“Oscar? As in Oscar Schultz, executive assistant to Admiral Souers?”
“Right. And El Jefe told me how pleased he, the admiral, and President Truman were with you when you found U-234 at the Magellan Strait and took out SS-Oberführer Horst Lang just before he was going to sell five hundred and sixty kilos of uranium oxide to our Russian friends.”