“Don’t be. Your people are taking care of you, which suggests they like you. How did you manage to get that place?”
“I have friends in high places.”
“El Jefe?”
“Justice Jackson.”
The door to the suite opened and Janice Johansen walked in.
“Why do I think you’re not about to take me to dinner, Adonis?”
“I’ve told you, you’re prescient,” Cronley replied.
“Who’s your friend?”
“Adonis is still making up his mind whether I fit that description, Miss Johansen.”
“This is Major Anthony Henderson,” Cronley said. “He’s the DCI-Europe inspector general.”
“Wallace sent you to snoop on Adonis, did he, Tony?”
“I wouldn’t put it in quite those words, Janice.”
“Well, Adonis, is he or ain’t he one of the good guys?”
“About three minutes ago, I decided he is.”
“Thank you,” Henderson said.
“So what are you and your new friend chatting about in here where no one can hear you? Castle Wewelsburg?”
“We were about to do just that.”
“You recall promising to tell me all about it, I hope.”
“I do.”
“Then I guess I got here just in time.”
Where do I start?
At the beginning.
And what do I tell them?
Every last goddamn thing, including that I left there feeling I had just escaped Dracula’s Castle.
With Dracula and sixty demons hot on my tail with evil intentions.
“We landed at an airfield near Paderborn Cohen has taken over, and X marked the runways so that nobody will land there . . .”
“My God!” Henderson said. “If it wasn’t you and Cohen, I wouldn’t believe any of this.”
“Janice, I hope you recall that when I told you I’d tell you, I told you you’d have to hold off on writing it.”
“I recall. But let me give a brief lesson in Journalism 101. Let’s say I knew for a fact—and nobody else did—that Harry Truman fortified himself with half a bottle of Old Crow before delivering the State of the Union speech. Because I have a certain reputation, if I wrote that story it would be on the front pages of a lot of newspapers. That would make the White House hate me and make me a candidate for the Pulitzer Prize.
“If, however, I knew for a fact—and nobody else did—that Bess had caught ol’ Harry with a hooker and beat him and the hooker nearly to death with a bottle of Old Crow and wrote the story, it wouldn’t get published. Nobody would believe it because they wouldn’t want to believe it. So who do you think would want to believe what you just told us?”