“What I have to do is get on the SIGABA and get the word to Colonel Wallace and General Greene,” Henderson said. “And I suggest that the rest of you move your discussion somewhere where you know no one’s listening. Did you think about having your room here swept, Cronley?”
“It gets swept once a day.”
“Good thinking.”
[THREE]
The Duchess Suite
Farber Palast
Stein, near Nuremberg
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1835 24 February 1946
The door opened and Janice Johansen walked in.
“They threw you out of the bar, right?” she greeted the men in the room, who were sitting in chairs gathered in a rough circle around the enormous bed.
No one replied.
She went to the dressing room and returned with a chair and joined the circle.
“So what are you talking about that you don’t want anyone, especially me, to hear?”
“Something we don’t want to see on the front page of Stars and Stripes,” Cohen said.
“Okay, what?”
“Somebody tried to whack me,” Cronley said.
“Well, they apparently missed. Who somebody?”
That’s all of her reaction?
Not “Oh, my God! Are you all right, Adonis?”
Or words to that effect?
“You came in at the tail end of a long discussion in which it was decided we don’t know,” Cohen said. “The suspects are Odessa and the NKGB.”
“Why would the Russians want to whack Cronley?”
“I embarrassed ol’ Ivan when we got Mattingly back. Am I forgiven, or did he come to Nuremberg to kidnap, or whack, me?”
“I confess I’ve been a little curious about his piety,” she said. “Why is Odessa pissed at you? I mean, specifically at you.”
“Probably because they know I’m after von Dietelburg. Maybe I’m getting close, and that’s why they want to take me out.”
“The word that he’s been asking the wrong kind of questions could have come out of the prison. They know you talked to Kaltenbrunner and Macher,” Ostrowski said.
“Actually, Max,” Cohen said, “I’ve always been more worried about things being smuggled out of the prison than getting smuggled in. Orders, for example. In this case, to Odessa. This new man, Cronley, is asking the wrong kind of questions. Take him out.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong, Colonel,” Ostrowski replied. “You’re right. What I saw was how easy it is for the prisoners to get messages out. Orders to Odessa or somebody else. Not necessarily written. Verbal. And even coded verbal. ‘PFC Smith, please get word to my wife that I have no further problems with my ingrown toenail.’”
“Obviously, you’ve been giving some thought to the prisoners and their guards?” Cohen said. It was a question.