“How did a nice boy like you wind up with the Loose Cannon?” Wasserman asked, then quickly added, “Don’t answer that. I don’t think I want to know. But when you write, give my regards to your mother and dad.”
“I’ll do that, sir,” Winters said.
Wasserman turned his attention to the letter. When he finished, he held it out toward Spurgeon. “Okay with you, Loose Cannon?”
“Yes, sir. And if it pleases the colonel, the captain prefers ‘Super Spook’ to ‘Loose Cannon.’”
“Duly noted,” Wasserman said. “From Zielinski? When did you get this?”
“Who else?” Cronley replied. “It was delivered early this morning.”
“Do you think by ‘what you’re looking for’ he means von Dietelburg?”
“I certainly hope so.”
“If Zielinski has found von Dietelburg,” Spurgeon said, “he must have been in the Viktoria Palast—and wearing a name tag—the first time Zielinski walked in—and that’s only been a couple of days.”
“The question should be directed to Zielinski,” Cronley said. “And where the hell is he?”
There was a knock at the door.
“What the hell is that?” Cronley asked impatiently, and then ordered, “Tom, answer that.”
Winters had just opened the door a crack when it was pushed open so quickly and hard that it struck him in the face. He staggered backward.
Cronley reached for his pistol, as Wieczorek retrieved a Schmeisser machine pistol from under the couch.
Then he said, as he signaled Wieczorek to lower the Schmeisser, “Shit! Jesus H. Christ! What the hell?”
“Sorry, young man,” a middle-aged grandmotherly woman wearing an ornate hat and holding a dachshund puppy against her ample breast, said to Winters. “I didn’t think I had time to stand in the hall and explain myself.”
“What the hell is going on, Rahil?” Cronley asked.
“I have reluctantly concluded that Nikolayevich Merkulov is on to me,” she said. “Cronley, you have to get me out of Vienna to somewhere safe.”
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Wasserman said.
“Can I tell him?” Cronley asked.
“Since I just told you Merkulov is on to me, why not?” the grandmotherly woman said. She put out her hand to Wasserman, as if she expected him to kiss, rather that shake, it.
“I know who you are, Colonel,” she said. “My name is Rahil—that’s Rachel in English—Rothschild. General Gehlen—and of course Cronley—call me ‘Seven-K.’”
Wasserman rose to the occasion. He bowed over her hand and kissed it.
“Enchanté, madame,” he said.
“I have been—I suppose, for the moment, still am—a polkovnik of the NKGB. I am also an agent of Mossad. I confess the latter because I know you’re also a Jew.”
“One whose allegiance, Polkovnik, is to the United States,” Wasserman said.
“I’m not too fond of Mossad myself right now. The Vienna station chief—an American, by the way—told me yesterday that not only can’t he risk his operation here by helping me avoid the NKGB, but refused to let me appeal to Reuven Zamir.”
“Who’s he?” Cronley asked.
“I’m surprised you don’t know, James, that he’s the chief of Mossad.”
“In other words, this sonofabitch, this American sonofabitch, threw you under the bus when you asked for help?”