“We’ve got the sonofabitch—and his boss. Why should that be a secret?” Cronley challenged.
Seidel literally had his mouth open to reply, but stopped when Major General I. D. White, followed by his aide-de-camp, Mr. Oscar Schultz, and a third man in a business suit, entered the room.
“General Seidel,” Schultz said, “this is Colonel Cletus Frade, USMCR, who is deputy director for South America of the DCI. Clete, you know Colonel Wallace. And Super Spook.”
“You got both of these characters, Jimmy?” Frade asked.
“Leaving dead bodies and outraged Austrian police in his wake,” Wallace said.
“I wasn’t talking to you, Colonel,” Frade said coldly.
“Where’s General Gehlen?” Schultz asked.
“I presume in his quarters,” Wallace said.
“Ask him, Oberst Mannberg, and Mr. Niedermeyer to join us, please,” Schultz said.
Wallace walked out of the room.
“What the hell are you doing here, Clete?” Cronley asked.
“I was in Washington admitting to my grandfather that I’m taking Howell Petroleum to the brink of financial ruin as its new president when El Jefe found me and told me he needed a ride over here. And why. So we got in the Howell Petroleum Constellation and here we are.”
“I understood Mr. Schultz to say you were DCI deputy director for South America,” Seidel said.
“That we don’t talk about,” Schultz said. “Take notice, Janice.”
“My lips are sealed,” she said.
Five minutes later, Gehlen, Niedermeyer, and Mannberg came into the room.
“Okay. We’re all here,” Schultz said. “Let’s start with hearing Super Spook’s version of what happened. I’ve already heard Wallace’s and Wasserman’s somewhat hysterical versions.
“Okay, Super Spook, start with Rachel, a.k.a. Seven-K.”
“She came to me saying she had been outed—”
“Who are we talking about?” Seidel asked.
“She is—or was—an asset of mine. An NKGB colonel and also a Mossad agent,” Gehlen said.
“Not an asset of yours, General,” Schultz said. “An asset of DCI. As the Süd-Deutsche Industrielle Entwicklungsorganisation is a DCI asset.”
“I stand corrected.”
“Go on, Cronley.”
“She came to me and said the NKGB was on to her, and she had to get out of Vienna. She said the Vienna Mossad guy had thrown her . . . had refused to help her.”
“You knew she was an asset, correct?”
“Yes, I did.”
“So you got her out of Vienna?”
“Yes.”
“And where is she now?”