Curtain of Death (Clandestine Operations 3)

“I’m not sure I know how to do that, sir.”

“Without saying it in so many words, tell Bonehead to have your wives pack everything up and have it ready to load in the ambulances either late tonight or first thing in the morning. Got it?”

“I’ll try, sir.”

“I think maybe I should go with the ambulances,” Hessinger said.

He wants to play an active role.

“You’re needed here.”

“I could be back tomorrow night.”

“Somebody with DCI credentials should go,” Claudette said. “I could.”

Cronley looked at her, then said, “Okay, Freddy. I need Dette here. You go. How about this? We fly you up there. When you’re on the Air Corps side of the base, call Mrs. Moriarty and have her meet you in the PX or someplace. Tell her what’s going on, get her and Mrs. Winters to pack their stuff. Then, either tonight—or in the morning, when they’ve left Fritzlar—you fly back.”

“That’d work,” Hessinger said.

“Or I could go, sir,” Winters said. “And do the same thing. I came here in an L-4, and . . .”

“You’d like to be with your wife?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s understandable,” Cronley said.

But unless I make it clear right now that this is DCI, and not a Constabulary regiment, where you can ask for—and get—time off to deal with family problems, this will quickly get out of hand.

Was getting him and Bonehead and their very pregnant wives transferred here yet more proof that I’m a loose cannon fucking things up because I don’t think things through?

“I need you here, Winters. Sorry. What did you say about coming here in an L-4?”

“Colonel Wilson arranged that, sir. It’s the one we get.”

On the other hand, he didn’t remind me his wife is pregnant, and couldn’t I please reconsider his request? And he said “we.”

Doesn’t that confirm my snap character judgment that he’s a good, duty-first officer?

“Where is it?”

“Schleissheim.”

Schleissheim was the Munich Military Post airfield.

“Well, we can’t leave it there,” Cronley said. “So what’s going to happen now is we’ll get in the Kapitän, and Freddy will take us to Schleissheim and then drive to the Compound. We’ll get in the Piper Cub and fly it to the Compound. While that’s going on, Dette, you will call the Compound and tell Max—”

“Max is taking your guest to the monastery,” Claudette interrupted.

“I stand corrected. You will tell the Pole duty officer and the trooper NCOIC to load up the ambulances and head for the Air Corps, repeat Air Corps, side of the base at Fritzlar, where Freddy will meet them and tell them what to do.

“Freddy, on his arrival at the Compound, will send the Kapitän back here with two or three Poles in it. The Poles, who will have by then been instructed never to get more than ten feet from you, Miss Colbert, will then drive you to the Compound.”

“That’s not necessary,” Claudette protested. “I can take care of myself.”

“That was not a suggestion,” Cronley said. “Meanwhile, at the Compound, Lieutenant Winters and I will shoot touch and goes until he feels confident in his ability to do it by himself. We will then park the Piper, and taking Major Bischoff with us in a Storch, fly to the monastery so that Konrad can have a nice long chat with our guest.

“Once that’s been set up, we’ll go back to the Compound. By then, it is to be hoped, Winters will have absorbed enough of my expert instruction to be able to land the Storch at the Compound. If we live through that, we will tell General Gehlen and Colonel Mannberg what we have learned about our guest at the monastery, and what Bischoff thinks we might learn in the future. Got it?”