Curtain of Death (Clandestine Operations 3)

They were annoyed because they had been told by a large Negro staff sergeant sitting in a jeep with a pedestal-mounted Browning .50 to “stay in the jeep until they come back from lunch.”

Augie Ziegler walked up to the jeep and extended his hand to the master sergeant.

“Hey, Phil,” he said.

“I’ve got your pictures, Augie,” he said. “What the hell is this place?”

“Read the sign,” Ziegler said, pointing to the OFFICE OF THE OMGUS LIAISON OFFICER sign, and then put his hand out for the large manila envelo

pe on the sergeant’s lap.

The sergeant handed him the envelope.

“I guess you’re not going to tell me,” the sergeant said.

“I just did. Come with me.”

The sergeant followed him into the building, where Augie laid the envelope before Cronley.

“Master Sergeant Phillips has brought us the pictures, sir.”

“Thanks,” Cronley said to the sergeant. “Stick around a minute, please.”

He took an inch-and-a-half-thick stack of 8×10-inch black-and-white photographs from it and then quickly flipped through them.

“I’m glad you brought these after I had my lunch,” Cronley said.

“They are pretty grim, sir,” the MP said.

“Negatives?”

“Sorry,” the MP said, and took several 4×5-inch envelopes from his breast pocket and handed them over.

“And the fingerprints?” Cronley asked.

“The hospital won’t hand them over until they finish the autopsies,” the MP said. “Then they’ll give us both the autopsies and the prints.”

“Damn!”

“How important are the fingerprints right now?” Ziegler asked.

“Excuse me?” Cronley asked.

“They won’t be much use to us until we identify those people, Jim,” Mannberg answered for him. “And then all we’ll have is confirmation that ‘Body A’ is really so-and-so.”

“I see that my monumental ignorance has once again surfaced,” Cronley said. “But then, Ziegler, why did you ask for them ‘as soon as we can have them’?”

“I think they call that ‘dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s,’” Claudette said.

Ziegler looked at her and they smiled.

“The thing to do, I suggest,” Mannberg said, “is to see if General Gehlen or I can identify these people—which is unlikely—and then send them over to Kaserne Two and see if anyone there can. Unlikely, but possible.”

“You obviously think identifying these people is very important,” Cronley said, as he shoved the stack of photographs and the negatives to the center of the table. He then added, “I don’t think you want to see those, Dette.”

“I don’t want to, but . . .”

“As the victim you think you should?”