“Pray continue, Mon Commandant.”
“DuPres—by then Capitaine DuPres—was having remarkable success in the interrogation of German officers. This came to my attention—”
Cronley broke in: “As you were rolling across France with Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division in the turret of your Sherman tank, right? Shouting, ‘Allons, mes enfants, allons au Rhin’?”
Winters made the translation without thinking about it.
Cronley just stuck it to him.
There’s no way a major riding in a tank in Northern France shouting, “Come on, my children, on to the Rhine!” would know anything about a Goumier captain in southern France saying anything, much less about his skill at interrogation.
Unless of course the major was something other than an armored major—say, a colonel in intelligence.
“I thought you didn’t speak French,” Fortin said.
“If you’re going to be in this business, Jean-Paul, you’re going to have to learn not to take anything anyone tells you at face value.”
It was too much for Winters to contain. He laughed. And then DuPres did.
“Actually, at the time I had been given certain other duties by General de Gaulle,” Fortin confessed.
“I wouldn’t think of asking what those might have been,” Cronley said.
“When I met Capitaine DuPres, he explained to me his interrogation technique,” Fortin said. “When he had captured, for example, an oberst, he would put him in a cell, where he would announce that he was a Jew and then order Herr Oberst to strip himself naked. He would then leave him alone for an hour or so to consider his plight. Then he would send Sergent-chef Ibn Tufail, whom he had taught to speak passable German, into the cell. Tufail would then smile at Herr Oberst in an intimate way and ask if the Herr Oberst was familiar with how friendly Lawrence of Arabia had become with his Turkish captors when he was in their custody.”
Am I supposed to believe this? Winters wondered, and then realized, God, it’s probably true!
“Whereupon Herr Oberst would do one of two things. He would either turn onto his stomach and spread his cheeks, or he would ask Sergent-chef Ibn Tufail if there was anything, anything at all, he’d like to know.”
“Except for the Lawrence of Arabia business, that was clever,” Cronley said. “Once someone told me that there are almost no Negroes in Russia, I’ve been using my deputy to help in the interrogation of the NKGB people we’ve bagged. Captain Chauncey Dunwiddie is six feet five or six, weighs nearly three hundred pounds, is built like a Sherman tank, and is, literally, as black as coal.”
And Cronley’s not kidding, either!
Either about Dunwiddie’s size or using black people to intimidate the Russians.
The NKGB officer I saw at the monastery was visibly afraid that Tiny’s Troopers were planning to boil him in a pot and have him for supper.
“I shall look forward to meeting the captain,” Fortin said. “If I may continue?”
“Pardon the interruption, Mon Colonel . . . excuse me . . . Mon Commandant.”
“Shortly after I met Capitaine DuPres, higher authorities decided he would be of more value attached to General de Gaulle’s headquarters than he would be serving with the Goumiers. And so would Sergent-chef Ibn Tufail.”
“You mean working for you,” Cronley said.
“Refuting the common belief that higher headquarters are usually wrong, both Capitaine DuPres and Sergent-chef Ibn Tufail have proved themselves quite valuable to the DST.”
“I was thinking,” Winters said, “that it would probably be very useful for Capitaine DuPres and Sergent-chef Tufail to meet Captain Dunwiddie and Sergeant Tedworth.”
“Great minds walk similar paths,” Cronley said. “That can happen tomorrow. But right now, we have to get going. There’s no runway lighting at the Compound, and as you may have noticed, it gets dark early this time of year. Did you say something, Mon Colonel, about a case of champagne?”
“That was before you started calling me ‘colonel,’” Fortin said. “But we Alsatians are well known for our compassion toward foolish Americans who say foolish things, so you may have the Crémant d’Alsace.”
[ FIVE ]
The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound
Pullach, Bavaria