Florence got into the wheelchair, and Major Cramer pushed it down the corridor and into an elevator. Augie and Claudette then got on, and then two PSO men who had Thompson submachine guns slung from their shoulders got on.
Claudette reached for the elevator control panel.
“Hold it!” Florence ordered.
“What?” Claudette asked.
“What about my fu . . . upgefukt uniform?”
“It’s in the CID forensic lab in Heidelberg,” Augie said. “They’re matching the . . . stuff . . . on it with the guys Dette took out.”
“Great! And when am I going to get it back?”
“Probably never,” Augie said. “It has become what we call evidence.”
“And what’s with these guys?” Florence asked, pointing at the PSO men.
“Get used to them, Flo,” Claudette said.
“We’re your security detail, miss,” one of them said. He had a pronounced British accent. “Wherever you go, we do.”
“What if I have to go to the ladies’ room?” Florence challenged, and then without waiting for a reply, made another challenge: “You sound like an Englishman.”
“Any more questions, Flo? Or can I push the down button?” Claudette asked.
“Push away,” Florence said.
“I’ve spent some time in England, Miss Miller,” the PSO man said.
“I never would have guessed,” Florence said.
[ THREE ]
Suite 507
Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten
Maximilianstrasse 178
Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
2130 25 January 1946
When Florence walked through the doorway that Augie Ziegler had just opened for her, she saw that her uniform had indeed reached the hotel before they had. Her uniform skirt was draped over the edge of Hessinger’s desk, with a pair of shoes, a shirt, a necktie, and a pair of stockings sitting on it. And she saw Hessinger was cutting at her chevrons with a razor blade.
“Freddy, you sonofabitch, what the fuck are you doing to my fucking stripes?”
Captain James D. Cronley Jr. answered for him.
“Cutting them off. You can’t wear triangles and stripes.”
She looked at him in utter confusion.
“We have a new rule around here,” Cronley went on. “That whenever the bad guys try to kidnap one of our enlisted people and said enlisted person behaves well during such attempted kidnapping, they get promoted. Welcome to the DCI, Special Agent Miller.”
“Shit!” Florence said.
And then started to sob.