“Meaning someone like me can spot—as you should be able to, Mr. Spymaster—a staged photo. These people, especially the kids, clearly are having a good time.”
She held up one of the photographs for him to see.
Cronley saw one of the faces he recognized more than the others. It was of the older boy, Sergei. He was eating—devouring—an empanada, an Argentine meat pie, with a huge smile on his face.
The last time Cronley had looked closely at Sergei’s face, they had been in the Storch in which Cronley had picked him up across the East German border in Thuringia. He had just been torn, almost literally, from the hands of his mother and little brother, then thrown, again almost literally, into Cronley’s airplane.
Sergei’s face had then been distorted with abject terror.
Cronley had never seen anything like that before and that memory flooded his mind now as he looked at the photograph.
“Nice-looking boy,” he said.
“Yeah. Like Wagner,” Janice said as she stuffed the photographs back in the envelope.
“I’m worried about him.”
“I gave him a long big-sister talk on what he should . . . and, more important, should not . . . do on that long ride from Munich. He’ll be all right.”
“Christ, I hope so.”
“So, what happens now?”
“We make an early evening of it at Schlosshotel Kronberg, rise with the chickens, get in my airplane, and go show Lazarus proof of the good life in Argentina that’s one of his options.”
“Going to bed early seems to be a good idea, but I’m not so sure about getting up with the chickens.”
“You said it, Janice. Duty calls.”
“So does yours, Adonis.”
Janice placed her hand so that there was no question in her mind what she meant.
[ FIVE ]
Schlosshotel Kronberg
Hainstrasse 25, Kronberg im Taunus
Hesse, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1910 26 January 1946
“Either they heard we’re coming, or the MPs are having a convention,” Cronley said as they drove up to the castle converted to a “senior officers’ recreation facility.”
There were maybe a dozen Military Police vehicles crowding the entrance to the castle’s lobby—jeeps, former ambulances, a half-dozen staff cars, even an M-8 armored car.
When he parked the Ford, an MP lieutenant came to the car and politely announced: “Sir, you should have been stopped before you got here. This is a crime scene and you’ll have to move, sir.”
“What kind of a crime scene?” Janice asked.
The MP lieutenant ignored her.
Cronley showed him his CIC credentials.
“Tell the lady what kind of a crime scene, Lieutenant,” he ordered.
The lieutenant examined the credentials.