Curtain of Death (Clandestine Operations 3)

“They don’t know he’s alive.”

“We don’t know that. For that matter, we don’t know who ‘they’ is. Are.”

“Any further reaction from Lazarus to the pictures?”

Ostrowski shook his head.

“But there’s something about him that bothers me, Jim.”

“What?”

“I’ve been trying to put my finger on it, but the best I can come up with is that he is remarkably calm for someone in his situation. I started thinking he was resigned to . . . his fate.”

“Which he thinks is?”

“Being disposed of. He knows we’re not going to turn him loose. But as I say, that thought gave way to thinking he’s confident he won’t be . . . disposed of. He’s confident that we’re not going to shoot him, that somehow he’s going to get out of the mess he’s in.”

“Prisoner swap? Mattingly for Lazarus?”

“Now that we know they have Mattingly, it’s certainly a possibility, isn’t it?”

“But they—whoever they are—don’t know we have Lazarus.”

“We don’t know that for sure, do we? What I was thinking before I heard that Mattingly had gone missing was that maybe he thinks somebody is going to break him out of here.”

“With your guys and Tiny’s Troopers guarding the place?” Cronley challenged.

“He becomes ill. Concerned for his safety, and unwilling to bring medical personnel here . . . and they know that.”

“How do they know that?”

“That brings me to that theory,” Ostrowski said. “The person—possibly, even probably, persons—they, whoever they are, have in Kloster Grünau told them.”

“Have in here, or in the Compound. Or the 98th General Hospital.”

Ostrowski looked at him questioningly.

“There are more people in the Compound than here,” Cronley explained. “Yours, Gehlen’s, mine. People gossip. Everybody knows what happened with Claudette and Florence, both from Janice’s story in Stars and Stripes and what they saw—two ambulances full of your guys rushing to the hospital. The story said Dette killed three in the parking lot, and the fourth died in the hospital.”

“So?”

“The bodies of the three she killed were taken to the hospital for autopsy. They were photographed before they were turned over to whoever buries people. Graves Registration? The city of Munich? But what happened to the fourth body? For the sake of argument, let’s say the bodies were photographed again before they were buried.”

“I see where you’re going,” Max said. “They, whoever they are, managed to get photos of the bodies. They would know who they were. One face is missing . . .”

“Lazarus,” Cronley picked up. “If he’s not dead, where is he?”

“And they’re in the hospital. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that ambulance at the NCO club came from the 98th General.”

“And since they’re in the hospital, one might logically presume they saw Lazarus being taken from the hospital in one of our ambulances . . .”

“Together with the hospital bed, et cetera, in another of our ambulances . . .”

“Yes.”

“And they would assume we brought him here. Which brings us back to my theory that since they have someone in here, they know Lazarus is here. And that they can’t assault the place . . .”

“But can intercept an ambulance, even one accompanied by two or more of Tiny’s jeeps . . .”