Curtain of Death (Clandestine Operations 3)

“Please tell everybody,” Cronley said. “This young and inexperienced intelligence officer doesn’t understand, either.”

Now there were chuckles from everybody—including Lieutenants Winters and Moriarty.

“Rahil, Colonel, gentlemen, is an NKGB officer with whom I’ve had dealings over the years. She was instrumental in getting Polkóvnik Likharev’s wife and sons out of Russia. Nikolayevich Merkulov is the commissar of State Security. His deputy, whom Rahil suggests we meet at the Drei Husaren restaurant in Vienna at our earliest convenience, is Ivan Serov.”

“She?” Bristol asked.

Gehlen nodded.

“She,” he confirmed, and went on: “And since this slightly older and marginally more experienced intelligence officer intuits that Comrade Merkulov is interested in exchanging Colonel Mattingly for Colonel Likharev, I think we should go to Vienna and hear what Serov has to say.”

There were more smiles.

Cronley’s mouth went on automatic: “Not only no, but hell no!”

The look on Bristol’s face was now one of surprise.

Gehlen’s eyebrow rose but Cronley saw there was no ice in his eyes.

He knew I wouldn’t go along with that.

He’s curious to hear my objections, but he’s not outraged that I would dare question him.

“When I am relieved as chief, DCI-Europe,” Cronley said, “I don’t want Seidel and Company to be able to crow that my most spectacular fuck-up was being responsible for getting you, General, grabbed by the NKGB. I’m expendable. You’re not.”

Gehlen nodded. “I admit that possibility—Merkulov wanting to get his hands on both of us—crossed my mind. But I thought we could take the necessary precautions—the Drei Husaren is in Vienna’s Inner City, which the Russians do not control absolutely—to see that didn’t happen.”

“And I have no intention of swapping Colonel Likharev for Colonel Mattingly,” Cronley said. “What I intuit here is that Likharev’s defection burned the NKGB badly. If we swapped Likharev for Mattingly, Merkulov could parade him in chains before the rest of the NKGB and announce, ‘This is what happens to NKGB officers who try to defect. Even if they make it as far as Argentina.’”

“Point taken,” Gehlen said.

“But having said that, it might be useful to hear what Serov has to say. But since I don’t speak Russian . . .”

“When do you think you and I should go to Vienna, Jim?” Oberst Mannberg asked.

“The problem there, Ludwig, is that you’re not expendable.”

“Either, I suggest, are you. And that suggests we should make the precautions the generalmajor mentioned we take with great care.”

“You’re willing to go?”

“Of course,” Mannberg said.

So I guess Mannberg and I are going to Vienna.

They both looked at Gehlen.

“What precautions did you have in mind?” Cronley asked.

“Where is this restaurant?”

“Within walking distance of the Hotel Bristol,” Mannberg answered.

“I wonder how much we can lean on the CIC in Vienna,” Cronley said.

“I think all you would have to do is ask General Greene,” Tiny Dunwiddie said. “He runs the CIC all over Europe.”

“I don’t think I want to ask him.”