“You have any idea who they are?”
“One of them got Red Ball an apartment for his fräulein. I know that.”
“You didn’t say anything to the sergeant about Odessa, did you, son?” White asked.
“No, sir. My orders from Captain Cronley were to keep my eyes open and my mouth shut.”
“Do I have to tell you that you have to continue keeping your mouth shut now?”
“No, sir. I know I’m not in DCI, but Mr. Cronley made me understand how important it is to keep what goes on around here a secret.”
Cronley’s mouth went on automatic: “You’re in DCI now, Casey. And just as soon as Mr. Hessinger gets back from Berlin, he’ll cut orders making you a sergeant.”
White looked at Cronley.
“I was about to make a suggestion along those lines, Captain Cronley,” he said, then put his hand on Wagner’s shoulder. “Well done, son. Very well done.”
PFC Wagner blushed.
“And now back to my list of things to do,” White said. “Cronley, is there somewhere General Gehlen, Colonels Wallace and Williams, and you and I could have a private conversation?”
[ SEVEN ]
Suite 527
Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten
Maximilianstrasse 178
Munich,
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0855 1 February 1946
“Would it surprise you, Captain Cronley,” General White asked as soon as everyone had found chairs in Cronley’s sitting room, “to learn that in addition to feeling that you’re wholly unqualified to hold your present position, General Seidel feels—and has told General Bull—that you’re the last man he would choose—the phrase he used was ‘any rational senior officer would choose’—to be in charge of getting Colonel Mattingly back from the Russians?”
“No, sir,” Cronley said. “It would not.”
“Then you will probably not to be surprised . . .”
Well, the ax ending my brilliant intelligence career didn’t take long to fall, did it?
What comes next?
“You will probably not be surprised to hear that Admiral Souers has decided that you are to be relieved as chief, DCI-Europe, effective immediately, and that Colonel Wallace will assume that position.”
“. . . to learn that both General Bull and I are interested to hear what precisely you said to General Seidel that made him splutter like that.”
Wallace laughed.
“When the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley,” Wallace said, “the planner often splutters.”
“What plan was that, Harry?”
“General Seidel demanded that Cronley come to that meeting so he could sandbag him. If Seidel had his way, Cronley was going to agree to permit the FBI to snoop around the Compound and Kloster Grünau, in which case the FBI would find not only Lazarus—”
“Who?”