“I don’t like to think what will happen to Bob Mattingly if we don’t get him back in twelve days, but I suggest that General Seidel and Company are going to start crowing something along the lines of ‘If only young Captain Cronley had accepted the assistance that I and the FBI offered, poor Colonel Mattingly would be free.’”
“Yes, sir, I’ve thought of that.”
“And?”
“For the time being I decided the thing to do is what Serov asked me to do. I showed up at the bridge, as ordered, and today I’m going to rebury the Russians.”
“That’s all?”
“I’ve been hoping, sir, that Lazarus might somehow be useful in getting Colonel Mattingly back but—”
“Swapping him for Colonel Mattingly, you mean?”
“Y
es, sir. But, General, I was going to say I don’t think they’ll swap Colonel Mattingly for a major. What the Russians want—what they specifically have told me they want—in exchange for Mattingly is Polkóvnik Likharev and his wife and children.”
“Do the Russians know you have this Lazarus?” White asked.
“Sir, I think somebody who knows has told them we have him.”
“You have a mole, is that what you’re saying?”
“‘Moles,’ plural, General,” Wallace said. “We’re working on it.”
“Good luck. Moles are notoriously difficult to eliminate,” White said.
“But eventually, it has been my experience, if one keeps one’s eyes open,” Gehlen said, “they pop their heads out of the ground, permitting them to be eliminated.”
White met Gehlen’s eyes, and nodded. Then he said, “Why do you think the Russians know you specifically have this man?”
Cronley took a moment to frame his reply.
“Sir, prefacing this by saying I’m a beginner in the business of dealing with senior NKGB officers, I had the feeling that Serov was much more interested in getting him back than he let on. I came out of our meeting feeling that there was more to this reburial business than Serov’s devotion to his religious faith.”
“According to Oberst Mannberg, Jim,” Gehlen said, “you did very well in your dealings with Comrade Serov.”
“That’s two compliments from people I respect, Cronley,” White said. “So why don’t you tell us how you thought you might use Lazarus—Major . . . Whatsisname?”
“Ulyanov, sir. Major of State Security Venedikt Ulyanov.”
“How might you use Major Ulyanov to get Colonel Mattingly back?”
“My idea didn’t work, sir. What I thought might work was to infiltrate the Odessa organization, grab one or more of the Nazis it’s moving around, and offer them, plus Lazarus, to Serov in exchange for Colonel Mattingly.”
“How had you planned to infiltrate Odessa?”
“The head of the DST in Strasbourg, Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin, is after Odessa with a vengeance, sir.”
“How did you come to know this Fortin?”
“That’s a long story, sir.”
“Let’s have it,” White said.
“My mother is a Strasbourgerin, sir,” Cronley began. “A war bride of the First World War. She received a letter from her nephew there, my cousin, a man named Luther Stauffer . . .”
—