“I’m going to hold you to two hours,” Ziegler said.
—
“You know what I was thinking when all that was going on?” Ziegler asked as they drove through the cemetery toward the gate.
“No,” Cronley said. “But I guess you’re going to tell me.”
“Munich got pretty well screwed up during the war. It doesn’t look like it used to, I mean.”
“A sage observation, Mr. Ziegler.”
“This place,” Ziegler said, gesturing at the gravestones, tombs, and trees they were passing through, “hasn’t changed hardly at all. Today, we buried some Russians who got themselves shot while doing their duty to their country. Two years ago, some Germans who got themselves shot doing their duty to their country got buried here, probably ten yards from where we buried the Russians. A couple of years before that, the Nazis used this place to hide the ashes of three thousand nine hundred and ninety-six Germans they’d killed in Dachau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald—”
“Three thousand nine hundred and ninety-six? Where’d you get that number?”
“After that—I guess they ran out of space here—they just buried them in Dachau, et cetera,” Ziegler said.
“Is there a point in this history lesson?”
“I was thinking that pretty soon, at some cemetery in Berlin, or maybe Moscow, some NKGB guys are going to stand around watching guys with shovels pat the earth over Mattingly’s grave into a neat pile.”
“We don’t know that’s going to happen,” Cronley said.
“You don’t think we’re going to get him back, do you?”
“What we’re trying to do now is just that.”
“They won’t give him back unless we give them the Likharevs, and you know—or should—that we’re not going to do that.”
“I don’t know that, either. Somebody may decide that we need Mattingly more than we need the Likharevs.”
“We can’t do that, and you know it. That would encourage the bastards to kidnap somebody else whenever they want something from us.”
“I tried to make that point to Schultz and the admiral.”
“What did they say?”
“They didn’t say anything.”
“Figures. They want to make the swap.”
Cronley let slip: “I’m not going to let that happen.”
“What the fuck did you just say?”
“Nothing. Forget what I just said.”
“How the hell can I do that?” Ziegler asked. “You really think you can stop them from swapping the Likharevs for Mattingly?”
“Change the subject, Augie. Please.”
“If you fuck up a swap like that, and I don’t see how you could—but if you even try to fuck up a swap, you’ll find yourself in Leavenworth.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you change the subject, Mr. Ziegler. That was an order.”
Ziegler looked at him for a moment, exhaled audibly, and said, “Yes, sir.”
[ FIVE ]