Curtain of Death (Clandestine Operations 3)

Suite 507

Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten

Maximilianstrasse 178

Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

1110 5 February 1946

Colonel Richard P. McMullen, DCI agents Karl-Christoph Wagner and Albert Finney, Major Harold Wallace, Lieutenant Thomas Winters, and Miss Janice Johansen were filling all the chairs in the outer office when Cronley and Ziegler walked in. Technical Sergeant Florence J. Miller, now wearing blue triangles on her uniform, was sitting at the desk usually occupied by Claudette Colbert.

“Good morning, sir,” Cronley said.

“How went the funeral?” Miss Johansen asked.

“If you had gone out there, you would know.”

“I knew you would be giving me pictures,” she said. “And I don’t like standing around in the snow. Did anybody else show up?”

“Like who?”

“Maybe the mole you’ve got around here. To see if you were going to bury them, or just tell Serov you did.”

Jesus, I didn’t think about that!

Was there somebody from the NKGB peering around a tombstone?

Well, if there was, he can tell Serov I’m being a good boy.

No harm.

But what good, either, is that charade I just staged going to do about getting Mattingly back?

“Not that I saw,” Cronley said. “Anything else new?”

“I called Fortin to make sure he’ll be there for you and Colonel McMullen,” Finney said.

“And will he be? He’s back from the Spanish border?”

“Capitaine DuPres said he’s back from the Spanish border—”

“Who’s Captain DuPres?” Janice asked.

“He works

for Fortin,” Cronley said. “Little guy. Young, but one tough sonofa . . . officer and gentleman.”

“My kind of guy. You’ll have to introduce me,” Janice said.

“. . . but not yet back in Strasbourg,” Finney continued. “He’s apparently been following your cousin Luther all over, and right now he’s in Wissembourg.”

“Wissembourg?” Colonel McMullen asked.

“I looked it up, Colonel,” Finney replied. “It’s a little dorf about forty miles north of here, on a little river called the Lauter, which is the international border between France and Germany.”

“So Wagner has been telling us,” McMullen said.

“Excuse me?” Finney asked.