Curtain of Death (Clandestine Operations 3)

“Well, I figured the food would be better here than in Wissembourg,” McMullen said. “How are you, Jean-Paul?”

“Fine, and at the moment both hungry and thirsty, both of which hungers I will be delighted to satisfy at the expense of Jim Cronley.”

He sat down at the head of the table and reached for a bottle of the Crémant d’Alsace.

“Capitaine Big Mouth here told you I was in Wissembourg?” Fortin said, pointing at DuPres.

“Only after I gave him a heads-up that I was thinking of going there,” Finney said.

Fortin raised his champagne flute in salute.

“Looking for Cousin Luther?” he said.

“Actually, no. I wanted to have a look at the place. Wagner”—Finney pointed at Wagner—“thinks it’s Odessa’s preferred point to smuggle people across the border into France.”

“While I am wholly convinced that great minds travel the same roads, frankly I’m surprised to be walking along with someone so young. May I ask how you came to this conclusion, young man?”

Wagner told him.

“General Gehlen, Jean-Paul, referred to this as ‘wisdom from the mouth of babes,’” McMullen said.

“How old are you?” Fortin asked.

“Seventeen, sir.”

“When I was seventeen, I was in my first year at Saint-Cyr,” Fortin said. “Well, gentlemen, I have reached the same conclusion about Wissembourg, but I reached it not by logical conclusion but by following your cousin Luther there, Jim, from the Spanish border. Which brings us to him. Or which has brought him to us.”

“Brought him to us?” Cronley asked.

“I have him confined here. I’m about to have to turn him over to Capitaine DuPres and Sergent-chef Ibn Tufail for interrogation.”

Cronley thought: And when you’re through, are you going to shoot him in the knees and elbows before you throw him in the Rhine, like you did with the priest?

“But I wanted to talk to you before I started that, Jim.”

“Because he’s my cousin?”

“Because he knows who you are.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“When I arrested him, he tried to reason with me. He asked if I thought he and I couldn’t come to some sort of arrangement. He was offering, I thought, to change sides. I told him I wasn’t interested. He then suggested I think his offer over carefully. For one thing, he knew he could be useful to me, and for another, he asked if I thought it would be wise of me to endanger my present cordial relationship with DCI-Europe by refusing the chief of DCI-Europe’s cousin’s offer to realize the error of his ways and change sides.”

“The sonofabitch!” Cronley said.

“Of course he was—is—desperate, but I thought it interesting that he knew you were the head man of DCI.”

“Well, we knew he knew I wasn’t Second Lieutenant Cronley of the 711th Mobile Kitchen Renovation Company when he gave Finney the cold shoulder, but . . . Jesus!”

“Sergent Deladier found that out with a simple telephone call,” Fortin said. “But I wonder who told him who you really are. I didn’t think you or Finney let that slip.”

“No,” Finney said. “He didn’t get that from me.”

Cronley’s mouth went into high gear: “What I suggest you do, Jean-Paul, is let Finney help Captain DuPres and Sergent-chef Ibn Tufail in their interrogation of Herr Stauffer. He can ask him who told him about us, a name I’d really like to have, and he can ask him if the next people he hoped to help across the border, and across France to the Spanish border, are two people we’re really looking for, SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter and his deputy, Standartenführer Oskar Müller.”

This time, unusually, Cronley did not regret hearing what had come automatically and without thought out of his mouth.

“Who are they? Why do you want them?” Fortin asked.