The Assassination Option (Clandestine Operations 2)

“Sir, may I ask a question?”

“Ask away, but don’t be surprised if I reply you don’t have the need to know.”

“Sir, I understand. My question—questions, actually—are can we expect further attempts by the Reds to gain entrance to either place?”

“I think you can bet your ass they will,” Cronley said.

“You said ‘questions,’ plural, Lieutenant?” Hessinger asked.

“Are there still the traitors inside you mentioned?”

Cronley answered carefully. “The NKGB colonel and the traitors he was dealing with are no longer a problem . . .”

My God, he means they have been “dealt with.”

Which means killed.

“. . . but we have to presume (a) there are more of them, and (b) that the NKGB will continue to attempt to contact them.”

“I understand,” Ostrowski said.

“I hope so,” Cronley said.

Even as he spoke the word “understand” Ostrowski had thought that he not only understood what Cronley was telling him, but that his Third Life had really begun.

I’ve stumbled onto something important.

What I will be guarding here and at Pullach is not going to be what I expected—mountains of canned tomatoes and hundred-pound bags of rice in a Quartermaster Depot—but something of great importance to the U.S. Army and by inference, the United States itself.

And, whatever it is, it’s just getting started.

And if I play my cards right, I can get my foot on the first step of that ladder of opportunity everybody’s always talking about.

And the way to start playing my cards right is to become the best lieutenant of the guard not only in Detachment One, Company “A,” 7002nd Provisional Security Organization, but in the entire goddamned Provisional Security Organization.

Each night, Senior Watch Chief Ostrowski set his Hamilton chronograph to vibrate at a different time between midnight and six in the morning. He selected the hour by throwing a die on his bedside table. The first roll last night had come up three. That meant three o’clock. The second roll had come up three again. That meant, since three-sixths of sixty minutes is thirty, that he should set the Hamilton to vibrate at 3:30.

Next came the question of whether to get undressed, and then dress when the watch vibrated, or to nap clothed on top of the blankets. He opted in favor of not getting undressed.

When he was wakened, he did not turn on the bedside lamp. He was absolutely sure that at least one, and probably three, of his guards were watching his window so they could alert the others that Maksymilian the Terrible was awake and about to inspect the guard posts.

Instead, he made his way into the bath he shared with First Sergeant Dunwiddie—they were now on a “Tiny and Max” basis—and dressed there. First he put on a dyed-black U.S. Army field jacket, around which he put on a web belt that supported a holstered Model 1911A1 pistol. Then, since it had been snowing earlier in the evening and the ground was white, he put on a white poncho.

Then, without turning on any lights, using a red-filtered U.S. Army flashlight, he made his way downstairs and out of the building.

The Poles were guarding the outer perimeter, and sharing the guarding of the area between it and the second line of fences with Tiny’s Troopers. The inner perimeter was guarded by the Americans only.

Twenty yards from the building, he saw the faint glow of another red-filtered flashlight, and quickly turned his own flashlight off. Fifty yards farther toward the inner fence, he saw that Technical Sergeant Tedworth, dressed as he was, was holding the other flashlight.

He wasn’t surprised, as he knew Tedworth habitually checked the guards in the middle of the night. He also knew that Tedworth usually went to the outer perimeter to check the Poles first. It looked as if that’s what he was up to now, so Ostrowski followed him.

If Tedworth found nothing wrong—one of the Poles, for example, hiding beside or inside something to get out of the icy winds—Ostrowski planned to do nothing. Tedworth would know the Poles were doing what they were supposed to do and that was enough.

If, however, Tedworth found a Pole seeking shelter from the cold—or worse, asleep—Ostrowski would then appear to take the proper disciplinary action himself. Tedworth would see not only that Ostrowski was on the job, but also that Maksymilian the Terrible could “eat ass” just about as well as Technical Sergeant Tedworth.

He had been following Tedworth for about ten minutes when the red glow of Tedworth’s flashlight suddenly turned white. There was now a beam of white light pointed inward from the outer perimeter fence toward the second.

Ostrowski hurried to catch up.