The Assassination Option (Clandestine Operations 2)

“I am an American citizen, sir, who was born in Germany.”

“And that leaves you, Colonel Mannberg,” Parsons said.

“My university is Philipps-Universität in Marburg an der Lahn, Colonel,” Mannberg said.

“Well, truth being stranger than fiction,” Parsons said, “I know something about your university, Colonel. Are you aware that your school has been training American intelligence officers since our Civil War? Maybe even before our Civil War? And that we plan to resume that just as soon as we can?”

“I didn’t know that you were going to resume that program, Colonel, but I knew about it. When we were at Philipps, your General Seidel and I were in the same Brüderschaft—fraternity.”

Is that what Gehlen’s been up to? Setting the stage for letting Parsons know that Mannberg and Seidel, the EUCOM G2, are old college fraternity buddies?

And how come Mannberg didn’t tell me that?

“How interesting!” Parsons said. “And have you been in touch with General Seidel since the war ended?”

“Yes, I have,” Mannberg said. “Actually, he tasked the CIC to find me. And, of course, they did.”

And now I will sit here with bated breath waiting to see where all this goes.

It went nowhere.

As they talked, they had been eating.

When they had finished eating, they were through talking.

Parsons said something to the effect that while he hated to leave good company, he “and Warren have a lot on our plates for tomorrow” and that they were “reluctantly going to have to call it a night.”

Hands were shaken all around, and thirty seconds later Colonel Parsons and Major Ashley had left.

When they were out of earshot, Gehlen asked, “Jim, would you think that talking this over while it’s still fresh in our minds might be a good idea?”

Cronley nodded.

Gehlen, with his usual courtesy, is going to hand me my ass on a platter.

“Why don’t we go upstairs to my room?” he said.

[FOUR]

Suite 527

Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten

Maximilianstrasse 178

Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

2155 29 December 1945

Suite 527—an elegantly furnished bedroom, sitting room, bath, and small office—was Cronley’s, although he rarely spent the night in it, or for that matter, used it at all.

He had inherited it, so to speak, from the OSS. When Colonel Robert Mattingly had commanded OSS Forward, he had requisitioned all of the fifth floor’s right wing for the OSS when it had been decided to put—hide—General Gehlen’s people at least temporarily in Kloster Grünau.

Mattingly had no intention of spending his nights on a GI cot in a cold, former, and until very recently, long-deserted former monastery in the middle of nowhere when the five-star Vier Jahreszeiten was available to him.

When the OSS was disbanded, and Mattingly became deputy chief, CIC-Europe, he had put Kloster Grünau under then Second Lieutenant Cronley. And turned Suite 527 over to him. At the time Cronley had thought it was a nice, if misguided, gesture. The very things that made the Vier Jahreszeiten appealing to Mattingly—it was a playground for senior officers and their wives and enforced a strict code of dress and decorum—made it unappealing to a young second lieutenant.

Cronley now believed that it was far less benevolence on Mattingly’s part that gave him access to “the fifth floor” than Mattingly’s desire to distance himself as far as possible from Kloster Grünau and what was going on there. There was a very good chance that Operation Ost was going to blow up in everyone’s face, and Mattingly wanted to be far away when that happened.