“Who is Max . . . what you said?” El Jefe asked. “That Polish-Englishman who flew us to the monastery?”
“Right.”
“And what’s he going to do?”
“Guard Colonel Mannberg. I don’t want him grabbed by the Russians, either.”
“Can he do that?” El Jefe asked. “More important, will he want to?”
“He killed the two NKGB guys who had the wire around Tedworth’s neck,” Cronley said. “Yeah, he can do it. And he wants to do more than he’s doing right now.”
“You mean, more than flying the Storch?”
“Actually, he’s not supposed to be flying the Storch. Officially, he’s in charge of the Polish guards at Kloster Grünau.”
“Just so I have things straight in my mind, Captain Cronley,” Ashton said. “You have this guy who’s not in the service—technically, he’s a displaced person, employed as a quasi–military watchman, right?”
“Right.”
“Flying an airplane you’re not supposed to have?”
“Right.”
“And now you want to involve him in a delicate, top secret DCI operation?” Ashton asked. And then he went on, “Why are you smiling, Schultz? You think this is funny? Cronley doing this, doing any of this, on his own—which means absolutely no . . . authority? You think that’s funny?”
“I was thinking it reminded me of when we were starting up in Argentina,” Schultz said. “When Clete realized we needed some shooters to protect us from the Nazis, what he did was ask Colonel Graham to send some Marines down from the States. Graham told him to write up a formal request and send it to General Donovan.
“Clete never wrote a formal request, of course. What he did do was put gauchos—most of them had been in the cavalry, I’ll admit—from Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo on the job. Then he sent the OSS a bill. Nine dollars a day, plus three dollars for rations and quarters, per man. The OSS paid without asking him a question. By the time the war was over, we had three hundred some gauchos in ‘Frade’s Private Army’ on the payroll. If the OSS was willing to pay for hiring necessary civilian employees in Argentina, more than three hundred of them, I don’t think the admiral will much care if Jim hires a few here.”
“Are you telling me you’re in agreement with what he’s proposing?”
“I haven’t heard everything he’s proposing, but so far he’s making a lot of sense,” Schultz said. Then he turned to Cronley: “Okay, you, the colonel here, and that Polish-Englishman are in Vienna. Where did he learn English like that, by the way?”
“He was in England with the Free Polish Air Force. They were sort of in the RAF.”
“So that’s where he learned to fly?” El Jefe said. “So what do you do in Vienna?”
I’m making this up as I go along. Doesn’t he see that?
“We go to the Café Weitz. Colonel Mannberg by himself, Max and me together.”
“Why?”
“Mannberg so he can see Rahil, or she him. Max to protect Mannberg in case it is the NKGB waiting for him. After that, we play it by ear.”
“Wrong,” El Jefe said with finality.
Uh-oh.
Well, I got pretty far for somebody who is making it up as he goes along.
“You can’t go, because by now the NKGB knows what you look like,” El Jefe said. “I don’t want to have to tell the admiral that you’re on your way to Siberia. Or send you home in a body bag. So I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ll go with the Polish-Englishman. Or the English-Polack. Whatever he is. And then we’ll play it by ear.”
“Oscar, I was there when the admiral told you he didn’t want you getting into anything you shouldn’t,” Ashton said.
“Then you must have been there when he said I was running things but not to tell anybody unless I decided we had to,” Schultz said. “And when the admiral said you were not to even think about running the whole operation until you were off those crutches. I’m going to Vienna. Period. Okay?”
“You know the admiral’ll be furious when he hears about this.”