“Two weeks later,” El Jefe picked up the story, “the naval attaché was forced to swear me in as a lieutenant, USNR. The attaché couldn’t say anything, of course, but that really ruined his day, which is why I asked Clete to have him ordered to do it.”
General Smith chuckled.
“The reason I look so spiffy in my uniform is that it’s practically brand-new,” El Jefe said. “I don’t think it’s got two weeks’ wear on it.”
“You didn’t wear it because you were too cheap to buy more gold stripes when you were made a lieutenant commander,” Ashton said. “Or when Clete got you promoted to commander so you’d outrank me and could take command of what was still the OSS, Southern Cone, when he took off his uniform.”
Schultz gave him the finger.
“Clete thought—and he was right—that it looked better if people thought I was a chief, rather than an officer,” Schultz said. “So we kept my change of status quiet.”
“You’re a full commander, Oscar?” Cronley asked.
“I retired a couple of weeks ago as a commander, U.S. Naval Reserve, Jim,” Schultz said. “What I am now is a member of what they call the Senior Executive Service of the Directorate of Central Intelligence. My title is executive assistant to the director.”
When Cronley didn’t reply, Schultz said, “Why are you so surprised? You’ve been around the spook business long enough to know that nothing is ever what it looks like.”
“Like the chief, DCI-Europe, isn’t what he looks like?”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that I’m very young, wholly inexperienced in the spook business, and pretty slow, so it took me a long time to figure out that there’s something very fishy about a very junior captain being chief, DCI – Europe, and that no one wants to tell him what’s really going on.”
“Well, Jim, now that you have figured that out, I guess we’ll have to tell you. I will on the way to the airport.”
“Why don’t you tell him now?” General Smith said. “I think General Greene should be privy to this.”
“Yes, sir,” Schultz said. “Okay. Where to start? Okay. When President Truman was talked into disbanding the OSS—largely by J. Edgar Hoover, but with a large assist by the Army, no offense, General—”
“Tell it like it is, Chief,” General Smith said.
“He first realized that he couldn’t turn off everything the OSS was doing—especially Operation Ost, but some other operations, too—like a lightbulb. So he turned to his old friend Admiral Souers to run them until they could be turned over to somebody else.
“Admiral Souers convinced him—I think Truman had figured this out by himself, so I probably should have said, the admiral convinced the President that the President was right in maybe thinking he had made a mistake by shutting down the OSS.
“The admiral didn’t know much about Operation Ost, except that it existed. Truman told him what it was. The admiral knew I was involved with it in Argentina, so he sent for me to see what I thought should be done with it.
“The President trusted his old friend the admiral, and the admiral trusted his old shipmate. Okay? The President was learning how few people he could trust, and learning how many people he could not trust, starting with J. Edgar Hoover.
“So Truman decided a new OSS was needed. Who to run it? The admiral.
“So what to do about Operation Ost, which was important for two reasons—for the intel it had about the Russians, and because if it came out we’d made the deal with Gehlen and were smuggling Nazis out of Germany, Truman would be impeached, Eisenhower would be court-martialed, and we’d lose the German intelligence about our pal Joe Stalin.
“So how do we hide Operation Ost from J. Edgar Hoover, the Army, the Navy, the State Department, the Washington Post, et cetera, et cetera? We try to make it look unimportant. How do we do that? We pick some obscure bird colonel to run it. Which bird colonel could we trust? For that matter, which light bird, which major, could we trust?
“And if we found one, that would raise the question, which full colonel, which light bird would General Gehlen trust? I mean really trust, so that he’d really keep up his end of the deal?
“The President says, ‘What about Captain Cronley?’”
“You were there, Chief?” General Smith asked. “You heard him say that?”
“I was there. I heard him say that. The admiral said, ‘Harry, that’s ridiculous!’ and the President said, ‘Who would think anything important would be handed to a captain?’
“The admiral said, ‘Who would think anything in the intelligence business would be handed over to a captain?’
“And the President said, ‘There are captains and then there are captains. I know. I was one. This one, Cronley, has just been given the DSM and a promotion to captain by the commander in chief for unspecified services connected with intelligence. J. Edgar knows it was because Cronley found the submarine with the uranium oxide on it. J. Edgar would not think there was anything funny if Captain Cronley were given some unimportant job in intelligence that might get him promoted.’
“The admiral said something about giving Cronley Operation Ost because no one would think Operation Ost was important if a captain was running it, and the President said, ‘For that reason, I think we should name Captain Cronley chief, DCI-Europe, and let that leak.’