“You’ll have to take a chance on my good judgment?” Wilson parroted softly.
“Right.”
“I can’t wait to hear this.”
“I am in the process of getting the wife and children of NKGB Colonel Sergei Likharev out of Russia and to Argentina.”
“That must be an interesting task. Who is Colonel Whatsisname and why are you being so nice to him?”
“One of Tiny’s Troopers caught him sneaking out of Kloster Grünau . . .” Cronley began the story, and finished up, “. . . whom we have reason to believe are now in Poland.”
“And how much of this does good ol’ Bob Mattingly know?”
“More, I’m sure, than I like. But not everything.”
“And Hank Wallace?”
“He knows just about everything.”
“And you don’t think he’s going to share it with ol’ Bob?”
“I don’t think he will.”
“Did you tell him not to? Ask him not to?”
“I did.”
“And he agreed?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Now how do you envision my role in this cloak-and-dagger enterprise?”
Cronley told him.
When he had finished, Wilson said, “Oddly enough, I was up there several days ago. What used to be the Fourteenth Armored Cavalry Regiment and is now the Fourteenth Constabulary Regiment is stationed in Fritzlar. While I was there, very carefully avoiding any intrusion into the air space of Thuringia State, I flew the border. I wasn’t looking for them, of course, but I saw a number of places into which I believe one could put an aircraft such as a Storch.”
“Could you mark them on a map for me?”
“I’ll do better than that,” Wilson said. “At first light tomorrow, an L-4 aircraft attached to the Fourteenth
Constab will fly the border and take pictures of fields in Thuringia which look suitable for what you propose.”
“Thank you,” Cronley said.
“Always willing to do what I can for a noble cause,” Wilson said.
“And will you tell me, teach me, what you know about doing something like this?”
“That will depend on whether General White tells me whether I can or not.”
“Isn’t he in the States? At Fort Leavenworth?”
“He was in the States at Fort Riley, the Cavalry School. Right now, he’s somewhere en route here—the route being Washington-Gander, Newfoundland-Prestwick, Scotland-Rhine-Main—where he is tentatively scheduled to land at ten tomorrow morning.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Not many people do. I didn’t even tell good ol’ Bob Mattingly when my spies told me. What is important is the moment General White sets foot in Germany, he becomes commanding general of the United States Constabulary. When that happens, I don’t do anything without his specific permission. Especially something like this.”