“Excuse me, sir. I want to get this right. Kurt Schröder is the other Storch pilot, correct?”
“Correct. Tell him to fly here—I’m at Schleissheim, just landed here—at first light, and I will explain things when they’re here.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll get right on it.”
“Oh, almost forgot. Tell Captain Dunwiddie to wear pinks and greens and to bring a change of uniform.”
“Yes, sir, pinks and greens. Is there anything else you need, sir?”
“I think you know what that is. Do you suppose you could bring it to my room? I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”
“It will be waiting for you, sir.”
[THREE]
Suite 527
Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten
Maximilianstrasse 178
Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1935 16 January 1946
“As much as I would like to continue this discussion of office business with you, Miss Colbert,” Cronley said, “I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast and need sustenance. Let’s go downstairs and get some dinner.”
“And while I can think of nothing I’d rather do than continue to discuss office business with you like this, Captain Cronley . . .”
“You mean in a horizontal position, and unencumbered by clothing?”
“. . . and seem to have somehow worked up an appetite myself, I keep hearing this small, still voice of reason crying out, ‘Not smart! Not smart!’”
“I infer that you would react negatively to my suggestion that we get some dinner and then come back and resume our discussion of office business?”
“Not smart! Not smart!”
“Oddly enough, I have given the subject some thought. Actually, a good deal of thought.”
“And?”
“It seems to me that the best way to deal with our problem is for me to treat you like one of the boys. By that I mean while I don’t discuss office business with them as we do, if I’m here at lunchtime, or dinnertime, and Freddy is here, or Major Wallace, or for that matter, General Gehlen, I sometimes have lunch or dinner with them. Not every time, but often. I’m suggesting that having an infrequent dinner—or even a frequent dinner—with you would be less suspicious than conspicuously not doing so. Take my point?”
“I don’t know, Jim.”
“Additionally, I think if we listen to your small, still voice of reason when it pipes up, as I suspect it frequently will, and do most of the things it suggests, we can maintain the secret of our forbidden passion.”
“It will be a disaster for both of us if we can’t.”
“I know.”
After a moment, she shrugged and said, “I am hungry. Put your clothes on.”
“With great reluctance.”
“Yeah.”
Lieutenant Colonel George H. Parsons and Major Warren W. Ashley were at the headwaiter’s table just inside the door to the dining room when Cronley and Colbert walked in.