The Assassination Option (Clandestine Operations 2)

“Stop that,” Claudette said. “I didn’t come here for that.”

“I thought you’d changed your mind.”

“Are you crazy?”

“I don’t know about crazy,” Cronley said. “How about ‘overcome with lust’?”

“You just about admitted to Colonel Parsons that I’ve been feeding you his messages to the Pentagon.”

“The moment he saw you with me, he figured that out himself,” Cronley said. “I never thought he was slow.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

“He would have heard sooner or later that you defected to DCI.”

“Jimmy, please don’t do that. You know what it does to me.”

“That’s why I’m doing it.”

“So what’s going to happen now?”

“Well, after I get your tunic off, I’ll start working on your shirt.”

“What’s Parsons going to do now?”

“Spend an uncomfortable thirty minutes or so with Ashley, wondering what incriminating things they said in the messages you turned over to Hessinger and me.”

“Jimmy, I told you to stop that.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t sound as if you really meant it.”

“And then what’s he going to do?”

“See about getting another communications route to the Pentagon. Which will probably be hard, as he would first have to explain what’s wrong with the one he has, and then if he did that, said he had good reason to believe I was reading his correspondence, he would then have to explain to Greene, or ol’ Iron Lung, what it was he wanted to tell the Pentagon he didn’t want me to know.

“Oh, there they are! I knew they had to be in there somewhere!”

“Are you listening to me? What if Freddy comes back and comes in here? . . . Oh, God, Jimmy! . . . Jimmy, let me do that, before you tear something!”

[FIVE]

Schleissheim Army Airfield

Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

0545 17 January 1946

Captain Chauncey L. Dunwiddie squeezed himself out of the Storch, and a moment later, Max Ostrowski followed him. Kurt Schröder started to follow Ostrowski.

“Stay in there, Kurt,” Cronley called to him, “we’re leaving right away.” And then asked, “Have you enough fuel to make Eschborn?”

Schröder gave him a thumbs-up.

“Why are we going to Frankfurt?” Dunwiddie asked.

“Actually, we’re going to Rhine-Main,” Cronley said, directing his answer to Ostrowski.

“Rhine-Main or Eschborn?”