“I had the feeling you knew one another,” General Gehlen said. “You said ‘that bad.’ Colonel Wilson doesn’t think much of our chances?”
“Colonel Wilson said I should know better than to try to estimate the chances of an operation being successful.”
“What did he mean by that?” Cronley asked. “Why not?”
“The only pertinent question to be asked is, ‘Is it necessary?’ And you’ve already made that decision, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I have,” Cronley said, as much to himself as in response to Wallace’s question.
“Konrad,” General Gehlen asked, “once we get them, how long is it going to take to get the coordinates of possible pickup sites to Seven-K?”
“That would depend, Herr General, on whether we send them by messenger—”
“Which would be slower in any event than by radio, even if we knew where Rahil is,” Mannberg interrupted.
“But would present less of a risk of interception,” Bischoff argued.
“It would take too much time,” Gehlen said. “The time element here is critical. Rahil is greatly exposed moving around Poland or Bohemia, Moravia—”
“General,” Wallace interrupted, smiling, “that’s Czechoslovakia again. The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia is history. You lost the war.”
“Indeed, we did. What I meant to say, Green Valley, was that Seven-K is greatly exposed moving around that part of the world with a Russian woman and two Russian children with the NKGB looking for them.”
“Well, if you think they’re in what used to be Moravia, people other people are looking for are sometimes very hard to find in Moravia. Even by . . .”
Gehlen shook his head, and smiled.
“Searchers directed by Major Konrad Bischoff of Abwehr Ost,” he said.
“We heard you were personally directing the searchers,” Wallace said.
“Perhaps if I had, we would have met sooner than we did,” Gehlen said. “What happened was that my man normally in charge of important searches, Oberst Otto Niedermeyer, wasn’t available, so Kon—”
“You’re talking about the guy I met in Argentina?” Cronley blurted.
“I’m sure we are, Jim,” Gehlen said.
Jesus, this intelligence business is really a small world, isn’t it?
“So Konrad got the job of . . . trying to arrange a conversation with Green Valley,” Gehlen concluded.
“And damned near succeeded,” Wallace said. “There I was, all by my lonesome in a muddy field in picturesque Králický Snežník. I could actually hear your motorcycles coming up the valley, and no sign of anything in the sky to get me the hell out of there. I was about to kiss my . . . rear end . . . goodbye, when there was Billy Wilson coming down the valley in his puddle jumper, about ten feet off the ground.”
“We saw him,” Bischoff said. “We were looking for a Lysander—”
“A what?” Cronley asked.
“A British ground cooperation aircraft, Jim,” Gehlen explained. “With short field capability. The OSS used them often in situations like Major Wallace’s.”
“Which we expected to land, and then get stuck in the muddy fields,” Bischoff explained.
“But instead you got Hotshot Billy in an L-4, with oversized tires,” Wallace said. “He touched down and I got in and away we went.”
“We were amazed when you got off the ground,” Bischoff said. “You flew right over us.”
“Which brings us to that,” Wallace said.
“Excuse me?” Gehlen said.