Cronley gestured with his hand around the room. “And to put your mind at rest, Colonel, about the wrong people hearing those answers, I told Brunhilde to have the ASA guys sweep your suite for bugs after dinner and again at midnight.”
“And if I don’t choose to answer your questions?”
“Then we’re going to have trouble.”
“You’re threatening me?”
“I’m making a statement of fact.”
“Your pal Cletus warned me not to underestimate you,” Wallace said, and waved him into the room.
Wallace sat in an armchair, and motioned for Cronley to sit on a couch.
“Okay. What questions have you for me?”
“Let’s start with how long you’ve been a colonel.”
“What makes you think I am a colonel? Where the hell did you come up with that?”
“If you’re going to play games with me, Colonel, we’ll be here a long time.”
Wallace looked at him for a long thirty seconds before replying.
“Why are you asking?”
“I figure if I get a straight answer to that, straight answers to my other questions will follow.”
“And if I give you a straight answer, then what? You tell the world?”
“You know me better than that.”
“I guess I knew this conversation was coming, but I didn’t think it would be this soon. Been doing a lot of thinking, have you?”
“Since just before we went to dinner. I’m sorry I didn’t start a lot earlier. So, what’s your answer?”
“I was promoted to colonel the day after Bill Wilson pulled me out of Králický Snežník. It was April Fools’ Day, 1945. I guess that’s why I remember the exact date. Is that what tipped you off?”
“Wilson’s a starchy West Pointer. You called him ‘Hotshot.’ He doesn’t like to be called Hotshot. So how were you getting away with it? Maybe because you outrank him? And if that’s true . . .”
“You figured that out, did you, you clever fellow?”
“It started me thinking about what else I didn’t know.”
“For example?”
“You brought up ‘my pal Cletus.’ Does he know what’s going on here?”
“What do you think?” Wallace said sarcastically.
“You met him before—him and El Jefe—before the day you came to Marburg with him and Mattingly, to pick up Frau von Wachtstein?”
Wallace nodded.
“In—the middle of 1943, I forget exactly when—Wild Bill Donovan decided that David Bruce, the OSS station chief in London, should be brought up to speed on what was happening in Argentina. Things that could not be written down.
“Bruce couldn’t leave London, so he sent me, as sort of a walking notebook. I spent three weeks there with Cletus and El Jefe. Which is how, since we are laying all our secrets on the table, you got in the spook business.”
“I don’t understand.”