“The Ninety-seventh General Hospital,” Dunwiddie furnished.
“Ideally, the latter,” Mannberg went on. “Instead of the Schlosshotel Kronberg. I suggest that if any of the Likharevs require medical attention, the place to do that would be in Frankfurt, where the good offices of Generals Smith and Greene could be enlisted to discourage the curious.
“If necessary, the doctor or the nurse or both could go on the airplane with the Likharevs. If their services were not required, they wouldn’t go. I agree with Cronley that the presence of a woman would be a calming influence on Mrs. Likharev, and suggest that Fraulein Colbert could fill that role.”
“I agree with everything he just said,” Cronley said.
“How could you not?” Wallace asked sarcastically. “Okay, we’re in agreement that Brunhilde can make a contribution, right?”
Wallace looked around the table. Everybody nodded.
“My take on that is, if so, why not get her up here right now? How would we do that?”
“Going down that road,” Cronley began, “we get Hotshot Billy to fly her up here.”
[FOUR]
Hangar Two
U.S. Air Force Base, Fritzlar, Hesse
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1450 19 January 1946
They went down that road, and many others, without interruption—not even to send someone to the PX snack bar for the hot dogs, hamburgers, Cokes, and potato chips Major Wallace had promised—until Sergeant Pete Fortin came into the room.
This stopped their discussion, which was then on how to get photographs of Mrs. Likharev and her sons to former Major Konrad Bischoff in Munich so they could be affixed to the Vatican passports they would need to leave the American Zone of Occupied Germany.
“What is it, Sergeant?” Major Wallace demanded, not very pleasantly.
“Two things, sir. Our next contact is at fifteen hundred . . .”
Wallace looked at his watch and shook his head in what was almost certainly disbelief that it was already that late.
“. . . and Sergeant Mitchell says there’s something funny going on at the Constab that maybe you want to have a look at it.”
“Something funny?” Wallace asked. “Okay. We’ll pick this up again just as soon as I finish taking a leak, seeing what’s amusing Sergeant Mitchell, and having our chat with Seven-K.”
He stood up and went directly to the restroom. There he stood in front of one of the two urinals. Captain Dunwiddie shouldered Captain Cronley out of the way and assumed a position in front of the adjacent urinal. Former Colonel Mannberg got in line behind Major Wallace, and Kurt Schröder got in line behind him as Max Ostrowski got behind Captain Cronley.
Minutes later, after climbing the stairs, they filed into the radio room in just about that order.
Cronley looked at where Dunwiddie was pointing, out one of the huge plate-glass windows. He saw what looked like three troops of Constabulary troopers lining up on a grassy area half covered with snow in front of the 11th Constabulary Regiment headquarters.
“Okay, I give up,” Cronley said. “What’s going on?”
“Beats me,” Dunwiddie admitted. “It’s too early for that to be a retreat formation.”
“Jesus, there’s even a band,” Cronley said.
“Regiments don’t have bands,” Dunwiddie said.
“This one does,” Cronley argued.
“Gentlemen, if you’re going to be in the intelligence business, you’re really going to have to remember to always look over your shoulder,” Major Wallace said, and pointed out the plate-glass window to their immediate rear.
The window gave a panoramic view for miles over the countryside, and in particular of the road down a valley and ending at the air base.