By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

And what will happen, if Freddy can track Daddy down, is that he will deny, swearing on a stack of Bibles, that he ever took a fraulein to bed all the time he was here and that he certainly has no intention of starting now to support somebody else’s bastard.

Goddammit. Men should be castrated at birth.

But what did she say? It wasn’t a question of child support?

Netty carefully considered her words, then continued: “As I’m sure you’re aware . . . and you, Pastor Dannberg . . . I’m ashamed to say that this boy is not the first child to be abandoned by an American soldier. Do you

have the father’s name?”

“Jorge Castillo,” Erika said. “He was a helicopter pilot and he was from Texas.”

“May I speak bluntly?” Netty asked after a long moment ’s thought.

“Of course.”

“I think my husband can probably find this man—that seems an unusual name—but I also think it’s possible, even likely, that this man will be less than willing to acknowledge a child who, as you said, he doesn’t even know he’s had.”

“We’ve thought about that, of course,” Pastor Dannberg said.

“And, however remote,” Erika added, “there is the possibility that he will be pleased to learn he has a son and be willing to assume his parental obligations.”

There is also the possibility that pigs can be taught to whistle. In twelve years—if this guy wasn’t already married —Poppa already has a wife and children and the last thing he wants his wife to know is he left a bastard in Germany who he is now expected to take into his happy home.

“Please believe me when I say I’m trying to be helpful,” Netty said. “But there are certain questions I just have to ask.”

“I understand.”

“Does the mother have other children?”

“No. She never married.”

Well, that answers my next question: What does Mamma’s husband have to say about this?

“She raised the boy by herself? And never married?”

“She never married and she raised the boy by herself,” Erika said.

“This is an indelicate question,” Netty said. “Forgive me for asking it. But I have to. How does she know this man is the father?”

“She knows. No other possibility exists. He was her first, and only, lover. They were . . . together . . . three times. The first night, and then the next.”

“I really hate to say this, but how can we know that?”

“Because I’m telling you,” Erika said.

“But, Erika, how do you know?” Netty pursued.

“Because we are talking about my son, Netty,” Erika von und zu Gossinger said.

[TWO]

Headquarters Eleventh Armored Cavalry Regiment Downs Barracks Fulda, Hesse, West Germany 1545 7 March 1981

The sergeant major of the Eleventh “Blackhorse” Armored Cavalry Regiment, a stocky thirty-nine-year-old from Altoona, Pennsylvania, named Rupert Dieter, put his shaven head in the door of the colonel’s office.

“You have time for the colonel’s lady?” Dieter asked.

Colonel Frederick J. Lustrous, Armor, a tall, muscular forty-five-year-old, was visibly surprised at the question— Netty almost never came to the office—but rose to the occasion.