Curtain of Death (Clandestine Operations 3)

“I took none, Al, but Dette thinks you don’t like her.”

“She knows better than that, Major. How you doing, Dette?”

“A lot better than Florence. She’s still in the 98th.”

“But just shook up, right? Not cut or shot?”

“Shook up is bad enough,” Dette said.

“Before we get into the subject of Odessa,” Wallace said, “when I called El Jefe to tell him what happened to Dette and Florence, he said that he had been thinking—which I believe means that the admiral had been thinking—that those scurrilous rumors saying we’ve been sending people the CIC has been looking for to Argentina could be put to rest if we had proof that Odessa is the villain.”

“Hmm,” General Gehlen said. “Interesting point.”

“Schultz said, ‘If there was proof that three or four former senior SS officers the CIC is already looking for turned out to be the culprits.’”

“Yeah,” Cronley agreed thoughtfully.

“Which suggests to me, Jim, that your previously made decision to put those sleeping dogs—your cousin Luther and Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin of the Strasbourg office of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire—on the back burner has been overridden by El Jefe.”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“And with that in mind, and seeing you have two new members of your staff who have no idea what we’re talking about, may I suggest that you do a recap, starting at the beginning, of what has gone before?”

“Let Finney do it,” Cronley said. “I’m personally involved.”

“Sergeant Finney, you have the podium,” Wallace said.

Finney stood up, looking a bit uncomfortable.

Understanding why, Cronley said, “I’ve done it again. Sergeant Finney, that’s CID Supervisory Special Agent Ziegler and that’s CIC Supervisory Special Agent Hammersmith, both of whom saw the error of their ways and begged to be taken in by us. In other words, Al, they’re in the loop.”

Hammersmith thought: Wiseass!

The men nodded at each other.

“From the beginning, Al,” Cronley ordered. “Whoops, one more thing. I should have introduced you as DCI Special Agent Finney. Which raises the question, why are you wearing stripes?”

“Fat Freddy said I should ask you if you wanted me in stripes or triangles.”

“Your call, Al. Whichever is right at the time. Please proceed.”

“I guess it goes back to when the CIC guy brought the black market packages that the CID grabbed”—Finney looked at Hammersmith and Ziegler—“that was you guys, right?”

“That was me,” Hammersmith said.

Ziegler shook his head and said, “This is all new to me.”

“The captain’s mother,” Finney went on, “had sent him several packages of black market goodies—canned hams, coffee, cigarettes—which somebody in the CID grabbed in the APO. Because they had the captain’s CIC address on them, the CID turned them over to the CIC . . .”

Where, Wallace thought, good ol’ Bob Mattingly, seeing his chance to stick it to Cronley, grabbed it.

“. . . who sent a CIC agent to deliver the packages to Captain Cronley with a letter saying ‘please let us know in advance if you are going to require such materials in connection with your DCI activities.’”

Wallace thought: And made damned sure Greene and everybody else in USFET G-2 and provost marshal’s office got a copy.

“When . . .” Finley went on, and looked at Hammersmith. “What would you like me to call you?”

In a just and fair world, Sergeant, I would be able to tell you to call me “Major Hammersmith, sir.”