“I’d like to see Colonel Cohen, please. My name is Cronley.”
“Send him in,” a high-pitched voice ordered from an outer office.
Cronley walked through the open door.
A very slight man in his forties sat behind a desk on which sat a small sign:
COLONEL MORTIMER S. COHEN, MI. COMMANDING OFFICER.
“Good morning, Colonel. I’m Jim Cronley. I command the Thirty-fourth CIC Detachment, which has just been assigned here, and I’m here to make my manners with you.”
“You’re off to a bad start. For one thing, since we both know you’re in the Army, you should have saluted. And for another, you’re obviously too young to be a field-grade officer, so you shouldn’t have parked where you just did.”
Oh, shit!
What do I do now?
Salute this arrogant little sonofabitch and apologize?
Fuck that!
That would put me in his pocket, and I can’t let that happen.
The best defense is a good offense!
“For one thing, Colonel, I’m wearing triangles, and civilians don’t salute. And so far as being a field-grade officer, that comes with this.”
He took out his DCI credentials and laid them on Cohen’s desk.
“I’m actually commanding officer of Detachment ‘A’ of DCI-Europe, which has been charged with protecting Justice Jackson. The Thirty-fourth CIC Detachment is my cover.”
“I’ve been charged with protecting everyone connected with the Tribunal.”
“You have just been relieved of that responsibility for Justice Jackson.”
“Presumably you have orders giving you the authority to do that? I find that hard to believe.”
“I don’t need orders. I have that authority. May I suggest you ask General Greene?”
Colonel Cohen stared coldly at him for a full twenty seconds.
“General Greene telephoned me to tell me you were coming. He said I was to cooperate with you. He didn’t say anything about you assuming responsibility for Justice Jackson.”
“Well, he knows that’s one of the things I was sent here to do. Why don’t you call him?”
“You wouldn’t want me to call him if you didn’t know what he was going to say, so I’ll give you a pass on that, Captain Cronley.”
Cronley didn’t reply. They looked at one another for thirty seconds.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Cohen asked finally. “How I’m supposed to cooperate with you? You implied just now—‘one of the things I was sent here to do’—that you have more than protecting Justice Jackson on your plate.”
“Let’s start with Justice Jackson. When the President heard that Colonel Mattingly had been kidnapped, he became concerned with Justice Jackson’s security.”
“‘Kidnapped’? There was a story in Stars and Stripes that he’d been arrested for drunk driving in East Germany.”
“You can’t always believe what you read in the newspapers, Colonel.”
“Very true. There was another story in Stars and Stripes reporting that my friend, the CIC inspector general, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schumann, and his wife were killed when his hot water heater blew up. I didn’t believe that, either.”