Sorry, Alicia. Hansel is shutting the airplane down. He’ll get off in a minute.
Cletus Frade embraced his wife, lifting her off the ground in the process, and then started to offer his hand to Cronley. He then changed his mind, wrapped his arms around him, and also lifted him off his feet.
“What the hell is going on, Clete?” Cronley asked, after breaking free of the embrace.
Frade simply pointed up to the aircraft’s door.
Jim Cronley’s mother, elegant and trim, had come out of the aircraft and was very carefully making her way down the steep, narrow stairway. Cronley’s throat tightened and his eyes watered. He could not immediately recall that last time he had seen his mother. He walked quickly over to meet her.
His mother finally made it to the foot of the stairs, then raised her eyes from the steps and saw him.
“Mein Liebchen, mein Liebchen!” she cried, and threw herself into his arms.
He picked her up and carried her to one side of the stairs.
Maybe thirty seconds later, he freed himself from her barrage of kisses.
He looked up the stairway, expecting to see his father. Instead, he found himself looking up the skirt of an adult female who was holding an infant while slowly descending the steps. He saw far enough up her skirt, before he averted his eyes, to note that she was wearing blue-lace panties.
Who the hell is that?
And why were you looking at some strange female’s crotch while hugging your mother?
His mother continued kissing and crying.
The next thing he was aware of was a han
d on his shoulder, then his father’s voice.
“How are you, son?”
Cronley freed himself enough from his mother’s embrace to get his arm around his father. The three of them hugged one another, Cronley hoping no one saw the tears running down his cheeks.
When he opened his eyes again, there was a familiar face looking at him curiously.
Jesus Christ. Unless I’m losing my mind, that’s Ginger!
That was her blue-lace crotch I was just looking at!
What the hell is she doing here?
With her months-old baby?
Dumb question. Babies are usually with their mothers, stupid!
“Hello, Jimmy,” Ginger said.
“Hey, Ginger.”
Cronley’s history with twenty-two-year-old Virginia Moriarty went back to their growing up together in the Texas Panhandle.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Cletus Frade announced as he held up a SIGABA printout, “but this is important. It came in when we were an hour out.”
“What?” Cronley said, stepping closer to him.
He took the sheet and read it.
Top Secret–Lindbergh? he thought. So Oscar Shultz forwarded Wallace’s message about Burgdorf and von Dietelburg escaping the Tribunal Prison, with Wallace saying Cohen blames Odessa. And that Wasserman says the Vienna police intel chief suspects DCI’s hand in his surveillance chief’s disappearance?