He glowered at Cremer.

“All I know for sure,” Cremer went on, “is that he built a very nice hotel in a place that is not very nice. It has none of that cowboy nonsense we’ve seen everywhere else.”

Adolphus Busch, as might be expected of one so named, saw to it that the hotel bearing his name was heavily influenced by European design. He built a bit of Bavaria on the north Texas prairie, creating an oasis of elegance in a town that was otherwise rather rough around the edges.

The guests Grossman and Cremer had seen clearly were wealthy, though the two noticed that their dress was not necessarily always up to the standards of what might be expected of, say, the German upper class attending functions at the Hotel Berlin.

Granted, almost without exception the women of the Adolphus dressed quite fashionably, and many practically dripped in diamonds.

The clothing of the men, though, covered a wide range.

Some of them wore well-fitted suits with pointed-toe, Western-style boots, their black leather skins buffed to a deep shine. Instead of a necktie, a few had on a bolo, a finely braided leather cord that was clasped at the shirt-collar button by an elaborate slide fashioned by craftsmen of silver and gems.

Most of the other men at the Adolphus, however, were not concerned with such niceties. They had the weathered look of ranchers—hardworking and honest men—and it reflected in their clothes. If they happened to have on suit coats, the garments were not freshly pressed—one had even showed dirt—and their boots, whether the toes were pointed or rounded, went unpolished.

As it happened, this worked in the favor of Cremer and Grossman.

Cremer said, “No one has looked twice at us here, proving no one would expect to find a couple of German nationals suspected of blowing up things hiding in an expensive hotel.”

Cremer flipped the pages of the Dallas Daily Times-Herald, found what he was looking for, then folded the paper.

“Especially,” he added, “when those agents appear to be blowing up things on the East Coast.”

He held out the folded paper to Grossman.

“Here. Read this.”

Grossman walked over, took the paper, and found the article.

* * *

POWER OUTAGES SPREAD

Baltimore Latest to Lose Power;

3 Cities in 3 Days Go Dark

Governor Calls for Calm

By Michael B. Goldman

Daily Times-Herald Washington Bureau Chief

WASHINGTON, D.C., Mar. 5—The mayor of Baltimore, MD, last night called his entire police department on duty after more than half of that port city’s downtown area lost electrical power.

The outage began at 6 o’clock and lasted for more than five hours.

Confusion struck commuters the hardest, with busy train stations coming to a halt and city streets gridlocked until well after midnight.

Hospital emergency rooms were reported to be operating at peak capacity with record numbers of injured being admitted. A hospital representative who would not speak officially put the figure at “hundreds.”

“It is important to have a strong police presence at such times,” Mayor Sean MacDonald said, explaining his emergency action. “The public expects it.”

By this morning, power and calm had returned to downtown Baltimore.

But, according to some, there was anything but calm among the general population.

“People are scared,” said Maryland state representative Silas Rippy, a Democrat whose district includes downtown Baltimore. “This is exactly hat happened on Tuesday in Carolina and on Thursday in Virginia. They’re calling it a ‘coincidence.’ This is no coincidence. We want—and we deserve—real answers.”

Tags: W.E.B. Griffin Men at War Thriller
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