Empire and Honor Page 19

  Cronley could hear enough of the couple’s conversation in German to conclude that Tiny was right on the money.

  The couple finished their meal and left just as Tiny’s and Jimmy’s entrees were being served. The blonde, who they now saw towered at least a head over her escort, was even more spectacular when viewed from the rear.

  Dunwiddie again read Jimmy’s mind: “I have always been an ass man myself,” he said, and when Cronley smiled, went on: “I never asked. Did you leave a fur-line behind in Marburg?”

  “No,” Cronley replied immediately. When he saw the look on Tiny’s face, he explained, “My father met my mother in Strasbourg after the First World War.”

  “And you’re uncomfortable ‘taking advantage’?”

  “I guess.”

  “Oddly enough, so am I,” Dunwiddie said, and then asked, “You haven’t gotten laid since you came to Germany?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Didn’t Norwich teach you that gentlemen don’t tell?”

  “What Norwich taught me was to seek inspiration from great leaders.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “General George S. Patton, who I suggest qualifies as a great leader, said, ‘A soldier who won’t fuck won’t fight.’ I have taken that advice to heart.”

  “So, you have a fräulein?”

  “I didn’t say that. What I did was agree with the opinion of Oscar Wilde, who said, ‘Celibacy is the most unusual of all the perversions.’”

  Cronley chuckled. “I never heard that.”

  “We of Norwich tend to have greater erudition than you Aggies.”

  “So then what do you do?”

  “Well, since I certainly don’t want to be accused of practicing the most unusual of all perversions, I decided that I would have to enter into business relationships with practitioners of the world’s oldest profession.”

  “You find yourself a whore,” Jimmy said.

  “When my libido gets out of control, I find a prostitute, not a whore.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “You pay a prostitute for services rendered, and that’s the end of it.”

  My God, he’s got it right. That’s what I should do.

  I can’t spend the next two years—or however long I’m going to be in Germany—with a perpetual raging hard-on.

  Dunwiddie again read his mind.

  “Why, Lieutenant, do I think I have just solved one of your more pressing problems?”

  “Where would I find one of these professional ladies?”

  “In Munich. I shall have to make discreet inquiries. What you should not do is go to one of the ladies walking up and down on the sidewalk. You saw the movies—your male appendage turns black and falls off. You must have seen those movies.”

  “I saw them. And then you go crazy and die.”

  “Exactly. I’d love to know where that fat little man met the blonde.”

  “Maybe we can find him and ask.”

  “He’s funny-looking, but he also looked smart. He wouldn’t tell us, and in any event, we don’t know what Major Harold N. Wallace has in mind for us to do.”

  Cronley had a very clear mental image of Elsa in her see-through underwear and then of her without it.

  A business relationship it is going to have to be.

  I can’t go on this way.

  —

  Cronley followed Dunwiddie down the carpeted fifth floor of the hotel looking for Room 507.

  “Here it is,” Dunwiddie announced.

  There was a small, neatly lettered sign nailed to the door: XXVII CIC DET.

  Dunwiddie pushed it open, went in, and Jimmy followed.

  This isn’t a room, Cronley immediately decided when he saw how the room was furnished.

  More like the Presidential Suite. Or the Reichsführer Suite.

  The plump young man from the dining room was sitting behind an ornate gilded desk.

  “What do you want?” the young man challenged in a thick German accent.

  “Who are you?” Tiny Dunwiddie challenged.

  “I am asking the questions,” the young man said.

  It came out “duh k-vestions”—the accent so thick that Cronley smiled.

  “Well, you don’t get any answers until I hear who you are,” Dunwiddie replied.

  An interior door opened and Major Harold N. Wallace, wearing insignia-less pinks and greens, came into the room.

  “Well, I see you’ve found us in all this squalor,” Wallace said.

  “Yes, sir,” Tiny and Jimmy said in chorus.

  “Say hello to Sergeant Friedrich—Freddy—Hessinger,” Wallace said. “Freddy, this is First Sergeant Dunwiddie, and I think I should warn you that his bite is just about as bad—maybe a little worse—than his bark. And this is Second Lieutenant Cronley, who unlike most second lieutenants seems to know what he’s doing.”

  Hessinger smiled uncomfortably and said, formally, “How do you do?”

  Cronley had to smile again at both the formality and the accent.

  “Well, come on in,” Wallace said, and waved them through the door. “You better come, too, Freddy.”

  Through the door was a luxuriously furnished sitting room, equipped with a desk even more ornate than Hessinger’s, and off of which three doors opened. One of them was ajar and Cronley could see an enormous bed.

  “Sit,” Wallace ordered, indicating two chairs and a couch, all ornately carved and upholstered, facing his desk.

  “We have heard from our master, now ensconced in the I.G. Farben Building, right behind the throne of Eisenhower,” Wallace said. “So where to begin?” he asked rhetorically, and then began.

  “Welcome to the CIC, Tiny,” he said.

  “Sir?”

  Wallace opened a drawer in his desk, took out something—Cronley thought it looked like a leather CIC credentials wallet—and tossed it to Dunwiddie. He examined it, then tossed it to Cronley.

  It was indeed a set of CIC special agent credentials, badge and plastic-sealed identity card providing the photo, physical description, and name of the agent: CHAUNCEY L. DUNWIDDIE.

  “Chauncey?” Cronley asked, smiling.

  “Fuck you, with all possible respect, Lieutenant, sir.”

  “Colonel Mattingly said to tell you that while he thinks these credentials will probably prove useful, he doesn’t think you should tell anybody about them, or rush off to the Officers’ Sales Store to buy pinks and greens. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Just get another Ike jacket and sew the triangles on it, for use as needed,” Wallace said, pointing to one of the small blue triangles with the letters “US” inside them on his lapels.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Those ordinarily come with a .38 S&W snub-nosed,” Wallace said, indicating the credentials. “You want one?”

  “Absolutely,” Tiny said.

  “Colonel Mattingly thought you would think the .38 was beneath the dignity of a cavalryman,” Wallace said. “That you would prefer the 1911-A1 .45.”

  “I’m curious. I’ve never shot one of those little snub-nose .38s.”

  “Freddy here shot Expert on the range at Camp Holabird with one,” Wallace said. “Which brings us to him. Or, more precisely, to that subject.

  “Freddy, like you, Jim, is a graduate of one of those abbreviated classes at Holabird. The CIC needs German-speaking people to run down Nazis. Many of them, like Freddy, are German Jews who have a personal interest in seeing that Nazis are rounded up. While this is of course a noble endeavor, it is somewhat at odds with our mission. How many of you were there on the plane, Freddy?”

  “There were twenty-two of us, sir.”

  “Colonel Mattingly had a chat with each of the twenty-two,” Wallace said. “And he liked Freddy for two reasons. One, Freddy wants to be an historian when he gets out of the Army, and the colonel, as you know, was a professor of history.”

  Second Lieutenant Cronl
ey thought: Mattingly was a what?

  “The second thing that caused the colonel to look fondly upon Freddy,” Wallace went on, “is that he said Freddy was the only one who had ever heard of the Communists—frankly, I think this was a bit of hyperbole—much less regarded them as a major threat to anything.

  “After giving Freddy what has now become a standard cautionary note vis-à-vis Operation Ost—‘Reveal any of this to anyone and we’ll kill you’—the colonel told him what we’re doing here.

  “This included telling him that while, thank God, Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau has left government service, he left in place a large number of people as devoted as he was to running down Nazis wherever found. For example, in Kloster Grünau or even in Argentina.

  “He also told Freddy of his concern that—with the most noble of motive—the CIC Nazi hunters, especially those of the Hebrew persuasion, would happily share with these people whatever they had heard—fact and rumor—about Nazis being in Kloster Grünau or even in Argentina, and this would be unfortunate for Operation Ost.

  “The colonel told me he realized that there should be—had to be—two branches of the CIC in USFET—one dedicated to finding Nazis and the other to frustrating the Soviets. And he realized that the structure to do this was fortuitously already in place, the Twenty-seventh CIC Detachment. At the time, there were only two personnel assigned to the Twenty-seventh, Second Lieutenant Cronley and myself. Now there are four, counting you two.

  “The colonel also told me he realized the Twenty-seventh would itself have to have two divisions, one of them nameless and secret and charged with the support and security of General Gehlen and his people—Operation Ost. The other would perform more or less routine counterintelligence operations involving the Soviets. The colonel feels their activities will provide a credible cover for the activities of the unnamed section. They will know nothing of the unnamed section.”

  He paused, looking between them.

  “Getting the picture?” Wallace said.

  “Where does Hessinger fit in?” Dunwiddie asked.

  “General Gehlen told the colonel he thinks we have to expect the Soviets will try to kidnap anyone they think knows anything about Operation Ost. While Freddy will know no more than he absolutely has to about the details of Operation Ost—in case the Soviets grab him, the less he knows the better—but he will serve as the contact between Kloster Grünau and me.”

  “Got it,” Dunwiddie said.

  “And turning to the subject of contact,” Wallace said. “There is no way I could operate a semi-clandestine radio station in the Vier Jahreszeiten, so you get the Collins and the SIGABA.”

  Collins? SIGABA? Cronley thought.

  Semi-clandestine radio station?

  What the hell is he talking about?

  “Yes, sir,” Dunwiddie said.

  “Bring Lieutenant Cronley up to speed on that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What are you driving?”

  “A Kapitän, sir.”

  “I’m not sure the Collins and the SIGABA will fit in a Kapitän,” Wallace said. “But that’s not going to be a problem. I got you another three ambulances . . .”

  Three ambulances?

  Oh, the ones with the Red Crosses painted over.

  “. . . so you can put the SIGABA and the Collins in one of them and drive home. They’re in the basement garage.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You drive the ambulance, Mr. Dunwiddie, as second lieutenants are not supposed to drive ambulances. It’s beneath their dignity, and we don’t want to draw attention to us with an undignified lieutenant, do we?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And when you get home, send someone to pick up the other ambulances. I want to get them out of here before anyone asks where I got them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Spend the night here—I don’t want to risk damage to the SIGABA if you hit a pothole. Leave first thing in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can you think of anything else, Hessinger?” Major Wallace asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “What do we do, sir? Check into the hotel?” Dunwiddie asked.

  “Not necessary. I requisitioned this entire floor. I don’t know what I’m going to do with all the space, but I didn’t want anybody else in it.”

  Wallace looked at his watch.

  “Well, that’s it. I’m off to see the Wizard . . .”

  Now what the hell does that mean?

  “. . . call Freddy when you’re set up with Vint Hill.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Code phrase ‘I talked to Virginia.’ The Wizard really doesn’t want anyone to know about the SIGABA and the Collins, and I don’t think we should trust the ground lines between here and the Kloster.”

  “Should I try to call Argentina, sir?”

  “Yes, and set up a schedule. The Wizard can’t put an antenna on the Farben building either.”

  Aha! The Wizard is Colonel Mattingly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, what a tangled web, right, Tiny?” Wallace asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I told Freddy to get you anything you need,” Wallace said, as he offered his hand to everybody in turn. Then he walked out of the room.

  Anyplace else, we’d have been called to attention, been dismissed, and then exchanged salutes.

  Welcome to Oz, Lieutenant Cronley!

  “I have the keys to your rooms outside,” Hessinger said. “Is there anything you need tonight before I go?”

  You’re back to that spectacular blonde, you mean?

  They followed him to the outer room. He handed them enormous keys attached to even larger brass room number tags.

  “Is there anything?” Hessinger repeated.

  “We understand why you’re so anxious to leave, Hessinger. We saw the blonde,” Tiny said.

  “She seeks employment as a translator,” Hessinger said simply. “I am trying to help her.”

  “Of course you are,” Tiny said.

  “If you are asking if she is available, of course she is. But not for a box of Hershey bars.”

  “Never buy cheap shoes or rent cheap courtesans, Hessinger. You agree?”

  Hessinger bent over his desk and scrawled an address on a slip of paper.

  “It’s not far. I recommend that you walk.”

  “Presumably she has friends?”

  “Many friends.”

  “May we say that you sent us?”

  “Of course.”

  “There is something you can do for me, Sergeant,” Cronley then said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You have access to the files on the people we’re looking for?”

  Hessinger nodded. “Of course, sir.”

  Tiny’s curiosity was visible on his face, but he said nothing.

  “We recently picked up a woman, a Category Four. You know what that means?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’d like a look at her dossier. Can you get it for me?”

  “Right now, sir?”

  “Before we go back to the Kloster.”

  “If you and First Sergeant Dunwiddie are going out, sir, I could have it waiting for you in your room by the time you come back.”

  “That’ll do fine. Her name is Frau Elsa von Wachtstein. Should I spell that for you?”

  “That’s enough, sir.”

  “Good man, Hessinger,” Jimmy said.

  —

  In the elevator, Tiny said, “Because I am now a CIC agent and a simulated gentleman, I won’t ask you what that was all about.”

  “Good, because it’s none of your fucking business.”

  —

  Two hours later, their mission to find companionship having been successful, Tiny pointed to a sign in the lobby of the hotel reading OFFICERS’ CLASS VI SALES.

  Class VI was the Army euphemism for distilled spirits.

  “One way for you to show me y
our gratitude for finding that energetic redhead for you would be for you to go in there and buy us a bottle of Rémy Martin.”

  “To drink while I now wait for my dick to turn black and fall off?”

  “To drink while we consider our philosophical discussion of the differences between whores and courtesans.”

  “What the hell—why not?”

  —

  There was a well-stuffed manila envelope on the desk in Cronley’s room. It bore a red mark across it, on which the word SECRET was printed.

  There was a handwritten note on it: I hope this is the right one. Sgt Hessinger.

  “Let me wash a couple of glasses,” Tiny said. “There’s some on that table.”

  Cronley sat down at the desk and ripped open the envelope flap.

  The envelope contained several folders. In the second were four photographs of Elsa. Three showed her with a man who was obviously the late Oberstleutnant Graf von Wachtstein. The fourth showed her in a skimpy bathing suit on the bank of a narrow river.

  God, she’s beautiful!

  Tiny set a brandy snifter on the desk.

  “Is that the lady causing you to wallow in remorse because of your recent infidelity?”

  “How the fuck could I be unfaithful to her? She thinks I’m a boy. And she’s in fucking Argentina.”

  “Hans-Peter von Wachtstein’s widowed sister-in-law? That’s who you . . . found sexual relief with?”

  “Fuck you, Tiny.”

  “You promised her something—or implied something—to get in her pants and didn’t deliver? Is that what’s bothering you?”

  “I didn’t know about the brother-in-law. Before Mattingly showed up in Marburg, before I knew what was going on, I told her she didn’t have to worry, I was . . . I was in a . . . a position to help her.”

  “You told her you were rich?”

  Dunwiddie then saw the look on Cronley’s face, and explained: “Mattingly showed me your dossier before you came down from Marburg.”

  “Yeah. And her reaction was to make me promise I would never tell another German woman. She was afraid they’d take advantage of me.”

  “And they would. She was right.”

  “I’m in love with her.”

  “She is thirty-something. You’re twenty-one. And you better hope Mattingly never finds out you screwed her.”

  “I don’t really give a damn if he does.”

  “Come on! Operation Ost needs you.”