"Sir, this sergeant is this major's deputy?"

"The way things work around here is the best man for a job gets it, regardless of his rank . . ."

- Fifteen minutes later, he decided that for once he might have made the right decision.

What I had was a lieutenant and three sergeants-all good people; McClung sent me the best he had-who had suddenly been put on indefinite Temporary Duty doing they knew not what in the middle of nowhere.

They were understandably less than thrilled.

After telling them everything, I now have, I think, a lieutenant and three good non-coms who are looking forward to being part of Operation Ost.

And maybe, just maybe, they may have decided that the baby-faced captain isn't such a candy-a.s.s after all.

XI.

[ ONE ].

The Dining Room Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Maximilianstra.s.se 178 Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany 1325 4 November 1945 There was a colonel and a formidable-looking woman almost certainly his wife sitting at the table next to where Rachel had been waiting for him for almost an hour.

When Rachel blows up-and why else would she still be waiting for me, if not to blow up?-the colonel and his lady are going to get an earful.

"Mrs. Schumann, I'm so sorry to be late-"

"Don't be silly, Special Agent Cronley," Rachel said. "Special Agent Hessinger was kind enough to come by and tell me you were unavoidably detained. And the colonel made it perfectly clear to me that your entertaining me until he gets here depended on the press of your duties. Say no more. Please sit down."

That was obviously intended for the ears of the colonel and his formidable lady.

Rachel is, after all-maybe above all-a colonel's lady. Like Caesar's wife, colonels' ladies have to be above suspicion. They shouldn't be suspected of, for example, f.u.c.king young officers.

Maybe that's what's behind the bloom coming off the rose. Rachel has had time to think about what we've been up to. And wants to stop.

That's what it has to be. I got lucky again.

"Thank you," Cronley said, and sat down.

He had just adjusted his chair and reached for the napkin when he felt her foot searching his crotch.

[ TWO ].

Suite 527 Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Maximilianstra.s.se 178 Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany 1415 4 November 1945 "Sweetheart," Mrs. Rachel Schumann said to Captain James D. Cronley Jr., "don't be offended, but you need a shower."

They had been in Suite 527 perhaps two minutes, just long enough for them to be partially disrobed. That was, Rachel had pulled her dress over her head, and then pulled Jimmy's trousers and shorts down to his ankles. She was now on her knees, with his member in her hand.

It was the smell, or perhaps the taste, of the latter that she apparently found offensive.

"Go on," Rachel went on. "I don't know what you were doing all morning with that Russian of yours, but you smell like him. Don't worry. I'll be here when you come out."

Obviously, his nave hope of an hour before that he had gotten lucky again and was going to be able to get out of their relationship before it exploded in his face was just that, a nave hope born of desperation.

Rachel got to her feet. Jimmy stepped out of the trousers and shorts gathered at his ankles. He walked to the bathroom, shedding his Ike jacket as he reached it. He went into the bathroom, took off the rest of his clothing, and got into the shower.

As the cold water poured down on him, the conclusion he was forced to draw was that Rachel was bonkers.

There were a number of facts to support this theory, starting of course with the simple fact that she had enticed him into the relationship. It was not his Errol Flynntype woman-dazzling persona that had made him irresistible to her, which would have been nice to believe, but something else, and that something else was that she was not playing with all the cards normally found in a deck.

Now that he thought about it, he had known that something was wrong from the beginning. He had again thought of this-that Rachel was irresponsible, which is a polite way to say bonkers-at lunch.

Shortly after his lunch had been laid before him, the colonel and his formidable lady who had been at the adjacent table finished their lunch and left. With no others close to them, Rachel decided she could speak freely.

"I suppose it's too much to hope that when you were at the Pullach compound with your Russian friend, you found someplace we can go?"

"I was out there alone, Rachel. Major McClung sent an officer down with some communications equipment and I had to show him where it was to be installed."

"Then I guess we'll have to go to your room here. Do you always eat so slowly?"

"Going to my room would be dangerous. Maybe we could go to yours."

"What are you talking about, dangerous?"

He had then explained, in great detail, why going to his room would be dangerous, and to her room, only slightly less so: His room, Suite 527, was at the far end of the fifth-floor corridor, the interior end, so to speak. Away from the front of the hotel. The rooms at that end of the corridor, suites 501 and 502, the windows of which looked out upon Maximilianplatz, were permanently reserved for the use of Brigadier General H. Paul Greene, chief, Counterintelligence, European Command, and Colonel Robert Mattingly, his deputy. Neither officer was in Munich.

Suites 503 through 505 came next. Suite 503 was a.s.signed to Major Harold Wallace, and 504 and 505 had been set aside for the use of senior officers of the ASA/CIC community visiting Munich. Such as Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Schumann, who had been placed in Suite 504.

The two-door elevator bank came next, replacing Suite 506. Next came Suite 507, which served both as the offices of the XXVIIth CIC Detachment and quarters for Special Agent/Sergeant Friedrich Hessinger.

"So going to either my room or yours, Rachel, would be dangerous . . ."

"We have to go somewhere, sweetheart."

". . . my room more so because to get to it, when we got off the elevator, to get to my room, 527, we would have to walk past the door to 507, which is where Major Wallace and Special Agent Hessinger work. They often leave the door open, and they frequently leave the suite for one reason or another. Our chances of being seen going from the elevator to your room, 504, would be much less as we wouldn't have to walk past 507."

"Well, we can't go to my room, silly boy. What if Tony came back early and walked in on us?"

Since Cronley knew that the northbound Blue Danube, the only way he knew that Colonel Schumann could get to Munich from Vienna, didn't arrive until 1640, he didn't think this posed as much of a threat as Rachel did. But it was possible. And he didn't think arguing about it would be wise.

They had gone to his room, slipping undetected down the corridor past Suite 507's closed door. Getting back on the elevator-in other words, again pa.s.sing Suite 507, without attracting Freddy Hessinger's attention-was something he had not wanted to think about.

- Cronley stayed in the shower until he realized he was shivering and only then, reluctantly, added hot water to the stream to get rid of his chill.

So, what do I do now?

The first problem is getting Rachel out of here without getting caught.

No. That's the second problem. The first is getting back in bed with her and performing as she expects me to.

And what else?

As he warmed himself in the shower, and then as he dried himself, he considered all of his options, all of the potential disasters that could-and were likely to-happen.

And then he summed it up, in sort of an epiphany: The worst thing that's going to happen is not that Tiny Dunwiddie and Freddy Hessinger will learn that I'm incredibly stupid and an a.s.shole, or that Mattingly will know that he's been right all along about me being grossly incompetent, or that Clete will learn that I'm a three-star s.h.i.t for f.u.c.king a married woman before, almost literally, the Squirt was cold in her grave. It will be that I've failed to follow the oath I took the day my father pinned my gold bar onto my epaulet at College Station.

I swore to defend the Const.i.tution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help me G.o.d.

And if the Soviet Union isn't a foreign enemy of the United States, who is?

And speaking of G.o.d, how does that go in "The Book of Common Prayer"? I've said it enough. But for the first time in my life, I know what it means . . .

"Almighty and most merciful Father, "We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep.

"We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.

"We have offended against Thy holy laws.

"We have left undone those things which we ought to have done . . ."

Guilty on all counts. And there's nothing I can do about it.

Except for the last.

I am not going to leave undone those things I know have to be done.

I am going to protect Major Konstantin Orlovsky from getting shot and buried in an unmarked grave because that's a convenient solution to the problem for Colonel Mattingly.

I am going to convince that NKGB sonofab.i.t.c.h that it's his Christian duty to do what he can for his wife and children by turning.

I am going to get him on a plane to Argentina, and then I am going to make sure that General Gehlen does whatever he has to do to get Orlovsky's family out of Russia.

And after that, what?

I don't really give a d.a.m.n. It doesn't matter.

Back to the immediate problem: getting Rachel out of here without getting caught.

No. I got that wrong again.

First, getting Ole Willie to stand up and do his duty, which may be a h.e.l.l of a problem, and then getting Rachel out of here without getting caught.

He wrapped a towel around himself and walked into the bedroom.

He looked for his Ike jacket, intending to hang it up, then saw it was hanging on the back of a chair, with his trousers and shorts folded neatly on top of it.

I guess Rachel did that to pa.s.s the time. Or just to be nice.

Rachel was in the bed, with a sheet drawn over her. Her clothing was neatly folded on a chaise longue.

"Did you ever play doctor when you were a little boy?" Rachel asked.

"Excuse me?"

"'You show me yours and I'll show you mine'?"

She threw the sheet off her.

He walked to the bed and dropped the towel.

She reached for him.

A few seconds later, another philosophical truism from his days at College Station came to him: A licked p.r.i.c.k has no conscience.

[ THREE ].

Schleissheim U.S. Army Airfield Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany 1605 4 November 1945 "Lieutenant, what would I have to do to get you to give me half a dozen jerry cans of avgas to take with me?" Cronley asked.

"Why would you want to do that?"

"This airplane seems to run better if I put avgas in it."

"In other words, it's a CIC secret?"

"My lips are sealed. Two elephants and a rhinoceros could not drag that secret from me."