Top Secret Part 3

One moment, Squirt was Clete's annoying little sister, and the next we were . . . involved.

"Ah, to be young!" Major Derwin said. "You just got here, and already you're playing the field."

Cronley smiled but didn't reply.

Derwin had a helpful thought and expressed it.

"Perhaps you should go outside and wait for her. The club's sign is poorly lit."

"She's a very resourceful young woman, sir. She'll find me."

Five minutes later, the Squirt did.

She stopped at the door to the bar just long enough for Jimmy to see her, which caused his heart to thump, and then walked to him.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi, yourself." Jimmy then turned to Derwin. "Major Derwin, may I introduce Miss Marjorie Howell?"

Please, Major, say "Nice to meet you" and then leave us alone.

"A great pleasure, Miss Howell. When the lieutenant was a student here, I was his instructor in the techniques of surveillance. Obviously, I taught him well. Look what he found."

Miss Howell gave him an icy look.

Please, Squirt, don't say what you're thinking!

"Oh, really?" she asked. Then, "Jimmy, why don't you pay your tab? I'm pressed for time."

"Well, there's a small problem there," Cronley said. "All I have is Funny Money-Army of Occupation Scrip-and they won't take that here. I don't suppose you'd loan me a few dollars?"

She looked at him, saw on his face that he was telling the truth, and reached into her purse. She came out with a thick wad of currency, folded in half, that seemed to be made up entirely of new one-hundred-dollar bills.

She unfolded the wad and extended it to him. He took three of the hundreds.

"Thank you," he said, and then curiosity got the better of him. "What are you doing with all that money?"

"I thought I might need it in Germany, so I cashed a check."

"You're going to Germany, Miss Howell?" Major Derwin asked.

"Yes, I am," she said. "Pay the bill, please, Jimmy."

"Oh, you're from an Army family?"

"Not yet," Marjorie said. "Thank you for entertaining Jimmy until I could get here, Major."

[ THREE ].

Marjorie took Jimmy's hand as they left the officers' club and led him to a bright yellow 1941 Buick convertible.

"I'll drive," she said. "You've been drinking."

He got in beside her.

"Where the h.e.l.l did you get the car?"

"On a lot on Ninth Street. One look and I had to have it."

"You bought it?" he asked incredulously.

"And since it was parked right in front of the lot, I thought I could buy it quicker than anything else they had. I didn't know how long it was going to take me to get here."

"What are you going to do with it when you go to Midland?"

"I'm not going to Midland. Weren't you listening? I'm going to Germany."

"We have to talk about that," he said.

"I don't like the way you said that."

She turned to face him. Their eyes met.

"Jimmy, you sound like my mother trying to reason with me . . ."

Their conversation was interrupted when the proximity of their faces caused a mutual involuntary act on both their parts.

A minute or so later, Jimmy said, "Jesus H. Christ!" and Marjorie said, a little breathlessly, "Don't let this go to your head, but as kissers go, you're not too bad."

A moment after that, she said, "No! G.o.d, Jimmy, not in the car!"

"Sorry."

"Let's go to a motel," she said. "G.o.d, I can't believe I said that!"

He put his hands on her arms and moved her back behind the steering wheel.

"About you coming to Germany," he then said. "Do you remember what the major said, that he asked, 'Oh, you're from an Army family?'"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"The only way you're going to get into Germany, Squirt, is as a member of an Army family. The Army calls them 'dependents.'"

"I'll get into Germany. Trust me."

"If you did, we couldn't get married. There's a rule about that, too. You can't get married in Germany without permission, and they won't give you permission to marry unless you have less than ninety days to serve in the theatre."

"In the theatre?"

"That's what they call it, the 'European Theatre of Operations.' The rules are designed to keep people from marrying Germans."

"How do you know so much about this subject?" Marjorie asked suspiciously.

"Professor Hessinger delivered a lecture on the subject to Tiny and me one night when we were sitting around with nothing else to do."

"Who the h.e.l.l are they?"

"They are my staff," he said, chuckling. "If you're going to be an Army wife, Squirt, you'll have to learn that all officers, including second lieutenants, have staffs. Hessinger and Tiny are mine."

"If you're trying to string me along, Jimmy, you're never going to get to do what you tried to do a moment ago."

"Hessinger is a sergeant. Tiny Dunwiddie is a first sergeant. Interesting guys."

"I will play along with this for the next thirty seconds."

"Hessinger is a German Jew who got out of Germany just in time, went to Harvard, and then got drafted. They put him in the CIC because he speaks German. He's still got an accent you can cut with a knife."

"Fifteen seconds."

"Tiny is an enormous black guy. Two-thirty, six-three. He went to Norwich University in Vermont."

"Where? Ten seconds."

"Norwich is a private military college in Vermont, the oldest one," Cronley said, now speaking so rapidly it was almost a verbal blur.

Marjorie giggled, which he found surprisingly erotic.

"Slow down," she said. "You've got another thirty seconds."

". . . from which, rather than waiting to graduate and get a commission, he dropped out and enlisted so he could get into the war before they called it off. He's from an Army family. His ancestors were the Buffalo Soldiers who fought the Indians. Two of his great-grandfathers were in the Tenth Cavalry, which, Tiny has told me at least twenty times, beat Teddy Roosevelt up San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish American War."

"And did he manage to get in the war before they called it off?" Marjorie asked, and then added: "d.a.m.n you. You've got me. You're as good at that as my mother. But there better be a point to this history lesson."

"Yeah, he got in the war. Silver Star, Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts serving with a tank destroyer battalion in the Second Armored Division. Plus first sergeant's stripes when all the sergeants senior to him got killed or wounded. He's one h.e.l.l of a soldier."

"But they still didn't give him a commission? Why, because he didn't finish college? Or because he's Negro?"

"No. Because he was needed to run the company of black troops Colonel Mattingly has guarding the Gehlen compound. I said he's a h.e.l.l of a soldier. He takes that duty, honor, country business very seriously. He knows guarding General Gehlen and his people is more important than being one more second lieutenant in a tank platoon somewhere."

"I get the feeling you really like this guy."

"Yeah, I do."

"So what about the Jewish sergeant with an accent you can cut with a knife?"

"Freddy's hobby is reading. You never see him without a book of some kind in his hand. Including Army Regulations. And he remembers every last detail of anything he's ever read. That's why we call him 'the professor.'"

"His hobby is reading? You're suggesting he's a little funny?" Marjorie waved her hand to suggest there might be a question of his s.e.xual orientation.

Jimmy laughed.

"That's not the professor's problem. I should have said, 'You never see him without a tall, good-looking German blond-or two-on his arm, and a book in the other hand.'"

"And what did this Jewish Casanova with an accent remember Army Regulations saying about us getting married in Germany?"

Jimmy told her again: The bottom lines were (a) she could not get into Occupied Germany unless she was a dependent, and (b) even if she did somehow get into Occupied Germany, they could not get permission to marry there.

When he had finished, she said without much conviction, "There has to be a way."

"I've been thinking about that. Are you open to a wild idea?"

"Try me."

"When I was here before, I learned that Elkton, Maryland, up near the Pennsylvania border, is where people go when they're eloping. Justices of the peace there will issue a marriage license, then marry you, and have you on your way in about an hour."

"Huh," Marjorie said.

"What I was thinking was that, since they're going to send me-"

"Where did you say Elkton, Maryland, is?"

"On U.S. 1 up near the Pennsylvania border."

"I came from Was.h.i.+ngton on U.S. 1," Marjorie said. "I know how to find it."

She reached to the dashboard, turned the ignition key, and then pressed the starter b.u.t.ton.

[ FOUR ].

The Lord Baltimore Hotel 20 West Baltimore Street, Baltimore 21, Maryland 2325 25 October 1945 "Yes, sir? May I be of a.s.sistance?" the a.s.sistant manager of the hotel inquired of Second Lieutenant Cronley.

"We'd like a room, please. A nice room."