The Assassination Option Part 24

The door was opened-just a crack.

Cronley could see a woman. She had blond hair, brushed tight against her skull. She looked to be in her thirties, and she didn't look as if she was close to starvation.

"We are looking for Herr Luther Stauffer," Hessinger announced in German.

The woman shook her head, but otherwise didn't reply.

"Then Frau Stauffer," Hessinger said. "Frau Ingebord Stauffer."

The woman tried to close the door. She couldn't. After a moment, Cronley saw why: Hessinger had his foot in the doorjamb.

He also saw the fear in the woman's face.

It grew worse when Hessinger snapped, like a movie n.a.z.i in a third-rate film, "Papiere, bitte!"

The woman, her face now showing even more fear, stepped back from the door.

And then the door opened.

A man appeared. He was blond, needed a shave, appeared to be in his middle to late thirties, and looked strangely familiar.

Why do I think my cousin Luther has been hiding behind the door?

"Oh, you're American," the man said in German, and then turned and said, "It's all right, dear, they're Americans."

Then the man asked, "How can I help you, Sergeant?"

"We're looking for Herr Luther Stauffer," Freddy said.

"May I ask why?"

"It's a family matter, not official," Freddy said.

"A family matter?" the man asked, taking a close look at Cronley.

"A family matter," Freddy repeated.

"I am Luther Stauffer."

"Lieutenant," Freddy said in English, "I think we found your cousin."

Hessinger, Cronley, and Finney all decided, judging by the man's reaction to Freddy's question, that Luther Stauffer spoke-or at least understood-English.

"Tell him, Sergeant, please, that I have some things for him from his aunt, Wilhelmina Stauffer Cronley," Cronley said.

Freddy did so.

"Give him the box, Sergeant Finney," Cronley ordered.

As Finney extended the box, Stauffer pulled the door fully open and said, gesturing, "Please come in."

"What did he say?" Cronley asked.

Hessinger made the translation.

"Then go in," Cronley ordered.

"Yes, sir."

They found themselves in a small living room.

Finney extended the box to Stauffer again.

"This is for me?" Stauffer asked.

"From your aunt, Wilhelmina Stauffer Cronley," Hessinger said. "You are that Luther Stauffer, right? Frau Cronley is your aunt?"

"Yes," Stauffer said, as he put the box on the table.

"If that's so," Hessinger said, "then Lieutenant Cronley is your cousin."

Stauffer and Cronley looked at each other. Stauffer put out his hand, and Cronley took it.

Stauffer turned to his wife and quite unnecessarily announced, "The officer is my cousin." Then he turned to Cronley and said, "I'm sorry, I didn't get your name."

Cronley almost told him, but at the last second caught himself, and instead asked, "What's he asking?"

"He wants to know your name," Hessinger said.

"James. James D. Cronley Junior."

Stauffer took his hand again and said, "James. Ich bin Luther."

Frau Stauffer took a look in the box.

"Oh, so much," she said.

"Tell her my mother got a letter from them, and then wrote me, and here we are," Cronley ordered.

Hessinger made the translation.

Frau Stauffer pulled out a drawer in a ma.s.sive chest of drawers, came out with a photo alb.u.m, laid it on the table and began to page through it. Finally, she found what she wanted, and motioned for Cronley to look.

It was an old photograph. Husband, wife, and two young children, a boy of maybe ten and a girl who looked to be several years younger.

"Luther's Papa," Frau Stauffer said, laying her finger on the boy, and then moving it to the girl. "Dein mutter."

"She says the girl in the picture is your mother," Hessinger translated.

"Ask him," Frau Stauffer asked, "if he has a picture of his mother now."

Hessinger translated.

As a matter of fact, I have two of her. Right here in my wallet.

Let me show you.

The first one was taken at College Park, the day I graduated from A&M. That's Mom, the lady in the mink coat with the two pounds of pearls hanging around her neck. The girl sitting on the fender of the custom-bodied Packard 280 is our neighbor's kid. Sort of my little sister. I called her "the Squirt."

In this picture, that's my mom standing next to President Truman. That's my dad, pinning on my captain's bars. This was taken the day after I married the Squirt, and the day she got herself killed.

"Tell her, 'Sorry. I have a couple, but I left them back at the Kloster.'"

Hessinger made the translation, but, picking up on Cronley's slip, said, "kaserne," not "Kloster."

Cronley saw on Luther's face that the translation was unnecessary.

Why is Cousin Luther pretending he doesn't speak English?

"Kloster?" Luther asked.

And he picked up on that, too.

"The lieutenant's little joke," Hessinger said. "Our kaserne is in the middle of nowhere, twenty miles outside Munich. The lieutenant jokes that we're all monks, kept in a kloster far from the sins of the city."

Luther smiled and then asked, "What exactly do you do in the Army?"

"Lieutenant, he wants to know exactly what you do in the Army."

"Tell him the 711th is responsible for making sure that the equipment in every mess hall in the European Command-and for that matter, in U.S. Forces in Austria-meets Army standards."

Hessinger made the translation. Luther confessed he didn't completely understand. Hessinger made that translation, too.

"You tell him what we do, Sergeant," Cronley ordered.

Hessinger rose to the challenge. He delivered a two-minute lecture detailing the responsibility the 711th QM Mobile Kitchen Repair Company had with regard to maintaining the stoves, ovens, refrigerators, dishwashers, and other electromechanical devices to be found in U.S. Army kitchens.

He explained that there were three teams who roamed Germany, Austria, and France inspecting and repairing such devices. Team 2 was commanded by Lieutenant Cronley. A dishwasher had broken down in Salzburg, and Team 2 had been dispatched to get it running.

Lieutenant Cronley had decided, Hessinger told Luther, that since Strasbourg was more or less on their way to the malfunctioning dishwasher, it was an opportunity for him to drop off the things his mother had sent to her family.

Cronley wasn't sure whether Hessinger had prepared this yarn before they got to Strasbourg or was making it up on the spot. But it sounded credible, and Cousin Luther seemed to be swallowing it whole.

"So you're going to Salzburg?" Luther asked.

Hessinger nodded.

"And from there?"

Why don't I think that's idle curiosity?

Before Hessinger could reply, Cronley said, "Ask him what he does."

"The lieutenant asks what your profession is," Hessinger said.

"I'm an automobile mechanic," Luther replied. "Or I was before the war. Now there are very few automobiles."

Hessinger translated.

"Ask him what he did in the war," Cronley ordered.

As Hessinger translated, Cronley saw that not only had Cousin Luther understood the question as he had asked it, but that he didn't like it, and was searching his mind for a proper response.

What the h.e.l.l is this all about?

"Do you understand about Strasbourg?" Luther asked. "How over the years it has pa.s.sed back and forth between French and German control?"

"Not really," said Hessinger, who had delivered a ten-minute lecture on the subject on the way to Strasbourg.

"Well . . ." Luther began.

Hessinger shut him off with a raised hand.

"Lieutenant, your cousin says Strasbourg has been under German and French control for years."

"Really?"

"Go on, Herr Stauffer," Hessinger ordered.

"Well, before the war, we were French," Luther explained. "And then when the Germans came, we were Germans again."

Hessinger translated.

"So what?"

"The lieutenant says he doesn't understand," Hessinger said to Luther.

"When the Germans came, they said I was now a German, and in 1941 I was conscripted into the German Army," Luther said.

There's something fishy about that.

When Hessinger had made the translation, Cronley said, "Ask him what he did in the German Army."

"The lieutenant wants to know what you did in the German Army."

"I was a common soldier, a grenadier, and then I escaped and hid out until the war was over."

Cousin Luther, that is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.