The Assassination Option Part 27

Which means he speaks English far better than he wanted us to think.

Of course he speaks English, stupid! He spent almost four years in England.

Both Hessinger and Finney looked at Cronley, who had his tongue pus.h.i.+ng against his lower lip, visibly deep in thought.

Finally he said, very softly, "My sentiments exactly, Sergeant Finney."

He turned to Fortin.

"Commandant, I really don't know what to say."

"I don't expect you to say anything, Mr. Cronley," Fortin said. "I just wanted you to understand my deep interest in your cousin, and in Odessa."

"Just as soon as we get back, I'll find out what General Greene knows about it, and get back to you with whatever he tells me."

I will also go to General Gehlen, who probably knows more about Odessa than anyone else.

But I can't tell you about Gehlen, can I, Commandant?

Even if Gehlen's never mentioned it to me.

And why hasn't he?

"I would be grateful to you if you did that."

"Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Possibly."

"Anything."

"You didn't tell your cousin you're an intelligence officer?"

"Of course not."

"What did you tell him you do?"

"Repair dishwas.h.i.+ng machines," Cronley said, chuckling.

"Excuse me?"

"Freddy, tell Commandant Fortin all about the 711th QM Mobile Kitchen Repair Company."

Hessinger did so.

"I wondered," Fortin said, when Hessinger had finished his little lecture. "The European Command has no record of the 711th anything. When you parked your car in front of Hachelweg 675 and the ambulance with the red crosses painted over down the street, it piqued my curiosity, and I had Sergeant Deladier"-he pointed to the outer office-"call Frankfurt and ask about it."

"I hope Frankfurt . . . I presume you mean EUCOM . . . didn't have its curiosity piqued," Cronley said.

Fortin shook his head.

"Deladier's a professional. He's been with me a long time," Fortin said. "And you would say your cousin accepted this?"

"I think he did."

"You would think so. What about you, Sergeant? Do you think Herr Stauffer thinks you're dishwas.h.i.+ng machine repairmen?"

"Yes, sir. We had our act pretty much together. I think Stauffer believed us."

"Your act pretty much together?"

"We were all . . . not just me . . . in uniform. Mr. Cronley as a Quartermaster Corps second lieutenant, Mr. Hessinger as a staff sergeant. Stauffer had no reason not to believe what we told him."

"In addition to you being dishwas.h.i.+ng machine repairmen, what else did you tell him?"

"We told him our next stop was Salzburg," Hessinger answered for him. "He seemed to find that very interesting."

"Because it would take you across the border into U.S. Forces Austria from EUCOM," Fortin said. "Crossing borders is a major problem for Odessa. Tell me, Sergeant, how much talking did you do when you were in the house?"

Finney thought it over for a moment before replying, "Commandant, I don't think I opened my mouth when I was in the house. All I did was carry the black market stuff."

"In other words, all you were was the driver of the staff car?"

"Yes, sir."

"Let me offer a hypothetical," Fortin said. "Let us suppose you were too busy, Second Lieutenant Cronley, to yourself deliver more cigarettes, coffee, et cetera, to your cousin Luther and instead sent Sergeant Finney to do it for you.

"Do you think your cousin might either prevail upon Sergeant Finney to take something-maybe a few cartons of cigarettes, or a canned ham-to, say, Salzburg as either a goodwill gesture, or because he could make a little easy money doing so?"

"I see where you're going, Commandant," Hessinger said.

"Start out more or less innocently, and then as Sergeant Finney slid down the slippery slope of corruption, move him onto other things such as moving a couple of men-'going home, they don't have papers'-across the border. Und so weiter."

"Yeah," Cronley said.

"These people routinely murder people who get in their way. With that in mind, would you be willing to have Sergeant Finney do something like this?"

"That's up to Sergeant Finney," Cronley said.

"h.e.l.l yes, I'll do it. I'd like to burn as many of these moth- sonsofb.i.t.c.hes as I can," Finney said.

"Thank you for cleaning up your language, Sergeant Finney," Cronley said. "I really would have hated to have had to order Mr. Hessinger to wash your mouth out with soap."

Finney smiled at him.

"I would suggest that in, say, a week Sergeant Finney deliver another package to Herr Stauffer," Fortin said. "How does that fit into your schedule?"

"Not a problem," Cronley said. "We have to be in Vienna on the fourteenth."

"Vienna?" Fortin asked.

"So we can be back at the monastery on the sixteenth. Finney could deliver a second package the next day, the seventeenth. That's a week from today."

"Why do I think you're not going to tell me what you're going to do in Vienna?"

"Because you understand that there are some things simple policemen just don't have the need to know," Cronley said.

"That's cruel," Fortin said, smiling, and put out his hand. "I'm perfectly willing to believe you're a second lieutenant of the Quartermaster Corps."

"It's been a pleasure meeting you, Simple Policeman," Cronley said. "I look forward to seeing you soon again."

[FIVE].

Suite 307 The Bristol Hotel Kaerntner Ring 1 Vienna, Austria 1600 14 January 1946 It was time to go to what everybody hoped would be a meeting with Rahil, A/K/A Seven-K, at the Cafe Weitz, and Cronley and Schultz had just finished putting the fifty thousand dollars intended for her in former Oberst Ludwig Mannberg's Glen plaid suit when there came a knock at the door.

Putting the money into Mannberg's suit had proved more difficult than anyone had thought it would be. It had come from the States packed in $5,000 packets, each containing one hundred fifty-dollar bills. There were ten such packets, each about a half-inch thick.

Mannberg's suit was sort of a souvenir of happier times, when young Major Mannberg had not only been an a.s.sistant military attache at the German emba.s.sy in London, but in a position to pay for "bespoke" clothing from Anderson & Sheppard of Savile Row.

Cronley had not ever heard the term "bespoke" until today, but now he understood that it meant "custom-tailored" and that custom-tailored meant that it had been constructed about the wearer's body, and that meant room had been provided for a handkerchief, wallet, and maybe car keys, but not to accommodate twenty packets of fifty $50-dollar bills, each half an inch thick and eight inches long.

When they had finished, Mannberg literally had packs of money in every pocket in the suit jacket, and every pocket in his trousers. He also had a $2,500 packet in each sock. The vest that came with the suit was on the bed.

Ostrowski was larger than Mannberg and just barely fit into one of Mannberg's suits, providing he did not b.u.t.ton the b.u.t.tons of the double-breasted jacket. But to conceal the .45 pistol he was carrying in one of the holsters Hessinger had had made, he was going to have to keep his hand in the suit jacket pocket to make sure the pistol was covered.

"Who the h.e.l.l is that?" Cronley asked, when the knock on the door came.

"There's one way to find out," El Jefe said, and went to the door and opened it. Ostrowski hurriedly shoved his pistol under one of the cus.h.i.+ons of the couch he was sitting on.

There were three men at the door, all wearing ODs with U.S. triangles.

The elder of them politely asked, "Mr. Schultz?"

El Jefe nodded.

"If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a few questions," the man said, and produced a set of CIC credentials. "May we come in?"

El Jefe backed away from the door and waved them in.

The three of them looked suspiciously around the room.

"What's the nature of your business in Vienna, Mr. Schultz, if you don't mind my asking?"

"What's this all about?" Schultz asked.

"Please, just answer the question."

"Why don't you have a look at this?" Schultz said, extending his DCI identification. "It will explain why I don't answer a lot of questions."

"Don't I know you?" one of them, the youngest one, asked of Cronley.

"You look familiar," Cronley said, and found, or thought he did, the name. "Surgeon, right?"

"Spurgeon," the man corrected him.

"I never saw one of these before," the CIC agent said, after examining El Jefe's DCI credentials.

"I'm not surprised," El Jefe said.

"Major, I knew this fellow at Holabird," the younger agent said.

"What?"

"We took Surveillance together," the younger agent said. "Right?"

"Under Major Derwin," Cronley confirmed.

"Terrible Tommy Derwin," Agent Spurgeon said. He put out his hand. "Cronley, right?"

"James D., Junior."

"Are you working?"

Cronley nodded.

"Doing what?"

"I'm sort of an aide-de-camp to Mr. Schultz."

"You're CIC?" the older agent asked.

Cronley produced his CIC credentials.

"I should have known it would be something like this," the older agent said.

"What would be something like this?" Schultz asked.

"Well, we encourage the people in the hotel to report suspicious activity, and one of the a.s.sistant managers did."

"Did he tell you what I did that was suspicious?" El Jefe asked.