The Assassination Option Part 45

"Sir-"

"Actually, I'm not sure about her, so throughout our twenty-nine years of married bliss, I have never shared so much as a memorandum cla.s.sified 'confidential' with her. As far as Colonel Davidson and Captain Wayne are concerned, if you say anything I think they should not have heard, I'll have them shot and have their bodies thrown off the train. You may proceed."

"Yes, sir. Sir, we have turned a Russian, NKGB Colonel Sergei Likharev-"

"Who is 'we'? Are you referring to Colonel Mattingly? Is that why he's among the missing?"

"No, sir. Colonel Mattingly had nothing to do with turning Colonel Likharev. Tiny and I turned him."

"You and Chauncey turned an NKGB colonel?" White asked incredulously.

"Uncle Isaac, please give Jim, and me, the benefit of the doubt," Tiny said.

"I.D.," Mrs. White ordered, "get off your high horse and hear the captain out."

"You may proceed, Captain Cronley," General White said.

"Yes, sir. Sir, one of the reasons Colonel Likharev turned was because we promised him-"

"'We' being you and Chauncey?"

"Yes, sir."

"Promised him what?"

"You'll never find out if you keep interrupting him," Mrs. White said. "Put a cork in it!"

"Sir, we, Tiny and me, promised Likharev we would try to get his family-his wife, Natalia, and their sons, Sergei and Pavel, out of Russia. This is important because Mr. Schultz believes, and he's right, that by now Likharev is starting to think that we lied to him about trying to get his family out-"

"Excuse me, Captain," Mrs. White interrupted. "Mr. Schultz? You mean Lieutenant Schultz? The old CPO?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Now the admiral's Number Two," General White said. "You met him the first time Admiral Souers came to Fort Riley."

"Pardon the interruption. Please go on, Captain," Mrs. White said.

"Yes, ma'am. Well, we've gotten them-I should say, General Gehlen's agents in Russia have gotten them-out of Leningrad as far as Poland. That's what that hundred thousand is all about. It went to General Gehlen's agents. Now we have to get them . . .

- ". . . So when Colonel Wilson said he couldn't help us any more without your permission, I decided I had to get your permission. And here we are."

General White locked his fingers together and rocked his hands back and forth for a full thirty seconds.

Finally, he asked, "Bill, what are the odds Cronley could pull this off?"

"Sir, I would estimate the odds at just about fifty-fifty," Wilson said.

General and Mrs. White exchanged a long look, after which White resumed rocking his finger-locked hands together, for about fifteen seconds.

"George Patton was always saying we're going to have to fight the Russians sooner or later," he said finally.

He looked at his wife again. She nodded.

"Try to not let this be the lighting of the fuse that does that," General White said.

"Sir, does that mean . . . ?" Colonel Wilson began.

"It means, Bill, that while you are providing Captain Cronley with whatever he needs, you will try very hard not to light the fuse that starts World War Three."

"Yes, sir."

X.

[ONE].

Conference Compartment, Car #2 Personal Train of the Commanding General, U.S. Constabulary Approaching Hauptbahnhof Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany 1615 17 January 1946 The sliding door from the corridor opened and Captain Chauncey L. Dunwiddie stepped inside.

The commanding general, United States Constabulary, was sitting at a twenty-foot-long highly polished wooden conference table around which were also seated more than a dozen officers, the junior of them a lieutenant colonel.

General I.D. White's eyebrows rose in disbelief.

"What?" General White asked.

Captain James D. Cronley Jr. slid into the room.

"Oh, I now understand," General White said. "You two decided the red Conference in Session light was actually advertising a brothel."

Mrs. White slipped into the room.

"I didn't hear that," she said.

"Hear what, my love?"

"I insisted they make their manners," she announced. "So that I would not have to hear you complaining that they hadn't."

"Why are they making their manners? We're nowhere near Sonthofen."

"They're getting off in Munich."

"I've seen Chauncey a total of twenty minutes," he protested.

"Duty calls, apparently," she said.

Tiny came to attention.

"Permission to withdraw, sir?"

"Granted."

Tiny saluted, followed a half second later by Cronley.

The general returned them.

Cronley started to follow Mrs. White out of the conference compartment.

"Cronley!"

Captain Cronley froze in mid-step and then turned to face General White.

"Yes, sir?"

"The next time you want to talk to me, seek an appointment. I've told Colonel Davidson to put you ahead of everybody but my wife."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

[TWO].

The Hauptbahnhof Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany 1635 17 January 1946 The private train of the commanding general, U.S. Constabulary, rolled into what little was left of the bahnhof-it had been nearly destroyed during the war, and the recently started reconstruction had taken down what little had remained after the bombing-and stopped.

The door to the first car of the train slid open.

Two Constabulary troopers stepped onto the platform. One of them came to attention to the left of the door and the other to the right.

As first Captain James D. Cronley Jr. and then Captain Chauncey L. Dunwiddie came through the door, the troopers saluted crisply.

Captains Cronley and Dunwiddie returned the salute.

One of the troopers put a glistening bra.s.s whistle-which had been hanging from his epaulet on a white cord-to his lips and blew twice.

The train immediately began to move. The troopers went quickly through the door and it slid closed.

Captain Cronley addressed those waiting on the platform, Mr. Friedrich Hessinger and Miss Claudette Colbert.

"How nice of you to meet us. And now that you have seen the evidence of the high regard in which Captain Dunwiddie and myself are held by the U.S. Constabulary, I am sure we will be treated with greater respect and deference than you have shown in the past."

"Well, I'm awed," Miss Colbert said.

"You got us to come down here to watch you get off the train?" Mr. Hessinger asked incredulously.

"What happened," Tiny said, "is that Colonel Wilson was showing us the communications on the train, and asked if there was anyone we wanted to call. Our leader said, 'Let's get Freddy on the phone, and have him pick us up at the bahnhof. Save the price of a taxicab.' So he did."

"A cab would have cost you fifty cents!" Hessinger complained.

"'A penny saved is a penny earned,'" Cronley quoted piously. "Isn't that true, Miss Colbert?"

"And 'A fool and his money are soon parted,'" she replied.

Their eyes met momentarily.

He forced the mental image this produced of Miss Colbert in her birthday suit from his mind.

Nose to the grindstone, Cronley!

"Is Major Wallace in the office?" he asked.

"Probably for the next five minutes," Freddy said. "He really hates missing Happy Hour at the Engineer O Club, and that starts at five o'clock."

"I may have to ruin his evening," Cronley said. "We've got a lot to do and we're going to need him."

"For instance?" Freddy asked.

"I'll tell you at the office," Cronley said, "when I tell him."

"For instance," Tiny said, "we've got to get the Storchs to Sonthofen first thing in the morning, which means I'm going to have to go out to Kloster Grnau and set that, and some other things, up. Do I just take the Kapitn?"

"I can drive you out there," Claudette said.

"Do it. We'll need the Kapitn in the morning," Cronley ordered.

[THREE].