Part 39 (1/2)
”Words to that effect, sir,” Claudette said.
”How would she know?” Tiny challenged. ”She was in there with you?”
”Let me finish, please, Tiny, then I'll get to that,” Cronley said. ”Wallace said the only reason he wasn't going to General Greene, who would almost certainly relieve Derwin, was because he was determined to find out who wrote the letter to Derwin, and if Derwin was relieved, whoever wrote it would crawl back in his hole, or words to that effect, and he'd never catch him. He also told Derwin to call off his 'investigation' of the allegations in the letter as of that moment.”
”Did Major Wallace have any idea who wrote the letter?” Mannberg asked.
”He thinks it's someone, one of us, who doesn't think I should have been named chief, DCI-Europe.”
”That's what it sounds like to me,” Gehlen said. ”And you think Major Derwin will cease his investigation?”
”Yes, sir. I don't think he wants to cross Major Wallace. You knew Wallace was a Jedburgh?”
”Yes, I did.”
”Did I leave anything out, Dette?”
”Sir, you didn't get into the tail end of your conversation with Major Wallace.”
”I asked before, was Serg- Miss Colbert in there with you?” Tiny said.
”Fat Freddy put bugs in what was Mattingly's office, and Wallace's. Or, actually, Miss Colbert did, when Freddy asked her to.”
”You knew about that?” Tiny asked.
Cronley shook his head.
”I think, when Freddy thinks the moment is right, he'll tell me.”
”Then how did you find out?” Tiny asked.
”With your permission, sir?” Claudette said, before Cronley could open his mouth. ”When Mr. Hessinger ordered me to transcribe what would be said between Mr. Cronley and Major Derwin, I realized I could not do that without Mr. Cronley's knowledge, so I told him.”
”Afterward?” Mannberg asked.
”Yes, sir.”
”Why?”
”There is no question in my mind that I owe Mr. Cronley my primary loyalty, sir.”
”What was 'the tail end' of your conversation with Wallace?” Tiny asked.
”I told him what I learned from El Jefe in the Farben Building. Why I'm chief, DCI-Europe. And I told him that Lieutenant Schultz hasn't been a lieutenant for some time, and that he retired a little while ago as a commander, and is now executive a.s.sistant to the director of the Directorate of Central Intelligence. A few little things like that.”
”Why? He doesn't have the need to know about little things like that,” Tiny said.
”Because I've come to understand that unless I want to be tossed to the wolves-did I mention El Jefe told me that was a distinct possibility?-I'm going to need all the friends I can get that I can trust. And after carefully considering Ludwig's theory that when you really want to trust your intuition, that's when you shouldn't, I decided, f.u.c.k it . . . Sorry, Dette.”
She gave a deprecating gesture with her left hand.
”. . . I decided (a) Wallace can be trusted, and (b) I need him. And the more time I've had to think it over, the more I think I made the right decision.”
”Even though Wallace was Mattingly's Number Two in the OSS?” Tiny challenged.
”Mattingly was a politician in the OSS. The only time he ever served behind the enemy lines, if you want to put it like that, is when he flew over Berlin in a Piper Cub to see what he could see for General White. Wallace jumped into France three times. And into Norway once with a lieutenant named Colby. My gut feeling is that he's one of us.”
”One of us? I was never behind enemy lines, or jumped anywhere. Where do I fit into 'us'?”
”I'm tempted to say you get a pa.s.s because you're a r.e.t.a.r.d,” Cronley said. ”But you're one of us because you got a Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, and promotion to first sergeant in the Battle of the Bulge. You've heard more shots fired in anger than I ever heard. Mattingly never heard one. Not one. Do you take my point, Captain Dunwiddie?”
”I take your point, Captain Cronley,” General Gehlen said, and then added, ”Tiny, he's right, and you know it.”
Dunwiddie threw up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
”Is this where someone tells me that we've heard from the lady with the dachshund?” Cronley asked innocently.
”It is,” Mannberg said, chuckling. ”Go ahead, Konrad.”
”It is Seven-K's opinion,” former Major Konrad Bischoff began, ”that the exfiltration of Mrs. Likharev and her children from their present location-which I believe is in Poland, although I was not told that, and Seven-K's man in Berlin said he doesn't know-”
”Seven-K's man in Berlin?” Cronley interrupted.
A look of colossal annoyance flashed across Bischoff's face at the interruption.
f.u.c.k you, I don't like you, either, you s.a.d.i.s.tic, arrogant sonofab.i.t.c.h!
”Answer the question, Konrad,” Mannberg said softly, in German. The softness of his tone did not at all soften the tone of command.
”NKGB Major Anatole Loskutnikov,” Bischoff said.
”We've worked with him before,” Gehlen said. ”We suspect he also has a Mossad connection.”
”And you sent Bischoff to Berlin to meet with him?”
”Correct.”
”And what did Loskutnikov tell you?” Cronley asked.
”That Seven-K believes it would be too dangerous to try to exfiltrate the Likharev woman and her children . . .”
Not ”Mrs. Likharev”? She's a colonel's wife. You wouldn't refer to Mannberg's wife as ”the Mannberg woman,” would you? You really do think all Russians are the untermensch, don't you?
”. . . through either Berlin or Vienna.”
”So what does she suggest?”