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Colonel Robert Mattingly was the intruder.
“At ease, gentlemen,” he ordered, slapping his gloves against his leg. “But the next time I arrive—even unannounced—please have the band waiting to play ‘Hail to the Chief.’”
Mattingly had added an Air Corps pilot’s leather jacket to his usual somewhat spectacular uniform. That had not been a surprise; very little of his uniform was authorized in the first place.
Jesus Christ, Cronley thought, he looks like Clark Gable—or at least some other movie star.
Mattingly walked to each of them and offered his hand.
“I suspected that you would be sitting here twiddling your thumbs hoping for something to do to pass the time, so I brought you an L-4 full of more documents concerning the passengers of U-405. Plus an enormous stack of same that I held, not without discomfort, in my lap in my puddle jumper.”
“We have a plethora of information, Colonel,” Mannberg said in precise, British-accented English. “What we have been doing, so to speak, is separating the wheat from the chaff.”
“That was the original intention, but there has been a change of strategy,” Mattingly announced. “I will explain. I have always held the thought of how nice it would be if we could enlist General Martín in our cause.”
“The man who heads the . . . ?” Mannberg began to ask.
“The Argentine Bureau of Internal Security, the BIS,” Mattingly furnished. “He has been cooperating for a long time. If he was going to betray us, he would already have done so. I think he believes, either professionally or philosophically, that allowing these people to establish themselves in Argentina is not in Argentina’s best interests. And Colonel Frade trusts him completely.
“How nice it would be, I thought, if we could show the general our appreciation for his past services by giving him access to our intelligence—including of course that of the South German Industrial Development Organization regarding the Nazis who have made it safely to Argentina. Doing so would, I thought, encourage him to continue, perhaps even with enthusiasm, his cooperation in the future.
“I realized this would be difficult—virtually impossible—for several reasons, including that I hadn’t yet found a solution to get the dossiers of these scoundrels Colonel Frade asked for to Argentina.
“The problem, as I’m sure you all have realized, was twofold. First of all, the dossiers should really never leave our control, even to accommodate Colonel Frade. All we can do in this situation is make new files from the material you pluck from General Gehlen’s originals.
“The only way around this problem would be if we had the capability to copy all of USFET G-2’s, and General Gehlen’s, files. And there is no such capability. Right?”
“No, there is not,” Dunwiddie said with finality. “Maybe we could use the Corps of Engineers’ blueprint machines. That’s sort of a photocopy. But that would take forever.”
“It would take forever,” Mattingly agreed. “And if we made copies using the Army’s ‘Certified True Copy’ procedure—typing everything, or hand-drawing maps, et cetera, and then having each page signed by a commissioned officer swearing on his honor as an officer and a gentleman that the page is a true copy—that would not only take forever, but I doubt if General Martín would be very impressed with that, even if signed by our very own Second Lieutenant Cronley.”
He paused long enough to let that sink in, and then said, “Two days ago, I somewhat reluctantly attended a briefing in the Farben building. It was presented by the Signal Corps Intelligence Service. That is the official euphemism for the unit charged with seeing what of a technical nature can be stolen from one’s defeated enemy.
“They demonstrated a number of devices, including a gadget that permits recording on wire. It is fascinating. I requisitioned three of these devices, and when Major Wallace and I are finished playing with them—Wallace is, you will recall, Signal Corps and presumably knows how to deal with such things—we will send one here for your edification and amusement.
“The last device they showed us was at the very end of their presentation—so late that it was only by the grace of God that I was still awake, proving once again that the Lord looks fondly upon the pure in heart. You may wish to write that down, Cronley. It may keep you out of brothels.”
What? Cronley thought.
The only way he could have known about that is Sergeant Freddy Hessinger told him.
And that fat little sonofabitch probably also told him I asked for, and he gave me, Elsa’s dossier!
“This device,” the Mattingly lecture continued, “was developed by the Ernst Leitz people—they make those wonderful Leica 35-millimeter cameras—in conjunction with the Zeiss people, who used to make the lenses for Leica cameras in what is now the Russian Zone of Germany. It is a copy machine. I have absolutely no idea how it works—how they work. The Signal Intelligence people had four of them, two of which are as we speak en route here in the care of Major Wallace—but what they do is copy documents, make photos of them, so to speak, on special paper with astonishing speed.
“The only problems with it are: One, the factory making the paper was blown up in the closing days of the late unpleasantness. I requisitioned all of the paper they liberated and would let me have, and several trucks loaded with it—it comes in huge rolls, like newspaper printing paper—are also en route here.
“Two, documents fed to it have to be flat, without creases. That means anything that is not flat or has creases will have to be ironed. I have acquired the necessary irons and ironing boards. They are in the trucks.”
“Ironing?” Dunwiddie said. “Who’s going to do the ironing?”
Mattingly did not immediately answer the question.
He instead said, “The machines will be accompanied by technicians I have pressed into service. You, Ludwig, will have to impress upon them that there will be dire consequences if they run at the mouth after we let them go several months from now.”
“They will be so impressed,” Mannberg said. “I have several people very skilled in that sort of thing.”
“Nevertheless, these technicians should not be permitted to read what is being copied, either when it is being fed into the machine, or should it require pressing before insertion. That means, to answer your question, Tiny, that we are going to have to do the pressing.”
