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Frade impatiently gestured, Well, go on . . .
Cronley nodded as he thought, What the hell did I do?
What the hell’s bothering Clete?
He continued: “Hidden by a code we don’t have, but I don’t think we need. What’s missing on this list is the correct longitude and latitude numbers. S54, for south longitude, for example, and W68, for west latitude, are dummy figures—they don’t mean anything.
“But the rest of one of those one hundred blocks, the five digits after the big number are right on the money. . . . The first two are called minutes and seconds. One minute means one-sixtieth of a degree, and one second means one-sixtieth of a minute. I have no idea what the last three digits are called, but they break down the same way.”
“I’m not following you,” Frade said coldly. “Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?”
“I think I’m starting to,” Martín said thoughtfully. “Go on.”
“Yes, sir. Sir, if you add the correct figures for south longitude and west latitude to one of those blocks, you’ll have the intended landfall, probably within a hundred meters. Maybe two hundred meters. But close. I’m sure the Germans, what with being German, plotted it very carefully.”
“And all we have to do is connect the correct longitude and latitude in degrees with the minutes and seconds in one of the coded blocks, correct?” Martín said.
“Yes, sir.”
“And how do we know the correct longitude and latitude is in fact correct?” Clete asked sarcastically.
Up yours, Clete!
“We already have it. If Karl’s friend in Bremen was telling him the truth.”
“I’m sure he was,” Boltitz said.
“The landfall is somewhere around here, at the mouth of the Magellan Strait,” Jimmy said, putting his finger on the map. “And the map should give us the correct longitude and latitude.”
Clete looked at the map, then at Jimmy.
After a long moment, he announced: “If you’re right about this, I will publicly admit you’re a lot smarter than you look. How the hell did you figure this out?”
It’s a simple problem in logic, Colonel, sir, which posed no problem for me once I gave it a little thought, Colonel, sir.
“Sir, it’s the way Gehlen’s people set up rendezvous points in Russia for their agents. On the Steppes.”
“And how do you know that?” Frade asked.
“Sir, at Kloster Grünau I got pretty close to a Gehlen officer, Ludwig Mannberg. He used to be a colonel. He showed me how it worked.”
“And why are you so sure this former colonel isn’t pulling your chain, Lieutenant?” Frade asked.
How are you so sure Boltitz’s guy in Bremen isn’t pulling his chain?
And I didn’t hear you ask him about that.
“Sir, I believe Oberst Mannberg can be trusted.”
And you better trust Oberst Mannberg, too.
He’s the source of the dossiers on the Nazis that von Dattenberg brought here.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Frade said.
“Well, sir, his mother is a Strasbourgerin, like mine. Sons of Strasbourgerins don’t lie to each other.”
“Spare me your wiseass wit.”
