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“One last question. Who’s that admiral in the picture?”
Mattingly didn’t reply for a long moment. Finally he said, “General, when you hear, sometime in the next few months, that President Truman has established a new organization, working title Central Agency for Intelligence, and has named Rear Admiral Sidney William Souers to be its head, please act very surprised.”
Greene grunted again. He then stood and offered his hand.
“I didn’t hear a word you just said, Colonel. I imagine we’ll be in touch.”
“Yes, sir, we will.”
Mattingly raised his hand to his temple.
“Permission to withdraw, sir?”
Greene returned the salute, far more crisply than he had previously, and said, “Post.”
Mattingly started for the door.
“You forgot your pictures and the general orders,” Greene called after him.
“I thought the general might wish to study them closely before he burns them, sir.”
“Thank you.”
As Mattingly went through the doorway, he thought, He’s not going to burn any of that material. It’s going into his personal safe, in case he needs it later.
That doesn’t matter. Nothing in that stuff touches on Operation Ost.
And I think even Admiral Souers would understand why I thought I had to show it to him.
He had another tangential thought.
I wonder where Hotshot Billy Wilson is on this miserable German morning?
That’s next.
[ THREE ]
Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten
Maximilianstrasse 178
Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1215 28 October 1945
First Sergeant Chauncey L. Dunwiddie and Sergeant Friedrich Hessinger had been waiting for Cronley at the Munich airfield. Both had been wearing uniforms identifying them as civilian employees of the U.S. Army. Dunwiddie wore an olive drab woolen Ike jacket and trousers, with an embroidered insignia—a blue triangle holding the letters “US”—sewn to the lapels. Hessinger was more elegantly attired, in officer’s pinks and greens with similar civilian insignia sewn to its lapels.
Jimmy remembered there were rumors that the pudgy German was making a lot of money somehow dealing in currency.
“Welcome home,” Tiny Dunwiddie had said, as he reached in the Piper Cub and effortlessly grabbed Cronley’s Valv-Pak canvas suitcase from Jimmy’s lap.
Jimmy then climbed out, turned to the pilot, and said, “Thanks for the ride.”
“My pleasure, sir,” the lieutenant said, and saluted.
Neither Tiny nor Freddy had commented on the twin silver bars of a captain pinned to Cronley’s epaulets at the airfield—the reason the puddle-jumper pilot had saluted him—or in their requisitioned Opel Kapitän on the way to the hotel or during lunch in the elegant officers’ mess.
It was only after they had gone upstairs—and into Suite 507, above the door of which hung a small, neatly lettered sign, XXVIITH CIC DET.—that there was any clue that anyone had noticed the insignia.
