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“You want us to take the tarpaulin all the way off, Captain?”
“No, thanks. Just take me back to the mess.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No. Take me to the chapel,” he said. He thought: So I can see if they changed the shit bucket in Orlovsky’s cell, or whether Bischoff told them to ignore me.
—
Bischoff and the small, tough sergeant who had been in the room behind the altar were again sitting at the card table, playing poker with packs of cigarettes and Hershey bars for chips. There were two others at the table, both soldiers, neither of whom Cronley had seen.
The sergeant stood.
He nodded politely and said, “Captain.”
“What does it smell like down there?” Cronley asked.
“Well, Captain, it don’t smell like roses,” the sergeant said. “But it smells better . . . scratch that. It don’t smell near as bad as it did.”
“Show me,” Cronley said, and then added, “We won’t need you down there, Herr Bischoff.”
—
Major Konstantin Orlovsky of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs reacted to the opening of his cell door as he had the first time. Shielding his eyes from the headlights, he slid his back up the wall until he was standing.
“Take the light out of his eyes,” Cronley ordered, and then, “If you can, turn all but one of those headlights off.”
“I’ll have to rip them loose,” the sergeant said.
“Then do it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Everybody out of here but you and me, Sergeant, and then close the door.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you,” Orlovsky said.
Cronle
y didn’t reply.
When the door had creaked closed behind them, Cronley looked at the sergeant.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Staff Sergeant Lewis, Harold Junior, Captain.”
“If I hear that you have repeated to anyone but First Sergeant Dunwiddie one word of what I’m about to say in here, Staff Sergeant Harold Lewis Junior, you will be Private Lewis, washing pots and pans for the Germans in the kitchen until I decide whether or not to castrate you with a dull bayonet before I send you home in a body bag. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir, Captain.”
“Okay. Now the question, Major Orlovsky, is, ‘What do I do with you?’”
