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“Yes, sir.”
“And what makes you think Frade wouldn’t think relieving a twenty-two-year-old captain who wouldn’t take orders was something I had every right to do?”
“I’ll have to take that chance, sir.”
Mattingly looked at him a long moment. “My biggest mistake was in underestimating your ego,” he said, almost sadly. “I should have known better. Why the hell couldn’t you have stayed a nice young second lieutenant who only knew how to say ‘Yes, sir’ and wouldn’t dream of questioning his orders?”
Cronley didn’t reply.
“We seem to be back to: ‘What the hell do I do with you?’”
“You can let me see how I do with Major Orlovsky.”
“My question was rhetorical, Captain Cronley. I was not asking for a reply.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Prefacing the following by saying that this conversation is by no means over, I’ll tell you what’s going to happen now. In the morning, you will return to Kloster Grünau. I’ll give you a week to see what you can learn from Major Orlovsky. One week. Seven days from now, you will come back here and report to me what, if anything, you think you have learned, and offer any suggestions you might have regarding the next step.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“Don’t entertain any illusions that you have come out on top of our little tête-à-tête. Whatever happens, our relationship in the future will be considerably less cordial than it has been in the past.”
“I understand, sir.”
“Now, presuming you still take some orders, I don’t want you to leave this room until you get in the staff car that takes you to the airfield in the morning. There is room service. You will eat your supper and breakfast in the room. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t want you bumping into Mrs. Schumann. Your first encounter with her ended without anything untoward happening. I want to keep it that way.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mattingly got out of his chair and left the suite without saying another word.
Cronley looked at the closed door, and then wondered aloud, “Why the hell couldn’t I have stayed a nice young second lieutenant who only knew how to say ‘Yes, sir’ and wouldn’t dream of questioning my orders?”
Then he walked into the bathroom to meet the call of nature.
[ SIX ]
When Cronley came back into the sitting room, he pushed the curtains on the French doors aside and looked out. It was drizzling, a precursor, he thought, of the bad weather moving in. Defying the drizzle, four golfers were walking down the fairway with their caddies trailing after them.
He let the curtain fall back, having remembered that there was room service.
A little celebratory Jack Daniel’s is in order for the prisoner in Room 112.
After that confrontation with Mattingly, while things are certainly not ginger-peachy, Mattingly knows he can’t let Gehlen’s men shoot Orlovsky. At least right away.
He had just picked up the telephone when there was a knock at his door.
Shit! Mattingly’s back with something devastating to say to me.
He swung open the door.
Mrs. Colonel Schumann was standing there.
“Yes, ma’am?”
