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He didn’t pull that from thin air; he had that time period in his mind.
And if that interrogation produces the names, fine.
And if it doesn’t, that’s fine, too.
And if the names Orlovsky gives up—and he knows everybody’s names; he had the rosters—are of innocent people, that’s one of those unfortunate things that can’t be helped.
They get shot and buried alongside Orlovsky in unmarked graves in the ancient cemetery of Kloster Grünau.
If nothing else, that will teach Gehlen’s people—and whoever controls the disappeared NKGB officer Orlovsky—that the Americans can be as ruthless as anybody.
And we keep looking for the people who really have been turned so we can shoot them and plant them in the Kloster Grünau cemetery.
What Mattingly can’t afford to have happen is for it to come out that we grabbed an NKGB officer. We are allies of the Soviet Union. We’d have to give him back, and the Russians could then, in righteous outrage, complain loudly that we are protecting two-hundred-odd Nazis from them.
So Orlovsky has to disappear. It doesn’t really matter if he gives us the names of Gehlen’s people who have been turned.
And Mattingly is right.
So why are you playing Sir Galahad?
The question now seems to be when did that week clock start ticking?
It’s ticking for me, too. Maybe Mattingly has decided he needs that much time—but no more—to come up with some way to shut me up. He can’t have me running to Clete—much less to Admiral Souers.
And if reason doesn’t work . . .
“What a pity. Poor Cronley was just standing there when the truck went out of control. At least, thank God, it was quick. He didn’t feel a thing.”
No. Two deaths by an out-of-control truck would be too much of a coincidence.
“Poor Jimmy. He just couldn’t handle the death of his bride. He was so young and he loved her so much. It was just too much for him. What did you expect? He put his .45 in his mouth.”
That’d work.
Well, it won’t.
Over my dead body, as the saying goes.
[ TWO ]
Kloster Grünau
Schollbrunn, Bavaria
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1305 31 October 1945
As Cronley made his approach, he saw Tiny Dunwiddie leaning on the front fender of a three-quarter-ton ambulance where the road turned. The Red Cross panels had been painted over, as the ambulance was no longer used to transport the wounded or injured.
He either heard me coming or he’s been waiting for me, possibly with good news from Mattingly.
“This is a direct order, Sergeant Dunwiddie. When Captain Cronley gets there, sit on him. By ‘sit on him’ I mean don’t let him near the man he’s been talking to or near the radio. Or leave. I’ll explain when I get there. Say, ‘Yes, sir.’”
—
When he taxied to the chapel to shut down the Storch, he saw that while he was gone, U.S. Army squad tents—six of them—had been converted into what was a sort of combination hangar and camouflage cover large enough for both Storches.
