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“And why are you taking me to Frankfurt?”
“Because I need ten minutes, maybe a little more, of White’s time, just as soon as I can get it, and you’re going to arrange it.”
“I’ll do no such thing.”
“What?”
“My personal relationship with General White is exactly that, personal. And if you don’t mind, please refer to him as ‘General White.’”
“Are you constipated, or what?”
Dunwiddie did not reply.
“Just for the record, Captain Dunwiddie, I do not wish to intrude on your personal relationship with General White. I’m not going to ask him, for example, if he has any pictures of you as a bare-ass infant on a bearskin rug he’d be willing to share with me. This is business.”
“Official?”
“Yes, official.”
“Then I suggest that if you need to see General White that you contact his aide-de-camp and ask for an appointment.”
“If I had the time, maybe I would. But I don’t have the time.”
“Would you care to explain that?”
“Hotshot Billy told me he can’t do anything more for me to get Mrs. Likharev and the kids across the border than he already has, unless he gets permission from White.”
“Can you tell me what Colonel Wilson has done for you so far?”
“He told me that when, a couple of days ago, he flew the East/West German border around Fritzlar, he thinks he saw places, fields, roads, right across the border in Thuringia where we could get the Storchs in and out.
“And as we speak, at least one and maybe more than one Piper Cub of the Fourteenth Constab—”
“The nomenclature is L-4,” Dunwiddie interrupted.
“—which is stationed in Fritzlar, is flying the border taking aerial photographs of these possible landing sites. He has promised to give me what they bring back. But when I asked him to teach me and Ostrowski and Schröder what he knows about snatch operations—and Hotshot Billy knows a lot—he said he couldn’t do anything more, now that White has returned to Germany, without White’s permission.”
“That’s the way things are done in the Army.”
“Fuck you, Tiny.”
“You might as well turn the airplane around, Jim. Because I flatly refuse to be in any way involved with getting General White involved in one of your loose-cannon schemes.”
“Before I respond to that, I think I should tell you the reason I know White will be in Frankfurt is because Wilson told me. And it was Wilson who suggested that the quickest way for me to get permission from White for him to help me was to get you to Frankfurt to meet your Uncle Isaac when he gets off the plane. Wilson says he’s sure White will invite you to ride on his private train, and if you get on it, so will I. How could they do less for the man who flew Chauncey to meet his Uncle Isaac?”
“You’re not listening, Jim. I refuse to become involved.”
“You’re not listening, I told you this was important. And a word to the wise: I’ve had about all of your West Point bullshit I can handle, Tiny.”
“I went to Norwich, not West Point. So did General White.”
“Well, pardon me all to hell. I forgot that Wilson’s the West Pointer, not you and your Uncle Isaac. Same comment, I’ve had enough of this bullshit. Grow the fuck up, you’re in the intelligence business, not on the parade ground of some college. That I will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do philosophy doesn’t work here.”
“I beg to disagree.”
“You will get me on that fucking train, Tiny, because this isn’t a suggestion, or a request, it’s what you proper soldiers call a direct order. Once I’m in with the general, you can tell him you’re there against your will, or even—shit, why not?—that I threatened to shoot you if you wouldn’t go along.”
“Now you’re being sophomoric.”
