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“My mother didn’t want me to grow up to be a Texas cowboy. If there was an operetta within five hundred miles, we went to it. Actually, I learned to like Lehár.”
—
The restaurant was in the basement of the bomb-damaged building. It was very similar to the one Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin of the DST had taken Cronley and Winters to in Strasbourg, with a high ceiling supported by massive stone arches that had been strong enough to protect the basement when the building had fallen.
—
The main dining room was huge. At least a hundred men were seated at candlelit tables, many of them with well-dressed and attractive women. Most, but not all, of the men were in uniform—English, French, Russian, and American.
More surreal.
Somewhere in here are the six CIC special agents whom Wassermann has provided to keep us from being kidnapped.
And, obviously, Serov has NKGB people undercover in here, too.
So, at least a dozen spooks. Six good guys and at least six bad.
And I don’t have a clue which is which.
—
The headwaiter Hussar pushed open a door to a small private dining room.
“Oberst Serov, your guests are here,” he announced in German, and then waved Cronley and Mannberg into the room.
Two men in Russian uniforms rose from a table.
One was about fifty, heavyset, and wore the shoulder boards of a polkóvnik—colonel—and the other, a blond-haired, pleasant-looking man who looked to be in his mid-twenties, wore those of a lieutenant colonel.
“Thank you for coming,” the young man said in German, putting out his hand to Cronley. “It is always a pleasure to break bread with our American allies.”
His smile was warm and his handshake firm.
“This is Colonel Dragomirov,” the young man announced. “My superior, who suggested we meet.”
Dragomirov’s hand was callused and his handshake turned into a crushing contest, which Cronley almost lost.
“Hauptmann Cronley,” Dragomirov said, using the German translation of “captain.”
“Polkóvnik,” Cronley replied.
That used up one-tenth of my entire Russian vocabulary.
“Which must make you Comrade Serov,” Mannberg said to the younger man.
“At last we meet, Oberst Mannberg,” Colonel Ivan Serov said, extending his hand to him.
“All things come to he who waits,” Mannberg said.
“A drink is obviously called for,” Serov said. “And thanks to international cooperation, I believe I am prepared.”
“Excuse me?” Mannberg asked.
“As a gesture of courtesy between friends, senior officers affiliated with the Quadripartite Commission are honorary members of the senior officers’ clubs of all parties,” Serov explained. “Colonel Wassermann, for example, is welcome at the Red Army Senior Officers’ Club, and I am welcome at the American Club, the French Club, and so on. At the American Club, James, knowing we were going to meet, I visited the spirits store.”
“James”? We’re now buddies?
Serov snapped his fingers and a waiter, in Hussar uniform, came to the table and put a bottle of George Dickel sour mash bourbon on the table.
