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“I have that pleasure,” Winters said.
“Fuck you, Jim,” Janice said. “And you, too, Winters.”
“Why do I suspect I have in some small way offended you, Miss Johansen?” Cronley asked.
“Our deal, and you know it, you sonofabitch, was that I was to be in on everything.”
“That’s our deal as I remember it,” Cronley said.
“So how come I didn’t get to go to Vienna with you? Or Berlin?”
“Who told you about Vienna or Berlin?”
“I’m a journalist. I find things out. Maybe I should give lessons to you spooks.”
“Janice, we shouldn’t be talking about any of this in here.”
“Okay. So when the drinks I got you are served, you pay for them, and carry them into the dining room.”
“That’s no better than the bar.”
“Unless we go where General Gehlen is, in a private dining room.”
—
When First Sergeant Tedworth had told Cronley and Winters that General Gehlen was having dinner at the Vier Jahreszeiten with several of his officers, Cronley naturally had presumed that these would be maybe a half dozen of the former Abwehr Ost lieutenant colonels and majors now in the Compound.
But when Gehlen’s Polish bodyguards passed him, Janice, and Tom Winters into the private dining room off the main dining room, Gehlen had only two Germans sitting at his table, Major Konrad Bischoff and Kurt Schröder, the ex- and present Storch pilot, and two Americans, Major Harold Wallace and Lieutenant Colonel John J. Bristol.
Everybody at the table rose when they saw Cronley, Janice, and Winters approaching the table.
It would be nice to think that was a gesture of courtesy to me as chief, DCI-Europe.
But it wasn’t.
They stood up as a Pavlovian reaction to Janice, even though Wallace and Bischoff clearly are unhappy to see her.
“Well,” Gehlen said, “I see I was wrong, Miss Johansen, when I told you I thought there was no chance at all of Jim being able to get here before the Blue Danube arrived at eleven. Please sit down.”
“You flew from Frankfurt?” Kurt Schröder asked incredulously as chairs were pulled to the table.
“He flew,” Winters replied, “while I prayed watching the fuel gauge needles bang against the empty peg as we went through the
blizzard.”
“I need something to eat,” Cronley said. “I haven’t had anything since breakfast.”
“And when he’s finished,” Janice said, “or preferably while he’s eating, he’s going to tell us all about Vienna and Berlin.”
Wallace’s face showed he strongly disapproved of that idea.
“Is this one of those occasions where I should be asked to be excused?” Colonel Bristol asked.
“No,” Cronley said firmly. “Colonel, this is one of those occasions where I’ll be more comfortable knowing you know everything, rather than wondering what you know and what you’ve intuited.”
“Same question, Herr Cronley,” Kurt Schröder asked.
“Same answer, Kurt.”
