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A waiter approached, and Cronley ordered a New York strip pink in the middle, fried eggs with running yolks, and pommes frites.
Winters said, “Just the steak and the French fries for me, please.”
—
Ten minutes later Cronley concluded: “Colonel Ledbetter promised to have the film processed and to send it with one of his people as soon as that can be done. And so, there being nothing more for me to do in Berlin, I came home to bury the Russians Claudette shot.”
He met Gehlen’s eyes, and thought, And for your advice on getting Mattingly back without swapping the Likharev family.
“Interesting,” Gehlen said, as if he read Cronley’s mind. “This will require some thought.”
“And I get the pictures of Mattingly in the truck on the bridge, right?” Janice asked.
“With the understanding you can’t use any of them until this thing is resolved one way or another.”
“No offense, Miss Johansen,” Wallace said, “but I’m more than a little worried that unless we have only our hands on that photography, it’s likely to get out.”
“No offense taken, Harry,” Janice said. “I understand your concern. But Jim promised me I could have a look at the photos. And he’s a man of his word. You’re just going to have to trust me.”
Your face, Colonel Wallace, Cronley thought, suggests you trust her only about as far as you can throw her. Or maybe halfway as far as you could throw Tiny Dunwiddie.
“I don’t suppose anybody knows where Augie Ziegler is,” Cronley said.
“At the Munich NCO club,” Janice said. “After he decided you wouldn’t be coming back tonight—you weren’t on the Blue Danube, and you, quote, wouldn’t be dumb enough to try to fly in this weather, close quote—he took Wagner there.”
“That was nice of him.”
“He had an ulterior motive.”
“Which was?”
“To punch holes in Wagner’s theory about how the Stars and Stripes trucks are moving the bad guys around.”
“Wagner has a theory?”
“Augie calls it a theory. Casey says he knows.”
“Who the hell is Casey?”
“PFC Wagner’s Christian name is Karl-Christoph. You know, K dash C. Casey?”
“Now you’ve aroused my curiosity. Who is he?” Colonel Bristol asked.
“He’s an enormous seventeen-year-old Pennsylvania Dutchman who works for Ziegler. Translator. Janice has a Press Office jeep. So we sent . . . Casey . . . to the Stars and Stripes plant at Pfungstadt to see what he could see.”
“He’s seventeen years old?” Bristol asked.
“He looks older,” Cronley replied. “He could pass for eighteen, maybe even nineteen.”
“And he speaks fluent Hessischer Deutsch,” Kurt Schröder offered. “Not many Americans do. He could pass as a Frankfurter.”
Cronley chuckled and then looked at him questioningly.
“I took an L-4 and picked him up in Pfungstadt,” Schröder explained. “And on the way back here he told me—in fluent Hessischer Deutsch—about what he learned about the Stars and Stripes trucks.”
“And?”
“I think he’s onto something,” Schröder said.
