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Serov’s face tightened but he didn’t reply.
“Where is Cronley?” he asked finally.
“Occupied elsewhere,” Wallace said. “He asked me to give you these.”
He handed Serov three cans of motion picture film and a large manila envelope.
“What is this?” Serov asked as he opened the envelope.
“Still and motion pictures of the reinterment of your people,” Wallace said.
Serov pulled several 8×10 photos halfway out of the envelope, looked at them quickly, and then slid them back into the envelope.
“Please tell Cronley I will look at these carefully.”
“I’ll do that,” Mannberg said.
“And please tell him that a week from today, at this hour, I look forward to seeing him and Polkóvnik Likharev and his family here.”
He saluted again, waited for Dunwiddie to return it, and when he had, did an about-face and marched away. The doors to the truck closed as it drove off.
The Americans turned and walked off the bridge.
[ TWO ]
U.S. Constabulary School
Sonthofen, Bavaria
The American Zone of Occupied Germany
1100 8 February 1946
Major General I. D. White, trailed by his junior aide-de-camp, Second Lieutenant Gregory Douglas, walked unannounced into his conference room. Before any of the officers sitting at a twenty-foot-long conference table could rise—jump—to their feet, he made a waving gesture and said, “At ease, gentlemen.”
He then slipped into the ornate high-backed leather-upholstered chair at the head of the table and announced, “The major problem as I see it is that the people we are looking for will learn, either through the mole, or moles, we feel we are infected with, that we will be looking for them at Wissembourg, or they will learn because we do something stupid, especially in and around Wissembourg.
“If this problem has not been a factor in your planning, which would deeply disappoint me, then go back, so to speak, to your drawing board. If it has, let’s hear what you’ve come up with.”
McMullen stood up.
“Here’s where we are, sir,” he began. “Commandant Fortin’s interrogation of Luther Stauffer was only partially successful. He was in fact at Wissembourg to arrange the movement for Odessa of two men across the Franco-German border, then across France to the Franco-Spanish border.”
“He admitted this?”
“Ol’ Pierre—Captain DuPres—General, began questioning him by asking what seemed to be an innocent question,” DCI agent Finney said. “‘How’s the Gasthaus Zum Adler, Luther? Comfortable? Good kitchen?’ When he saw the question made Cousin Luther uncomfortable, he sent Sergeant Deladier to the gasthaus to search his room.”
“How did he know this fellow had a room in that particular gasthaus?” White asked.
“It’s the only gasthaus in Wissembourg, sir.”
“Dumb question,” White admitted. “Go on, please.”
“That took about thirty, forty minutes. During which we left Cousin Luther alone with Sergent-chef Ibn Tufail.”
“Who is?”
“A Berber, sir, from Morocco. Great big mean-looking sonofabitch.”
