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He punched Cronley affectionately on his shoulder and got out of the staff car.

Cronley drove out of the Visiting Senior Officers’ Parking Area before Wallace reached his car.

[ FOUR ]

Kloster Grünau

Schollbrunn, Bavaria

American Zone of Occupation, Germany

1740 27 January 1946

It was dark when Cronley got to the monastery. Not only dark, but snowing. The snow made the headlights on the jeeps and trucks and ambulances—which had come on to illuminate the strip when he’d flown over the former monastery—into fuzzy orbs of white, when what he needed was clear light.

That the lights had come on told him both that Major Wallace had gotten on the horn to give them a heads-up and that Max Ostrowski had set up the vehicles immediately in case Cronley was really crazy enough to attempt to land at Kloster Grünau at night in a snowstorm.

He got the Storch onto the ground all right, which was not the same thing as saying safely. He realized this was a tribute to the flight characteristics of the airplane, which permitted him to make his approach at a speed not much faster than a walk, rather than to his flying skills.

Cronley was fully aware that he should have gone into Schleissheim, the Munich Military Post airfield, whose runways were fully lighted. He had not done so for three reasons. He didn’t want to have the Storch seen at Schleissheim; he didn’t want the airfield officer of the day running up to the airplane when he parked it, asking, Are you out of your mind, flying in this weather? and he didn’t want to go through the hassle of getting a car, either at the airfield or from the Vier Jahreszeiten, to drive to Kloster Grünau.

He knew he was taking a chance. He’d become used to taking chances, so far successfully.

But as he was landing the airplane, he had another thought, this one sobering: One of these days, sooner or later, and probably sooner than later, one of the chances I’m taking is

going to bite me in the ass.

—

Max Ostrowski met him with a jeep.

“You were pushing it, old chap, flying in this weather,” he greeted him in his heavy British accent. “I’m presuming there is a reason you felt you had to get back today?”

“I really needed a shower, Your Majesty,” Cronley replied.

“Why do I have the feeling that’s the truth? Or at least part of the truth.”

“Because you are a PP, Max.”

“What’s a PP?”

“A Perceptive Pole,” Cronley said. “How’s Lazarus?”

“As in the chap Christ brought back from the dead?”

“See, you are perceptive. Maybe even a VPP.”

“Let me guess: Very Perceptive Pole.”

“Correct. Take me to the palace, please, driver. I need a hot shower and a cold Jack Daniel’s.”

—

“Colonel Mattingly gone missing is problem enough,” Max said, after Cronley had finished telling him of his encounter with General Seidel. “If he’s killed . . .”

“I’m taking what comfort I can from thinking they may want to swap him for Likharev,” Cronley said.

“Or Lazarus.”