Page 7

“Colonel Kellogg, I need a favor,” Cronley said. “Badly. I want you to put Mr. Ziegler on temporary duty with . . . What do we call it, Freddy?”

“Military Detachment, Central Intelligence Directorate, Europe, APO 907,” Hessinger furnished.

“Certainly,” Kellogg said. “I’ll have orders cut in the morning.”

“Am I allowed to ask why?” Ziegler said.

“Because there’s something about you that smells smart cop,” Cronley said. “And I want everything that happened tonight (a) to be investigated thoroughly and (b) the results of that investigation to be neatly summarized and typed up neatly with no strikeovers so that I can give them to General Bull, and (c) to help us with another investigation we’re running that probably has something to do with this. You have any problems working with us?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay, now fully aware that when I finish saying this to you, you will seriously consider putting my photo in your urinal so that you can piss on it, I want to warn you, Mr. Ziegler, that if I catch you running at the mouth, even running a little at the mouth, about what you see, hear, or intuit about what’s going on around here, if I don’t have you killed, or court-martialed, which will be the first things that will occur to me, you will spend the rest of your MP career handing out jaywalking tickets in the parking lot of the PX at Fort Abercrombie, which is on Kodiak Island, in Alaska. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Augie replied. He could not suppress a smile.

He thought: This guy, who looks like he made second lieutenant last week, is a real hard-ass.

A genuine hard-ass.

I think that whatever I’m going to be doing here is going to be a lot more fun than investigating dependent domestic disputes and catching people importing coffee and cigarettes from the States to sell on the black market.

“Okay,” Cronley said, “now before I send you and Freddy over to get Claudette out of wherever you have her, I’ll give you my take on what’s happened here.”

“Please do. That’s presuming I can be told?” Colonel Kellogg said.

“I think you should hear this, sir,” Cronley said. “Before Mr. Hessinger recruited Claudette for us, she was in the Army Security Agency, as an intercept operator and cryptographer and debugger. That means she knows how to find hidden microphones. And that means she knows how to install them, too. She was a tech sergeant.

“Now she carries one of these . . . Freddy, show Colonel Kellogg your credentials.”

“Yes, sir,” Hessinger said, and did so.

“She needs one of those, Colonel, because she is privy to everything that goes on around here. Everything.”

“I understand,” Kellogg said.

“DCI agents have assimilated field grade officer rank. They’re treated as at least majors when they need a hotel room, et cetera. Claudette lives here in the Vier Jahreszeiten—down the corridor. We have the entire wing on this floor. She’s on per diem, and takes her meals in the restaurant downstairs.

“Shortly after she came here, she suggested to Hessinger that he recruit Tech Sergeant Miller, a pal of hers in the ASA, and also a cryptographer and debugger. So we had her transferred to us.”

“Question?” Augie asked.

“Shoot.?

?

“‘Pal of hers’? How close a pal?”

“If you’re suggesting what I think you are, no, not that kind of pal.”

“You understand why I had to ask.”

“That’s why I recruited you, Ziegler. Because I thought you would ask the indelicate questions that have to be asked.

“Tech Sergeant Miller lives in the Pullach compound with other WACs. The ASA has an intercept station in the Pullach compound.

“But Claudette and Miller were still buddies even after Claudette moved into the Vier Jahreszeiten. So with one a tech sergeant and one an assimilated officer, what could they do together? Go to the PX and the movies, and that’s about it. Except the WAC NCO club. Claudette still had her sergeant’s ID card. So I think they went there to have a steak and some drinks. I think maybe Claudette left her DCI credentials in the safe. Freddy?”

“I’ll check.”