Page 165

“Concur,” Gehlen said, and stood up.

“I should have my notes typed up by the time you get back,” Claudette Colbert said.

“While I appreciate your devotion to duty, Claudette,” Wallace said, “that’ll wait until tomorrow, too. You stick your notes in the safe and come to dinner with us.”

And what’s your real role in this, Claudette?

Did my innocence and naïveté really cause you to throw your maidenly modesty to the winds?

Or did someone tell you that I tell females with whom I am cavorting sexually everything they want to know?

And if so, who told you that? Is Fat Freddy part of this?

Or have you been working for Wallace all along, and he told you to get to me through Hessinger?

[FIVE]

Suite 527

Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten

Maximilianstrasse 178

Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

0310 18 January 1946

“Fuck it,” Captain James D. Cronley Jr. announced and swung his legs out of bed.

He was in his underwear. He found the shirt he had discarded when he went to bed, and then his uniform trousers. He pulled on socks, made a decision between Shoes, Men’s Low Quarter, Brown in Color, and Uribe Boots, San Antonio, Texas, choosing to jam his feet into the latter.

Then he walked to his door, unlocked it, and went down the corridor to Suite 522, where he both pushed the doorbell and knocked at the door.

A full ninety seconds later, Major Harold Wallace, attired in his underwear, opened the door.

“If you’re looking for Brunhilde, Romeo, she’s in 533,” Major Wallace said.

“I’m looking for you, Colonel,” Cronley said.

“Colonel? How much have you had to drink, Jim?”

“Not a drop. Not a goddamn drop.”

“What’s on your mind at this obscene hour?”

“I have some questions I need to have answered.”

“Such as?”

“How long have you been working for Schultz?”

“How long have I what?”

“I think you heard me, Colonel.”

“I think you better go back down the corridor and jump in your little bed.”

“I’m not going to do that until I get some answers,” Cronley said.