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Sidney W. Souers

Rear Admiral, USN

Director, DCI

TOP SECRET PRESIDENTIAL NUCLEAR

Cronley handed the letter to Gehlen.

“Please give it to Captain Dunwiddie when you’ve read it, General,” he said.

When Tiny had read the letter, Cronley said, “My take on that letter is that Truman is afraid of Hoover. Otherwise, he would just tell Hoover to butt out.”

When no one replied, he asked, “Can I interpret the silence to mean you agree with me?”

“You can interpret my silence to mean I am obviously not in a position where I can presume to comment on anything the President of the United States does or does not do,” Gehlen said. “I would, however, suggest that both President Truman and Admiral Souers seem to feel confident that both you and Colonel Ashton can deal with a very difficult situation.”

“Shit,” Cronley said, and looked at Dunwiddie. “And you?”

After a moment, Dunwiddie avoided the question, instead asking, “Lieutenant Colonel Ashton? I thought he was a major, and in Walter Reed with a broken leg?”

“In other words, no comment, right?” Cronley asked.

Dunwiddie said nothing.

“As to your question,” Cronley said. “Applying my Sherlock Holmesian logic to it, I deduce Ashton (a) has been promoted, and (b) that he will shortly appear here, broken leg or not. Obviously, if he was in Walter Reed, we could not share this letter with him.”

“Wiseass,” Dunwiddie said.

Gehlen chuckled.

“I further deduce,” Cronley went on, “that Lieutenant Colonel Ashton is coming over here to familiarize himself with his new underlings.”

“Other than that Otto Niedermeyer speaks highly of him, I don’t know much about Colonel Ashton,” Gehlen said.

“All I really know about him is that he’s a Cuban—an American whose family grows sugarcane and makes rum in Cuba—and that Clete likes him. The little I saw of him when I was in Argentina, I liked,” Cronley said. “He’s really . . . what’s the word? ‘Polished.’ Or maybe ‘suave.’ He can charm the balls off a brass monkey.”

“Now that’s an interesting phrase,” Gehlen said, chuckling.

“I have no idea what it means,” Cronley confessed.

“Would you be surprised to hear it has nothing to do with the testicles of our simian cousins?” Dunwiddie asked.

Tiny has found a way to change the subject.

Well, what did I expect him to say? “I agree it looks like Truman is throwing us off the bus”?

“Pay attention, General,” Cronley said. “Professor Dunwiddie’s lecture is about to start.”

“Until breech-loading rifled-barrel naval cannon came along,” Dunwiddie began, “men-of-war, as warships were then called, fired round iron balls from their smooth-barreled cannon. These balls often contained a black powder charge, with a fuse that was lit just before the ball was rammed down the cannon muzzle. Is this too technical for you, Captain Cronley, sir, or should I continue?”

Gehlen chuckled.

“Carry on, Captain Dunwiddie,” Cronley ordered.

“As you are aware, balls tend to roll around on flat surfaces,” Dunwiddie continued. “They tend to roll around even more on flat surfaces which are themselves moving, as the deck of ships on the high seas tend to do. Since the balls the Navy was using weighed up to one hundred pounds, you can see where this was a problem. The problem was compounded by the explosive shells to which I previously referred.

“Phrased simply, if some of the black powder in the explosive shells came out of the touch hole—that’s where they put the fuse—while it was rolling around on the deck, it made for a highly combustible environment. Even worse was the possibility that glowing embers—debris from previous firing of the cannon—would find the touch hole of the explosive ball as it rolled around the deck crushing feet and breaking ankles. Bang. Big bang.