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“Then they were Germans?”

“The BIS—and Cletus Frade—believes they were Paraguayan criminals hired by the Russians. So does Colonel Sergei Likharev of the NKGB.”

“Who?”

“When Major Orlovsky realized that the NKGB was trying to kill him, and probably would do something very unpleasant to his wife and kids if General Gehlen could not get them out of the Soviet Union, he fessed up that his name is really Likharev and that he is—or was—an NKGB colonel. And gave up the names of Gehlen’s traitors.”

“What happened to them?”

“You don’t want to know, Colonel Ashton.”

“So Cronley did the right thing.”

“I don’t think that Colonel Mattingly would agree that the ends justify the means.”

“But you do?”

“On one hand, it is inexcusable that Cronley went around Mattingly. On the other hand, we now have Colonel Likharev singing like that proverbial canary. And on the same side of that scale, General Gehlen has gone out of his way to let me know in what high regard he holds Cronley and Dunwiddie. But let me finish this.”

“Yes, sir.”

“After Frade informed me that he believed Likharev had truly seen the benefits of turning, and that he believed he would be of enormous value to us in the future, I was willing to overlook Cronley’s unorthodoxy. Then Cronley got on the SIGABA and sent me a long message stating that he considered it absolutely essential that when he is transferred to the DCI that he have another commissioned officer to back him up, and that he wanted First Sergeant Dunwiddie commissioned as a captain—he said no one pays any attention to lieutenants—to fill that role.

“My first reaction to the message, frankly, was ‘Just who the hell does he think he is?’ I decided that it probably would be unwise to leave him in command of the Pullach compound. I then telephoned General Gehlen, to ask how he would feel about Major Harold Wallace—do you know who I mean?”

Shaking his head, Ashton said, “No, sir.”

“He was Mattingly’s deputy in OSS Forward . . .”

“Now I do, sir.”

“And is now commanding the Twenty-seventh CIC, which is the cover for the Twenty-third CIC, to which Cronley and Dunwiddie are assigned. You are familiar with all this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I asked General Gehlen how he would feel if I arranged for Major Wallace to take over command of the Pullach compound. He replied by asking if he could speak freely. I told him he could. He said that in the best of all possible worlds, he would prefer that Colonel Mattingly and Major Wallace have as little to do with Pullach as possible. When I asked why, he said that he regarded the greatest threat to the Pullach compound operation, in other words, to Operation Ost, was not the Russians but the U.S. Army bureaucracy.

“In case you don’t know, the Pentagon—the deputy chief of staff for intelligence—has assigned two officers, a lieutenant colonel named Parsons and a major named Ashley—to liaise with Operation Ost at Pullach.”

“Frade told me that, but not the names.”

“DCS-G2 thinks they should be running Operation Ost. Both Parsons and Ashley outrank Captain Cronley. See the probl

em?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought it could be dealt with, since Mattingly, in the Farben Building, is a full colonel and could handle Parsons, and further that Wallace could better stand up to Parsons and Ashley than Cronley could.”

Ashton nodded his understanding.

“General Gehlen disagreed. He told me something I didn’t know, that First Sergeant Dunwiddie’s godfather is General White, and that in private Dunwiddie refers to General White as ‘Uncle Isaac.’ And he reminded me of something I already knew: The President of the United States looks fondly upon Captain Cronley.”

“How did Gehlen know that?”

“I don’t know, but I have already learned not to underestimate General Reinhard Gehlen. Gehlen put it to me that he felt Parsons was under orders to somehow take control of Pullach, that Mattingly, who is interested in being taken into the Regular Army, is not going to defy the general staff of the U.S. Army.

“Gehlen put it to me that DCS-G2 taking over Operation Ost would be a disaster—reaching as far up as the President—inevitably about to happen. And I knew he was right.”