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That silenced the young priest. Cronley wondered how long that would last.

Maybe ten minutes later, McKenna asked, “Is General Serov on your list of forbidden subjects?”

“That would depend, Francis, on your questions about him,” Cohen said.

“Why did he fly instead of traveling with us?”

“Flying is of course faster. But, more important, don’t you think it would arouse curiosity if a Russian general got on The Blue Danube?”

“I didn’t think about that,” McKenna said.

Cronley wondered, Is this an act or is he really that naïve?

Cohen said, “He’ll meet us at the Four Seasons. Then we’ll go to the Pullach Compound.”

“What’s the Pullach Compound?”

“A top secret intelligence operation run by General Gehlen, who used to run Abwehr Ost for the Germans.”

“What will we be doing there?”

“If we told you, Francis,” Cohen said, “we’d have to kill you.”

“I never know when you’re pulling my leg,” the priest complained.

“Now you’re getting it,” Cronley said.

[TWO]

Pullach Compound

Near Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

1305 23 April 1946

Reinhard Gehlen, as a Wehrmacht generalmajor, had commanded Abwehr Ost, the German espionage operation dealing with the Soviet Union. He now was chief executive of the Süd-Deutsche Industrielle Entwicklungsorganisation, the South German Industrial Development Organization. It had nothing whatever to do with industrial development but rather did much the same thing vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, inside and outside the Russian border, and under the aegis of the United States Directorate of Central Intelligence, from its heavily guarded Compound in the village of Pullach.

Since setting up shop, so to speak, Gehlen had become so close to the head of the DCI, Rear Admiral Sidney W. Souers, that they were on a Sid and Rhiny nickname basis.

Gehlen also habitually called his subordinates by their nicknames or Christian names—while they addressed him as Herr General—but he was not that close to any of them at the Compound.

Gehlen attributed this to his service in the Abwehr, both before and during the war. Some of the friends he had made coming up in the German Army had been killed. Those losses hurt.

Others had betrayed him, which had been even more painful.

Nor was Gehlen close to any of the Americans at the Compound—with the notable exception of Captain James D. Cronley Jr.

Gehlen had “inherited” Cronley, as he thought of it, just as the OSS was being disestablished but the Directorate of Central Intelligence was by no means up and running. The European Command was trying to take advantage of that situation by taking over the Süd-Deutsche Industrielle Entwicklungsorganisation. Gehlen knew he could not do what was expected of him with a U.S. Army intelligence officer looking over his shoulder and offering “helpful” suggestions.

The Pullach Compound was guarded by an oversize company of American Negro soldiers. During the war, they had been in an antitank battalion and had taken pride that they indeed were fighting soldiers and not working as laborers at a quartermaster’s depot somewhere or as stevedores in one of the ports.

They originally had had black officers, but recently there had been no black officers available to assign to the duty. The first white officer assigned to it had done a good job, but, inevitably, he had gone home.

When Gehlen took one quick look at the new commanding officer, he saw cause for concern. Cronley was a second lieutenant, for one thing, and looked, despite his size and bulk, like he had just graduated high school.

But Gehlen quickly learned that his usual shrewd snap judgment of people in the case of Cronley was pretty far off the mark. Cronley was nowhere near being a just-about-useless second lieutenant. Gehlen began to realize this when he explained the problems Cronley was about to face with his black soldiers.

“I don’t see it as much of a problem, General,” Cronley said with monumental self-confidence.