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“And while we’re on the subject of being out of uniform,” Wilson said, as he pulled from a metal locker a zippered tanker jacket, to the breast of which were sewn pilot’s wings. “This is one of your prizes for having successfully completed the William W. Wilson course in the operation of the Storch aircraft. The other prizes being two Storches. Treat them kindly, Captain. I have grown very fond of them.”

“Colonel, I’m not entitled to wear those wings.”

“That may be true. On the other hand, as Colonel Mattingly and I discussed, there is very little chance of someone rushing up to you when you land someplace and demanding to see your certificate of graduation from flight school. No one has ever asked me for such proof. And even if the unexpected happened, you could dazzle him with your CIC credentials, couldn’t you, Special Agent Cronley?”

Cronley chuckled.

“Jim—may I call you ‘Jim’?”

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

“And you may call me ‘sir’ or ‘Colonel,’ whichever comes easiest.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Jim, Bob Mattingly and I go back a long ways. We share a mutual admiration for Major General I. D. White, who will shortly return to Germany and assume command of the U.S. Constabulary. When it is activated, I will become Aviation Officer of the U.S. Constabulary.

“The Air Force, always willing to share its superior knowledge with we lesser birdmen, volunteered to have a look at the proposed Table of Organization and Equipment, came to item Number So and So, two each Fieseler Fi 156 Storch aircraft, and promptly wet its panties. They could not in good conscience approve the use of captured enemy aircraft, as the reliability of such aircraft was unknown, and they didn’t want to be responsible for some Army Liaison pilot of limited skills injuring himself.

“Over the years, I’ve provided Bob Mattingly—that is, provided the late and lamented OSS—with all sorts of aircraft. So I mentioned this to him, wondering if he had use for the Storches. His response was he’d love to have them, but would have to look around for a pilot or pilots and that would be a problem.

“Yesterday, he called me. A benevolent Deity had just dropped a pilot in his lap. There was a small problem: Although this chap had a commercial ticket, with multi-engine and instrument ratings, he had not wanted to be an aerial taxi driver and had concealed these ratings from the Army. In spite of that, he had just returned from flying a Storch, a Cub, and a Lodestar around the mouth of the Magellan Strait in connection with some activity Mattingly didn’t wish to share with me but which had caused President Truman to jump him from Second John to Captain and pin the DSM on his manly chest.

“So here we are,” Wilson went on. “That was a nice recovery from the stall, by the way. Most people would have tried—and suffered a possible fatal mistake at that altitude—restarting the engine.”

“Thank you.”

“So, what you get is two Storches, a decent supply of parts, and, if you think they would fit into Kloster Grünau, a former Luftwaffe Storch pilot and three mechanics.”

Cronley’s first reaction was: Great! I barely know how to fly a Storch, and I know zilch about maintaining one.

That was immediately followed by: And what is Major Harold Wallace, not to mention Colonel Robert Mattingly, going to say when they hear I’ve moved four Germans into Kloster Grünau, thereby posing a threat to the secrets of Operation Ost?

And that was immediately followed by: Stop thinking like a second lieutenant, Captain Cronley. You command Kloster Grünau. If Mattingly told Tiny “to handle” the problem of the Russian he caught, and you ask him, “Colonel, what should I do?” he’s going to have one more confirmation of his suspicions that giving you responsibility for Kloster Grünau, considering your youth and inexperience, was one of the dumbest decisions he ever made.

“Colonel, what can you tell me about the Germans?”

“The former Luftwaffe captain—his name is Kurt Schröder—showed up a couple of days after I brought in the Storches. I found them, loaded them on trucks, and brought them here. Schröder said that he had just been released from a POW enclosure, and as he walked home—he lives near here—he saw the Storches being trucked here. He thought we might need someone to work on the planes. And he needed a job to feed his family. He also said he knew where to find the Storch mechanics. So I hired him. Them. They’ve worked out well. Schröder checked me out in the airplane, and his men do a fine job maintaining them. Even Sergeant McNair approves.”

“Sounds great, sir. I’ll take them. Thank you.”

“There are several problems, starting with paying them. The German currency is useless. What Schröder and his people had been working for is food. That isn’t a problem for me here. It’s not hard to find extra food for twenty-odd mouths when Sonthofen is drawing Quartermaster rations for about sixteen hundred people. But how would you handle that at Kloster Grünau?”

“Not a problem, sir.”

Wilson’s eyebrows went up questioningly.

“We draw standard GI rations for our prisoners, sir, as well as for our guard company.”

“Okay,” Wilson said, his tone making it clear that he didn’t believe that was the complete answer.

—

And it wasn’t.

First Sergeant Chauncey L. Dunwiddie had explained that what was almost certainly a fraud committed daily upon the U.S. Army had begun as a solution to a deadly serious problem concerning the secrecy of Operation Ost. The solution had been proposed by Sergeant Friedrich Hessinger and approved by Colonel Robert Mattingly.

As long as General Gehlen and the members of Abwehr Ost had been prisoners of war, they had been entitled under the Geneva Conventions to the same rations as their U.S. Army captors.