“You think he’d tell General Seidel about this?”
“He wouldn’t tell Seidel, but he’d probably tell Wallace, and Wallace would tell me not to go.”
“Because of the risk to you?”
“Because of the risk to Mannberg,” Cronley said. “If the Russians grabbed me, a lot of Wallace’s problems would be solved.”
“You don’t mean that,” Tiny challenged.
“I think Wallace, personally, would be unhappy if I got bagged by the NKGB. But I think a small, still voice in the back of his mind—”
“I don’t believe that,” Tiny said.
“Neither do I,” Cronley said, chuckling. “So here’s what we’re going to do. Have the switchboard set up a secure call to the CIC agent-in-charge in Vienna. I don’t remember his name, but we met him when we were in Vienna the first time. Ludwig will ask him to meet us—”
“Colonel Mannberg will ask?” Tiny asked.
“One of the CIC Vienna guys, Spurgeon, remembers me from Camp Holabird. If I told him I’m chief, DCI-Europe, I don’t think he’d believe it. On the other hand, Ludwig not only dazzled everybody with his DCI credentials, he looks much more like a senior, experienced intelligence officer than I do.”
He paused and looked at his watch.
“It’s about two hundred twenty miles as the bird flies. Make that three hundred, as I’m going to have to fly through the Alps, rather than over them. That means I’ll have to stop for fuel. And as I don’t know of an airfield where I can do that without raising a lot of questions, I’ll have to land on a road or in a field somewhere. Not a problem. We’ll take four jerry cans of gas with us. If we leave in an hour, say, ten o’clock, that’ll put us into Schwechat about fourteen hundred hours.”
“Why do I think this is not the first time you’ve thought about flying to Vienna?” Gehlen asked.
“Because you are, General, an older and far wiser intelligence officer than I am. The last time we were there I did think about flying a Storch there without asking official permission of the Russians to overfly their zone. It can be done.”
“And what if you have to land in the Russian Zone?” Tiny challenged.
“I don’t plan to, but worst scenario, if I have to, I tell the people pointing their PPSh-41 submachine guns at Ludwig and me to call Comrade Serov, who will tell them we’re on our way to see him.”
“If you have to land in the Russian Zone, they’ll have you and Colonel Mannberg as well as Colonel Mattingly to swap for Likharev,” Dunwiddie argued, in exasperation.
For a moment Cronley didn’t reply.
“Tiny,” he said finally and very softly, “neither Oberst Mannberg nor I are going to allow ourselves to be taken alive by the NKGB, either in the Russian Zone of Austria or in the Drei Husaren restaurant in Vienna.”
There was an awkward silence for a moment, and then Tiny asked, very softy, “Is meeting this Serov man so important?”
“I’ve decided it is,” Cronley said. “So Ludwig will ask the head of CIC in Vienna to meet him at the Hotel Bristol at, say, sixteen hundred. And ask him to provide people to make sure that neither Ludwig nor I are kidnapped on our way to or from having our dinner at the Drei Husaren.”
“
That would work,” Mannberg said.
“Now, what, besides putting four jerry cans of gas in my Storch, has to be done? I’ll start with you, Bonehead. Make sure absolutely nobody gets into either the Compound or Kloster Grünau who Colonel Bristol or Captain Dunwiddie doesn’t know about. And get that word to Ostrowski.”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Moriarty said.
He hasn’t said “Yes, sir” to me since we were at College Station.
“By now, Sergeant Finney is on his way to Garmisch-Partenkirchen from Strasbourg. With a little bit of luck, my cousin Luther will have tried to enlist him in Odessa. I have a hunch that’s going to work. I want to know if it did, or not. So you, Tom, get in the other Storch and go get him.”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Winters said. “When should I go?”
“It would be better if you were in Garmisch-Partenkirchen when he gets there, so pretty soon.”
“Yes, sir.”