Jesus Christ!
“So, the two of you show up. Bruce heads right for me. You head right for Candice Howard.”
“Why not? You were Bruce’s girl.”
“That’s what I mean about you being stupid. Anyway, an hour later, during which you finally said something to me . . . You remember what you said?”
“No.”
“‘Be gentle with Bonehead, Ginger’ is what you said. ‘He’s not experienced with sorority girls like you.’”
“Ginger, the reason I never made a pass at you was because Bruce was nuts about you.”
“And that’s precisely what I mean about you being stupid. That wasn’t a two-way street, and you should have seen that. Anyway, about an hour later all the girls were whispering to each other that the prize for first score of the evening went to Candice Howard. She had Jimmy Cronley upstairs, where he was screwing her brains out.
“I figured, what the hell, and took Bruce upstairs. He got my pearl of great price. And in the process, lucky me, I got knocked up. He did the gentlemanly thing, of course. And in June we graduated, and then Bruce—after following you into the cavalry instead of the engineers, which he really wanted—and his pregnant wife wound up at Fort Knox with you. Where you used to visit us in that ugly apartment and talk about you being godfather to the baby. And then Bruce came home one night and said that you were gone, that you were now in the Counterintelligence Corps, whatever the hell that was.”
Cronley shrugged. “They needed German-speaking officers in the CIC in Germany,” he said.
“Anyway, at that time I decided my life had been decided. It was my destiny to be an Army wife. Our baby would be an Army brat. Bruce was a genuine good guy, smart, and he’d probably get to be a colonel, maybe even a general. It would be a pretty good life, and I was just going to have to forget my schoolgirl crush on Jimmy Cronley. He was out of our life forever.”
“And then I showed up in Fritzlar?” Cronley asked, softly.
“And then Captain Cronley showed up in Fritzlar. Flying a mysterious secret airplane across the East German border to rescue a Russian woman and her children. And with enough clout to get Bruce out of the Constabulary and into the DCI.
“I didn’t want to leave Fritzlar. I didn’t want to be around you. Women about to have a baby shouldn’t be thinking about a man who is not the father of that baby.”
“Ginger—”
“Shut up, Jimmy, let me finish. So off we go to Munich, and the Compound, because I can’t think of any way not to go. And I have the baby. And we’re back to you being the godfather. And right after you gave us thirty minutes of your valuable time to show up for the christening, you were off again, this time to Nuremberg.
“That really decided it for me. I was going to be a good mother and a good wife. And you were out of my life. Period. End of story.
“And then the chaplain comes to call. ‘There has been an accident. Your husband was cleaning a pistol and it went off.’
“And you showed up to offer your condolences. And I was thinking that if you weren’t so stupid, you’d have seen how I felt about you, that if you hadn’t taken Candice Howard upstairs at the Kappa Delta Sigma house and screwed her brains out, maybe I would have become Mrs. Cronley instead of the Widow Moriarty.
“So I told you get the hell out of my house.
“And when they handed me the flag after we lowered Bruce’s casket into the ground, and I saw your mother and father, I lost it and gave her hell, too, just because she was your mother.”
She paused, cleared her throat, then went on. “I told you I came to my senses and went to your mother and apologized. And that she said maybe I should come down here. So I came. As much to get away from my mother, and her parade of nice, young, unmarried men, as anything else. But also to apologize.”
“No apology is necessary. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
Ginger ignored him and went on.
“And on the Dorotea, on the way down, I half decided to take a chance and tell you the reasons behind me being Ginger the Bitch to you.”
“Half decided? You just did.”
“The final decision was made when I was coming down the stairs from the airplane. When I saw you with your mother, my girlish heart nearly jumped out of my chest. Then I saw that you were looking up my dress. I thought, he hasn’t changed. But then I finally decided to take a chance.”
There was a long silence, then Cronley said, “And you did. Why?”
“I just told you. It was my attempt to make a Hail Mary pass.”
“About what?”
“You’re so damn smart, Super Spook, figure it out yourself. Let me know when you have and what you want to do because—”
She stopped when she heard the baby wailing.
“Don’t go anywhere, Jimmy.”
A minute or so later, she returned with the softly sobbing infant, rocking him in the crook of her arm.
“Here,” she said, now holding Baby Bruce out toward him, “hold him while I get his bottle ready.”
“What the hell?” Cronley said. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“It’s simple. Just make sure you support his head. Hold your arm this way.”
She moved Cronley’s right arm as hers had been, cradling the infant in it with his head resting against Cronley’s chest.
“Good. See, Jimmy? Not so mysterious.”
Cronley, with a look that was equal parts terror and awe, glanced from her to the infant.
Baby Bruce, blinking, stared back at him.
He has his mother’s amazing blue eyes.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, then touched his cheek and hurried out of the bedroom and down the hall.
“Hurry, damn it!”
* * *
—
A few minutes later—what seemed an eternity to Cronley—she returned with a baby bottle. She held it out to Cronley.
“Oh, not no,” he said. “Hell no.”
“Oh, hell yes.”
As Cronley met her eyes, she slipped the bottle’s nipple between the infant’s lips. She moved Cronley’s free hand to hold the bottle.
There then came the sound of a contented gurgle from Baby Bruce, and when Cronley looked down, he grinned around the bottle’s nipple and blinked his blue eyes.
“He’s beautiful, Ginger. Peaceful.”
“Uh-huh.”
Cronley felt something warm growing inside his gut.
Jesus, is this little creature making me melt or is that wretched fear?
Next, he felt the infant’s torso begin twisting in his arm. And then Baby Bruce loudly expelled a burst of flatulence.
[SIX]
4730 Avenida del Libertador General San Martín
Buenos Aires, Argentina
0230 11 April 1946
Cronley turned in the bed to switch off the bedside lamp.
Ginger was standing halfway between the bed and the door. She was wearing a dressing gown and, under it, pajamas. She had Baby Bruce in her arms.
When she saw that he had seen her, she walked over to the bed.
She thrust the sleeping infant toward Cronley.
“Take him,” she said. “You know he doesn’t bite. Breaks wind with wild abandon, yes, but no bite.”
He had no choice but to take the child.
“What the hell are you up to?” Cronley asked.
“When I went to check on him, I had an epiphany. He’s another of your goddamn problems. Being a father scares you to death.”
Cronley didn’t reply.
“So,” she went on, “tell me what you want me to do with him. I’m open to anything but putting him up for adoption or drowning him.”
“You’re crazy . . . drunk . . .”
“Probably. You make me crazy and
drive me to drink.”
The infant made a sound.
Cronley saw that the baby’s blanket was covering his mouth and that he was trying to push it away.
Very carefully, using his index finger, Cronley moved the blanket away. Baby Bruce smiled and then reached for and grabbed Cronley’s finger.
“Christ, he’s beautiful! And I think he really likes me!”
“So do I—we do. What the hell else do you need?”
He looked up from the baby’s blue eyes and saw that Ginger had slipped out of the dressing gown and was unbuttoning her pajama top.
“What the hell else do you need?” she repeated.
When he didn’t reply, she put her fingers in the hem of her pajama bottoms and slid them off her hips.
“For Christ’s sake,” she said, her voice breaking, “what the hell else do you need?”
“Right now, I can’t think of a thing. But what we do with what’s his name?”
“We put a pacifier in his mouth and put him on the couch.”
She slipped out of her pajama top and came to the bed and reached for the child.
“And his name is Bruce. Try to remember that.”
* * *
—
“Jesus Christ!” Cronley wheezed, out of breath, when he rolled off Ginger five minutes later.
“Yeah, Jesus Christ. Can I assume that I passed the test?”
“You get both ears and the tail.”
He spread his arms, and she crawled into them.
“I always knew I loved you, Jimmy. But until just now, when I felt you in me, I really didn’t know how much.”
After perhaps sixty seconds of the only sound being Jimmy’s labored breathing, she said, “It’s now your turn to say something. Preferably, something nice.”
“I was wondering what to say.”
“‘I love you, too,’ would be nice.”
“I mean to our parents, to Clete—to everybody. Last night, you had barely forgiven me for getting Bonehead whacked, and, at breakfast, we’re a couple of lovebirds. They’re going to know something happened. I don’t give a damn what they think, but you?”
“I don’t give a damn either. But you’re right. So, during the day you will slowly discover that I am an attractive, unattached woman, and I will slowly stop resisting your unwanted attentions. And at night I will sneak into your bedroom, and we will screw the brains out of each other.”
“That’ll probably work.”
“Are you going to say it now?”
“You mean say that I love you? Why? I think you’ve known that all along.”
“Say it, damn you, Jimmy!”
He did.
And then she rolled onto her back and pulled him to her.
II
[ONE]
4730 Avenida del Libertador General San Martín
Buenos Aires, Argentina
0315 11 April 1946
Cletus Frade opened the door to Uncle Willy’s bedroom, flipped on the lights, and shouted, “Drop your cock and pick up your socks—we’ve gotta go!”
Startled awake, the baby started to howl.
Ginger, naked, jumped out of bed to comfort him.
Cronley said, “Oh, shit!”
“Just to clear the air,” Frade announced, his back now turned to them, “I have just been stricken by temporary blindness. When you get your pants on, Romeo, have a look at these.”
He tossed two teletypewriter printouts on the floor and then went back out the door.
Cronley, in his birthday suit, went to the printouts and picked them up.
The first was a NOTAM—Notice to Airmen—from the U.S. Army Air Force field at Puerto Allegre, Brazil, which was just across the border. Airmen bound for Europe were warned to expect “significant headwinds within five hundred miles of the South American continent from oh-six-hundred hours.” Cronley did the mental arithmetic and concluded they had to get as far away from the South American continent as soon as possible.
The second sheet of paper was a SIGABA message:
TOP SECRET–LINDBERGH
URGENT
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
FROM: ASST DIRECTOR
TO: TEX
1—AS SOON AS EN ROUTE SIGABA CONTACT CAN BE ESTABLISHED WITH DCI-EUROPE FURNISH ETA RHINE-MAIN.
2—YOU WILL BE MET BY LTCOL WILSON WHO WILL TAKE YOUR PASSENGERS TO NUREMBERG.
3—ASAP AFTER PASSENGER TRANSFER RETURN TO WASHINGTON. ADVISE ETA.
SCHULTZ
END
TOP SECRET–LINDBERGH
Cronley looked across the room to Ginger. She was bouncing the baby against her naked bosom and looking at Cronley as tears flowed down her cheeks.
“Hey, not to worry,” he said with conviction, something he did not feel at all, as he went to her. “Clete’s a good guy. He’s not going to say anything.”
She nodded, and handed him the baby. She walked to her discarded clothing, quickly slipped into the dressing gown, and then motioned for him to give her the infant.
She met his eyes, shrugged, leaned up, and kissed him on the cheek.
She then chuckled, and said, “Is this the wages of sin that everybody’s talking about?”
She walked out of the room.
He hurriedly dressed, finished packing, and then went in search of Ginger.
* * *
—
As he and she started down the wide main stairs together, they immediately saw by everyone’s expression—particularly that of his mother, who glared at him, and that of Max Ostrowski, who was grinning broadly—that their secret was out.
“It wasn’t Clete,” Ginger said. “Dorotea went to my room, and I wasn’t there.”
* * *
—
“Well, let’s get loaded,” Cletus Frade said as they reached the bottom stair. “We have a headwind to dodge.”
As Cronley’s mother kissed him good-bye, she whispered, “How could you? What in God’s name were you thinking?”
[TWO]
Rhine-Main Airfield
Frankfurt am Main, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
2305 12 April 1946
The Beechcraft C-45—General I. D. White’s personal aircraft—that Cronley expected to see was nowhere in sight as the Dorotea taxied up to the transient tarmac. The only other aircraft there was a Gooney Bird, an Air Force C-47.
But when Cronley saw Lieutenant Colonel William “Hotshot Billy” Wilson walking out onto the tarmac, he decided he had the C-45 hidden somewhere.
Rhine-Main was an Air Force base, and the “Fly Boys” didn’t like the “Ground Pounders” to have aircraft larger than two-seater Piper Cubs. It was said that General White got to keep his small, twin-engine C-45 only because his U.S. Constabulary patrolled all the highways in Germany, especially the Autobahn. How long it took them to “inspect” Air Force trucks on the highways was entirely up to them.
* * *
—
Wilson was waiting for them at the foot of the stairway on wheels.
“Welcome to Deutschland,” he said, shaking hands with Cronley.
Cletus Frade, Max Ostrowski, and Tom Winters arrived as Wilson pointed to the Gooney Bird, and said, “Your chariot awaits.”
Cronley noticed for the first time that it had the Constabulary’s Circle C insignia painted both on the nose and on the vertical stabilizer.
Wilson added, “You should feel honored to fly on the first C-47 aircraft to appear on any U.S. Army Table of Organization and Equipment.”
“How the hell did you pull that off?” Cronley said.
Wilson didn’t reply but instead nodded toward Ginger, who was coming down the stairs. “Is somebody going to explain to me how the Widow Moriarty is involved in this?”
“Officia
lly,” Frade said, “she is here to gather up her household goods. She had to leave them here when they flew her to the States with Bonehead’s corpse.”
“And unofficially?”
“You don’t want to know,” Frade said, “does he, Super Spook?”
“Fuck you, Clete.”
Wilson thought about it and decided not to pursue the question.
“You’re going right back?” he asked Frade. “Are you all right to fly?”
“Against my better judgment, I let Super Spook and Winters watch the fuel gauge needles drop as we flew across the ocean while Hansel and I slept. I’m all right.”
“Good luck, then,” Wilson said, shaking his hand.
Wilson then looked at Cronley.
“Come on, Super Spook, off to Nuremberg and the Farber Palast. You have—everybody has—an appointment with Justice Jackson at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow.” He glanced at his watch and corrected himself. “Eight hundred today!”
[THREE]
Flughafen
Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0120 13 April 1946
Captain Chauncey “Tiny” Dunwiddie, who was six foot four and weighed close to three hundred pounds, was waiting for Cronley and the others when they landed at the airfield seven kilometers north of Nuremberg.
He was leaning on the fender of the enormous Horch Sport Cabriolet touring car that Cronley had inherited from Colonel Robert Mattingly when Cronley had gotten the kidnapped officer back from the NKGB. It was parked behind a Chevrolet staff car, and two other Chevrolets were parked behind it.
The drivers of the cars hurried to relieve the incomers of their luggage and usher them into the cars. Ginger and her baby and Father McGrath were put into the one immediately behind the Horch.
Dunwiddie got behind the steering wheel of the Horch, and Cronley got in beside him. Max Ostrowski and Tom Winters got in the backseat. Dunwiddie blew the horn, and the convoy got under way.
The Enemy of My Enemy Page 4