Top Secret

by W. E. B Griffin

  “And then where do we get married?” Marjorie Howell demanded. “In the ruins of Berlin? Maybe we could get married in that bunker where Hitler married his mistress the day before he shot her. That would be romantic as hell, wouldn’t it?”

  “Chip off the old block, isn’t she, Admiral?” the old man said, smiling with obvious pride. “She’s got my genes. I advise you not to cross her.”

  “Squirt,” Cronley said. “This is important stuff.”

  “So far as I’m concerned, getting married is pretty important stuff,” she said.

  “Not that I think the admiral is at all interested,” Martha Howell said, “but I thought you and Beth wanted a double wedding. And I can’t set up something like that in less than three months.”

  “You wanted the double wedding, Mother,” Marjorie said. “Let’s get that straight. Beth would like to get married today. And so, goddamn it, would I, now that I think about it.”

  “I’m afraid your marriage plans are going to have to be put on hold until we get this straightened out, Miss Howell,” Souers said.

  “On hold for how long?” Marjorie demanded. “Or is that another classified secret?”

  “Yes, it is classified,” Souers said. “Highly classified. Lieutenant Cronley is right, Miss Howell. This is very important stuff.”

  “So you’re going to send him right back to Germany?” Marjorie said. “‘Thank you for all you’ve done, Lieutenant. Don’t let the knob on the airplane door hit you in the ass as you get on board.’”

  “That’s quite enough, Marjorie!” her mother announced.

  “Cool it, Squirt,” Cronley said. “I’m a soldier. I obey my orders.”

  “I would like to send him back to Germany immediately, Miss Howell,” Souers said. “But unfortunately, that’s not possible. President Truman wants to see him before he goes back, and that’s it.”

  “You’re going to explain that, right?” Cletus Marcus Howell said.

  “What Colonel Mattingly suggested, and what we’re going to do, is put Lieutenant Cronley on ice, so to speak, until the President’s schedule is such that he can see him.”

  “What does ‘on ice, so to speak’ mean, Admiral?” Marjorie said.

  “Well, since we can’t put him in a hotel, or at Fort Myer, because J. Edgar’s minions would quickly find him, what we’re going to do is put him in the Transient Officers’ Quarters at Camp Holabird. That’s in Baltimore. Mattingly tells me junior CIC officers passing through the Washington area routinely stay there—it’s a dollar and a half a night—so he won’t attract any attention. Mattingly will arrange for them to misplace his registry card, so if the FBI calls for him they can say they have no record of him being there.”

  “And how long will he be there?” the old man asked.

  “Just until he sees the President. And on that subject, Mr. Howell, the President would like to see you there at the same time. And he would be furious with me if he later learned that your granddaughter and Mrs. Howell were here and I hadn’t brought you along to the White House for his meeting with Lieutenant Cronley.”

  “And after he meets with the President, he gets on the plane to Germany?” Marjorie said.

  Souers nodded.

  “If Jimmy goes to Germany, I’m going to Germany,” Marjorie then announced.

  “We’ll talk about that, dear,” Martha Howell said.

  “If Jimmy goes to Germany, I’m going to Germany. Period. Subject closed.”

  [ TWO ]

  The Officers’ Club

  U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center & School

  Camp Holabird

  1019 Dundalk Avenue, Baltimore 19, Maryland

  1730 25 October 1945

  The artwork behind the bar at which Second Lieutenant Cronley was sipping at his second scotch was more or less an oil painting. It portrayed three soldiers wearing World War I–era steel helmets trying very hard not to be thrown out of a Jeep bouncing three feet off the ground.

  Rather than an original work, it was an enlargement of a photograph taken at Camp Holabird in 1939. The U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, which had then reigned over Camp Holabird, was testing the new Willys-designed vehicle. Some GI artist had colored the photograph with oil paints.

  Cronley had heard the rumor that it was at Camp Holabird that the vehicle—officially known as “Truck, 1/4 Ton, 4×4, General Purpose”—first had been dubbed “Jeep,” from the G and P in General Purpose.

  He wasn’t sure if this was true or just lore. Or bullshit, like the rumors circulating among the student officers and enlisted men about My Brother’s Place, the bar directly across Dundalk Avenue from the main gate. That lore, or bullshit, held that an unnamed “foreign power” had a camera with a long-range lens installed in an upstairs window with which they were taking photographs of everyone coming out the gate.

  That, the lore said, would of course pose enormous problems for the students when they graduated and were sent “into the field.”

  His thoughts were interrupted when a voice beside him said, “Cronley, isn’t it?”

  He turned and saw the speaker was a major.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The major offered his hand. “Remember me, Cronley? Major Derwin? ‘Techniques of Surveillance’?”

  “Yes, sir, of course. Good to see you again, sir.”

  “So they sent you back, did they, to finish the course?”

  “Just passing through, sir.”

  “From where to where, if I can ask?”

  “Munich to Munich, sir. With a brief stop here. I was the escort officer for some classified documents.”

  That bullshit came to me naturally. I didn’t even have to wonder what cover story I should tell this guy.

  “Munich? I thought you’d been sent to the Twenty-second in Marburg.”

  “Yes, sir. I was. Then I was transferred to the Twenty-seventh.”

  Counterintelligence Corps units were numbered. When written, for reasons Cronley could not explain—except as a manifestation of the Eleventh Commandment that there were three ways to do anything, the Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the Army Way—Roman numerals were used. For example, the XXVIIth CIC Detachment.

  “I’m not familiar with the Twenty-seventh. Who’s the senior agent?”

  Is that classified? No. It’s not.

  The XXIIIrd CIC Detachment and what it does is classified—oh, boy, is it classified!—but not the XXVIIth. The XXVIIth is the cover for the XXIIIrd.

  “Major Harold Wallace, sir.”

  “Wallace? Harold Wallace?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t think I know him.”

  “I’m not sure if this is so, sir, but I’ve heard that Major Wallace was in Japan, and sent to Germany because we’re so under strength.”

  Actually, before President Truman put the OSS out of business, Wallace had been deputy commander of OSS Forward. I can’t tell this guy that; he doesn’t have the Need to Know. And if I did, he probably wouldn’t believe me.

  And, clever fellow that I am, I learned early this morning from Admiral Souers—who really knows how to eat someone a new anal orifice—that sharing classified information one has with someone who also has a security clearance is something that clever fellows such as myself just should not do.

  “That would explain it,” Major Derwin said. “The personnel problem is enormous. They scraped the bottom of the Far East Command CIC barrel as they scraped ours here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As a matter of fact, Major, the morning report of the XXIIIrd CIC Detachment shows a total strength of two officers—Major Wallace and me—and two EM—First Sergeant Chauncey L. Dunwiddie and Sergeant Friedrich Hessinger. And we really see very little of Major Wallace of the XXVIIth.

  “No offense, Cronley,” Major Derwin said.

&
nbsp; “Sir?”

  “It certainly wasn’t your fault that scraping the barrel here saw you sent into the field before you were properly trained. Did you find yourself in over your head?”

  “Sir, that’s something of an understatement. No offense taken.”

  On the other hand, this morning Colonel Mattingly patted my shoulder and said, “You done good, Jimmy.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by the bartender, a sergeant who was earning a little extra money by tending bar. He inquired, “Is there a Lieutenant Crumley in here?”

  Speaking of the devil, that’s Colonel Mattingly, calling to tell me the President can’t find time for me and that he’s sending a car to take me to the airport for my flight back to Germany.

  And I probably won’t even get to say goodbye to the Squirt.

  Shit!

  “There’s a Lieutenant Cronley,” Jimmy called.

  The bartender came to him and handed him a telephone on a long cord.

  Jimmy said into it: “Lieutenant Cronley, sir.”

  “Sergeant Killian at the gate, Lieutenant,” the caller replied. “There’s a civilian lady here wanting to see you. A Miss Howell. Should I pass her through?”

  Cronley’s heart jumped.

  “After first giving her directions to the officers’ club, absolutely!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cronley handed the phone back to the bartender.

  “My date has arrived, sir,” Cronley said to Major Derwin.

  We never had a date, come to think of it.

  One moment, Squirt was Clete’s annoying little sister, and the next we were . . . involved.

  “Ah, to be young!” Major Derwin said. “You just got here, and already you’re playing the field.”

  Cronley smiled but didn’t reply.

  Derwin had a helpful thought and expressed it.

  “Perhaps you should go outside and wait for her. The club’s sign is poorly lit.”

  “She’s a very resourceful young woman, sir. She’ll find me.”

  Five minutes later, the Squirt did.

  She stopped at the door to the bar just long enough for Jimmy to see her, which caused his heart to thump, and then walked to him.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi, yourself.” Jimmy then turned to Derwin. “Major Derwin, may I introduce Miss Marjorie Howell?”

  Please, Major, say “Nice to meet you” and then leave us alone.

  “A great pleasure, Miss Howell. When the lieutenant was a student here, I was his instructor in the techniques of surveillance. Obviously, I taught him well. Look what he found.”

  Miss Howell gave him an icy look.

  Please, Squirt, don’t say what you’re thinking!

  “Oh, really?” she asked. Then, “Jimmy, why don’t you pay your tab? I’m pressed for time.”

  “Well, there’s a small problem there,” Cronley said. “All I have is Funny Money—Army of Occupation Scrip—and they won’t take that here. I don’t suppose you’d loan me a few dollars?”

  She looked at him, saw on his face that he was telling the truth, and reached into her purse. She came out with a thick wad of currency, folded in half, that seemed to be made up entirely of new one-hundred-dollar bills.

  She unfolded the wad and extended it to him. He took three of the hundreds.

  “Thank you,” he said, and then curiosity got the better of him. “What are you doing with all that money?”

  “I thought I might need it in Germany, so I cashed a check.”

  “You’re going to Germany, Miss Howell?” Major Derwin asked.

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “Pay the bill, please, Jimmy.”

  “Oh, you’re from an Army family?”

  “Not yet,” Marjorie said. “Thank you for entertaining Jimmy until I could get here, Major.”

  [ THREE ]

  Marjorie took Jimmy’s hand as they left the officers’ club and led him to a bright yellow 1941 Buick convertible.

  “I’ll drive,” she said. “You’ve been drinking.”

  He got in beside her.

  “Where the hell did you get the car?”

  “On a lot on Ninth Street. One look and I had to have it.”

  “You bought it?” he asked incredulously.

  “And since it was parked right in front of the lot, I thought I could buy it quicker than anything else they had. I didn’t know how long it was going to take me to get here.”

  “What are you going to do with it when you go to Midland?”

  “I’m not going to Midland. Weren’t you listening? I’m going to Germany.”

  “We have to talk about that,” he said.

  “I don’t like the way you said that.”

  She turned to face him. Their eyes met.

  “Jimmy, you sound like my mother trying to reason with me . . .”

  Their conversation was interrupted when the proximity of their faces caused a mutual involuntary act on both their parts.

  A minute or so later, Jimmy said, “Jesus H. Christ!” and Marjorie said, a little breathlessly, “Don’t let this go to your head, but as kissers go, you’re not too bad.”

  A moment after that, she said, “No! God, Jimmy, not in the car!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Let’s go to a motel,” she said. “God, I can’t believe I said that!”

  He put his hands on her arms and moved her back behind the steering wheel.

  “About you coming to Germany,” he then said. “Do you remember what the major said, that he asked, ‘Oh, you’re from an Army family?’”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “The only way you’re going to get into Germany, Squirt, is as a member of an Army family. The Army calls them ‘dependents.’”

  “I’ll get into Germany. Trust me.”

  “If you did, we couldn’t get married. There’s a rule about that, too. You can’t get married in Germany without permission, and they won’t give you permission to marry unless you have less than ninety days to serve in the theatre.”

  “In the theatre?”

  “That’s what they call it, the ‘European Theatre of Operations.’ The rules are designed to keep people from marrying Germans.”

  “How do you know so much about this subject?” Marjorie asked suspiciously.

  “Professor Hessinger delivered a lecture on the subject to Tiny and me one night when we were sitting around with nothing else to do.”

  “Who the hell are they?”

  “They are my staff,” he said, chuckling. “If you’re going to be an Army wife, Squirt, you’ll have to learn that all officers, including second lieutenants, have staffs. Hessinger and Tiny are mine.”

  “If you’re trying to string me along, Jimmy, you’re never going to get to do what you tried to do a moment ago.”

  “Hessinger is a sergeant. Tiny Dunwiddie is a first sergeant. Interesting guys.”

  “I will play along with this for the next thirty seconds.”

  “Hessinger is a German Jew who got out of Germany just in time, went to Harvard, and then got drafted. They put him in the CIC because he speaks German. He’s still got an accent you can cut with a knife.”

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  “Tiny is an enormous black guy. Two-thirty, six-three. He went to Norwich University in Vermont.”

  “Where? Ten seconds.”

  “Norwich is a private military college in Vermont, the oldest one,” Cronley said, now speaking so rapidly it was almost a verbal blur.

  Marjorie giggled, which he found surprisingly erotic.

  “Slow down,” she said. “You’ve got another thirty seconds.”

  “. . . from which, rather than waiting to graduate and get a commission, he dropped out and enl
isted so he could get into the war before they called it off. He’s from an Army family. His ancestors were the Buffalo Soldiers who fought the Indians. Two of his great-grandfathers were in the Tenth Cavalry, which, Tiny has told me at least twenty times, beat Teddy Roosevelt up San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish American War.”

  “And did he manage to get in the war before they called it off?” Marjorie asked, and then added: “Damn you. You’ve got me. You’re as good at that as my mother. But there better be a point to this history lesson.”

  “Yeah, he got in the war. Silver Star, Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts serving with a tank destroyer battalion in the Second Armored Division. Plus first sergeant’s stripes when all the sergeants senior to him got killed or wounded. He’s one hell of a soldier.”

  “But they still didn’t give him a commission? Why, because he didn’t finish college? Or because he’s Negro?”

  “No. Because he was needed to run the company of black troops Colonel Mattingly has guarding the Gehlen compound. I said he’s a hell of a soldier. He takes that duty, honor, country business very seriously. He knows guarding General Gehlen and his people is more important than being one more second lieutenant in a tank platoon somewhere.”

  “I get the feeling you really like this guy.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “So what about the Jewish sergeant with an accent you can cut with a knife?”

  “Freddy’s hobby is reading. You never see him without a book of some kind in his hand. Including Army Regulations. And he remembers every last detail of anything he’s ever read. That’s why we call him ‘the professor.’”

  “His hobby is reading? You’re suggesting he’s a little funny?” Marjorie waved her hand to suggest there might be a question of his sexual orientation.

  Jimmy laughed.

  “That’s not the professor’s problem. I should have said, ‘You never see him without a tall, good-looking German blond—or two—on his arm, and a book in the other hand.’”

  “And what did this Jewish Casanova with an accent remember Army Regulations saying about us getting married in Germany?”