“Boy Scout’s Honor, Mrs. Schumann. And if you don’t believe that, try this on for size: That same afternoon, the President of the United States, the Honorable Harry S Truman, pinned the Distinguished Service Medal, and captain’s bars, on me. And at nine o’clock—excuse me, let’s keep this military—at twenty-one hundred hours that same night, Colonel Mattingly and I got on the plane that brought us back here.”
“My God, you’re telling me the truth!”
“Yes, Mrs. Schumann, I’m telling you the truth.”
“And now I did this to you. Jimmy, I’m so sorry. If I had known . . .”
“Mrs. Schumann, it takes two to tango, as they say in Buenos Aires, where, putting your credulity to the test once again, I was three days before I got married.”
“You have every reason to be disgusted with me, but could you bring yourself to call me Rachel and not Mrs. Schumann?”
He looked at her and found himself looking into her sad eyes.
“Sure, Rachel, why not?”
“Jimmy, I am so very sorry.”
“Rachel, if you’re on a guilt trip, don’t be. You may have noticed I was an enthusiastic participant in what just happened.”
She smiled.
“I noticed. I feel a little guilty about . . . not knowing what happened to you. But not about what I did. Understand?”
“No.”
“Are you interested?” she said, then before he could reply added: “I think I should tell you.”
He still didn’t reply.
“Despite what it looks like, I don’t jump into bed with every good-looking young officer I meet.”
His face showed his disbelief.
“Or touch them under the table,” she went on. “Testing your credulity, this is the first time I’ve ever been unfaithful to my husband.”
“Is that so?”
“We grew up together. We got married when Tony graduated from college. I was nineteen. He went into the Signal Corps. His degree’s in electrical engineering. We had our two children, Anton Junior, who’s now fourteen, and Sarah, who’s now twelve, when we were stationed at Fort Monmouth—”
“Rachel,” he interrupted, “you don’t have to do—”
She silenced him by putting her finger to her lips.
“It’s important to me that you hear this. Tony was first a student and then an instructor at Monmouth. Then he went into the Army Security Agency, and we moved to Vint Hill Farms Station—do you know about Vint Hill, the ASA?”
Cronley nodded.
“And then the war came along, and somehow Tony moved into the inspector general business, first with ASA and then with the CIC. I guess you know about Camp Holabird? In Baltimore?”
He nodded again.
“We went there, and we had just found an apartment when Tony was assigned to Eisenhower’s Advance Party when Ike was sent to London. He made major, and then they sent him back to Washington, where he made lieutenant colonel. And then when the war was nearly over they sent him back here. He became involved in collecting evidence to be used against the Nazis when they were to be tried. I think his seeing what they did to the Jews was what did it.”
“Did what?”
“Make him decide to assert his Jewish masculine superiority by . . . stupping it to every German shiksa he can.”
“I don’t know what that means. Stupped? Shiksa?”
“What it means is that when the kids and I got over here six weeks ago, I found out that Tony . . .”
She stopped, chuckled, then ran her fingers over his face tenderly. “‘Stupping,’ my goy lover, is Yiddish for what you just did to me. Goy means ‘gentile man.’ And shiksa is Yiddish for ‘gentile girl.’”
“How did you find out about your husband?”
“It doesn’t matter. I found out.”
“I’m sorry, Rachel.”
She ran her fingers over his face again.
“So, what were my options? If I left him, the kids would have learned that not only is their father a sonofabitch stupping it to all the shiksas he can, but that he prefers them to me. And what would I do? I’ve been an officer’s wife since I was a kid, I don’t know how I would make a living.”
She paused, then went on: “So, what did I do? I did what a lot of women here do—Tony’s not the only officer who has found that fräuleins, or for that matter, die Frauen, are more interesting in bed than their wives. I started to drink, is what I did, Jimmy.
“And then I began to have this fantasy. I would pay the sonofabitch back. What’s sauce for the goose, et cetera. I would find a lover, preferably a goy. That would show him.”
“Christ, you’re not going to tell him about us?”
She laughed and smiled.
“No, Jimmy, I’m not going to tell him about us. If I did, my children would learn that their mother’s no better than their father. Or as bad as their father. It would be enough, I thought, that I would know I had paid him back.
“But the fantasy went nowhere. I didn’t come across anyone that I wanted to take to bed. I began to understand that my fantasy was just that—fantasy.
“And then I ran into a young goy officer my husband really hates. More importantly, he had the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. Perfect, I thought. Except you showed no interest in me whatever. So I took another sip of my martini of liquid encouragement and . . . let you know I was interested. You still didn’t show any interest, but—and this really came as a surprise—what I had done to you really excited me.
“I waited until Colonel Mattingly had driven away and then I came knocking at your door. And here we are.”
When he didn’t reply, she said, “No comment?”
He rolled on his side and looked at her.
“I’m glad you didn’t give up, Rachel.”
“I hope you’re just not saying that.”
He put his hand to her breast. She laid her fingers on top of his hand. He felt her nipple stiffen.
“Jimmy, are you feeling guilty about betraying the memory of your late wife?”
“She’s dead, Rachel . . .”
“I feel so sorry for you.”
“. . . and I’m alive.”
He took his hand from her breast, caught hers, and guided it to his member. She closed her fingers around it and it sprang almost instantly to life.
“Oh, God!” she said.
And then he rolled on top of her.
[ EIGHT ]
1430 30 October 1945
“You look lost in thought,” Jimmy said to Rachel, who was standing before the mirror in the bath and combing her hair.
She turned from the mirror. She had showered and wrapped a towel around her waist, leaving her breasts uncovered.
“You’re not supposed to be looking,” she said, but didn’t seem offended. She turned back to the mirror and resumed running the comb through her hair.
“I’ve got a lot to think about,” Rachel said.
“Like what?”
“Like—not that it matters—I’m too old for you. Like I really have to keep Tony from finding out and, for different reasons, my kids from even suspecting.”
“For different reasons?”
“Because Tony really hates you. My kids, thank God, don’t even know you exist.”
“Your husband hates me because of what I did to his car?”
“Because he suspects you’re involved in getting Nazis out of Germany to Argentina, and he can’t do anything about it.”
After a moment, Jimmy said, “And the different reasons for the kids?”
“No mother wants to have to come off the pedestal of virtue her kids have put her on.”
“Then we’ll just have to make sure your kids don’t find out.”
“The only way we could do that for sure would be for me to get dre
ssed, walk out of here, and never see you again.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“No. But that’s moot. Eventually, we’re going to run into each other again. We’re just going to have to be very careful.”
“Can I interpret that to mean . . .”
“Do I want to be with you again? Of course I do. I know I should be overwhelmed with remorse right now, but the truth is I like standing here combing my hair while you stare hungrily at my breasts.”
“Wow!”
“But we’re going to have to be very careful and pray we don’t get caught. And I mean that about praying. I don’t want my kids to get hurt.”
“Understood.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Involved in sneaking Nazis out of Germany to Argentina?”
“Jesus, Rachel!”
“I thought so. Tony is ordinarily very good at what he does, and so far as that business is concerned, he’s passionate. I guess he feels that if he can stop it, that will be even better for his Jewish masculine ego than . . .”
“Stupping the shiksas?”
She laughed.
“If you suddenly start spouting Yiddish, people will wonder who’s teaching you.”
“Then I will spout it only to you, my shiksa.”
She laughed and turned to him.
“I’m not your shiksa, mein Trottel goy. I’m your khaverte.”
“Is that what you think, Rachel, that I’m a fool of a Christian?”
“That’s right, you do speak German, don’t you? And Yiddish is really bastard German.”
“My mother is a Strasburgerin. I got my German from her.”
“I was just about to say, ‘That was said lovingly,’ but we have to be careful about using that word, don’t we? Or even thinking about it?”
“Can you have a lover, be lovers, without love?”
“We’re going to have to try to, aren’t we? Or at least without saying it, or even thinking it?”
When he didn’t reply, Rachel said, “Oh, my God, Jimmy. You’re not thinking that what happened between us . . . That was lust, Jimmy. Lust. Not love.”
He smiled.
“What’s funny? This is not funny!”
“When I was in the eighth grade, thirteen, fourteen years old . . .”
“As old as Anton Junior. So?”
“Our teacher, Miss Schenck, introduced us to classical music. Started out easy. We were all ranch kids in West Texas. She set up her phonograph and said she was going to play a Viennese operetta for us. She said it was called Die Lustige Witwe and that meant ‘The Merry Widow.’ So I put up my hand and said, ‘Excuse me, Miss Schenck, but lustige doesn’t mean ‘merry.’ It means ‘lusty.’ And she said, ‘What are you talking about?’ So I told her, ‘Lustige means “horny.” You know, like a bull is when you turn him loose in the pasture with the cows.’”
“Oh, Jimmy, you didn’t!”
“Miss Schenk snapped, ‘James Cronley, you go straight to the principal’s office! This instant!’”
Rachel laughed.
“So my mother was called in, heard what happened, and told me I was just going to have to learn (a) I should never correct my teachers, and (b) I should never try to explain what lust means to any female.”
“And here you are discussing lust with me.”
“Yeah.”
“Can we leave . . . what we have . . . to that, Jimmy?”
“The only other alternative that comes to mind is chastity, and as I stand here ‘staring hungrily’ at your breasts, that doesn’t have much appeal.”
She smiled in the mirror. “To me either.”
“If you really want to see lust in action, drop that towel.”
“My God!” Rachel said, and shook her head in disbelief.
Then she put down the comb and dropped the towel.
[ NINE ]
1615 30 October 1945
“The kids get home from school about five,” Rachel said. “I have to go.”
She got out of bed and went to the armchair onto which she had put her clothing after gathering it up from where it had been on the floor.
“It was nice bumping into you, Mrs. Schumann. We’ll have to try to get together again real soon.”
“I’m going to do my best to see that doesn’t happen for a long time. But when it does, you better remember to call me Mrs. Schumann.”
“Yes, ma’am. Are you going to tell your husband about me?”
“Well, I’m not going to tell him everything, mein Trottel. It wouldn’t surprise me that he’s already heard that you were here with Colonel Mattingly.”
“I should have thought of that.”
“Yes, you should have,” she said, turning her back to him to put on her brassiere.
“Rachel, about this unfounded rumor your husband has heard about some people smuggling Nazis out of Germany . . .”
“What about it?”
“For the sake of argument, let’s say, hypothetically, that there’s something to it.”
“And?”
“You don’t seem to be very upset about it.”
“I don’t like it. But I think General Greene must know about it. And I’m sure Colonel Mattingly knows about it, and probably is involved with it. And I know you are—”
“You know nothing of the kind,” he interrupted.
“If Tony strongly suspects you’re involved, you’re involved. And you as much as admitted to me you are. What did you expect I would think when you told me you had just been in Argentina? That you were on one of those ninety-nine-dollar all-expenses-paid Special Service tours, a little vacation from your exhausting duties in the Army of Occupation?”
She turned to face him as she stepped into her skirt.
“Rachel, you could cause a hell of a lot of damage to something very important if you dropped that little gem into any conversations you have with your husband.”
“As I started to say, if General Greene and Colonel Mattingly know about it, and they do, then the fact that it’s still going on tells me there has to be a good reason for it.”
“There is.”
“Hypothetically speaking, of course?”
“Hypothetically speaking.”
She put her blouse on and buttoned it, and then tucked it into her skirt, and then she reached for her jacket.
“Where do you live?”
“Hoechst. Not far. A little suburb not far from the Eschborn airstrip. It somehow didn’t get leveled in the war.”
She slipped into her shoes.
Jimmy got out of bed and went to her.
“Uh-oh,” she said. “I don’t think I’m going to like this.”
“You won’t like what?”
“Don’t say anything foolish, Jimmy, please.”
“Okay.”
“And you don’t have to tell me not to tell my husband about what you let slip.”
“Thank you.”
“And don’t try to entice me back into bed. I really have to be at home when the kids get there.”
“What gave you the idea I was going to try something like that?”
“This,” she said, putting her hand on him. “You know what happens to me when it stands up and waves at me like that. I lose all control.”
“What do I do now?”
“Kiss me quick, and then go back to bed. Alone.”
He kissed her. It was quick.
She took her hand off him and walked out of the bedroom without looking back.
After a moment, he walked into the sitting room. Rachel was gone.
So, what do I do now?
I take a shower. Then I get dressed.
And, fuck Mattingly, I go to the dining room and get something to ea
t.
He looked at his watch.
Well, since the dining room doesn’t open until five, and I can’t drink as I’m flying in the morning, what do I do for the next thirty-five minutes?
I take a little nap is what I do for the next thirty-five minutes.
And then I take a shower and go get something to eat.
[ TEN ]
0800 31 October 1945
He first had trouble waking, and then he couldn’t find the goddamned ringing telephone.
“Captain Cronley.”
“Captain, your car is here to take you to the Eschborn airstrip.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Jesus Christ, I never woke up!
V
[ ONE ]
U.S. Army Airfield H-7
Eschborn, Hesse
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0825 31 October 1945
As the olive drab 1942 Ford staff car drove Cronley up to Base Operations, he saw that the Storch had been moved off the tarmac in front of Base Operations. It was now on the grass across from it—and the subject of attention of a group of officers, the senior of them a full bull colonel wearing Air Force insignia.
As Cronley got out of the car, he saw a lieutenant writing something in a notebook.
Probably the tail numbers and XXIIIrd CIC.
Colonel Wilson warned me the Air Force doesn’t want the Army to have Storches. He wouldn’t have given me his if there was any way he could have kept them. And he’s much higher on the totem pole than I am.
So what the hell am I going to do if that colonel tries to grab my Storch?
The only thing I can try—hide behind the secrecy that covers the CIC.
And maybe be a little deceptive.
Cronley went into Base Operations and checked the weather map. The front had passed through the Munich area. Then he checked the local map, saw there was a small airstrip in Fulda, and filed a Visual Flight Rules flight plan giving that as his destination.
Then he walked out to the airplane and the officers examining it.
He did not salute, as he was wearing his civilian triangles, and civilians don’t salute.
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