Top Secret Part 54

"I suppose that happens in the Red Army, too," Cronley said.

"What?"

"That senior sergeants like Clark, who have held their rank for some time, develop soft hands. I mean, so that when they are called on to perform some manual labor of the type they were accustomed to perform when they were privates, they're not up to it. Those hands must really be painful."

"Obviously."

"Well, we've learned our lesson. The next time we dig your grave, we'll be good Boy Scouts."

"Excuse me?"

"The Boy Scouts is an American organization that one joins at age nine, as a Cub Scout, and remains in, generally, until the age of eighteen, or until the Scout discovers the female s.e.x. Whichever comes first. Roasting marshmallows over an open fire is great fun, but for an eighteen-year-old it can't compare with exploration of the female anatomy."

Orlovsky shook his head in disbelief again.

"How did I get on that subject?" Cronley asked rhetorically. "Oh! I started out to say that the motto of the Boy Scouts is Be Prepared. That's what I meant when I said the next time we dig your grave, we'll be good Boy Scouts. By that I mean, we'll be prepared. The gravediggers will have gloves to protect their hands."

Orlovsky didn't reply.

"Do you remember the first time you went on a successful exploratory mission like that, Konstantin? Perhaps with the young lady who eventually became Mrs. Orlovsky and the mother of your children?"

"You do not actually expect me to answer a question like that!"

"I wasn't asking for the details, Konstantin. I'm an officer and a gentleman. That would be like asking a fellow officer and gentleman what exactly he did on his honeymoon, and how often he did it. Bad form. All I was asking was if you remembered."

Orlovsky failed in his attempt not to smile.

"Captain Cronley, you are very good. If I did not know who you are, and what you are trying to accomplish, I would believe that you were an amiable lunatic."

"I remember my honeymoon well. Probably because it happened so recently and was so brief. Do you remember yours? Or was it so long ago that you've forgotten? Or maybe not all that pleasant?"

Orlovsky's face tightened. He looked at Cronley in cold anger.

"Dunwiddie, I seem to have offended the major, wouldn't you say?"

"From the look on his face, sir, I would say that you have. I don't think he likes being reminded of his honeymoon. Or, for that matter, his wife. Or his children."

Orlovsky turned his coldly angry face to Dunwiddie.

"Well, Konstantin," Cronley went on, "since I've offended you-unintentionally, of course, I just didn't think that anyone would want to forget his honeymoon-let's see if we can find something safe to talk about."

"Please do," Orlovsky said, meeting his eyes.

"But what? How about this? Do they have Boy Scouts in Russia? And presuming they do have Boy Scouts, were you one? Is that a safe enough subject for an amiable pre-dinner conversation between us?"

"At one time, there were Boy Scouts in Russia."

"I didn't know that," Dunwiddie said. "Really? Or do you mean there was a Communist version of the Boy Scouts?"

"Both," Orlovsky said. "Before the revolution there were Boy Scouts, on the British pattern. My father was one. So was the Czarevich Alexei, as a matter of fact."

"The who?" Tiny asked.

"I think he means the son of the last emperor, Czar Nicholas the Second," Cronley furnished. "If memory serves, Lenin considered him as much of a threat to Communism-the thirteen-year-old and his four sisters-as the czar, so he sent the Cheka to Yekaterinburg . . ."

"He sent the what?" Tiny interrupted.

". . . where they were being held and on July seventeenth, 1918, blew the whole family away," Cronley said, and then formed a pistol with his right hand and added, "PowPowPowPow."

"Why am I not surprised that your memory serves you so well on this point?" Orlovsky asked icily.

"Do that again for me," Tiny said.

"Lenin sent the Cheka, which is what they called the NKGB in those days, to Yekaterinburg, which is about a thousand miles east of Moscow, and where the Imperial family was being held, and then"-Cronley made a pistol again and pointed it at Orlovsky-"PowPowPow. Blew them all away and dumped the bodies in a well so they couldn't be found. Have I got that right, Konstantin? You're a proud member of the NKGB, right? You should know."

"Go to h.e.l.l, Captain Cronley," Orlovsky said.

"I seem to have offended him again," Cronley said. "So let's get back to talking about the Boy Scouts. You say, Konstantin, that there is a sort of Boy Scouts in Russia?"

"The Young Pioneers," Orlovsky said.

"The Young Pioneers? And were you a Young Pioneer?"

"I was."

"And your son, is he a Young Pioneer?"

"He's not old eno- G.o.d d.a.m.n you to h.e.l.l!"

"Sorry. Believe me, I know how painful it is to talk about someone in your family, someone you love, who you will never see again."

"You sonofab.i.t.c.h!"

"Let's get back to the Boy Scouts, the Young Pioneers. Do they have an oath, Konstantin?"

Orlovsky stared at him a long moment, then finally said, "I don't know what you mean."

"An oath. 'On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to G.o.d and my country, and to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.' Like that. That's the Boy Scout oath. Do the Young Pioneers have an oath like that?"

"Yes, they do. We do. And a motto much like yours. We say 'Always Prepared,' not 'Be Prepared.'"

"That's not much difference. Tell me, how do you handle the G.o.d part?"

"The G.o.d part?"

"'I will do my best to do my duty to G.o.d.' That part. How is that handled in the atheistic Soviet Union's Young Pioneers?"

"There is of course no reference to a superior being in the Young Pioneers."

"Oh, I get it. You say, 'I will do my best to do my duty to Josef Stalin and the Central Committee'?"

Dunwiddie laughed, earning him an icy look from Orlovsky.

"Isn't that a little hard on Christians like you?" Dunwiddie pursued. "Or, maybe, you and the wife are raising the kids as good Communist atheists?"

Orlovsky didn't reply.

"'Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray Comrade Stalin my soul to take,'" Dunwiddie went on. "That the sort of prayers you teach your kids, Konstantin?"

After a long pause, Cronley said, "I don't think Konstantin's going to answer you, Tiny."

"Doesn't look that way, does it?"

"I will have nothing further to say about anything," Orlovsky said. "I would request that I be returned to my cell, but I suspect that would be a waste of my breath."

"One, we haven't had our dinner yet, and two, you haven't seen this," Cronley said. He took Frade's message from his pocket and tossed it onto the table. "Read it, Konstantin."

For a moment, it looked as if Orlovsky was going to ignore the message. Then he unfolded it and glanced at it.

"You do not actually expect me to believe that you would show me a bona fide cla.s.sified message?" Orlovsky asked.

"I thought he said he wasn't going to say anything about anything," Tiny said.

"NKGB officers, Sergeant Dunwiddie, like women, always have the option of changing their minds," Cronley said. "Isn't that so, Konstantin?"

Orlovsky shook his head in disgusted disbelief.

"Let me explain the message to you," Cronley said.

"Wouldn't that be a waste of time for both of us?"

"Well, chalk it up to professional enrichment," Cronley said. "Didn't they teach you in NKGB school that the more you know about your enemy, the better?"

"As I have no choice, I will listen in fascination to your explanation."

"Great! Thank you so much. At the top there, it says 'Priority.' That shows how fast the message is supposed to be transmitted. 'Priority' is ahead of everything but 'Urgent.' 'Urgent' doesn't get used very often. For example, so far as I know, the last time 'Urgent' was used was on the messages that told President Truman the atom bombs we dropped on j.a.pan went off as they were supposed to. Got the idea?"

Orlovsky didn't reply.

"Next comes the security cla.s.sification. I'm sure you know what 'Top Secret' means. 'Top Secret Lindbergh' is a special cla.s.sification dealing with anything connected with a special project we're running. You may have heard that we've been sending members of Abwehr Ost to Argentina to keep them out of the hands of the NKGB . . ."

"I am a little surprised that you are admitting it," Orlovsky said.

"Why not? For one reason or another, you're not going to tell anybody I said that. That next line, 'Duplication Forbidden,' means you're not supposed to make copies of the message. Copies of messages tend to wind up in the hands of people who shouldn't have them. I'm sure you can understand that.

"Next is what we call the signature blocks, who the message is from, when it was sent, how, and to whom. Tex is Colonel Frade, who sent this message via Vint Hill, which is a communications complex in Virginia. I'm sure that you know what Greenwich Mean Time is."

Orlovsky nodded.

"Polo is Colonel Frade's deputy, Major Maxwell Ashton the Third. They call him Polo because he spends his off-time in Argentina playing polo. Do they play polo in the Soviet Union?"

"Not so far as I know."

"h.e.l.l of a game. The next line says Altarboy-that's me-gets a copy at Vatican. That's what we call Kloster Grnau. You know, because of the religious connection.

"Now, to the message itself. The first paragraph means that Colonel Frade arrived in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., at five in the morning Greenwich time. What it doesn't say-we're presumed to know this-is that he took off from Frankfurt, flew to Prestwick, Scotland, then across the Atlantic to Gander, Newfoundland, and from Gander to Was.h.i.+ngton. He was flying a Lockheed Constellation. You ever see a Constellation, Konstantin?"

"No."

"Magnificent airplane! Four engines. It can carry forty pa.s.sengers in a pressurized cabin for four thousand three hundred miles at thirty-five thousand feet at better than three hundred knots. You know what a knot is, right?"

Orlovsky, in a Pavlovian response, nodded.

"Impressive, if true," he said.

"Well, you play your cards right, Konstantin, and maybe I can get you a ride in one."

"I think that is highly unlikely."

"The next paragraph, two, says he's leaving Was.h.i.+ngton for Midland at eight o'clock Greenwich time. Midland is in Texas. Colonel Frade and I grew up there. My wife was just buried there, beside her father, who raised Colonel Frade from the time he was an infant . . . Oops, sorry. I forgot that talking about wives, especially dead ones, upsets you-"

"You sonofab.i.t.c.h! If you think that this . . . this constant reference to wives and families is going to permit you to change my mind about my doing my duty-"

"I wouldn't even dream of trying," Cronley said. "You wouldn't believe anything I said about your duty to either G.o.d or your family."

"Correct. And I don't want to hear it."

"I give you my word of honor as an officer and a gentleman that after I explain the rest of this message I will never again bring up your family, or mine, or G.o.d, in an attempt to get you to do anything."

"Forgive me if I have trouble believing that."

"I understand. It's not like I'm a priest, right? I mean, a priest wouldn't lie, but you can't be sure that I wouldn't, right?"

"Get it over with, please."

"Now, the reason Colonel Frade is going to Midland is because he took his wife and their two kids to my wife's funeral. And come to think about it, Hans-Peter von Wachtstein's wife and their kid. Hans-Peter-we call him 'Hansel,' as in Hansel and Gretel-is Colonel Frade's best friend. Before he started flying Constellations for South American Airways, he was a Luftwaffe fighter pilot. A very good one. Adolf Hitler personally hung the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross around his neck. That was before, of course, Hansel decided it was his duty to his G.o.d, his country, and his family to turn."

"My G.o.d! You have absolutely no shame, no sense of decency!"

"Anyway, Hansel went with Colonel Frade to Midland for the funeral of my wife. As a friend. And what Colonel Frade's going to do in Midland is pick up his wife and their kids, and Hansel's wife and their kid, and fly them back home to Buenos Aires.

"Probably, they'll fly from Midland to Caracas, Venezuela, and then straight down across South America to Buenos Aires. Where they expect to arrive at noon tomorrow, Greenwich time. That's nine o'clock in the morning in Buenos Aires.

"Now, the last two paragraphs: Colonel Frade ordered Major Ashton to be prepared to go somewhere for a month. Somewhere is here. As soon as Colonel Frade explains to him what's going on here, he'll put him on the next South American Airways Constellation to Frankfurt. That could happen within hours, but within twenty-four hours, in any event.

"When he gets here, he'll take over from me. What that will mean, I can't tell you. Because I don't know.

"In the last paragraph, Colonel Frade orders Major Ashton to have Father Welner-'the Jesuit'-available. That really means 'find out where he will be, so I can go to him.' Colonel Frade can't order the Jesuit around. He's a very important priest. He's Colonel Juan Peron's confessor. You know who Colonel Peron is, right?"