“Jimmy, what the hell is that all about?” Dunwiddie demanded.
Father McGrath cleared his throat, and said, “Since Jim, judging by the look on his face, appears as surprised as the rest of you, I’d better take that question.”
Now everybody looked at him.
“Ginger and I had a long chat across the ocean,” McGrath began, “while Super Spook and Tom were flying the airplane and Clete and von Wachtstein were snoring in their seats. Cutting to the chase, she confirmed what most of us suspected when she and Jim came down the staircase in Buenos Aires together. Specifically, that a substantial change had occurred in the nature of their relationship.”
Dunwiddie turned to Cronley, who arched his eyebrows.
McGrath went on. “I first thought that she had concluded what had happened was a mistake and that she had come to me for advice on how to get out of a difficult relationship. She quickly disabused me of that notion. She said she had been in love with Jim since their college days and now intends to marry him as soon as possible and doesn’t care at all what anyone—her family, Jim’s family, or anyone else—thinks about it.”
“Jesus!” Winters said.
“You want to marry her?” Dunwiddie asked.
“As soon as possible,” Cronley said, nodding. “And anyone who doesn’t like it can take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.”
“She next said that as they began their new life together,” McGrath went on, “and until they married, she had no intention of pretending she was, quote, a born-again virgin saving her virtue for wedlock, sneaking into his bedroom like a fräulein trying to earn a box of Hershey bars, unquote.”
“Colorful!” Winters said.
“Good for her,” Max Ostrowski said.
“There are some problems that I can see,” Dunwiddie announced.
“Why am I not surprised?” Cronley said.
“For one thing, I don’t think Justice Jackson is going to like this at all.”
“Fuck him,” Cronley snapped. “It’s none of his business.”
“That’s so stupid, I won’t dignify it with a reply,” Dunwiddie said. “The other problem is, getting married. This isn’t the States, where you give them two bucks for a license and then get married.”
“I don’t think I understand, Captain Dunwiddie,” Father McGrath said. “I don’t see where there’s any impediment to their marriage.”
“The Army is nobly protecting its members from wicked women,” Dunwiddie said.
“Please elaborate,” Father McGrath said.
“I got this story from Fat Freddy,” Dunwiddie said.
“And Fat Freddy is?”
“Hessinger, Friedrich, DCI senior special agent,” Cronley offered. “He’s a bit on the chubby side, thus A/K/A Fat Freddy.”
“He’s also one of many American-German Jews in the CIC who are chasing Nazis,” Dunwiddie went on. “One of them was at Harvard with Fat Freddy. Both of them got out of Germany just in time to not get fed into the ovens.
“Freddy’s friend was engaged when he fled Germany. She, however, didn’t get out. The friend figured she had been murdered. Her father was a rabbi. The SS especially did not like rabbis or their families.
“Fast-forward to Freddy’s friend coming to Germany as a CIC special agent, which means he had all the clearances to get into all the records. He starts looking for references to his fiancée. He hoped he could at least find out where she had been gassed and incinerated. Then find in which mass grave her ashes had been dumped, so he could lay a rose on it.
“But he finds her—alive—in a Displaced Persons camp outside Hannover. She had somehow come up with a Polish passport that said she was a Catholic and she had been able to dodge the ovens.
“First, he has trouble with the Office of Military Government getting her out of the DP camp. He was working for Colonel Mortimer Cohen of the CIC, who lost most of his family to the ovens. Colonel Cohen—this was long before I met Mort—used all of his considerable clout to get her out of the DP camp, then to get her a new Kennkarte in her real name, and then to run her through the De-Nazification Court, which made her a certified non-Nazi.
“So, this guy has the love of his life installed in an apartment in Nuremberg and the obvious next step is to get married and live happily ever after. He asks how he can do that, and they tell him. It required an investigation of the lady and a bunch of other crap, including getting a letter from the German government stating she wasn’t a prostitute. Even with Cohen’s clout, he had a hard time speeding things up. In the end, it took six months to get final permission.”
“I remember that now,” Cronley said. “And I also remember you had a hell of a lot to do with that, Tiny, even more than Cohen.”