“Either of you have any thoughts on why they attacked the safe house?” Gehlen asked.
“Well, I suspect they don’t like me,” Cronley said.
“If I were those two,” Cohen said, “I’d be more concerned with getting my ass out of Dodge than whacking Americans.”
“That also occurred to me,” Gehlen said.
“Maybe it was staged to impress their own people,” Cronley said. “‘Hey, guys, look. We’re so sure of ourselves, we can whack Americans.’”
“That’s certainly a possibility,” Cohen said. “Carrying with it the suggestion that Odessa may be having problems of its own.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Gehlen said. “So, tell me about this arrangement you’re trying to reach with the Holy Mother Church.”
“With my usual eloquence,” Cohen said, “I suggested to the cardinal that the Church of Sa
int Heinrich is as dangerous to him, to the Vatican, as communism. I don’t think he was convinced but he sent McKenna to have a look at Wewelsburg. He admitted that he’d sent people to have a look before, but my people had kept them out.”
“I just had an idea,” Cronley said.
Cohen turned to him. “That’s always dangerous. But let’s have it.”
“We’ve been saying those death’s-head rings—and God knows what else—may have been put in a cave or a tunnel and then the opening was dynamited. And we haven’t been able to find the cave, or whatever. How about having some experts look for it? And, for that matter, have a look at Wewelsburg Castle?”
“Where are we going to get the experts?”
“You know what a Light Engineer company’s like?”
Cohen shrugged. “I can only guess that a Light Engineer company paints buildings and a Heavy Engineer company builds buildings. Or blows them up.”
“I don’t often have this opportunity, so I’m taking great pleasure in being able to say, ‘Colonel, sir, your ignorance of the function, the capabilities, of a Light Engineer company is shocking.’”
“Okay, wiseass, enlighten me.”
“There are basically three kinds of engineer companies,” Cronley said. “Combat engineers are the guys who fix roads, place and remove mines, do the dirty work of digging trenches, maintaining roads at night in the rain during an artillery barrage. Then there are the engineer companies that handle really big jobs, like keeping the Mississippi River navigable. Then there’s the third kind, Light Engineer companies.”
“Which do what?”
“Everything the other two don’t. The opposite of how it sounds, actually—they build airstrips, bridges, et cetera.”
“Presumably, there is a point to this lecture?”
“There is a Light Engineer company in the Constabulary. If we can talk General White into loaning us one of its platoons, they can do what we haven’t done—take a really close look at Castle Wewelsburg, maybe find hidden rooms, tunnels. Maybe they could even find the cave with the death’s-head rings.”
“I retract fifty percent of the unkind thoughts I’ve been having about you, Super Spook. Can we ask White on the telephone?”
“I think we have to do it face-to-face.”
“And since you don’t dare go see General White before you see Justice Jackson . . .”
“Nuremberg, here we come.”
XII
[ONE]
Office of the Chief U.S. Prosecutor
Palace of Justice