Curtain of Death Page 10

  “And what did you say?” General Gehlen asked.

  “I told him I’d think about it, and also that I would ask General Greene for what he had on Odessa and pass it on to him. I was also planning on asking you, General, but I didn’t tell Fortin that.”

  “And did you contact General Greene?” Gehlen asked.

  “No, sir. When we came back from Vienna, Major Wallace said, ‘Let the CIC deal with that. It’s none of our business.’ And then we got involved getting the Likharevs across the border and I didn’t do anything.”

  “You’d say Commandant Fortin’s idea is still active?” Mannberg asked.

  Cronley nodded.

  “Al, are you willing to get involved in something like this?” Wallace asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Knowing that if you find something interesting, and Odessa learns you have found—or are even looking for—something interesting, you’re liable to find yourself tossed into the Rhine?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Jim, I would like to report to El Jefe that you have decided this Odessa business is DCI-Europe’s Number One covert project,” Wallace said.

  Cronley raised his hand in the manner of a Roman emperor.

  “I so decree,” he pronounced solemnly. “You may so inform El Jefe.”

  “El Jefe will be so pleased,” Wallace said, shaking his head and smiling.

  IV

  [ ONE ]

  Main Dining Room

  Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten

  Maximilianstrasse 178

  Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  0815 25 January 1946

  When Captain Jim Cronley walked up to the table where Lieutenants Tom Winters and Bruce Moriarty were sitting with their wives and Claudette Colbert and Freddy Hessinger, the men rose.

  “Sit,” Cronley ordered. “Good morning. Sorry to be late. Major Wallace asked if I could spare him a minute, which turned out to be fifteen.”

  His statement earned polite chuckles.

  He pulled the chair away from the head of the table, placed a very full leather briefcase on the floor, and sat down.

  A waiter appeared almost immediately and took Cronley’s order for ham and eggs, rye toast, orange juice, milk, and a coffee. Without consciously deciding to do so, he had spoken in German.

  “I’m impressed,” Ginger said. “I wish I could speak German like that.”

  “How was the trip from Fritzlar?” he asked.

  “Just dandy. I felt like a movie star. That was my first time being driven anywhere by a chauffeur armed with a submachine gun.”

  “Has Bone . . . Bruce . . . told you why that was necessary?”

  “Mr. Hessinger,” she said, “told me part of it in Fritzlar, and then he and Bruce filled in the details when we got here.”

  “And has Freddy assured you there’s nothing to be worried about? That we were just being careful?”

  “He and Claudette told us that,” Barbara Winters said. “And she also told us why.”

  “What happens next,” Cronley said, “is that whenever you’re ready—today or tomorrow, whenever—Claudette will take you out to the Compound and you can pick your quarters. They’re actually very nice.”

  “And inside three barbed wire fences,” Ginger said, somewhat sarcastic, “or so Claudette told us.”

  “Enough, honey,” Moriarty said, on the edge of unpleasantly. “We’re here. Adjust to it.”

  “Sorry,” she said, sounding genuinely contrite, which surprised Cronley.

  “You said Tom and I can go out to this place whenever we’re ready,” Barbara Winters said. “How about right after breakfast?”

  “That’s not an option,” Cronley said. “Right after breakfast, Tom and I are going flying. Sorry.”

  “Flying where?” Claudette asked.

  “That’s what Wallace wanted to talk to me about. Greene sent a briefcase full of material about a certain subject he thought I should pass to the Frenchman as soon as possible.”

  “What we could do, Barbara,” Claudette said, “is go out to the Compound with them. And then I could show you around the Compound, look at quarters, and then bring you back here.”

  “You don’t need me to pick quarters, sweetheart,” Winters said.

  “I like to pretend your opinion matters,” she said, smiling.

  “Can we all fit in the Kapitän?” Cronley asked, and then answered his own question. “Yeah. Six’ll fit.”

  “Does that mean Bruce and I get to go?” Ginger said.

  “I would never leave you out of anything, Ginger,” Cronley said. “You know that.”

  She snorted.

  Cronley’s breakfast was delivered.

  “You’re going to leave what Major Wallace gave you with the Frenchman?” Hessinger asked, and then when Cronley nodded, asked, “Do Dette and I get a look before you do that?”

  “You’d have to take it to the office,” Cronley said.

  “I think we should have a look, Captain,” Claudette said.

  “I will finish my breakfast slowly,” he said. “But don’t dally.”

  Cronley handed the briefcase to Hessinger and then Claudette followed Hessinger out of the dining room.

  Ten minutes later, Augie Ziegler walked up to the table. As soon as Cronley had introduced him, he asked, “Dette not here yet?”

  “Dette has been here, and is now in the office,” Cronley replied. “Looking at something you should see.”

  “Before or after I have my breakfast?”

  “Now.”

  “I hear and obey,” Ziegler said, and quickly left.

  “Claudette’s gentleman friend?” Ginger asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cronley said.

  “He acted like it.”

  “I don’t know about that, either. But come to think of it, you’re kindred souls.”

  “How so?”

  “He’s a CID agent. Always asking questions.”

  “It sounded as if he was working for you,” Ginger said.

  “Ginger said,” Bonehead said, “proving Jim’s point.”

  “Score one for Bonehead,” Cronley said.

  —

  Claudette, Ziegler, and Hessinger walked up to the table. Hessinger handed Cronley the briefcase.

  “Colonel Bristol called when we were in the office,” Claudette said. “He’s at the Compound and would like a word with you. Something about having to lay more 110-volt lines to the houses. The refrigerators came, but they won’t run on 220.”

  “Would that be Lieutenant Colonel Jack Bristol? Engineer type?” Winters asked.

  “You know him?” Cronley asked.

  “He’s Barbara’s cousin,” Winters said.

  “That should prove very useful,” Cronley said.

  “We really should have a copy of what’s in that briefcase in our files,” Claudette interrupted. “Augie says if you can give him two hours, he can Leica them.”

  “I don’t have two hours,” Cronley said, and stood up. “But you’re right. We need that stuff copied. I’ll have to think of something. Let’s go, people.”

  [ TWO ]

  The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound

  Pullach, Bavaria

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  0905 25 January 1946

  While they were in the car—Cronley driving, Winters and Moriarty in the front seat beside him, and the women in the back—en route to the Compound, Winters had asked, in almost a whisper, “What the hell does ‘Leica them’ mean?”

  “What?”

  “Miss Colbert said something about Ziegler being able to ‘Leica.’”

  “You can say ‘Leica’ out loud,” Cronley explained, chuckling. “It’s no big secret. If yo
u have a Leica Model Ic or better camera, and a holder for it, and the right film, you can take pictures of documents. And then if you have a Leica whatchamacallit—Leica Projector—to project the negative, you can make prints that are a hell of a lot easier to read than blueprints—they’re in black and white and color—and you can do that a hell of a lot faster than you can make blueprint copies.”

  “I thought everybody knew that,” Bonehead said.

  “Fuck you,” Lieutenant Winters said.

  “Watch your mouth!” Mrs. Winters snapped from the backseat.

  —

  Lieutenant Colonel John J. Bristol, CE, was sitting in his jeep at the inner checkpoint waiting for Cronley to arrive at the Compound.

  When he did, Bristol got out of the jeep and walked up to the Kapitän. Cronley rolled down the window of the driver’s door.

  “I guess Claudette’s already told you,” Bristol greeted Cronley, “about the refrigerators?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “We have a tractor trailer full of them from the Giessen Quartermaster Depot, none of which run on 220 volts DC.”

  “So she said,” Cronley said.

  “If you need a few of them right away . . .”

  “I need two right away.”

  “Okay. I can run temporary 110 lines from the power station this morning. Where do you want them?”

  “Off the top of my head, one of them probably goes to wherever your cousin Barbara picks for her quarters.”

  “My cousin Barbara?” Bristol said, and then looked into the backseat, where Claudette, Ginger, and Barbara were sitting.

  “Jesus, Barb! I didn’t see you back there. Sorry. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “First, I’m going to select quarters, and then I’m going to sit around waiting to be a mother.”

  “You’re going to be in the Compound?” he asked, surprised.

  “Hello, Jack,” Tom Winters said, leaning across Cronley to offer his hand.

  “And this is Bruce Moriarty,” Cronley said. “He’s taking over Compound security. And Mrs. Moriarty.”

  The men shook hands. Bristol said, “Lieutenant,” and Moriarty said, “Colonel.”

  Mrs. Moriarty said, “I’m Ginger, who’s also going to need a refrigerator while I’m locked up behind barbed wire waiting to be a mother.”

  “Speaking of barbed wire, Jim,” Bristol said, “now that we don’t really need it, we got a tractor-trailer load of that last night. Should I send it back?”

  “If you’ve got somewhere to store it,” Cronley replied, “I suggest keeping it.”

  “There’s a rumor going around that Dette—”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not a rumor,” Cronley said. “She can tell you all about it while you’re showing the ladies the quarters. But right now, and I mean right now, Tom and I have to go flying. How about you follow us to the airstrip?”

  [ THREE ]

  Entzheim Airport

  Strasbourg, France

  1120 25 January 1946

  When Winters parked the L-4 in front of Base Operations at the airfield, Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin, a natty man in his early thirties with a trim mustache, was waiting for them. Fortin was wearing U.S. Army ODs with his French rank insignia—shoulder boards with four gold stripes—on the epaulets and a French officer’s “kepi.”

  Cronley saluted and Fortin returned it.

  “Your man Hessinger telephoned to tell me you were coming,” Fortin said in German.

  “Thank you for meeting us,” Cronley replied in German. “Commandant, this is Lieutenant Winters.”

  Winters saluted and said, “Mon Commandant.”

  “You speak French,” Fortin said in French. It was impossible to determine if it was an observation, a question, or a challenge.

  “Sir, let’s say I was exposed to French for four years at school,” Winters said in English.

  “So was I,” Cronley said. “With little or no effect.”

  Fortin switched to German: “So you are now Captain Cronley’s French-speaking pilot, Lieutenant?”

  “Why do I suspect you’re really asking, ‘How much can I say before this officer?’” Cronley said.

  “Because you have a naturally suspicious nature?”

  “That’s supposed to be an asset in our line of work,” Cronley said. “I wouldn’t want this to get around, Commandant, but Lieutenant Winters is a special agent of the DCI. You can tell him all your secrets.”

  “People in our line of work should never tell anyone all their secrets.”

  “Write that down, Tom,” Cronley said. “And remind me when I forget.”

  “Hessinger said you have something for me,” Fortin said.

  Cronley handed him the briefcase.

  “This is?”

  “What General Greene has on Odessa.”

  “It all fits in one briefcase?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to look at it, but I suspect it’s what he thought you don’t already have.”

  “You don’t know what’s in here?”

  “Which brings us to that. Have you the facilities to copy what’s in there?”

  “You didn’t make copies?”

  “I’m sure General Greene did. What I would like to do is see that you have copies. Then, when I get back to Germany, I will give General Greene his originals back, and he will give me his copies.”

  “Was there some reason you didn’t have copies made before you came here?”

  Cronley raised his eyebrows. “Which brings us to that. My superiors have told me that if we can slow down, or at least seriously impede, Odessa, at the same time bagging three or four former senior officers of the SS—even better, of the SS-Sicherheitsdienst—who are running it, it would tend to squash those terrible rumors going around that there’s something called Operation Ost which has been slipping Nazis out of Germany to Argentina. With that in mind, I wanted to get the briefcase to you as soon as possible.”

  “May I infer that DCI is now going to work with the DST to deal with Odessa?”

  “You may infer that DCI is now going to work with Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin. I don’t know anyone else in the DST and I don’t trust anyone I don’t know.”

  “You seem to be trusting me.”

  “You have such an innocent face, Mon Commandant, how could anyone not trust you?”

  “So that’s why it took you so long to get back here: You were waiting for permission from your superiors.”

  Cronley nodded.

  I didn’t say, “That’s it.”

  But I nodded. And he thinks I said, “Yes.”

  The reason I didn’t get back here before this is because Wallace told me to let Odessa lie.

  Which makes my nod a lie.

  And I didn’t think it through before I lied. My mouth went on automatic.

  As it tends to do.

  “Sergent Deladier’s over there with my car,” Fortin said, pointing. “I suggest we get in it, go to the DST photo lab, tell them to Leica everything in here, and while they’re doing that, go have our lunch. I am so pleased that DCI’s going to work on Odessa with me that I will even pay for the lunch.”

  [ FOUR ]

  Gurtlerhoft

  13 Place de la Cathédrale

  Strasbourg, France

  1215 25 January 1946

  “The cellar is about the only part of the building that wasn’t torn up in the war,” Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin said as he led them through the basement of the building. He pointed to the high arched ceiling. “Those held up is why. I requisitioned it for DST. I’m still wondering why.”

  “Excuse me?” Cronley asked.

  “Perhaps it was because my mother used to bring me here as a child, and later, I used to bring my wife here. Or maybe because it was the favorite p
lace for SS officers when les Boches were here. Anyway, I requisitioned it for DST, and it’s proved quite useful.”

  As they entered a small alcove, Fortin pointed again to the arched ceiling and to the walls.

  “It’s impossible to hide a microphone in the masonry, and when Sergent Deladier puts the heavy felt drape in place—which he is about to do . . .”

  “Oui, Mon Commandant,” the sergeant, who looked to be in his fifties, said.

  “. . . one could set off a bomb in here, and it wouldn’t be heard on the other side. So no one—save Sergent Deladier, who is one of the DST people I hope you will learn to trust as I do—will overhear our conversation.”

  There was one table, set for six, in the alcove. A waiter immediately appeared.

  Fortin turned to Winters and said, “I don’t know if Captain Cronley has told you this, Lieutenant—”

  “I thought we were now pals,” Cronley interrupted, “on a first-name basis.”

  “And so we are,” Fortin said. “I will call the lieutenant by his Christian name. Which is?”

  “Thomas, sir,” Winters said. “Or Tom. Whichever you prefer.”

  “Thomas. And the both of you may call me either ‘sir’ or ‘commandant,’ whichever you prefer.”

  Winters wondered, Is he kidding, or does he mean that?

  “Don’t hold your breath, Jean-Paul, waiting for me to call you ‘sir,’” Cronley said. “Our relationship is that of partners, equal partners.”

  “The reason Jim is so suspicious of me, Thomas, is that he’s half Alsatian, and is aware that we Alsatians are infamous for our ability to charm people out of their shoes. Or into the pants of the gentle sex.”

  It looks like you Alsatians share a sense of sarcastic humor, too, Mon Commandant.