The Assassination Option Read online

  “Fortunately for us, she has apparently decided—and let me restate this—that the good the Süd-Deutsche Industrielle Entwicklungsorganisation can do for the Mossad justifies the risks entailed in getting the Likharevs out of Russia.”

  “What good can we do Mossad?” Cronley asked.

  “Rahil will think of something,” Gehlen said. “And if she manages to get the Likharevs out, we will be in her debt.”

  “Yes, we will,” Cronley thought out loud.

  “I don’t think Colonel Parsons even suspects anything about the Likharev situation,” Gehlen said. “And we have to keep it that way. It’s just the sort of thing he’s looking for.”

  “I don’t see where that will be a problem,” Cronley said.

  “The problems that cause the most trouble are often the ones one doesn’t suspect will happen,” Gehlen said.

  No one replied.

  “If you don’t have anything else for us, Jim,” Gehlen went on, “may I suggest we’re through here?”

  “I’ll drive you to Pullach, General,” Hessinger said. “I’m going to need the Kapitän in the morning.”

  “I’ll drive everybody to Pullach,” Cronley said. “I have to go to Kloster Grünau. When do you need the car in the morning?”

  “Nine. Nine-thirty. No later than ten.”

  “I’ll either have one of Tiny’s guys bring it back tonight, or I’ll bring it back in the morning.”

  “You want me to go with you, Jim?”

  “No. Thank you, but no.”

  “What do you have to do tonight at Kloster Grünau?” Dunwiddie asked.

  “There’s a problem with one of the Storchs. I promised Schröder I’d have a look at it.”

  “Tonight?”

  “I promised him yesterday.”

  That’s all bullshit. Schröder didn’t say anything about a problem with a Storch.

  What I want to do is have a little time to think, and I won’t have it if I stay in Pullach, and I don’t want to spend the night in the Vier Jahreszeiten.

  But I didn’t have to think about coming up with an excuse to go to Kloster Grünau. The excuse—the story, the bullshit, the lie—leapt to my lips.

  Why am I surprised?

  Everybody in this surreal world I’m now living in lies so often about everything, and I’m so used to that it never even occurred to me to tell the simple truth that I need some time to think.

  [FIVE]

  Kloster Grünau

  Schollbrunn, Bavaria

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  0015 30 December 1945

  The conclusion Cronley reached after thinking all the way to Kloster Grünau was that not only would he be way over his head when he became chief, DCI-Europe, but that Admiral Souers damned well knew it.

  So why isn’t there some grizzled full-bird colonel available to do what I’m clearly unqualified to do?

  The non-availability of such a grizzled full-bird colonel—and Lieutenant Colonel Maxwell T. “Polo” Ashton would not qualify as even a grizzled lieutenant colonel even if he showed up here, which, considering his broken leg and other infirmities, I now think seems highly unlikely—was not a satisfactory answer to the question.

  So what to do?

  Face it that Gehlen has taken over Operation Ost.

  Not for any political reasons, but because nature abhors a vacuum.

  So how do I handle that?

  Sit there with my ears open and my mouth shut?

  It’s already obvious that he and ol’ Ludwig are only telling me what they think I can be trusted to know.

  Not one word about Mata Hari, the super Mossad spy, until tonight.

  A/K/A Rachel.

  And didn’t Fat Freddy pick up on that?

  Does he suspect anything? Fat Freddy is pretty damned smart.

  So what do I do about Gehlen not telling me what I should be told?

  “See here, General, you and ol’ Ludwig are going to have to tell me everything.”

  To which he would say, “Absolutely,” and tell me not one goddamned thing he doesn’t think I should know.

  So what should I do?

  Admit you don’t have a fucking clue what to do, and place your faith in the truism that God takes care of fools and drunks and you fully qualify as both.

  When he drove the Kapitän past the second barrier fence, Cronley saw that floodlights were on in the tent hangar built for the Storchs.

  Maybe something is wrong with one of them. Truth being stranger than fiction.

  He drove to the hangar.

  Kurt Schröder was working on the vertical stabilizer assembly of one of them. And apparently being assisted by Lieutenant Max—whose name Cronley was wholly unsure he could ever pronounce.

  Schröder seemed surprised to see him. Maksymilian Ostrowski looked as if he had been caught with his hand in the candy jar.

  “We’ve got a frayed cable, not serious, but I thought I’d replace it,” Schröder said.

  “And drafted Lieutenant Max to help you?”

  “I hope that’s all right, sir,” Ostrowski said.

  “Fine with me, if it’s okay with Kurt.”

  Cronley’s half-formed wild idea about the Pole popped back into his mind.

  Where the hell did that come from?

  And now that it’s back and I’m entirely sober, I can see it’s really off the wall.

  Or is it?

  Why the hell not?

  Who’s going to tell me no?

  None of us are supposed to be flying the Storchs, so what’s the difference?

  “Tell me, Max,” Cronley said, “what’s the name of your guy who served with the Free French?”

  “Jaworski, Pawell Jaworski, sir.”

  “Could Pawell Jaworski take over the guard detachment?”

  Ostrowski thought it over for a long moment.

  “Yes, sir. I’m sure he could.”

  “Okay. On your way to bed, wake him up and tell him that as of 0600 tomorrow, that’s what he’ll be doing,”

  “Yes, sir,” Ostrowski said. “Captain, may I ask what this is about?”

  “Oh, I guess I didn’t get into that, did I?”

  “No, sir, you did not.”

  “Presuming, of course, that Kurt can get that vertical stabilizer assembly back together and working, what he’s going to do at 0600 is start checking you out on the Storch.”

  “Checking me out?”

  “They didn’t use that term in the Free Polish Air Force?”

  “Yes, sir. I know what it means.”

  “Try not to bend my airplane, Max. I’ve grown rather fond of it.”

  Cronley turned and walked out of the tent hangar.

  That was probably a stupid thing to do.

  Colonel Mattingly would almost certainly think so.

  But since I’ll be running, as of January 2, DCI-Europe, I don’t have to worry about what that bastard thinks.

  That’s my plan for the future.

  Do whatever the hell I think will be good for Operation Ost, and keep doing it until somebody hands me my ass on a shovel.

  Abraham Lincoln Tedworth, his sleeves now adorned with the first sergeant’s chevrons to which he had been entitled since 1700 the previous day, was waiting for him when he walked into the bar.

  “This came in about ten minutes ago, Captain.”

  He handed Cronley a SIGABA printout.

  “Top, I just relieved Lieutenant Max as commander of the Polish Guard,” Cronley announced.

  “With all respect, sir, that was a dumb move.”

  That’s what they call loyalty downward.

  “I deeply appreciate your unfailing confidence in my command decisions, First Sergeant.”

  “Well, you b
etter reconsider that one. Max is a damned good man.”

  “That’s why I am transferring him to the Operation Ost Air Force. I told Schröder to check him out in a Storch.”

  Tedworth thought that over for a minute, and then announced, “Now that, sir, is a fine command decision.”

  “I’m glad you approve, First Sergeant,” Cronley said, and then read the SIGABA printout:

  PRIORITY

  TOP SECRET LINDBERGH

  DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN

  FROM POLO

  VIA VINT HILL TANGO NET

  2210 GREENWICH 30 DECEMBER 1945

  TO ALTARBOY

  UNDERSIGNED WILL ARRIVE RHINE-MAIN MATS FLIGHT 343 ETA 0900 2 JANUARY 1946. USUAL HONORS WILL NOT BE REQUIRED. A SMALL BRASS BAND WILL SUFFICE.

  POLO

  END

  TOP SECRET LINDBERGH

  IV

  [ONE]

  Arriving Passenger Terminal

  Rhine-Main USAF Base

  Frankfurt am Main

  American Zone, Occupied Germany

  0915 2 January 1946

  Cronley watched through the windows of the terminal building as the passengers debarked from the Military Air Transport Service Douglas C-54 “Skymaster,” which had just flown—via Gander, Newfoundland, and Prestwick, Scotland—from Washington.

  The procession down the ladder and into the terminal building was led by a major general, two brigadier generals, some other brass. Then came four senior non-coms, and finally a long line of women and children. They were “dependents” joining their husbands, called “sponsors,” in the Army of Occupation.

  When the dependents came into the terminal, they were emotionally greeted by the sponsors in a touching display of connubial affection.

  Cronley’s mind filled with the memory of his explaining the system to the Squirt at Camp Holabird the day they were married. The day before the drunken sonofabitch in the eighteen-wheeler ran head-on into her on US-1 in Washington.

  He forced his mind off the subject.

  No one was coming down the stairway.

  What did you do, Polo? Miss the goddamn plane?

  And then Lieutenant Colonel Maxwell Ashton III appeared in the door of the aircraft. In pinks and greens. He was on crutches. His right leg and left arm were in casts.

  He stared down the stairs. Then, apparently deciding the crutches would be useless, he threw them down the stairs.

  Jesus, he’s going to try to hop down the stairs!

  “Go get him, Tiny,” Cronley ordered. “Before he breaks his other leg.”

  “They won’t let me out there,” Dunwiddie protested.

  “Show them the goddamn CIC badge and go get him!”

  “Right.”

  “And you go with him, and get the crutches,” Cronley ordered.

  “Yes, sir,” Maksymilian Ostrowski said, and headed for the door.

  Ostrowski was wearing, as Cronley was, a U.S. Army woolen olive-drab Ike jacket and trousers with “civilian” triangles sewn to the lapels. Dunwiddie was in pinks and greens.

  Cronley, after thinking about it overnight, had decided to have Ostrowski fly the second Storch from Kloster Grünau to Rhine-Main to meet Ashton. For one thing, Schröder had reported—not surprisingly, since Ostrowski had been flying Spitfires and Hurricanes—that it had taken less than an hour for him to be convinced the Pole could fly a Storch. For another, Ostrowski spoke “British English” fluently. When he called the Rhine-Main control tower, that would not cause suspicion, as Schröder’s heavily German-accented English would.

  But the real reason he had ordered Ostrowski to fly the second Storch was to test his theory that he could—DCI-Europe could—get away with not only flying the Storchs that were supposed to be grounded, but having them flown by a German and a Pole, and hiding both behind CIC credentials to which they were not entitled.

  It would either work or it wouldn’t. If they suddenly found themselves being detained by outraged Air Force officers—or for that matter, outraged Army officers—calling for somebody’s scalp, better to have that happen now, when Ashton was in Germany. A newly promoted lieutenant colonel might not be able to do much against the forces aligned against DCI-Europe, but he would have a lot more clout than a newly promoted captain.

  Tiny, flashing his CIC wallet, and with Ostrowski on his heels, got past the Air Force sergeant keeping people from going onto the tarmac, and without trouble.

  The young sergeant might have been dazzled by the CIC credentials, Cronley thought. But it was equally possible that he had been dazzled by an enormous, very black captain he knew he could not physically restrain from going anywhere he wanted to.

  As Tiny started up the stairs, two at a time, another man appeared in the airplane door. A stocky, somewhat florid-faced man in his late forties, wearing the uniform of a U.S. Navy lieutenant.

  He was somehow familiar.

  Jesus Christ! That’s El Jefe!

  The last time Cronley had seen Lieutenant Oscar J. Schultz, USNR, he had been wearing the full regalia of an Argentine gaucho, a billowing white shirt over billowing black trousers; a gaily printed scarf; a wide-brimmed leather hat; knee-high black leather boots; a wide, silver-coin-adorned leather belt, and, tucked into the belt, the silver scabbard of a horn-handled knife the size of a cavalry saber.

  El Jefe had once been Chief Radioman Oscar Schultz of the destroyer USS Alfred Thomas, DD-107, hence the reference El Jefe, the chief. Schultz had been drafted into the OSS by then-Captain Cletus Frade, USMCR, when the Thomas had sailed into Buenos Aires on a friendly visit to the neutral Argentine Republic. And also to surreptitiously put ashore a radar set and a SIGABA communications system for the OSS.

  Frade thought he needed a highly skilled, Spanish-speaking (El Jefe had done two tours at the U.S. Navy base at Cavite in the Philippines) communications and radar expert more than the Thomas did, and General William Donovan, then head of the OSS, had not only agreed, but had had a word with the chief of naval operations.

  Two days later, the Thomas had sailed from Buenos Aires without Chief Schultz. Schultz set up shop on Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, Frade’s enormous ranch, where Cronley had met him, and where he had quickly acquired both the regalia of a gaucho and a Rubenesque lady friend, who became known as “the other Dorotea,” the first being Señora Dorotea Frade.

  More importantly, he had become an important member of “Team Turtle,” the code name for Frade’s OSS operation in Argentina. So important that he had been given a direct commission as an officer.

  What the hell is El Jefe doing here?

  Before the question had run through his mind, Cronley knew the answer.

  Admiral Souers, knowing that Polo would refuse the assistance of a nurse, even a male nurse, although he really needed it, had ordered Schultz up from Argentina so that he could assist and protect Polo while he traveled to Germany and then back to Argentina.

  That noble idea seemed to be destined to become a spectacular disaster.

  As Tiny bounded up the stairway, El Jefe, seeing an enormous black man headed for his charge, started bounding down them to defend him.

  Cronley recalled Cletus Frade telling him that El Jefe enjoyed the deep respect of the gauchos of the estancia, despite his refusal to get on a horse, because he had become both the undisputed bare-knuckles pugilist of the estancia and the undisputed hand-wrestling champion. Gauchos add spice, Cletus had told him, to their hand-wrestling fun by holding hands over their unsheathed razor-sharp knives.

  Captain Dunwiddie and Lieutenant Schultz had a brief conversation near the top of the stairs. Then, suddenly, as if they had practiced the action for months, they had Polo in a “handbasket” between them and were carrying him—like the bridegroom at a Hebrew wedding—down the stairs, across the tarmac, and into the passenger terminal.

  Cronley was surprised that no one s
eemed to pay much attention.

  “Welcome to occupied Germany,” Cronley said, as Schultz and Dunwiddie set Ashton on his feet and Ostrowski handed him his crutches. “Please keep in mind that VD walks the streets tonight, and penicillin fails once in seven times.”

  Ashton shook his head.

  “Thanks,” he said to Dunwiddie, Schultz, and Ostrowski. “Where’s the colonel?”

  “Which colonel would that be?”

  “Mattingly.”

  “I don’t know. I hope he’s far from here.”

  “The admiral said I should see him as soon as I got here. I’ve got a letter for him. What do you mean you hope he’s far from here?”

  A letter? From Souers to Mattingly? Why does that scare me?

  “We’re going to have to have a little chat before you see him,” Cronley said. He gestured toward the door. “Your ambulance awaits.”

  “I don’t need an ambulance.”

  “You do unless you want to walk all the way across Rhine-Main airfield.”

  “What’s all the way across the field?”

  “The Storchs in which we are going to fly to Kloster Grünau—the monastery—to have our little chat.”

  “How they hanging, kid?” Schultz demanded of Captain Cronley.

  “One beside the other. How about yours?”

  “I don’t have to tell you, do I, about how lousy I feel about what happened to the Squirt?”

  “No. But thank you.”

  “I really liked that little broad,” Schultz said. “Mean as a snake, but nice, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Cronley said.

  “You know, Jim, that you have my condolences,” Max Ashton said. “Tragic!”

  Cronley saw the sympathy, the compassion, in their eyes.

  [TWO]

  Kloster Grünau

  Schollbrunn, Bavaria

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1340 2 January 1946

  Lieutenant Colonel Maxwell Ashton III tapped the remnants of his steak on his plate with his knife and fork and then announced, “Not too bad. Not grass-fed on the pampas, of course, and—not to look the gift horse in the mouth—this red wine frankly does not have the je ne sais quoi of an Estancia Don Guillermo Cabernet Sauvignon. But one must expect to make certain sacrifices when one goes off to battle the Red Menace on foreign shores, mustn’t one?”