Curtain of Death Read online

  “No problem,” the chubby man said. “What can I do for you at this obscene hour of the morning?”

  When the chubby man spoke, a German accent also was apparent. Staff Sergeant Friedrich Hessinger had been born in Germany. A Jew, he and his family had gotten out of the Thousand-Year Reich just in time to miss getting sent to the gas chambers.

  Hearing the accent, Augie wondered, Is this CIC sonofabitch mocking me?

  He said: “Does the name Claudette Colbert mean anything to you?”

  “I’ve always thought she is better-looking than Betty Grable. Why do you ask?”

  There’s that Kraut accent again!

  The sonofabitch is mocking me!

  Augie took his credentials—a leather folder holding a badge and a plastic-sealed photo identification card—and held them before the chubby man’s face.

  Hessinger examined them and nodded his understanding of what they were.

  “I am investigating a shooting,” Augie announced.

  “Somebody shot Claudette?” Hessinger asked. “Somebody” came out Zumbody.

  You sonofabitch!

  “I asked if you knew her,” Augie snapped.

  “Is she all right?”

  “So you do know her?”

  “I asked if she’s all right.”

  “I’m asking the questions,” Augie snapped.

  Hessinger shrugged in resignation, and then leaned toward the door to Suite 507 and unlocked it with a key he had hanging around his neck with his dog tags. He then went through it, and turned on the lights.

  “Shit!” Augie said, and followed him inside.

  He found himself in a luxuriously furnished office. He saw Hessinger sit behind a large, ornately carved desk and pick up the telephone.

  “Sorry, sir, to wake you,” Hessinger said. “But you better come to the office right now.”

  The German accent was still there, so Augie put that together:

  He doesn’t look like a Jew—but what does a Jew look like?

  He’s a German Jew. The CIC is full of them.

  Why didn’t I think of that before? So is the CID full of ex–German Jews?

  “My boss is coming,” Hessinger announced.

  He then rose from the desk and walked across the office and opened a door.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Augie demanded.

  “To the coffee machine,” Hessinger replied. “I don’t think well when somebody gets me up in the middle of the night until I have my coffee.”

  Augie saw Hessinger switch on an electric coffeemaker.

  Hessinger turned from it and said, “Sie haben einen Akzent.”

  I have an accent?

  What’s that, Chubby, the pot calling the kettle black?

  Hessinger went on: “Sind Sie ein Deutscher? Ein deutscher Jude?”

  Augie, without consciously deciding to do so, angrily replied in German: “Nein, ich bin kein Deutscher. Und kein Jude. Ich bin ein gottverdammter Amerikaner! Meine Familie ist amerikanisch seit der gottverdammten Revolution gewesen!”

  Hessinger nodded, then replied in English: “If you’ve been American since the revolution, that makes you a Pennsylvania Dutchman. I know a great deal about you people.”

  “‘You people’?” Augie repeated incredulously.

  “Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, went to General Washington and told him that the peasants conscripted to serve in the Landgrave de Hesse-Kassel’s Regiment of Infantry, commonly called ‘the Red Coats,’ were unhappy with their lot and could probably be induced to desert if they were offered six hundred and forty acres of land and a mule. Washington thought it was a good idea, and told the Marquis to give it a try. It succeeded. About thirty percent of the regiment went, as we say, ‘over the hill.’ Where do you live in the States? Bucks County, Pennsylvania?”

  Augie replied, without thinking: “Berks County. Outside Reading.”

  “When I heard your Hessian accent, I should have put it all together.”

  The conversation was interrupted when the door opened and a tall, blond, muscular young man in his early twenties came into the room. He was wearing a bathrobe with the logotype of Texas A&M University on its breast and battered Western boots.

  “What’s up?”

  “He’s from the CID,” Hessinger replied. “He says somebody shot Claudette.”

  “Jesus H. Christ! Is she all right?”

  “Who are you, sir?” Augie asked.

  “I asked if Claudette is all right. What the hell happened?”

  “The woman—”

  “Her name is Claudette Colbert,” the young man said.

  “Sir, who are you?” Augie asked.

  “Freddy, show him your DCI credentials. Mine’s in my room.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hessinger said.

  He walked to the wall, moved an oil painting out of the way, and began to work a combination lock.

  “My name is Cronley,” the young man said to Augie. “I’m the big cheese around here and I asked about Claudette. You would be ill-advised to fuck with me.”

  Augie decided not to do so.

  He said: “A woman carrying the identification card of Technical Sergeant Claudette Colbert is being detained for interrogation in connection with a shooting in the WAC NCO club parking lot just after midnight.”

  “For the last fucking time, is she all right?”

  “She is uninjured, sir.”

  Hessinger held out an open leather folder before Augie’s eyes.

  Office of the President of the United States

  Central Intelligence Directorate

  Washington, D.C.

  The Bearer Of This Identity Document

  Friedrich Hessinger

  Is an officer of the Central Intelligence Directorate acting with the authority of the President of the United States. Any questions regarding him or his activities should be addressed to the undersigned only.

  Sidney W. Souers

  Sidney W. Souers,

  Rear Admiral, USN

  Director, DCI

  “You understand what that is?” the young man asked.

  “I’ve never seen one before, but yes, sir, I think I understand what it is.”

  Jesus Christ, what’s going on around here?

  “There’s one just like it with my name on it in my room, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, now what’s happened?”

  “About 0015 hours, sir, an MP patrol responded to a call of shots fired, ambulance required, at the parking lot of the WAC NCO club. MP protocol requires that the CID be notified whenever there’s shots fired. I was working late at the office and took the call.

  “When I got there, there were three bodies, white males, in a 98th General Hospital ambulance, all with bullet wounds to the head. A fourth man had taken a bullet in the shoulder and was being loaded into an ambulance—”

  “They sent MPs with him, I hope?” the young man interrupted.

  “Sir, I don’t know if they did, or not.”

  “Okay, priority one, get on that phone and make sure there are at least two—four would be better—MPs sitting on this guy and that no one but doctors gets near him.”

  Augie looked at him and thought: I don’t know if this guy has the authority to order me to do that, but it’s a good idea.

  “Yes, sir,” Augie said.

  “Freddy, didn’t you tell me Colonel Whatsisname, the provost marshal, lives in the hotel?”

  “Kellogg, sir,” Hessinger furnished. “He does.”

  “Try to get Colonel Kellogg on the phone. Ask him to come here right away. Tell him it’s important. If he’s not in the hotel, find out where he is.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cronley turned to Augie: “You heard me, g
et on the goddamned phone, whatever your name is, and make sure MPs are sitting on the guy in the hospital.”

  “Yes, sir. My name is Ziegler, sir.”

  [ THREE ]

  Colonel Arthur B. Kellogg, a portly forty-six-year-old in uniform, came through the door of Suite 507 five minutes later.

  “Your man caught me as I was going through the lobby, Cronley. There’s been a . . . an incident I suspect you’ve already heard about. Hello, Mr. Ziegler.”

  “Good evening, sir. I guess I mean ‘good morning.’”

  “What the hell went down at the WAC club? Three dead?” Kellogg said.

  “And one wounded, sir. Not counting the hysterical WAC they had to sedate before they could get her in the ambulance.”

  “What hysterical WAC?” Cronley asked.

  “Miller, Florence J., Tech Sergeant,” Ziegler reported. “One of yours?”

  Cronley nodded.

  “We need MPs sitting on her, too,” he said.

  “Won’t that wait until Ziegler brings me up to speed?”

  “Sir, I’d be really grateful if you’d indulge me,” Cronley said.

  Kellogg considered that a moment, then pointed to the telephone.

  As Ziegler was walking to it, Cronley said, “Freddy, while he’s doing that, call Max at the Compound. Tell him to put a dozen of his guys in ambulances and get them headed this way.”

  “Can I tell him why?”

  “No. And when you’ve done that, how’s the coffee machine working?”

  “I’m way ahead of you on that,” Hessinger said.

  —

  “Okay, Mr. Ziegler,” Colonel Kellogg ordered perhaps three minutes later. “Start at the beginning.”

  “Yes, sir. About 0015 hours, sir, an MP patrol responded to a call of shots fired, ambulance required . . .” Ziegler began. A minute later, he finished: “. . . A fourth man had taken a bullet in the shoulder and was being loaded into an ambulance. And the medics were sedating a WAC tech sergeant so they could take her to the 98th.”

  “What was her problem?” Kellogg asked.

  “She was hysterical, sir.”

  “Because of the shooting?”

  “The shooter, who we believe to be another WAC by the name of Claudette Colbert, knew what she was doing. She shot the three dead guys with a .38, which I’m guessing had hollow-points in it. To judge from what I saw of the shoulder of the fourth guy. They expand on contact—”

  “I know,” Kellogg interrupted impatiently.

  “So when she popped these guys in their heads,” Ziegler went on, “first we got their brains sort of exploding, and then making a large exit wound in the skull, through which a couple of handfuls of brain and a lot of blood then erupted. Two of the three men were in the back of the ambulance. Both then fell on the sergeant, still spouting blood and brains all over her.”

  “My God!” Kellogg said. “Why did she shoot them? Fun and games in the back of the ambulance go wrong?”

  “Sir,” Cronley said, “the woman Mr. Ziegler believes to be WAC Technical Sergeant Colbert . . .”

  “That’s what her ID says,” Ziegler challenged.

  “. . . is actually the administrative officer of DCI-Europe. I would be very surprised if she and Technical Sergeant Miller, who is one of our cryptographers, were involved in fun and games in the back of an ambulance in the parking lot at the WAC NCO club.”

  “Then what were they doing there?”

  “Okay,” Cronley said, “I should have done this before. What are you, Ziegler, a master sergeant?”

  “I’m a chief warrant officer, sir.”

  “Okay, Mr. Ziegler, you—and you, too, Colonel Kellogg, sir—are hereby advised that any and all information relating to the incident which took place at the WAC NCO club tonight is classified Top Secret–Presidential, and further that the Central Intelligence Directorate–Europe is taking over the investigation thereof. Do you both understand that?”

  Ziegler’s eyes darted to Kellogg.

  “Colonel, can he do that?” Ziegler asked, on the edge of outrage.

  “Yes, I’m afraid he can,” Kellogg said. “And he doesn’t even have to tell us why.”

  Cronley went on: “Because I think the most likely scenario is the shooting came when an attempt to kidnap Miss Colbert and Tech Sergeant Miller went wrong. Miss Colbert took her pistol from where she usually carries it—concealed in her brassiere—and started shooting.”

  “My God!” Colonel Kellogg said.

  “Jesus Fucking Christ!” Augie Ziegler said.

  “Colonel Kellogg, I need a favor,” Cronley said. “Badly. I want you to put Mr. Ziegler on temporary duty with . . . What do we call it, Freddy?”

  “Military Detachment, Central Intelligence Directorate, Europe, APO 907,” Hessinger furnished.

  “Certainly,” Kellogg said. “I’ll have orders cut in the morning.”

  “Am I allowed to ask why?” Ziegler said.

  “Because there’s something about you that smells smart cop,” Cronley said. “And I want everything that happened tonight (a) to be investigated thoroughly and (b) the results of that investigation to be neatly summarized and typed up neatly with no strikeovers so that I can give them to General Bull, and (c) to help us with another investigation we’re running that probably has something to do with this. You have any problems working with us?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Okay, now fully aware that when I finish saying this to you, you will seriously consider putting my photo in your urinal so that you can piss on it, I want to warn you, Mr. Ziegler, that if I catch you running at the mouth, even running a little at the mouth, about what you see, hear, or intuit about what’s going on around here, if I don’t have you killed, or court-martialed, which will be the first things that will occur to me, you will spend the rest of your MP career handing out jaywalking tickets in the parking lot of the PX at Fort Abercrombie, which is on Kodiak Island, in Alaska. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Augie replied. He could not suppress a smile.

  He thought: This guy, who looks like he made second lieutenant last week, is a real hard-ass.

  A genuine hard-ass.

  I think that whatever I’m going to be doing here is going to be a lot more fun than investigating dependent domestic disputes and catching people importing coffee and cigarettes from the States to sell on the black market.

  “Okay,” Cronley said, “now before I send you and Freddy over to get Claudette out of wherever you have her, I’ll give you my take on what’s happened here.”

  “Please do. That’s presuming I can be told?” Colonel Kellogg said.

  “I think you should hear this, sir,” Cronley said. “Before Mr. Hessinger recruited Claudette for us, she was in the Army Security Agency, as an intercept operator and cryptographer and debugger. That means she knows how to find hidden microphones. And that means she knows how to install them, too. She was a tech sergeant.

  “Now she carries one of these . . . Freddy, show Colonel Kellogg your credentials.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hessinger said, and did so.

  “She needs one of those, Colonel, because she is privy to everything that goes on around here. Everything.”

  “I understand,” Kellogg said.

  “DCI agents have assimilated field grade officer rank. They’re treated as at least majors when they need a hotel room, et cetera. Claudette lives here in the Vier Jahreszeiten—down the corridor. We have the entire wing on this floor. She’s on per diem, and takes her meals in the restaurant downstairs.

  “Shortly after she came here, she suggested to Hessinger that he recruit Tech Sergeant Miller, a pal of hers in the ASA, and also a cryptographer and debugger. So we had her transferred to us.”

  “Question?” Augie asked.

  “Shoot.�
�

  “‘Pal of hers’? How close a pal?”

  “If you’re suggesting what I think you are, no, not that kind of pal.”

  “You understand why I had to ask.”

  “That’s why I recruited you, Ziegler. Because I thought you would ask the indelicate questions that have to be asked.

  “Tech Sergeant Miller lives in the Pullach compound with other WACs. The ASA has an intercept station in the Pullach compound.

  “But Claudette and Miller were still buddies even after Claudette moved into the Vier Jahreszeiten. So with one a tech sergeant and one an assimilated officer, what could they do together? Go to the PX and the movies, and that’s about it. Except the WAC NCO club. Claudette still had her sergeant’s ID card. So I think they went there to have a steak and some drinks. I think maybe Claudette left her DCI credentials in the safe. Freddy?”

  “I’ll check.”

  “She customarily went around armed?” Ziegler asked.

  “We all do,” Cronley said. He chuckled and pointed at Hessinger. “Freddy even wears his with his bathrobe.”

  “Hessinger’s carrying a .45,” Ziegler said. “Colbert had a non-issue S&W .38 with the thumb part of the hammer filed off. It could only be fired double-action. One of your fancy weapons?”

  “No. But I’m going to say it is, so we—she—gets it back. Is there going to be a problem with that?”

  “Far be it from me to deny a good-looking blonde her right to file three notches in the grip of her trusty .38,” Ziegler said.

  “Here it is!” Hessinger called, waving a credentials folder in the air. “She left it in the safe.”

  “One more point for my yet-to-be-proven, or disproven, theory,” Cronley said.

  “Which is, Mr. Cronley?” Kellogg asked.

  “Sir, I think the NKGB may have attempted to kidnap Miss Colbert and Sergeant Miller.”

  “The NKGB?” Kellogg asked incredulously. “Why?”

  “To see what they know about certain subjects.”

  “What certain subjects? Isn’t that germane to this investigation?”

  Ziegler thought: Dumb question, Colonel.

  “Colonel, with all respect, answering that would cross a line I’m not willing to cross.”