The Assassination Option Page 4

  Officers and non-coms were obviously going to be required for the PSO, and ranks were established, and then filled from the ranks of the students in the first class. Ostrowski was appointed a “watch chief”—which roughly corresponded to second lieutenant—more, he thought, because he spoke English well, rather than because he had been a captain in the Free Polish Air Force.

  Company “A,” 7002nd Provisional Security Organization had then been loaded on U.S. Army six-by-six trucks and driven down the autobahn to Munich, and then along winding country roads to the village of Pullach.

  There Ostrowski learned that the entire village had been commandeered by the U.S. Army for unspecified purposes. Army Engineers were installing a triple fence, topped by concertina barbed wire. The fence and the guard towers made the village look like a prison camp.

  It was there that he had first seen the Negro troops assigned to guard whatever it was that needed guarding. They all seemed to be enormous. That they were really guarding something was evident. They constantly circled the village in jeeps that carried ready-to-fire .50 caliber machine guns, and there were similar weapons in the guard towers.

  The initial mission of Company “A” had nothing to do with the security of the village—which the Americans called “the compound”—but rather the protection of the Engineers’ supplies—of which there were mountains—and equipment.

  Company “A” was provided with U.S. Army twelve-man squad tents, a mobile mess, and went to work.

  Ostrowski was not happy with his new duties—he saw himself as sergeant of the guard, which was quite a comedown from being a captain flying Spitfires and Hurricanes—but he had food to eat, clean sheets, and he thought it highly unlikely he would be rounded up for forcible repatriation.

  Then, a week after they had moved to Pullach—the day he saw a GI sign painter preparing a sign that read GENERAL-BÜROS SÜD-DEUTSCHE INDUSTRIELLE ENTWICKLUNGSORGANISATION and wondered what the South German Industrial Development Organization might be—it was announced that Company “A” had been given the additional duty of guarding a monastery in Schollbrunn, in the Bavarian Alps. Promoted to senior watch chief, Ostrowski was put in charge of a sixty-man detachment, which was then trucked to Kloster Grünau.

  There, he reported to the American in charge, a Mr. Cronley, who appeared to be in his early twenties, and his staff. These were two enormous black men wearing 2nd Armored Division shoulder patches. One wore the sleeve insignia of a first sergeant and the other that of a technical sergeant. There was also a plump little man who was introduced as Mr. Hessinger.

  Ostrowski had thought he had solved the mystery of what was going on. Both Mr. Cronley and Mr. Hessinger were in civilian attire. That is, they were wearing U.S. Army uniforms—Cronley the standard olive-drab Ike jacket and trousers, and Hessinger the more elegant officer’s green tunic and pink trousers—but carrying no insignia of rank or branch of service. Instead, sewn to their lapels were small embroidered triangles around the letters US.

  They were military policemen, Ostrowski quickly decided. More specifically, they were CID, which stood for Criminal Investigation Division, and who were, so to speak, the plainclothes detectives of the Military Police Force. What was being constructed at Pullach was to be a military prison. It all fit. The three lines of fences, the guard towers, the floodlights, and as absolute proof, all those enormous Negro troops. They practically had “Prison Guard” tattooed on their foreheads.

  “If you don’t speak English,” Mr. Cronley had begun the meeting, “I’m going to have a problem telling you what’s going on here.”

  “I speak English, sir,” Ostrowski said.

  “And German, maybe?” the chubby little man asked in German.

  He was, Ostrowski guessed, a German Jew who had somehow avoided the death camps and somehow become an American.

  “Yes. And Russian. And of course, Polish.”

  “That problem out of the way, what do we call you?” Mr. Cronley asked.

  “My name is Maksymilian Ostrowski, sir.”

  “That’s an unworkable mouthful,” Cronley said. “It says here you’re a senior watch chief. What the hell is that?”

  “I believe it is equivalent to U.S. Army first lieutenant, sir.”

  Cronley had raised his right hand as a priest giving a blessing does, and announced, “Since I can pronounce this, I christen thee Lieutenant Max. Go and sin no more.”

  “Jesus, Jim!” the enormous black first sergeant protested. But he was smiling.

  “Any objections?” Cronley asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Any other officers in your organization?”

  “Yes, sir. There is one who served as a tank lieutenant with the Free French.”

  “Okay. Then you and he will bunk and mess with us,” Cronley said. “Sergeant Tedworth”—Cronley pointed to the technical sergeant—“who is Number Two to First Sergeant Dunwiddie”—Cronley pointed to the first sergeant—“who is my Number Two, will show you where your men will be quartered. I hope you brought somebody who can cook with you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You will answer to Sergeant Tedworth,” Cronley went on. “You have any problems with that?”

  Does he mean because I’m an officer?

  “No, sir.”

  “Okay. Freddy, you go with Tedworth and Lieutenant Max and show them where they’ll be. Then send Lieutenant Max back here. If you find someone who can translate for Tedworth . . . Abraham Lincoln speaks German, Max, but not Polish . . .”

  “Abraham Lincoln”? Oh, he means Sergeant Tedworth.

  “. . . Hessinger speaks Russian and tells me that’s close to Polish. If there are no translation problems, Freddy, you come back. If there are, stay and translate. But send Lieutenant Max back. I need to bring him up to speed on what’s going on around here ten minutes ago.”

  Mr. Hessinger nodded.

  Twenty minutes later, Hessinger and Ostrowski had come back into what Ostrowski was to learn was called the “officers’ mess.” Cronley and Dunwiddie were sitting at a bar drinking beer.

  “No translation problems?” Cronley asked.

  “Between the Poles who speak German and Tedworth’s guys who do likewise, no problem,” Hessinger reported.

  “Do you drink beer, Max?” Cronley asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you better have one before I tell you how close you’ll be to getting shot working here.”

  What did he say?

  Cronley gestured to Hessinger, who went behind the bar, found bottles of Löwenbräu and mugs, and handed one of each to Ostrowski.

  “Tell me, Max, how you came to speak the King’s English?”

  “I spent the war years in England.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I was in the Free Polish Air Force.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Flying. Mostly Spitfires and Hurricanes.”

  “And then they wanted you to go back to Poland and you didn’t want to go, and became a DP. Is that about it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How do you feel about Germans, Max? Straight answer, please.”

  “I fought a war against them, Mr. Cronley.”

  “In other words, you don’t like them very much?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And the Russians? How do feel about them?”

  “I like them even less than the Germans.”

  “You ever hear of the Katyn Forest?”

  “That’s one of the reasons I didn’t think it was wise for me to go home.”

  “What we’re running here is a classified—a highly classified—operation. I’m not supposed to tell someone like yourself anything at all about it. But I don’t see how you can do your job at all, much less well, until I tell you something about it.”

  “Ye
s, sir.”

  “So I’m going to tell you some things about it. Prefacing what I’m going to tell you by saying we’re authorized to protect the security of this operation by any means, including the taking of life. Do you understand what I’m saying? And if you do, should I continue, or would you prefer to be sent back to Pullach? There would be no shame, or whatever, if you don’t want to stay. I personally guarantee that you won’t be forcibly repatriated if you choose to go back to Pullach. Think it over carefully.”

  My God, he’s serious! What the hell is going on here? What am I letting myself in for?

  After a long moment, Ostrowski came to attention and said, “I am at your orders, sir.”

  “Anybody got anything to say before I start this?” Cronley asked.

  No one did.

  “What we’re doing here is protecting a substantial number of former German officers and enlisted men from the Russians, and from those Germans and others sympathetic to the Soviet Union,” Cronley said.

  When there was no reply, he went on: “Eventually, just about all of them will be moved to the Pullach compound. That process is already under way. Any questions so far?”

  “May I ask why you’re protecting them from the Russians?”

  “No. And don’t ask again. And make sure your men understand that asking that sort of question is something they just are not allowed to do. If they do, that will ensure immediate and drastic punishment. You can consider that your first order. Get that done as soon as possible.”

  “Tedworth’s probably already done that,” Hessinger said.

  “Even if Sergeant Tedworth has already gotten into the subject, I want the warning to come from Lieutenant Max.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I think I should tell you, Lieutenant,” Dunwiddie said, “without getting into details, that there already have been a number of deaths . . .”

  “Two yesterday,” Hessinger chimed in.

  Dunwiddie gave him a withering look and went on. “. . . directly related to security breaches, attempted and successful, of this operation,” Dunwiddie finished.

  “The Russians have a very good idea of what’s going on in here,” Cronley said. “We already have caught an NKGB colonel as he tried to sneak out of here with information given to him by German traitors. Your mission will be to augment the American soldiers—we call them ‘Tiny’s Troopers’—who have been guarding Kloster Grünau and are in the process of establishing security at the Pullach compound.”

  “Sir, may I ask a question?”

  “Ask away, but don’t be surprised if I reply you don’t have the need to know.”

  “Sir, I understand. My question—questions, actually—are can we expect further attempts by the Reds to gain entrance to either place?”

  “I think you can bet your ass they will,” Cronley said.

  “You said ‘questions,’ plural, Lieutenant?” Hessinger asked.

  “Are there still the traitors inside you mentioned?”

  Cronley answered carefully. “The NKGB colonel and the traitors he was dealing with are no longer a problem . . .”

  My God, he means they have been “dealt with.”

  Which means killed.

  “. . . but we have to presume (a) there are more of them, and (b) that the NKGB will continue to attempt to contact them.”

  “I understand,” Ostrowski said.

  “I hope so,” Cronley said.

  Even as he spoke the word “understand” Ostrowski had thought that he not only understood what Cronley was telling him, but that his Third Life had really begun.

  I’ve stumbled onto something important.

  What I will be guarding here and at Pullach is not going to be what I expected—mountains of canned tomatoes and hundred-pound bags of rice in a Quartermaster Depot—but something of great importance to the U.S. Army and by inference, the United States itself.

  And, whatever it is, it’s just getting started.

  And if I play my cards right, I can get my foot on the first step of that ladder of opportunity everybody’s always talking about.

  And the way to start playing my cards right is to become the best lieutenant of the guard not only in Detachment One, Company “A,” 7002nd Provisional Security Organization, but in the entire goddamned Provisional Security Organization.

  Each night, Senior Watch Chief Ostrowski set his Hamilton chronograph to vibrate at a different time between midnight and six in the morning. He selected the hour by throwing a die on his bedside table. The first roll last night had come up three. That meant three o’clock. The second roll had come up three again. That meant, since three-sixths of sixty minutes is thirty, that he should set the Hamilton to vibrate at 3:30.

  Next came the question of whether to get undressed, and then dress when the watch vibrated, or to nap clothed on top of the blankets. He opted in favor of not getting undressed.

  When he was wakened, he did not turn on the bedside lamp. He was absolutely sure that at least one, and probably three, of his guards were watching his window so they could alert the others that Maksymilian the Terrible was awake and about to inspect the guard posts.

  Instead, he made his way into the bath he shared with First Sergeant Dunwiddie—they were now on a “Tiny and Max” basis—and dressed there. First he put on a dyed-black U.S. Army field jacket, around which he put on a web belt that supported a holstered Model 1911A1 pistol. Then, since it had been snowing earlier in the evening and the ground was white, he put on a white poncho.

  Then, without turning on any lights, using a red-filtered U.S. Army flashlight, he made his way downstairs and out of the building.

  The Poles were guarding the outer perimeter, and sharing the guarding of the area between it and the second line of fences with Tiny’s Troopers. The inner perimeter was guarded by the Americans only.

  Twenty yards from the building, he saw the faint glow of another red-filtered flashlight, and quickly turned his own flashlight off. Fifty yards farther toward the inner fence, he saw that Technical Sergeant Tedworth, dressed as he was, was holding the other flashlight.

  He wasn’t surprised, as he knew Tedworth habitually checked the guards in the middle of the night. He also knew that Tedworth usually went to the outer perimeter to check the Poles first. It looked as if that’s what he was up to now, so Ostrowski followed him.

  If Tedworth found nothing wrong—one of the Poles, for example, hiding beside or inside something to get out of the icy winds—Ostrowski planned to do nothing. Tedworth would know the Poles were doing what they were supposed to do and that was enough.

  If, however, Tedworth found a Pole seeking shelter from the cold—or worse, asleep—Ostrowski would then appear to take the proper disciplinary action himself. Tedworth would see not only that Ostrowski was on the job, but also that Maksymilian the Terrible could “eat ass” just about as well as Technical Sergeant Tedworth.

  He had been following Tedworth for about ten minutes when the red glow of Tedworth’s flashlight suddenly turned white. There was now a beam of white light pointed inward from the outer perimeter fence toward the second.

  Ostrowski hurried to catch up.

  He heard Tedworth bellow, “Halt! Hände nach oben!”

  Ostrowski started running toward him, fumbling as he did to un-holster his pistol.

  Another figure appeared, dressed in dark clothing, approaching Tedworth in a crouch. Before Ostrowski could shout a warning, the man was on Tedworth. Tedworth’s flashlight went flying as the man pulled him back.

  Ostrowski remembered, cursing, that he had not chambered a round in the .45, and stopped running just long enough to work the action.

  He could now see three men, Tedworth, now flailing around on the ground, the man who had knocked him over . . .

  He looped something around Tedworth’s throat. Probably a wire ga
rrote.

  . . . and another man in dark clothing who had come from the second line of wire.

  Ostrowski was now ten meters from them, and was sure they hadn’t seen him. He dropped to a kneeling position and, holding the .45 with both hands, fired first at the man wrestling with Tedworth, hitting him, and then as the second man looked at him, let off a shot at his head, which missed, and then a second shot at his torso, which connected.

  Then he ran the rest of the way to the three men on the ground.

  The man who had been wrestling with Tedworth was now reaching for something in his clothing. Ostrowski shot him twice. The man he had shot in the torso looked up at him with surprise on his face. His eyes were open but they were no longer seeing anything.

  Blood was spurting from Tedworth’s neck, and as Ostrowski watched, Tedworth finally got his fingers under the wire that had been choking him and jerked it off his body.

  Tedworth looked at Ostrowski.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” he said, spewing blood from his mouth.

  “You’re bleeding. We’ve got to get a compress on your neck,” Ostrowski said.

  Tedworth reached for his neck again and again jerked something loose. It was a Cavalry yellow scarf.

  “Use this,” he said. “It probably kept me alive.”

  Then he added, disgust oozing from his voice, “If you hadn’t showed up, these cocksuckers would have got me!”

  “Just lie there,” Ostrowski ordered. “Hold the scarf against your neck. I’ll go for help.”

  That didn’t prove to be necessary. As he stood up, he saw first the light from three flashlights heading toward him, and then the headlights of a jeep.

  II

  [ONE]

  The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound

  Pullach, Bavaria

  The American Zone of Occupied Germany

  1605 28 December 1945

  A neat sign on the small snow-covered lawn of the small house identified it as the Military Government Liaison Office.