Curtain of Death Page 5
“Next, when the President decided he really needed a clandestine espionage, et cetera, organization answering only to him, he signed an Executive Order establishing the Directorate of Central Intelligence as of January first and named Admiral Souers as director.”
“That’s three weeks ago,” Harmon observed.
“Just before I came back here,” White said. “Somewhere during our conversation on the porch, Souers introduced the civilian. His name is Schultz. Souers said that Schultz had been Number Two in the OSS operation in the Southern Cone—Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile—during the war. He had just retired as a commander and was now Souers’s Number Two. The ‘executive assistant to the director.’
“Souers then told me ‘it had been decided’ that the Constabulary was going to provide whatever support was requested by DCI-Europe . . .”
“Decided by who?”
“He didn’t say. I got the feeling that Souers has the authority to do whatever he thinks has to be done. Anyway, he said that Harry Bull was in the loop, as is a brigadier general named Greene.”
Harmon shook his head, signaling he didn’t know who Greene was.
“He runs the CIC for USFET,” White said. “I had met him once, but didn’t know him. And the head of the Army Security Agency in USFET, a major named McClung, and a Major Wallace, who used to run OSS Forward and is now ostensibly working for Greene.”
“Didn’t . . . What’s his name? Mattingly . . . Didn’t Colonel Bob Mattingly, who used to be in Hell on Wheels before he went to the OSS, command OSS Forward?”
“When I asked the same question, Schultz—who is known as ‘El Jefe,’ which means ‘the Chief’ in Spanish, because he was once a chief petty officer—”
“An ex-CPO is now Number Two in this DCI?” Harmon interrupted, his tone incredulous.
White nodded. “He is. Schultz told me that Colonel David Bruce, who ran the OSS in Europe, decided that OSS Forward could function more efficiently if ‘the Army’ thought it was commanded by Bob Mattingly, when it was in fact commanded by Major Harold Wallace, who was—is—in fact Colonel Harold Wallace. Schultz also told me that Bob Mattingly, who is now Greene’s deputy, would not, repeat not, be in the loop.”
“What’s that all about?”
“G-2 wants to take over DCI-Europe. Quote, Since Colonel Mattingly has applied for integration into the Regular Army . . .”
“I always thought he was a fine officer,” Harmon said.
“He was. Is. Let me finish the quote . . . he might consider his primary loyalty was to the Army, rather than to DCI. End quote. So Mattingly is not in the loop. Lieutenant Colonel Billy Wilson is.”
“Billy’s part of this?” Harmon asked, shaking his head in disbelief.
“You remember that during the war he was always doing things for the OSS?”
Harmon nodded.
“Among those things he did for the OSS was fly Major Wallace to the rendezvous point where Generalmajor Gehlen surrendered. Among the things he’s done recently for the OSS—now the DCI—was arrange for the pickup across the border in Thuringia of the wife and two kids, boys, of an NKGB colonel the DCI had bagged and sent to Argentina.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Because Billy—not knowing that I was already in the loop—came to me and asked for permission to participate. Knowing Billy, if I had said, ‘Hell, no!’ he probably would have done what he did anyway, but I thought it was nice of him to ask. You’ll recall Billy doesn’t always ask permission.”
Harmon laughed. “Billy once told me, with a straight face, that if you think you’re going to get your ass chewed anyway, it makes more sense to get it chewed after you’ve done what you want to do instead of getting it chewed just for asking.”
“Maybe that’s the way you get to be a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant colonel. Why didn’t we think of that?”
Harmon laughed. It came out as a grunt.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what you think of all this,” Harmon said.
White understood he had been asked a question, and he answered it: “I don’t think we should rearm the Wehrmacht and head for Moscow, but I believe the Soviet Union is a real threat. And it looks to me like few people outside of the loop realize how serious a threat. And I’m a soldier, Ernie. When someone gives me an order I know is lawful, I salute and say, ‘Yes, sir.’”
When Harmon didn’t immediately reply, White went on: “To answer your original question, Why am I not going home? Apparently Ike decided that the role originally envisioned for the Constabulary is not going to happen. The Germans are behaving. The Russians are not. The Constabulary is going to have to be more border police than anything else, at least for the time being. And Ike also probably realized that the support the Constabulary has been ordered to provide DCI-Europe is going to go far beyond sending a platoon of M8 armored cars somewhere.
“I think Bull decided—and I don’t know this, Ernie—that I had too much on my plate to handle, and that the solution to that was to keep you in command for a little longer, until things sort themselves out.”
For a long moment Harmon was silent.
Then he said: “I knew the minute I laid eyes on the dependent housing officer at Fort Knox that if I took him under my wing, sooner or later he was going to royally fuck me up.”
“That’s why you got me out of that damned job and gave me that battalion of Armored Infantry, right?”
“But, me too, I.D.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m a soldier, too. When I get a lawful order, I salute and say, ‘Yes, sir.’”
[ THREE ]
Office of the Chief, Counter Intelligence Corps
Headquarters, U.S. Forces European Theater
The I.G. Farben Building
Frankfurt am Main
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0715 24 January 1946
A tall, hawkish-featured man in his early thirties in ODs with triangles pushed open the door to the outer office of the chief, CIC USFET, and smiled at the WAC chief warrant officer, an attractive woman in her late twenties sitting behind the desk. She was wearing the female version of pinks and greens.
“What got you up so early?” he asked.
“The Greene monster,” she replied. “Someone had to cut your orders.”
“What orders?”
“He’ll tell you all about it,” she said, and pointed at an interior door. On it was a neatly lettered sign: BRIG. GEN. H. P. GREENE.
The man went to the door and knocked.
“Come.”
The man pushed the door open. A stocky, forty-three-year-old officer with a crew cut waved him in. His olive drab uniform had the single star of a brigadier general on its epaulets.
“Come on in, Jack,” he said. “And close the door.”
The man did so.
“Good morning, General.”
Greene waved him onto a couch before a coffee table, and then rose from his desk and joined him.
The door opened and the WAC came in with a thermos and two coffee mugs.
“I’ve been reading your mind,” she said.
“Good for you. Don’t let anybody in but Major Wallace and/or General Gehlen,” General Greene ordered.
The WAC nodded, poured coffee into the mugs, and then left.
“General Gehlen?” Jack asked.
Greene nodded.
“What Helen has been doing is cutting orders putting you on indefinite temporary duty with Military Detachment, Central Intelligence Directorate, Europe, APO 907,” he said.
“Jesus! What—”
“And if that didn’t get your attention, Jack, maybe this will: You play your cards right, you just might get your commission back.”
“I’m all ears.”
—
Brigadier General Homer P. Greene and CIC Supervisory Special Agent John D. “Jack” Hammersmith were old friends.
Hammersmith had been an enlisted man before the war, quickly promoted to technical sergeant when he had become a CIC special agent. When war came, he had been directly commissioned into the Military Intelligence Service as a first lieutenant.
His first assignment had been to the 1st Army Counter Intelligence Detachment, Major H. P. Greene, commanding. They had later served together in Morocco, England, and then France and Germany. Greene had come out of the war with a brigadier general’s star and Hammersmith a major’s gold leaf.
As soon as the war was over, the Army began a Reduction in Force. Fearing that he was likely to be among the first majors to be “RIFed” as he had only a high school education, Hammersmith had accepted relief from active duty as a reserve major to reenlist as a regular Army master sergeant. That way, he would not only have a job, but when he retired he would do so at the highest rank held in wartime.
It had seemed to be the smart thing to do, although when he heard about it, General Greene told him he had been a damned fool, and Hammersmith had come to agree with him. A great many officers had been RIFed, but only a very few from Intelligence.
—
“Major Harold Wallace?” Greene began, and continued after Hammersmith’s nod told him he knew who Wallace was: “He got me out of bed at quarter to four this morning to tell me—”
Greene interrupted himself.
“Jack, this is all classified Top Secret–Presidential. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“. . . To tell me there had been a shooting in Munich. One of his WACs had killed three men and wounded another. Wallace’s initial take on the incident was that the NKGB and/or Odessa had tried to kidnap the WAC . . . actually two WACs . . . whereupon one of the WACs had popped all of them.”
“Jesus Christ! What the hell was that all about?”
“Wallace said what he wanted from me was my best agent, and he wanted him yesterday. I said ‘sure’ and called Marburg and told you to shag your ass down here bringing a change of clothes.
“The reason I said ‘sure’ so quickly was because General Harry Bull told me that I was to give Wallace—this Directorate of Central Intelligence–Europe he runs—anything at all he wants, emphasis on anything.”
“It’s not under Seidel?”
Major General Bruce T. Seidel was USFET’s G-2, in charge of Intelligence.
“It’s under a rear admiral, Sidney Souers, and he reports to President Truman.”
“What does it do?”
“You’ve heard the rumors that we struck a deal with General Gehlen?”
“He gave us everything he had, including agents in place, and we kept him and his people out of the hands of the Russians?”
“His people and their families. We sent the Nazis among them to Argentina.”
“I didn’t believe that rumor.”
“It’s called Operation Ost, Jack. And it includes setting up Gehlen—what was Abwehr Ost—in a compound outside Munich, where he now works for us.”
“And Wallace runs this whole thing? He’s only a major.”
“The chief of DCI-Europe is Captain James D. Cronley, Junior.”
“You just said Wallace runs it.”
“Wallace looks over Cronley’s shoulder while Cronley runs it.”
“What’s that all about? My take on the Gehlen deal is that it’s important.”
“Very important.”
“And if it gets out that we’re slipping Nazis out of Germany . . .”
Greene nodded. “The political implications are frightening.”
“So why isn’t somebody senior running it? Mattingly comes to mind. At the end of the war Wallace was his Number Two at OSS Forward.”
“At the end of the war it was decided that OSS Forward could function more effectively if people thought that Colonel Bob Mattingly was running it, leaving Major Harold Wallace—actually Colonel Wallace—free of Army interference to do what he thought had to be done.”
“Everybody was smoking funny cigarettes?”
“It worked, Jack, and it works now.”
“Something wrong with Mattingly?”
“G-2 wants to take over DCI. Admiral Souers decided that Mattingly, who has applied for integration into the regular Army, wouldn’t want to get in a scrap with G-2.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Admiral Souers told me.”
“You’re part of this ‘Alice in Wonderland Through the Looking Glass’ business?”
“I am. Iron Lung McClung is. I.D. White is. And so is Harry Bull.”
Hammersmith ran that all through his mind: Major James B. “Iron Lung” McClung was chief, Army Security Agency, Europe. Major General I. D. White was scheduled to assume command of the U.S. Constabulary, charged with patrolling the American Zone of Germany, on the first of February. Major General Harold R. Bull was chief of staff to General Joseph McNarney, commander of U.S. Forces European Theater (USFET).
“And General McNarney?” Hammersmith asked.
Greene didn’t reply.
“Sorry. Stupid of me to ask.”
Greene agreed with that by saying nothing.
“So I’m to go to Munich to work for who?” Hammersmith asked.
“For DCI-Europe. Whose chief is Captain Cronley.”
“Jesus!”
“You’ve got something against Cronley?”
“I don’t like the idea of working for a twenty-one-, twenty-two-year-old captain.”
“Twenty-two.”
“Who may not even be a captain. Is he?”
“He is.”
“He was a second lieutenant in Marburg a couple of months ago. Or was he really a twenty-nine-year-old captain, who looks young, pretending to be a second lieutenant?”
“Jack, do you want to get your commission back?”
They locked eyes for a moment.
“You know I do, Homer. So I will go to Munich, smile, and salute the boy captain and do what I’m told.”
“He got his railroad tracks from President Truman. The bars and the Distinguished Service Medal.”
“For what?”
“That’s classified Top Secret–Presidential, and you don’t have the Need to Know.”
“Jesus!”
“What did Cronley do in Marburg to piss you off?”
Hammersmith didn’t reply for a moment, and then he said, “Nothing. I thought he was a nice kid. Smart. Not your typical second lieutenant. He speaks fluent German. And then he pissed off Connell, which I enjoyed.”
Major John Connell was the executive officer of the XXIInd CIC Detachment.
“How did he do that?” Greene asked, smiling and shaking his head.
“Connell put Cronley in a jeep to watch the MPs at a refugee checkpoint. I went out there one day with him. Connell chewed his ass because the kid was wearing a .45 in a holster slung cowboy style, and not the prescribed snub-nosed .38. So the next time Connell went out there, the kid—”
“Think ‘Captain Cronley,’ Jack,” General Greene interrupted.
“—is wearing triangles and cowboy boots and has the .45 hanging from the jeep windshield. Connell was so pissed that he just turned around and headed back to town. He said, ‘I’m going to burn him a new asshole.’”
“And did he?”
“Later that day, Cronley found the Kraut woman—”
“Think Frau von Wachtstein, Jack. Hitler hung her father and her father-in-law from butcher’s hooks. And she has friends in high places.”
“—Frau von Whateveryousaid. And the next thing we know he’s transferred to OSS Forward. The next time I saw him was when Mattingly caught him smuggling coffee and canned hams—”
“You sound as if you don’t like Mattingly much.”
“When you get to Munich, and start making reports to me, keep in mind that Colonel Mattingly is not in the loop.”
“That bad, huh?”
“I am presuming you are telling me that you will have no problems in Munich working for Captain Cronley?”
“I will try very hard to be a very good boy in Munich.”
“Think Major Hammersmith, Jack.”
“It will be foremost in my mind, sir. How do I get to Munich? That’s a long haul in a jeep.”
“Leave your jeep here. I’ll see that it gets back to Marburg. What happens now is that after Major Wallace tells General Bull about this shooting, which is probably happening right now, he and General Gehlen will come here and have a look at you.
“Presuming you remember to think Colonel Wallace, don’t break wind, and you pass their muster, the three of you will go out to Eschborn. There, Gehlen and Wallace will get in their Storch.”
“They have a Storch?”
“DCI-Europe has two of them. The one they’ll be in will be piloted by a guy who used to fly Gehlen around the steppes of Russia in one.”
“A German?”
Greene nodded.
“Now a special agent of DCI. Major Wallace and Mr. Gehlen of the Süd-Deutsche Industrielle Entwicklungsorganisation.”
“The South German Industrial Development Organization?” Hammersmith made the translation. “Which is what?”
“What we are now calling what used to be Abwehr Ost. They will be flown to a village about twenty miles from Munich, Pullach, which is now the organization’s headquarters. You will follow in an L-4 that the U.S. Constabulary has generously provided. Have a good time in Munich, Jack.”