Death at Nuremberg Read online

  “If we accuse, or even suggest, the NKGB is involved, and it gets in the newspapers or on the radio, (a) the Russians will deny everything, and (b) the world will learn that the NKGB, despite to-be-expected denials, killed one of us and got away with it. They’d like that. Same thing with Odessa. They’d like the word to get out that they got away with murdering a DCI officer.”

  “How do you plan to keep what happened a secret?” Greene asked.

  “We can’t keep it a secret, but what we can do is put out the story that it was an accident, and get his body, and his widow and their baby, out of Germany as soon as possible. At seven in the morning, Moriarty’s body will be taken by one of our ambulances to Rhine-Main. It will be placed aboard the ten-o’clock MATS flight to Washington. Accompanied by Lieutenant Winters, Mrs. Moriarty and the baby will be on the plane. Admiral Souers and Mr. Schultz will meet the plane, and the party will then proceed to Texas on Admiral Souers’s aircraft.

  “The family will be told, in confidence, that Lieutenant Moriarty died in the line of duty while engaged in a classified operation. He will be posthumously decorated with the Legion of Merit.”

  “So that’s why you haven’t called in the military police,” Schwarzkopf said.

  “Yes, sir,” Wallace said.

  “General Gehlen,” Schwarzkopf asked, “whom do you suspect did this?”

  “I suspect it’s one of my people.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was done with such finesse. In this room we have all of the best intelligence officers—except Colonel Cohen—in Europe. And none of us have any idea based on the evidence we have who did this. And since the only evidence we have is that pistol, that points to one of my people—the Russians and Odessa would have left us something else to work with.”

  Cronley stood up.

  “Where is Mrs. Moriarty now?”

  “In her quarters. The chaplain, Lieutenant and Mrs. Winters, and Colonel and Mrs. Bristol are with her.”

  “I’m going to offer my condolences.”

  “You heard what I said about keeping this from your lady friend?” Wallace said.

  “I heard you, Colonel. But I’ll make up my mind about that later, when I’ve had time to think things over.”

  He walked to the door.

  “Just a minute, Captain Cronley,” Wallace snapped.

  Cronley went through the door, pulling it closed after him.

  Dunwiddie stood up.

  “Colonel, I think I better go with him.”

  “You tell that arrogant sonofabitch what I said about that goddamn reporter is an order!” Wallace fumed.

  Dunwiddie hurried through the door in pursuit of Cronley.

  [FIVE]

  Officers’ Quarters #5

  The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound

  Pullach, Bavaria

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1805 21 February 1946

  Lieutenant Colonel Jack Bristol opened the door to Cronley and Dunwiddie.

  “She’s in the kitchen,” he said.

  “How’s she doing?” Cronley asked.

  Bristol shrugged, and waved them toward the kitchen of the cottage.

  Ginger Moriarty was sitting at the kitchen table nursing Bruce T. Moriarty Jr. Mrs. Jack Bristol and Mrs. Thomas Winters sat with her, watching. Lieutenant Thomas Winters stood by the refrigerator, carefully averting his eyes.

  “Ginger,” Cronley said, “I’m really sorry.”

  She looked away from her baby and at him.

  “You goddamn well should be, you sonofabitch! This is all your fault. Get the hell out of my house!”

  “Ginger,” Mrs. Bristol said, shocked and concerned.

  “And you know it’s your fault, you bastard!” Ginger went on, coldly furious. “You’ve had my Bruce following you around since College Station. He even went into the Cavalry because of you. He really wanted to go into the Signal Corps, but he followed you into the Cavalry because he wanted to be just like you. And even that wasn’t enough. You got him to follow you to this goddamn concentration camp. If he hadn’t wanted to be a hotshot intelligence officer like you, we’d still be in Fritzlar. Bruce wouldn’t have been in the Signal Corps, but he wouldn’t be dead.”

  “Ginger—” Cronley said.

  “Get the hell out of my house, you sonofabitch!”

  Cronley felt a tug at his sleeve, turned his head to see that it was Tiny Dunwiddie, and then turned and followed him out of the kitchen and ultimately out of the cottage.

  “She’s upset, Jim,” Dunwiddie said, when they were outside.

  “Yeah, I picked up on that. Unfortunately, she’s right. I got Bonehead to come here, and now he’s dead.”

  “You’re not responsible for that, Jim.”

  “I’d do it again, but I’m responsible. If I had left Bonehead in Fritzlar, he’d still be alive. I thought I was doing him a favor, but that didn’t turn out well, did it?”

  Dunwiddie didn’t reply.

  “Have you got a car?”

  “No. I came out here in Colonel Wallace’s Kapitän. You’re going to the Jahreszeiten?”

  “I’m going back to the airfield, back to Nuremberg . . .”

  “If what I think you’re going to do—take one of the Storchs—”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I was going to leave Ziegler here to see what he could find out and tell me. But with Greene and Schwarzkopf here—with their resources—he’d be redundant. And you can tell me what Greene and Schwarzkopf find out.”

  “I don’t think Wallace would like you taking a Storch any more than he will like me being your mole here.”

  “Fuck him!”

  “And he will really be cumulatively pissed—maybe to the point of relieving you—if he also finds out you told anything about this to Janice Johansen.”

  “I will tell her, and Wallace will probably find out. But he won’t relieve me without checking with Chief Schultz, and I know El Jefe well enough to know that he’ll want to hear my version of the story. I’ll take my chances with that.”

  “I sometimes wonder if you have a death wish, that you really want to get relieved.”

  “What I want to do is find out who whacked Bonehead. And I don’t want Wallace to tell me he’ll handle it, butt out.”

  “I admit I think that’s on his mind. And I think you know what kind of a spot you’re putting me in.”

  “Indeed I do. Is that a problem for you, Tiny?”

  Dunwiddie looked at him for a long moment.

  “Why don’t you go get Augie Ziegler and meet me at the motor pool?” he said finally.

  IV

  [ONE]

  XXIst CIC Kaserne

  The Palace of Justice Compound

  Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  0805 21 February 1946

  “Thank you for seeing us, Colonel,” Cronley said, as he and Augie Ziegler were waved into Colonel Mortimer Cohen’s office by his sergeant major.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” Cohen said. “General Greene called to tell me he thought seeing me was high on your list of priorities.”

  What the hell?

  “He told me about the murder of Lieutenant Moriarty, and suspected you were about to open your own investigation of the incident against orders, and that you would probably come to me for assistance.”

  Oh, shit!

  Greene almost certainly told him to keep me at arm’s length.

  “He also told me you’d stolen a Storch airplane, and asked me to help you conceal it from your outraged commanding officer and the Air Corps.”

  Greene asked Cohen to help me hide the Storch?

  “I didn’t steal it, Colonel.”

  “Actually, General Greene s
aid you’d taken the airplane without asking permission.”

  “That’s true.”

  “He said that you probably did this following the philosophy of Lieutenant Colonel William W. Wilson.”

  “Sir?”

  What?

  “Hotshot Billy has been quoted as saying if you want to do something you know is right, and you know your superiors don’t want you to do it, then do it and ask permission afterward.”

  “I’ve heard that, Colonel.”

  “Why do you need that airplane?”

  “I’m going to find the bastards who murdered Moriarty, which means I’ll have to go all over Germany. The Storch will be very useful.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Out of sight, in a hangar at Soldier’s Field.”

  “How long do you think it will be before people start asking questions about it?”

  Do I tell him?

  Does he already know?

  Probably.

  “Before Moriarty was killed, I asked Colonel Rasberry if he knew where I could hide it. It’s now being guarded—no one gets in the hangar—by his people.”

  “I was about to suggest you bring the subject up to Rasberry. He’s a good man. So tell me how you propose to find the people responsible for your friend’s murder.”

  “He was killed either by the NKGB or Odessa. I have no idea right now how to go after the Russians, so I’m going to start with Odessa. The reason I came to see you, Colonel, is that I want to have a chat with Ernst Kaltenbrunner. I’d like you to go with me.”

  “You don’t really think Kaltenbrunner is going to tell you anything, do you? Anything you can believe?”

  “What I’m thinking is that I can dazzle him with my DCI credentials. What I’m hoping is that the word will pass down to his men imprisoned here that an officer from the White House has been to see him. And then I’m going to talk to every last one of them, until I find who I can turn.”

  “Turning people is very difficult.”

  “I seem to have a flair for doing it. I turned NKGB Polkovnik Sergei Likharev.”

  “So General Greene told me,” Cohen said, and stood up. “Why don’t we go have a chat with former SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei und Waffen-SS Kaltenbrunner? He always hates to see this lowly gottverdammten Juden Oberst who has him in a cell and that pleases me. And on the way—this is General Greene’s suggestion—I will start your cram course on how really dangerous these people are. He thinks I might be able to enlist you two in my secret army of the righteously indignant.”

  What the hell is he talking about? Secret army of the righteously indignant?

  —

  Colonel Cohen began the cram course just as soon as they left the XXIst CIC Kaserne and started to walk to the prison.

  “Kaltenbrunner was born in a little Dorf in Austria. His father was a lawyer, and Ernst earned a doctorate degree in law at Graz University in 1926. The story he put out was that the scars on his face came from a duel at Graz, part of the initiation ritual to gain entrance into a fraternity, a Brüderschaft. Actually, the scars, of which he was—still is—quite proud, were caused when he got drunk and got into an automobile accident.

  “Kaltenbrunner joined the Nazi Party on October 18th, 1930. He was not, in other words, one of the originals. He became a Nazi because he thought it was no longer dangerous to become a Nazi—by then three hundred thousand people had signed up—and he thought membership might be good for him, personally. He went on to join the SS in August 1931.

  “From mid-1935, Kaltenbrunner was considered a leader of the Austrian SS. His role in the Anschluss in 1933 got him promoted to SS-Brigadeführer, and he parlayed that into getting himself elected to the Reichstag.”

  Jesus, this is a classroom lecture.

  Colonel Cohen’s another Freddy Hessinger!

  Take notes! There will be a quiz!

  “In January 1934, Kaltenbrunner got married to thirty-year-old Elisabeth Eder of Linz, who was a Nazi Party member. They had three children. But he had a wandering eye and had a long affair with Gräfin—Countess—Gisela von Westarp. They had two children, a boy and a girl, twins.

  “In September 1938, Kaltenbrunner, while still Führer of SS-Oberabschnitt Österreich, was promoted to the rank of SS-Gruppenführer—lieutenant general—in the army. He was also appointed Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer for Donau, which was the primary SS command in Austria.

  “In June 1940, he was named Police President of Vienna, and in July 1940, he got a commission as SS-Untersturmführer in the Waffen-SS Reserve, and later to Generalleutnant of the police. On January 30, 1943, Kaltenbrunner was appointed chief of the RSHA, which was the Sicherheitspolizei—the combined forces of the Gestapo and the Criminal Police—the Kripo—plus the Sicherheitsdienst: Security Service.

  “When Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated in Prague in June 1942, Kaltenbrunner got his job and was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei.”

  “Colonel,” Augie Ziegler said, “are you going to take a break anytime soon? You’re throwing a lot at us.”

  “With that in mind, Mr. Ziegler, as we speak, Sergeant Major Feldman is hammering away at his typewriter preparing, with one carbon copy, what I suppose could be called lecture notes for you and Mr. Cronley to study at your leisure. There will be a quiz.”

  A quiz? Christ, is he reading my mind?

  “May I continue?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ziegler said, chuckling.

  “As an illustration of what kind of people we’re dealing with, let me tell you what happened in the summer of 1943 at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. When the camp commander heard that our Ernst was about to make an inspection of the camp, they set up what the U.S. Army would call a ‘dog and pony show.’

  “Prisoners at Mauthausen were exterminated in one of three ways—by gunshot to the neck, by hanging from a gallows, and by gassing them. For Kaltenbrunner’s edification, and to solicit his professional advice, a demonstration was arranged.”

  “What kind of a demonstration? Dog and pony show?” Ziegler asked.

  “Fifteen prisoners were selected to demonstrate for Kaltenbrunner the three methods of killing then in use. Five categories of prisoners—Healthy, Not Healthy, Young, Aged, and Average. A special gallows was erected for the hanging, and a truck with a sealable body brought in to demonstrate the efficiency of Zyklon-B, a pesticide, in ending human life.

  “They were exterminated one by one so that Kaltenbrunner could witness the efficacy of the different procedures. After the dog and pony show, Kaltenbrunner inspected the crematorium and later the quarry, where prisoners were worked to death moving hundred-pound rocks from one pile to another and then back.”

  “Colonel, I heard about really nasty shit like this, but until now, coming from you, I guess I just didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Mr. Ziegler, you ain’t heard nothing yet,” Colonel Cohen said.

  [TWO]

  Outside the prison building, a captain, a lieutenant, two sergeants, a corporal, and a PFC of the 26th Infantry regiment guarded the entrance. All of them were armed with pistols. The sergeants had Thompson submachine guns slung from their shoulders. They were backed up by two jeeps, each with a pedestal-mounted .30 caliber machine gun.

  Although the captain obviously in charge greeted Cohen by name when he saluted, that recognition didn’t get them into the prison building. There was a protocol to follow.

  First, they had to produce identification. After their CIC credentials were carefully examined, their names were checked against a roster of Accredited Personnel mounted on a clipboard.

  Cronley saw another clipboard marked Authorized Visitors, but it wasn’t consulted.

  Cohen, who runs the whole show, must have gotten Augie and me on the Accredited list right after I asked him to.

&n
bsp; “And your weapons, if any, gentlemen, please,” the lieutenant said.

  He was visibly impressed when, after Colonel Cohen had surrendered his .45, Cronley and Ziegler hoisted their Ike jackets, revealing their pistols, holstered in their “Secret Service High Rise Cross Draw” holsters.

  “Nice,” he said. “I didn’t think either of you were armed.”

  “That’s the whole idea, Lieutenant,” Cronley said. “We like to surprise people before we shoot them.”

  When Cronley and then Ziegler took their pistols from their holsters, it was immediately apparent from the drawn-back hammers and the position of the safety levers that they were “cocked and locked.” All it would take to fire them was for the shooter to move the safety lever and squeeze the trigger.

  The captain and the lieutenant were visibly surprised. The captain’s face showed surprise and disapproval. Carrying holstered pistols in that ready-to-fire condition was forbidden in the Army.

  Ziegler picked up on this: “When I was a Boy Scout,” he said, “they had a motto. ‘Be Prepared.’”

  One at a time, the lieutenant removed the magazines from the pistols, and then racked the actions back to eject the rounds in their chambers. Each time, a cartridge flew out of the pistols. When the lieutenant was finished, the captain looked relieved that a dangerous situation had been dealt with.

  Cronley saw that both Ziegler and Cohen were amused.

  “And which of our guests are you going to visit, Colonel?” the captain asked.

  “We’re going to have a chat, a brief one, with Herr Kaltenbrunner,” Cohen replied, “and we may visit, or at least have a look at, Herr Göring.”

  A third clipboard was produced. The lieutenant wrote on it, and then extended it first to Cohen, then to Cronley, and finally to Ziegler. This one had to be signed, attesting to the fact that they were entering the prison at 0825 21 February 1946 to visit prisoners Kaltenbrunner, Ernst, and Göring, Hermann.

  —

  One of the sergeants unlocked a door with a massive key Cronley thought probably weighed a half pound and passed them into the prison.

  They found themselves in a three-story building. The ground floor was lined with cells on both sides. A 26th Infantry private or PFC armed with only a billy club stood before each door, or leaned on it, peering momentarily through a small window in the recessed cell door. These guards all appeared to be in their teens.