Curtain of Death Page 9

  “My father, who didn’t like Cousin Luther playing my mother for a sucker, said it was my call. What I should do was decide what was best for my mother. So I put the boxes away while I thought that over.

  “Then we had to go to Vienna to meet Seven-K—”

  “Who is?” Ziegler asked.

  “Shorthand, an NKGB agent,” Wallace furnished. “Leave it at that for now. Go on, Jim.”

  “By which time I had decided, what the hell, I’ll give Cousin Luther the goodies and then tell Mom to stop sending packages because it’s against the law. Problem solved. So I told Freddy to get me an ambulance and I would drive to Strasbourg, drop the goodies off, and then go to Vienna. Pick it up, Al.”

  “Freddy said ‘no.’ He believed that the captain alone in an ambulance would make the Frogs curious—Strasbourg is in France—and what we should do is have a little Mess Kit Repair Company convoy, a staff car, and an ambulance—”

  “Mess Kit Repair Company?” Augie Ziegler asked. “What the fuck . . . sorry, Dette . . . is that?”

  Claudette looked at Cronley for permission, and when he nodded, she answered the question.

  “Since we didn’t want to put DCI, or even CIC, on our bumpers, and had to put something, Captain Cronley had 711th MKRC painted on the bumpers. He said it meant the 711th Mess Kit Repair Company . . .”

  “Which Fat Freddy said was sophomoric,” Cronley said.

  Hammersmith thought: And it was. Just the sort of thing you’d expect from a twenty-two-year-old captain.

  “So,” Cronley went on, “Freddy changed it to Mobile Kitchen Renovation Company. Same letters. Go on, Al.”

  “Then Freddy put on stripes and QM lapel insignia, and a second john’s bar and QM insignia on the captain, and off we went to Strasbourg with me driving the Ford staff car and six of Tiny’s Troopers in the ambulance.”

  “‘Tiny’s Troopers’?” Hammersmith parroted.

  “As our security force is fondly known,” Cronley explained. “Making reference to their former first sergeant, Captain Dunwiddie, who for some unknown reason is known as Tiny.”

  Wallace smiled.

  Hammersmith thought bitterly: That figures. The big black guy was a first sergeant and now he’s a captain. And Major Hammersmith is now a master sergeant.

  Then he had a second thought: Maybe Greene knew that, and that’s what he was thinking when he said if I played my cards right, I could get my commission back. If this DCI can pin railroad tracks on a first sergeant, they can probably pin my gold leaf back on me.

  But that’s not what Wallace said.

  “So we go to the address that the captain had,” Finney went on, “and asked the woman who opened the door—we later found out she was Frau Stauffer—for Cousin Luther. She never heard of him until Freddy told her the captain was Luther’s cousin. Then he appeared.

  “He seemed very happy to meet his long-lost relative who had the black market goodies for him, and he seemed fascinated with the detachment of the Mobile Kitchen Renovation Company on its way to Salzburg to renovate kitchens.

  “We left him two boxes of goodies, and the captain told Cousin Luther that he would try to come back to see him, which also seemed to please him.

  “Something wasn’t right, and we all smelled it, so Freddy suggested we go see if the DST had anything on Cousin Luther . . .”

  “DST?” Ziegler interrupted.

  “Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire,” Finney said. “Sort of a Frog version of the CIC and the CID combined. Where we met Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin of the Strasbourg office of the DST. Who is one smart sonofabitch.”

  “Why do you say that?” Wallace asked.

  “Well, before we went to see him, we dropped the QM disguise. The captain and Hessinger put on triangles and the captain showed Fortin his CIC credentials.”

  “Cut to the chase, Al,” Cronley ordered.

  “It came out, after Fortin had played cute with us for a while, that he’d had people sitting on Cousin Luther’s house. And those people had told him about the 711th staff car and ambulance, so he’d called USFET and asked what it was. So Fortin asked if the captain could explain what he was doing in a vehicle with the markings of a nonexistent QM outfit.”

  “Meaning your clever idea is now known to USFET?” Hammersmith asked.

  “I asked him what USFET had told him,” Cronley said. “He told me that my secret was safe. So I showed him my DCI credentials, and he let me know he knew about the DCI, even when it had been formed. That told me Fortin was far more important than he wanted people to think. I think he’s a colonel, not a major.”

  “I understand that happens from time to time,” Wallace said.

  “So then he gets me Cousin Luther’s dossier,” Cronley said. “Which showed that shortly after the Germans came to Strasbourg, Luther joined the LVF—Légion des Volontaires Français. He was sent to Russia, won the Iron Cross, and got himself promoted to lieutenant. Later on, he was taken into the SS as a sturmführer—a captain.

  “There was a photo of Cousin Luther in his sturmführer’s uniform”—Cronley pointed to the top of his head—“skull-and-crossbones insignia and all. He didn’t mention that in his letter to my mother.

  “Anyway, Fortin said that Cousin Luther had next gone, near the end of the war, to the Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS Charlemagne. Fortin said he thought it was likely Luther knew the war was lost, deserted the SS, made his way home to Strasbourg, and went into hiding.”

  “Did this officer tell you why he gave you access to Herr Stauffer’s dossier?” Mannberg asked. “That seems a bit odd.”

  “I thought so, so I asked, and Fortin said he was hoping the DCI was working on the Odessa Organization. He said he was almost as interested in Odessa as he was in dealing with collaborators.”

  “Is Odessa for real?” Ziegler asked. “The story I’ve been getting is that it’s like those SS werewolves who were supposed to be around Obersalzberg prepared to die to the last man defending Hitler. Which was pure bullshit.”

  “Unfortunately, Herr Ziegler,” Gehlen said, “Die Organisation der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen—the Organization of former German SS officers—is real, is efficient, and, in my opinion, is very dangerous.”

  “That’s quite true,” Mannberg said. “But I wasn’t aware that the French were actively involved in doing anything about it. Did Commandant Fortin—”

  “I don’t know about the French being interested, Colonel,” Cronley interrupted, “but I believe Fortin is, and he explained why. And his explanation explains why I think he’s a lot more important than he wants people to think he is.”

  “And you’re going to explain to us that explanation, right?” Wallace said.

  “I would be crushed to think you were making fun of me, Major, sir.”

  “Perish the thought. Just get on with explaining the explanation, please, Captain Cronley.”

  “Certainly, sir. I am always happy to explain things to people who have trouble understanding things.”

  Hammersmith thought: The word is “sophomoric.”

  But everybody, including Gehlen, is smiling. My God!

  “You will be rewarded in heaven, Captain, if you do so,” Wallace said.

  “Okay. Fortin is an armored officer, which of course sets him above officers in lesser services . . .”

  “Okay, Jim. Enough,” Wallace said.

  “. . . who was a captain at Saumur, the French cavalry school, when the war started. Then he was at Montcornet with de Gaulle. Freddy told us that was the only battle the Germans lost in France in 1940—”

  “General Rommel,” Gehlen offered, “once told me, with admiration, that de Gaulle attacked with two hundred tanks and recaptured Caumont. And was stopped only when his tanks were taken out by Stukas.”

  Cronley nodded thoughtfully, then went on: �
�Fortin said that when de Gaulle got on a plane to England, de Gaulle took him along. That’s what they call having a friend in high places. During the war, Fortin said he served with Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division. He said he returned to Strasbourg with Leclerc, who left him there in charge of the DST.

  “Now, if I were a cynical man, which Major Wallace here has been urging me to be, I would wonder why a guy who was with de Gaulle at Montcornet, and fought with the 2nd Armored Division in Africa and then across Europe, was only a major.”

  “And what do you think is the case?” Mannberg asked.

  “Well, I think he’s probably a colonel, and that he’s doing something in Strasbourg for de Gaulle besides being the local CIC or CID guy.”

  “He also knows a lot more than you would expect,” Finney said.

  “For example?” Wallace asked.

  “He knew all about the DCI . . . that it was like three weeks old,” Finney said. “And he knew who General Greene is.”

  “So, what do you think Fortin is doing for de Gaulle, besides being the local CIC or CID guy?” Wallace asked.

  “I don’t have a clue. But I think I know why he’s personally interested in Odessa.”

  “Why?”

  “His family was in Strasbourg . . .” Cronley said.

  “And he picked up right away on the captain’s Strasbourg accent,” Finney said. “Which may have had something to do with the way he opened up to us.”

  “May I ask a question?” Hammersmith asked.

  “Shoot,” Cronley said.

  “I’m getting the feeling that you were all talking with this man in German.”

  Cronley nodded.

  Hammersmith said: “Hessinger is a German Jew. And you got your German from your mother.”

  “So how come I speak German?” Finney asked.

  Hammersmith nodded.

  “Tell him, Al,” Cronley said.

  “I grew up in Yorkville,” Finney said. “Upper East Side of Manhattan. Lots of Germans. My pals were Germans. I went—kindergarten up—to a German school. We went to a Lutheran church, services conducted in German. So when I turned eighteen and promptly got drafted and I told the Army I spoke German, they tested me, and then the SNAFU began—”

  “As another linguist, General,” Cronley put in, “let me translate. SNAFU means Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.”

  Gehlen gave one of his small smiles.

  “I was told that was FUBAR,” he said.

  “No, sir. That means Fucked Up Beyond All Repair.”

  “Thank you,” Gehlen said.

  “Go on, Al,” Cronley ordered.

  “So some guy comes to see me in basic training, flashes his CIC credentials—which having never seen them before, impressed hell out of me—and then asks, in German, how come I speak German, and says, ‘Answer in German.’

  “So I did. Then he tells me the CIC is looking for people who speak German to chase Nazis, and was I interested? I knew my other option was being sent overseas to work as a stevedore, or fix roads, et cetera, which is where the Army was assigning people with my complexion, so I told him I was really interested. So I’m off to Camp Holabird—”

  “You’re CIC?” Hammersmith blurted in surprise.

  “I was for a while, Jack,” Finney said.

  “What the hell do you mean, you were for a while?” Hammersmith asked.

  “Let him finish, Hammersmith,” Cronley ordered curtly.

  “And I’m about halfway through the course, they decided they needed people in Europe right away, so they gave me credentials and put me on a plane.”

  “Much the same happened to me, Hammersmith,” Cronley said. “I like to think the Holabird authorities recognized that Al and I were already so smart that further education would be a terrible waste of the CIC’s time and money.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Wallace exclaimed, smiling.

  “So I’m in a repple depple—the Tenth Replacement Depot—in Le Havre, and a CIC officer shows up and tells me he’s really glad to see me, they’re having a problem. They got word that the Communists are trying to cause trouble in the Negro units. And because the white officers aren’t too close to the black troops, they can’t get a handle on it.

  “So he says instead of looking for Nazis because I speak German, I am going to be sent to a Negro unit, undercover, which means as a private, to root out the Communists. I have visions of myself in the . . . I don’t know, the 711th Stevedore Battalion. I’m not that lucky. I get sent to Charley Company, 203rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, of ‘Hell on Wheels.’ The first sergeant there turns me over to a great big buck sergeant . . .”

  “By the name of Chauncey Dunwiddie,” Cronley furnished.

  Hammersmith wondered: Dunwiddie? Some relation to this black captain?

  “. . . who asks me what I know about destroying tanks—which is nothing—and then starts teaching me how to destroy tanks. I was into that school about five days when the Germans started to come through the Ardennes Forest.

  “And guess what outfit was ordered to hold in place while we tried to destroy German tanks?

  “Cutting to the chase, when the Battle of the Bulge was over, Charley Company was down to no officers and sixty-seven troopers, including Sergeant Dunwiddie, who was now first sergeant.”

  “And wearing the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts,” Cronley said. “And Finney, who in his undercover role as Private Finney, had been promoted to sergeant and awarded one each Bronze Star and Purple Heart.”

  Finney went on: “While the Bulge was going on, the CIC tried to contact me. When they couldn’t, they decided I’d been captured, and they sent my folks a telegram saying I was missing in action.

  “When they finally pulled Charley Company off the line, I went to Tiny and fessed up that I was CIC, and told him I was going to take off and go back to the CIC.”

  Dunwiddie picked up the story: “So I told Al . . .”

  Hammersmith wondered, incredulously: You were this sergeant, now first sergeant?

  “. . . by then we were pretty close, that I had learned Charley Company was about to be assigned to provide security for OSS Forward, and that I thought the smart thing to do was stick around until that happened. It would be smarter than wandering around France with nothing to prove he was CIC, that he’d probably get grabbed by the MPs as a deserter. He asked how I knew Charley Company was going to go guard the OSS, and I told him.”

  “And how the hell did you know?” Hammersmith blurted.

  Dunwiddie looked at Hammersmith for a moment before saying, “General White told me.”

  “The commanding general of the 2nd Armored Division personally told you, a first sergeant, where your unit was to be assigned?” Hammersmith challenged.

  “Yes, he did,” Dunwiddie said.

  “What happened, Hammersmith,” Wallace said, “was that when SHAEF ordered White to come up with a company to be put on indefinite temporary duty with the OSS, he looked at the morning reports to see which company he could best spare. He came on Charley Company, which was down to zero officers and sixty-seven EM, and was being temporarily commanded by its first sergeant.

  “And then he noticed the first sergeant’s name—Chauncey L. Dunwiddie is not a common name—so he got on the horn and called First Sergeant Dunwiddie and learned he was indeed his godson. General White and Tiny’s father, Colonel Dunwiddie, are Norwich classmates—class of ’20. First Sergeant Dunwiddie was supposed to be ’45, but he resigned from Norwich and enlisted because he was afraid the war would be over before he got in it.

  “General White then got on the horn again and tried to call Bob Mattingly at OSS Forward, to tell him who was commanding the company he was sending him. Mattingly was off somewhere, protecting the OSS from the Army, so I took the call.

  “Tiny reported to me at OSS Forward, and as soon
as I’d told him what was going to be expected of Charley Company, he told me one of his sergeants had ‘an unusual personnel problem.’ Enter Al.

  “I got on the horn to General Greene, and asked him about CIC Special Agent Finney. Greene said he thought he was MIA, either dead or a POW. I told him he was alive and well and had gotten himself promoted to sergeant and had picked up a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star while looking for Communist agitators during the Battle of the Bulge . . .”

  “Which resulted,” Finney put in, smiling, “in my dad and mother getting three more telegrams, one saying I had been ‘recovered,’ a second saying I had the Bronze Star, and a third saying I had been wounded in action but was expected to recover. They were going crazy.”

  “. . . and how I had found this out,” Wallace continued. “Then I asked Greene what he wanted me to do with Al. After thinking it over for maybe ten seconds, he said something to the effect that if he was such a lousy CIC agent that he couldn’t find Communist agitators in a unit commanded by the son of an old pal, he probably couldn’t find them anywhere, so why didn’t I just keep him. ‘And tell Tiny to say hello to his dad.’

  “A couple of days later, orders came down transferring Al to the OSS, and we’ve been stuck with him since.”

  “Why don’t we get back to why Jim thinks Commandant Fortin is interested in Odessa?” General Gehlen asked.

  “Fortin told us, sir,” Finney said, “that when the Germans—the SS—learned that he was in England with de Gaulle—they and the Milice, their French assistants—arrested Fortin’s mother, wife, and two young children for interrogation. When that was over, they threw their bodies in the Rhine.

  “Fortin told us the only reason he hadn’t arrested Luther Stauffer and had him tried as a collaborator was that he had become convinced that Stauffer was involved with Odessa, and that breaking that up and catching the people involved was more important to him than putting Stauffer in jail.”

  “And then he asked,” Cronley said, “how I would feel about using Al to get inside Odessa. What he proposed was that Al return, alone, with more PX goody packages, and tell Cousin Luther he was en route to Salzburg. Cousin Luther would then ask a favor, a small favor—something like giving the packages to someone in Salzburg, or someplace else over the border. Maybe he’d offer to pay him. Anything that would put Al on the slippery slope.”