“That would be tantamount to committing suicide,” Gehlen said.
“I feel duty bound to see my people,” von Wachtstein said. “To see what I can do for them.”
“I can only infer that you have absolutely no idea what the situation is in Soviet-occupied Germany,” Gehlen said.
“Sir, that’s what I have to find out,” von Wachtstein said.
“Tell him, please, General Gehlen,” Mattingly said.
Gehlen looked at Mattingly, obviously collecting his thoughts.
“Why don’t you start with what happened to von Stauffenberg?” Mattingly suggested. “To the von Stauffenbergs? And his father? I think everyone would profit from knowing.”
General Gehlen thought it over for a long moment.
[TWO]
Finally, after nodding softly, then clearing his throat, General Gehlen somberly began: “When Colonel Claus Graf von Stauffenberg was released from hospital in Munich after recovering from the grievous wounds he suffered when his car was strafed in Tunisia—he lost an eye, his right hand, and two fingers of his left hand—he was assigned to the staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the OKW.”
Frade and Dooley locked eyes for a moment.
“More precisely,” Gehlen continued,” he became part of that relatively small number of officers, some senior—Generalleutnant Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein, for example—and some relatively junior, who had frequent access to Hitler, especially when Hitler was at his East Prussian command post, Wolfsschanze.
“On July twentieth of last year, von Stauffenberg left a bomb in a briefcase under the map table in a small outside building, the Lagebarracke—in other words, not in the Führer Bunker—set the timer, and found an excuse to leave the building.
“He waited until he heard the bomb detonate, then flew to Berlin in a small Heinkel aircraft. He and his adjutant then went to the OKW building on Bendler Strasse, where they learned that while some aspects of the coup had been successful—in Paris, General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, one of the conspirators, had already arrested most SS officers in the city—the most important facet, the death of Hitler, had not been realized.
“General Friedrich Fromm, one of the conspirators, telephoned Wolfsschanze and spoke with Field Marshal Keitel, who told him Hitler was alive. Fromm, thinking to save his own neck, ordered the arrest of fellow conspirators General Friedrich Olbricht and von Stauffenberg. Instead, they arrested him and locked him in his office.
“Himmler, meanwhile, had contacted Major Otto Ernst Remer, who commanded the Wachbataillon Grossdeutschland in Berlin, told him of the failed assassination attempt, told him that he was now a colonel by order of the Führer, and ordered him to, quote, deal with the traitors at Bendler Strasse, end quote.
“Colonel Remer responded to his orders with enthusiasm. He and his men arrived at Bendler Strasse around twenty-two hundred hours and started shooting. Colonel von Stauffenberg was wounded in the left arm. The conspirators had no choice but to surrender and did so.
“General Fromm, still trying to save his own skin, promptly convened a summary court-martial, which promptly found von Stauffenberg, Olbricht, Mertz, Colonel-General Ludwig Beck, and Lieutenant Werner von Haeften guilty of high treason and ordered their execution.
“Shortly after midnight, they were led, one by one, before a stack of sandbags in the parking lot and executed by SS submachine-gun fire. Just before his executioners fired, von Stauffenberg shouted, ‘Long live our holy Germany.’”
“My God!” von Wachtstein said.
“In a sense, Graf von Wachtstein, they were fortunate,” Gehlen said.
Clete noticed that Gehlen had just called von Wachtstein “Graf” and then remembered he had done so before.
“Fortunate?” Delgano asked incredulously.
“The SS immediately began to arrest anyone suspected of being involved,” Gehlen went on. “The total was approximately seven thousand people. They missed some of the guilty—”
“Including General Reinhard Gehlen,” Mattingly interjected dryly.
“—and arrested many people who were completely innocent,” Gehlen went on as if he hadn’t heard Mattingly’s comment. “Accused officers were denied courts-martial and tried before the Volksgerichthof, whose chief judge was a man named Roland Freisler. Freisler permitted the accused no defense, and usually had the accused standing before the court in uniforms stripped of all insignia, buttons, belts, and braces. They had to try to hold their trousers up with their hands. When Freisler screamed at them to stand to attention, the trousers of course fell down and the accused faced the court in their underdrawers. Not a single person brought before the Volksgerichthof—there were two thousand—was acquitted.
“On August 10, 1944, three weeks or so after the bomb failed to eliminate Hitler, Graf von Stauffenberg’s brother, Berthold, Count von Schulenberg, and three others—including Generalleutnant Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein—were tried and convicted of high treason and hung with despicable cruelty that afternoon in the execution hut in Berlin-Ploetzensee.”
“What does that mean, General?” Delgano asked. “‘Despicable cruelty’?”
Clete thought: For God’s sake, Gehlen, don’t answer that!
He glanced at Mattingly, whose face showed he was thinking the same thing.
“They were taken to the execution hut in an inner courtyard of the building,” Gehlen went on matter-of-factly, “where they were stripped of the clothing they had been wearing since their arrest. Their hands and feet were bound. Wire—something like piano wire—was looped around their necks, then around hooks—something like the hooks one sees in a butcher’s shop—on the wall.
“They then were strangled by their own weight. They took two or three minutes to lose consciousness, whereupon they were revived and the strangulation process begun again. This was repeated four or five times until death finally occurred.”
Clete looked at Peter’s face. It was white and contorted.
You didn’t have to get into the fucking details, you sonofabitch!
“The hangings—strangulations?—were filmed by SS motion picture photographers at the request of Hitler, who wished to see them. I understand he has watched the films over and over.
“All properties of the conspirators and their relatives were confiscated. Just about everybody in the von Stauffenberg family was immediately arrested,” Gehlen went on. “Von Stauffenberg’s mother, Caroline, was in solitary confinement from July 23, 1944, until the end of the war. Claus von Stauffenberg’s widow, Nina, was held in the Alexanderplatz prison in Berlin. She gave birth there, a daughter named Konstanze, in January 1945—”
“Where is Nina—the countess—now?” von Wachtstein interrupted.
“May I suggest, Graf von Wachtstein, that you hold your questions until I finish?”
“Excuse me,” von Wachtstein said.
“The third brother, Alexander von Stauffenberg, was brought back from Athens to Berlin. Even when it became apparent that he was not involved in the conspiracy, he was nevertheless arrested and held in various concentration camps.
“Von Stauffenberg’s cousin Caesar von Hofacker was condemned to death on August thirtieth but kept alive for interrogation—which was unsuccessful—about Rommel’s and Speidel’s involvement in the conspiracy, after which, on December 20, 1944, he was executed in the manner I described.
“There are other details, but I think I have covered pretty much everything. You had questions, Herr Graf?”
“Where is the Countess von Stauffenberg now? Claus’s widow, Nina?” von Wachtstein asked.
“We know only that she escaped both the SS mass execution of the prisoners in Alexanderplatz prison as the Russians drew close and the arrest of the prisoners still living by the Russians when they took the prison. We can only presume—”
“The von Stauffenbergs have a house in Zehlendorf,” von Wachtstein said. “Perhaps she is trying to get there.”
“Had a house, Herr
Graf,” Gehlen said. “As I said before, all von Stauffenberg property—all the property of all the conspirators, including that of your late father, Herr Graf, was seized by the Third Reich.”
He paused to let that sink in.
“The property of the late Admiral Canaris was also seized,” Gehlen went on. “His house in Zehlendorf has been requisitioned by General White for the use of the OSS.”
“General White, von Wachtstein,” Mattingly offered, “is doing what he can to locate Countess von Stauffenberg and the baby. If they can be found, White will find them. When that happens, she will be taken to the Canaris house and placed under the protection of the OSS.”
“How is the OSS going to protect her?” Frade asked. “We have people in Berlin?”
“Did you see Master Sergeant Dunwiddie when we arrived here?” Mattingly said. “That huge black man they call ‘Tiny’? He was posting the guard.”
Frade nodded.
“He and eight of his men, most of them at least as large as Tiny, will be on the C-54 with me tomorrow,” Mattingly said. “Tiny is a very interesting man. His great-grandfather charged up San Juan Hill in Cuba with the Tenth Cavalry. Given the slightest chance, Tiny will tell you the Tenth made it up the hill before Colonel Teddy Roosevelt’s First Volunteer Cavalry did.”
Gehlen’s face showed that he could have done without the history lesson.
“Is there anything else you’d like to know, Herr Graf?” Gehlen asked.
Von Wachtstein seemed to be struggling to find his voice.
Finally, he did, and asked calmly, “General, do you know what
happened to the remains? I’d like to take my father’s body to Schloss Wachtstein.”
“Weren’t you listening, Herr Graf, when I told you that the Schloss—all of your land, all your holdings—have been seized?” Gehlen said. “Let me carry that a little further: When the Soviets took the castle—I presume you know it was being used as a recovery hospital for amputees—”
“I knew that, General. I was there.”
“—they executed the patients who had not been in condition to leave their beds and flee. The nurses and the doctors who had remained behind to treat them were sent to Russia. After, of course, the nurses had been repeatedly raped.”
“With respect, Herr General, my question was regarding the location of my father’s remains.”
“If you had been in the castle when the Russians took it, Herr Graf, and they learned who you were, you would have been hung by your ankles and your epidermis would have been cut from your body. Your skinned remains would have been left hanging so that the people in the village would get the message that the regime of the aristocracy was over and that the Red Army was in charge.”
“They actually skinned people alive?” Clete asked incredulously.
“SS officers and members of the nobility,” Mattingly said. “I’ve seen—what?—maybe twenty confirmed reports.”
“And my father’s remains, Herr General? What can you tell me?” von Wachtstein asked evenly.
“The best information I have, Herr Graf, is that they were taken to the Invalidenfriedhof cemetery and placed in an unmarked pit. They were then burned, some caustic added to speed decomposition, and then, when there were perhaps a hundred corpses in the pit, it was closed. The reasoning of the SS was that the more corpses in the grave, the harder it would be to identify any individual body if there was later an attempt at exhumation.”
After a long moment, von Wachtstein softly said, “Thank you, Herr General.”
There was silence in the room. People stared straight ahead, at their hands, at the ceiling, anywhere but at von Wachtstein.
Suddenly, Peter got to his feet and marched to the bar. He stood over it, supporting himself on both arms, his head lowered.
Frade got up and went toward him. Before he reached the bar, Dooley got up and followed him.
The three stood side by side at the bar, Dooley and Frade erect, von Wachtstein still leaning on it.
After a very long moment, von Wachtstein said, without looking at either Frade or Dooley, or even raising his head, “I would really like to have a drink. But if we are flying to Berlin in the morning, I suppose that’s not a very good idea.”
“Colonel Dooley,” Frade said, “if you would be good enough to set brandy snifters on the bar, I will pour that Rémy Martin I see.”
Frade poured three-quarters of an inch of cognac into each glass.
“Hansel,” Frade said, and after a moment when von Wachtstein raised his head to look at him, Frade held up his glass and proclaimed, “To a fellow warrior I never had the privilege to know: Generalleutnant Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein.”
Von Wachtstein pushed himself erect and looked first at Clete and then at Dooley. Then he picked up his brandy snifter and lifted it.
“And since we get only one of these,” Frade said, “I suppose we better include your pal von Stauffenberg in those warriors we never got to know.”
“Yeah,” Dooley said.
“My father would have liked both of you,” von Wachtstein said. “But I’m not so sure about Claus. He was a Swabian, and they’re even stuffier than Prussians. I always had the feeling Claus thought fighter pilots should be kept with the other animals in the stables.”
He touched the rim of his glass to theirs, and then—simultaneously, as if someone had barked the command Drink!—all three raised their glasses to their mouths and drained them.
When they started to return to the table, they saw that everyone at it was standing at attention.
[THREE]
Transient Officers’ Quarters Rhein-Main Air Base Frankfurt am Main, Germany 2305 19 May 1945
Colonel Mattingly, saying that he wanted to check on what had happened at the Russian roadblock at Helmstedt on the autobahn, dropped Frade, von Wachtstein, Stein, Boltitz, and Enrico at the door to the transient officers’ quarters, then got behind the wheel of the Horch.
Accustomed to the low-range gears, he pressed heavily on the accelerator as he let out the clutch. The huge Horch, its tires squealing, jumped into motion.
There was a small foyer in the building. There was a window in one wall—now closed by a roll-down metal curtain—behind which a desk clerk had once presided. The room was now sparsely furnished with a small table—on which sat a telephone—and two small wooden armchairs.
Both chairs were occupied by men who rose to their feet when Frade and the others walked in.
They were wearing U.S. Army officer Class A uniforms, a green tunic and pink trousers. Clete first noticed there was no insignia of rank on the epaulets, and that the lapels held only the gold letters U.S. but no branch insignia below that.
Something about those gold letters triggered curiosity in Clete’s brain. Mattingly, saying they would need them in Berlin, had furnished everybody—from an astonishingly full supply room—with “Officer equivalent civilian employee uniforms” just before they had left Schlosshotel Kronberg. The green tunics had small embroidered insignia—the letters U.S. within a triangle within a square sewn to the lapels, and a larger version of that insignia sewn to the right shoulder. They were all stuffed into a U.S. Army duffel bag, which Enrico now carried hanging from his shoulder.
Why do I think the Secret Service has appeared?
“Which one of you is Cletus H. Frade?” one of the men demanded.
Whatever response he expected, he didn’t get it. Instead, he found himself looking at the muzzle of Enrico’s Remington Model 11 twelve-gauge riot gun and then listening to the metallic chunk the weapon made as a double-ought buckshot shotgun shell was chambered.
“Secret Service! Secret Service!” the man said excitedly.
“What?”
“We are special agents of the United States Secret Service!”
“Can you prove it?”
“I have credentials in my pocket.”
“Get them. Slowly,” Frade ordered, and then pointed at the second man. “And while he’s
doing that, you drop to your knees and then lock your hands behind your head.”
The man, mingled concern and disbelief on his face, hesitated.
Frade snapped, “Are you deaf?”
The man dropped to his knees. The first man carefully took a small leather folder from his breast pocket and slowly offered it to Frade.
Frade examined it carefully, then tossed it to Stein.
“Secret Service, huh? What the hell are you doing in Germany? I thought what you people did was chase counterfeiters.”
“We are on a special mission for Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau,” the first special agent said.
“Looking for German counterfeiters?” Frade asked incredulously.
“Looking for German Nazis,” the man said.
“Well, they shouldn’t be hard to find,” Frade said. “There’s a bunch of them in Germany.”
“These credentials appear bona fide, Commander,” Stein said.
“Show them to von Wachtstein,” Clete ordered.
“Commander?” the man on his knees asked.
“I don’t recall giving you permission to ask questions,” Frade said, and then asked, “Are you armed?”
“Yes, of course we’re armed,” the first special agent said.
“Well, then, very slowly, take whatever you’re carrying from its holster, lay it on the floor, and then step away.”
“For God’s sake, Colonel Frade, I just showed you proof that we’re special agents of the United States Secret Service!” the first man said.
He had regained some—but by no means all—of his composure.
“Weapons on the ground, please,” Frade ordered. “When you’ve done that, we’ll see if we can make some sense of this.”
Each special agent produced a Smith & Wesson revolver and laid it on the floor, then backed away from it. The special agent on his knees did so with more than a little difficulty—it is difficult to back up when one is on one’s knees—but finally managed to put six feet between him and his pistol.
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