Cronley’s car was passed into the Compound without trouble after Max Ostrowski, who was driving, flashed his credentials at the sergeant in charge of the striped-pole barrier across the road.
And then they reached the building that housed the Office of the Chief United States Prosecutor. Getting into the building required that they each show identification. There, the trouble began.
Ginger had no identification besides her passport. She had thrown her Military Dependent identification card atop her husband’s casket as it was lowered into the ground.
After a good fifteen minutes, Kenneth Brewster marched out of the building. Following him was a motherly looking woman in her thirties, a nurse, upon whose uniform gleamed the silver oak leaves of a lieutenant colonel.
“What’s the holdup?” Brewster demanded, somewhat imperiously, and then without waiting for a reply gestured for the nurse to go to Ginger, who now was holding the baby.
She handed over Baby Bruce more than a little reluctantly, then everyone walked into the building, where they found Justice Jackson waiting for them.
Jackson led them to his conference room door, then said, “Ken, put someone on your desk to make sure we’re not disturbed for any, repeat, any reason.”
“Yes, Mr. Justice.”
* * *
—
“Pencil sharpened, Mrs. Rogers?” Jackson asked.
Mrs. Lorraine Rogers, a widow in her early fifties, wore a conservative gray sweater and dark woolen skirt. Her shoulder-length red hair, brushed tight against the scalp, had been pulled into a ponytail.
“Yes, Mr. Justice,” she said as she uncovered her Stenotype machine.
“Okay, let’s get started. This meeting of the Tribunal Prison Escape Committee is convened as of seven forty-five on the morning of April fifteenth, 1946, in the office of the U.S. Prosecutor in the International Tribunal Compound in Nuremberg, Germany. All proceedings, including the transcript of proceedings, will be classified Top Secret–Presidential.
“Present are the undersigned: Mr. Kenneth Brewster of my office; Colonel Mortimer S. Cohen, chief of U.S. Counterintelligence for the Tribunal; Colonel James T. Rasberry, commanding officer of the Twenty-sixth Infantry Regiment; and Captains James D. Cronley Jr., Thomas Winters, and Chauncey Dunwiddie of the Directorate of Central Intelligence. Also present are: Father Jack McGrath, Max Ostrowski of the DCI, Mrs. Virginia Moriarty, and others selected by Captain Cronley to assist in the recapture of the escaped prisoners—to wit, former SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg and SS-Generalmajor Wilhelm Burgdorf.
“Colonel Cohen, will you please recount what happened here on or about April fifth of this year?”
“Yes, sir,” Cohen said, cleared his throat, then began. “At approximately oh-six-ten on the sixth, I received a telephone call from Lieutenant Lewis J. Feller, telling me there had possibly been an escape from the Tribunal Prison.”
“Who is Lieutenant Feller?” Jackson said.
“An officer of the Twenty-sixth Infantry, which is charged with guarding the Tribunal Prison. He had, he said, just come on duty as officer of the day when he found the on-duty OD, the sergeant of the guard, and maybe seven soldiers, sprawled unconscious in the guard shack just outside the prison cellblock. I asked him if he had notified Colonel Rasberry. He said he had.
“So, I put my pants on and went to the prison. When I got there, Rasberry told me he had run a bed check and found more soldiers unconscious—and that Burgdorf and von Dietelburg were missing.”
“These were prisoners awaiting trial?”
“Yes, sir,” Colonel Cohen said.
“Do you know, from personal knowledge, how they came to be incarcerated in the Tribunal Prison?”
“Yes, sir. Super Spook and company arrested them in Vienna and flew them to Nuremberg.”
“And, for the record, Super Spook is?”
“Captain Cronley, sir.”
“Let the record show,” Jackson said, “that I started calling Captain Cronley Super Spook following his outstanding intelligence efforts in the past. The fact that other intelligence officers have taken up referring to him by that nickname shows they share my admiration of his performance.” He paused to allow Mrs. Rogers time to record all that, then went on. “Now, from your personal knowledge, Colonel Cohen, was Cronley made aware of these events at the prison?”
“No, sir, he was not.”
“Again, from your personal knowledge, Colonel, why wasn’t he?”
“He was in Argentina, sir. I had heard that as rumor, and you later confirmed it.”
“Had Captain Cronley not been in Argentina, would he have been notified, and would he have participated in your subsequent investigation?”
“Absolutely. He’s thoroughly familiar with the prison. Not only that, but with the assistance of Super Spook Junior—”
“Does Super Spook Junior have a name?”
“Yes, sir. Captain Cronley calls him Casey—initial K, initial C—Wagner.”
“And Casey Wagner is?”
“A DCI agent, sir.”
“And he is called Super Spook Junior why?”
“Well,” Colonel Cohen said, “he works with Captain Cronley. He’s also very young.”
“How young?”
“I believe he’s eighteen, sir.”
“And he’s an agent of DCI? Isn’t that a little unusual?”
“Yes, sir, it is. But he is a very unusual young man. Cronley took him into the DCI after Wagner had determined how Odessa was getting Nazis on the run over the Franco–German border and then to Spain. We bagged two really bad Odessa Nazis—”
“For the record, would you please define ‘Odessa’?”
“Organisation Der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen. In English, that’s Organization of Former SS Personnel. I think it’s forty percent probable that they’re involved in this prison break.”
“And the Odessa Nazis bagged because of this young man Wagner were whom?”
“Former SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter and his former deputy, Standartenführer Oskar Müller. Among other things, what we wanted them for was the massacre of slave laborers at Peenemünde, the German rocket laboratories.”
“Colonel Cohen,” Cronley said, “you said it was forty percent probable that Odessa was involved in this break. Who else is suspect?”
“Let’s not go down that road right now,” Jackson said.
Cohen ignored him, and said, “The NKGB. That’s obvious. But I have a gut feeling that the AVO may be involved. That’s the—”
“Államvédelmi Osztálya, acronym AVO,” Cronley provided. “The Russian-controlled Secret Police in Hungary. Its chief is a real sonofabitch, Gábor Péter. He murdered Niedermeyer’s wife, Karol—”
“This escape was a professional operation,” Cohen interrupted Cronley while looking at Justice Jackson. “The AVO is very professional. Many of its members—including Gábor Péter—go back to the Nazi Arrow organization, which was run by the SS. My scenario here is that if the NKGB wanted people out of the Tribunal Prison, (a) they have been planning this for some time, (b) Cronley’s pal Ivan Serov figured that not only is the AVO very good but if something went wrong, better the AVO take the rap, not the NKGB, and (c) that the operation was designed to spring somebody else—that somebody-else list is long—not Burgdorf and von Dietelburg, who had been there only a short time. But when they learned that those two were in the prison, they decided they wanted them more than anyone on the somebody-else list.”
There was a lot to consider, and no one said anything. It was Cronley who broke the silence.
“That scenario makes a lot of sense.”
“Cronley’s pal Ivan Serov?” Jackson asked of Cohen.
“Colonel of State Security Ivan Serov, first deputy to Commissar of State Security Nikolaevich Merkulov. Super Spook dealt wit
h him when the NKGB had Colonel Mattingly and wanted to swap him for Polkóvnik Sergei Likharev and family.”
“Identify those people, please,” Jackson said.
“Super Spook turned Colonel Likharev—who we caught trying to sneak out of the DCI Pullach Compound—by promising to get his family out of Russia and then did. The Likharevs went to Argentina.”
“Where,” Cronley put in, “he has proved to be a very good asset regarding the NKGB. He used to work as Ivan’s deputy.”
“Let’s get back to what happened here,” Jackson said. “You said when you went to the prison you found the guards were unconscious?”
“Yes, sir,” Colonel Cohen said. “They’d been gassed.”
“How do you know that? With what?”
“My people found a little puddle of brown liquid outside the entrance to the prison. It had solidified. They think that it’s leakage from a gas tank. Their scenario is, the tank possibly was put on the ground, with a tube to carry the gas between the door and its sill, or maybe some kind of device to spray it in the air. Then its valve was opened. When enough time had passed to knock out the guards on the other side of the door, they entered the prison cellblock itself and knocked out the guards there, who are unarmed, by spraying the gas directly in their faces.
“Sort of strengthening this scenario is the fact that the main I.G. Farben gas plant in Hungary, which made the Zyklon B that was used in the death camps, and where they still manufacture various gases and probably still does Zyklon B, had a laboratory in which other gases were developed.
“They were tested at Treblinka, as well as other concentration camps, including those in Hungary. When the Germans were first allied with Hungary, and later took it over completely, the Arrow organization got access to and used Zyklon B and other gases to murder maybe a half-million people.
“Rephrasing it, my scenario, which may be far-fetched, is (a) that the AVO staged the prison break, (b) that it was intended to free somebody other than Burgdorf and von Dietelburg, and (c) that they used some kind of gas—something pretty sophisticated—to knock out, but intentionally not kill, the guards. Thirty-odd dead Americans would have caused an outrage that they didn’t need.”
“I don’t think it’s far-fetched,” Colonel Rasberry said. “What impressed me was the professionalism of the break. I don’t think Serov has the capability to do what was done.”
“Can you amplify that, Colonel?” Jackson asked.
“They entered the Tribunal Compound in an Army ambulance,” Rasberry said. “We finally found out that it was stolen six weeks before the escape from the Fifty-seventh Field Hospital in Giessen, which is a long way from here. They were wearing U.S. Army uniforms and they spoke English. They left the Compound the same way—I mean, they had a Trip Ticket to show my people.
“The ambulance was found in the Rhine-Main–Danube Canal five days after the break, which suggests they drove directly there, where others must’ve waited, probably with clothing and counterfeit Kennkarten for Burgdorf and von Dietelburg. The ambulance was in a sort of pool, a lake, on the canal, twenty feet under. It was found by accident—something fell off a barge and the crew was looking for it. If that hadn’t happened, we’d probably never have learned what happened to the ambulance.”
“For the record, please define Kennkarten,” Jackson said.
“German identity documents.”
“Any questions, Super Spook?” Jackson asked.
“No, sir.”
“Any suggestions on what we should do next?”
“Colonel Cohen,” Cronley asked, “was Casey Wagner involved in your interrogations of the people, German and American?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And?”
“He came up with the scenario that they had driven the ambulance to a rendezvous point somewhere, either in a forest or near water, and that we should start by finding the ambulance. So, we asked General White to have the Constabulary start looking for it. Which they did, and they came up with nothing.”
“I suggest, sir,” Cronley said, looking at Justice Jackson, “that our only option is to re-interrogate the guards, the German personnel in the prison, and the prisoners. Maybe if we can determine who the AVO was originally intending to break out—”
“You think it was the AVO?” Jackson interrupted.
“Yes, sir. Because of their skill, and because Ivan Serov is a master of covering his ass . . . Sorry . . . And I’d like Wagner to be there. Where is he?”
“In Sonthofen with General White,” Cohen said, then chuckled. “General White is serving as the ad hoc chairman of the German branch of Norwich University’s Scholarship Committee.”
“What’s that all about?”
“The general thinks that Sergeant—excuse me, Special Agent—Wagner would make a fine career officer and the way to do that is for him to graduate from Norwich.”
“And Norwich is the one in Vermont?” Jackson asked.
“Yes, sir, the oldest private military academy. Its graduates are commissioned into the Regular Army the same day as West Point graduates, so they start off with the same date of rank. By coincidence, I’m sure, General White is a 1920 graduate of Norwich. I’ll call over there and let them know we need Wagner here.”
“Are there any objections to Cronley’s ideas how we should proceed?” Jackson asked.
There were none.
“So ordered. This meeting of the Prison Escape Committee is concluded at eight fifty-three on the morning of April fourteenth, 1946,” Jackson said, and then went on. “Mrs. Rogers, as your first priority please type up your notes in disposition form, then have Ken look at them, and, when he has, get on the SIGABA and send it ‘Eyes Only the President’ to the White House.”
“Yes, sir. Shall I copy to Admiral Souers?”
“No. I know the President well enough to know that as soon as he reads the SIGABA, he’ll send for the admiral to get his take on it.”
“Yes, sir,” Mrs. Rodgers said, and left the conference room.
“I would like to make amends to Mrs. Moriarty,” Justice Jackson said.
“Sir?” Cohen asked.
“Ginger, I gave you ten minutes to eat your breakfast and then I took your baby away from you. So, what I’m going to suggest is that you, your baby, and Father McGrath be my guests for lunch. Give us a little break, so to speak. And I really want to hear what Father McGrath thinks of Himmler’s new religion. How about twelve-thirty hours at the Farber Palast? Can you arrange that, Jim?”
“Consider it done, sir,” Cronley said.
“You are also invited, of course. You, Dunwiddie, and Ostrowski.”
III
[ONE]
The Dining Room, Farber Palast
Stein, near Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1330 15 April 1946
A waiter delivered two bottles of Veuve Clicquot champagne to the table.
“With the compliments, meine Dame und Herren, of Oberst Serov.”
As a second waiter placed champagne flutes before everybody, Cronley saw Serov sitting at the bar, raising a flute toward their table.
Cronley gestured to him to come over.
“What are you up to, Jim?” Justice Jackson asked.
“I respectfully suggest, sir,” Cronley said, “that the question is, what is Serov up to?”
“Point taken,” Jackson said, smiling.
Serov, wearing the dress uniform of an infantry colonel, approached the table.
“Mr. Justice,” he said. “How nice to see you again, sir.”
“Colonel,” Jackson said.
“Pull up a chair, Ivan,” Cronley said, “and tell us what you expect to get for your bottles of bubbly.”
“A moment of your time,” Serov replied. “First, to welcome you back from Argentina. And, second, to as
k how the inquiry into the escape is going.”
So, Serov knows where I was?
No surprise.
“I don’t know how that Argentina rumor got started,” Cronley said. “And this is not the place to discuss the escape.”
Serov didn’t reply, instead turning to the waiter and telling him to bring his open bottle of champagne to the table.
“Someone once said, ‘There is no such thing as too much money or champagne,’” Serov said. “Are you going to introduce me to your friends?”
“Ginger, Father McGrath, when you get home you can dazzle people by reporting that you met a very senior officer of the NKGB. This is Colonel Ivan Serov, first deputy to Commissar of State Security Nikolaevich Merkulov.”
“I thought I told you, James, that is in the past. I am now back in my beloved infantry, serving as adviser to the Soviet chief prosecutor to the Tribunal. I speak English, he doesn’t.”
Serov turned to McGrath.
“Father, it is a pleasure to meet you. But James hasn’t given me the proper name of this lovely lady.”
“This is Mrs. Moriarty,” McGrath said, “a friend of the family.”
“And the widow of the late Lieutenant Bruce Moriarty,” Cronley said, an edge to his tone.
Serov turned to Ginger.
“I heard, of course, about your husband, Mrs. Moriarty. A tragedy. My condolences.”
It wasn’t a tragedy, Ivan, Cronley thought. It was an assassination.
And I’m just about convinced—not sure, but just about convinced—that you were behind it.
“I know how it is to lose someone,” Serov went on, “to lose one’s life companion . . .”
And where are you going now with this, you bastard?
“. . . I recently lost my Rozalina. On March seventeen. Not quite a month ago.”
The Enemy of My Enemy Page 6