The Enemy of My Enemy

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I’ll drive the car,” Williams said.

  “Why would you want to do that?” Switzer asked.

  “Boss, I know you’re skeptical, but I think Colonel Cohen is onto something, and I don’t want to remember in a couple of years—or maybe even next Friday—that I turned down a chance to be in on it.”

  “Understood,” Switzer said, nodding.

  “What I’d like to do, then,” Cohen said, “is send at least two guys over to the Am Zoo.”

  “I think we have to wait until we hear from Serov,” Cronley said.

  Cohen met his eyes and, after a pause, said, “I think you’re right.”

  “And while we’re waiting, I’ll summon the reinforcements,” Williams said. “Where’s the secure phone?”

  * * *

  —

  They didn’t have to wait long. At 1215, there came a knock at the front door of the safe house. A scrawny, middle-aged German on a bicycle handed the plainclothes DCI agent who answered the door an envelope. It bore no return address. There was only block lettering handwritten in black ink, the penmanship impeccable: HERR J. CRONLEY.

  The agent delivered it to Cronley, and, when he opened it, he found it contained a plain sheet of paper with more block lettering: KEMPINSKI BRISTOL HOTEL BAR, KURFÜRSTENDAMM 25 1300-1430.

  It was unsigned. But there was no question in Cronley’s mind that it came from Ivan Serov.

  [FOUR]

  Kempinski Bristol Hotel

  Kurfürstendamm 25

  Berlin, International Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1350 20 April 1946

  Serov, wearing the uniform of an NKGB general officer, was sitting at a booth in the bar with another man, who was wearing the uniform of an NKGB colonel. Cronley recognized him as Sergei Alekseevich. He had met him while negotiating with Serov to get the kidnapped Colonel Mattingly back from the NKGB. Alekseevich then had been wearing the uniform of an NKGB major.

  “What a pleasant surprise!” Cronley said, in German, as he walked up to the booth.

  He sat down—without being invited and without shaking Serov’s outstretched hand—and switched to English. “How they hanging, Sergei?”

  After a bit, Alekseevich grunted, “Herr Cronley.”

  “You came alone,” Serov said.

  “Not exactly, Ivan. Everybody but Colonel Cohen is in the lobby, waiting to hear what’s going on with you.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Father J-for-Jack McGrath, Max Ostrowski, and Lieutenant Colonel Frank Williams. Plus, of course, Ginger and the baby.”

  “Who is this Colonel Williams?”

  “I’m surprised you don’t know. More than once I thought I’d been reliably informed that the NKGB knew all.”

  That earned him a glare from Serov.

  Cronley went on. “Actually, he’s a lieutenant colonel. He’s number two in Berlin CIC.”

  “Sergei,” Serov ordered, “go to the maître d’hôtel, tell them we have unexpected guests, and then ask James’s people to join you in the dining room. I need a moment alone with James.”

  Alekseevich stood up, acknowledged the order with a curt nod of his head, and left the bar.

  “I have two tidbits of new information,” Serov then said. “Burgdorf and von Dietelburg have escaped from the AVO.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “What is it you’re always saying, James? Money talks? Colonel Alekseevich was able to get the Hungarians to turn them loose with a remarkably small gift.”

  “What the hell was the purpose of turning them loose?”

  “Both were prepared to die as martyrs to the Church of Saint Heinrich the Divine rather than give up Odessa. I confess I was sorely tempted to let them, but then I thought they just might interpret getting free of AVO as an act of God and run right to Odessa, or at least to some high-ranking member of Odessa.”

  “You are a really devious bastard, Ivan. I say that with all due admiration.”

  “They sneaked across the Hungarian border into Austria and then across the Austrian border into Germany. They made no attempt to contact anyone during their journey. They’re now in Wiesbaden, in Hesse. My people tell me they will probably make their way to the Autobahn at Helmstedt, on the American–Russian Zone border, where they will bribe a truck driver to carry them through East Germany to Berlin.”

  “Bribe a truck driver? Where did they get the money to do that?”

  “I can only assume they stole it from the AVO guard they overpowered when he went unaccompanied into their cell, reeking of Slivovitz. It will take them at least three days, possibly as many as five, to make it to Berlin. So, we’ll have that much time in case our plans during that time bear no fruit.”

  “And what are our plans?”

  “His Eminence Cardinal von Hassburger, under the aegis of either John Jay McCloy or General Clay, possibly both, is to tour the Kaiser Wilhelm Church at ten-hundred hours tomorrow, which will give him, or a member of his entourage, at least the chance to meet with someone from Odessa, if not pass a briefcase to him.

  “I think we should be there, don’t you, James? By we, I mean your people and mine.”

  “Let me see if I can fit it into our schedule.”

  “Wonderful! Now let’s go to lunch. They serve a marvelous sauerbraten here.”

  VII

  [ONE]

  The Adler Room

  Kempinski Bristol Hotel

  Kurfürstendamm 25

  Berlin, International Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1410 20 April 1946

  “Apfelstrudel is the appropriate finish for a meal like this,” Serov said. “And that strudel was marvelous.”

  There were murmurs of agreement from all at the table.

  “And now duty calls,” Serov said, “unless there’s something someone wishes to say.”

  “The only complaint I have,” Father McGrath said, “is that we have to call this luncheon off for the call of duty, which means I can’t get General Serov—”

  “Please, Father, Ivan,” Serov interrupted.

  McGrath nodded, and said, “On the condition you start calling me Jack.”

  “Very well,” Serov said. “What is it you were saying, Jack?”

  “I realized, when you were discussing Heinrich Himmler, how little I know about the man. I was about to say that high among the reasons I’m sorry lunch is over is because I can’t ask the general—Ivan—more about him.”

  “We’ll find time sooner or later, Jack, to have a long talk about Saint Heinrich the Divine. In the meantime, perhaps I could suggest a book on the subject you could read?”

  “How can there be a book?”

  Serov smiled, then said, “A book about Saint Heinrich written with impeccable historical accuracy and great literary flair. The author has been compared to Shakespeare.”

  He snapped his fingers.

  Colonel Alekseevich dug into his briefcase and came out with what looked like three small leather-bound notebooks held together with a thick rubber band. He handed them to Serov, who then took off the rubber band and handed one to Ginger.

  “With the compliments of the author,” he said, and then handed one to Father McGrath and then one to Cronley.

  The cover of what he had thought was a notebook held a legend in gold:

  A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF

  REICHSFÜHRER-SS HEINRICH HIMMLER

  By General Ivan Serov

  Cronley opened the book and saw the text was in English.

  “What the hell is this?” Cronley said.

  “As I said, James, ‘A book about Saint Heinrich written with impeccable historical accuracy and great literary flair.’”

  “And aside from that?”

  Looking very pleased with himself, Serov explained. “It’s sort of a textbook in our ag
ent training system. The students are given one of these to read overnight. The next morning, they are required to write—in English—their own biography of Saint Heinrich.”

  “Clever . . .” Cronley said. “But in English?”

  “Before they reach that part of their instruction, the students are required to speak English. Merkulov—Commissar of State Security Nikolaevich Merkulov—believes that the greatest threat to the Soviet Union is posed by people whose native language is English.”

  “You mean the United States.”

  “And England.”

  Cronley considered that, then said, “Very clever. As you probably know, since the NKGB knows all, we train our agents first and then send them to the Army Language School at the Presidio, the Army base in San Francisco, to teach them the language they will need. I think the way you do it makes more sense.”

  “How kind of you to say so,” Serov said, beginning to stand. “But now Sergei and I must go. Until what? Eight thirty, in the Kaiser Wilhelm Church.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “If you can find the time overnight to read my literary opus, I’d be interested to hear what you think of it.”

  “If there aren’t too many big words in it, I’ll give it a shot.”

  [TWO]

  44-46 Beerenstrasse

  Zehlendorf, Berlin, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1605 20 April 1946

  Cronley made himself a drink, sat down on the couch in the bar, and put his feet on the coffee table. Ginger immediately sat very close to him.

  “This will probably do great damage to your ego, my love,” he said, taking Serov’s book from his jacket pocket. “But right now, I’m more interested in this book than I am in romantic cuddling.”

  “Actually, so am I, Jimmy. But since I gave my copy to Max, I’ll have to share yours. You have my word that I won’t try to arouse you sexually.”

  Cronley opened the book. Their eyes went to the opening page, and they read to the end without uttering a word.

  Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler—head of the Gestapo; the Waffen-SS; Minister of the Interior, and organizer of the mass murder of Jews in the Third Reich—was born in Munich, Kingdom of Bavaria, on 7 October 1900.

  His father, a devout Roman Catholic who had once been tutor to the Crown Prince of Bavaria, had become headmaster of a Catholic school.

  For some reason, young Himmler was not given his elementary and intermediate education in his father’s school, but rather in a Catholic school in Landshut.

  Himmler served briefly as an officer cadet in the 11th Bavarian Regiment in the last days of the First World War. On separation from the service, he enrolled in the Munich Technical High School, which, in 1922, granted him a diploma in Agriculture.

  He then worked briefly as a fertilizer salesman. It is not known why he left this employment. Soon afterward, he joined what was then an insignificant political organization known as the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei—the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—acronym: Nazi.

  The Nazi Party was headed by Adolf Hitler, an Austro-German. Hitler had served as a corporal in the trenches in Belgium, where he was gassed and temporarily blinded.

  There is an interesting, though unverifiable, story that while serving as a messenger in the trenches, Hitler was attacked by a large herding dog, a Bouvier des Flandres, which bit him in the crotch, causing him eventually to lose one of his testicles. It is known that when Hitler returned to Belgium in World War II, he ordered the complete eradication of the breed, which turned out unsuccessful.

  In November of 1923, during the infamous Munich Beer Hall Putsch, Himmler served as the “standard-bearer” to Ernst Röhm. Röhm, then serving as the unpaid secretary to Gregor Strasser, the grandiosely named district leader for Bavaria, Swabia, and the Palatinate. Surprising many, Röhm later acquired enough power to seriously threaten to take Hitler’s place as Führer—“leader”—of the Nazi Party.

  In 1927, Himmler married, and briefly returned to poultry farming. Probably because he was spending so much time on Nazi affairs at low—or no—pay, he again went bankrupt.

  Hitler came to his rescue. He named him as head of his personal black-shirted bodyguard, which then consisted of approximately two hundred men. Himmler promptly named these bodyguards the Schutzstaffel—acronym: SS—and immediately began to recruit “pure Germans” for it.

  In 1930, Himmler was elected to the Reichstag. By then, both Hitler and Himmler were growing increasingly wary of Ernst Röhm, whom they suspected was trying to take over the Nazi Party. Their first step was to make the Schutzstaffel independent of Röhm’s SA. By 1933, the SS had fifty-two thousand members.

  Himmler then formed the Security Service, the Sicherheitsdienst—acronym: SD—under Reinhard Heydrich, a former Naval Reserve officer who had been removed from service for base and vile acts of depravity.

  Himmler and Heydrich then worked together to ensure the Nazi Party’s influence in Bavaria grew.

  In March 1933, Hitler took the first step in increasing Himmler’s and the SS’s power by naming him Munich police president.

  Step two was naming Himmler commander of all the political police throughout Bavaria.

  In September 1933, Hitler made him commander of all political police units outside Prussia and, though technically under Hermann Göring, Hitler’s deputy, he on 20 April 1934 became head of the Prussian police and the Geheime Staatspolizei—the secret state police, known as the Gestapo.

  Two months later, on 30 June, Hitler’s and Himmler’s increasing rant against the Jewish people came to a head on what became known as Krystallnacht. This “crystal night” was a callous, mocking reference to the glass fragments from the thousands of windows of Jewish shops and hundreds of synagogues looted and then set afire by mobs under the control of the SS.

  The SS also used the tempest to deal with another problem. They burst into Ernst Röhm’s room in a country inn, the Gast Haus, found him naked in bed in the act of copulating with a young male, and shot both on the spot.

  They photographed the scene of the double crime—homosexuality and murder—and saw that images were widely circulated.

  Thus ended the Röhm threat to take over the Nazi Party.

  By 17 June 1936, Himmler had successfully completed his bid to win control of the political and criminal police throughout the Third Reich. His official title became Reichsführer-SS.

  Possibly because of his father, Himmler had been interested in ancient German history since his youth, and this had evolved into a fascination with the occult.

  In 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, Himmler began searching for a castle in the area where, in 9 A.D., Hermann der Cherusker had fought a decisive battle against the Romans, saving the German people from being conquered. As a result, the German tribes retained their culture and identity long after other tribes had been absorbed into the Roman Empire.

  Thus, on 3 November 1933, Himmler visited Wewelsburg Castle and decided that day to lease it for one hundred years and to restore it so that it could be used as an educational and ceremonial center for the SS.

  It was his intent to imbue the SS with a sense of racial superiority with the virtues of loyalty, camaraderie, duty, truth, diligence, honesty, and knighthood. His SS was to be the elite of the party, the elite of the German people, and, thus, the elite of the entire world.

  By using the castle to indoctrinate SS members in his ideals, he hoped to breed a new man who was, in his words, “far finer and more valuable than the world had yet seen.”

  Himmler’s romantic dream of a race of blue-eyed, blond heroes was to be achieved by cultivating an elite according to “laws of selection” based on criteria of physiognomy, mental and physical tests, character, and spirit. His aristocratic concept of leadership was aimed at consciously breeding a racially organized order
which would combine charismatic authority with bureaucratic discipline.

  The SS man would represent a new human type—scholar, warrior, administrator, leader—whose messianic mission was to undertake a vast colonization of the East. This synthetic aristocracy, trained in a semiclosed society and superimposed on the Nazi system as a whole, would demonstrate the value of its blood through “creative action” and achievement.

  From the outset of his career as Reichsführer of the SS, Himmler had introduced the principle of racial selection and special marriage laws that would ensure the systematic coupling of people of “high value.”

  Himmler was obsessed with creating a race of supermen by means of breeding. To accomplish this, he established state-registered human stud farms, known as Lebensborn, where young girls selected for their perfect Nordic traits could procreate with SS men. Their offspring were better cared for than “common” babies in maternity homes for married mothers.

  On 28 October 1939, he proclaimed to the entire SS that “it will be the sublime task of German women and girls of good blood, acting not frivolously but from a profound moral seriousness, to become the mothers of children of soldiers setting off to battle.” He next decreed that “war heroes” should be allowed a second marriage.

  Personally, he suffered from psychosomatic illness—severe headaches and intestinal spasms. It was reported that he had almost fainted at the sight of a hundred Eastern Jews, including women, being executed for his benefit on the Russian front. As a result of this, he ordered a “more humane means” of execution. This resulted in the use of poison gas—Zyklon B, an insecticide—to eradicate Untermenschen in gas chambers.

  Himmler was determined that: the SS was to be the resurrection of the ancient Order of the Teutonic Knights, with himself as grand master; the breeding of a new Herrenvolk aristocracy was to be based on traditional values of honor, obedience, courage, and loyalty; and the SS was to be the instrument of a vast experiment in modern racial engineering.