The Enemy of My Enemy

by W. E. B Griffin

  In October 1939, Hitler appointed Himmler as Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums—Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of Germandom—and he was given absolute control over the newly annexed slice of Poland.

  Responsible for bringing people of German descent back from outside the Reich into its borders, he set out to replace Poles and Jews with Volksdeutsche from the Baltic lands and various outlying parts of Poland.

  Within a year, more than a million Poles and three hundred thousand Jews had been uprooted and driven eastward. With the characteristic self-pitying and ascetic ethos of self-abnegation that he inculcated into the SS, Himmler informed the SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler Regiment, “Gentlemen, it is much easier in many cases to go into combat with a company than to suppress an obstructive population of low cultural level, or to carry out executions or to haul away people or to evict crying and hysterical women.”

  It was Himmler’s success in indoctrinating the SS with an apocalyptic “idealism” beyond all guilt and responsibility, which rationalized mass murder as a form of martyrdom and harshness toward oneself.

  In a speech to SS group leaders in Poznan on 4 October 1943, he said, “One principle must be absolute for the SS man: We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to no one else. What happens to the Russians, what happens to the Czechs, is a matter of utter indifference to me.

  “Such good blood of our own kind as there may be among the nations we shall acquire for ourselves, if necessary, by taking away the children and bringing them up among us. Whether the other peoples live in comfort or perish of hunger interests me only insofar as we need them as slaves for our Kultur. Whether or not ten thousand Russian women collapse from exhaustion while digging a tank ditch interests me only insofar as the tank ditch is completed for Germany.

  “We shall never be rough or heartless where it is not necessary; that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude to animals, will also adopt a decent attitude to these human animals, but it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and to bring them ideals.

  “I speak to you here with all frankness of a very grave matter. Among ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly. I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people.

  “Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have stuck it out and at the same time—apart from exceptions caused by human weakness—to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard.

  “This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and shall never be written.”

  In May 1945, Himmler finally faced the fact that the war was lost. He shaved off his mustache and took off his SS uniform, replacing it with that of a Wehrmacht sergeant. He acquired forged Wehrmacht credentials, identifying him as Sergeant Heinrich Hitzinger, and, with a small group of aides, left Berlin and headed west.

  Hitzinger was arrested on 21 May at an informal checkpoint. It had been set up by recently released Russian prisoners of war near Neuhaus, in territory occupied by the British. Two days later, the Russians turned over Hitzinger to the British.

  Himmler confessed his true identity to the British duty officer, Captain Thomas Selvester, who didn’t believe him but nevertheless sent him to British 2nd Army Headquarters in Lüneburg. There, an intelligence officer confirmed his identity and ordered an immediate body cavity search by a medical officer.

  When a physician named Wells put his finger in Himmler’s mouth, Himmler bit him. When the doctor removed his finger, Himmler turned his head and bit on a cyanide capsule. After fifteen minutes of agony, Himmler died.

  He was buried that day in an unmarked grave in a farmer’s field. The burial detail was unaware of who they were burying, and the only person who knows where Heinrich Himmler is buried is the intelligence officer who confirmed his identity.

  —END—

  “How much of this is true?” Ginger then said, very softly, her voice breaking.

  “Just about all of it.”

  “Those . . . breeding farms?”

  “Yeah. And the NKGB had agents in the British Second Army Headquarters. Otherwise he couldn’t know about the freed Russians who grabbed Himmler first. Or the names of the British officers. Or Himmler’s burial in some farmer’s field.”

  Ginger stood up and ordered, “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the room. Where I’m going to lay down, holding Bruce as tight as I can. And then you’re going to lay down and hold the both of us as tight as you can.”

  Cronley stood up and followed her out of the room.

  As he passed through the door, he put his arm around her shoulders.

  In the corridor, she turned into his arms, and he held her as tight as he could.

  [THREE]

  44-46 Beerenstrasse

  Zehlendorf, Berlin, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  0745 21 April 1946

  Cronley was dipping pieces of steak into the yolk of one of his fried eggs. Ginger, visibly deep in thought and holding Baby Bruce to her shoulder, was moving a piece of toast around her plate with a fork. Father McGrath, his plate clean, held a cup of coffee in one hand and a freshly lit eight-inch cigar in the other.

  Max Ostrowski came into the dining room and took a seat at the table.

  “I hope everybody else slept well,” Ostrowski said, gesturing with Serov’s book. “This goddamn thing kept me awake all night, after I read it twice.”

  He tossed it on the table. Ginger raised her eyes to look at him but didn’t say anything.

  Ostrowski broke the silence: “Any reason you’re wearing your railroad tracks, Captain Cronley?”

  “In the hope that when Cardinal von Hassburger, or members of his ecclesiastic staff, sees me in the Kaiser Wilhelm Church, they will think I am a sightseeing captain, and as such, not important. However, when they see your triangles, Max, they will immediately decide that someone should keep an eye on you.”

  “You want me to get rid of my triangles?”

  “Absolutely not. That’s the point: If they’re watching you, they likely won’t be watching me.” He paused, and as an afterthought added, “Unless you happen to have civilian clothing?”

  “I wish we had this conversation last night. Before I told all my guys to wear civvies.”

  “Well, your call. You can swap clothes with one of your guys, if you want, and let him be the subject of intense Vatican curiosity.”

  “How much time do I have before the CIC comes?”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Frank Williams is expected any minute,” Cronley said.

  Ostrowski hastily went off to change clothes. He had been gone not much more than a minute when Williams and Colonel Cohen walked into the dining room.

  “Good morning,” Williams said. “Everybody ready to spy on the cardinal’s minions?”

  “No,” Cronley said. “One of us is changing his clothes. You’re welcome to have some breakfast.”

  “We’ve eaten, thank you,” Cohen said. “But how about a cup of coffee?”

  “Sit,” Cronley said, and made a royal gesture.

  Williams saw Serov’s book on the table and picked it up.

  “What’s this?” he said, reading the cover. “A brief biography of Saint Heinrich the Divine? By Serov?”

  “Let the record show that nothing gets past CIC Berlin,” Cronley said.

  Williams opened the book, and said, “Well, let’s see what Serov knows about that son of a bitch that I don’t.”

  He then rapidly ran his finger down the first page and almost immediately turned it and repeated his finger-down-the-page scan.

  The fourth time he did it, Cronley said, “Fascinating. I’v
e never seen a real-life speed-reader in operation before.”

  Williams raised his eyes to Cronley, smiled, and said, “It’s convenient, I admit. But it’s only one of the character traits contributing to my genius.”

  Soon, Williams closed the book and gently placed it back on the table.

  “You see anything you didn’t know before while zipping through that?” Cohen asked.

  “I didn’t know how well the NKGB had infiltrated the Brits’ Second Army. They had to be all over, otherwise Serov wouldn’t know that released Russians were the first to grab Himmler. Or the names of the British officers there. Or how he died and where they buried him.”

  “You know what I didn’t see in there?” Ginger said, her tone furious. “Not one mention of Himmler’s number two.”

  “Von Dietelburg?” Cronley asked.

  “SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg,” she said, practically spitting out the name.

  “She’s right,” Williams said. “And now that it has come up, I find that very interesting.”

  “So do I,” Cohen said.

  “What should be considered more important,” Ginger demanded, “Himmler’s heir or the Vatican’s money?”

  She waited for an answer and, when none was offered, went on. “Since I don’t think the Vatican is any happier with Saint Heinrich and his new religion than we are, you should be working with them, not stealing their money.”

  “What would you suggest we do,” Williams asked, his tone sarcastic, “go to the Pope and say, ‘Your Holiness, we’re on the same page vis-à-vis von Dietelburg’?”

  Ginger glared at him.

  “Maybe not the Pope,” she said, “but the cardinal. Let the cardinal go to the Pope.”

  “I think Ginger is onto something,” Father McGrath said.

  There was a long silence.

  “Facts bearing on the problem,” Cronley then said, formally, using the phase that begins every U.S. Army staff study. “One, Father Jack knows more about Holy Mother Church than any one of us, and we’re going to take his advice—”

  “Well, I’m glad that he agrees with me,” Ginger said. “But I am going to mention in passing that making friends with the Vatican, instead of royally pissing them off, is my idea.”

  After a long pause, Cronley went on, “Fact two: Serov told me he arranged for von Dietelburg and Burgdorf to escape from the AVO in Budapest and that he has had people on them. He said yesterday they were headed for Helmstedt, on the Autobahn crossing between the Russian Zone and ours, where they intended to bribe a truck driver to smuggle them into Berlin.”

  “How about this for fact three?” Williams put in. “We have an ongoing investigation into those Berlin-bound truck drivers. A lot of paperless people are using them to get across the Russian Zone into Berlin. We have heard, credibly, that once the truck gets into a relatively empty area in East Germany, the smuggled passengers are killed and their bodies left a hundred yards or so from the Autobahn. The truck then proceeds to Berlin with their luggage.”

  “Is this organized,” Cohen said, “or random?”

  “I don’t think a truck driver is going to be able to successfully take on von Dietelburg and Burgdorf,” Cronley said. “So, by now, they’re in Berlin. But where? Serov’s people couldn’t get on a truck with them.”

  “But they could get word to Serov,” Cohen said, “with the truck’s description and license plate. And have his people meet it here.”

  “I don’t know if this qualifies as one of your facts, Jim,” McGrath said, “but if we’re going to go to His Holiness with this, we should apply some real pressure. Tell him (a) that it’s going to be rumored in the world press that they have many millions of Nazi dollars in their vault, (b) that they had better get rid of it, and (c) that we know they know of many places where all that money can be put to good use.”

  “The press wouldn’t touch a story like that,” Williams said. “Attacking the Vatican is number one on their no-no list.”

  “Janice would touch it,” Ginger said. “Janice would love a story like that.”

  “Who’s Janice?” Williams asked.

  “My fiancé’s former girlfriend,” Ginger said.

  “Miss Janice Johansen of the Associated Press,” Cronley said. “We were—are—just friends. Nothing more. When Serov kidnapped Colonel—”

  “Friends? Pinocchio, your nose is growing,” Ginger said, her tone mock sweet.

  “Kidnapped who?” Williams asked.

  “Colonel Robert Mattingly, chief of DCI-Europe,” Cohen furnished. “Super Spook had turned Colonel Sergei Likharev. Serov wanted him back. Wanted him and his wife, Natalia, and their two boys.”

  “I never heard about that,” Williams said. “There was nothing in the papers. I didn’t even hear about it back-channel.”

  “You weren’t supposed to hear about it,” Cronley said. “I came up with a Russian who Serov wanted even more than Likharev. We made the swap. In exchange for going onto the Glienicke Bridge with me, to take pictures, Janice filed a story that the exchange was of a Russian officer who had been arrested for public drunkenness in West Germany, and an American officer who had been arrested for drunken driving in East Germany.”

  “I saw that in Stars and Stripes,” Williams said. “My reaction was that our colonel could forget becoming a general.”

  “It is to be devoutly hoped,” Cronley said. “Anyway, Janice would love to have this Vatican story. I think we should drop her name into our conversation but keep her out of it for now.”

  “You’re not really serious about kidnapping an archbishop?” Williams asked.

  Colonel Cohen stood up, and said, “Let’s go.”

  “For a moment, I was actually worried,” Williams said.

  Cohen shrugged. “Where I’m going, Colonel, is to see what advice General Serov can offer vis-à-vis kidnapping a senior member of the Vatican hierarchy with as little fuss as possible. If you don’t want to come, give me the keys to your car.”

  Williams took the keys from his pocket and handed them to Cohen.

  “Colonel,” McGrath said. “Ginger, because of the baby, obviously can’t go. But I can. And I might be useful.”

  Cohen looked at him.

  “Maybe and maybe not,” he said, finally. “But the bottom line is, Father Jack, none of this is any of your business. So, thanks but no thanks.”

  “Hey, that’s my call, Mort,” Cronley protested.

  “I planned to get into this in the car,” Cohen said. “But, what the hell, now’s as good a time as any. The next time you address me, Captain Cronley, you will call me Colonel and preface your comments with ‘sir.’ Say ‘Yes, sir.’”

  When Cronley did not immediately reply, Cohen went on. “I may very possibly land in Leavenworth because of this operation, but if that happens, it will be because I’m calling the shots, not taking orders from a twenty-two-year-old captain. Now say ‘Yes, sir,’ Captain, or consider yourself under arrest.”

  After deciding this was not the time or place to get into a who’s-in-charge war, Cronley said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Go get Ostrowski,” Cohen ordered, and walked out of the room.

  Colonel Williams was left alone in the dining room with Father McGrath and Ginger and her baby.

  Then he hurried out of the room.

  “I’m coming,” he called.

  VIII

  [ONE]

  Kaiser Wilhelm Church

  Berlin, International Zone of Occupation, Germany

  0845 21 April 1946

  Cronley had driven or walked past the ruined church often but never been inside. When he, Cohen, Ostrowski, and Williams walked inside now, he was first impressed by the enormous size of the building, and then the damage to it.

  It was just an empty hulk.

  The altar was a fire-scarred mar
ble oblong. A cross—with what was left of Christ nailed to it, the head and legs were missing—hung behind the altar. The windows were gone except for a few remnants of stained glass. The only thing that seemed intact was the inlaid marble floor, which had been swept clean.

  There were perhaps forty people in the church. Neither General Serov nor his deputy, Sergei Alekseevich, were among them, and Cronley couldn’t pick out among the other people in the church who might be NKGB agents.

  “Let’s wait for Serov outside,” Cronley said.

  As they passed through what had been the vestibule, three Polish DCI agents in battered civilian clothing passed them. They showed no sign of recognition.

  A minute or so later, a battered Opel Kapitän with Berlin civilian license plates pulled into the parking area. Alekseevich was behind the wheel.

  Cohen trotted to the parked car, arriving at it as Serov, with some difficulty, opened the passenger-side door.

  “We have to talk,” Cohen said.

  “No time. The cardinal is about to arrive.”

  “Now. It’s important.”

  Serov considered that, then said, “Why don’t we walk over to the Kempinski while Sergei keeps an eye on the church?”

  [TWO]

  Coffee Shop

  Kempinski Bristol Hotel

  Kurfürstendamm 25

  Berlin, International Zone of Occupation, Germany

  0905 21 April 1946

  Serov, with a cup of tea, and Cohen and Cronley, with cups of coffee, took their seats at a small, round table.

  “What’s so important, Mort?”

  “We have an idea that will probably solve a lot of our problems.”

  Serov gestured anxiously. “In as few words as possible?”

  Cohen locked eyes. “Instead of snatching a briefcase that may or may not have a million dollars in it, we snatch an archbishop—”

  Serov, sipping his tea, pulled the cup from his lips. “And I suppose you suggest we hold him for ransom?” he said, sarcastically.