The Enemy of My Enemy
Page 18
“That’ll do it,” Clay said. “Especially if we can sell it to that American reporter . . . What’s her name?”
“The AP’s Janice Johansen, sir,” Cronley said. “She has been very cooperative.”
“General Makamson,” Clay said, “get with the PIO, locate Miss Johansen, and bring her here. No. To the hospital.”
“The hospital, sir?” Cronley asked. “Why the hospital?”
“Because, Captain Cronley, that’s where you’re going to be. This conference will resume at seventeen-hundred hours. Let’s go, Makamson.”
Clay and Makamson stood up and walked out of the Operations Room.
“Admiral Souers, sir?” Cronley said. “Oscar?”
There was no answer, and he realized they had broken down the SIGABA connection.
Cronley was looking at the closed door, wondering what was going to happen next, when it opened. Two men wearing doctor smocks entered, followed by a pair of nurses and three burly hospital corpsmen.
Then a middle-aged, gray-haired woman came into the room. She headed right for Cronley. She put her face nose to nose to the infant.
“Hello, beautiful boy,” she said.
Then she looked up at Cronley.
“I’m Alice Clay. Can I hold him while they fix you up?”
Cronley neither replied nor even reacted.
“James,” Serov said, “give her the infant. You cannot hold him forever. And he is in dire need of a change of diaper.”
After some hesitation, he handed the infant to her.
“Thank you, Mrs. Clay.”
“Of course, Captain. And my deep condolences at the loss of your fiancée.”
He nodded.
She forced a small smile, then quickly left the room with the infant, followed by the pediatric team.
Cronley’s throat tightened, his eyes watered, and he had an almost irresistible urge to weep.
He was brought back when one of the doctors asked, “How bad’s your leg, Captain?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my leg.”
“Where’d all the blood come from?”
“Fuck you,” Cronley said.
“Captain, we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way. Are you going to get on my stretcher, or am I going to have to stick a needle in you?”
Serov said, “Captain Cronley will go with you, Doctor. He doesn’t need a stretcher. And if you attempt to stick a needle in him, I will shoot you.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“General Ivan Serov. And I will accompany you and Captain Cronley to the hospital.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, General Serov.”
“Then he doesn’t go to the hospital. Look around you, Doctor. Do you see anyone in a position to order a Soviet general officer to do, or not do, anything?”
The doctor gestured toward the door. “Captain, your ambulance awaits.”
[FOUR]
Room 234-C
1512th Field Hospital
Berlin, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1505 21 April 1946
The small room was furnished with a hospital bed, a white bedside table, on which sat a telephone that didn’t work, two white, straight-backed chairs, and a wastebasket.
When Serov walked into the room, Cronley was sitting in one of the chairs and resting his feet on the bed. Lying at the foot of the bed were his bloody trousers, sloppily folded. The trousers he now wore still had the tags that come with new garments attached.
“Well?” Cronley greeted him.
“Alekseevich is outside with my car,” Serov said.
“And what about . . . Bruce?”
“You heard what General Clay’s wife said, that she would see to his care while you are, well, being cared for.”
“That’s it?” Cronley said, and shook his head. “Ivan, I’m not going to leave here without him.”
“I have no suggestions. And you cannot wander around this enormous hospital looking for him. If he’s even here. Also, if I didn’t already mention this, there are now two very large military policemen in the corridor who are probably charged with keeping you in here.”
“I’m under arrest?”
“The MP sergeant said they were your protection detail.”
“So, what do you think I should do?”
“If nothing happens in the next half hour, I will call the Kommandatura and tell them I am being held against my will. Or, better, I’ll go have a chat with General Clay and threaten him with my making the call. Presuming the MPs will let me out of here. Relax, James, something will happen.”
* * *
—
Fifteen minutes later, the MP sergeant stuck his head in the door and politely said, “Captain Cronley, sir, you have visitors.”
“See, James?” Serov said, somewhat smug.
“I’m not good at relaxing.”
A trim, mustachioed lieutenant colonel, in pink and green, entered. Cronley didn’t recognize the light bird. Without thinking about it, he checked the lapel insignia. It was that of the Judge Advocate Corps.
Great, Cronley thought. Just what I need. An Army lawyer.
On his heels was Janice Johansen. She was in her late twenties and attractive, nicely filling out her pink-and-green uniform, the sleeves of which at the shoulder bore gold-thread-embroidered patches reading U.S. WAR CORRESPONDENT. She carried herself with extreme confidence.
“Jesus Christ, sweetie,” Janice greeted him. “What the hell happened to you?”
She crossed the room to him, bent over, and kissed him wetly on the cheek.
Then she saw the bloody trousers on the bed.
“God, you took a bullet? Two bullets? What the hell happened?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute.”
Cronley then asked, “Who are you, Colonel?”
“My name is Waldron, Captain. General Clay sent me to see you—”
“That sounds like a threat. What are you, my defense counsel?”
“—at the request of Mr. Justice Jackson,” Waldron went on, “and bearing a suggestion from Colonel Frade—”
“What kind of a suggestion?”
“Quote, shut your mouth, Jimmy, and listen to what Tom Waldron has to say, unquote.”
“You know Cletus?”
“He and my little brother were classmates before Cletus changed to Tulane to play tennis.”
“You mean at A&M?”
“We are all products of that noble institution. I’m Class of 1937. Now, before we go any further, are you going to listen to Colonel Frade’s advice concerning closing your mouth?”
“Okay,” Cronley said, chuckling.
“That being the case, the proper response to that question is ‘Yes, sir.’”
Cronley nodded.
“Say it.”
“Yes, sir.”
Waldron turned to Serov.
“I presume, sir, that you are General Ivan Serov?”
“Yes, I am.”
“General Clay said he thought you might be here, sir.”
Serov nodded but didn’t reply.
“What I have to discuss with Captain Cronley is of an extremely personal nature. Both Mr. Justice Jackson and General Clay have told me that Captain Cronley considers you all close personal friends. And because of that, he might be reluctant to ask you to leave us while we are having our talk. But I’ll deal with that. So to spare him any possible awkwardness, I’ll ask you and Miss Johansen to please step outside.”
“They stay, Colonel,” Cronley said, flatly. “That is not open for discussion.”
“Okay, that’s your position, Cronley, but I haven’t heard from either of them.”
Serov said, “Colonel, if Captain Cronley wants me to stay, I will stay
.”
“Ditto,” Janice said.
Waldron nodded. “Very well, then, so be it. We now turn to the subject of Captain Cronley’s relationship with Bruce J. Moriarty III, the orphan infant son of the late Virginia Calhoun Moriarty and the late Lieutenant Bruce J. Moriarty Jr. . . .”
Waldron paused, frowned, and twice shook his head in what could have signified frustration.
“I had hoped to avoid this, but obviously that’s not going to be possible. I’m going to have to start at the beginning. And since this meeting never took place, which means that nothing said today in here will ever leave this room, and, further, that the normal protocols about classified material do not apply, I can speak freely.”
“Speak,” Cronley said, impatiently.
“Okay, starting with the announcement that the villain, so to speak, in all of this is Harry S (no period) Truman.
“I had enough service so as to be released within days of the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay. I returned to the practice of corporate law in Washington. One of the firm’s major clients was Midwest Insurance, whose prewar CEO was one Sidney W. Souers.
“My friend Bob Jackson came to me the day that Truman named him chief prosecutor for the Nuremberg Tribunal and told me the reason Truman wanted the Nazis properly tried, then hanged, was to avoid making them martyrs. He asked me what I thought and I told him I thought it was a stroke of genius. History would show that Truman was much smarter than many thought. I also said that if there was anything I could do to help, et cetera.
“Two days later, Bob was back. This time he had Eisenhower, then chief of staff of the Army, with him. They had been talking. What Bob needed in Germany was a high-placed friend no one knew about who would protect Bob not only from the Nazis still running loose, including but not limited to those in Odessa, who obviously would try to harm him, both physically and politically, but also from certain personnel in the Army and Military Government and from the sometimes rash ideas and actions of the commander in chief.
“The only person in Germany who would know of my role in this was General Clay. Later, High Commissioner McCloy was brought into the loop. In Washington, of course, the only cognoscenti were Admiral Souers, Oscar Schultz, and Cletus Frade. And, of course, Dwight Eisenhower.
“The wisdom of the plan became almost immediately apparent when the President had two ideas, one immediately following the other.
“Idea one was that Bob was actually in physical danger and needed protection, especially since Truman—idea two—had decided that Jackson was going to have enough idle time on his hands to run to earth the large number of senior Nazis who we had so far been unable to locate.
“To protect Bob, Truman didn’t want to use the military police or the Counterintelligence Corps or the FBI. That would be too visible and those agents would immediately report to their respective superiors anything they learned about Justice Jackson in which they thought their superiors would be interested. This was especially true of the FBI. Admiral Souers once told me with a straight face that he wasn’t sure whom the President loathed more, Joseph Stalin or John Edgar Hoover.”
Cronley and Serov both grunted simultaneously.
“Can I quote you on that, Colonel?” Janice said.
“Absolutely not,” Waldron said, making a thin smile. “And if you do, I’ll deny it. Anyway, the President said he knew of a young officer who could fill the roll. He had met Second Lieutenant James D. Cronley Jr. and promoted him to captain and pinned the Distinguished Service Medal on him for his role in shooting the captain of the German submarine U-590 in Patagonia as he prepared to sell five hundred and sixty kilograms of Nazi uranium-235 to the Soviets.”
“I didn’t know until this moment that that was you, James,” Serov blurted.
“For obvious reasons, General,” Waldron said, drily, “there followed no press conference call to trumpet Cronley’s exploits.”
Serov’s face showed his obvious displeasure.
“Truman got on the SIGABA,” Waldron went on, “and told Jackson he was getting a DCI protection detail headed by Captain Cronley, whom he knew personally and who would also be useful in helping Jackson track down the at-large Nazis who Truman wanted in the cells of the Tribunal Prison awaiting trial.
“The next thing the President heard was, things had gone better than he had hoped. He was told that Cronley had captured von Dietelburg and Burgdorf in Vienna.”
“You know that didn’t come without a steep price,” Cronley said.
Waldron nodded. “About forty-five minutes after the President was told the good news, General Clay came into my office and announced that the Austrian government had issued a warrant for the arrest of one of Cronley’s men on a charge of murder and one for Cronley himself on a charge of being an accessory before and after the fact. They also charged him and his people with violating Austrian airspace and customs regulations by flying unmarked aircraft across the border on several occasions.”
“Nice work, Jimmy,” Janice said.
“I feel obligated to state that this is all off the record, Miss Johansen.”
“Worry not, Colonel,” Cronley said. “We have an understanding.”
Waldron looked at him. “Right. Anyway, there was a long list of other charges, including from the U.S. Army Air Force and the Office of Military Government. Cronley, surprising no one, had an explanation for his actions. When planning the capture of von Dietelburg and Burgdorf with Austrian authorities, he had decided that the Austrians’ true intention was to incarcerate the two Nazis in an Austrian prison for trial by the Austrian government at a later date.
“He decided (a) that this was a bad idea since von Dietelburg and Burgdorf would be killed in prison long before any trial, (b) that his duty was to the President and his orders that the Nazis be tried, then hanged, and (c) the only way Cronley could ensure that those orders were carried out was to personally deliver the Nazis to the Tribunal’s cells in Nuremberg.
“He had the means to do so—specifically, two German Fieseler Storch aircraft, which he had spared from the Air Force’s ordered destruction. He needed these illegal aircraft to fly into Austria, Italy, France, and elsewhere while Nazi hunting. Justice Jackson agreed with Cronley’s argument and arranged for the airplanes to be stored in a guarded hangar at Nuremberg.
“After seeing Burgdorf and von Dietelburg behind Tribunal bars, Cronley and company were put on ice at Cletus Frade’s Argentina estancia while Oscar Shultz plied the Austrians with money to make the criminal charges associated with the capture go away.”
Waldron paused and glanced around the room.
“I will now turn to the escape itself,” he continued, then stopped and looked at Serov, and said, “There are those, General—frankly, including me—who believe that you were up to your eyeballs in said escape. Would you care to comment, sir?”
Serov, stone-faced, said, “I absolutely and categorically deny any connection with the escape of those scum from the Tribunal Prison—”
“Bullshit,” Cronley blurted. “Come on, Ivan!”
Serov locked eyes with Cronley. After a minute, he said, somewhat casually, “But, hypothetically speaking, I can imagine a situation where a senior NKGB officer with a certain influence over the Államvédelmi Osztálya might enlist the services of the AVO in getting those two godless sons of bitches out of the Tribunal Prison so that they might be interrogated.”
Waldron’s eyebrows went up. “Why wouldn’t your so-called hypothetical NKGB general just go to the Tribunal Prison and interrogate them there?”
“He would be concerned that Mr. Justice Jackson might disapprove of his interrogation techniques.”
“And—hypothetically speaking, of course—once the AVO had Burgdorf and von Dietelburg in hand, did they learn what they wanted to know? And what, exactly, did they want to know?”
Serov nodded. “They wan
ted the location of Odessa’s funds, estimated to be at least between fifty and one hundred million dollars, and almost certainly more. These are the funds von Dietelburg and Burgdorf intend to use to nurture the heretical religion started by Himmler.”
“And did the AVO learn where these funds were being held?”
“Unfortunately, no. Both von Dietelburg and Burgdorf were perfectly willing to die as martyrs to their faith. Frankly, one has to admire their dedication.”
“They were killed?”
“No. At this point, I became involved. As you know, James and I were also looking into the matter, and I had learned where those funds were being kept.”
“And where was that?”
“To coin a phrase, they were ‘hidden in plain sight.’ In the Vatican Bank.”
“No shit?” Janice said, then added, “Pardon my French. That’s some story.”
“Which, Janice, we will discuss,” Cronley said. “As I just told the colonel here, we have an understanding.”
Janice gave him the finger.
Waldron shook his head. “Would you be surprised if many people, including me, would find that hard—in fact impossible—to believe?”
“I’m a former NKGB officer, Colonel, nothing surprises me, including the proclivity of many senior officials to disbelieve what is uncomfortable for them to accept. But, like it or not, that’s where the funds of the Nazi religion are, in the Vatican Bank.”
“It’s true,” Cronley said.
Waldron looked at him. “You’re in on this, too?”
“Up to my ears.” He then gestured toward the foot of his bed. “And my bloody clothing. That’s why Odessa hit the DCI safe house.”
“I don’t suppose you have any proof to substantiate this notion?”
Serov picked up the briefcase from the floor and handed it to Waldron.