The Enemy of My Enemy

by W. E. B Griffin

“A top secret intelligence operation run by General Gehlen, who used to run Abwehr Ost for the Germans.”

  “What will we be doing there?”

  “If we told you, Francis,” Cohen said, “we’d have to kill you.”

  “I never know when you’re pulling my leg,” the priest complained.

  “Now you’re getting it,” Cronley said.

  [TWO]

  Pullach Compound

  Near Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1305 23 April 1946

  Reinhard Gehlen, as a Wehrmacht generalmajor, had commanded Abwehr Ost, the German espionage operation dealing with the Soviet Union. He now was chief executive of the Süd-Deutsche Industrielle Entwicklungsorganisation, the South German Industrial Development Organization. It had nothing whatever to do with industrial development but rather did much the same thing vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, inside and outside the Russian border, and under the aegis of the United States Directorate of Central Intelligence, from its heavily guarded Compound in the village of Pullach.

  Since setting up shop, so to speak, Gehlen had become so close to the head of the DCI, Rear Admiral Sidney W. Souers, that they were on a Sid and Rhiny nickname basis.

  Gehlen also habitually called his subordinates by their nicknames or Christian names—while they addressed him as Herr General—but he was not that close to any of them at the Compound.

  Gehlen attributed this to his service in the Abwehr, both before and during the war. Some of the friends he had made coming up in the German Army had been killed. Those losses hurt.

  Others had betrayed him, which had been even more painful.

  Nor was Gehlen close to any of the Americans at the Compound—with the notable exception of Captain James D. Cronley Jr.

  Gehlen had “inherited” Cronley, as he thought of it, just as the OSS was being disestablished but the Directorate of Central Intelligence was by no means up and running. The European Command was trying to take advantage of that situation by taking over the Süd-Deutsche Industrielle Entwicklungsorganisation. Gehlen knew he could not do what was expected of him with a U.S. Army intelligence officer looking over his shoulder and offering “helpful” suggestions.

  The Pullach Compound was guarded by an oversize company of American Negro soldiers. During the war, they had been in an antitank battalion and had taken pride that they indeed were fighting soldiers and not working as laborers at a quartermaster’s depot somewhere or as stevedores in one of the ports.

  They originally had had black officers, but recently there had been no black officers available to assign to the duty. The first white officer assigned to it had done a good job, but, inevitably, he had gone home.

  When Gehlen took one quick look at the new commanding officer, he saw cause for concern. Cronley was a second lieutenant, for one thing, and looked, despite his size and bulk, like he had just graduated high school.

  But Gehlen quickly learned that his usual shrewd snap judgment of people in the case of Cronley was pretty far off the mark. Cronley was nowhere near being a just-about-useless second lieutenant. Gehlen began to realize this when he explained the problems Cronley was about to face with his black soldiers.

  “I don’t see it as much of a problem, General,” Cronley said with monumental self-confidence.

  “And why is that, Lieutenant?”

  “A very wise man once told me that if a second lieutenant—or, for that matter, a lieutenant colonel—finds himself in a situation where he really doesn’t know what to do, he should go find a good sergeant and listen to him.”

  “That’s good advice. Who was this wise man?”

  “My father, sir.”

  “Your father was an officer?”

  “In War One, a light colonel, sir, the executive officer of Colonel Donovan—excuse me, General Donovan. Between wars, Uncle Bill was the family lawyer. I suppose that had some influence on my winding up in the DCI.”

  * * *

  —

  Gehlen routinely ate breakfast, and sometimes lunch, with the officers of his staff, but now dined alone. After his first “chat” with Cronley, he started inviting him to dinner.

  As this was out of character for him, he gave it considerable thought and finally concluded it was because the young and very junior officer stimulated him intellectually. And when Gehlen thought about that he was forced to conclude that Cronley’s mind was as sharp, perhaps even sharper, than his own.

  More as after-dinner entertainment than anything else, Gehlen began to tell Cronley about what he thought of as his personal unsolved puzzles—personal because they had little or nothing to do with his work for the DCI and because most of them dated back to just before the surrender.

  One so-called puzzle was Phoenix—Operation Phoenix—meaning that, after some time had passed, the Fourth Reich would rise, phoenixlike, from the ashes of the Third Reich.

  Gehlen’s Nazis knew many details of Operation Phoenix, and given the choice between sharing those with the Office of Strategic Services or being returned to Germany to face the wrath of the Allies and the Jews, they chose to work with the OSS.

  And then an American Jew, Colonel Mortimer Cohen, who provided CIC security for the War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg, came up with something.

  According to Cohen, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had started a new, nameless religion at Castle Wewelsburg. Gehlen had heard only whispered rumors about it and decided to take a closer look. But it was now guarded by Cohen’s agents. Within an hour of their first meeting, Gehlen and Cohen had become fast friends and co-conspirators determined to do away with the Church of Saint Heinrich the Divine.

  * * *

  —

  As soon as Cohen, Cronley, and McKenna had been passed through the outer of three checkpoints of the Compound, Gehlen had been notified. He was waiting for them when they walked into his office.

  “Jim, I’m so sorry about Mrs. Moriarty.”

  Cronley nodded.

  “Thank you, General.”

  “Who he, Morty?” Gehlen asked, pointing to the priest.

  “This is Father McKenna,” Cohen replied. “He’s here to hear your confession and save your soul.”

  The priest’s face showed he was not amused, but he said nothing.

  “If it gets back to the Vatican, Father, that you’re running around with these two . . .” Gehlen said.

  “The Vatican knows,” Cohen said. “At least, Cardinal von Hassburger does, and he and Pius XII are pals. We are in the process of establishing one of those ‘the enemy of my enemy’ relationships with the Holy Mother Church.”

  “That’ll have to wait until after I deal with von Dietelburg and Burgdorf. Got any idea where they are?”

  Gehlen shook his head.

  “In the good old days, I could have called upon the Sicherheitsdienst and the Gestapo to find people for me. Now I have to rely on the CIC . . .”

  Cohen chuckled. “I feel your pain, General.”

  “Either of you have any thoughts on why they attacked the safe house?” Gehlen asked.

  “Well, I suspect they don’t like me,” Cronley said.

  “If I were those two,” Cohen said, “I’d be more concerned with getting my ass out of Dodge than whacking Americans.”

  “That also occurred to me,” Gehlen said.

  “Maybe it was staged to impress their own people,” Cronley said. “‘Hey, guys, look. We’re so sure of ourselves, we can whack Americans.’”

  “That’s certainly a possibility,” Cohen said. “Carrying with it the suggestion that Odessa may be having problems of its own.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” Gehlen said. “So, tell me about this arrangement you’re trying to reach with the Holy Mother Church.”

  “With my usual eloquence,” Cohen said, “I suggested to the cardinal that the Church of Sa
int Heinrich is as dangerous to him, to the Vatican, as communism. I don’t think he was convinced but he sent McKenna to have a look at Wewelsburg. He admitted that he’d sent people to have a look before, but my people had kept them out.”

  “I just had an idea,” Cronley said.

  Cohen turned to him. “That’s always dangerous. But let’s have it.”

  “We’ve been saying those death’s-head rings—and God knows what else—may have been put in a cave or a tunnel and then the opening was dynamited. And we haven’t been able to find the cave, or whatever. How about having some experts look for it? And, for that matter, have a look at Wewelsburg Castle?”

  “Where are we going to get the experts?”

  “You know what a Light Engineer company’s like?”

  Cohen shrugged. “I can only guess that a Light Engineer company paints buildings and a Heavy Engineer company builds buildings. Or blows them up.”

  “I don’t often have this opportunity, so I’m taking great pleasure in being able to say, ‘Colonel, sir, your ignorance of the function, the capabilities, of a Light Engineer company is shocking.’”

  “Okay, wiseass, enlighten me.”

  “There are basically three kinds of engineer companies,” Cronley said. “Combat engineers are the guys who fix roads, place and remove mines, do the dirty work of digging trenches, maintaining roads at night in the rain during an artillery barrage. Then there are the engineer companies that handle really big jobs, like keeping the Mississippi River navigable. Then there’s the third kind, Light Engineer companies.”

  “Which do what?”

  “Everything the other two don’t. The opposite of how it sounds, actually—they build airstrips, bridges, et cetera.”

  “Presumably, there is a point to this lecture?”

  “There is a Light Engineer company in the Constabulary. If we can talk General White into loaning us one of its platoons, they can do what we haven’t done—take a really close look at Castle Wewelsburg, maybe find hidden rooms, tunnels. Maybe they could even find the cave with the death’s-head rings.”

  “I retract fifty percent of the unkind thoughts I’ve been having about you, Super Spook. Can we ask White on the telephone?”

  “I think we have to do it face-to-face.”

  “And since you don’t dare go see General White before you see Justice Jackson . . .”

  “Nuremberg, here we come.”

  XII

  [ONE]

  Office of the Chief U.S. Prosecutor

  Palace of Justice

  Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  0735 24 April 1946

  Executive Officer Kenneth Brewster opened the door to Justice Jackson’s office and formally announced, “Mr. Justice, General Serov, Colonel Cohen, Father McKenna, and Captain Cronley.”

  Justice Jackson’s response was far less formal. He came quickly from behind his desk, went to Cronley, and put his hands on the captain’s arms.

  Then he hugged him.

  “Jim, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about Mrs. Moriarty. I’m so damn sorry.”

  “I guess it wasn’t meant to be,” Cronley said.

  Jackson patted Cronley’s arms, then turned to the priest.

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure . . .” he said.

  “This is Father McKenna,” Cronley said. “He’s here to hear your confession and save your soul.”

  “Cronley,” the priest snapped, “I’ve had about all I can stand of you and your so-called wit.”

  “But you’re stuck with me, right? Or can you go to Cardinal von Hassburger and complain I’m not being nice?”

  “And who is Cardinal von Hassburger?” Jackson asked.

  “A Vatican big shot,” Cronley said, “who is worried (a) that the world is about to hear they’ve been guarding Odessa’s money for them and (b) that General Serov, Colonel Cohen, and I are right that the Church of Saint Heinrich the Divine poses a greater threat to Holy Mother Church than does communism.”

  “The first is a hell of an accusation,” Jackson said. “Easy—but dangerous—to make and hard to prove. How’re you going to do that?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Serov said, then paused and dramatically put his briefcase on Jackson’s desk, “there’s a little over two million dollars in various hard currencies in there. We snatched it from one of von Hassburger’s bishops while he was trying to hand it over to Odessa, maybe even to von Dietelburg himself.”

  “Are you giving me that money?” Jackson asked.

  Cronley couldn’t tell if Jackson was joking. He was reminded of his observation about Serov and his men using the captured small Mercedes and the fact that the Soviets essentially were broke.

  “You jest,” Serov said.

  “I hope you’re not thinking of sending it to Lubyanka Square,” Jackson said.

  Serov chuckled and shook his head.

  “I spoke to the President yesterday,” Jackson volunteered. “Surprising me only a little, he had heard from General Clay about the attack on the safe house. For some reason, Clay didn’t mention to the President that Mrs. Moriarty was murdered in the attack.

  “The President now harbors the opinion that the target of the safe house attack was you, Super Spook. As very well it may have been. And he made it clear that he is holding me responsible for keeping you alive. Get yourself a bodyguard, Cronley. Better yet, get two.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And yet a better idea than that . . .” Jackson said, pulling his telephone to him and then dialing a number from memory. “Ostrowski, Justice Jackson. Further on our conversation designating you as Captain Cronley’s bodyguard, pick two good men to assist you and bring them to my office prepared to guard Cronley around the clock whither in the wide world his duties may take him.”

  Visibly pleased with himself, Jackson hung the telephone up, and asked Cronley, “Now tell me when I—and, more important, our commander in chief—can expect you to have von Dietelburg and Burgdorf back in the Tribunal Prison?”

  “I have no idea where they are, sir, nor do Colonel Cohen, General Serov, or General Gehlen.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  “I agree. Which made me wonder why. And then on the way over here from the Compound, I had one of my famous epiphanies.”

  “Oh, really, Super Spook?” Cohen said, sarcastically. “Please do share it with us.”

  “One of two things is true,” Cronley said. “Let me back up a little. This is where my epiphany got started anyway. With the CIC, the Russians, the DCI, and even the German police looking for von Dietelburg and Burgdorf, why haven’t we had at least a sighting of either of them?”

  When no one answered, Cronley went on. “Because the German people don’t want them caught. They don’t give a damn what they’ve done. All the Kraut population wants is to be able to thumb their nose at the Army of Occupation and the Nuremberg Tribunal. And as long as we don’t have them, that’s what’s happening.”

  “Super Spook may be onto something,” Jackson said, thoughtfully.

  “So where are they?” Cohen asked.

  “Actually,” Cronley replied, “the first question is, where aren’t they? In Hungary? I don’t think so, not with the NKGB looking for them. Vienna? I don’t think they’re there either. That’s where they were bagged. Humiliating the Austrians, who wanted—want—to put them on display on trial in Austria. Have they gone to Prague? Or Croatia? France? Spain? I don’t think so.”

  Cohen said, “At the risk of repeating myself, so then where are they?”

  “I think in Germany, either Berlin or the American Zone. And I don’t think we’re going to find them. We’re going to have to make them come to us.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Cohen asked, dubiously.

  “My epiphany is, they’
re still interested in Castle Wewelsburg. When I thought about it, there was something fishy about their attempt to blow it up.”

  “But they tried, James,” Serov said.

  “And failed.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that if von Dietelburg, head of the Church of Saint Heinrich the Divine, wanted the Vatican of said church to be destroyed, all we would have found was rubble. They wanted—want—us to think that it’s no longer of any real value to them.”

  “To what end?” Justice Jackson asked.

  “So that after we’ve had our look around, satisfied our curiosity, and left, they can come back.”

  “For those golden death’s-head rings?” Jackson asked.

  “And for the contents of Saint Heinrich’s safe, which we haven’t found; for the ‘holy relics,’ and almost certainly for God only knows how much money. Now that I think about it, the only reason they were trying to make a withdrawal from the Vatican Bank is because Cohen’s guys are sitting on the castle, where they have day-to-day expenses’ money.”

  No one said anything, and then Cronley continued. “I think—hell, I’m sure—that at this very moment one of von Dietelburg’s disciples is watching Wewelsburg to see what we’re up to.”

  “Cut to the chase, Jim,” Jackson said.

  “I’ve come up with an idea that will bring them back to Wewelsburg. First of all, we have to convince them we’re really leaving. I mean, we can’t just drive away. They know that Cohen’s people have been sitting on the place since he first became involved.”

  “Whatever your harebrained epiphany is telling you,” Cohen said, “I am not prepared to give up control of the castle even for thirty seconds. There’s a hell of a lot we don’t know about it.”

  “It will be impossible for us to get them to think we have really given up and left the castle until we do, in fact, leave the castle.”

  “Did you hear what I just said?” Cohen snapped.

  “If we in fact give up and leave the castle, that would make it available to the rest of the European Command, right?”