The Enemy of My Enemy

by W. E. B Griffin

  Cohen repeated: “Did you just hear—”

  “Such as the United States Constabulary, right?” Cronley finished.

  “What the hell would the Constab want with Wewelsburg?” Cohen demanded.

  “Well, after suitable renovation, of course, it would make a lovely home for the Constabulary Non-Commissioned Officer Academy.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!” Cohen said, disgustedly.

  “Let him finish, Mort,” Jackson ordered.

  “The only way von Dietelburg is going to believe we have left Wewelsburg is if we do, in fact, leave,” Cronley said. “Which we can do. The proof of that for von Dietelburg is that the Constabulary then moves in and construction on the NCO Academy begins.”

  “By whom?” Jackson asked.

  “The One Hundred Fourteenth Engineer Company (Light), U.S. Constabulary. Presuming I can talk General White into letting me have it.”

  Cohen said, “I had to have Jim explain to me what the hell’s a Light Engineer company. He did. But I’m still not convinced.”

  “Colonel, sir, it would be inappropriate for a very young and very junior officer such as myself to question the decisions of officers much senior to myself.”

  Justice Jackson laughed.

  “I’ll call I. D. White for you, if you’d like.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’d rather do it myself. Or, actually, set up Tiny Dunwiddie to ask him. Tiny usually gets what he asks General White for. And I’d like to pick General White’s brain about Burgdorf. Ever since the general saw the grave at Peenemünde where Burgdorf buried the slave workers alive, he’s had a special place in his heart for him.”

  Jackson considered that for a minute and then reached for the telephone.

  “Get me General White in Sonthofen,” he ordered into the receiver, then looked at Cronley, and said, “Bear with me a moment.”

  “Well?” a gruff voice demanded over the phone seconds later.

  White apparently had not only answered his own line but answered it on the first ring.

  “I’m sorry your gout is out of control again, General. I’ll call later.”

  He hung up and glanced across his desk at the others.

  Thirty seconds after that, his telephone rang.

  Surprising no one, it was General White.

  “Sorry, Bob,” he said. “This is one of those mornings where I’m surrounded by idiots.”

  “I.D., I need to talk to you, but I don’t want to do it over the phone.”

  “I can’t get away right now. Would you consider coming here? I can send Billy Wilson in the C-45.”

  “I’d like to bring Cohen, Cronley, and Dunwiddie with me.”

  “You may consider that Hotshot Billy is on the way,” White said, and then the line went dead.

  “That work, Cronley?” Justice Jackson said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Serov then said, “I think I would be of more value to our noble cause by encouraging my countrymen to exert more effort in looking for von Dietelburg and Burgdorf than they are. Is there any reason I have to go to Sonthofen?”

  “No,” Cronley decided. “And I think our spiritual adviser would be in the way. Can you keep him occupied, Ivan?”

  “Oh, yes,” Serov replied.

  For some reason, Cronley thought, that sounds menacing.

  [TWO]

  Office of the Commanding General

  United States Constabulary

  Sonthofen, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1455 24 April 1946

  Major General I. D. White signaled for the people in his office doorway to come in.

  “Now that I’ve had time to think it over, why am I worried that you’ve accepted my gracious invitation?” the stocky, forty-six-year-old White greeted them.

  No one saluted, but, in turn, Cohen, Cronley, and Tiny Dunwiddie approached White’s desk, came to a stance very much like attention, then shook White’s extended hand. When they had finished, Justice Jackson went to the side of the desk and shook hands with him.

  “My spies tell me you have been infiltrated by the NKGB,” White said. “Where’s Serov?”

  “I can only conclude he’s afraid of you,” Jackson said. “I can’t imagine why. Anyway, he sends his respects.”

  “As well he should. And you, Chauncey, has the Texan here managed to completely corrupt you? Or are you still redeemable?”

  “Unfortunately, I’m afraid it’s the former, Uncle Isaac. I have the strength of zero because in my heart I’m completely corrupted.”

  “In a manner of speaking? Or is there something specific?”

  “I think for once Super Spook is right.”

  White’s eyes went from Dunwiddie to Cronley.

  “I’m now afraid, Captain Cronley, to ask what I can do for you. What is it you want from me?”

  “Sir, your Fourteenth Light Engineer Company.”

  White’s eyebrows went up.

  “Now you have piqued my curiosity. What in the world would you do with it?”

  “Would you believe,” Jackson said, “that as a token of his admiration for yourself specifically, I.D., and the Constabulary generally, he intends to use it to convert an existing structure into the U.S. Constabulary NCO Academy.”

  White grunted. “No. I would not.”

  “Sir,” Cronley said, “I would apply its many talents in my unending war to save the world from the Thousand-Year Reich.”

  White’s eyes went back to Dunwiddie.

  “Chauncey, can you tell me what Super Spook is talking about?” Then he immediately changed his mind. “No, Cronley, you try—hard—to tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, sir. Sir, would you be surprised if I told you I forgot one of the basic principles of warfare?”

  “I’d be surprised if you remember any of them. Which particular one, pray tell, are you referring to?”

  “‘Never underestimate your enemy,’ sir.”

  White lit a cigarette, exhaled, and said, “Okay, this game of Twenty Questions is over. Let’s have it, Cronley. Nothing cute.”

  “Sir, yes, sir. Sir, you’re aware that just as the war was ending, Colonel Cohen smelled something was off about Castle Wewelsburg and took it under his wing.”

  White nodded. “Whereupon he learned that the Nazis had attempted to start a lunatic and/or obscene religion with the castle as its Vatican?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s correct.”

  “I also heard the Nazis abandoned it after trying and failing to blow it up?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s what I’m getting to. I started thinking about that. They had what they thought was a good reason to blow the castle up. That raised two questions. What was the reason? And since they had made the decision to blow it up, why had they failed?

  “I began to give that some serious thought. Neither von Dietelburg nor Burgdorf were run-of-the-mill Nazis. Von Dietelburg was Himmler’s adjutant. I suspect he was a lot more than that, but I know that if he was Himmler’s adjutant, he was privy to ninety-plus percent of Himmler’s secrets—including, of course, being up to his eyeballs in the Church of Saint Heinrich the Divine.

  “And SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Burgdorf wasn’t a run-of-the-mill Nazi big shot either. He was dispatched by Himmler himself to Peenemünde to make sure that there was nothing of value left when we got there. I suspect he wasn’t sent there until whoever was first sent had failed.

  “That gives us two really top-drawer Nazi officials. Which raises the question of how come they failed in blowing up an old castle?

  “Answer: Because they—for a number of reasons I’ll get into later—didn’t want to destroy it. They just wanted it to look like they had tried to demolish it.”

  “Interesting reasoning,” White said, thoughtfully.

  “Once I s
tarted down that road, sir, a lot of other things began to fall into place. As Colonel Cohen first found, Sergeant Johann Strauss isn’t who he says he is. He was left behind at the castle to tell whichever Americans showed up that all the goodies—the secret relics, the death’s-head rings, the contents of Himmler’s safe, et cetera—were long gone when he got there.

  “It probably would have worked with anyone else, but Colonel Cohen smelled a rat—although he didn’t say so out loud—from the beginning.”

  “What’s this got to do with my Fourteenth Engineers?” White asked.

  “Sir, the only way von Dietelburg and/or Burgdorf are going to believe Cohen’s people have left Wewelsburg is for Cohen’s people to actually leave Wewelsburg.”

  “General,” Cohen put in, “I’ve made it clear that that will happen over my dead body.”

  White made a gesture which Cohen instantly understood was an order to shut up. Then he gestured for Cronley to continue.

  “Sir, in my scenario, as Cohen’s people move out, the Fourteenth Engineers move in.”

  “And do what?” White asked, suspiciously.

  “Sir, the first thing they do is prepare signs on four-by-eight sheets of plywood. The one hanging over the main entrance would read ‘Welcome to the U.S. Constabulary NCO Academy.’”

  “I don’t think you are trying to be cute, Cronley,” White said, “but it damn sure is starting to sound like it.”

  “Sir, I’m dead serious. If nothing else works, at the end of this, the Constab will have a first-rate NCO Academy.”

  “Define ‘nothing else,’” White said.

  “Yes, sir. If the Fourteenth Engineers are unable to discover hidden passages and tunnels, and the like, in Castle Wewelsburg as they build this NCO Academy. Or if we’re unable to bag some von Dietelburg underling visiting the castle to see what we’re up to.”

  “Why do you think he’ll be interested?”

  “I think he took—takes—the dignity of the SS seriously. It’s like a religion to him. We know Wewelsburg was intended for the SS elite, the SS’s Generals Corps. And here we are, turning it into a school that will turn PFCs into corporals. I think that’s going to piss them off. All of them.”

  White abruptly changed the subject.

  “Cronley, I know what happened in Berlin. At the safe house. Including what happened to Mrs. Moriarty.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “My wife thinks that you and Mrs. Moriarty were more than good friends from your college days. That you had something going on. True?”

  Cronley felt his anger immediately build.

  That’s really none of your fucking business, General.

  However, I damn sure cannot tell you that.

  But neither am I going to lie about it.

  “Well?” White pursued.

  “Yes, sir. We were going to get married.”

  “So soon after she lost her husband?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What, exactly, was your relationship with Mrs. Moriarty when her husband was still alive?”

  “She was the wife of my best friend at A&M, General.”

  “And nothing more? Am I supposed to believe that?”

  Cronley heard himself blurt his reply before he could stop himself. “Sir, with all due respect, I don’t give a damn what you or anyone else believes.”

  There was silence in the room. Cronley could feel the tension of the others.

  General White then said, evenly, “We’ve noticed, Cronley. Haven’t we, Mr. Justice? That you don’t give a damn what anyone believes, including your superiors.”

  “Leave him alone, I.D.,” Jackson said. “You’ve been intentionally, for reasons I can’t imagine, trying to get him to blow his cork.”

  “So you’ve noticed that, Bob, have you? And how would you judge Captain Cronley’s response to my provocation?”

  “He handled it a helluva lot better than I would or could.”

  “‘Great minds march down similar trails,’” White replied. “You ever hear that, Bob?”

  White then reached for his telephone.

  “Get me Colonel Dickinson of the Fourteenth Engineers on a secure line. If memory serves, they’re in Bad Nauheim.”

  * * *

  —

  “Dickinson, this is General White. I’ve decided that the Constabulary needs an NCO Academy, and, further, that the Fourteenth is going to build it for us.”

  There was a pause long enough for Colonel Dickinson to say “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll tell you what happens next,” White continued. “My godson is in town, and Mrs. White is going to feed us lunch. After lunch, Colonel Wilson is going to fire up my Gooney Bird and fly to Bad Nauheim, where you and either your S-3 or your executive officer—your choice—will be waiting with your bags packed for, say, five days. Got all that?”

  There was again a pause long enough for the colonel to again say “Yes, sir.”

  “Nice to talk to you, Dickinson,” White said, and hung up. Then he stood up. “Let’s go to lunch.”

  [THREE]

  Aboard Constabulary 1

  Bad Nauheim, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1725 24 April 1946

  When Hotshot Billy Wilson landed General White’s Gooney Bird at Bad Nauheim, Lieutenant Colonel David P. Dickinson, CE, and another engineer officer, Major Donald G. Lomax, were waiting for them.

  Both officers were visibly surprised when they were waved aboard the aircraft and found that the interior, instead of the rows of canvas-and-aluminum-pipe seating they expected, was furnished more like a living room than anything else. It had armchairs and couches affixed to a floor of nice carpet, and against the forward wall of the passenger compartment was a small bar.

  “Gentlemen, I’m Justice Jackson,” Jackson greeted them, then pointed as he spoke. “That’s Colonel Cohen, and those two are Captains Dunwiddie and Cronley.”

  When Cronley got out of the copilot’s position, both engineers were surprised there were no pilot’s wings on his tunic chest.

  “Captain,” Major Lomax offered helpfully, “you seem to have lost your wings.”

  “Major, you can’t lose something you never had,” Cronley replied.

  The major, his face blank, did not know how to reply.

  “This is what happens next, after we take on fuel and stow your gear,” Cronley then said. “First, we’re going to Wetzlar to pick up Sergeant K. C. Wagner. Then we’re going to Castle Wewelsburg, where Colonel Cohen will show our new engineer friends here around. Then Nuremberg. Any questions?”

  There were none.

  “Colonel Dickinson,” Cronley said, “have you got any large—the larger, the better—bulldozers, hole diggers, heavy equipment like that, that you’re not going to need, say, for the next three weeks?”

  “Why do you want to know, Captain?”

  “Well, if you do, I want you to get them on their way to Wewelsburg as soon as possible.”

  “Is that so, Captain? On whose authority?”

  “Mine.”

  “Colonel,” Cohen said, chuckling, “welcome to our world. You will have to get used to the idea that we’re all working for Captain Cronley—Lord knows that I have fought that battle and lost. The next person up in his chain of command is Harry S Truman.”

  Dickinson looked in disbelief at Justice Jackson, who, smiling, said, “This is the other side of Alice’s looking glass: ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’”

  [FOUR]

  Farber Palast

  Stein, near Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  2005 24 April 1946

  Cronley’s bodyguard detail, which now consisted of Max Ostrowski and two other Polish DCI agents, hadn’t gone with them to Sonthofen, but when they landed at Nuremberg, they found the three waiting for the
m.

  Also waiting were Cronley’s Horch touring car, a Chevrolet staff car, and three jeeps.

  Cronley offered the Horch to Justice Jackson, who smiled.

  “Thanks all the same, Jim. Maybe you can pull it off, but I cannot afford to look like Hitler in a Nazimobile on the way to a rally of the faithful.”

  Minutes later, preceded by a jeep, and trailed by another, Cronley and Casey Wagner rode to the castle in the backseat of the Horch.

  * * *

  —

  There was a large ex-Wehrmacht Mercedes with Red Army plates sitting in a NO PARKING area in front of the hotel, so when Cronley entered the lobby bar, he was not surprised to see Ivan Serov. But he was surprised that instead of sitting with Father McKenna, Serov was with Miss Janice Johansen. He had last seen her in the hospital in Berlin.

  “Where’s our friend from the Vatican?” Cronley said. “You were supposed to be watching him, Ivan.”

  “I passed him to Mortimer, who is giving him a first look at the castle.”

  “You look a lot better than I expected you to, Jimmy,” she greeted him. “Nice to see that you’ve improved, sweetie. And good to see you, too, Casey.”

  Wagner made a thin smile and nodded once.

  “Thank you, Miss Johansen,” Cronley said as he and Casey took their seats. “When your life is FUBAR, and there’s nothing you can do about it, you throw yourself into your work. I learned that from Ivan.”

  “Or turn to drink,” Serov said, reaching for a bottle of Haig & Haig and offering it to Cronley.

  Cronley took the bottle, then poured two inches of the scotch whisky into one glass and half an inch into a second. The latter he slid over to K. C. Wagner.

  “Jimmy,” Janice said. “I realize this sounds a little lame, but is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Oddly enough, I just thought of something . . . Ivan, did you tell her why I went to see General White?”

  Serov shook his head.

  “I need your literary talent,” Cronley said, turning back to Janice.

  “To write about what?”

  “The about-to-be-built Constabulary NCO Academy.”