The Enemy of My Enemy

by W. E. B Griffin

  “What time tomorrow?”

  “How does oh-nine-hundred grab you?”

  “Not as tightly as oh-eight-hundred.”

  “Oh-eight-hundred it is.”

  [FIVE]

  King Arthur’s Court

  Wewelsburg Castle

  Near Paderborn, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  0750 27 April 1946

  When Cronley arrived, he had expected to find the “destruction” crew setting up in the big round room, with Colonel Dickinson standing at King Arthur’s huge round table, perhaps marking up with a pencil parchment sheets showing hidden rooms and passageways in the castle.

  What Cronley and Father McKenna found when they entered the room was Dickinson working, but not on any such floor plans.

  He was working on King Arthur’s round table itself.

  Dickinson had somehow managed to get three Dodge three-quarter-ton trucks from what had become the motor pool up onto the second floor and into the room.

  Originally designed as an ammo carrier, its three-quarter-ton chassis had been quickly adapted, officially and unofficially, to other tasks. Some, for example, were combat vehicles, with a .50 caliber Browning machine gun mounted on a pedestal in the bed.

  Dickinson’s trio of three-quarter-tons in the room had been converted, by the installation of a winch-and-cable mechanisms in their beds, into vehicle-recovery trucks. While these winch-and-cables could not lift an enormous GM 6×6 truck, they were more than powerful enough to pick up a jeep.

  But what these “jeep wreckers” were doing now, along with an enormous crane that had its end squeezed through one of the windows, was aiding in the disassembly of King Arthur’s round table.

  “Impressive, Colonel,” Cronley said as they approached.

  “Don’t get too close,” Dickinson said. “The damn thing tips the scales at two tons, if it’s an ounce. And there’s always a chance that, weakened by deconstruction, the son of a bitch could let loose and crush shit out of everyone and anything in its path.”

  “Duly noted,” McKenna said, wide-eyed, taking a couple steps back.

  “We got started a little early,” Dickinson said to Cronley. “Didn’t think you’d mind.”

  “Dumb question?” Cronley said.

  “Shoot.”

  “Why take apart the table? I thought we were concerned with deconstructing walls, et cetera.”

  “So did I. Here, let me show you something.”

  Dickinson led them over to a battered wooden chair against the wall. Leaning against it was a heavy paper tube four feet in length and three inches in diameter. He pulled from the tube a loose roll of parchmentlike papers. When he unrolled them, Cronley saw that they were the engineer’s working blueprints showing walls and measurements made the previous day.

  The top sheet showed a pencil-sketched outline of what Cronley recognized as King Arthur’s Court.

  “So, here,” Dickinson said, pointing, “you can see this is where we’re standing.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And this is where the round table sat. And this—”

  “Oh, shit!” Cronley blurted.

  “Yeah. It’s not certain, but we won’t know till that table . . .”

  “Carry on, Colonel. I’m holding you up.”

  * * *

  —

  Cronley and McKenna watched from a safe distance as the entire table was lifted six feet off the floor, then tilted enough by one of the three-quarter-ton wreckers so that the other two wreckers, their windshields folded down, could get underneath.

  Sturdy ropes were wrapped around the table while half a dozen soldiers, some equipped with air-powered jacks and others with air-powered saws, broke the table into four roughly equal pieces.

  One piece remained attached to the crane. The remaining three were held by the wreckers.

  Under Dickinson’s precise—if profane, even blasphemous—direction, one by one the pieces of the table were inched through the castle wall opening and then lowered onto a waiting 6×6 in the courtyard.

  Cronley was about to turn away from watching the activity in the courtyard when there came the sound of a siren, then multiple sirens.

  An M8 armored car drove into the courtyard, followed by a second M8, and then three three-quarter-tons in personnel carrier mode. Each held eight Constabulary troopers.

  There was blast of a whistle, and the troopers in the three-quarter-tons leapt out of them, clutching Thompson submachine guns. They acted as if they expected to be attacked at any moment.

  And then there was action in the second M8.

  Major General I. D. White, wearing a shiny helmet liner with the two silver stars indicating his rank gleaming on its front, leapt nimbly to the ground. Two more Thompson-armed troopers followed him. White tucked a riding crop under his arm and marched regally toward the castle entrance.

  Dickinson walked up to Cronley to see the source of the sirens.

  “Captain,” he said, helpfully, “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the general is looking for you. And I suggest it might be a good idea not to keep him waiting.”

  Cronley met his eyes, then turned and walked quickly to the door before breaking into a trot.

  XIV

  [ONE]

  Wewelsburg Castle

  Near Paderborn, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  0955 27 April 1946

  Cronley slowed to a walk as he entered the kitchen. General White was helping himself to a cup of coffee and a doughnut from a tray on the table in the center of the room. Two Constabulary troopers, the elder of whom looked as if he required a shave maybe every other week, eyed Cronley coldly. Both troopers obviously were prepared to turn their Thompsons on him if he acted at all suspiciously. Cronley saluted crisply.

  “Good morning, sir. An unexpected pleasure.”

  General White returned the salute by touching his riding crop to his gleaming helmet liner.

  “I was taking a morning patrol with my troopers and realized we were close to your castle. I thought I’d drop by and pay my respects.”

  “We’re honored to have you, sir.”

  “You’re scared practically shitless, Cronley. I can tell when you are because your military courtesy is impeccable.”

  Cronley didn’t reply.

  “In response to your unasked question, Sergeant Casey is sitting—figuratively speaking, of course—on Miss Johansen in Sonthofen. I didn’t want her around until I had a good look at what’s going on at your castle. I have a number of probing questions for you. Starting with, why is King Arthur’s table in pieces and why are they loading said pieces onto that six-by-six?”

  “Sir, Colonel Dickinson believes an entry—maybe the entry—into the secret passages in the castle is concealed where the table was sitting.”

  “Now I’m really glad I came,” White said, then gestured with his riding crop. “Lead on, Captain Super Spook. Show me the secret passages.”

  * * *

  —

  When they walked into the vaulted room, they found Major Lomax on his knees where the table had been. He was gently tapping the stone floor with a ball-peen hammer and then, all of a sudden, raised the hammer over his shoulders and delivered a heavy blow to the floor.

  “You’re brighter than you look, Lomax,” Colonel Dickinson said. “Maybe you should consider a career in the Corps of Engineers.”

  Lomax ignored him, instead handing the hammer to Technical Sergeant Holmes.

  “You see where it’s starting to crack, Elwood?”

  “Got it, sir,” Sergeant Holmes said, taking the hammer and dropping to his knees.

  At that point, Dickinson, Lomax, and Father McKenna, who was standing beside Lomax, spotted General White, a natty lieutenant next to him, obviously his aide-de-camp, his bodyguards, and Cronley.

>   Dickinson called, “Ten-hut!” and everybody in the room, which included maybe a dozen soldiers, popped to attention.

  “Rest,” White ordered, and then pointed his riding crop at Father McKenna. “Who are you, padre? And what are you doing in my castle?”

  “I’m Father McKenna, General. I’m on Cardinal von Hassburger’s staff. The cardinal sent me here to learn what I can about the Nazi religion Himmler started.”

  White didn’t respond, instead asking, “Sergeant, why are you hammering on the floor?”

  “Sir, we think there’s a—I don’t know—maybe some sorta trapdoor under here, blocking the entrance to a passage or stairway, or something. Somebody’s tried to hide it. And did a damn good job.”

  The sound of the hammer striking the stone floor took on a new pitch. Then there was a cracking sound.

  The sergeant wedged an iron crowbar into a crack and, with a grunt, heaved on it. This caused a section of the floor, almost an inch thick and four feet square, to rise just high enough so that the sergeant could insert a metal wedge.

  “There you are, you tough son of a bitch,” the sergeant said. “Somebody, quick, get me a length of chain and then move one of the damn jeep wreckers over here. There’s no telling how heavy that son of a bitch is going to be.”

  Ten minutes later, the sergeant had looped the chain through a handle on the underside of the square blocking the hole and then looped the other end through a hook on the jeep wrecker’s derrick.

  As the sergeant used hand signals to control the derrick, the chain tightened. The truck engine revved as the derrick strained under the weight, then began to lift.

  “Here comes the bastard,” Dickinson called.

  The square slowly cleared the hole, then swung to one side. The sergeant made a slashing motion across his throat, and the derrick operator stopped raising the chain.

  The sergeant went to the hole and looked down in it. As he did, Colonel Dickinson got on his knees beside him for a better look.

  And then he clutched at his throat with his hand and, gray-faced, turned away from the hole.

  The sergeant vomited. Then so did Dickinson.

  General White, in his legendary voice of command, ordered, “Everybody out! Now!”

  White turned to Cronley.

  “You get Dickinson. I’ll get the sergeant.”

  Cronley got a whiff.

  “Jesus! Poison gas?” he asked as they hurried toward the hole.

  He got another whiff—then vomited.

  “No,” White said. “That’s a mass of human bodies putrefying . . .”

  [TWO]

  General White cared for, almost parentally, his aide and the two teenage bodyguards, all of whom took longer than almost anyone else to get control of their wrenching stomachs.

  Cronley required much the same care—and got it from Father McKenna—before he was able to help anyone else.

  Finally, he decided that he had done all he could. He surveyed the chaotic scene and was surprised that everyone was still alive.

  * * *

  —

  Cronley made his way outside, into the cobblestone courtyard, and deeply inhaled the fresh air. He found Father McKenna with Colonel Dickinson and Major Lomax. They were sitting on cobblestones, their backs against the rear tires of the 6×6 truck that held the pieces of the disassembled round table.

  Soon, General White approached. “You guys going to be all right?”

  Cronley, Lomax, and Dickinson nodded, and, in a chorus, said weak “Yes, sir”s. McKenna made a limp gesture with his right fist, the thumb up.

  Cronley saw White’s teenage bodyguards more or less stumble out of the castle and come to rest where they could keep an eye on General White.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” White said, “the first time I smelled that—and what I smelled then wasn’t as bad as this—I was hors de combat for six hours.”

  “Where was that, sir?” Dickinson asked.

  “Peenemünde, the German rocket labs. We knew what had been going on there, so we were in a race with the Russians to get there first. The Germans sent SS-Generalmajor Wilhelm Burgdorf—one of the two bastards Super Spook is looking for—to blow up the place and otherwise make sure that whoever got there first, us or the Reds, would find nothing of value.”

  “But we did, right?” McKenna said.

  “Peenemünde was enormous. There was no way Burgdorf could blow up the whole thing. So he blew up and burned what he could, and then he massacred the slave laborers who had been working there so they couldn’t tell us or the Reds what they had seen.”

  “Massacred, sir?” Dickenson said. “How?”

  “He didn’t have enough time to shoot all of them—there were hundreds, not counting those who had died from being worked to death—so what he did was bulldoze mass graves, usher the workers into the graves, and, after a perfunctory attempt to shoot them, had the bulldozers bury everybody—dead, or still breathing, or sometimes not even wounded—men, women, and children.

  “That’s when I smelled this for the first time”—he gestured back toward the castle—“when I opened those mass graves . . . It’s a smell that sticks with you a long time. I suspect forever.”

  He paused and then went on. “So how can we get rid of enough of the stink, Dickinson, and how soon, so that we can have a look in the hole and see what’s down there?”

  “Exhaust fans are the obvious answer, General,” Lomax weakly answered for Dickinson, then suddenly got to his feet and ran twenty feet before bending at the waist and suffering another attack of nausea.

  “Where do we get exhaust fans?” White went on.

  “The Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives people, sir,” Dickinson said. “They use them to blow air into caves and tunnels and mines where the Krauts stored stolen artwork.”

  “Do you know for sure where there are such fans?”

  “Yes, sir. But I don’t know how Monuments is going to like our wanting to take them over.”

  White nodded. “Can the engineers settle such a dispute or am I going to have to send a couple of Constabulary troops with you?”

  Lomax walked back to where they sat by the truck. “We can handle it, General.”

  “Once you get the fans, how long will it take?”

  “I’d run them at least twenty-four hours, sir. But there’s always a chance that they could clear it faster.”

  “Start looking for them,” White ordered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Super Spook, where’s your Nazimobile?”

  “It’s here, sir, outside by the moat.”

  “We’re going to ride into Nuremberg with the windshield folded down and see if that’ll help in getting the smell out of our nostrils.”

  “Yes, sir. Why are we going to Nuremberg?”

  “To pay our respects to Mr. Justice Jackson.”

  “Stupid question,” Cronley said.

  “Yes, it was.”

  “General, can I hitch a ride with you?” Father McKenna asked.

  “You have business with Justice Jackson?”

  “No, sir. But I want to send a message to the cardinal.”

  “What sort of message?”

  McKenna paused before replying, then said, “I want to tell him that the situation is even worse than Cronley presented it.”

  “Castle Wewelsburg got to you, did it?”

  “It’s made its impression, yes, but not as much as my conversation with Brigadeführer Heimstadter.”

  “How so?”

  “It took me some time, General, to accept that he’s perfectly willing, maybe even eager, to be a martyr to this new religion and the Thousand-Year Reich. He’s an intelligent man. One would think that after all that’s happened—Hitler’s suicide, Goebbels and his wife murdering their children before committ
ing suicide themselves, the defect of the Wehrmacht, the unconditional surrender, the utter destruction of Berlin, all of that—that he’d at least begin to question what good his suicide could do the cause. That’s what I find really dangerous. How many more are there like him? Intelligent, educated, competent—and clearly out of their minds?”

  “More than I like to think, I’m afraid, Father. And you want to tell the cardinal this?”

  “I want to get that message to Cardinal von Hassburger soonest. But I don’t want to telephone, as I’m convinced Odessa has people listening. So, what I’m going to do is find someone in Nuremberg’s Jesuit community who’ll carry what I have to say to Rome verbally.”

  “Sure, you can ride along with us,” White said. “Okay, Super Spook, let’s go.”

  As they crossed the courtyard, White’s aide and then the two teenage bodyguards struggled to their feet, obviously determined to go where he was going despite their feeling ill.

  “Cronley,” White ordered, “tell them they’re not going.”

  “With respect, sir, no. I have a rule about not breaking hearts.”

  “You are one difficult sonofabitch. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

  “Yes, sir. But I didn’t believe them.”

  * * *

  —

  Several minutes later, they drove off in the Horch, its top folded down and with both the front and rear seat windshields also folded down.

  Cronley was at the wheel. White sat beside him. In the rear, the general’s aide and Father McKenna rode regally in the leather-upholstered rear seat, while the general’s bodyguards rode uncomfortably in the jump seats.

  [THREE]

  Office of the Chief U.S. Prosecutor

  International Tribunal Compound

  Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1710 27 April 1946

  “Why do I get the feeling that this isn’t a social call?” Justice Jackson said as White, Cronley, and McKenna entered his office. “And what is that sickening smell?”