Oh, shit!
His mouth went on automatic: “General, I hold myself responsible for Lieutenant Moriarty’s death. Bonehead would not have been in DCI if I hadn’t recruited him. But—”
“It wasn’t an accident, sir.” Dunwiddie finished the sentence, then asked, “May I tell the general, Mr. Cronley?”
“What the hell do you mean, Chauncey?” White flared. “May he tell me? He goddamned well better tell me!”
“General, Tiny is—as usual—being a good officer,” Cronley said. “The circumstances surrounding Lieutenant Moriarty’s death are classified Top Secret–Presidential.”
“And I don’t have the goddamn Need to Know? Is that what you’re telling me, Cronley?”
“No, sir. You have every right to know. And I fuck— Excuse me. I failed to bring you into this. I’m very sorry.”
“As you goddamn well should be. You also failed to tell me you’ve been assigned to protect Justice Jackson at Nuremberg.”
“Sir, no excuse, sir.”
I haven’t said that since I was a Fish at A&M.
General White makes A&M upperclassmen tormenting Fish seem like Angels of Mercy.
And how the hell does he know about Nuremberg?
“I read minds, Cronley. You might want to keep that in mind. I knew that you and Chauncey had been sent to Nuremberg because Colonel Wallace told me when he called to tell me he was now chief, DCI-Europe.”
My God! He does read minds!
“But he didn’t tell you about Moriarty?”
“I can only surmise that he didn’t think I had the right to know. So, are you going to tell me? Or are you going to wait until I tell Colonel Wilson to excuse us?”
“No, sir. Lieutenant Moriarty was assassinated. Everything points to me being the intended target. He was sleeping in what had been my bed at the Compound. He was shot—through the window—seven times with a silenced Colt Woodsman .22.”
“And who do you think was the assassin?”
“Obviously a mole in the Compound. General Gehlen thinks it’s probably one of his people, but it’s possible it’s one of the Polish guards.”
“His people?”
“One or more of them may be under pressure from either Odessa or the NKGB who may have their families.”
“And the Poles?”
“Same thing, sir. And, sir, that’s why we’re here.”
“Tell me.”
“The commanding officer of the 26th Infantry, who has the guards on the prisoners at Nuremberg—”
“So I’ve heard. Get to it, Cronley.”
“Colonel Rasberry thinks the same thing is happening to his guards. He went to Colonel Cohen, and Cohen came to me.”
“To do what?”
“We want to send Wagner to the 26th undercover, to see what he can find out.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” White asked. Before Cronley could reply, White raised his voice. “Sergeant Major!”
Then he turned to Cronley.
“Sergeant Major Charles Whaley has a Top Secret clearance, but not a Top Secret–Presidential. Despite that, I think he should hear what you are about to tell me. Objections?”
“No, sir.”
“General?” Whaley asked from the door.
“Mr. Cronley is about to ask the Constabulary to do something I suspect will be legally questionable. I think you should hear what that is.”
“Yes, sir,” Whaley said, and came into the room, and then leaned on the wall beside the door.
“Okay, Mr. Cronley. What probably illegal act, or acts, can the Constabulary do for you?” White asked.
“Sir, replacements to the 26th Infantry—”
“Which is charged, Charley,” White interrupted, “with guarding Hermann Göring and his former underlings at Nuremberg. Continue, Cronley.”
“Yes, sir. Replacements to the 26th don’t come from the repple depple at Marburg—”
“I know,” Sergeant Major Whaley interrupted. “Once a month we get a TWX from USFET, levying on us for sometimes as many as six troopers, pay grades E-3 through E-5, with six months in the theater and with Secret security clearances. No MOS requirements. To be transferred to the 26th. There’s one on my desk now for four men. Weird.”
“Mr. Cronley will now explain that to us,” White said.
“The idea is that Colonel Rasberry doesn’t want the guards to be fresh out of basic training and just off the troop ship from Camp Kilmer,” Cronley explained.
“Let me take a wild guess,” General White said. “You want Casey Wagner sent to the 26th as if he’s been levied from us.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you volunteer for this, Casey? Or did Mr. Cronley just tell you this is what’s going to happen?”
“I’m all right with it, sir. I’m a DCI special agent. This is what we do.”
“You’re a what?” Sergeant Major Whaley inquired incredulously.
“Why don’t you show Charley your credentials, Casey?” White said.
Wagner handed Whaley his credentials.
“And how old are you, son?” Whaley asked, after he had carefully examined them.
“Seventeen. I’ll be eighteen next month.”
“And even more incredible, Charley,” White said, “Casey earned those credentials. Casey is the fellow who figured out how Odessa was moving Nazis around and across borders in Stars and Stripes trucks, allowing us to bag those two bastards who massacred the slave laborers at Peenemünde.”
“I’ll be damned,” Whaley said.
Casey Wagner blushed.
“Unless we abandon our sinful ways, Sergeant Major, we all will be damned. Except for Colonel Wilson and Mr. Cronley, who have demonstrated, time and again, they can walk between the raindrops of sin and remain as pure as the driven snow.”
“No problem, General,” Whaley said. “I was about to cut the orders transferring the levy to the 26th. I’ll just put Casey on them.”
“It’s not quite that simple, Sergeant,” Cronley said. “We have to give Casey a cover. He has to know what training he would have had if he had gone through the school. And something about the regiment from which he is supposedly transferring. I mean stuff about which Gasthaus he frequented, the nickname of his first sergeant, that sort of thing.”
“I understand, sir. But unless we do that right now, I won’t be able to put him on the orders I’m about to cut. And so far as familiarizing him with a regiment—”
“Thank you, Colonel Wilson,” General White interrupted, “for volunteering to fly Casey to the 10th Constabulary Regiment in Wetzlar immediately after lunch for that background orientation you will arrange for him there with Sergeant Major Donley.”
“I hear and obey, my General,” Wilson said.
“And speaking of lunch, Charley, call Mrs. White and tell her to set places for lunch for all of us. Drop Captain Dunwiddie’s name into the conversation. That will cause her to raise her culinary standards.”
[THREE]
The Prison
The Palace of Justice
Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1650 23 February 1946
It wasn’t until Cronley was actually at the prison checkpoint that a disturbing thought popped into his mind.
Cohen told me that Macher had been sent to the SS detention compound in Darmstadt.
But he knew I was coming here—“your chat with Sturmbannführer Heinz Macher can be put off until you come back from arranging to insert Casey into the 26th Infantry”—so what the hell is going on?
“If you’re going in, Mr. Cronley, I’ll have to have your weapon,” the captain in charge of the checkpoint said.
“Sorry,” Cronley said, as he hoisted his Ike jacket to gain access to his pistol. “Where have you stashed Heinz M
acher?”
“Our newest guest is in Cell 12, right upper tier,” the captain said. “I know because I had the duty when he arrived.”
“When was that?”
“The day before yesterday. They had been holding him in Darmstadt, but I guess the CIC found out he wasn’t just one more unimportant SS-Sturmbannführer.”
Thank you, Captain. You just told me what to say to this guy.
And clever fellow that I am, I just figured out what that clever fellow Cohen has done. Since he and/or his people couldn’t get anything out of this guy at Darmstadt, he moved him here—
Did he need anyone’s permission to do that?
Or is ol’ Morty Cohen another loose cannon?
—where he will see all of the big shots on their way to the gallows and will be thinking of how he can dodge that.
But why didn’t Morty interrogate Macher himself once he was here?
Because Macher clammed up in Darmstadt when interrogated by a senior officer of the Jewish persuasion. Answering questions posed by a gottverdammten Juden would be a sin against Saint Heinrich’s new religion, and we know that Macher worked for Himmler, and Saint Heinrich himself sent him to see that Castle Wewelsburg was emptied and then blown up.
That means Himmler trusted him. He was too junior to be an apostle, but he damned sure had to be a convert to the new religion. A born-again convert, like someone at a Southern Baptist revival: “Hallelujah, brother. You have been washed in the blood of the lamb!”
In this case, the blood of Jews, Gypsies, Russian POWs, homosexuals, and other Untermenschen.
And when I said I wanted to talk to Macher, Cohen figured, “What the hell, maybe Cronley can do what I couldn’t. Improbable, but worth trying.”
And so he had Macher moved here.
Does Cohen think I can do what he couldn’t?
Is that a vote of confidence in me?
Or is he just grasping at straws?
Almost certainly.
A 26th Infantry sergeant led Cronley up three flights of metal stairs to the upper tier, then past a dozen cells, and then across the bridge to the right tier of cells, and then down it to a door with a sign—“Macher, Heinz”—on it.
“Open it up,” the sergeant ordered the PFC who was standing beside the door.
He’s about as old as Casey. Casey will fit right in here.
“Fit in”? Bullshit!
Casey should be running around Pennsylvania chasing girls, not risking his neck—his life—trying to outwit some really dangerous people.
And what about you, Super Spook?
Shouldn’t you be a Second John, supervising the washing of mud off the tracks of a tank in some motor pool, not trying to outwit some really dangerous and clever people?
“Mr. Cronley?” the sergeant asked.
Cronley saw the door to Cell 12 was open.
“Thanks, Sergeant,” Cronley said, and walked into the cell.
A tall, trim, nice-looking man in his late twenties rose from the bed on which he had been sitting.
“Wie geht’s, Heinz?” Cronley asked. “How are they treating you?”
Macher didn’t reply.
Cronley showed him his DCI credentials.
“I don’t know what that is, this Directorate of Central Intelligence,” Macher said, after he had carefully examined them.
“Well, it’s sort of Abwehr and the Sicherheitsdienst rolled into one. We look into everything from theft to crimes against humanity. You’re charged with both.”
“What do you want with me?”
“I’m looking for the contents of Himmler’s safe you took from Wewelsburg Castle, the twelve thousand—or more—Totenkopfrings you also took from the castle, and most important, for Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg.”
“As I told the other investigators, Herr Cronley, I stole nothing from Castle Wewelsburg. And I think you know von Dietelburg is dead.”
“You and I both know he isn’t. And I didn’t say you stole the contents of the safe, or the rings. Theft of SS property would violate your SS officer’s Code of Honor, wouldn’t it? I said you took that stuff from the castle because those were your orders from Reichsführer-SS Himmler.”
Macher shrugged, more than a little condescendingly.
“But I know, and you know I know, that you know where all that stuff is. And we want it.”
“If I knew what happened to what you’re talking about, and I don’t, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“In a way, Heinz, I almost admire your dedication to keeping the faith. But the difference between you and me is that I wouldn’t go so far as getting myself hung because I wouldn’t cough up some rings and some gold and old paintings. That’s not the same thing as betraying the Reichsführer-SS’s secrets, is it? You ever hear ‘To the victor goes the spoils’?”
Macher didn’t reply.
“Well, we won,” Cronley said. “We’re the victors, and we want those spoils. Think about that, Heinz. What difference does it make? Reichsführer-SS Himmler doesn’t need that stuff anymore. He took the coward’s way out, didn’t he?”
Macher glared at Cronley.
“It is better to die at one’s own hand than to be hung by the Jews,” he said.
“The Jews weren’t going to hang Himmler, Heinz, and the Jews aren’t going to hang you. People like me—and I’m half-German, my mother was born and raised in Germany—would have hung him, and unless you come to your senses, will hang you.”
Macher didn’t reply.
“Think it over, Heinz. I’ll be back,” Cronley said, and walked out of the cell.
[FOUR]
The sergeant led Cronley back across the bridge to the left tier of cells, and then down the stairs to the second tier and then to Cell 14, on which was a sign: “Heimstadter, Ulrich.”
“Open it, soldier,” the sergeant ordered.
The guard outside, who looked even younger than Casey Wagner, worked the lock and then the sliding barrier, and Cronley entered the cell.
“And how are you on this snowy February day?” Cronley asked in German.
Heimstadter, Cronley saw, had shaved off the soup-strainer mustache he had on his chubby face when he had been captured.
But the bastard still looks like a postcard Bavarian in lederhosen with Gemütlichkeit oozing from every pore.
Heimstadter didn’t reply.
“Generals White and Harmon asked me to look in on you,” Cronley said.
Major General Ernest Harmon had commanded 2nd Armored Division and, on assuming command of the VI Corps, had turned over Hell on Wheels to I. D. White. Three weeks earlier, on 1 Feburary, White had assumed command of the Constabulary.
When the stone-faced Heimstadter did not respond, Cronley added, “They saw what you and Müller did at Peenemünde and are looking forward to your conviction and hanging.”
Heimstadter’s face blanched for a moment.
“Victory must be sweet for someone like you,” he said.
“I don’t think ‘sweet’ is the word that applies. But a mixture of satisfaction and shame for someone of German blood like me. I will find it uncomfortable to watch my cousin Luther swing with a broken neck under the gallows.”
“Your cousin?” Heimstadter blurted.
“My mother’s brother’s son. You may have met him. Former Sturmführer Luther Stauffer . . .”
That rang a bell! I could see it in his eyes!
“The name does not seem familiar,” Heimstadter said.
“The SS sent him home to Strasbourg just as the Thousand-Year Reich was in its final death throes,” Cronley said. “They assigned him the duty of helping people they knew we would be looking for to get out of Germany. The French caught him trying to get you and Müller across the border. As soon as the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire is fi
nished asking Cousin Luther about Odessa, he’ll be transferred here for trial and, I’m afraid, the hangman’s noose.”
“You are a disgrace to your German blood!”
“I’m sure Cousin Luther would agree with you,” Cronley replied. “He was deep into Himmler’s Nazi Knights of the Round Table nonsense. He even got married at Castle Wewelsburg. But on the other hand, I can sleep at night. The hangman’s noose is not in my future.”
I don’t know where all that came from, but this time, my automatic mouth was right on the money.
I could see it in his eyes.
He met Cousin Luther and he knows what went on at Wewelsburg.
What he’s worried about right now is how much Müller is going to tell me.
Which is nothing, because I’m not going to call on Müller.
And when he asks Müller what he told me, and Müller tells him he never saw me, he’ll think Müller is a liar, and Müller will start wondering what former SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter told me to try to avoid the noose.
Cronley, you have really learned how to be a devious bastard!
He turned and raised his voice, and then cried in English, “Sergeant, let me out of here!”
[FIVE]
Farber Palast
Stein, near Nuremberg
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1845 23 February 1946
When Cronley walked into the lobby, he saw Lieutenant Tom Winters sitting in an armchair reading the Stars and Stripes.
“Please don’t tell me you flew Wallace down here,” he greeted him.
Winters closed the newspaper and stood up.
“No,” he said simply. “I’m reporting for duty. Me and the other Storch. Colonel Wallace told me you would probably eventually come here.”
“Let’s go in the bar and you can tell me all about it,” Cronley said, and then asked, “Why didn’t you wait for me in there?”
“Because I knew if I went in there, I would drink more than I should.”
“Tell me about it over a double scotch, and then we’ll get something to eat.”
—
They went in the bar and took a table and, when the waiter came, ordered Johnnie Walker, doubles.
Death at Nuremberg Page 18