Cronley climbed down from the Storch, and Charley Spurgeon climbed down after him.
“Now what, Loose Cannon?” Wallace greeted him.
“Lieutenant Spurgeon, this is Colonel Wallace, chief of DCI-Europe,” Cronley said.
“Who the hell is he?”
“He was formerly Colonel Wasserman’s assistant.”
“Formerly?”
“Colonel, if you would please summon a squad—a platoon would be better—of the security force, I will introduce our other passengers.”
“Who are?”
“I’d really rather not say until we get a platoon out here.”
“Goddamn you! Who?”
“If you insist, sir. I have former SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg in my aircraft and former General der Infanterie Wilhelm Burgdorf neatly trussed up in Lieutenant Winters’s aircraft.”
“Are you drunk, Cronley?”
“No,” Cronley said. “And while you’re summoning the troops, you’d better get Dr. Williamson out here.”
“Somebody injured, Cronley?” Dr. Williamson asked from the rear of the pack gathered around Wallace. Cronley hadn’t seen him.
“There’s some injured ego, Doctor, but what I need you to do for me is to body-search my guests. We were in sort of a rush leaving Vienna, and there wasn’t time to do it there. And I don’t want either of the bastards to bite on a cyanide capsule.”
A jeep and a three-quarter-ton weapons carrier loaded with large black soldiers rolled up.
First Sergeant Abraham L. Tedworth got out of the jeep.
“Honest Abe, I’m really glad to see you!” Cronley said. “There are two characters in the Storchs who need to be taken to my former quarters, where Doc Williamson will body-search them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If they give you any trouble, do not, repeat not, kill them. Break an arm, maybe, but we need these bastards alive.”
“Yes, sir.”
He made the Join on me gesture—balled fist held over his head in a pumping motion—and a dozen soldiers jumped out of the weapons carrier.
They went to the aircraft and removed the passengers, both wrapped in what looked like miles of adhesive tape. As they did so, General Gehlen and former Obersten Niedermeyer and Mannberg walked up.
“What the hell?” Wallace asked.
Gehlen looked down at former General Burgdorf.
“Back from the dead, are you, Wilhelm?” he said.
“You treasonous swine!” Burgdorf said.
“I suppose that depends on your point of view,” Gehlen said.
The soldiers put them in the bed of the weapons carrier, which then very slowly started off, with the soldiers trotting along beside and behind it.
[FIVE]
Office of the Military Government Liaison Officer
The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound
Pullach, Bavaria
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0450 4 March 1946
“What we have, Cronley,” Dr. Williamson said, “is two well-fed naked Germans who did not have anything like cyanide capsules concealed in their body’s orifices. What do I do with them now?”
“Honest Abe,” Cronley said, “after he has instructed his stalwart troopers, three of each, not to take their eyes off them for two seconds, will get them GI fatigues—no boots or shoes—to hide their nakedness. And come to think of it, Abe, it might be a good idea to put a couple of troopers outside the window of my former bedroom.”
“Way ahead of you, Captain,” Tedworth replied. “I’ve got two jeeps with pedestal .50 calibers sitting out there.”
“Lieutenant Winters,” Wallace said coldly, “since Captain Cronley doesn’t seem to understand what a direct order is, this direct order is to you. Neither he, or you, or this officer”—he pointed to Spurgeon—“or Zieliński is to leave this building for any purpose until further orders. You understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sergeant Tedworth,” Wallace went on, “you will see that they comply with my order.”
“Yes, sir.”
Wallace walked out of the building, with his staff trailing.
Cronley looked at Tedworth.
“Why are you smiling, Honest Abe?”
“That Kraut is the one everybody’s been looking for?”
Cronley nodded. “And the other one is his boss.”
“So why is Wallace so pissed at you?”
“I don’t think he likes me.”
“That’s what they call an understatement. I happened to overhear what he said to General Seidel on the telephone.”
“Which was?”
“‘That loose cannon sonofabitch has caused an international incident. If Schultz wasn’t on his way here, I’d have him locked up in the Fulda Stockade awaiting general court-martial.’”
“Speaking of telephones,” Cronley said, and reached for the one on the desk.
“Get me Miss Janice Johansen at the Farber Palast Press Center in Nuremberg,” he ordered.
[SIX]
0720 4 March 1946
“So you’re telling me you left two dead men in that alley?” Major General Bruce T. Seidel, the USFET G-2, asked. “And then left without telling Colonel Wasserman or the Viennese police what had gone down?”
Wallace had ordered everyone but Winters, Spurgeon, Zieliński, and Cronley out of the room—which meant outside the building into lightly falling snow—when he had entered with Seidel.
“Yes, sir,” Cronley admitted.
“My God! What the hell were you thinking?”
“Sir, I wanted to get von Dietelburg and Burgdorf out of Vienna.”
“You shot the— What did you say, gambling casino guards?”
“I did, sir,” Spurgeon said.
“That could be interpreted as murder. Kidnapping people is a felony, and any act in . . .”
He was drowned out by the roar of aircraft engines. A heavy roar, much louder than that of an L-4 or Storch.
“What the hell is that?” Seidel asked.
“Sounds like a C-45 to me,” Cronley said.
“Can a C-45 land on that little airstrip?”
“I don’t think I’d try it when it’s snowing. But Colonel Wilson—”
“You think that’s General White’s C-45?”
“I think it’s possible that General White—or at least his airplane—was waiting for Mr. Schultz at Rhine-Main, in order to bring him here.”
“The only thing that could make this situation worse is for Hotshot Billy to kill Mr. Schultz in a crash landing,” Seidel said.
About four minutes later, there was a knock at the door.
“Well, I guess he got it on the ground in one piece,” Cronley said.
“Sir, there’s a lady out here . . .” a trooper said.
He was pushed out of the way by Miss Janice Johansen of the Associated Press.
“You really have grabbed von Dietelburg, sweetheart?”
“Miss Johansen, I’m sorry, but you’re not welcome here,” Seidel said. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
The enormous trooper Janice had pushed aside now entered the room and put his massive hands on her arms, as if to pick her up.
“How about this, General,” Janice asked. “Quote, Major General Bruce T. Seidel, the USFET G-2, had this reporter forcibly removed from the building where this reporter was verifying that former SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg, sought for war crimes since the end of the war, had been finally captured by James Cronley of the DCI. End quote. You want that on the front page of the world’s newspapers tomorrow morning?”
Seidel didn’t reply, instead turning to Cronley.
“Did you tell Miss Johansen that you had captured .
. . this wanted war criminal, Captain Cronley?”
“No, sir. Not by name. But I did tell her that she might find visiting here interesting.”
“That’s a distinction without much of a difference,” Seidel said.
“One of Tiny’s Troopers told me, quote, Super Spook has nabbed some Kraut named von Dietelburg that everybody’s been looking for. End quote,” Janice said.
“By Super Spook, presumably, he meant Captain Cronley?”
“That’s what—for obvious reasons—Tiny’s Troopers call him,” Janice said.
“I have a deal with Janice, General,” Cronley said. “She won’t file her story until I tell her she can.”
“Somehow, Captain, I don’t find that at all reassuring.”
“We’ve got the sonofabitch—and his boss. Why should that be a secret?” Cronley challenged.
Seidel literally had his mouth open to reply, but stopped when Major General I. D. White, followed by his aide-de-camp, Mr. Oscar Schultz, and a third man in a business suit, entered the room.
“General Seidel,” Schultz said, “this is Colonel Cletus Frade, USMCR, who is deputy director for South America of the DCI. Clete, you know Colonel Wallace. And Super Spook.”
“You got both of these characters, Jimmy?” Frade asked.
“Leaving dead bodies and outraged Austrian police in his wake,” Wallace said.
“I wasn’t talking to you, Colonel,” Frade said coldly.
“Where’s General Gehlen?” Schultz asked.
“I presume in his quarters,” Wallace said.
“Ask him, Oberst Mannberg, and Mr. Niedermeyer to join us, please,” Schultz said.
Wallace walked out of the room.
“What the hell are you doing here, Clete?” Cronley asked.
“I was in Washington admitting to my grandfather that I’m taking Howell Petroleum to the brink of financial ruin as its new president when El Jefe found me and told me he needed a ride over here. And why. So we got in the Howell Petroleum Constellation and here we are.”
“I understood Mr. Schultz to say you were DCI deputy director for South America,” Seidel said.
“That we don’t talk about,” Schultz said. “Take notice, Janice.”
“My lips are sealed,” she said.
Five minutes later, Gehlen, Niedermeyer, and Mannberg came into the room.
“Okay. We’re all here,” Schultz said. “Let’s start with hearing Super Spook’s version of what happened. I’ve already heard Wallace’s and Wasserman’s somewhat hysterical versions.
“Okay, Super Spook, start with Rachel, a.k.a. Seven-K.”
“She came to me saying she had been outed—”
“Who are we talking about?” Seidel asked.
“She is—or was—an asset of mine. An NKGB colonel and also a Mossad agent,” Gehlen said.
“Not an asset of yours, General,” Schultz said. “An asset of DCI. As the Süd-Deutsche Industrielle Entwicklungsorganisation is a DCI asset.”
“I stand corrected.”
“Go on, Cronley.”
“She came to me and said the NKGB was on to her, and she had to get out of Vienna. She said the Vienna Mossad guy had thrown her . . . had refused to help her.”
“You knew she was an asset, correct?”
“Yes, I did.”
“So you got her out of Vienna?”
“Yes.”
“And where is she now?”
“In my quarters,” General Gehlen said.
“And what do you think we should do with her now?”
“Argentina,” Cronley said.
“She’s still Mossad, a Nazi hunter. What about . . .”
“Our Nazis?” Cronley said. “She said she’d leave ours alone, that there were more than she could handle in Argentina already there under the Phoenix Program.”
“General Gehlen?” Schultz asked.
“She’s a woman of her word.”
“General Seidel, do you have any problem with this?”
“I never heard of this person until just now.”
“General White?”
“I’ll go along with General Gehlen. Obviously, we can’t continue to hide, to protect her here.”
“Turning to von Dietelburg and Burgdorf. Cronley, why didn’t you at least tell Colonel Wasserman what you planned to do?”
“I thought he’d order me to tell Wangermann that we thought we had him, and that Wangermann would grab him himself.”
“Why would that be bad?”
Cronley told him.
“Anybody think that was a bad call?”
For a moment it looked as if Colonel Wallace had something to say, but in the end he was silent.
“Okay,” Schultz said. “This is what’s going to happen. It is not open for discussion. I say that because I had a long talk on the phone with Chief Justice Jackson when we landed at Rhine-Main. He already had heard from Colonels Wallace and Wasserman how Super Spook had fucked up by the numbers. But he also thought Cronley probably had good reasons for what he had done, and he made pretty good guesses as to what they were.
“Seven-K goes to Argentina. So do Cronley, Spurgeon, Zieliński, and the Winterses. They will go right now, immediately, to Rhine-Main in General White’s C-45, with a quick stop in Nuremberg to pick up Mrs. Winters and the baby. Captain Dunwiddie will take over protection of Justice Jackson. While Clete makes a quick round-trip to Buenos Aires, I will go—and I’d like you to come with me, General Seidel—to Vienna and put out the Wangermann volcano eruption by pouring money on it. General Gehlen, you have as long as Seidel and I are in Vienna—no more than seventy-two hours—to interrogate von Dietelburg and Burgdorf. Then Colonel Wallace will take them to the Tribunal prison in Nuremberg. Once they’re in there, you can work out further interrogation with Morty Cohen. Any questions?”
There were none.
[SEVEN]
LONG-SOUGHT NAZIS ARRESTED
By Janice Johansen
Associated Press Foreign Correspondent
Munich, Oct 8—
Major General Bruce T. Seidel, USFET’s chief intelligence officer, announced today that former Major General Wilhelm Burgdorf and former SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg are now in cells of the Allied War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg.
Seidel said their arrests “somewhere in Austria” were the result of a combined operation involving the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps, the super-secret U.S. Directorate of Central Intelligence, and Austrian authorities.
“I cannot fully express how grateful we are for the cooperation of the Austrian authorities,” Seidel said. “We could not have made the arrests without their help.”
Burgdorf, one of the two generals sent by Hitler to Stuttgart late in the war to offer General Erwin Rommel the choice between a cyanide capsule and hanging for his role in the failed plot to kill Hitler, was reported to have died in the Hitler bunker and been buried in the Chancellery Garden.
“We knew this was a ruse,” said Colonel Harold Wallace, the chief of DCI-Europe, and the only member whose name is made public, “but we allowed him to think he had fooled us so we could catch him. His arrest, and that of his deputy von Dietelburg, removes the leadership of the so-called Odessa Organization, which has tried, without much success, to help other Nazis escape to South America and other locations.”
Von Dietelburg, according to General Seidel, was heavily involved in a Nazi religious cult headquartered in Wewelsburg Castle.
“And now that we have him in a cell, we can investigate this fully,” Seidel concluded.
When pressed by this reporter for the name of at least one DCI agent, he replied, “Well, there’s one they call Super Spook,” but would go no further.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
W. E. B. Griffin is the author of seven be
stselling series: The Corps, Brotherhood of War, Badge of Honor, Men at War, Honor Bound, Presidential Agent, and Clandestine Operations. He has been invested into the orders of St. George of the U.S. Armor Association and St. Andrew of the Army Aviation Association of America, and is a life member of the U.S. Special Operations Association; Gaston-Lee Post 5660, Veterans of Foreign Wars; the American Legion, China Post #1 in Exile; the Police Chiefs Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey, and the State of Delaware; the National Rifle Association; the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Society; and the Flat Earth Society (Pensacola, Florida, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, chapters). He is an honorary life member of the U.S. Army Otter & Caribou Association, the U.S. Army Special Forces Association, the U.S. Marine Raider Association, and the USMC Combat Correspondents Association. Griffin lives in Alabama and Argentina.
William E. Butterworth IV has been an editor and writer for more than thirty years and has worked closely with his father on the editing and writing of many of the Griffin books, and is coauthor of eighteen bestselling novels with him, most recently Curtain of Death and Broken Trust. He is a member of the Sons of the American Legion, China Post #1 in Exile, and of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Society, and a life member of the National Rifle Association and the Texas Rifle Association. He lives in Florida.
Visit W. E. B. Griffin online at:
webgriffin.com
WEBGriffinBooks
WEBGriffinTales
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Death at Nuremberg Page 35