The Assassination Option

by W. E. B Griffin

  Hessinger told them it had been French until after the Franco-Prussian War, when, in 1871, the Treaty of Frankfurt had given it to the newly formed German Empire. The Germans had promptly “Germanified” the area, and surrounded it with a line of massive forts, named after distinguished Germans, such as von Moltke, Bismarck, and Crown Prince von Sachsen.

  After World War I, Hessinger had lectured, the area was given back to the French by the Treaty of Versailles. The French, after renaming the forts—Fort Kronprinz von Sachsen, for example, became Fort Joffre, after the famous French general, and Fort Bismarck became Fort Kléber—held Strasbourg until June of 1940, when the Germans invaded France and promptly reclaimed Strasbourg for the Thousand-Year Reich.

  Four years later, Hessinger said, the French 2nd Armored Division rolled into Strasbourg and hoisted the French tricolor on every flagpole they could find.

  “Strasbourgers,” Hessinger said, and Cronley couldn’t tell if his leg was being pulled or not, “keep German and French flags in their closets, so they can hang the right one out of their windows depending on who they’re being invaded by this week.”

  There was a large door knocker, a brass lion’s head, on the door. Freddy banged it twice.

  Jesus, this is my mother’s house, Cronley thought. She went through this door as a little girl.

  And where we got out of the car is where Dad punched her father’s—my grandfather’s—lights out.

  The door was opened—just a crack.

  Cronley could see a woman. She had blond hair, brushed tight against her skull. She looked to be in her thirties, and she didn’t look as if she was close to starvation.

  “We are looking for Herr Luther Stauffer,” Hessinger announced in German.

  The woman shook her head, but otherwise didn’t reply.

  “Then Frau Stauffer,” Hessinger said. “Frau Ingebord Stauffer.”

  The woman tried to close the door. She couldn’t. After a moment, Cronley saw why: Hessinger had his foot in the doorjamb.

  He also saw the fear in the woman’s face.

  It grew worse when Hessinger snapped, like a movie Nazi in a third-rate film, “Papiere, bitte!”

  The woman, her face now showing even more fear, stepped back from the door.

  And then the door opened.

  A man appeared. He was blond, needed a shave, appeared to be in his middle to late thirties, and looked strangely familiar.

  Why do I think my cousin Luther has been hiding behind the door?

  “Oh, you’re American,” the man said in German, and then turned and said, “It’s all right, dear, they’re Americans.”

  Then the man asked, “How can I help you, Sergeant?”

  “We’re looking for Herr Luther Stauffer,” Freddy said.

  “May I ask why?”

  “It’s a family matter, not official,” Freddy said.

  “A family matter?” the man asked, taking a close look at Cronley.

  “A family matter,” Freddy repeated.

  “I am Luther Stauffer.”

  “Lieutenant,” Freddy said in English, “I think we found your cousin.”

  Hessinger, Cronley, and Finney all decided, judging by the man’s reaction to Freddy’s question, that Luther Stauffer spoke—or at least understood—English.

  “Tell him, Sergeant, please, that I have some things for him from his aunt, Wilhelmina Stauffer Cronley,” Cronley said.

  Freddy did so.

  “Give him the box, Sergeant Finney,” Cronley ordered.

  As Finney extended the box, Stauffer pulled the door fully open and said, gesturing, “Please come in.”

  “What did he say?” Cronley asked.

  Hessinger made the translation.

  “Then go in,” Cronley ordered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  They found themselves in a small living room.

  Finney extended the box to Stauffer again.

  “This is for me?” Stauffer asked.

  “From your aunt, Wilhelmina Stauffer Cronley,” Hessinger said. “You are that Luther Stauffer, right? Frau Cronley is your aunt?”

  “Yes,” Stauffer said, as he put the box on the table.

  “If that’s so,” Hessinger said, “then Lieutenant Cronley is your cousin.”

  Stauffer and Cronley looked at each other. Stauffer put out his hand, and Cronley took it.

  Stauffer turned to his wife and quite unnecessarily announced, “The officer is my cousin.” Then he turned to Cronley and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

  Cronley almost told him, but at the last second caught himself, and instead asked, “What’s he asking?”

  “He wants to know your name,” Hessinger said.

  “James. James D. Cronley Junior.”

  Stauffer took his hand again and said, “James. Ich bin Luther.”

  Frau Stauffer took a look in the box.

  “Oh, so much,” she said.

  “Tell her my mother got a letter from them, and then wrote me, and here we are,” Cronley ordered.

  Hessinger made the translation.

  Frau Stauffer pulled out a drawer in a massive chest of drawers, came out with a photo album, laid it on the table and began to page through it. Finally, she found what she wanted, and motioned for Cronley to look.

  It was an old photograph. Husband, wife, and two young children, a boy of maybe ten and a girl who looked to be several years younger.

  “Luther’s Papa,” Frau Stauffer said, laying her finger on the boy, and then moving it to the girl. “Dein mutter.”

  “She says the girl in the picture is your mother,” Hessinger translated.

  “Ask him,” Frau Stauffer asked, “if he has a picture of his mother now.”

  Hessinger translated.

  As a matter of fact, I have two of her. Right here in my wallet.

  Let me show you.

  The first one was taken at College Park, the day I graduated from A&M. That’s Mom, the lady in the mink coat with the two pounds of pearls hanging around her neck. The girl sitting on the fender of the custom-bodied Packard 280 is our neighbor’s kid. Sort of my little sister. I called her “the Squirt.”

  In this picture, that’s my mom standing next to President Truman. That’s my dad, pinning on my captain’s bars. This was taken the day after I married the Squirt, and the day she got herself killed.

  “Tell her, ‘Sorry. I have a couple, but I left them back at the Kloster.’”

  Hessinger made the translation, but, picking up on Cronley’s slip, said, “kaserne,” not “Kloster.”

  Cronley saw on Luther’s face that the translation was unnecessary.

  Why is Cousin Luther pretending he doesn’t speak English?

  “Kloster?” Luther asked.

  And he picked up on that, too.

  “The lieutenant’s little joke,” Hessinger said. “Our kaserne is in the middle of nowhere, twenty miles outside Munich. The lieutenant jokes that we’re all monks, kept in a kloster far from the sins of the city.”

  Luther smiled and then asked, “What exactly do you do in the Army?”

  “Lieutenant, he wants to know exactly what you do in the Army.”

  “Tell him the 711th is responsible for making sure that the equipment in every mess hall in the European Command—and for that matter, in U.S. Forces in Austria—meets Army standards.”

  Hessinger made the translation. Luther confessed he didn’t completely understand. Hessinger made that translation, too.

  “You tell him what we do, Sergeant,” Cronley ordered.

  Hessinger rose to the challenge. He delivered a two-minute lecture detailing the responsibility the 711th QM Mobile Kitchen Repair Company had with regard to maintaining the stoves, ovens, refrigerators, dishwashers, and other electrome
chanical devices to be found in U.S. Army kitchens.

  He explained that there were three teams who roamed Germany, Austria, and France inspecting and repairing such devices. Team 2 was commanded by Lieutenant Cronley. A dishwasher had broken down in Salzburg, and Team 2 had been dispatched to get it running.

  Lieutenant Cronley had decided, Hessinger told Luther, that since Strasbourg was more or less on their way to the malfunctioning dishwasher, it was an opportunity for him to drop off the things his mother had sent to her family.

  Cronley wasn’t sure whether Hessinger had prepared this yarn before they got to Strasbourg or was making it up on the spot. But it sounded credible, and Cousin Luther seemed to be swallowing it whole.

  “So you’re going to Salzburg?” Luther asked.

  Hessinger nodded.

  “And from there?”

  Why don’t I think that’s idle curiosity?

  Before Hessinger could reply, Cronley said, “Ask him what he does.”

  “The lieutenant asks what your profession is,” Hessinger said.

  “I’m an automobile mechanic,” Luther replied. “Or I was before the war. Now there are very few automobiles.”

  Hessinger translated.

  “Ask him what he did in the war,” Cronley ordered.

  As Hessinger translated, Cronley saw that not only had Cousin Luther understood the question as he had asked it, but that he didn’t like it, and was searching his mind for a proper response.

  What the hell is this all about?

  “Do you understand about Strasbourg?” Luther asked. “How over the years it has passed back and forth between French and German control?”

  “Not really,” said Hessinger, who had delivered a ten-minute lecture on the subject on the way to Strasbourg.

  “Well . . .” Luther began.

  Hessinger shut him off with a raised hand.

  “Lieutenant, your cousin says Strasbourg has been under German and French control for years.”

  “Really?”

  “Go on, Herr Stauffer,” Hessinger ordered.

  “Well, before the war, we were French,” Luther explained. “And then when the Germans came, we were Germans again.”

  Hessinger translated.

  “So what?”

  “The lieutenant says he doesn’t understand,” Hessinger said to Luther.

  “When the Germans came, they said I was now a German, and in 1941 I was conscripted into the German Army,” Luther said.

  There’s something fishy about that.

  When Hessinger had made the translation, Cronley said, “Ask him what he did in the German Army.”

  “The lieutenant wants to know what you did in the German Army.”

  “I was a common soldier, a grenadier, and then I escaped and hid out until the war was over.”

  Cousin Luther, that is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.

  What the hell are you up to?

  Hessinger made the translation.

  “Tell him I’m glad he made it through the war,” Cronley said, and then asked, “How are we fixed for time, Sergeant?”

  Hessinger looked at his watch.

  “Sir, we’re going to have to get on the road,” Hessinger replied, and then told Luther the lieutenant was glad that he had made it through the war.

  “Tell him we have to leave,” Cronley ordered.

  When Hessinger had done so, and Luther had replied, he made that unnecessary translation:

  “He said he’s sorry to hear that, but understands. He says he’s very happy with your mother’s gifts, and that he hopes this will not be the last time you come to Strasbourg.”

  “Tell him that if my mother sends some more things, I’ll see that he gets them,” Cronley said, and put out his hand to Luther.

  “And where will you go from Salzburg?” Luther asked.

  Hessinger looked to Cronley for permission to answer. Cronley nodded, hoping Luther didn’t see him.

  “Vienna,” Hessinger said, and then, “He wanted to know where we’re going from Salzburg. I told him. I hope that’s all right.”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Frau Stauffer said “Danke schön” when she shook Cronley’s hand, and looked as if she wanted to kiss him.

  He smiled at her and walked to and out the door.

  The Stauffers waved as they drove off.

  [THREE]

  When Sergeant Finney pulled the Ford up behind the ambulance, another of Tiny’s Troopers—this one a corporal—got out of it and walked to the car.

  Finney rolled the window down.

  “We’re through here. Go get Sergeant Graham,” he ordered. “He’s somewhere behind the house.”

  “You got it, Sarge,” the corporal said, and took off at a trot.

  “Tell me, Sergeant Finney,” Cronley said, “now that you are a member of DCI-Europe, what is your professional assessment of Herr Stauffer?”

  Finney thought it over for a moment, and then said, “That Kraut is one lying motherfucker.”

  Cronley didn’t reply for a moment, then, coldly furious, said softly, “Sergeant, if you ever say that—or something like that—in my hearing again, you’ll spend the rest of your time in Germany as a private walking around Kloster Grünau with a Garand on your shoulder.”

  “Yes, sir,” Finney said, and then, “Captain, I’m sorry. I guess I just forgot he’s your cousin.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Cronley said. “My lying Kraut kinsman doubtless has many faults, but I don’t think we have any reason to suspect that he ever had incestuous relations with his mother.”

  “Sorry, Captain.”

  “You might want to pass the word around that that phrase is strengstens verboten. It turns my stomach.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”

  “And your take on Luther Stauffer, Mr. Hessinger?”

  “The question is not whether he was lying to us, but why,” Hessinger said. “I think we should find out why.”

  “How are we going to do that?”

  “I think the first thing to do is see if we can find the Strasbourg office of the DST.”

  “The what?”

  “The Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire,” Hessinger said. “It’s sort of the French CIC, except that it’s run by the French National Police, not the army. They may have something on Cousin Luther.”

  “Okay.”

  “And before we do that, I suggest we change out of our Quartermaster Corps uniforms,” Hessinger said. “I think we’ll get more cooperation from our French Allies as CIC agents than we would as dishwasher machine repairmen.”

  “Why don’t we go whole hog and dazzle them with our DCI credentials?”

  “Because (a) I would be surprised if word of the DCI’s establishment has worked its way through the French bureaucracy, and (b) even if it has, we want to make discreet inquiries.”

  [FOUR]

  Office of the Chief

  Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire

  Département Bas-Rhin

  Strasbourg, France

  1335 10 January 1946

  When his sergeant showed Cronley, Hessinger, and Finney into his office, Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin of the Strasbourg office of the DST rose behind his desk.

  He was a natty man in his early thirties with a trim mustache. He was wearing U.S. Army ODs with French insignia. There were shoulder boards with four gold stripes attached to the epaulets, and a brass representation of a flaming bomb pinned to his left breast pocket. On his desk, in what Cronley thought of as an in-basket, was his uniform cap.

  Cronley thought the hat was called a “kepi.” It had a flat circular top and what looked like a patent leather visor. The top was red. There were four gold stripes on a dark blue crown, and in t
he center of the top was another flaming bomb.

  Cronley remembered what Luther had said about his being conscripted into the German grenadiers. A flaming bomb was a grenade.

  “Thank you for seeing us, Commandant,” Cronley said.

  He offered his CIC credentials. Commandant Fortin examined them and then looked questioningly at Hessinger and Finney. They produced their credentials and Fortin examined them carefully.

  “Bon,” he said. “I regret that I have not much the English.”

  Oh, shit!

  “It is to be hoped that you have the French?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Hessinger said.

  “Is possible German?”

  “We all speak German, Major,” Cronley said.

  “Wunderbar!” Fortin said. “But of course, being in the CIC, you would. Now, how may the DST be of service to the CIC?”

  “We’re interested in a man named Luther Stauffer,” Cronley said. “We’ve heard he was originally from Strasbourg, and we’re wondering if the DST has anything on him.”

  “Herr Cronley, if you don’t mind me saying so, you sound like a Strasbourger yourself.”

  “My mother, Commandant Fortin, was a Strasbourgerin. I learned my German from her.”

  “So was mine, a Strasbourgerin, I mean.”

  “Mine married an American right after the First World War,” Cronley said. “And if you don’t mind my asking, I’ve always been led to believe the DST was a police organization.”

  “It is. I’ve been seconded to it,” Fortin said, and then bellowed, “Sergeant!”

  When the sergeant appeared, Fortin said, “Check in the files for a man named . . .” He looked at Cronley.

  “Stauffer,” Hessinger furnished. “Luther Stauffer.”

  “Oui, mon Commandant.”

  “What is this Stauffer fellow wanted for?” Fortin asked.

  “We didn’t mean to give that impression,” Hessinger said. “His name came up in an investigation of black market activities, that’s all. We’d just like to know who he is.”

  “I thought your Criminal Investigation, DCI, did those sort of investigations.”

  “Most of the time, they do,” Hessinger said.

  Commandant Fortin is good. Is this going to blow up in our faces?