The Assassination Option
Page 29
“Okay. Let’s say General Eisenhower in Frankfurt wants to send a secret message to General Clay in Berlin. He doesn’t want anybody else to see it, so he makes it ‘Eyes Only, General Clay.’”
“Which means only General Clay gets to see it,” Ashley said. “What’s funny about that?”
“I’ll tell you. Eisenhower doesn’t write, or type, the message himself. He dictates it to his secretary or whatever. He or she thus gets to see the message. Then it goes to the message center, where the message center sergeant gets to read it. Then it goes to the ASA for encryption, and the encryption officer and encryption sergeant get to read it. Then it’s transmitted to Berlin, where the ASA people get it and read it, and decrypt it, then it goes to the message center, where they read it, and finally it goes to General Clay’s office, where his secretary or his aide reads it, and then says, ‘General, sir, there is an Eyes Only for you from General Eisenhower. He wants to know . . .’ So how many pairs of eyes is that, six, eight, ten?”
“You have a point, Cronley,” Colonel Parsons said. “Frankly, I never thought about that. But that obviously can’t be helped. The typists, cryptographers, et cetera, are an integral part of the message transmission process. All you can do is make sure that all of them have the appropriate security clearances.”
“That’s it. But why ‘Eyes only’?”
“I have no answer for that,” Parsons said. “But how do you feel about someone, say, the cryptographer, sharing what he—or she—has read in an Eyes Only, or any classified message, with someone not in the transmission process?”
“Do you remember, Colonel, what Secretary of State Henry Stimson said when he shut down the State Department’s cryptanalytic office?”
“Yes, I do. ‘Gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail.’ I think that was a bit naïve.”
“You know what I thought when I heard that?” Cronley asked rhetorically. “And I think it applies here.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Major Ashley said.
“I wondered, ‘How can I be sure you’re a gentleman whose mail I shouldn’t read unless I read your mail?’”
“How does this apply here?” Ashley asked sarcastically.
“Hypothetically?”
“Hypothetically or any other way.”
“Okay. Let’s say, hypothetically, that when Miss Colbert here was in charge of encrypting one of your messages to the Pentagon, and had to read it in the proper discharge of her duties, she reads ‘If things go well, the bomb I placed in the Pentagon PX will go off at 1330. Signature Ashley.’”
“This is ridiculous!” Ashley snapped.
“You asked how it applies,” Cronley said. “Let me finish.”
Ashley didn’t reply.
“What is she supposed to do? Pretend she hasn’t read it? Decide on her own that it’s some sort of sick joke and can be safely ignored? Decide that it’s real, but she can’t say anything because she’s not supposed to read what she’s encrypting? In which case the bomb will go off as scheduled. Or go to a superior officer—one with all the proper security clearances—and tell him?”
“This is absurd,” Ashley said.
“It’s thought-provoking,” Colonel Parsons said, and then turned to Colbert.
“See anything you like on the menu, Miss Colbert?”
“My problem, Colonel, is that I don’t see anything on the menu I don’t like.”
“Shall we have a little wine with our dinner?” Colonel Parsons asked. “Where’s the wine list?”
[FOUR]
Suite 527
Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten
Maximilianstrasse 178
Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
2105 16 January 1946
“Stop that,” Claudette said. “I didn’t come here for that.”
“I thought you’d changed your mind.”
“Are you crazy?”
“I don’t know about crazy,” Cronley said. “How about ‘overcome with lust’?”
“You just about admitted to Colonel Parsons that I’ve been feeding you his messages to the Pentagon.”
“The moment he saw you with me, he figured that out himself,” Cronley said. “I never thought he was slow.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“He would have heard sooner or later that you defected to DCI.”
“Jimmy, please don’t do that. You know what it does to me.”
“That’s why I’m doing it.”
“So what’s going to happen now?”
“Well, after I get your tunic off, I’ll start working on your shirt.”
“What’s Parsons going to do now?”
“Spend an uncomfortable thirty minutes or so with Ashley, wondering what incriminating things they said in the messages you turned over to Hessinger and me.”
“Jimmy, I told you to stop that.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t sound as if you really meant it.”
“And then what’s he going to do?”
“See about getting another communications route to the Pentagon. Which will probably be hard, as he would first have to explain what’s wrong with the one he has, and then if he did that, said he had good reason to believe I was reading his correspondence, he would then have to explain to Greene, or ol’ Iron Lung, what it was he wanted to tell the Pentagon he didn’t want me to know.
“Oh, there they are! I knew they had to be in there somewhere!”
“Are you listening to me? What if Freddy comes back and comes in here? . . . Oh, God, Jimmy! . . . Jimmy, let me do that, before you tear something!”
[FIVE]
Schleissheim Army Airfield
Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0545 17 January 1946
Captain Chauncey L. Dunwiddie squeezed himself out of the Storch, and a moment later, Max Ostrowski followed him. Kurt Schröder started to follow Ostrowski.
“Stay in there, Kurt,” Cronley called to him, “we’re leaving right away.” And then asked, “Have you enough fuel to make Eschborn?”
Schröder gave him a thumbs-up.
“Why are we going to Frankfurt?” Dunwiddie asked.
“Actually, we’re going to Rhine-Main,” Cronley said, directing his answer to Ostrowski.
“Rhine-Main or Eschborn?”
“Rhine-Main, and we have to be there by nine-thirty.”
“Got it,” Ostrowski said, and headed back for the Storch.
“Why are we going to Frankfurt?” Tiny asked.
“Get in the airplane, I’ll tell you on the way.”
“I’ve got things to do in Pullach.”
“Not as important as this. Get in the goddamn airplane.”
“Yes, sir,” Tiny replied sarcastically.
—
“Schleissheim departure control, Army Seven-Oh-Seven, a flight of two aircraft, request taxi and takeoff.”
“Army Seven-Oh-Seven, take Taxiway Three to threshold of Two Seven.”
—
“Schleissheim departure control, Army Seven-Oh-Seven, on the threshold of Two Seven. Direct, VFR to Rhine-Main. Request takeoff.”
“Army Seven-Oh-Seven, you are number one on Two Seven.”
“Schleissheim, Oh-Seven rolling.”
“Why are we going to Frankfurt?”
“For Christ’s sake, Tiny, put a fucking cork in it.”
“Army Seven-Oh-Seven. Schleissheim. Say again?”
—
“You had something you wished to ask me, Captain Dunwiddie?”
“Why are we going to Frankfurt?”
“We are going to see your beloved Uncle Isaac.”
“You’re referring to General White?”
“Unless you have another godfather you
call Uncle Isaac.”
“You’re saying General White is in Frankfurt?”
“ETA Rhine-Main ten hundred.”
“How do you know that?”
“Hotshot Billy Wilson told me.”
“You’re referring to Lieutenant Colonel Wilson?”
“Who else, for Christ’s sake, is known as ‘Hotshot Billy’?”
“And why are you taking me to Frankfurt?”
“Because I need ten minutes, maybe a little more, of White’s time, just as soon as I can get it, and you’re going to arrange it.”
“I’ll do no such thing.”
“What?”
“My personal relationship with General White is exactly that, personal. And if you don’t mind, please refer to him as ‘General White.’”
“Are you constipated, or what?”
Dunwiddie did not reply.
“Just for the record, Captain Dunwiddie, I do not wish to intrude on your personal relationship with General White. I’m not going to ask him, for example, if he has any pictures of you as a bare-ass infant on a bearskin rug he’d be willing to share with me. This is business.”
“Official?”
“Yes, official.”
“Then I suggest that if you need to see General White that you contact his aide-de-camp and ask for an appointment.”
“If I had the time, maybe I would. But I don’t have the time.”
“Would you care to explain that?”
“Hotshot Billy told me he can’t do anything more for me to get Mrs. Likharev and the kids across the border than he already has, unless he gets permission from White.”
“Can you tell me what Colonel Wilson has done for you so far?”
“He told me that when, a couple of days ago, he flew the East/West German border around Fritzlar, he thinks he saw places, fields, roads, right across the border in Thuringia where we could get the Storchs in and out.
“And as we speak, at least one and maybe more than one Piper Cub of the Fourteenth Constab—”
“The nomenclature is L-4,” Dunwiddie interrupted.
“—which is stationed in Fritzlar, is flying the border taking aerial photographs of these possible landing sites. He has promised to give me what they bring back. But when I asked him to teach me and Ostrowski and Schröder what he knows about snatch operations—and Hotshot Billy knows a lot—he said he couldn’t do anything more, now that White has returned to Germany, without White’s permission.”
“That’s the way things are done in the Army.”
“Fuck you, Tiny.”
“You might as well turn the airplane around, Jim. Because I flatly refuse to be in any way involved with getting General White involved in one of your loose-cannon schemes.”
“Before I respond to that, I think I should tell you the reason I know White will be in Frankfurt is because Wilson told me. And it was Wilson who suggested that the quickest way for me to get permission from White for him to help me was to get you to Frankfurt to meet your Uncle Isaac when he gets off the plane. Wilson says he’s sure White will invite you to ride on his private train, and if you get on it, so will I. How could they do less for the man who flew Chauncey to meet his Uncle Isaac?”
“You’re not listening, Jim. I refuse to become involved.”
“You’re not listening, I told you this was important. And a word to the wise: I’ve had about all of your West Point bullshit I can handle, Tiny.”
“I went to Norwich, not West Point. So did General White.”
“Well, pardon me all to hell. I forgot that Wilson’s the West Pointer, not you and your Uncle Isaac. Same comment, I’ve had enough of this bullshit. Grow the fuck up, you’re in the intelligence business, not on the parade ground of some college. That I will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do philosophy doesn’t work here.”
“I beg to disagree.”
“You will get me on that fucking train, Tiny, because this isn’t a suggestion, or a request, it’s what you proper soldiers call a direct order. Once I’m in with the general, you can tell him you’re there against your will, or even—shit, why not?—that I threatened to shoot you if you wouldn’t go along.”
“Now you’re being sophomoric.”
“Am I? You saw how little the assassination option upset me when it was necessary. I will do whatever is necessary to get Mrs. Likharev and her two kids out of the East. If I thought I had to shoot you because you were getting in the way of my getting them out, I would.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Or dedicated. Now take off your headset. I have no further interest in hearing anything you might wish to say.”
[SIX]
Rhine-Main USAF Air Base
Frankfurt am Main American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0955 17 January 1946
As Cronley trailed a Follow me jeep down a taxiway to a remote area of the Rhine-Main airfield, he saw there was an unusual number of Piper Cubs parked on the grass beside the taxiway. And then he saw that just about all of them bore U.S. Constabulary markings.
There were a number of vehicles lined up beside a mobile stairway where the general’s plane was expected to stop. Three buses, one of them bearing Constabulary insignia, three 6x6 trucks, a dozen staff cars, and two Packard Clippers.
He hand-signaled Tiny first to look where he was pointing, and then for him to put on his headset.
“There’s a welcoming party,” he said. “Jesus, there’s even a band.”
Dunwiddie did not reply.
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take for General White to get off his plane and into one of those Packards, but it won’t take long, and I can’t afford you giving me any trouble. Got it?”
Dunwiddie did not reply.
When the Follow me had led Cronley to where he wanted him to park the Storch on the grass—maybe a quarter-mile from the cars and buses—an Air Force major wearing an Airfield Officer of the Day brassard drove up.
Oh, shit!
More trouble about the Storchs.
Cronley got out of the airplane as the major got out of his jeep.
“Interesting airplane, Captain,” the major said.
Christ, I forgot I’m wearing my bars!
Belatedly, Cronley saluted.
“They’re great airplanes,” Cronley agreed. “Plural,” he added, pointing to the Storch with Ostrowski and Schröder in it.
“I also understand the Air Force has grounded them.”
Cronley took his DCI credentials from his pocket and handed them to the major.
“Not all of them. I hope I won’t break your heart when I tell you the Air Force really doesn’t own the skies or everything that flies.”
“Those are the first credentials like that I ever saw,” the major said.
“There’s not very many of them around,” Cronley said.
“How can I be of service to the Directorate of Central Intelligence?”
“Don’t say that out loud, for one thing,” Cronley said, smiling.
“Okay,” the major said, returning the smile. “And aside from that?”
“I need to get the Storchs fueled and on their way as soon as possible.”
“On their way and out of sight?” the major asked.
“That, too.”
“That I can do. I’ll have a fuel truck come out here.”
“And then I have to be in that crowd welcoming General White back to Germany.”
“Quite a crowd,” the major said, gesturing around the field at all the L-4s. “I would say that every other colonel and lieutenant colonel in the Constabulary is here to watch General White get off the plane.”
“So I see. But the skies will fall and the world as we know it will end if we’re not standing there when the general gets off the pla
ne.”
He pointed to Dunwiddie in the Storch.
“Well, I wouldn’t want that on my conscience. I’ll make you a deal. I’ve never been close to a Storch before. If you can arrange a tour for me of one of those airplanes, I’ll take you over there in my jeep.”
“Deal,” Cronley said.
He waved at Max Ostrowski to get out of his Storch, and then called, “Captain Dunwiddie, you may deplane.”
“Yes, sir?” Ostrowski asked.
“The major is going to take Captain Dunwiddie and me over there. He’s also going to get a fuel truck sent here. When he comes back, show him around the Storch. Then as soon as you’re fueled, you and Kurt head for home. I’ll get word to you there what happens next.”
“Yes, sir.”
Cronley saw the major had picked up on Ostrowski’s British accent. But he didn’t say anything.
The major motioned for Cronley to get in the jeep. Cronley motioned for Dunwiddie to get in the jeep.
“After thinking it over,” Dunwiddie said, “I’ve decided you’re entitled to the benefit of the doubt.”
Cronley nodded, but didn’t say anything.
Almost as soon as the jeep started moving, the radio in the jeep went off:
“Attention, all concerned personnel. The VIP bird has landed.”
“I’m not surprised,” Cronley said. “I am famous for my ability to make the world follow my schedule.”
The major laughed.
As they got close to where the VIP bird would apparently be, they were waved to a stop by a sergeant of the U.S. Constabulary. He was wearing a glossily painted helmet liner bearing the Constabulary “Circle C” insignia, and glistening leather accoutrements, a Sam Browne belt, to which was attached a glistening pistol holster, and spare magazine holsters.
“End of the line,” the major said.
“Thanks,” Cronley said, offering his hand.
When he got out of the jeep, he remembered to salute.
A lieutenant and a sergeant marched up to them. They, too, wore the natty Constabulary dress uniform, and the sergeant held a clipboard.
The lieutenant saluted crisply.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “May I have your names, please?”