The Assassination Option

by W. E. B Griffin

  “If that’s a roster of some kind,” Cronley said, “I don’t think we’re on it.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” the lieutenant said. “I didn’t see the patch.”

  What the hell is he talking about?

  “‘Hell on Wheels’ comrades are in the rear rank of those greeting General White,” the lieutenant said. “Senior officers and personal friends are in the first rank. If you’ll follow the sergeant, please?”

  Aha! He saw the 2nd Armored patch on Tiny’s shoulder. That’s what he’s talking about!

  They followed the sergeant with the clipboard toward the reception area.

  There they were met by a Constabulary major.

  They exchanged salutes.

  “Hell on Wheels comrades in the rear rank, by rank,” the major said, pointing to two ranks of people lined up.

  “Yes, sir,” Tiny said. “Thank you, sir.”

  I think I have this ceremony figured out.

  Majors and up and personal friends are in the front row.

  Anybody who served under General White in the 2nd “Hell on Wheels” Armored Division is a “comrade”—which, considering our relationship with the Soviet Union, seems to be an unfortunate choice of words—and is in the rear row.

  Tiny belongs in the front row, and I don’t belong here at all, but this is not the time to bring that up.

  What I’ll try to do is pass myself off as a comrade.

  They found themselves about three-quarters of the way down the rear rank, between a major wearing a 2nd Armored Division patch and a first sergeant. Cronley guessed there were forty-odd, maybe fifty-odd, people in each rank.

  They had just taken their positions when a Douglas C-54 transport with MILITARY AIR TRANSPORT SERVICE lettered along its fuselage taxied up. In the side window of the cockpit was a red plate with two silver stars on it.

  The band started playing.

  That’s “Garry Owen.” The song of the 7th Cavalry Regiment.

  I know that because I was trained to be a cavalry officer and they played it often enough at College Station to make us aware of our cavalry heritage.

  And where I learned that the 7th Cavalry, Brevet Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer commanding, got wiped out to the last man at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

  I’ve never quite figured out how getting his regiment wiped out to the last man made Custer a hero.

  The mobile stairs were rolled up to the rear door of the C-54.

  The door opened.

  A woman with a babe in arms appeared in the doorway, and then started down the stairs.

  She was followed by fifteen more women, and about that many officers and non-coms, who were quickly ushered into the buses waiting for them.

  Clever intelligence officer that I am, I deduce that the airplane’s primary purpose was to fly dependents over here. Dependents and officers and non-coms who were needed here as soon as possible. General White was just one more passenger.

  Is there a first-class compartment on Air Force transports?

  The procession came to an end.

  The band stopped playing.

  A stocky, muscular officer in woolen ODs appeared in the aircraft door. There were two stars pinned to his “overseas cap.”

  The band started playing “Garry Owen” again.

  People in the ranks began to applaud.

  Someone bellowed “Atten-hut!”

  Cronley saw that it was a full colonel standing facing the two ranks of greeters.

  When the applause died, the colonel did a crisp about-face movement and saluted.

  The major general at the head of the stairs returned it crisply.

  That is one tough sonofabitch.

  The tough sonofabitch turned and then with great care helped a motherly-looking woman down the stairs.

  They then disappeared from sight.

  Three minutes later, the general appeared, now shaking hands with the major standing ahead of Cronley in the comrades and personal friends rank. He was trailed by the woman and a handful of aides.

  They disappeared again to reappear sixty seconds or so later, now in front of Captain Dunwiddie.

  “Chauncey, I’m delighted to see you!” the general said. “Honey, look who’s here! Chauncey!”

  The woman stood on her toes and kissed Captain Dunwiddie.

  Major General I.D. White looked at Captain Cronley.

  “You are, Captain?”

  “Cronley, sir. James D. Junior.”

  “You hear that, Paul?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bingo!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong. What’s next is that I go to make my manners to General Eisenhower . . .”

  “To General Smith, sir. General Eisenhower is in Berlin.”

  “Okay. And Mrs. White goes to the bahnhof to get on my train?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Put these two in the car with her,” General White ordered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  General White stepped in front of the first sergeant standing next to Cronley.

  “How are you, Charley?” he asked. “Good to see you.”

  [SEVEN]

  Dining Compartment, Car #1

  Personal Train of the Commanding General, U.S. Constabulary

  Track 3, Hauptbahnhof

  Frankfurt am Main American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1305 17 January 1946

  Captains Cronley and Dunwiddie rose when Major General White walked into the dining compartment trailed by two aides.

  “Sit,” he said.

  He walked to his wife, bent and kissed her, and then sat down.

  The train began, with a gentle jerking motion, to get under way.

  “Tim!” General White called.

  “Yes, sir?” a captain wearing the insignia of an aide-de-camp replied.

  “Find the booze, and make me a stiff one.”

  “Bourbon or scotch, sir?”

  “Scotch,” he said. “Georgie always drank scotch.”

  “I.D.,” Mrs. White said, “it’s one o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “And make Mrs. White one,” the general said. “She’s going to need it. Hell, bring the bottle, ice, everything. We’ll all have a drink to Georgie.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Mrs. White said.

  “General Smith was kind enough to fill me in on the last days of General George Smith Patton Junior,” White said. “He knew I would be interested.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Would you like Captain Cronley and myself to withdraw, sir?” Tiny asked.

  White considered that a moment.

  “No, Chauncey, you stay. You can write your dad and tell him what General Smith told me. Then I won’t have to. So far as Captain Cronley is concerned, I would be surprised if he doesn’t already know. Do you?”

  “Yes, sir. I believe I’ve heard.”

  “Besides, I have business with Captain Cronley I’d like to get out of the way before we go into the dining car for our festive welcome-back-to-Germany luncheon.”

  “Sir?”

  The aide appeared with whisky, ice, and glasses, and started pouring drinks.

  “First of all, it was an accident. Georgie was not assassinated by the Russians. Or anyone else. To put all rumors about assassination to rest. It was a simple crash. Georgie’s driver slammed on the brakes, Georgie slipped off the seat, and it got his spine.

  “The car was hardly damaged. It’s a 1939/40 Cadillac. General Smith asked me if I wanted it, and as I couldn’t think of a polite way to say no, I said, ‘Yes, thank you.’

  “They knew from the moment they got him in the hospital—and Georgie knew, too—that he wasn’t
going to make it. But they decided no harm would be done if they tried ‘desperate measures.’ These were essentially stretching him out, with claws in his skin and muscles to relieve pressure on his injured spine, and administering sufficient morphine to deal with the pain the stretching caused.

  “The Army then flew Beatrice over here. Little Georgie is at West Point. He was discouraged from coming with his mother.

  “The morphine, or whatever the hell they were giving Georgie for the pain, pretty well knocked him out.

  “So, after Beatrice arrived, Georgie stopped taking the morphine whenever Beatrice was with him. When she finally left his room to get some sleep, he got them to give him morphine. Then Beatrice ordered that a cot be brought into his room so she wouldn’t have to leave him.”

  “Oh, my God!” Mrs. White said.

  “So, he stopped taking the morphine. Period. And eventually, he died. Instead of getting killed by the last bullet fired in the last battle, Georgie went out in prolonged agony, stretched out like some heretic they were trying to get to confess in the Spanish Inquisition.”

  White’s voice seemed to be on the cusp of breaking.

  Mrs. White rose, and went to him and put her arms around him, and for a minute he rested his head against her bosom.

  Then he straightened.

  Cronley saw a tear run down his cheek.

  Mrs. White leaned over and picked up a shot glass from the table.

  “Gentlemen,” she said, “if I may, I give you . . .”

  Everyone scrambled for a glass and to get to their feet.

  “. . . the late General George Smith Patton Junior, distinguished officer and Christian gentleman,” she finished.

  And then she drained the shot glass.

  The others followed suit. Somebody said, “Hear, hear.”

  “You may recall, Captain Cronley,” White said, as he sat down, “that when you told me your name at Rhine-Main, I said, ‘Bingo.’”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “One of the first things I planned to do on arrival here was to send for you.”

  “Sir?”

  “Got the briefcase, Paul?” General White asked.

  Whatever this is about, the Patton business is apparently over.

  Why was I on the edge of tears? The only time I ever saw him was in the newsreels. The last time, he was pissing in the Rhine.

  “Sir, I’ve never let it out of my sight,” White’s senior aide-de-camp, a lieutenant colonel, said.

  He then set a leather briefcase on the table, opened it, took out a sheet of paper, and handed it to Cronley.

  “Please sign this, Captain,” he said, and produced a fountain pen.

  “What is that?” Dunwiddie asked.

  “Although your curiosity seems to have overwhelmed your manners, Chauncey,” General White said, “I’ll tell you anyway. It’s a briefcase full of money. One hundred thousand dollars, to be specific.”

  He turned to Cronley.

  “Admiral Souers asked me to bring that to you, Captain,” he said. “And to say ‘thank you.’”

  “What’s that all about?” Mrs. White asked.

  “You heard what I just said to Chauncey? About curiosity?”

  “What’s that all about?” she repeated.

  “I won’t tell her, Captain. You may if you wish.”

  “Ma’am, it’s a replenishment of my—the DCI’s—operating funds.”

  “In other words, you’re not going to tell me?”

  “He just did. Told you all he can,” General White said. “And while we’re on the subject of Admiral Souers, Captain Cronley, he told me of your role in getting done what Colonel Mattingly was unable to do—get Chauncey his commission. Thank you.”

  “No thanks necessary, sir.”

  “And on that subject, where is Bob Mattingly?”

  No one replied.

  White looked at Cronley.

  “What is it about Colonel Mattingly that you’re not telling me, Captain?”

  “I don’t know where he is, sir. I presume he’s in his office in the Farben Building.”

  “But he wasn’t at Rhine-Main, and he’s not on the train. Is he, Paul?”

  “Not so far as I know, General.”

  “Okay. Chauncey, who told you to be at Rhine-Main?”

  “Captain Cronley.”

  “Captain Cronley—and you are warned, I’m already weary of playing Twenty Questions—who told you when we were arriving at Rhine-Main?”

  “Colonel Wilson, sir.”

  “And why do you suppose he told you that?”

  “Sir, I told Colonel Wilson I needed ten minutes of your time, and he suggested that if Tiny . . . Captain Dunwiddie and I met your plane, I might be able to get it.”

  “There’s a protocol for getting ten minutes of my time. You get in touch with my aide-de-camp and ask for an appointment, whereupon he schedules one. Is there some reason you couldn’t do that?”

  Cronley didn’t immediately respond.

  “And Colonel Wilson is damned well aware of that protocol.”

  He looked at his watch.

  “There’s no time now. I’m due at my festive lunch. But as soon as that’s over, get Hotshot Billy in here, and we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  “Yes, sir,” his senior aide said.

  “What this looks like to me, Captain Cronley, is that you tried to use my personal relationship with Captain Dunwiddie to get around established procedures. I find that despicable. And, so far as you’re concerned, Chauncey . . .”

  “Uncle Isaac, Cronley doesn’t have time for your established procedures,” Dunwiddie said.

  “What did you say?” White demanded.

  “I said, ‘Uncle Isaac, Cronley doesn’t have time—’”

  White silenced him with a raised hand.

  “My festive lunch will just have to wait,” he said. “Tim, my compliments to Colonel Wilson. Please inform him I would be pleased if he could attend me at his earliest convenience.”

  The junior aide-de-camp said, “Yes, sir,” and headed for the door.

  He slid it open, went through it, and slid it closed.

  Thirty seconds later, the door slid open again.

  Lieutenant Colonel William W. Wilson came through it, marched up to General White, saluted, and holding it, barked, “Sir, Lieutenant Colonel Wilson reporting to the commanding general as ordered, sir.”

  White returned the salute with a casual wave of his hand in the general direction of his forehead.

  “Waiting for me in the vestibule, were you, Bill?”

  “Yes, sir. I hoped to get a minute or two of the general’s time.”

  “How modest of you! Captain Cronley hoped to get ten minutes.”

  Wilson didn’t reply.

  “Where to start?” General White asked rhetorically. “Bill, Captain Cronley tells me you suggested he bring Chauncey to Rhine-Main because he wanted the aforementioned ten minutes of my valuable time, and you thought his bringing Chauncey would help him achieve that goal. True?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you are going to tell me why this is so important, right?”

  “Sir, I suggest that Captain Cronley could do that better than I can.”

  White looked at Cronley, and when Cronley didn’t immediately open his mouth, said, “You heard the colonel, Captain. Cat got your tongue?”

  “General, the subject is classified Top Secret–Presidential . . .” Cronley said uneasily.

  “And these people, so far as you know, might be Russian spies?” General White said, waving his hand at his aides and his wife.

  “Sir—”

  “Actually, I’m not sure about her, so throughout our twenty-nine years of married bliss, I have never shared so much as a memorandum cla
ssified ‘confidential’ with her. As far as Colonel Davidson and Captain Wayne are concerned, if you say anything I think they should not have heard, I’ll have them shot and have their bodies thrown off the train. You may proceed.”

  “Yes, sir. Sir, we have turned a Russian, NKGB Colonel Sergei Likharev—”

  “Who is ‘we’? Are you referring to Colonel Mattingly? Is that why he’s among the missing?”

  “No, sir. Colonel Mattingly had nothing to do with turning Colonel Likharev. Tiny and I turned him.”

  “You and Chauncey turned an NKGB colonel?” White asked incredulously.

  “Uncle Isaac, please give Jim, and me, the benefit of the doubt,” Tiny said.

  “I.D.,” Mrs. White ordered, “get off your high horse and hear the captain out.”

  “You may proceed, Captain Cronley,” General White said.

  “Yes, sir. Sir, one of the reasons Colonel Likharev turned was because we promised him—”

  “‘We’ being you and Chauncey?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Promised him what?”

  “You’ll never find out if you keep interrupting him,” Mrs. White said. “Put a cork in it!”

  “Sir, we, Tiny and me, promised Likharev we would try to get his family—his wife, Natalia, and their sons, Sergei and Pavel, out of Russia. This is important because Mr. Schultz believes, and he’s right, that by now Likharev is starting to think that we lied to him about trying to get his family out—”

  “Excuse me, Captain,” Mrs. White interrupted. “Mr. Schultz? You mean Lieutenant Schultz? The old CPO?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now the admiral’s Number Two,” General White said. “You met him the first time Admiral Souers came to Fort Riley.”

  “Pardon the interruption. Please go on, Captain,” Mrs. White said.

  “Yes, ma’am. Well, we’ve gotten them—I should say, General Gehlen’s agents in Russia have gotten them—out of Leningrad as far as Poland. That’s what that hundred thousand is all about. It went to General Gehlen’s agents. Now we have to get them . . .

  —

  “. . . So when Colonel Wilson said he couldn’t help us any more without your permission, I decided I had to get your permission. And here we are.”

  General White locked his fingers together and rocked his hands back and forth for a full thirty seconds.