The Assassination Option

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Colonel? How much have you had to drink, Jim?”

  “Not a drop. Not a goddamn drop.”

  “What’s on your mind at this obscene hour?”

  “I have some questions I need to have answered.”

  “Such as?”

  “How long have you been working for Schultz?”

  “How long have I what?”

  “I think you heard me, Colonel.”

  “I think you better go back down the corridor and jump in your little bed.”

  “I’m not going to do that until I get some answers,” Cronley said.

  Cronley gestured with his hand around the room. “And to put your mind at rest, Colonel, about the wrong people hearing those answers, I told Brunhilde to have the ASA guys sweep your suite for bugs after dinner and again at midnight.”

  “And if I don’t choose to answer your questions?”

  “Then we’re going to have trouble.”

  “You’re threatening me?”

  “I’m making a statement of fact.”

  “Your pal Cletus warned me not to underestimate you,” Wallace said, and waved him into the room.

  Wallace sat in an armchair, and motioned for Cronley to sit on a couch.

  “Okay. What questions have you for me?”

  “Let’s start with how long you’ve been a colonel.”

  “What makes you think I am a colonel? Where the hell did you come up with that?”

  “If you’re going to play games with me, Colonel, we’ll be here a long time.”

  Wallace looked at him for a long thirty seconds before replying.

  “Why are you asking?”

  “I figure if I get a straight answer to that, straight answers to my other questions will follow.”

  “And if I give you a straight answer, then what? You tell the world?”

  “You know me better than that.”

  “I guess I knew this conversation was coming, but I didn’t think it would be this soon. Been doing a lot of thinking, have you?”

  “Since just before we went to dinner. I’m sorry I didn’t start a lot earlier. So, what’s your answer?”

  “I was promoted to colonel the day after Bill Wilson pulled me out of Králický Sněžník. It was April Fools’ Day, 1945. I guess that’s why I remember the exact date. Is that what tipped you off?”

  “Wilson’s a starchy West Pointer. You called him ‘Hotshot.’ He doesn’t like to be called Hotshot. So how were you getting away with it? Maybe because you outrank him? And if that’s true . . .”

  “You figured that out, did you, you clever fellow?”

  “It started me thinking about what else I didn’t know.”

  “For example?”

  “You brought up ‘my pal Cletus.’ Does he know what’s going on here?”

  “What do you think?” Wallace said sarcastically.

  “You met him before—him and El Jefe—before the day you came to Marburg with him and Mattingly, to pick up Frau von Wachtstein?”

  Wallace nodded.

  “In—the middle of 1943, I forget exactly when—Wild Bill Donovan decided that David Bruce, the OSS station chief in London, should be brought up to speed on what was happening in Argentina. Things that could not be written down.

  “Bruce couldn’t leave London, so he sent me, as sort of a walking notebook. I spent three weeks there with Cletus and El Jefe. Which is how, since we are laying all our secrets on the table, you got in the spook business.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When we got back to OSS Forward—the Schlosshotel Kronberg in Taunus—that night, after picking up Frau von Wachtstein, we—Mattingly, Frade, and I—had a private dinner. Toward the end of it, Mattingly mentioned the trouble we were having finding an officer to command Tiny’s Troopers, who were going to provide security not only for Kloster Grünau, but for the Pullach compound when we got that up and running.”

  “Why didn’t you just get Tiny a commission?”

  “All I knew about Tiny at the time was that he was a first sergeant who’d got himself a Silver Star in the Battle of the Bulge. I didn’t know he’d almost graduated from Norwich. And I certainly didn’t know he called General White ‘Uncle Isaac.’ I’m now sure Mattingly did, and knew that Lieutenant Dunwiddie would ask questions First Sergeant Dunwiddie couldn’t ask. Mattingly likes to be in control.”

  “You don’t like him much, do you?”

  “Mattingly is a very good politician. You need people like that. I was telling you how you got in the spook business.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So Cletus said, what about Jim Cronley? What they’ve got him doing is sitting at an unimportant roadblock in the boonies, or words to that effect, to which Mattingly replied, that wouldn’t work. You’d need a Top Secret–OSS clearance to work at Kloster Grünau. You didn’t have one, and he couldn’t imagine anyone giving you one. Mattingly said he was surprised that you even had a Top Secret–CIC clearance, or words to that effect.

  “This seemed to piss ol’ Cletus off. I don’t think he likes Mattingly much anyway. Cletus said, ‘Well, I’ll bet you his Uncle Bill would give him one.’ And Mattingly bit. ‘His Uncle Bill? Who the hell is his Uncle Bill?’

  “He’s not really his uncle. But Jimmy calls him that.

  “And Mattingly bit again.

  “What’s Cronley’s Uncle Bill got to do with Top Secret–OSS clearances?

  “‘Just about everything,’ Cletus said. ‘I’m talking about General Donovan. He and Jimmy’s father won World War One together.’

  “I was looking at Mattingly. I could see on his face that he was weighing the advantages of having Wild Bill’s nephew under his thumb against the risks of having Wild Bill’s nephew under his thumb, and as usual was having trouble making a major decision like that. So he looks at me for a decision, and since I had already decided—wrong decision, as it turned out—that you couldn’t cause much trouble at Kloster Grünau, I nodded. And that is how you became a spook.”

  “Did Cletus know you were a colonel?”

  “Sure.”

  “So why were you pretending to be a major?”

  “When David Bruce set up OSS Forward, he knew it would be facing two enemies, the Germans and the U.S. Army. Colonel Mattingly is very good at dealing with U.S. Army bureaucrats, if properly supervised. I provided that supervision and dealt with the enemy. It was easier to do that if people thought I was a major.”

  “And then, when DCI came along . . .”

  “The admiral thought that I was the guy who should keep an eye on Gehlen.”

  “And the chief, DCI-Europe?”

  “And the chief, DCI-Europe, and Schultz thought I could do that better if everybody thought I was a major. It never entered anybody’s mind that Little Jimmy Cronley would be the one to figure this out, and then Little Jimmy does. Or figures out most of it. And tells me, touching the cockles of my heart, that he has decided to trust me and needs my help. So I confess to him what I think needs to be confessed, and hope that’s the end of it.

  “And then you appear, in the middle of the goddamn night, and tell me you’ve been thinking. As I said, Clete warned me not to underestimate you, but I did. And, this taking place in the middle of the night, I told you more than I should have. Frankly, the assassination option occurred to me.”

  “You wouldn’t tell me that if you planned to use it.”

  “At least not until after we get Mrs. Likharev and kiddies across the border,” Wallace said. “Any more questions?”

  “Where does Claudette fit in all this?”

  “I haven’t quite figured that out myself,” Wallace said. “I’m tempted to take her and Freddy’s version, that she wanted out of the ASA . . .”

  “She’s not working for you?”

  Wa
llace shook his head.

  “. . . and was willing to let Freddy into her pants as the price to be paid to get out.”

  “Freddy’s not fucking her,” Cronley said.

  “He said with a certainty I find fascinating.”

  Cronley didn’t reply.

  “One possibility that occurs to me is that you know Freddy has not been bedding Brunhilde because you are.”

  Again, Cronley didn’t reply.

  “Well, that went right over my head,” Wallace said. “You’re a regular fucking Casanova, aren’t you, Boy Wonder? Fucking Brunhilde is pretty goddamn stupid for a number of reasons.”

  Then Wallace saw the look on Cronley’s face.

  “Okay. So what else is there that you don’t want to tell me?”

  Cronley remained silent.

  “Goddammit, Jim. Answer the question. What else do you know that I should?”

  Cronley exhaled audibly.

  “You’re not going to like this,” he said.

  “Understood. That’s why I insist you tell me.”

  “I suspect—suspect, not know—that Gehlen was responsible for that gas water heater explosion.”

  “Gehlen had Tony Schumann and his wife killed, is that what you’re saying?”

  Cronley nodded.

  “Why would he order that?”

  “Because the Schumanns were NKGB agents.”

  “That’s preposterous!”

  “It’s true.”

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “You know that the NKGB was waiting for Likharev when he went to Buenos Aires?”

  “Yes. So what? The Soviet Trade Mission to the Republic of Argentina knew we had him, they knew we were sending people to Argentina, so they started watching the airport. That’s what Cletus thinks, and I agree with him.”

  “They knew exactly when he would arrive in Buenos Aires,” Cronley said. “They probably had six, eight, maybe ten hours to set up that ambush. The ambush involved a lot of people, at least a dozen. They even used Panzerfausts. A lot of planning had to be involved. They weren’t just keeping an eye on the airport on the off chance that Likharev would show up.”

  Wallace considered that a moment.

  “How could they possibly know exactly when he would arrive?”

  “Because I told Rachel Schumann and she told her—their—handler.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “After we loaded him on the plane at Rhine-Main, I went to the Park Hotel . . . next to the bahnhof?”

  “I know where it is.”

  “And Rachel came to see me there.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Because the Boy Wonder called her. The Boy Wonder had just loaded an NKGB major—this was before Clete turned him, and we learned Likharev’s really a colonel—on an airplane, and the Boy Wonder thought he was entitled to a little prize for all his good work. Like some good whisky and a piece of ass.”

  “You were fucking Rachel Schumann?” Wallace asked incredulously.

  “In hindsight, in a non-sexual sense, Rachel was fucking me. At the time, I thought it was my masculine charm. And I thought all her questions about Kloster Grünau were simply feminine curiosity. So, when she showed up at the Park Hotel for fun and games, I proudly told her what I had just done. And thirty minutes later, she left. She had to go home, she said, to her husband.”

  “So when we heard what had happened in Buenos Aires, I put two and two together. The only way the Russians in Buenos Aires could have heard the precise details of when Likharev would get there was because they had gotten them from Rachel. And I’d given them to Rachel. The only other people who knew the details were Tiny and Hessinger, and I didn’t think either one of them would have tipped the NKGB. So I finally gathered my courage and fessed up.”

  “To Gehlen?”

  “Gehlen, Tiny, and Hessinger. Gehlen wasn’t as surprised, or as contemptuous, as I thought he would be. He said that he’d always wondered what Colonel Schumann was doing on that obscure back road in Schollbrunn, the day I shot up his car, why he had been so determined to get inside Kloster Grünau right then.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Well, he talked me out of my solution to the problem.”

  “Which was?”

  “I wanted to shoot both of them and then tell General Greene why I had. General Gehlen said the damage was done, and my going to the stockade, or the gallows, would accomplish nothing. And so, coward that I am, I accepted his advice.”

  After a long moment, Wallace said, “We joke about the assassination option, but sometimes . . .”

  “So I’ve learned.”

  “You’re sure . . . ?”

  “The other thing I’ve learned is never to be sure about anything.”

  “And Tiny? And Hessinger? Are you sure they can be . . .”

  “Trusted? As sure as I am of anything.”

  “What does Brunhilde know about this?”

  “I don’t know what she knows, but I’m presuming she knows everything.”

  “And do you think she might somehow try to use this knowledge to further her intelligence career?”

  “I don’t know she wouldn’t, but how could I be sure?”

  “You can’t. Have you told her what you’ve been thinking?”

  “No.”

  “You ever hear that the bedroom is usually where the most important secrets are compromised?”

  “I guess I’m proof of that, aren’t I?”

  “That argument could be reasonably made,” Wallace said drily.

  “Colonel,” Cronley began, and stopped.

  “What, Cronley?”

  “Sir, the only thing I can say in my defense is that I very seldom make the same mistake twice.”

  “I’m glad you said that,” Wallace said. “Both things.”

  “Sir? Both things?”

  “I’m glad you seldom make the same mistake twice, and I’m glad you said ‘Colonel.’”

  “Sir?”

  “For one thing, you are hereby cautioned not to say it out loud again,” Wallace said. “But don’t forget it. Now that my secret—that I’m the senior officer of the DCI present for duty—is no longer a secret to you, remember that when you have the urge to go off half-cocked. Get my permission before you do just about anything. For example, like forming an alliance with Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin of the Strasbourg office of the DST to investigate Odessa. I have a gut feeling that somehow that’s going to wind up biting you in the ass. And if your ass gets bitten, so does mine.”

  “You want me to try to get out of that?”

  “To coin a phrase, that cow is already out of the barn. But I want to hear everything that comes your way about that operation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So long as you don’t FUBAR anything that would necessitate your being relieved, the longer, in other words, everybody but you—correction: you, Hessinger, and Dunwiddie—believes you to be the chief, DCI-Europe, the better. So conduct yourself accordingly, Captain Cronley.”

  “Yes, sir. Sir, you didn’t mention Gehlen.”

  “An inadvertent omission. Gehlen knows. But let’s keep him in the dark a little. He’s smarter than both of us, but I don’t think he should be the tail wagging our dog. And unless we’re very careful, that’s what’ll happen. That which-tail-should-wag-whose-dog analogy, by the way, came from the admiral, via Schultz.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Can’t think of anything, sir.”

  “Then go to bed, Captain Cronley.”

  XI

  [ONE]

  U.S. Army Airfield B-6

  Sonthofen, Bavaria

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

&n
bsp; 1125 18 January 1946

  The olive-drab Stinson L-5, which had large “Circle C” Constabulary insignia painted on the engine nacelle, came in very low and very slow and touched down no more than fifty feet from the end of the runway. The pilot then quickly got the tail wheel on the ground and braked hard. The airplane stopped.

  The pilot, Captain James D. Cronley Jr., looked over his shoulder at his instructor pilot, Lieutenant Colonel William W. Wilson, and inquired, “Again?”

  “If you went around again, could you improve on that landing?”

  “I don’t think I could.”

  “Neither do I. Actually, that wasn’t too bad for someone who isn’t even an Army aviator.”

  Cronley didn’t reply.

  “How many tries is that?” Williams said.

  “I’ve lost count.”

  “Well, whatever the number, I think I have put my life at enormous risk sufficiently for one day. Call the tower and get taxi instructions to Hangar Three.”

  Cronley did so.

  When he had finished talking to the tower, and they were approaching Hangar Three, Lieutenant Colonel Wilson said, “I didn’t hear the proper response, which would have been, ‘Yes, sir,’ when I told you to call the tower.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And the proper response to my last observation should have been, ‘Sorry, sir. No excuse, sir.’”

  “With all possible respect, go fuck yourself, Colonel, sir.”

  Wilson laughed delightedly.

  “I wondered how long it would take before you said something like that,” he said. “Your patience with your IP during this phase of your training has been both commendable and unexpected.”

  Cronley, smiling, shook his head and said, “Jesus Christ!”

  Wilson asked innocently, “Yes, my son?”

  A sergeant wanded them to a parking space on the tarmac between another L-5 and a Piper L-4.

  They got out of the Stinson. Wilson watched as Cronley put wheel chocks in place and tied it down.

  “Now comes the hard part,” Wilson said. “Making decisions. Deciding what to do is always harder than actually doing it.”

  He waved Cronley toward a small door in the left of Hanger Three’s large sliding doors.