Curtain of Death

by W. E. B Griffin

  “A formidable female, in more ways than one,” Augie said.

  “Methinks our Claudette has caught this gentleman’s eye,” the large civilian said.

  “Meaning she hasn’t caught yours?” the black captain challenged.

  “Meaning I’ve learned the Ice Princess has not yet been taken in by my soulful Polish eyes.”

  “She’s probably waiting for Mr. Right to come along, and found us all wanting,” Cronley said.

  The black man laughed and put out his hand to Ziegler.

  “Since the boss has once again forgotten his manners, I’ll introduce myself. C. L. Dunwiddie. People call me ‘Tiny.’”

  Jesus, he’s six-foot-six, or more, and weighs three hundred pounds!

  “I can’t imagine why,” Augie replied. “My name is Augie Ziegler.”

  “I’m Max Ostrowski, Ziegler,” the blond man said. “I understand you’ve been temporarily banished to us?”

  “It looks that way,” Augie replied, and then asked, “You’re Polish?”

  “Guilty.”

  Augie nodded.

  “Let’s have a look at what the MPs have come up with,” Cronley said.

  “I’ll have to tell you what the inside of the ambulance looked like,” Augie said. “The photo lab isn’t finished. I told them to send prints as soon as they’re done.”

  [ TWO ]

  U.S. Constabulary School

  Sonthofen, Bavaria

  American Zone of Occupied Germany

  0655 24 January 1946

  There were twelve officers seated around the heavy table in the senior officers’ dining room of what had once been the Adolf Hitler Schule, where the sons of the Nazi aristocracy had been trained to assume leadership roles in the Thousand-Year Reich. The dozen officers at the table were dressed in woolen ODs. Their shoulder insignia was that of the U.S. Constabulary, a three-inch yellow circle outlined in black, with a “C” in the center. A red lightning bolt pierced the “C.”

  Major General I. D. White—a stocky forty-six-year-old who had led the 2nd “Hell on Wheels” Armored Division to the banks of the Elbe River, and then, after the Russians had been allowed to take Berlin, into the German capital—sat at the head of the table, where Der Führer had once reigned over his dinner guests.

  Sitting at the table were a full colonel of cavalry, a full colonel of infantry, a lieutenant colonel wearing the insignia of an aide-de-camp to a major general, a captain wearing the same insignia, a lieutenant colonel and a lieutenant of artillery (both wearing liaison pilot wings), a colonel and a lieutenant colonel whose lapel insignia identified them respectively as chaplains of the Jewish and Christian faiths, a colonel and a lieutenant colonel of the Medical Corps, and a lieutenant colonel of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

  General White believed that command problems could be discussed and possibly resolved over a meal at least as well as, and possibly better than, gathering everyone around a table in a conference room. Thus, once a week, on Thursdays, he scheduled a breakfast—“So everyone will be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed”—to which were invited those officers concerned with a problem who might have a solution for it. Their invitations provided the subject to be discussed.

  General White waited until everyone invited had entered the dining room and was standing behind the ornate chairs at the table. Then he walked—marched would be more accurate—into the room.

  His senior aide-de-camp called, “Ah-ten-hut!” and everyone came to attention.

  “Be seated, gentlemen,” General White said, and sat down.

  “For obvious reasons it would be inappropriate to discuss the subject of the day while we’re eating our breakfast,” he went on. “So we’ll hold off until we’re having our coffee.”

  Thirty minutes later, after two young men wearing starched white jackets over their uniforms cleared the table of dishes and placed coffee cups in front of the diners, the moment to discuss the subject of the luncheon conference had come.

  General White did so without rising from his chair.

  “The problem we have, gentlemen,” he said, “is social disease, which is a polite way of saying venereal disease. How does this affect the Constabulary? And what do we do about it? Your thoughts, please, Lieutenant.”

  He pointed to the lieutenant wearing the liaison pilot’s wings.

  The lieutenant, visibly surprised to be called on, rose to his feet. And appeared to be struck dumb.

  “Didn’t they teach you at West Point, Lieutenant Winters, that the junior is called upon first, so we get his honest opinion, rather than what he thinks his superiors want to hear?”

  The lieutenant flashed White what could have been a dirty look. The general did not seem to notice.

  “Yes, sir. I was taught that,” he said. “Sir, venereal disease is a problem . . .”

  “That’s why we’re having this conference,” White agreed.

  “. . . not only in that men are sick in hospital rather than available for duty, but that it poses a problem, sometimes a fatal problem, for them for the rest of their lives.”

  “I couldn’t have summed it up better myself,” White said. “And how would you suggest we deal with the problem?”

  The lieutenant visibly thought his reply over before making it.

  “If it were up to me, sir, I would open first aid stations for any German girl who wanted to come in, get examined, and then if she had the clap, syphilis, or scabies, treat her. And I would examine all the prostitutes in the brothels and walking the streets, whether or not they liked it, and offer them the choice of getting treated or going to jail.”

  “Nonsense!” the Christian chaplain said, for which he was rewarded with a withering glance from General White.

  “And what about our Constabulary troopers?” White asked.

  The lieutenant again debated replying, but finally said, “Sir, you’re probably not going to like this.”

  “Nevertheless?”

  “Sir, I’d see to it they had a chance to do what the officers do.”

  “Which is?”

  “Sir, they find some friendly doctor to give them penicillin so they don’t have to go to the hospital and wear a bathrobe with VD stenciled on the back. And get it in their service record.”

  “General,” the Medical Corps lieutenant colonel said, “I have to protest!”

  “Duly noted,” General White said. “Lieutenant, are you saying you have personal knowledge of officers who”—he paused, and then repeated verbatim what the lieutenant had said—“who ‘find some friendly doctor to give them penicillin so they don’t have to go to the hospital and wear a bathrobe with VD stenciled on the back’? ‘And get it in their service record,’ or do you just think that’s what’s going on?”

  “I have personal knowledge of that happening, sir.”

  “And what would you do with our enlisted troopers, Lieutenant?”

  The lieutenant’s mouth ran away with him. Or perhaps he consciously decided that since he had just flushed his military career down the toilet anyway, What the hell? Why not?

  “Sir, I’d get the doctors to determine who had the clap and scabies and nothing worse, and teach the first sergeants how to give them the six shots of penicillin to kill the clap and stuff to kill the scabies. I’d have the doctors send the people with syphilis to the hospital, but I’d diagnose it as something besides syphilis so that it wouldn’t fuck up their careers.”

  He heard what he had said, and added, “Sorry, sir. That ‘fuck’ just slipped out.”

  The Medical Corps colonel said, “General, if I may—”

  “You may not. I decide who speaks here and when,” General White replied, not at all pleasantly. He paused, obviously in thought, and then went on. “I’ve just decided that’s me.”

  He gestured for the lieutenant to sit down.


  “While I am sorely tempted to do so,” he began, “I am not going to quote the late General George Smith Patton’s insightful comment on officers and enlisted men and the carnal union of the sexes . . .”

  All the officers in the room knew that Patton had famously said, “A soldier who won’t fuck won’t fight.”

  More than half of the officers at the table laughed or chuckled. The rest showed shock or disapproval or both.

  “. . . but I don’t think anyone can honestly argue with the fact that the ideal solution to our venereal disease problem, abstinence or chastity, is simply not going to be available.

  “I have also believed since I first heard this at Norwich that if something valuable is going to be issued by the Army, the officer corps gets theirs after the enlisted men do. I can see no reason that this shouldn’t apply to the curing of social diseases. Finally, when I first learned that patients in hospital suffering from venereal disease were forced to wear bathrobes with VD stenciled on them, I thought—I knew—that this was going to keep soldiers from seeking the treatment they needed.

  “So, what we are going to discuss now—”

  The door to the dining room opened and a second major general practically burst into the room.

  He was wearing, like the others, a woolen olive drab Ike jacket but, unlike the others, instead of OD trousers he was wearing riding breeches and highly polished riding boots. He carried a leather riding crop. His shoulder insignia was that of the Constabulary. The opposite shoulder carried the insignia of the 2nd Armored Division, indicating that the general had served in wartime with the division.

  Major General Ernest Harmon had in fact commanded Hell on Wheels until, on assuming command of the VI Corps, he had turned it over to I. D. White. He was scheduled to turn over command of the Constabulary to General White on February 1.

  General White was the first to see General Harmon. He rose to his feet. So, quickly, did everyone at the table.

  “Gentlemen, I’m really sorry to bust in this way, but I have to have a few minutes with General White.”

  Harmon had a harsh, grating voice, which had caused his subordinates to call him, behind his back, “Old Gravel Voice.”

  “General,” White said, “we’re discussing VD. Your knowledge of that subject would be welcome.”

  Harmon glared at him.

  “Well, in that case,” White said, and raised his voice, “meeting adjourned. To reconvene at eleven hundred in my conference room. Think about what Lieutenant Winters said.”

  He then pointed at the lieutenant colonel with wings and at Lieutenant Winters.

  “You two stay.”

  When everyone else had filed out of the room, Harmon offered his hand to the lieutenant colonel.

  “Billy, what is General White going to tell me you did wrong now?”

  “Sir, I am as pure as the driven snow,” Lieutenant Colonel William W. Wilson said.

  “Ernie, this is Lieutenant Tom Winters,” General White said.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, son. How’s your dad?”

  “Mom sent me a picture of her and Dad in kimonos. He’s got the First Cav.”

  “I heard. Please give them my best when you write.”

  “Yes, sir, I will. Thank you.”

  “What’s I.D. got you doing in the Constab, Tom?” Harmon asked.

  “Just before you came, I was testing him to see how well he thinks on his feet,” White said.

  “And?”

  “He’s a chip off the old blockhead,” White said. “Even under pressure he said only one dirty word.” He paused and then asked, “Tom, you sure you want this transfer?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve thought about it carefully.”

  “Okay. Billy, Cronley can have him. And the A&M lieutenant, too.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Lieutenant Colonel Wilson said. “Permission to withdraw, sir?”

  White nodded.

  The lieutenant colonel and then Lieutenant Winters shook hands with the generals, and then the lieutenant colonel came to attention and saluted. General Harmon returned it, and then the two younger officers marched out of the dining room.

  When the door had closed, Harmon asked, “I.D., what the hell is going on?”

  Before White could finish framing his reply, Harmon went on: “Harry Bull called me in last night, told me I was not going home, and would have to put my retirement on hold. When I asked him what the hell was that all about, he said it had come from McNarney and was not open for debate. He said you knew what it was all about, but might not be able to tell me unless the CID gave you permission.”

  “Did Harry say ‘CID’? Or ‘DCI’?”

  “I don’t remember. What the hell is the DCI?”

  “The Central Intelligence Directorate. They can’t use the same acronym—CID—as the MP’s Criminal Investigation Division, so they say ‘DCI.’”

  “Okay, then what the hell is the DCI? More important, what’s it got to do with you and me?”

  “That brings us back to what Harry said about me needing the permission of the DCI to tell you,” White said.

  “What’s so classified about this? How highly classified is it?”

  “It doesn’t get any higher: Top Secret–Presidential.”

  “I.D., how the hell long am I going to have to stand around with my thumb in my ass waiting for you to tell me what the hell’s going on?”

  “Captain Cronley called me last night and gave me permission to tell you anything you want to know.”

  “Cronley? As in, ‘You can tell Cronley’?”

  “Yes. He’s the chief, DCI-Europe.”

  “And he’s a captain?”

  “A twenty-two-year-old captain. He didn’t make captain as soon as Billy Wilson made captain—Billy wasn’t out of West Point six months before he made captain—but he’s cast from the same mold.”

  “You know I like, and respect, Billy Wilson. But I have a lot of trouble with him being a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant colonel. I was older than that when I made first lieutenant.”

  “And so was I. Different Army, Ernie.”

  “I sort of liked the one we had. Okay, start telling me what this twenty-two-year-old captain told you you can.”

  “The question is where to begin.”

  “Try the beginning.”

  “All right then: How come I never told you anything about it? Because I was ordered not to.”

  “By who? Harry Bull? McNarney?”

  “By Admiral Souers.”

  “And who the hell is Admiral Souers?”

  “Souers—Sidney W., Rear Admiral, Reservist. He came to Fort Riley, where I was making plans for the Constabulary—”

  “A Navy admiral—a reserve Navy admiral—went out to the plains of Kansas to see an armored general? What the hell, I.D.?”

  “There I was, sitting on the porch of Quarters 24—you know, what they call ‘Custer’s House’?”

  “I’ve been to Fort Riley,” Harmon said. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Then I guess you already know it isn’t really Custer’s house. The house from which Lieutenant Colonel Custer actually rode forth to immortality by getting his entire command wiped out at the Little Big Horn burned down.”

  “Goddammit, I.D.!”

  “As I was saying, they put me in Quarters 24, Tom Davis having decided that it was appropriate accommodation for a distinguished general officer such as myself, who outranked him, and was at Riley for an unspecified purpose, but which Tom thought might have something to do with me being sent there to spy on him.”

  “I didn’t think about that,” Harmon said, smiling.

  “Or that I had been sent there because it was suspected I agreed with Georgie Patton that we should rearm the Wehrmacht and march on Moscow and had been sent to Riley
while they decided what to do with me.”

  “That was the rumor going around.”

  “So, there I was sitting on the porch of Quarters 24, innocently going over proposed Tables of Organization and Equipment for the Constab, when a staff car with a two-star plate pulled up at the curb. I presumed, of course, it was Tom.

  “It wasn’t. I suspected Tom was in—or his aide was in—a staff car that seemed to be following the one that stopped at my curb.

  “A Navy lieutenant got out of the car and opened the rear door, and then a civilian and an admiral got out. They marched up onto the porch, and the admiral said, ‘General White, I’m Sid Souers,’ and handed me an envelope.

  “Inside the envelope was a note on White House stationery. The note—handwritten, not typed—read ‘Dear General White. I have sent Admiral Souers to see you. He will explain. Best wishes, Harry S Truman.’”

  “Jesus!”

  “Which the admiral promptly did. He told me that Truman had realized he had made a mistake when he disestablished the OSS. Everybody who had been saying the OSS was useless, a threat to democracy, et cetera, and had to be abolished—by everybody I mean Army G-2, Navy Intelligence, the FBI, and the State Department—was now angling to take it over.

  “The admiral told me that Truman had decided, when he ordered the dissolution of the OSS, to turn over to him certain operations which had to be kept running.”

  “Him? Why? The Navy? Who is this admiral, anyway?”

  “I later found out he’s a longtime crony of the President, going back to Missouri, where Truman was a weekend warrior in the National Guard and Souers a weekend sailor in the Naval Reserve.”

  “I’d heard Truman was a National Guard colonel,” Harmon said.

  “He was an Artillery captain in France in the First World War. Anyway, when I said the admiral was the President’s crony, I meant just that. When Souers went on active duty when the war started, he was assigned to Naval Intelligence in Washington. Where he moved into Senator Harry Truman’s apartment, and they were bachelors together.”

  White paused in thought, then went on: “Where was I? Oh, yeah. The admiral told me that when Truman signed the order disbanding the OSS, Truman had decided where he would put the OSS operations that couldn’t be shut down. He promoted Souers to rear admiral, had him named deputy chief of ONI. Then he gave responsibility for these clandestine operations to the deputy chief of ONI.