Curtain of Death

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Sir, what is this place?”

  “When this whole Operation Ost thing started, and we needed someplace to hide General Gehlen and Abwehr Ost, Wallace got this place from the Vatican.”

  “From the Vatican?” Winters blurted.

  “That’s what they mean by strange bedfellows. They had—have—a number of unsavory people they wanted to get out of Europe. We had one means of doing that. They are scratching our back, and we are scratching theirs. I don’t like that much, but it’s necessary and has proved very useful.

  “Anyway, after we moved Abwehr Ost, now known as the Süd-Deutsche Industrielle Entwicklungsorganisation—South German Industrial Development Organization—to the Compound, I decided we should keep this place, known as the monastery, as someplace we could do things we really didn’t want anybody to know about.

  “The signs on the fences identify it as the home of the 711TH QM MOBILE KITCHEN RENOVATION COMPANY, and that—711 MKRC—is painted on vehicle bumpers. It allows us, I think, to be anywhere in Germany or Austria without raising suspicion.”

  “What sort of things you . . . we . . . don’t want anybody to know about?”

  “You’re about to find out,” Cronley said, and gestured for him to get out of the Storch.

  By the time they had, the jeep with the first sergeant and the blond man in triangled ODs had driven up to it. Cronley made the introductions.

  “Lieutenant Winters,” he said, “this is First Sergeant Abraham Lincoln Tedworth of Company ‘C,’ 203rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, which provides our security. When Lieutenant Moriarty assumes command of Charley Company, I hope he remembers what we were taught at A&M—that first sergeants are really in charge and that company commanders are just window dressing. And you know DCI Special Agent Max Ostrowski, who, in addition to his many other duties, controls our Poles.”

  The men shook hands.

  “Where’s our guest?” Cronley asked. “And what shape is he in?”

  “I put him where we had Colonel Likharev,” Ostrowski said. “I did so because he’s in rather bad shape. His shoulder joint was shattered. They showed me the X-rays, and I felt sorry for him. In other words, I thought it better to put him there right away than have to move him later.”

  “I would have put him there right away,” Bischoff said.

  “But you would have done that, Konrad, to make him uncomfortable,” Cronley said. “We are going to start to conduct our interrogation of our guest with kindness. You did the right thing, Max. Let’s go see the sonofabitch.”

  The men climbed into the jeep.

  “You need fuel for the Storch?” Ostrowski asked.

  “Normally,” Cronley said, “I top off whenever possible. Since we’re only going back to the Compound, I think we’re all right. But thanks.”

  The jeep lurched into motion.

  —

  They stopped before an ancient, cross-topped building, and everyone got out and went inside. There were no pews or other religious trappings, but Winters could see what had obviously been the altar, and high above it was a small leaded multicolored glass window centered with a cross.

  Tedworth led the way through the area where worshippers had once prayed and listened to homilies, then through a door. Inside was an area Winters, who had once been an altarboy, strongly suspected had been where priests and altarboys had once changed into—and out of—their vestments.

  It was now occupied by four men, two American sergeants and two men in black-dyed ODs. All were armed with .45 pistols. Four Thompson submachine guns with fifty-round drum magazines hung from wooden pegs on the wall.

  The four men popped to attention when they saw Cronley.

  “Rest,” Cronley ordered, gesturing with his hand. He then said, “He’s not alone, is he? He’s one of the guys who tried to kidnap Colbert and Sergeant Miller last night.”

  “Sergeant Tedworth told us, sir,” a very tall, very thin, coffee-skinned staff sergeant said. “We got one of each downstairs and one of each in with him. Tedworth said she popped three others. She all right, Captain?”

  Cronley nodded.

  “That is one tough lady,” he said, and then gestured for Tedworth to proceed through a door.

  It opened on a stairway. They went down it and found themselves in a small room. In it were a Pole and an American, this one an ebony-skinned sergeant. Both had Thompsons slung from their shoulders and .45 pistols in holsters. Pegs on the wall held two more Thompsons and web belts with holstered .45s.

  The men came to attention. Wordlessly, Cronley signaled for them to relax.

  “You heard what this guy did?” Cronley asked.

  “Abe Lincoln told us,” the sergeant said.

  “I don’t want anybody to hurt him, or even be mean to him,” Cronley said. “Anybody. You understand that?”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant and the Pole said on top of each other.

  “Max, when we get in there, say ‘Good morning’ in Russian. Maybe he’ll slip and reply or start to.”

  Ostrowski nodded.

  “Open the door, Honest Abe,” Cronley ordered.

  Tedworth pulled a heavy wooden door outward. The hiss of Coleman gas lanterns could be heard.

  Cronley went through the door. There was another American sergeant and another Pole, unarmed, in a small windowless chamber. They were in straight-backed chairs.

  There was a hospital bed, cranked up so that the man in it was half sitting up. He looked to be Slavic and in his mid-thirties. He was wearing hospital pajamas and a bathrobe. Beside the bed was a white hospital table, and under it a hospital bedpan.

  “Good morning,” Max said in Russian.

  The man in the bed didn’t respond.

  “Where,” Cronley asked in German, “did you get the hospital bed and stuff?”

  Max replied in German: “The hospital loaned it to us.”

  “And what,” Cronley asked in English, “was his prognosis?”

  Max, still in German, replied: “He’ll probably have limited use of his right arm from here on, but aside from that, he’s all right. In pain, but all right. The hospital gave us some morphine.”

  “Enough?”

  “I think so,” Max replied in English and then switched to Russian. “Are you in pain? Would you like some morphine?”

  The man in the bed showed no signs of understanding.

  “This is Major Bischoff,” Cronley said in English. “Formerly of Abwehr Ost. Which I think you already know. I also think you speak English, Russian, and German. Your eyes gave you away. So when Major Bischoff comes back in here to talk to you, you can’t get away with pretending you don’t understand him.”

  He gestured for the others to leave the room and then followed them out.

  Tedworth closed the heavy door.

  “Konrad,” Cronley said, “inasmuch as I don’t trust you—based on what you were doing to Colonel Likharev before I stopped you—to do nothing but try to talk to this guy, I’m ordering Sergeant Tedworth to break all the toes on your right foot before he calls to tell me you don’t know how to obey orders.”

  “You really don’t have to be so melodramatic, Herr Cronley.”

  “I think of it as being careful,” Cronley said. “I really want to turn this guy. And I really don’t want to put him in—”

  “I will of course obey your orders, Herr Cronley.”

  “As First Sergeant Tedworth will scrupulously obey mine. And now that’s been said, what are you thinking?”

  “My intuition is that this man—he was in the passenger seat of their ambulance, not in the back or driving—is the officer in charge. And I think you are right that he speaks Russian, which is to be expected, and also German and English. All of that—plus the importance of the mission to kidnap Fräulein Colbert and her sergeant friend—makes me think he’s probably a se
nior NKGB captain, perhaps a major.”

  “Not a lieutenant colonel or a colonel?” Tedworth asked.

  “They’ve already lost one colonel. I doubt if they’d risk a colonel to kidnap a female sergeant.”

  “They save the colonels to kidnap me?”

  “Yes. I believe they would.”

  “Do you think he can be turned?”

  “Possibly. He knows what the alternative would be. It would be better for us if he knew Colonel Likharev is safe with his family in Argentina.”

  “How could we do that?”

  “A photograph of the Likharevs standing in front of a Buenos Aires landmark with one of them holding a recent copy of the Buenos Aires Herald showing readable recent headlines would probably do it.”

  Cronley thought that over and grunted.

  “As soon as I get back to the Compound, I’ll get that started,” he said. Then he turned to Tedworth. “Honest Abe, as I’ve told you before, Major Bischoff is very good at what he does. Watch him carefully and learn from him. And at the same time make sure—”

  “That he obeys your orders. Yes, sir.”

  “You about ready to go back to the Compound, Max?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Off we go.”

  Cronley punched Tedworth affectionately on the arm and started up the stairs.

  [ TWO ]

  The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound

  Pullach, Bavaria

  1125 24 January 1946

  The sun had come out, which was unusual for late January, and Hammersmith got a good look at the village as the single-engine L-4 aircraft circled it, losing altitude to land.

  It was a typical small Bavarian village, one nestled in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. There were perhaps a hundred fifty or so houses, most of them small cottages, plus some barns. On the village square was a church. There were also three large three-story buildings—kasernen—which had been built in the 1930s to house the reserve 117th Bavarian Infantry Regiment.

  An outer fence ten feet high circled the village. On it every twenty yards or so were signs Hammersmith tried and failed to read.

  One hundred meters inside that fence, and probably not visible from the road passing Pullach, was a second fence, this one topped by barbed concertina wire. On it every twenty meters were more signs that Hammersmith also could not read.

  There was a gate through the second fence guarded by both Poles and Americans, two of each. Hammersmith could see that the Americans, both sergeants, were very large black men, armed with Thompson submachine guns. Their shoulder insignia was a triangular insignia that Hammersmith decided was most likely that of the 2nd “Hell on Wheels” Armored Division. One of them, and one of the Poles, manned the barrier.

  One hundred yards inside the second fence was a third.

  This one, also ten feet high, had concertina barbed wire on top and laid on the ground, the latter to make getting close to the fence difficult. At one-hundred-meter intervals along this fence line were guard towers equipped with floodlights and machine guns.

  On the third fence were signs every twenty meters. He couldn’t read these, either, although he could make out skulls and crossbones that signaled danger.

  The L-4 aircraft, which was the Army designation for the Piper Cub, dropped its nose and landed on what Hammersmith decided was a recently built crushed stone runway between the second and the inner fence.

  The pilot taxied to the end of the runway, stopping at a sort of a hangar there—tarpaulins held up by poles. Workmen were laying bricks on what was going to be a permanent hangar. Under the tarpaulin were two Fieseler Storch aircraft, the Wehrmacht’s version of the L-4, which Hammersmith had heard were far superior to the Army’s Piper Cubs.

  Two jeeps were waiting for them. One held two black soldiers, both three-stripe “buck” sergeants, in a jeep with a .50 caliber Browning machine gun on a pedestal mount. It wasn’t for show. Hammersmith saw a belt of ammunition was in place. And he saw that he’d been right—the triangular shoulder patch was that of “Hell on Wheels.”

  The second jeep, which did not have a pedestal-mounted Browning, held an American technical sergeant, a large black man, and a large white man in a dyed black U.S. Army uniform.

  The white guy’s a PSO guard, Hammersmith decided.

  He knew all about the PSO, which stood for Provisional Security Organization. It had been formed from former members of either the Free Polish Army or the Free Polish Air Force. After escaping captivity by the Germans or the Russians when Poland had been overrun in the early days of the war, they had made their way to England. There, they had spent the rest of World War II serving with the Free Polish Armed Forces.

  When those organizations had been disbanded almost immediately after VE Day, the discharged officers and soldiers had refused to be repatriated. They knew the Russians had murdered in cold blood more than eight thousand Polish officers, and had good reason to believe the Russians would do the same to them.

  Although the Soviets had angrily demanded their forced return, General McNarney flatly refused to do so.

  And then someone in the Farben Building in Frankfurt am Main, now the headquarters of U.S. Forces in the European Theater (USFET), decided that the former Polish soldiers and officers, who were languishing in displaced persons camps, were the answer to a serious problem USFET faced.

  Guards were needed to protect Army Quartermaster Corps supply depots from the German population, which was on the cusp of starvation. The U.S. Army was short of soldiers to perform the guarding. And since the Polish “DPs” had military training, and hated the Germans nearly as much as they hated the Russians, they seemed to be ideally suited to guard Quartermaster depots.

  McNarney agreed, and the Provisional Security Organization was formed. A school had been hastily set up in Griesheim, outside Frankfurt. There the Poles had been issued fatigue uniforms that had been dyed black, taught how to fire the carbine and the .45 pistol, and been quickly put to work as guards at Quartermaster—and other—supply depots.

  Hammersmith had thought the idea made as much sense as putting foxes in chicken houses, and predicted there would be mass thefts of Army property.

  As the PSO Pole in the jeep got out and walked toward the L-4, Hammersmith thought about this, and admitted he had been wrong. No mass plundering of depots had occurred.

  Then he had other thoughts.

  The Pole walking toward him had a Thompson submachine gun slung over his shoulder.

  Jesus, when did they start issuing Tommy Guns to the Poles?

  And then he saw that the Pole’s dyed-black uniform wasn’t baggy cotton twill fatigue jacket and pants.

  That’s a dyed-black woolen OD Ike jacket, trousers, khaki shirt, and necktie.

  When did they start issuing the PSO regular uniforms?

  And those aren’t combat boots, either. What they look like is German Fallschirmjager boots.

  When did they start issuing the PSO German paratrooper boots?

  Hammersmith crawled out of the L-4, took his small bag out, thanked the pilot for the ride, and turned to face the PSO Pole.

  “Mr. Hammersmith?” the Pole inquired politely.

  Hammersmith nodded.

  “May I see your ID, sir? It’s the protocol.”

  He sounds like a fucking Limey.

  Hammersmith produced his CIC credentials. The Pole examined them carefully and then handed them back.

  “Thank you, sir. If you’ll come with us, we’ll take you over to the office. They’re waiting for you.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?” Hammersmith said, as they began walking to the jeep.

  “Why don’t you get in front, sir? I’ll hop in the back.”

  Hammersmith got in the jeep beside the driver, who smiled broadly at him and said, “Welcome to the Co
mpound. How was the flight in the puddle jumper?”

  “Long, noisy, and a little bumpy,” Hammersmith said. “Who’s the guy in the back?”

  “That’s Senior Watch Chief Wieczorek. He’s a Pole in the PSO. That’s like a first lieutenant, a senior watch chief is.”

  “He said they’re waiting for me. Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Well, I guess that would be General Gehlen, and Major Wallace, plus of course the chief.”

  “And the chief is?”

  “Mr. Cronley. Nice guy. You’ll like him.”

  “Whoopee!” Hammersmith said. “Drive on, Sergeant!”

  And then he remembered what General Greene had advised him to do, and did it.

  Think Major Hammersmith! Think Major Hammersmith! Think Major Hammersmith! Think major! Think major!

  [ THREE ]

  The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound

  Pullach, Bavaria

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1205 24 January 1946

  Neat, and obviously new, signs, one nailed above the door of the small, freshly painted cottage and another stuck into its snow-covered lawn, read OFFICE OF THE OMGUS LIAISON OFFICER.

  OMGUS was the acronym for Office of Military Government, U.S.

  It was, de facto, the headquarters of DCI-Europe.

  The chief, DCI-Europe, one James D. Cronley Jr., sat near the head of a conference table in the main downstairs room. At the head of the table, wearing a shabby suit, shirt, and necktie, was a slight, pale-faced forty-three-year-old with a prominent thin nose, piercing eyes, and a receding hairline. He was former Generalmajor Reinhard Gehlen.

  Across from Cronley was the only woman in the room. Claudette Colbert was wearing a WAC officer’s pinks-and-greens uniform with triangles. Her first role in the meeting had been that of witness to the attack on her and Technical Sergeant Miller. Following that, for the past hour and a half, she had been performing her duties as administrative officer of DCI-Europe, which translated to mean she was taking notes in case it was decided—as Cronley or Major Wallace almost certainly would—that a record of the meeting be kept. Augie Ziegler was sitting next to her.