Curtain of Death

by W. E. B Griffin

  His deputy, Major Harold Wallace, not only also spoke German fluently, with a Berliner accent, but decent French and Italian as well. But that was about all that could be said in his favor. While he rarely needed a shave, he often needed a haircut, and he was seldom seen in pinks and greens, but rather in a brown woolen uniform indistinguishable from that worn by common enlisted men. And his shoes often needed a shining. And he had the disconcerting habit of opening his jacket, revealing a large pistol in a shoulder holster.

  Their administrative officer wasn’t really an officer at all, but a sergeant who wore the insignia of a civilian employee on the lapels of an officer’s pinks-and-greens uniform. Friedrich Hessinger spoke German with a Bavarian accent fluently. He was a Bavarian, a Jew who had gone to America and was now back as a member of the occupying army.

  Hessinger frequently brought to the bar statuesque blond German women, sometimes two of them at once. Alphonse didn’t hold the women against him—to the victor go the spoils—or blame the women. But a German Jew who was really a sergeant bringing women of dubious morality into a senior officers’ bar was obviously inappropriate.

  When Colonel Mattingly left Munich for duty at a higher headquarters, Major Wallace and Sergeant Hessinger remained, now as members of something called the XXVIIth CIC, which had replaced the OSS, and which Alphonse understood to be something like the Sicherheitsdienst in the former regime.

  And then the one American whom Alphonse really didn’t like appeared in the XXVIIth CIC. He was a captain, although he didn’t look to be old enough to hold that rank. He often appeared in a uniform with triangles, suggesting he was a civilian employee. When wearing the latter—and sometimes when wearing ODs and pinks and greens with his captain’s insignia—he wore cowboy boots. Sometimes they were highly polished, and sometimes they looked as if he had walked from Moscow to Munich in them.

  Alphonse didn’t think the young captain was a Jew. He was blond and didn’t have Semitic facial features. Alphonse strongly suspected the young captain was a German, because he spoke German fluently with a strong Alsatian accent. He was invariably armed, carrying a huge pistol either in a holster, or sometimes simply jammed in his waistband.

  Once, when this “officer and gentleman” had appeared in the bar wearing a gray woolen upper garment on which was printed in red a map of Texas and the lettering “A&M”—plus of course his battered cowboy boots—and was accompanied by two German men, whom he addressed in German as “Herr General” and “Herr Oberst,” Alphonse knew he had to do something about it.

  Alphonse tried to hear what they were talking about, but every time he sidled close as he polished glasses, they stopped talking. He would have liked to hear them talking about what he thought they were talking about—specifically, black market prices—so he could take that information with him when he went to Lieutenant Colonel Matthews, who was the club officer.

  He went to Colonel Matthews anyway, where he suggested that since it was not his position to say anything, perhaps the colonel might see fit to have a word with the young captain about his presence in a senior officers’ bar wearing a garment more suited to a gymnasium and with a pistol jammed in his waistband, and bringing with him two Germans whom regulations forbade being in the Vier Jahreszeiten at all.

  “Between you and me, Alphonse,” Colonel Matthews had replied, “yours is not the first complaint I’ve heard about Cronley. A number of the officers’ ladies have complained. But the thing is, he’s the chief of something called the DCI and so far as his being quartered in the Vier Jahreszeiten, this DCI thing gives him the assimilated rank of lieutenant colonel. And this DCI, whatever the hell it is, is not under Munich Military Post. And so far as those two Germans are concerned, they have documents identifying them as members of this DCI, and they can come in here, too. We just have to live with this situation. Sorry.”

  —

  When Captain James D. Cronley Jr. walked into the Vier Jahreszeiten bar and took a stool, Alphonse Bittermann saw that again his dress did not meet the standards of the house. The wearing of pinks and greens was “strongly recommended” after 1930 hours. And not only was the young captain wearing OD, he was wearing it with civilian triangles and a turtleneck sweater instead of a shirt and tie. And of course cowboy boots, the ones that looked as if he had walked in them all the way from Moscow.

  Alphonse draped his barman’s napkin over his left arm, walked quickly to him, smiled, and greeted him in English.

  “Good evening, Captain Cronley, sir. What can I fix for you this evening?”

  Cronley replied in German: “What’s new, Fritz? How about pouring me a double Jack Daniel’s? Water on the side. I’m entitled. I’ve had a long day.”

  “Yes, sir. Double Jack Daniel’s. Water on the side,” Alphonse parroted in English, and then added, “My name is Alphonse, sir.”

  “I don’t know why I can’t remember that. One of my favorite gangsters is named Alphonse. Alphonse Capone.”

  Alphonse smiled although he had heard Cronley’s little joke before. He suspected the gottverdammt Amerikaner called him Fritz just so he could make his little joke. He had vowed he wouldn’t give him the chance again but had forgotten.

  As Alphonse took the bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the row of bottles behind the bar, he saw in the mirror that the gottverdammt Amerikaner was looking with interest at a woman sitting far down the bar.

  This pleased him. The woman, who was in her late twenties or early thirties, had been in the bar for about an hour. She had attracted the attention of three different officers, all of whose advances she had bluntly rejected. The woman was wearing a pink-and-green uniform with a gold-thread-embroidered patch sewn to her sleeves at the shoulder. It read US WAR CORRESPONDENT.

  With just a little bit of luck, Captain Cronley would make a play for the woman, and she would reject him at least as humiliatingly as she had the other officers, all of whom, Alphonse recalled, were not only in the proper uniform but senior—one major and two lieutenant colonels—to him.

  And then, after he had placed the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, two glasses, a water decanter, and a silver ice cube bucket with tongs on his tray and turned to carry it to Cronley, Alphonse saw something that really pleased him.

  Colonel Robert Mattingly, as usual splendidly turned out, had entered the bar together with another officer, a major, whom Alphonse did not recognize, and was headed for Cronley. Mattingly certainly would be offended by the turtleneck sweater and he would correct him. Cronley could not ignore Mattingly.

  “Colonel Mattingly,” Alphonse called out. “How nice to see you again, sir!”

  “Hello, Alphonse,” Mattingly said, and offered his hand. Then he turned to Cronley.

  “Cronley,” he said.

  “Good evening, Colonel,” Cronley said.

  “Steve, this is Captain Cronley. Cronley, Major Davis.”

  “How do you do, sir?”

  “Captain.”

  “We were upstairs,” Mattingly said. “The office is locked.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cronley said. “It is.”

  “What may I get you, Colonel?” Alphonse asked.

  Colonel Mattingly ordered Dewar’s on the rocks, and Major Davis said, “The same, please.”

  “I was afraid I wouldn’t find you. Or anyone,” Mattingly said. “We have to make the Blue Danube at 2330.”

  “I left word with the switchboard that I’d be in here,” Cronley said. “They didn’t tell you?”

  “I didn’t ask, actually,” Mattingly said.

  “What brings you to Munich?”

  “We had some business with Colonel Parsons at the Compound,” Mattingly said. “And while we were there, he told us that Sergeant Colbert got involved in something pretty nasty.”

  “That’s Miss Colbert now. I made her a DCI special agent.”

  “You made her a DCI special agent
?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The correct answer to that question would have been, ‘Yes, sir.’”

  “No disrespect intended, sir. But the colonel did notice that I’m not wearing any insignia of rank?”

  “Before we get into it yet again, Cronley, when I get back to Frankfurt, I’d like to tell General Greene about this incident Sergeant Colbert was involved in. So, what can you tell me about it?”

  “Sir, Major Wallace has already brought General Greene up to speed on the incident.”

  “In other words you’re not going to tell me what you know?” Mattingly snapped.

  “Sir, with respect, I don’t believe you have the Need to Know.”

  “And you think you have the authority to make that decision?”

  “I know I do, Colonel.”

  “Captain,” Major Davis said, “I’d like to know where the hell you think you got the authority to refuse to tell Colonel Mattingly anything he wishes to know.”

  Cronley reached in his pocket and took out his DCI credentials. He held them open for them to read.

  “With all respect, this is where I get the authority.”

  “What’s that?” Major Davis asked.

  Mattingly did not reply to the question, instead saying, “Well, it didn’t take long for this to go to your head, did it, Cronley?”

  Cronley didn’t reply.

  “Keep in mind, you arrogant pup,” Mattingly said, “that you’re still a serving officer, and that what goes around comes around, and is going to bite you hard on the ass just as soon as someone comes to his senses and takes those goddamn credentials away from you.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”

  “Let’s go, Davis,” Mattingly said, and marched out of the bar.

  Alphonse didn’t understand much of what he overheard, but it was clear that Colonel Mattingly was quite angry with Cronley about something, something much more important than Cronley’s turtleneck sweater.

  He started to remove Mattingly’s and Davis’s untouched drinks.

  “Leave them, Alphonse,” Cronley ordered in German. “Didn’t your mother teach you ‘Waste not, want not’?”

  Ninety seconds later, just after Cronley had tossed down what was left of his Jack Daniel’s and taken the first sip of what had been Mattingly’s scotch, the woman at the bar moved down and took the stool beside Cronley.

  “You’re just the man I’m looking for,” she said. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “I don’t know what you have in mind, but you better understand from the get-go that I am a practicing Episcopalian who doesn’t let himself get picked up by strange women in bars.”

  “Maybe you ought to try it sometime,” she said, and put out her hand. “Janice Johansen, AP.”

  He shook her hand, but said nothing.

  “And you are?”

  “I never give my name to strange women. If I do, then they want my telephone number, and the next thing I know, there are lewd phone calls at three a.m.”

  “Your name is Cronley and I already have your phone number,” she said, and proceeded to recite it. “There was no answer when I called, so I thought I would hang around the bar and see if the mysterious chief of the Central Intelligence Directorate came in for a nightcap. I was looking for somebody twenty years older with a paunch.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Don’t be. I would much rather wield my feminine charms on someone your age.”

  “You’re a cradle robber?”

  “Why not? I’d like to ask you a couple of simple questions.”

  “I don’t answer questions from strange women, so I’ll tell you what: Why don’t you help yourself to that Dewar’s and then go back down the bar?”

  “We can start with that,” she said, and picked up the glass.

  She took an appreciative sip, and then asked, “Can I try a couple of questions on for size?”

  “Can I stop you?”

  “You’re pretty good at pissing people off, aren’t you? I thought that colonel was about to throw a punch.”

  “He wouldn’t do that. He’s an officer and a gentleman.”

  “What was it that you showed him that so pissed him off? Can I see it?”

  “None of your business, and no.”

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  “Presumably you’re speaking of identification documents.”

  “Not exclusively. What did you have in mind?”

  “Next question?”

  “I heard this Sergeant Colbert killed three guys . . .”

  “Is that so?”

  “. . . with a snub-nosed .38 she carries in her brassiere. True?”

  “Who the hell told you that?”

  “I have friends in the MPs.”

  “Interview over.”

  “Consider this. A woman blowing away three guys trying to rape her and her girlfriend is a real man-bites-dog yarn. It’s not going to go away. I’m going to write it with what I have. If for some reason there’s some aspects of the story you don’t want me to write, you’re going to have to tell me what they are, and why I shouldn’t write them.”

  “Jesus H. Christ!”

  “Your call.”

  “I can’t talk about this in here.”

  “Are you trying to get me into your room?”

  “My office. To talk about this. Yeah.”

  “And for that purpose only?”

  “Boy Scout’s honor, cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “Pity,” she said. “Okay, let’s go.”

  —

  “I’m a little disappointed,” Janice Johansen said, when they were in 507. “This is really an office.”

  “Take a look at this, please, Miss Johansen,” Cronley said, and handed her his credentials.

  She read them.

  “I’ll be damned! If you wanted to dazzle a girl who has evil intentions, you succeeded. And you can call me Janice.”

  “I frankly don’t know what to do with you, Miss Johansen. So, what I’m going to do is tell you the truth and then appeal to . . . Jesus . . . your patriotism.”

  “The last refuge of a scoundrel, they say.”

  “If after I tell you this story and what I don’t want to see in the papers appears in the papers, and any of my people get hurt, I’ll kill you.”

  “This just stopped being fun. Still exciting, but not fun.”

  “I’m not trying to be clever.”

  “You’ve succeeded. What you are is menacing. So let’s have the story.”

  —

  Five minutes later, she said, “If you had your druthers, Cronley, what would my story not contain?”

  “Any reference to DCI. Any reference to Claudette or Florence being DCI agents. Any reference to the guys Claudette took down being either NKGB or Nazis. Any reference to one of them still being alive.”

  “The sign outside says Twenty-seventh CIC. What’s that?”

  “Off the record it’s the cover for DCI. On the record, it’s what it says.”

  “And would the Twenty-seventh CIC have WAC cryptographers?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they go around with pistols?”

  “Usually in their purses. Sometimes in holsters.”

  “Can I use this one carrying her gun in her bra?”

  “She’d probably be embarrassed. But maybe not. She’s a hell of a woman.”

  “He says with admiration.”

  “Yeah. A lot of admiration.”

  “Anything happen to be going on between you two?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I wouldn’t want to fool around with the boyfriend of a woman who just killed three guys with a gun she took out of her brassiere.”

&n
bsp; “Don’t you ever get in trouble making those wise-ass sexual remarks? Aren’t you afraid someone’s going to get the wrong idea?”

  “Are you telling me you’re not interested?”

  After a long moment Cronley said, “No. I’m not saying that.”

  “So I’ll tell you what happens next. First thing, you tell me what you want me to call you.”

  “Jim.”

  “Then I tell you the truth.”

  “What truth is that?”

  “Two things. First, when you came in the bar, I thought what a goddamn pity that blond Adonis is not this Cronley guy. I’d love to put the make on him. Second, when you said you would kill me, I believed you and found that very exciting.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “So now that you know my sexual secrets, why don’t we go to a room with a bed, and you can tell me yours?”

  When he didn’t reply, she said, “And whenever we finish that, we can come back in here, and I’ll write the story and show it to you. Just so long as I can get the story on the wire to Stars and Stripes before they go to bed at midnight. How’s that strike you?”

  “I’m so innocent I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “I’m going to send my story to Stripes. They’ll put it on the AP wire. After they go to bed—start printing—at midnight.”

  “So that’s what ‘go to bed’ means.”

  “That’s one meaning. When we get to your room, I’ll show you another.”

  “It’s right down the hall,” Cronley said, and waved Janice out of his office.

  VI

  [ ONE ]

  The Main Dining Room

  Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten

  Maximilianstrasse 178

  Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  0945 26 January 1946

  Major Harold Wallace looked into the dining room and found what he had failed to find the last four times he had looked in the past half hour.

  James D. Cronley Jr. was sitting alone at a table. He was neatly attired in pinks and greens with triangles, watching a waiter fill his coffee cup.