Curtain of Death

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Do ‘those’ have a name?” Bristol asked.

  “Major General Bruce T. Seidel, the USFET G-2, heads the list. And it’s a long list.”

  Bristol looked intensely at Cronley for a moment, then shrugged and sat down.

  What do I do now, say “Thank you”?

  “Thank you,” Cronley said.

  A WAC staff sergeant—a formidable, stocky woman—came in the room.

  “Sir, I swept this room at 0700. You want me to sweep it again?”

  “No. But I want it, and my office, swept every six hours until I tell you different.”

  “Yes, sir. Is there something I don’t know?”

  “Just being cautious. I don’t know anything.”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, and left.

  Tiny came back in the room and took his seat.

  Everybody looked expectantly at Cronley.

  Well, here’s where the chief explains the problem, and tells his subordinates how he wants them to deal with it.

  It would be a lot easier if I wasn’t just about convinced I’m wholly unqualified to be the chief and had any idea how to deal with the problem.

  He walked to the head of the table, and saw all eyes were on him.

  Primarily because he didn’t have any idea how to begin, he paused to take a cigar from his tunic, clip the end, and carefully light it.

  “Yesterday,” he began, letting out a cloud of smoke, “I was summoned to a meeting presided over by General Seidel. Generals Greene and Schwarzkopf, Colonel Thomas B. Nesbitt, who works for Seidel, and the senior agent in charge of the FBI office attached to USFET, a Mr. Preston—I don’t know his first name—and Major Wallace were present . . .”

  “Preston’s first name is Douglas,” former Major Konrad Bischoff furnished.

  Rather than being helpful, Konrad, ol’ buddy, that was intended, I think, to show everybody how smart you are.

  The only reason I don’t allow myself to think you are the mole/traitor around here is because I really can’t stand you, and I don’t want that to color my thinking.

  “After some preliminaries, during which General Seidel suggested I’m not up to meeting the responsibilities of chief, DCI, he explained Mr. Preston’s presence. Mr. Preston has developed the theory that the death of Colonel and Mrs. Schumann was not accidental.”

  Cronley met Gehlen’s eyes. Gehlen’s face showed nothing.

  “Both General Greene and General Schwarzkopf challenged this theory, saying that they had both personally investigated that tragedy and found nothing suspicious about it. Neither General Seidel nor Mr. Preston seemed to accept what Greene and Schwarzkopf thought.

  “Next, Mr. Preston said that he not only suspected that Major Derwin did not really fall under the freight train in the Munich bahnhof, but had been pushed, but also saw a pattern in the two deaths. Both Colonel Schumann and Major Derwin had shown great interest in both Kloster Grünau and the Compound, and Major Derwin had met his end shortly after visiting the Compound. The third suspicious coincidence was that Colonel Mattingly had gone missing shortly after he had made a visit to the Compound, which to his mind suggested that General Gehlen was responsible for all three incidents.”

  “He actually made that accusation?” Colonel Bristol asked incredulously.

  “Seidel said he thought it was ‘a possibility we could not ignore.’ And that he had a solution which would clear everything up. That was that ‘we’ seek the assistance of the FBI’s excellent investigators, which would include granting them access to both the Compound and Kloster Grünau.”

  “What was Major Wallace doing during all this?” Tiny asked.

  “Not much while it was going on, but afterward when we were alone in the parking lot, he said he hoped I realized I had as much as told the USFET G-2 to go fuck himself when I told him that I was not going to let the FBI anywhere near the Compound or Kloster Grünau.”

  No one said a word.

  “He also said that the war is by no means over. Seidel and the Pentagon G-2 are determined to either swallow DCI or flush it down the toilet.”

  “And what do you propose we do to stop that?” Tiny said.

  “The only thing I can think of is somehow to get Colonel Mattingly back alive and catch somebody important in Odessa. And I don’t have a clue how we can do that.”

  “If I may, Jim,” Gehlen said, “I have some thoughts on the subject.”

  “Please.”

  “Colonel Parsons came to see me right after you flew the journalist . . .”

  “Miss Johansen,” Bischoff furnished.

  Gehlen very slowly turned his head to Bischoff. His left eyebrow rose.

  Bischoff’s face first flushed and then went pale.

  “Vergeben Sie mir, Herr Generalmajor,” he muttered.

  Gehlen turned his head back to Cronley and went on: “. . . to Pfungstadt.”

  Cronley thought: So that’s how a German general shuts off someone who has spoken out of turn. A raised eyebrow and a glance icy enough to freeze the blood in the offender’s veins.

  He looked at Bristol, and saw from the faint smile on his lips that he shared Cronley’s admiration.

  “The timing here is important,” Gehlen went on. “This occurred before Major Wallace, and then you, called to tell me that Colonel Mattingly had gone missing.”

  “He told you about that?” Cronley asked.

  “Not at first. At first, he said he had come to ask clarification of the report on the significance of the recent movement of Soviet armored units in Hungary we’d given him the day before. When I answered his questions, he said that he wanted me to know that G-2, both here in Europe and in the Pentagon, was very impressed with the quality of the intelligence he was getting from me.

  “Then he said he had come into intelligence himself that he felt he should share with me, but that doing so raised the delicate question of doing so because of you. He hoped I would consider what he was about to tell me as a confidence.

  “Colonel Parsons then said he had been informed by General Seidel that Colonel Mattingly had gone missing, and that he presumed Major Wallace, and ultimately you, would be told of this by General Seidel very shortly, and that one or the other or both would probably be calling to tell me about Colonel Mattingly.

  “He then went on to say that he knew I was aware of the friction between you and Colonel Mattingly and was sure that I knew it was nothing personal, that Mattingly’s only interest, and his, was that we—the Süd-Deutsche Industrielle Entwicklungsorganisation—continue to furnish the high-quality intelligence we have been furnishing.

  “Colonel Parsons then said, ‘between soldiers’—don’t quote me—that he saw the root of the problem was that DCI was under a couple of sailors. He said something to the effect that I probably agreed that the Army and the Navy think differently. That he could not imagine, if Admiral Souers was a general, that he would have given such heavy responsibility to a young and inexperienced officer as he had to you.”

  “The sonofabitch!” Cronley said, which earned him a raised eyebrow and a look nearly as icy as the one General Gehlen had given Bischoff.

  When he looked at Colonel Bristol, he saw both admiration and amusement in his eyes and his smile.

  Gehlen continued: “Colonel Parsons then said he had reason to believe that certain changes in the command structure were about to be made, and that . . . I forget exactly how he phrased it, but I took it to mean that he felt if I didn’t raise any objections to the change, or question it, I—the Süd-Deutsche Industrielle Entwicklungsorganisation—had nothing to worry about.”

  Gehlen looked at Cronley as if waiting for his reaction.

  When Cronley, not without effort, kept his automatic mouth in the off position, Gehlen went on: “Admiral Canaris once told me that it was a given that people would tell you untr
uths. The trick was to not only recognize this when this happened, but to ask oneself the liars’ motives.”

  He paused, and—now with a faint smile on his lips—added: “In this case, I would suggest that even a young and inexperienced intelligence officer would have much difficulty in guessing the motives of this liar.”

  “No,” Cronley said, “I think they’re pretty clear.”

  “If I may, Jim,” Gehlen said. “I’m not quite finished.”

  “Vergib mir, Herr Generalmajor,” Cronley said.

  Bischoff flashed Cronley an angry glance.

  Cronley saw that Gehlen, former Oberst Ludwig Mannberg, and Colonel Bristol were smiling.

  “My old friend Rahil has been heard from,” Gehlen said. “The essence of her message is that we have something Nikolayevich Merkulov wants back, and he has something we want back. She suggests that not only should you, Jim, and I meet with Ivan Serov to discuss an exchange, but where we should do so and when.”

  “I don’t understand any of that,” Bristol blurted, and then when he heard what he had said, added, “Vergib mir, Herr Generalmajor.”

  Bischoff glared at Bristol. Gehlen and Mannberg smiled.

  “And I can’t tell you, Colonel, without Jim’s permission,” Gehlen said.

  “Please tell everybody,” Cronley said. “This young and inexperienced intelligence officer doesn’t understand, either.”

  Now there were chuckles from everybody—including Lieutenants Winters and Moriarty.

  “Rahil, Colonel, gentlemen, is an NKGB officer with whom I’ve had dealings over the years. She was instrumental in getting Polkóvnik Likharev’s wife and sons out of Russia. Nikolayevich Merkulov is the commissar of State Security. His deputy, whom Rahil suggests we meet at the Drei Husaren restaurant in Vienna at our earliest convenience, is Ivan Serov.”

  “She?” Bristol asked.

  Gehlen nodded.

  “She,” he confirmed, and went on: “And since this slightly older and marginally more experienced intelligence officer intuits that Comrade Merkulov is interested in exchanging Colonel Mattingly for Colonel Likharev, I think we should go to Vienna and hear what Serov has to say.”

  There were more smiles.

  Cronley’s mouth went on automatic: “Not only no, but hell no!”

  The look on Bristol’s face was now one of surprise.

  Gehlen’s eyebrow rose but Cronley saw there was no ice in his eyes.

  He knew I wouldn’t go along with that.

  He’s curious to hear my objections, but he’s not outraged that I would dare question him.

  “When I am relieved as chief, DCI-Europe,” Cronley said, “I don’t want Seidel and Company to be able to crow that my most spectacular fuck-up was being responsible for getting you, General, grabbed by the NKGB. I’m expendable. You’re not.”

  Gehlen nodded. “I admit that possibility—Merkulov wanting to get his hands on both of us—crossed my mind. But I thought we could take the necessary precautions—the Drei Husaren is in Vienna’s Inner City, which the Russians do not control absolutely—to see that didn’t happen.”

  “And I have no intention of swapping Colonel Likharev for Colonel Mattingly,” Cronley said. “What I intuit here is that Likharev’s defection burned the NKGB badly. If we swapped Likharev for Mattingly, Merkulov could parade him in chains before the rest of the NKGB and announce, ‘This is what happens to NKGB officers who try to defect. Even if they make it as far as Argentina.’”

  “Point taken,” Gehlen said.

  “But having said that, it might be useful to hear what Serov has to say. But since I don’t speak Russian . . .”

  “When do you think you and I should go to Vienna, Jim?” Oberst Mannberg asked.

  “The problem there, Ludwig, is that you’re not expendable.”

  “Either, I suggest, are you. And that suggests we should make the precautions the generalmajor mentioned we take with great care.”

  “You’re willing to go?”

  “Of course,” Mannberg said.

  So I guess Mannberg and I are going to Vienna.

  They both looked at Gehlen.

  “What precautions did you have in mind?” Cronley asked.

  “Where is this restaurant?”

  “Within walking distance of the Hotel Bristol,” Mannberg answered.

  “I wonder how much we can lean on the CIC in Vienna,” Cronley said.

  “I think all you would have to do is ask General Greene,” Tiny Dunwiddie said. “He runs the CIC all over Europe.”

  “I don’t think I want to ask him.”

  “You think he’d tell General Seidel about this?”

  “He wouldn’t tell Seidel, but he’d probably tell Wallace, and Wallace would tell me not to go.”

  “Because of the risk to you?”

  “Because of the risk to Mannberg,” Cronley said. “If the Russians grabbed me, a lot of Wallace’s problems would be solved.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Tiny challenged.

  “I think Wallace, personally, would be unhappy if I got bagged by the NKGB. But I think a small, still voice in the back of his mind—”

  “I don’t believe that,” Tiny said.

  “Neither do I,” Cronley said, chuckling. “So here’s what we’re going to do. Have the switchboard set up a secure call to the CIC agent-in-charge in Vienna. I don’t remember his name, but we met him when we were in Vienna the first time. Ludwig will ask him to meet us—”

  “Colonel Mannberg will ask?” Tiny asked.

  “One of the CIC Vienna guys, Spurgeon, remembers me from Camp Holabird. If I told him I’m chief, DCI-Europe, I don’t think he’d believe it. On the other hand, Ludwig not only dazzled everybody with his DCI credentials, he looks much more like a senior, experienced intelligence officer than I do.”

  He paused and looked at his watch.

  “It’s about two hundred twenty miles as the bird flies. Make that three hundred, as I’m going to have to fly through the Alps, rather than over them. That means I’ll have to stop for fuel. And as I don’t know of an airfield where I can do that without raising a lot of questions, I’ll have to land on a road or in a field somewhere. Not a problem. We’ll take four jerry cans of gas with us. If we leave in an hour, say, ten o’clock, that’ll put us into Schwechat about fourteen hundred hours.”

  “Why do I think this is not the first time you’ve thought about flying to Vienna?” Gehlen asked.

  “Because you are, General, an older and far wiser intelligence officer than I am. The last time we were there I did think about flying a Storch there without asking official permission of the Russians to overfly their zone. It can be done.”

  “And what if you have to land in the Russian Zone?” Tiny challenged.

  “I don’t plan to, but worst scenario, if I have to, I tell the people pointing their PPSh-41 submachine guns at Ludwig and me to call Comrade Serov, who will tell them we’re on our way to see him.”

  “If you have to land in the Russian Zone, they’ll have you and Colonel Mannberg as well as Colonel Mattingly to swap for Likharev,” Dunwiddie argued, in exasperation.

  For a moment Cronley didn’t reply.

  “Tiny,” he said finally and very softly, “neither Oberst Mannberg nor I are going to allow ourselves to be taken alive by the NKGB, either in the Russian Zone of Austria or in the Drei Husaren restaurant in Vienna.”

  There was an awkward silence for a moment, and then Tiny asked, very softy, “Is meeting this Serov man so important?”

  “I’ve decided it is,” Cronley said. “So Ludwig will ask the head of CIC in Vienna to meet him at the Hotel Bristol at, say, sixteen hundred. And ask him to provide people to make sure that neither Ludwig nor I are kidnapped on our way to or from having our dinner at the Drei Husaren.”

  “
That would work,” Mannberg said.

  “Now, what, besides putting four jerry cans of gas in my Storch, has to be done? I’ll start with you, Bonehead. Make sure absolutely nobody gets into either the Compound or Kloster Grünau who Colonel Bristol or Captain Dunwiddie doesn’t know about. And get that word to Ostrowski.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Moriarty said.

  He hasn’t said “Yes, sir” to me since we were at College Station.

  “By now, Sergeant Finney is on his way to Garmisch-Partenkirchen from Strasbourg. With a little bit of luck, my cousin Luther will have tried to enlist him in Odessa. I have a hunch that’s going to work. I want to know if it did, or not. So you, Tom, get in the other Storch and go get him.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Winters said. “When should I go?”

  “It would be better if you were in Garmisch-Partenkirchen when he gets there, so pretty soon.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Which brings us to PFC Wagner,” Cronley said. “Who I never should have sent to Pfungstadt in the first place. Tom, as soon as you get Sergeant Finney back here, get in the Piper Cub and go get him. As soon as you find him, call Tiny. As soon as you get that call, Tiny, tell Janice Johansen that we’re going to let her use one of our Ford staff cars as long as she needs it, and that she should call the USFET Press Office and tell them she’s through with the jeep they gave her and that it’s at Pfungstadt.”

  “Yes, sir,” Winters said.

  “Do I tell her we went to get Wagner?” Tiny asked.

  “Yeah. Why not? Tell her I’ll explain everything when I come back.”

  “She’s going to want to know where you went.”

  “I’ll explain that to her when I get back.”

  “With all possible respect, sir,” Tiny said, “wouldn’t it be easier to explain all that to her before you go?”

  “As surprising as you may find this, Captain Dunwiddie, I don’t think I can handle Miss Johansen right now. On the other hand, you’re expendable.”

  Dunwiddie gave Cronley the finger.

  Cronley stood up.