Curtain of Death

by W. E. B Griffin

  More than a dozen of the men in the foyer were Tiny’s Troopers, just about all of whom had beer bottles in their massive hands. There were also about eight men whose blue-triangled OD Ike jackets bulged with concealed weapons.

  CIC agents? What the hell?

  Cronley walked to the door of the living room. He saw that there were a number of Ostrowski’s men, all with beer bottles, two more CIC types, and a lieutenant colonel and a major he had never seen before.

  Who the hell are they?

  He went to the dining room.

  Tiny Dunwiddie, wearing his captain’s uniform, was sitting at the table with Claudette Colbert, Freddy Hessinger, and Jack Hammersmith. They were all wearing pinks and greens with triangles. There were also seven men wearing parts of SAA aircrew uniforms at the table.

  Pilot, Cronley thought, as he searched for a familiar face among them, copilot, flight engineer, radio operator/navigator, and three stewards.

  SAA doesn’t have stewardesses.

  And then he found whom he was looking for seated at the head of the table.

  A handsome blond-haired man in his late twenties was refilling his glass from a bottle of Haig & Haig Pinch Scots whisky. He looked up and saw Cronley.

  The man cheerfully called, “Hey, look who’s finally showed up!”

  Cronley went to him.

  “Hansel, you have no idea how glad I am to see you!”

  Former Luftwaffe major Hans-Peter Freiherr von Wachtstein, now Captain von Wachtstein of South American Airways, stood up.

  Cronley wrapped his arms around him and kissed him wetly on the forehead.

  At that moment, the lieutenant colonel and the major whom Cronley had seen in the living room approached. Both looked confused or disapproving or, more precisely, confused and disapproving.

  “Mr. Cronley?” the lieutenant colonel asked.

  “Guilty.”

  “My name is Ledbetter, Mr. Cronley. I command the Twenty-sixth CIC. This is Major Rogers, my deputy.”

  Cronley shook their hands. “What can I do for you, Colonel?”

  “That shoe’s on the other foot,” Ledbetter said. “General Greene called and ordered me to get in touch with you and provide whatever assistance you require.”

  Cronley looked into Colonel Ledbetter’s eyes.

  Are you really here, Colonel, to provide whatever assistance I require?

  Or are you here so that you can tell General Greene and he can tell General Seidel and the USFET intelligence establishment what the loose-cannon young captain who has been given more authority than he can be expected to handle is up to?

  General Gehlen told me that the one thing intelligence officers should always remember is to trust no one.

  But, as my mother told me, there is always an exception to every rule.

  My gut tells me I can trust General Greene, and thus this cold-eyed colonel.

  Supporting that argument is that Hammersmith is here. If Greene wanted someone to report to him on me, it would be Hammersmith.

  Should I go with my gut feeling, or listen to Gehlen’s Trust No One?

  Yet another factor bearing on this problem is that until I’m relieved—and Major Harold Wallace more than likely is working hard on that right now—I’m chief, DCI-Europe.

  And, as such, I’m supposed to make decisions without—what did Patton say? “Do not take counsel of your fears”—immediately deciding that the worst-case scenario is the one most likely to bite me on the ass.

  “In that case, Colonel, I’m very glad you’re here,” Cronley said.

  “So, what can I do for you?”

  “Did General Greene tell you why I’m interested in the Glienicke Bridge?”

  Ledbetter nodded.

  “I’d like to have a look at it as soon as possible. How far is it from here?”

  “Not far, but you’re not going to be able to see anything at this time of day.”

  Hessinger and Claudette stepped closer.

  “There’s not much to see, Mr. Cronley,” Hessinger said. “Miss Colbert and I took a look before we came here.”

  “And?”

  “Girder bridge, two lanes.”

  “What about Russians?”

  “There were maybe half a dozen Russian soldiers at their end of the bridge,” Claudette said. “Just standing around.”

  “And on our end?”

  “Two MPs sitting in a jeep.”

  “Colonel,” Cronley asked, “has this—a prisoner swap or, for that matter, any interaction between us and the Russians—ever happened at the bridge before?”

  “Just the return of Red Army soldiers who got drunk and locked up in our zone,” Ledbetter said. “Or GIs who got drunk and locked up over there. Nothing like this.”

  “What I would like to do tomorrow,” Cronley said, “after they put Colonel Mattingly on display on the bridge, is to try to see where they take him afterward. Any ideas how we can do that?”

  “I’m already working on that,” Mannberg said. “There are two possibilities. One is the Cecilienhof Palace in the Neuer Garten—”

  “Where they held the Potsdam Conference, right?” Cronley interrupted.

  Mannberg nodded. “Comrade Serov might be staying there. As it was good enough for Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, he may have decided it’s appropriate quarters for Commissar of State Security Nikolayevich Merkulov, his deputy, and a visiting American.”

  “And possibility two?”

  “They’re holding Mattingly someplace else, God and Serov only knowing where.”

  Ledbetter looked at Mannberg and said, “I gather you’re no stranger to Berlin, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Sorry,” Cronley said. “Colonel, this is Mr. Ludwig Mannberg of the DCI. And Claudette Colbert, Fred Hessinger, and Max Ostrowski, ditto.”

  Everybody shook hands.

  “Why are you smiling, Jack?” Ledbetter asked.

  “You asked if Ludwig was a stranger to Berlin. Is it all right if I tell him, Cronley?”

  In for a penny, in for a pound!

  “In a previous life, Colonel, Mr. Mannberg was Oberst Mannberg of Abwehr Ost,” Cronley said.

  “Really?”

  “Under Admiral Canaris, in whose dining room we are now gathered,” Mannberg confirmed.

  “I’d heard this was his house,” Ledbetter said. “He must have been a fine officer.”

  “Why do you say that?” Mannberg asked.

  “Because of what the Nazis did to him. I saw his rotting corpse still hanging from a gallows when we liberated the Flossenbürg concentration camp.”

  “And Captain von Wachtstein of South American Airways,” Cronley said, gesturing toward him, “who is also DCI, was Major von Wachtstein of the Luftwaffe.”

  “And Mr. Ostrowski? Also ex-Luftwaffe?” Ledbetter asked softly.

  “Ex–Free Polish Air Force,” Ostrowski said. “The last time I was in Berlin I was flying an Eighth Air Force North American P-51.”

  “Magnificent airplane!” von Wachtstein said.

  “I know it’s not polite to ask questions,” Ledbetter said, “but . . .”

  “For example?” Cronley replied.

  “How is an Argentine airline connected with the DCI?”

  Cronley visibly thought it over before replying.

  “If I have to say this, Colonel, just about all of this is classified Top Secret–Presidential and I probably shouldn’t tell you and Major Rogers any of it. But some of it may—probably will—come into play in the next week or so, and you should know who the players are.

  “So, to answer your question, SAA is a DCI asset, inherited from the OSS when OSS was shut down. It was started up at President Roosevelt’s order by the Southern Cone OSS station chief, Lieutenant Colonel Cletus Frade, USMCR.”

  �
��When I met Frade, he was Captain Frade of SAA,” Ledbetter said.

  “Well, the DCI does have its little secrets, Colonel,” Cronley said.

  “There are rumors going around that the DCI has been shipping Nazis to Argentina—”

  “Scurrilous and absolutely untrue,” Cronley said, smiling.

  “I wondered how,” Ledbetter said, smiling back.

  “Very few Nazis,” Cronley said. “Lots of relatives of former members of Abwehr Ost whom our Russian allies wanted to chat with. The deal Allen Dulles struck with Gehlen was that Gehlen would turn over to us all his assets, including agents in place in the Kremlin, in exchange for us keeping his people, and their families, out of the hands of the Russians.”

  Ledbetter nodded.

  “Well, the official story is that Dulles never told Donovan about the deal. That it was kept secret from Donovan because if he knew he would have felt obligated to tell President Roosevelt, who probably would have stopped it and/or told Mrs. Roosevelt, who would have promptly told her Soviet friends.

  “Clete thought that story smelled. He thought Donovan knew about Operation Ost from the beginning and that Donovan knew that the OSS was going to need a means to get Gehlen’s people—especially the Nazis among them—out of Europe to Argentina. What better way to do that than with an Argentine airline that the OSS controlled?”

  “What comes to mind is that phrase ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive,’” Ledbetter said.

  “There were other scenarios,” Cronley went on. “One was that the Air Force had bet on the Douglas C-54 and the later C-56. Both were Air Force designs, and production was in full swing. Then Howard Hughes had come up—on his own, at his own expense—with the Constellation. It was superior in every way to the Douglas airplanes. It was faster, had a longer range, and carried more.

  “And there was another scenario that was either part of that one or stood alone. Roosevelt was not fond of Juan Trippe, who owned Pan American Airlines, which had a commercial monopoly on international/intercontinental passenger service. Trippe was operating his Clippers—seaplanes—from Miami to Argentina, for example. And from New York, via the Azores, to Europe. And from the West Coast to the Pacific.

  “Trippe could be taken down a peg if somebody started flying Constellations across oceans. They were much faster and had a greater range than Trippe’s Clippers. So, since the Air Force didn’t want them, Lockheed was free to sell the Constellations. But, to keep them out of the hands of Pan American/Juan Trippe, and out of the hands of Transcontinental and Western Airlines—which Howard Hughes owned although he wasn’t supposed to, and everybody knew he wanted to start across oceans with the Connies—Roosevelt ordered that the nine that Howard had sitting at the Lockheed factory couldn’t be sold to either.

  “They could be sold to others. Clete’s grandfather, Cletus Marcus Howell, of Howell Petroleum, got to buy one to fly around his petroleum empire. And Roosevelt had no objection to their being sold to neutral Argentina, which he had heard was thinking of starting up an international airline.”

  “Fascinating,” Ledbetter said.

  “We’ll probably never know the real story,” Cronley said.

  “That happens, from time to time, in our line of business,” Ledbetter said.

  “Anyway, that’s how come Clete and Hansel are flying SAA Constellations,” Cronley said.

  “It doesn’t explain how you got from being a second lieutenant in the CIC in Marburg to . . . where you are now,” Ledbetter said. “Is that question off-limits?”

  “Yes, sorry,” Cronley said. “I can tell you this: A decision was made by a very senior government official that a good way to divert attention from Operation Ost and DCI was to put it under a very junior captain. If such an unimportant young officer was running it, it couldn’t be very important, could it?”

  “Clever,” Ledbetter said.

  “Just between you and me, Colonel, not to get any further, General Seidel and Company are right. I am just about totally unqualified to be head of DCI-Europe—”

  “I challenge that,” Mannberg said.

  “And so do I, Jim,” Tiny Dunwiddie said. “We’ve had this discussion, and you’re still wrong.”

  “And I, Captain Cronley,” Ledbetter said, “know General Greene well enough to know he wouldn’t have ordered me to do whatever you ask if he thought—”

  “And as an example of that,” Cronley interrupted, “the distinguished head of DCI-Europe, after due consideration of the problem of getting Mattingly back from the fucking Russians, has come up with a brilliant plan to do so.”

  “Which is?”

  “Tomorrow morning I am going to go out to the Glienicke Bridge so that Comrade Serov can see me and see that I am obeying his orders, and then I am going to fly back to Munich and bury three of Comrade Serov’s comrades according to the rites of the Russian Orthodox Church as he ordered me to do.”

  “And?” Tiny asked.

  “That’s it. I don’t have a fucking clue how to get Mattingly back from the fucking Russians. That’s why I shouldn’t be chief, DCI-Europe.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  Then Cronley added, “Herr von Wachtstein, would you be so kind as to slide the Haig & Haig down this way?”

  X

  [ ONE ]

  Glienicke Bridge

  Wannsee, U.S. Zone of Berlin

  0625 31 January 1946

  Colonel Ledbetter offered them the choice of a Ford staff car or a jeep for what Cronley had dubbed “Our oh-dark-hundred look at the bridge.”

  “A jeep, I think, will attract less attention,” Cronley said.

  “In that case, you’ll need parkas. It’s snowing. Miserable conditions.”

  Ledbetter had then provided them with the bulky cotton garments, which were olive drab on one side and white on the other. They had hoods, ringed with what Cronley thought could have been fur.

  “The last time I wore one of these was in the Battle of the Bulge,” Dunwiddie announced, as he pulled on his parka. “It didn’t keep me warm then, but maybe we’ll get lucky today.”

  “We’re going to need all the luck we can get,” Cronley said.

  A jeep “comfortably” held four people. Into the one Ledbetter provided went five—Hessinger, driving because he knew the way, plus Cronley, Mannberg, Dunwiddie, and Ostrowski.

  Snow fell heavily as they drove up to the bridge, obscuring its far end. The half-dozen men there were recognizable as Russian soldiers, but their faces and rank insignia were lost in the whiteout blur.

  The snow, Cronley saw, coated the canvas roof of the MP jeep sitting to one side of the bridge, and made invisible the white line that marked the center of the bridge.

  When they got close to the bridge itself, the MP jeep came suddenly to life and moved to block their way. A sergeant got out of the jeep and walked around the front of their jeep to the driver’s side.

  “Sorry,” he said to Hessinger with monumental insincerity, “I got to write you up for five in a jeep. Let me have your trip ticket, driver’s license, Russian Zone authorization, and the ID card of the senior guy in there. He’s responsible for the violation.”

  “That would be me,” Dunwiddie, sitting beside Hessinger, announced. “Let’s start with this, Sergeant: Don’t the MPs in Berlin salute officers?”

  The sergeant was visibly surprised, but he saluted and said, “Sorry, sir. Your parka covers your bars. I didn’t see them. But I still got to write you up.”

  Dunwiddie said, “What you still got to do, Sergeant, is get back in your jeep and forget you ever saw us. This is CIC business.”

  Dunwiddie fumbled around under his parka, and then turned in his seat and asked, “Has anyone got their CIC credentials with them?”

  Cronley, laughing, produced his, and they had the expected reaction o
n the sergeant.

  “But I still got to see your Russian Zone authorization,” the sergeant said. “Nobody gets to cross the bridge without a Russian Zone authorization. Orders is orders.”

  “Not a problem, Sergeant,” Cronley said. “We’re not going over there.”

  He reached between his legs and came up with something wrapped in a blanket.

  “Here you go, Sergeant,” he said, handing it to the sergeant. “Keep up the good work.”

  “Sir? What’s this?”

  “A thermos of coffee,” Cronley explained. “Which I brought along thinking we might be here long enough to need it. Take us home, Freddy.”

  The sergeant saluted crisply as Hessinger spun the jeep around and drove away from the bridge.

  [ TWO ]

  44–46 Beerenstrasse, Zehlendorf

  U.S. Zone of Berlin

  0715 31 January 1946

  Hans-Peter von Wachtstein and the other SAA crewmen were in the process of loading themselves into a Chevrolet station wagon with an SAA logo on its doors when Hessinger drove the jeep into the parking area.

  Cronley jumped out of the jeep.

  “Hansel, what’s going on?” he demanded.

  “Air Force Weather said the snow’s going to stop in the next hour, but they don’t know for how long. As long as it’s stopped, I’ll have the half-mile visibility I need to take off. Which means I’ve got to get out of here as soon as the snow stops.”

  “I needed to talk to you. I told you that.”

  “Jimmy, I have to get out of here,” von Wachtstein said.

  “I was going to give you a letter to give Clete . . .”

  “Something wrong with the SIGABA?”

  “. . . saying something I didn’t want anybody with SIGABA access to see. I ran out of time, so I need you to pass it verbally.”

  “Jesus! What the hell are you up to?”

  “As soon as you get to Buenos Aires, get Clete alone and tell him this. Tell him exactly this. Memorize it.”

  “I’ll write it down.”

  “No. Just memorize it.”

  Von Wachtstein’s eyebrows went up as he nodded.