“Okay. What’s the message?”
“That I am not going to obey any order to turn over the Likharevs to the Russians, even if that means I’ll have to spend the rest of my life in Leavenworth.”
“What’s Leavenworth?”
“The Army prison. It’s in Kansas.”
“Mein Gott, you’re serious, aren’t you, Jimmy?”
“Yeah. I’m serious. I’m just not going to do it.”
“So they’ll get somebody else to do it. Have you considered that?”
“Another sentence for you to repeat to Clete: ‘And I will do my best to fuck up any transfer by anybody, and I mean anybody, else.’”
“I don’t know if you’re stupid or noble. My father did the noble thing and got himself hung from a butcher’s hook.”
“As far as I know, the intelligence community doesn’t use butcher’s hooks.”
“You do something like this, they’ll come up with something.”
“Just do what I’m asking, Hansel, please.”
Von Wachtstein looked into Cronley’s eyes for a moment.
“How long are you going to be at the Glienicke Bridge?” von Wachtstein asked.
“I don’t know. Serov said he’d show us Colonel Mattingly at nine o’clock.”
“After that, you’re going back to Munich?”
“On the eleven-o’clock courier flight to Rhine-Main. Presuming the weather lets the plane get out of here. Otherwise, I’ll have to drive.”
“All of you?”
“Just me. Mannberg and Ostrowski need to be here in case I can’t get back in time for Serov to put Mattingly on display tomorrow. The sonofabitch will expect to see at least one of us.”
“When you finish at the bridge, get to Tempelhof as quick as you can. I’ll hold off taking off as long as I can. With a little bit of luck, you can ride with me to Rhine-Main.”
“What’s that all about?”
“Between here and Rhine-Main, I will try to talk you out of your noble plan to go to prison for the rest of your life.”
Von Wachtstein then quickly got in the Chevrolet station wagon.
[ THREE ]
Glienicke Bridge
Wannsee, U.S. Zone of Berlin
0850 31 January 1946
The Air Force weather briefing had been accurate. The heavy snow had stopped, the clouds cleared, and the sun had come out.
Three Ford staff cars, the lead one bearing MP insignia and a fender-mounted chrome siren, rolled up to the bridge and stopped.
Immediately, a dozen of Tiny’s Troopers—all wearing white parkas, glossily painted helmet liners with Constabulary insignia, gleaming leather Sam Browne belts, and all armed with Thompson submachine guns and .45 ACP pistols—filed out of the two three-quarter-ton “weapons carriers” that had brought them to the bridge.
They immediately formed into two six-man squads, were called to attention, and with the Thompsons at the port arms position, marched to the bridge, six men on each side. When they were in position, Tiny Dunwiddie, also in Constabulary regalia, got out of the third staff car, marched to the men at the bridge, came to attention, and bellowed, “Sling Arms. Parade Rest!”
As Dunwiddie assumed that position, his troops slung their Thompsons from their shoulders and assumed the position.
As this was going on, two jeeps with pedestal-mounted .50 caliber Browning machine guns, and each carrying three similarly uniformed troopers, drove up and parked facing the bridge. The canvas covers were removed from the machine guns, and ammo cans put in place.
All of this was Cronley’s idea.
“I don’t want us to show up there as beggars,” he had said. “So we’ll stage a little dog and pony show for Comrade Serov.”
He had then gone on to explain the details of the dog and pony show.
He thought Mannberg and Ostrowski had agreed that it was a good idea, and he was sure Colonel Ledbetter, Jack Hammersmith, and Freddy Hessinger had not.
Ledbetter, however, did arrange for the other things Cronley thought they should have. These included the MP staff car and photographers, a motion picture cameraman and two still photographers, one with a Speed Graphic Press camera, the other with a Leica mounting an enormous lens. The photographers were standing on a platform on the roof of a Signal Corps mobile film laboratory, which was mounted on a six-by-six truck chassis.
When everyone was in place, Cronley and Mannberg got out of the MP staff car. Cronley was in Class A uniform, wearing a trench coat with his captain’s bars pinned to the epaulets and a leather-brimmed officer’s cap. Mannberg wore a fur-collared overcoat and a fur hat.
Max Ostrowski, wearing Class A’s and a trench coat, got out of the second car, as did a second man, wearing ODs. Three more men got out of the car in which Tiny Dunwiddie had been riding. All the men were CIC agents, one of them Jack Hammersmith.
Cronley and Mannberg marched up to the edge of the bridge, stopping where the metal structure of the bridge began. Ostrowski and Hammersmith marched up to six feet beside them and stopped.
Cronley could now see all the way across the bridge. He saw that the white line marking the middle was clearly visible. Someone—probably the Russian—had swept the snow from it.
There were about twenty Russians, some of them officers, on the far end of the bridge. Cronley did not see Ivan Serov among them.
I’m sure he’s here, that he’s seen the cameras and doesn’t want his picture taken.
Or doesn’t want to be seen, period.
For what seemed like a very long time, nothing happened.
Cronley made an exaggerated gesture of looking at his wristwatch. He saw that it was almost exactly nine.
“Jim,” Mannberg said softly.
Cronley looked at him. Mannberg nodded just perceptibly down the bridge.
Cronley saw that an enormous truck, with a body as large as the trailers on what he thought of as “eighteen wheeler” tractor trailers, was beginning to slowly back onto the bridge.
Along the truck body’s left side was an officer walking backward, occasionally looking over his shoulder while giving hand signals to the driver. Immediately behind him were eight Red Army soldiers, in a file, each carrying a PPSh-41 submachine gun across his chest. Another eight similarly armed soldiers marched on the other side of the truck body.
Mannberg put his fist to his mouth, coughed, and then softly observed, “Dog and pony show, Serov version.”
The truck continued to slowly back up until it was within ten feet of the white line marking the center of the bridge. It stopped with a squeal of brakes.
The officer who had been giving instructions to the driver signaled for a soldier to unlock the rear doors of the truck body. When the soldier had done so, the officer turned and looked toward the American end of the bridge. He folded his arms across his chest.
A moment later, the left rear door was pushed open by a soldier inside.
It was dark inside the body. Cronley couldn’t see anything beyond the soldier.
Then the right rear door swung open.
And interior lights came on.
They illuminated Colonel Robert Mattingly, who was sitting on a wooden chair. He was wearing his trench coat.
The officer then turned and ordered both doors quickly closed.
“What the hell?” Cronley exclaimed.
The truck didn’t move.
“Now what?” Cronley asked after ninety seconds, which seemed longer.
The truck doors then again were opened.
Colonel Mattingly now was standing, naked except for his white jockey shorts. A chain circled his waist, to the front of which his hands were handcuffed. His ankles were shackled. There was a clean white bandage on his upper right arm.
Well, at least they changed his bandage.
Somew
hat awkwardly, Colonel Mattingly began shuffling his feet to turn counterclockwise. He stopped when he was back to where he was looking at the American end of the bridge.
The officer signaled for the rear doors to be closed. As soon as they had, he signaled to the truck driver, who began to slowly drive off the bridge. The soldiers followed alongside.
Cronley watched until the truck reached the end of the bridge, where it turned and he could no longer see it.
“Those sonsofbitches!” he said.
“Comrade Serov said he would provide proof that they would treat Colonel Mattingly’s wounds and not physically abuse him,” Mannberg said. “It looks as if he’s done that.” He paused, then added: “You’re going to Frankfurt with von Wachtstein?”
“Yeah,” Cronley said. “I’ll try to get back for our nine o’clock dog and pony show tomorrow, but if I don’t get back, we do the same show. Okay?”
Mannberg nodded.
Cronley went to the MP staff car, got in the front seat, and told the CIC agent behind the wheel, “If that siren will get us to Tempelhof any quicker, turn it on.”
Cronley arrived at Tempelhof in time to see the SAA Constellation begin its takeoff roll.
[ FOUR ]
The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound
Pullach, Bavaria
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1730 31 January 1946
The flight on the Air Force C-54 from Tempelhof to Rhine-Main—some 240 miles that took almost two hours—put Cronley on the ground in Frankfurt at 1300. There had been time to call the house in Zehlendorf and tell Claudette Colbert to call Lieutenant Tom Winters in Eschborn to have him meet Cronley’s flight.
Cronley used the time on the C-54 to consider the problem of what Hans-Peter von Wachtstein was going to do in Buenos Aires. There was absolutely no question he would give Clete the message verbatim. What was not clear was what Hans-Peter, or Clete, or most likely both, would do to keep Cronley from spending the rest of his life in Leavenworth.
Cronley also considered at length how stupid it had been of him to tell Dette to have Tom meet him at Rhine-Main. Winters had one of the Storches. The Air Force did not like Storches with U.S. ARMY painted on their fuselages. The way things were going, there would be a flap at Rhine-Main, which would see the Storch impounded, sending him and Tom rushing to the Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt to—just in time—catch the Blue Danube train to Munich.
Things began to look up when Winters met him in the Arriving Passengers Terminal.
“I hope I did the right thing,” Winters said. “I left the Storch in Eschborn. Freddy Hessinger told me landing one here might cause problems.”
They drove to Eschborn and boarded the Storch.
In the Storch, which raced through the skies at about eighty miles per hour, the approximately 190-mile flight from Eschborn to Pullach should have taken no more than two and a half hours. But the snow, which had left Berlin, had moved south. The flight took three and a quarter hours, leaving the fuel gauge needles indicating empty tanks when Cronley touched down at the Compound.
From the look on Winters’s face, Cronley saw he was unimpressed with his argument that experience had taught him that even when the needles indicated empty there was still “several” gallons of avgas remaining.
Announcing, “Looks like we cheated death again,” after shutting down the engine did not exactly help.
Cronley pushed getting to Pullach because he needed to see General Gehlen as soon as possible. He wanted to tell him what had happened in Berlin and see if he had ideas how to get Mattingly back without swapping the Likharev family for him.
Thus, when First Sergeant Abraham Lincoln Tedworth met them, Cronley was less than pleased to hear Honest Abe report that the general was taking dinner at the Vier Jahreszeiten hotel with several of his officers and had said he probably would spend the night there because of the snow.
Making matters worse, the ex-ambulance in which they then drove from Pullach to Munich had both a malfunctioning heater and a missing windshield wiper, which made the drive on the snow-covered cobblestone road slow, uncomfortable, and more than once terrifying.
[ FIVE ]
The Lobby Bar
Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten
Maximilianstrasse 178
Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1840 31 January 1946
“My friend will have a Shirley Temple,” Cronley greeted the bartender. “And I will have a little taste of that Johnnie Walker Black. Make it a double.”
Lieutenant Winters gave Captain Cronley the finger.
“I’ll have the same,” Winters announced to the bartender.
“Excuse me, sirs,” the bartender asked. “Is the Herr Captain and the other gentleman aware this is a senior officers’ establishment?”
Shit, Cronley thought, I’m wearing my captain’s bars.
What the hell else can go wrong?
“Yes, the Herr Captain and the other gentleman are,” Cronley replied. “Where’s the regular bartender?”
“It’s all right, Franz,” a female voice said. “These junior officers are with me. You can serve them.”
“Es wird mir ein Vergnügen, gnädige Frau,” the bartender said, and reached for glasses.
Cronley and Winters looked down the bar.
“Well, if it isn’t Miss Janice Johansen, of the Associated Press,” Cronley said. “You know Miss Johansen, don’t you, Lieutenant Winters?”
“I have that pleasure,” Winters said.
“Fuck you, Jim,” Janice said. “And you, too, Winters.”
“Why do I suspect I have in some small way offended you, Miss Johansen?” Cronley asked.
“Our deal, and you know it, you sonofabitch, was that I was to be in on everything.”
“That’s our deal as I remember it,” Cronley said.
“So how come I didn’t get to go to Vienna with you? Or Berlin?”
“Who told you about Vienna or Berlin?”
“I’m a journalist. I find things out. Maybe I should give lessons to you spooks.”
“Janice, we shouldn’t be talking about any of this in here.”
“Okay. So when the drinks I got you are served, you pay for them, and carry them into the dining room.”
“That’s no better than the bar.”
“Unless we go where General Gehlen is, in a private dining room.”
—
When First Sergeant Tedworth had told Cronley and Winters that General Gehlen was having dinner at the Vier Jahreszeiten with several of his officers, Cronley naturally had presumed that these would be maybe a half dozen of the former Abwehr Ost lieutenant colonels and majors now in the Compound.
But when Gehlen’s Polish bodyguards passed him, Janice, and Tom Winters into the private dining room off the main dining room, Gehlen had only two Germans sitting at his table, Major Konrad Bischoff and Kurt Schröder, the ex- and present Storch pilot, and two Americans, Major Harold Wallace and Lieutenant Colonel John J. Bristol.
Everybody at the table rose when they saw Cronley, Janice, and Winters approaching the table.
It would be nice to think that was a gesture of courtesy to me as chief, DCI-Europe.
But it wasn’t.
They stood up as a Pavlovian reaction to Janice, even though Wallace and Bischoff clearly are unhappy to see her.
“Well,” Gehlen said, “I see I was wrong, Miss Johansen, when I told you I thought there was no chance at all of Jim being able to get here before the Blue Danube arrived at eleven. Please sit down.”
“You flew from Frankfurt?” Kurt Schröder asked incredulously as chairs were pulled to the table.
“He flew,” Winters replied, “while I prayed watching the fuel gauge needles bang against the empty peg as we went through the
blizzard.”
“I need something to eat,” Cronley said. “I haven’t had anything since breakfast.”
“And when he’s finished,” Janice said, “or preferably while he’s eating, he’s going to tell us all about Vienna and Berlin.”
Wallace’s face showed he strongly disapproved of that idea.
“Is this one of those occasions where I should be asked to be excused?” Colonel Bristol asked.
“No,” Cronley said firmly. “Colonel, this is one of those occasions where I’ll be more comfortable knowing you know everything, rather than wondering what you know and what you’ve intuited.”
“Same question, Herr Cronley,” Kurt Schröder asked.
“Same answer, Kurt.”
A waiter approached, and Cronley ordered a New York strip pink in the middle, fried eggs with running yolks, and pommes frites.
Winters said, “Just the steak and the French fries for me, please.”
—
Ten minutes later Cronley concluded: “Colonel Ledbetter promised to have the film processed and to send it with one of his people as soon as that can be done. And so, there being nothing more for me to do in Berlin, I came home to bury the Russians Claudette shot.”
He met Gehlen’s eyes, and thought, And for your advice on getting Mattingly back without swapping the Likharev family.
“Interesting,” Gehlen said, as if he read Cronley’s mind. “This will require some thought.”
“And I get the pictures of Mattingly in the truck on the bridge, right?” Janice asked.
“With the understanding you can’t use any of them until this thing is resolved one way or another.”
“No offense, Miss Johansen,” Wallace said, “but I’m more than a little worried that unless we have only our hands on that photography, it’s likely to get out.”
“No offense taken, Harry,” Janice said. “I understand your concern. But Jim promised me I could have a look at the photos. And he’s a man of his word. You’re just going to have to trust me.”
Curtain of Death Page 28