Curtain of Death

by W. E. B Griffin

  “As I said, sir, I’m going to go ahead with reburying the Russians, and then go back to Berlin.”

  “You don’t think there’s any chance of resurrecting your idea of getting into Odessa through Commandant Whatsisname, the Frenchman, in Strasbourg?”

  “Fortin, sir. Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin. Anything’s worth a try, sir.”

  “Your cousin—that relationship—would not pose a problem for you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How did Winters get along with Commandant Fortin?”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “Then do you think it would be a good idea if he flew you—before or after the reinterments of the Russians, but before you return to Berlin—over there to have a shot at that . . .”

  Is Cousin Luther going to cause me problems if Tom Winters flies me over there?

  Have I just ever so tactfully been reprimanded for flying down here in the bad weather last night?

  You bet your ass I have.

  “. . . and, in the meantime, I was thinking that General Gehlen, Colonel Wallace, Colonel Wilson, and myself can get together with that marvelous Pennsylvania Dutchman PFC of yours and see what we can come up with about getting into Odessa through the Stars and Stripes trucks. Does that make sense to you, Cronley?”

  “Sir, I would suggest you include Augie Ziegler in that.”

  And now I have just been ordered, with great tact, so as not to antagonize the enormous—and wholly unjustified—ego of the chief, DCI-Europe, to have DCI do something I should have thought of myself, involving Wallace and Hotshot Billy Wilson, with the Stripes trucks.

  This man is amazing!

  No wonder Wallace, Hotshot Billy—and, come to think of it, Mattingly and Tiny Dunwiddie—think Major General Isaac Davis White walks on water.

  “I should have thought of that,” White said. “I am afraid PFC Wagner really still thinks I bite off people’s heads. Thank you for that suggestion, Cronley. And for what I think of not only as a profitable meeting, but one which will permit me to put General Bull’s concerns at rest when I tell him about it.”

  Cronley’s mouth went on automatic: “General, that ‘thank you’ shoe unequivocally belongs on my foot, not yours.”

  White stood up, looked at Cronley intently for a moment, and then smiled at him.

  “Have fun at the burials and in Strasbourg,” he said.

  XI

  [ ONE ]

  Glienicke Bridge

  Wannsee, U.S. Zone of Berlin

  0855 1 February 1946

  The small convoy of vehicles—an MP jeep, a Chevrolet staff car, and two former ambulances—drove up to the bridge and stopped.

  The rear doors of the ambulances opened and six men in Constabulary regalia—all black soldiers, all six feet tall or better, and all armed with Thompson submachine guns—got quickly out of each. A Constabulary sergeant got out of the front seat of one of the ambulances and formed the men into two six-man squads. He then marched the soldiers up to the staff car, where he opened the rear door.

  Captain Chauncey L. Dunwiddie got out. The sergeant saluted crisply and Dunwiddie returned it. DCI Special Agents Max Ostrowski and Ludwig Mannberg then got out of the car. None of them appeared to be armed. All were wearing pinks and greens, trench coats, and leather-brimmed uniform caps.

  When Dunwiddie, with Ostrowski and Mannberg following, walked to the head of the column of soldiers, Dunwiddie towered over all of them.

  The three started to walk toward the bridge.

  The sergeant quietly ordered, “Port H-arms! Forward, harch!” and the soldiers fell in behind them.

  As this was happening, an enormous truck, apparently the same one the Russians had used in their first meeting on the bridge, began backing onto the bridge, again guided by a Red Army officer walking backward. Red Army soldiers marched on either side of it as they held PPSh-41 submachine guns across their chests.

  The truck stopped ten meters from the white line marking the center of the bridge. The officer who had been walking backward did an about-face and came to attention on the left side of the truck.

  Senior Major of State Security Ivan Serov appeared on the right side of the truck. He gestured with his right hand, and the doors of the truck opened. Colonel Robert Mattingly was sitting on a wooden chair about ten feet inside. He was wearing a trench coat and a leather-brimmed cap.

  Dunwiddie, Mannberg, and Ostrowski walked onto the bridge and stopped when they were ten meters from the white line marking the center.

  Dunwiddie saluted crisply. Serov returned it casually. Mattingly, in a reflex action, tried to return it, but handcuffs and a waist chain stopped the movement of his hand when it was halfway to his chest.

  Serov made another gesture, and the truck started to drive off the bridge as the doors closed.

  He then walked right up to the white line.

  Dunwiddie, Mannberg, and Ostrowski walked up to it.

  “I rather expected to see Captain Cronley,” Serov said in English.

  “He’s arranging an interment in Munich,” Dunwiddie replied.

  “When you’re in touch, please tell him that I’m living up to my side of our arrangement, too. You can see that Colonel Mattingly is in good health.”

  “I’ll tell him, Ivan, that you had him chained to a chair,” Mannberg said.

  Serov smiled.

  “You find that amusing, Ivan?” Mannberg asked.

  “Not what you said. What I find amusing, Ludwig, is to see you and your Polish associate in American uniforms.”

  “Just a convenience, Ivan. Like your wearing a podpolkóvnik’s shoulder boards rather than those of a major general. Or have you been demoted since the last time I checked?”

  Serov’s smile froze for a moment, and then brightened.

  “It’s always a pleasure to play mental chess with someone of your caliber, Ludwig,” he said.

  Then he came to attention, saluted, and marched back down the Russian side of the bridge.

  —

  “Colonel,” Dunwiddie asked, as they drove away from the bridge, “can I ask what that rank business with Serov was all about?”

  “Serious answer?”

  “Please, sir.”

  “Usually, it’s better that your adversary think you have less knowledge than is the case,” Mannberg explained. “Sometimes, when dealing with Russians, it’s better to challenge their superiority. He let us know he knows Max is Polish—which also meant he wanted us to know he has a mole in the Compound. So I let him know I knew more about him than he thinks I did.”

  “How did you know he’s really a major general?”

  “I don’t know. I do know that it’s highly unlikely the NKGB would have a lieutenant colonel running an operation like this. So I took a chance with major general, which seemed to be a realistic rank for someone serving as first deputy to Commissar of State Security Nikolayevich Merkulov. And I think my dart struck home.”

  Ostrowski chuckled.

  “Another question from an amateur,” Dunwiddie said. “We now have pictures of Colonel Mattingly sitting chained to a chair in that truck. So why don’t we just go to the Allied Commandantura with them. ‘Here’s proof you have our officer chained to a chair. Now let him go.’”

  Mannberg considered his reply for a moment before making it.

  “The Communists have one advantage over us in any confrontation,” he said finally. “We enter such proceedings weighed down by Exodus 20:1–17, and Deuteronomy 5:4–21. ‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.’ The Russians enter a meeting expecting to lie through their teeth to get what they want.

  “If we went to the Commandantura with this, the most likely thing that would happen is that they would first deny any knowledge of anything. Then if we pressed them—with photos of poor Mattingly in that
chair, for example—they would accuse us first of lying and then of provocation. And then—unless they had something important they wanted from the Commandantura—they would storm out of the meeting in righteous indignation, and stay out until they wanted something from the Commandantura. And then, when the question of Mattingly came up, they would say that was in the past, and, for everyone’s mutual benefit, there should be a fresh start with a new slate.”

  “In Russia,” Max Ostrowski said, “the state religion is Communism, Tiny. Officially, there is no God.”

  “Then what’s this business about giving Christian burials to the guys Claudette put down?”

  “I don’t really know,” Mannberg said. “It could be that Serov is really a Christian. Or not.”

  “‘Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,’” Ostrowski said, obviously quoting. “‘But perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.’”

  “He does have a way with words, doesn’t he?” Mannberg said, chuckling.

  “Who does?” Tiny asked.

  “Winston Churchill,” Ostrowski replied. “He said that in a speech in 1939.”

  “I suspect this burial business has a meaning,” Mannberg said. “We have no choice but to play along with it until we find out what that is.”

  “Do you suppose it might have something to do with Russian nationalism?” Max asked drily.

  [ TWO ]

  München-Ostfriedhof Cemetery

  St.-Martins-Platz

  Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1050 1 February 1946

  “Augie,” Captain James D. Cronley Jr. inquired of Chief Warrant Officer August Ziegler as the Ford staff car entered the gates of the cemetery, “is this the right place? Comrade Serov said ‘the Giesinger Friedhof cemetery.’ That plaque—brass sign, whatever—read MÜNCHEN-OSTFRIEDHOF.”

  “I can only surmise,” Ziegler replied, “that no one elected to tell Comrade Serov that the establishment—opened in 1821 as the Giesinger-Friedhof cemetery and designed to provide approximately thirty-five thousand burial plots within its nearly forty hectares—which is just shy of a hundred acres—was renamed München-Ostfriedhof, or Eastern Cemetery of Munich, in September 1929, when the crematorium was opened. Rest assured, Captain Cronley, sir, that I would never take you to the wrong boneyard.”

  “Did anyone ever tell you, Mr. Ziegler, that you’re a smart-ass?”

  “Often, sir. How about you?”

  “Where’d you get all that historical data? And how did you remember it all?”

  “In a previous life, you will recall, I was a CID agent. And before that I was a cop who wanted to be a detective. I learned to memorize things so I could write them down later. Sometimes stuff like that sticks in my mind for a while. I got it while praying the 98th General Hospital didn’t send the corpses right to the crematorium.”

  “What?” Cronley asked.

  “I was afraid that might happen, considering the Kraut rule of After Twenty-five Years, Pay Up or Into the Crematorium.”

  “The what?” PFC Karl-Christoph Wagner inquired from the backseat.

  “It’s sort of a Rent-a-Grave system,” Ziegler explained. “After a quarter century, unless the family pays for another twenty-five years, they exhume the bodies, cremate what’s left, and then rent the grave to somebody new.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  Cronley said, “If they’d cremated those bastards, we’d be fucked with Serov. Are you sure they didn’t?”

  “We’re about to find out,” Ziegler said as he pulled up before a large building with a round roof. “The crematorium also houses the grave-locating office.”

  “What the hell does that sign mean?” Cronley asked.

  “For the captain’s edification, ‘Det 7, AGRC’ means ‘Detachment 7, American Graves Registration Command.’ I can only surmise we’re burning our dead. That would be cheaper than buying them a coffin and then flying them home.”

  “Or they’re looking for the bodies of still-missing American POWs,” Cronley said.

  “I didn’t think of that,” Ziegler admitted.

  —

  When they were halfway up the steps to the door of the building, an American voice called out, “Mr. Ziegler?”

  A short, muscular first lieutenant trotted up to them, saluted Cronley, and said, “Lieutenant McGrory, sir. Munich Post Engineers. Colonel Bristol sent me to do whatever Mr. Ziegler requires.”

  He pointed to the side of the building where an Army backhoe sat on a trailer attached to a three-quarter-ton truck. Half a dozen GIs sat on the fenders and running boards of the truck and on a jeep next to it. “Is that you, sir?”

  “Guilty,” Ziegler said. “Welcome.”

  “What can we do for you, sir?” Lieutenant McGrory asked.

  “Presuming we can find their graves,” Cronley said, “we are going to exhume the bodies—which may or may not be in caskets—of three recently buried men . . .”

  McGrory’s face showed he didn’t like this information at all. But he said nothing.

  “. . . and then we’re going to take them to the morgue at the 98th General Hospital.”

  “Sir, I can’t get three bodies, with or without caskets, on that three-quarter-ton.”

  “Four bodies,” Cronley said, as if to himself.

  “Sir?” Ziegler and McGrory asked.

  Before Cronley could reply, a Chevrolet staff car drove up beside them. Three men, all in ODs with triangles, got out. One of them carried a Speed Graphic press camera and had a Leica 35mm camera hanging from his neck. Another had an Eyemo motion picture camera.

  “Ziegler, what the hell is going on here?” the man who did not have a camera asked.

  “Mr. Cronley, this is CID Agent Walt ‘Hollywood’ Thomas, of the CID photo lab. Hollywood, this is Mr. Cronley of the DCI.”

  “I heard you got transferred there. What the hell is the DCI?”

  “I’m surprised Colonel Kellogg didn’t tell you not to ask questions,” Ziegler said.

  “Yeah, he did,” Thomas said, and, turning to Cronley, added, “If I’m out of line, sir, I’m sorry. My orders from the provost marshal were to do whatever Ziegler asked. And not to ask questions.”

  “We need pictures, still and movie, of digging up some bodies, of the bodies in the morgue of the 98th General Hospital, and then of them in caskets, and then of their reburial here—”

  “Which will take place as soon as we get the caskets,” Ziegler interjected. “And the tombstones. Which hopefully will be tomorrow but will probably be the day after tomorrow.”

  “Can I ask what this is all about?” Thomas asked.

  “No,” Ziegler said. “Classification, Top Secret. You’ll develop the film, immediately, make prints of the stills, give everything to me, and then forget everything. Got it?”

  “You get that, Lieutenant?” Cronley asked the engineer officer.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Make sure your men get it.”

  “Yes, sir, I will.”

  “I need a quiet word with you, Mr. Ziegler,” Cronley said.

  “Yes, sir,” Augie replied.

  Cronley led him up the stairs and into the crematorium.

  “Serov knows three of his guys were killed,” Cronley began. “Janice wrote that the fourth guy died in the hospital. He knows, I think, that the fourth guy is Lazarus, Ulyanov. And I don’t think he thinks Lazarus is dead. I think this whole reburial process is because it’s important to Serov to know that he’s dead. Why is he so important? I don’t have a fucking clue. But I want to play with that.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Ziegler replied.

  “You’re the expert on this place. What do they do with the ashes of somebody who gets cremated?”

  “For all I know, they use the
m for fertilizer. Maybe into a mass grave of ashes.”

  “What if somebody rented a grave? Then what?”

  “That I know. They put the ashes into what looks like a flower pot with a lid and the deceased’s name on it, on a little bronze strip, and then bury it.”

  “They dig a six-foot hole for a flower pot?”

  “They dig a hole maybe two feet deep.”

  “You just made my day,” Cronley said. “Get one of these flower pots. And put on a bronze strip: MAJOR OF STATE SECURITY VENEDIKT ULYANOV. When we open the three graves and get pictures of the caskets and bodies, we will open, right next to it, a fourth grave, maybe two feet deep, from which we will exhume and take pictures of a flower pot with no name tag on it. Later, we put the name strip on it, take a picture of it, and then of it being reburied.”

  “And you’re thinking that will convince Serov that Lazarus is dead?”

  “I don’t know. What I want to see is his reaction. Is he pissed? Relieved? What?”

  “How about ‘unbelieving’?”

  “I have a gut feeling this should be done, so we’re going to do it.”

  “By ‘we,’ you mean me and Wagner.”

  “You’re going to do it. I’m going to take Wagner to see General White. Have a nice day, Mr. Ziegler. I’ll see you at the hotel at the cocktail hour.”

  [ THREE ]

  München Ostbahnhof

  Haidhausen, Munich

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1205 1 February 1946

  The locomotive was pulled nose first into the left platform of the station. An American flag and a red flag with two silver stars—indicating the presence of a major general—hung limply from poles mounted forward of the boiler.

  “Relax, Casey,” Cronley said to PFC Karl-Christoph Wagner. “He really doesn’t eat people alive.”