Curtain of Death

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Actually, I sort of like him,” Wagner replied. “He reminds me of my grandfather.”

  “When he’s through with you, call the office and they’ll send a car. Got the number?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They walked past the locomotive, which was lazily puffing steam from under its boiler onto the platform, and then past the car immediately behind the locomotive. A very crisply uniformed Constabulary sergeant stood guard at the door of the next car. He was armed with both a Thompson submachine gun and a .45 ACP pistol. He wore a glistening helmet liner and had a yellow scarf puffing out of his Ike jacket.

  He looked to be a little younger than Wagner, and Cronley recalled another lecture from Freddy Hessinger, in which Freddy had reported that the average age of enlisted men in USFET was eighteen-point-something years, that ninety-something percent of them were high school graduates with an average Army General Classification Test score of 113, which would have qualified them for officer candidate school had they been old enough—twenty-one—to become officers. Seventy-something percent of them had taken advantage of the Army’s desperate need for troops by accepting the offer to enlist for eighteen months, which made them eligible for college under the GI Bill.

  “Sergeant, this is Mr. Wagner, who has an appointment with General White,” Cronley said to the eighteen-point-something-year-old sergeant.

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied. “We’ve been given a heads-up. If you’ll come with me, Mr. Wagner?”

  The sergeant did not seem at all surprised that another eighteen-point-something-year-old was wearing the triangles of a civilian employee of the Army or that he had an appointment with the major general who commanded the U.S. Constabulary.

  Wagner, who was not supposed to salute another civilian wearing triangles, saluted Cronley, who returned it.

  —

  As Cronley opened the door of the staff car, he was still considering the surreal aspects of the situation, which included himself having become a captain while his A&M classmates were still waiting for their automatic promotion to first lieutenant after eighteen months of service and his being in charge of an operation attempting to get a full bull colonel back from the Russians who had kidnapped him.

  He was abruptly brought out of his reverie when a voice barked, “Sir, Lieutenant Douglas, sir. Aide-de-camp to Major General White, sir. General White’s compliments. Sir, it would please the general if you would attend him at your earliest convenience.”

  Cronley turned and found himself looking at a second lieutenant whose Constabulary uniform bore the lapel insignia and aiguillette of an aide-de-camp to a major general and who looked to be about as old as PFC Wagner.

  “Lieutenant, how long have you been in the Army?”

  “Sir, about seventeen months. I’m Norwich, ’45.”

  “When you were at Norwich, did you know a great big black guy named Dunwiddie?”

  “Yes, sir, as a matter of fact I did. Tiny Dunwiddie was my first sergeant, and then he dropped out of school. There was a rumor he enlisted. I’ve always wondered what happened to him.”

  Well, right about now he’s a captain standing on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, dealing with NKGB Senior Major of State Security Ivan Serov, trying to get a colonel the Russians kidnapped back.

  Surreal!

  “Lead the way, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir. If you’ll come with me, I’ll take you to the general.”

  —

  Cronley stepped inside the third railcar. Seated at a map-covered conference table were General White, Lieutenant Colonel Hotshot Billy Wilson, PFC Wagner, and a lieutenant colonel and a major, all of whom Cronley had sort of expected. Also seated at the table was Miss Janice Johansen of the Associated Press, which really surprised him.

  “Come on in, Cronley,” General White said. “I’m glad Lieutenant Douglas caught you.”

  “Good afternoon, sir,” Cronley said. “Miss Johansen.”

  “How did the funeral go, sweetheart?” she asked.

  “Cronley, this is Colonel McMullen, my G-2, and Major Lomax, his deputy,” White said.

  The men shook hands.

  “Sit down, and tell us how the funeral went, sweetheart,” General White said.

  Colonel Wilson laughed. Colonel McMullen and Major Lomax chuckled. Lieutenant Douglas and PFC Wagner tried hard to do neither.

  Sonofabitch!

  His two G-2 officers and the aide aren’t cleared for any of this.

  Do I ignore that and answer the question or say something and piss General White off?

  And what the hell was him calling me “sweetheart” all about?

  Just being funny, or is he letting me know he knows I’ve been screwing Janice and letting me know he disapproves?

  “I hope you were paying attention, Greg,” White said. “And you, too, Wagner. Although I suspect you’re already aware of what you should do in a situation like the one I just put Captain Cronley in.”

  “Sir?” Lieutenant Douglas asked, visibly confused.

  “Cronley doesn’t know any of you are in the loop,” White replied, pointing at McMullen, Lomax, and Gregory. “So when I asked him—coupled with something I hoped would upset him—questions about the funeral, the answers to which would have been Top Secret–Presidential, he did the right thing. He kept his mouth shut and gave me a really dirty look. Get it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Gregory said.

  White added, “Even if he had said, politely, ‘General, that’s classified,’ he would have been letting you know that there was something secret about the funeral. You get that, Greg?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cronley, Admiral Souers gave me permission to bring anyone into the loop I thought necessary. Will you take my word on that?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  “After Billy and I talked with Wagner yesterday, I decided that the contributions Dick McMullen and Fred Lomax could make toward solving the problem justified bringing them into the loop. I brought Greg into the loop as part of his education. Aides should do more than pass canapés. They should learn how things work at the higher echelons of the Army. Does my bringing Lieutenant Gregory into the loop pose a problem for you, Cronley?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He’s Norwich. Same class, ’45, as a mutual friend of ours. Speaking of whom?”

  “Sir, Captain Dunwiddie is, or was at oh-nine-hundred, on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, dealing with NKGB Senior Major of State Security Ivan Serov, trying to get Colonel Mattingly back from the Russians.”

  “Wipe that expression of shock and disbelief off your face, Greg,” White said. “An officer needs to have a poker face.”

  There were chuckles at Gregory’s visible discomfiture.

  “If something other than what you expected had happened, I presume you would have heard by now?” White asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Which brings us back to the funeral. How’s that going?”

  “Sir, when I left the cemetery just before coming here, a backhoe that Colonel Bristol sent over was about to open the graves. He also found somebody to make the tombstones.”

  “Greg, he’s Norwich, too, ’40, I think,” White said. “Engineer. Good man. I suspect—but don’t know—that Captain Cronley has brought him into the loop.”

  “Yes, sir. I did.”

  “How long is this exhumation/reburial process going to take?” White asked.

  “It depends on how soon we get the tombstones. Augie Ziegler found a Russian Orthodox priest—”

  “An archiereus,” Wagner interjected. “That’s like a bishop.”

  “I stand corrected,” Cronley said. “An archiereus who will conduct the burial.”

  He turned to Wagner and asked, “Does this guy have priests under him? I mean, can we get priests, broth
ers, whatever to participate?”

  “There was a price. Augie said he thought you’d be happy to pay it.”

  “And I will be. I want this done right.”

  “My question was,” White said, “how long is this going to take?”

  “Colonel Bristol said he’s been promised the tombstones by the day after tomorrow, but not to hold my breath. I’m working with the day after the day after tomorrow. That would be February fourth.”

  “And since Serov wants the exchange to take place on the thirteenth, that would leave nine days.”

  “Yes, sir,”

  “Mr. Cronley,” Colonel McMullen said, “General White said something about you having a relationship with Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin of the DST?”

  Cronley nodded.

  “In connection with SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter. I hope, I hope?”

  “If you’re talking about the guy from Peenemünde, his name never came up when I was with Fortin.”

  “Damn,” McMullen said.

  “Can I ask what you were doing with Fortin?” Major Lomax asked.

  “Trying to get into Odessa by . . .” Cronley paused, then said, “Bottom line is that my clever idea didn’t work.”

  “What didn’t work?” McMullen asked.

  “It’s a long story, Colonel.”

  “My wife and the other ladies won’t be back for an hour and a half,” White said, after looking at his watch. “Will that give you enough time?”

  “Yes, sir. Well, my mother is a Strasbourgerin, a World War One war bride . . .”

  —

  “. . . Finney said he’s sure my cousin Luther was onto our little scheme,” Cronley concluded. “And Finney is a very clever guy.”

  “Chauncey speaks very highly of him,” White said. “Do you think it would be useful if you raised the question of this chap Heimstadter with Fortin? McMullen suspects Heimstadter and the other Peenemünde Nazi . . .”

  White looked at McMullen, who furnished, “Standartenführer Oskar Müller.”

  “. . . Müller are high on the list of people Fortin doesn’t like.”

  “I’ll certainly bring it up to him when I see him, sir.”

  “It would mean you would have to pass on a late luncheon with the ladies, but you could have Tom Winters fly you to Strasbourg now.”

  “Fortin’s not in Strasbourg, General. I was going to see him while the exhumation was going on and called to make sure he would be there. His sergeant told me he won’t be back until the day after tomorrow.”

  “Did he say where he was?” McMullen asked.

  “The Spanish border. He wouldn’t say—and I asked, pressed—why, which makes me suspect he’s looking for my cousin Luther.”

  “He could be looking for Heimstadter and Müller,” McMullen said. “We’re starting to think the Odessa route, or at least one of them, is Germany-France-Spain and then to Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, wherever.”

  “So we’re back to two days from now until you can see Fortin,” White said.

  “Three, sir,” Cronley said. “I want to hand Serov—or have Tiny hand him—pictures of me burying the Russians.”

  “That’s important?”

  “I have a gut feeling that it is, sir.”

  “So three days until you can see Fortin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So, sorry, it looks like luncheon with the ladies,” White said. “No offense, Miss Johansen.”

  “None taken, darling.”

  “Would you be offended if I say you’ve been remarkably quiet during all this? Most reporters, I think, would have been asking all kinds of questions.”

  “Most reporters, darling, don’t know how to listen. I’m getting the picture. But now that you mention it, I do have a question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I know why Jim wants these two Krauts. But I don’t know why you and McMullen are so hot to get them. Same reason?”

  “I don’t know why Mr. Cronley wants to get them,” McMullen said.

  “Why do you?” Cronley asked.

  “Do you know Major General Harmon, Mr. Cronley?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He commanded Hell on Wheels—2nd Armored Division—before he turned it over to General White. He now commands the Constabulary, which will be turned over to General White.”

  “I said I didn’t know him. I do know who he is,” Cronley said.

  “He was at Peenemünde when we found the mass graves in which Heimstadter and Müller had buried . . . Actually, more accurately where they had forced the slave laborers to dig a mass grave and then lined up the slaves and mowed them down with Schmeissers, and dumped them into it.

  “It was a scene straight from hell. Some of them still had been alive when the grave was closed. About a third were women. General Harmon turned to me—I was then G-2 of 2nd Armored—and told me, ‘McMullen, from this moment on your priority is to find the bastards who did this, so we can hang them.’ I’ve been looking for them since.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “When I assumed command of Hell on Wheels,” White said softly, “one of the reasons I wanted to get to Berlin quickly was that McMullen had heard that Heimstadter and Müller were there. I learned that they had been. What we thought then was that Russians had them. The Reds wanted to know what they knew of Peenemünde. The Russians accused us of having them, which was predictable, I suppose. Now McMullen has learned that they’re still on the loose.”

  “Courtesy of Odessa,” Colonel Wilson said.

  “When I brought these people into the loop, Cronley,” White said, “I didn’t get into why DCI is interested in Heimstadter and Müller. The political reason. I thought that should be your call. I think I should tell you that General Seidel is Colonel McMullen’s brother-in-law.”

  His brother-in-law!

  Shit!

  “Sir,” McMullen said to White, “what’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I thought you might be aware that Captain Cronley is not high on the list of junior officers whom General Seidel thinks are making substantial contributions to the Army.” White paused, then added, “Actually, I can’t tell you what he thinks about Captain Cronley in the presence of a lady.”

  “Aren’t you sweet, darling?” Janice said.

  “My wife told me that if I get into another brouhaha with her brother about the DCI, she’ll . . . She said I’ll spend the rest of our marriage sleeping on the couch.”

  “And what do you think of the DCI, Colonel?” Cronley asked.

  “I had a lot of respect for the OSS during the war. That’s where I met Bob Mattingly, when he was running OSS-Forward. I thought President Truman made a mistake when he shut it down. And I was delighted when I heard he’d established DCI.”

  “Why?” Cronley asked.

  “I’m tempted to say because my brother-in-law thought it was absolutely the wrong thing to do. But the truth is because I don’t think the Army can—or for that matter, should—do the things of questionable legality that sometimes have to be done in order to accomplish things like getting Bob Mattingly back. It takes an agency like the OSS—like the DCI.”

  “You’re aware, Colonel, that General Seidel is trying to either take over DCI or shut it down?” Cronley asked.

  “That’s hardly a secret, Mr. Cronley.”

  “My priority is to see that doesn’t happen.”

  McMullen looked between Cronley and General White.

  “How can I be of assistance?” he asked.

  “My boss believes the one way we can get the intelligence community off our backs is with Operation Paperclip. You know about Paperclip?”

  “General Seidel has told me a great deal about his role in getting the German rocket establishment to Alabama. He believes it was a triumph of Army intell
igence, and frankly I’m prone to agree with him.”

  “Including his role in running the Nazis who ran Peenemünde through, quote, sympathetic, unquote, denazification courts? Thus going directly against Truman’s order than no Nazis be taken into the States?”

  McMullen, after a moment’s reflection, said: “He never mentioned anything along those lines. But frankly, so what? We have von Braun and his scientists and the rockets. And the Russians don’t.”

  “Which would you say gave the United States the best deal? Paperclip, which gave us von Braun and his people, or Operation Ost, which gave us everything General Gehlen had, including agents inside the Kremlin?”

  “Tough call,” McMullen said, nodding thoughtfully. “Isn’t it the same kind of a deal? Paperclip let some Nazis dodge getting tried and got them to the States. Operation Ost let them escape to Argentina. If that was the price that had to be paid, so be it.”

  “The difference is that Operation Ost had Truman’s approval,” Cronley said.

  McMullen nodded again. “Point taken.”

  “And to keep Seidel and Company from taking over or shutting down DCI, I have been authorized to take whatever action is necessary.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “The reason I want to find Heimstadter and Müller—who are probably feeling very sorry for themselves because every other Peenemünde Nazi but them is safe in the States and they’re in hiding from both the Russians and us—is to get them to make statements—before movie cameras—about everything they know about Peenemünde and Operation Paperclip.”

  “To what end?”

  “I think Admiral Souers might call on the assistant chief of staff–Intelligence or the chief of Naval Intelligence, and say something like, ‘I’m going to show you a movie that I plan to show to the President unless you get off the back of DCI right now. And stay off.”

  “You’re going to blackmail them,” McMullen said, almost incredulously.

  “Not ninety seconds ago you were saying something about ‘things of questionable legality’ that sometimes have be done,” General White said.

  McMullen met White’s eyes, then looked at Cronley.