Top Secret

by W. E. B Griffin

  “May I ask why?”

  “I think I should.”

  “Of course,” Mannberg said, and stood.

  As they walked out of the bar, Cronley saw the zipper jacket Lieutenant Colonel Wilson had given him. It was hanging from a peg by the door.

  Schröder must’ve left it there—returning it to me—when he came back from Sonthofen. It still has the Liaison Pilot’s wings.

  To which neither of us is entitled.

  Cronley took the jacket and put it on as they walked to what had once been the monastery’s chapel.

  At least it’ll cover my captain’s bars, and if I speak German, the NKGB guy will think I’m another German.

  Why is that important?

  Because, on the rank totem pole, a U.S. Army captain is far down from Gehlen and Mannberg.

  Unless he already knows Kloster Grünau is being run by me. Which he probably does.

  Which means—Tiny’s people grabbed him before I returned from the States with my brand-new captain’s bars—that if he does know who I am, he thinks I’m a second lieutenant, which is really at the bottom of that totem pole.

  To hell with it. My gut feeling is to wear the jacket; go with that.

  —

  There were four of what Cronley thought of as “Tiny’s Troopers,” plus two of Gehlen’s men, just inside the foyer of the former chapel. They were seated around a card table playing poker. Packs of cigarettes and Hershey chocolate bars were used as chips.

  It was less innocent than it seemed. Cigarettes and Hershey bars were the currency of the land when dealing with the Germans, and could be used to purchase what little the Germans had to sell, including very often the sexual favors of the women.

  Everybody quickly rose to their feet when the senior non-com among them, a staff sergeant, barked, “Ten-hut!”

  The sergeant—who was uncommonly small for a trooper, not much over five-feet-two, the Army minimum height—casually held an M-3 .30 caliber carbine in his hand. The others were holding Thompson .45 caliber submachine guns.

  “At ease,” Cronley said. “I’m here to investigate rumors that gambling is taking place on the premises.”

  “Ah, Lieutenant, you know we wouldn’t do nothing like that,” the sergeant said.

  One of the troopers hissed, “That’s Captain, asshole!”

  “Excuse me, Captain,” the sergeant said. “Sorry, sir.”

  “You have an honest face, Sergeant. So I will believe you when you say you wouldn’t even think of gambling,” Cronley said. “And as far as that Captain business is concerned, I’ve only been a captain for a couple days. If you had called me Captain, I probably would have looked around to see who you were talking to.”

  The troopers smiled and chuckled.

  “I came to have a look at our guest,” Cronley said. “How is he?”

  “He’s all right. I’ve got another two guys down there who peek at him every five or ten minutes or so,” the sergeant said.

  And then he came to attention.

  “Permission to speak, sir?”

  Another Regular Army old soldier.

  Why am I not surprised? Tiny would be very careful who he put in charge.

  “Granted.”

  “Sir, my orders from First Sergeant Dunwiddie are to do what Konrad here says about keeping that guy in the hole.”

  He nodded toward one of the Germans, a pink-skinned man in his thirties.

  Cronley looked at Mannberg, who said, “Konrad Bischoff, Hauptmann Cronley, former major. Interrogation specialist.”

  Bischoff bobbed his head to Cronley.

  “And . . . ?” Cronley said to the sergeant.

  “And, Captain, ever since I put that guy in the hole, he’s been . . . doing his business . . . in a canvas bucket. It smells to high heaven in there. Konrad says, ‘That’s part of the process,’ and not to change it. I’m really starting to feel sorry for that Communist sonofabitch, sitting there in the dark and—”

  Cronley held up his hand to stop him.

  What do I do now?

  Say, “Fuck the Russian” or “Tough shit”?

  That’d be the same thing as admitting the Germans are running Kloster Grünau, running Operation Ost.

  They’re not. Or at least they’re not supposed to be running it.

  If I override the order, I’m not only going to confirm Mannberg’s opinion that I’m getting a little too big for my britches, challenging the superior knowledge and the decisions of his “interrogation specialist,” but piss him off. And if I piss him off, I piss off Gehlen.

  Bottom line, I’m supposed to be running Kloster Grünau.

  “Let’s go see what you’re talking about,” Cronley said. “You, me, Herr Mannberg, and Herr Bischoff. Tell me how that works, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir. What Konrad got us to do is rig up a floodlight—six jeep headlights mounted on a piece of plywood, hitched to a jeep battery. We turn the lights on, then open the door. The Russian, who’s been sitting there in the dark since his candle went out . . . you know about the candles, Captain? They last about two minutes—”

  “I know about them,” Cronley interrupted.

  “Yes, sir. Well, the Russian, who’s been there in the dark for an hour at least, is blinded when the lights shine in his eyes. We can see him, but he can’t—”

  “Okay, Sergeant,” Cronley interrupted again. “Let’s go.”

  —

  The sergeant led the way through the former chapel to a room behind what had been the altar, past crates of supplies where once, presumably, there had been pews full of hooded priests and monks.

  Two troopers, both armed with Thompsons, were in the room. They popped to attention.

  “What’s he doing?” the sergeant asked.

  “Ten minutes ago, he was sitting with his back against the wall,” one of them, a sergeant, replied.

  “Open the door,” the sergeant ordered.

  He took two flashlights from a shelf, handed one to Cronley, and waited until the door had been opened. Then he started down the stairway. Cronley followed.

  At the foot of the stairway, Cronley found himself in a small area, perhaps six feet by eight. To the left was a single heavy wooden door. It was closed with a piece of lumber jammed against it. Across from the door, the improvised floodlights rested against a brick wall.

  The sergeant pointed to one of the men who had followed them down the stairs, gesturing for him to take the floodlights, and then to another man, ordering him to be prepared to remove the timber that held the door shut.

  Then he stood by the door, unslung the carbine from his shoulder, and held it as if he expected to use it as a club if the prisoner tried to burst out of the room.

  “Now!” he ordered.

  The man with the floodlights moved to the door and turned them on. The man on the timber kicked it free and then jerked the door open.

  Cronley could now see the cell and the man in it.

  And he smelled the nauseating odor of human waste.

  The NKGB agent, who had been sitting on a mattress, shielded his eyes from the light as he rose, sliding his back against the wall.

  “Take your hand away from your face!” Cronley barked in German.

  The man obeyed but closed his eyes.

  That was involuntary, Cronley decided. That light really hurts his eyes. He’s not being defiant.

  He could now see the NKGB agent’s face.

  He was surprised at what he saw: a slight man, fair-skinned and blond, who appeared to be in his twenties.

  A nice-looking guy.

  What the hell did you expect? Somebody who looks like Joe Stalin? Or Lenin?

  The NKGB agent finally managed to get his eyes into a squint. His eyes were blue.

  “Get another waste bucket in
there,” Cronley ordered in English. “And get that one out of there. This room smells like a latrine!”

  The trooper who had kicked the timber out of the way said, “Sir, we were told—”

  “Don’t argue with me, Corporal!” Cronley snapped. “Get that bucket out of there, and do it now. We’re not savages!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s your name?” Cronley demanded, first in English, then in German.

  The NKGB officer didn’t reply.

  “We believe him to be Konstantin Orlovsky,” Mannberg said softly from behind Cronley.

  “Major Konstantin Orlovsky of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs at your service, sir,” the NKGB officer said in fluent English. “And you are?”

  That’s not English English, but it’s not American English, either.

  “My name is Cronley, Major. We’ll talk again.”

  He turned to the sergeant.

  “Major Orlovsky’s waste bucket will be replaced at regular intervals. The next time I come down here, I want to smell roses. Got it?”

  “Got it, sir.”

  “Thank you,” Orlovsky said.

  Cronley turned from the door and went quickly back up the stairs. Mannberg and Bischoff followed him.

  As soon as they reached the room behind the altar, Bischoff asked, “Am I to assume, Herr Hauptman, that you are taking over the interrogation?”

  You’re really pissed that the naïve young American countermanded your orders, aren’t you?

  And, Mannberg, to judge from the look on your face, you’re pissed that I countermanded the orders of your “interrogation specialist” and did so in front of the black American enlisted men.

  Too fucking bad!

  “The assumption you should be working under, Herr Bischoff, is that you are conducting the interrogation under my direction. So far as what happened down there just now, vis-à-vis Orlovsky’s waste bucket, what I had in mind was something Herr Mannberg told me, something to the effect that causing pain—and I think making Orlovsky sit in a blacked-out cell forced to smell his own waste caused him pain—is usually counterproductive.

  “And if memory serves, Herr Mannberg, you also said that’s even more true when the person being interrogated is a skilled agent. I think we agree that Orlovsky is a skilled agent. I think that before he sneaked in here, he knew Kloster Grünau was commanded by a very young American. With that in mind, I told him my name. What good would it do to pretend otherwise?”

  “Your points are well taken,” Mannberg said.

  He means that.

  But he is also surprised.

  “And now, you’ll have to excuse me, I have to get on the phone.”

  And I want to get away from you while I’m still ahead.

  In other words, before I say something else stupid.

  [ FOUR ]

  Kloster Grünau was connected to a secure radio network that had originally been established by the OSS during the war. It used equipment—primarily Collins Radio Corporation Model 7.2 transceivers coupled with SIGABA encryption devices—acquired from the Army Security Agency’s Secret Communications Center at Vint Hill Farms Station in Virginia.

  During the war, the network had provided secure communications between OSS headquarters in Washington and important OSS stations around the world. Deputy OSS Director Allen Dulles had had one when he had been stationed in Berne, Switzerland. David Bruce, who had run the OSS organization attached to Eisenhower’s Supreme Command in London, had had another. Lieutenant Colonel Cletus Frade, who commanded Team Turtle, the OSS operation covering the “Southern Cone”—Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay—had another. And there had been a very few other stations in the network.

  Despite the demise of the OSS, parts of the network remained “up.” Instant, secure communication between Germany and Vint Hill Farms was still possible, but since the OSS had been “disestablished” was never used.

  There were now two stations in Germany. One had been set up immediately after the war by Colonel Mattingly in what had been Admiral Canaris’s home in the Berlin suburb of Zehlendorf. Mattingly had moved the station he had had with OSS Forward to Kloster Grünau the day before the OSS had ceased to exist.

  Communications between Germany and Argentina, because of Operation Ost, were frequent.

  There were no secure communications links between Colonel Mattingly’s office in the I.G. Farben Building in Frankfurt, Major Harold Wallace’s office in the Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel in Munich, and Kloster Grünau. Or between any of them.

  One of the reasons was the “antenna farm” that the Collins transceiver needed. Since Mattingly did not want anyone to know the radio network even existed, he could not order that antennae be set up on the roofs of either the Farben Building or the Vier Jahreszeiten.

  And since the less known by anyone about Kloster Grünau the better, he could not go to the Signal Corps and tell them to install a secure—encrypted—telephone line there. They would want to know why one was needed. And even if he told them why he needed one and pledged—or threatened—them to silence, a platoon of Signal Corps telephone linemen installing the heavy lead-shielded cable necessary for encrypted secure lines would cause questions to be asked about what was going on at the supposedly deserted former monastery.

  These problems would go away when the South German Industrial Development Organization moved to Pullach. But for the time being, telephone calls had to be conducted in the presumption that someone was listening to what was being said.

  —

  “Mattingly.”

  “Cronley, sir.”

  “Thank you for returning my call so promptly, Captain. It can’t be more than two or three hours since I asked Dunwiddie to have you call me immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hope you had a pleasant joyride through the countryside?”

  “Colonel, I need to talk to you.”

  “Odd, when I called before, I needed to talk to you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Among other things, I was curious how your flying lesson went.”

  “I think it went well, sir.”

  “And then I can hope that sometime in the near future, we may look forward to having our own aerial taxi service?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can you give me an idea, just a ballpark estimate, of when that might be? In, say, two weeks?”

  “Sir, the planes are at the monastery.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sir, I have the planes here now.”

  “How did they get there?”

  “I flew one of them and Schröder flew the other.”

  “I don’t believe I know anyone by that name.”

  “He and three mechanics came with the planes, sir.”

  “Are you telling me you flew a German national to the monastery?”

  “I wanted to run him past the general, sir. The general vouched for him. They were in the war together.”

  “I’m tempted to say, ‘Well done,’ but I’m afraid of the other shoe that’s sure to drop.”

  “We have the planes, sir. No problem. Tiny is on his way to Sonthofen to pick up the mechanics and the spare parts.”

  “With great reluctance, I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt. My friend said it would probably take six or eight hours for him to properly instruct you. I’m finding it hard to understand how.”

  “What he did, Colonel, was take me up, and put it into a stall and took his hands off the stick. When I recovered from it, I guess I passed his test.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Captain Cronley. But if you have the airplanes . . .”

  “I have them, sir.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Our guest, sir.”

  “What guest i
s that?”

  “The one Sergeant Tedworth brought home.”

  “I told Sergeant Dunwiddie to deal with that. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about, sir.”

  There was a significant pause before Mattingly replied.

  “Yeah,” he said, finally and thoughtfully slow. “I think we should have—have to have—a little chat about that situation. And similar ones that will probably crop up in the future.”

  Mattingly paused again, then continued, now speaking more quickly, as if he had collected his thoughts.

  “What I’ll do, Cronley, is ask my friend if he can fly me into there for an hour or two. Him personally. We don’t want any of his pilots talking about monasteries, do we? Which means he’ll have to fit me into his schedule, which in turn means it’s likely going to be a day or two before we can have our chat.”

  “Or I could fly into Eschborn first thing in the morning,” Cronley said.

  “Eschborn?”

  “Isn’t that the name of that little strip near the Schlosshotel Kronberg?”

  —

  The Schlosshotel Kronberg in Taunus, twenty miles from Frankfurt, was now a country club and hotel for senior officers. It had been, before the demise of the OSS, home to Colonel Mattingly’s OSS Forward command.

  It was there that Second Lieutenant Cronley had been drafted into the OSS. At the time, he had been the newest, least qualified and thus least important agent in the XXIInd CIC Detachment in the university town of Marburg an der Lahn. His sole qualification for the CIC had been his fluent German. His sole qualification for the OSS, aside from his fluency in German, had been that it had come out that his father had served in World War I with OSS Director Major General William J. Donovan, who had told Mattingly he remembered Cronley to be a “nice, smart kid.”

  Mattingly had frankly told Cronley that his being taken into the OSS was less nepotism than a critical shortage of personnel. There were few officers left to scrape from the bottom of the barrel for OSS service—the war was over and the wartime officers had gone home—and an officer was needed for a unique position Mattingly had to fill that would require no qualifications beyond his second lieutenant’s gold bar, his Top Secret security clearance, and the color of his skin.