Top Secret

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I’d be interested to hear, Colonel,” Greene said, “how you think the meeting went this afternoon?”

  “Paul,” Mrs. Greene said, “I didn’t get all gussied up to come out to listen to you talk shop.”

  Her husband ignored her. “Your thoughts, Colonel?”

  “General, in the Marine Corps, we have another odd custom. We ask questions like that of the junior officer present. That way, since they don’t know what their seniors are hoping to hear, they have to say what they actually think.”

  “We do the same thing, Colonel,” General Greene said, and his eyes went to Cronley. “Well, Captain, what impression did you take away from that long, long session this afternoon?”

  Thanks a lot, Clete!

  No matter what I say, it’s going to be wrong.

  What the hell! In the absence of all other options, tell the truth.

  “Sir, from the bottom of the totem pole, it looked to me like those people from the Pentagon are very unhappy that there’s going to be a new OSS. And/or that the Pentagon is not going to be running it.”

  Greene nodded and then made a Keep going gesture with his hand. Cronley saw that Mattingly was looking at him, obviously worried about what he was going to say next.

  “Sir, I had the feeling that they were really upset to hear that I have the monastery and will be in charge of Pullach.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mrs. Greene said. “What monastery? What’s Pullach?”

  “If the general answers those questions, Mrs. Greene, I’ll have to shoot both of you,” Frade said.

  Iron Lung McClung laughed loudly.

  “Jim!” his wife said warningly.

  “Grace,” General Greene offered, “Captain Cronley is going to run a little operation in Pullach, which is a little dorf near Munich.”

  These people tell their wives about what we’re doing?

  How much do they tell them?

  Probably everything.

  Rachel seems to know everything that’s going on.

  And Clete mockingly gave Boy Scout’s Honor that he had never told his wife anything.

  So much for the sacred Need to Know.

  “Why are the people from the Pentagon not pleased? Because he’s only a captain?” Mrs. Greene asked. “And if they’re not pleased, why is he going to be allowed to run it?”

  “The simple answer, Mrs. Greene,” Frade said, “is because Admiral Souers says he will. And quickly changing the subject, where is our leader tonight?”

  “Having dinner with Ike, Beetle, and Magruder,” Greene said.

  “And here’s our dinner,” McClung said as a line of waiters approached the table.

  Cronley felt Rachel’s bare foot on his ankle.

  “And this admiral,” Mrs. Greene relentlessly pursued. “He can just give orders to the Army like that? An admiral?”

  “Yes, ma’am, he can,” Frade said. Using his hands to demonstrate as he spoke, he went on, “This is the totem pole to which Captain Cronley referred, Mrs. Greene. We’re all on it. Cronley is at the bottom”—he pointed to the bottom of his figurative totem pole—“and Admiral Souers is here”—he pointed again—“at the tip-top. The rest of us are somewhere here in the middle.”

  “Perfect description,” General Greene said. His wife glared at both him and Frade.

  “I’ll tell you about it later, dear,” Greene said. “Now let’s have our dinner.”

  —

  “I think you’re right, Cronley,” Major Iron Lung McClung said several minutes later. “Magruder, Mullaney, Parsons, and Ashley—the Pentagon delegation—are all probably outraged that they won’t be taking over Pullach. But I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

  “Sir?”

  “Magruder’s not going to get anywhere at dinner tonight complaining to Ike or Beetle. Not with Souers there. And when Magruder and Mullaney get back to Washington, who can they complain to? Not Souers. And so far as Parsons and Ashley, when they’re at Pullach, the only one they can complain to about getting ordered around by you is Colonel Mattingly, and he’s not going to be sympathetic.”

  “My only problem with that,” Mattingly said, “is that being in charge may well go to Cronley’s head. I’m going to have to counsel him to make sure that doesn’t happen. He’s more than a little weak in that area. He tends to assume authority he doesn’t have and to act first and ask permission, or even counsel, later.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Frade said.

  “No, Colonel Frade, I am not kidding,” Mattingly said coldly. “He has a dangerous loose-cannon tendency.”

  “Jimmy,” Frade said, “don’t let your being given command of the monastery or Pullach go to your head. Or turn you into a loose cannon. Say, ‘Yes, sir.’”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Consider yourself so counseled,” Frade said, and then turned to look at Mattingly. “Jesus Christ, Mattingly!”

  Rachel’s bare foot, which had been caressing Cronley’s ankle, suddenly stopped moving as Mattingly stood.

  “I would remind you, Colonel Frade, that you are speaking to a superior officer,” Mattingly said furiously.

  “Senior, certainly,” Frade said. “Superior, I don’t think so.”

  “Ouch!” Iron Lung McClung said softly but audibly.

  “What the hell set this off?” General Greene asked.

  When there was no reply to what might have been a rhetorical question, Greene went on, “Junior officer first, Colonel Frade.”

  “I found Colonel Mattingly’s gratuitous insult of Cronley offensive, General,” Frade said.

  “Frankly, so did I. But it didn’t give you carte blanche to talk to Colonel Mattingly so disrespectfully.”

  “No, sir, it didn’t. I spoke in the heat of the moment and therefore offer my apology.”

  “Colonel Mattingly?” Greene asked.

  “Sir?”

  “I think you should accept Colonel Frade’s apology and then offer yours to Captain Cronley.”

  With a visible effort, Mattingly said, “Apology accepted.” After a pause, he went on: “Captain Cronley, it was not my intention to gratuitously insult you. If you drew that inference, I apologize.”

  Great.

  But the minute Clete leaves Germany, I’m really fucked.

  Rachel’s foot on his ankle began to move.

  General Greene looked at Cronley impatiently, and finally Cronley understood.

  He stood up, came to attention, and said, “Sir, no apology is necessary.”

  He sat down.

  “Sit down, please, Colonel Mattingly,” Greene said. “Whereupon, we will all promptly forget the last three minutes or however long that little theatrical lasted.”

  There were chuckles.

  “Can we get them to do it again?” Major McClung asked innocently. “Sort of a curtain call? I liked it.”

  “Jim, for God’s sake!” Mrs. McClung said.

  General Greene gave McClung a look that would have frozen Mount Vesuvius.

  McClung seemed unrepentant.

  Rachel’s foot found Jimmy’s ankle and instep again.

  —

  “Colonel Frade,” General Greene said as he cut into his Danish New York strip steak, “I’d like to ask you—you and Colonel Mattingly, but you first—what you consider the greatest threat to your operation between now and the time it comes under the new organization Admiral Souers mentioned.”

  Is he tactfully reminding Clete that Mattingly outranks him?

  What is that saying? “There are nice generals, and there are generals who are not nice, but there is no such thing as a stupid general.”

  Clete didn’t hesitate before replying.

  “So far as I’m concerned, and I’m not saying this to agree with Admiral Souers . . .”

&nbs
p; Clete picked up on that “who’s junior?” implication.

  He’s good at this.

  “. . . the greatest threat to our nameless operation is that our Soviet friends are going to expose it. I say expose it because we would be fools to think they don’t know about it. It is just a matter of time before they penetrate Kloster . . .” He paused, looking for the name by looking at Cronley.

  “Kloster Grünau,” Jimmy furnished.

  “. . . Kloster Grünau. And the Pullach installation, which, because it’s not only not on a Bavarian mountaintop but close to Munich, will be an even easier target for penetration. I’m frankly surprised there hasn’t been a penetration of the monastery already.”

  Cronley felt Mattingly’s eyes on him.

  What’s he want?

  Am I supposed to say, “Actually, now that you mention Russian penetration of my little monastery, I do have NKGB Major Konstantin Orlovsky locked up in a cell in what used to be the monastery chapel”?

  Or keep my mouth shut?

  “What about that, Captain Cronley?” Colonel Schumann asked. “Am I the only nefarious character you’ve caught trying to force his way into your monastery?”

  Christ, now what do I say?

  “Sir, you’re the only one I’ve had to discourage with a machine gun.”

  My God, where did that come from?

  General Greene laughed. Frade looked curious.

  “Colonel Frade,” Schumann said, “I wouldn’t worry about anybody penetrating Cronley’s monastery. I know from painful personal experience that Cronley’s got it guarded by some of the toughest, meanest-looking Negro soldiers I have ever seen—they’re all at least six feet tall, and weigh at least two hundred pounds—who are perfectly willing—willing, hell, anxious—to turn their machine guns on anyone trying to get in.”

  “Painful personal experience?” Frade replied. “I’d like to hear about that. And I guess I’ll see Cronley’s mean-looking troops when I go down there—”

  “Excuse me?” Mattingly interrupted. “Colonel, did I understand you to say you’re going to Kloster Grünau?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course you may. Sooner or later, the Soviets are going to penetrate the monastery and/or the Pullach camp, no matter how many two-hundred-pound six-foot-tall soldiers with machine guns Cronley has guarding it.”

  “Colonel, are you going to answer my question?” Mattingly demanded curtly.

  “That’s what I’m trying to do, Colonel,” Frade replied, and then went on: “If all they find is that we are employing a number of former German officers and non-coms to assist General Greene in his counterintelligence efforts, so what? Where we would be in trouble would be if they discovered—or actually tried to arrest under their Army of Occupation authority—former members of the SS whose names they know and whose arrests they have already requested. Or if they got their hands on any paperwork that could incriminate us.”

  He glanced at General Greene, and said: “Colonel Mattingly sent a great deal of the latter to me—Cronley carried it to Argentina—but I want to be absolutely sure he didn’t miss anything.”

  He looked back at Mattingly: “So, to answer your question, Colonel Mattingly, what I plan to do at the monastery is get with General Gehlen and come up with a list of the ex-SS and everyone else with a Nazi connection that we have to get out of the monastery and Pullach and to Argentina as soon as possible. In other words, a list of those people we really can’t afford to have the Soviets catch us with, prioritized on the basis of which of them, so to speak, are the most despicable bastards. They go first. Oberst Otto Niedermeyer and I have been thinking about this for some time—”

  “Who?” General Greene asked.

  “He was Gehlen’s Number Two—”

  “It’s my understanding that Colonel Mannberg is Gehlen’s Number Two,” Mattingly said.

  “Niedermeyer tells me he was,” Frade replied. “And he’s the officer Gehlen sent to Argentina”—Frade paused and chuckled—“doubly disguised as a Franciscan monk and then as a Hauptscharführer.”

  “I don’t understand,” General Greene said.

  “When they got to Argentina and took off their monk’s robes,” Frade explained, “they identified themselves as Obersturmbannführer Alois Strübel and his faithful Hauptscharführer—”

  “His faithful what?” Mrs. Greene asked.

  Frade looked first at General Greene and then at Mrs. Greene before replying, “Sergeant major, Mrs. Greene.”

  “Go on, please, Colonel,” General Greene said.

  “Brilliant detective work by myself quickly discovered that Hauptscharführer Otto Niedermeyer was actually Colonel Niedermeyer. Gehlen apparently decided a sergeant major could nose around easier than a colonel.”

  “So he lied to us,” Mattingly said.

  “And I was shocked as you are that anyone in our business could possibly practice deception,” Frade said. “But, as I was saying, Gehlen sent Niedermeyer to Argentina very early on in this process to make sure we were going to live up to our end of the bargain. He tells me he was Gehlen’s Number Two, and I believe him. And I’m also convinced Niedermeyer was not a Nazi—”

  “Why?” Mattingly interrupted.

  “Could you just take my word for that, Colonel, and let me finish?”

  “Go on,” Mattingly said.

  “So I believe the list of the Nazi and SS scum Niedermeyer gave me, again prioritized according to what kind of bastards they are, is the real thing. I’d be willing to go with it as-is. But as some—including Otto Niedermeyer—have pointed out, Gehlen can be very difficult, so I am going to politely ask him to go over Niedermeyer’s roster.”

  “I got the impression this afternoon,” Mattingly said, “that Admiral Souers wants to return to Washington as soon as possible.”

  “He does,” Frade said.

  “Then wouldn’t it make sense for you to give me this list of yours and have me deal with General Gehlen? There’s no reason for you to have to go all the way down there. It’s a four-, five-hour drive.”

  When Frade didn’t immediately reply, Mattingly went on: “And, really, the monastery and the people there are my responsibility, aren’t they?”

  Frade exhaled audibly.

  “Admiral Souers planned to get into all of this with you tomorrow, but it looks like I’m going to have to get into it now.”

  “Please do,” Mattingly said, rather unpleasantly.

  Frade felt everyone’s eyes around the table on him.

  “The reason I have to go to the monastery,” Frade began, “and to have a look at the Pullach installation is because Admiral Souers has ordered me to do so. And the reason he’s done that is because, for reasons of plausible deniability, he has transferred command of Operation Ost—just Ost, not the South German Industrial Development Organization—to the Special Projects Section of the Office of the Naval Attaché at the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires.”

  “To what, where?” Colonel Schumann asked.

  “When the OSS shut down, its assets—including me—in the Southern Cone of South America were absorbed by the Special Projects Section of the Office of the Naval Attaché at the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires. In other words, for the next sixty days, Operation Ost will be hidden there.

  “That will allow General Greene and you, Colonel Mattingly, if—I actually should say ‘when, inevitably’—the Soviets breach the security of the monastery or Pullach, to credibly deny you know anything about Operation Ost. All you’re doing there is running a counterintelligence operation in which some former German officers and non-coms are employed.”

  “That makes sense,” General Greene said thoughtfully. Then he chuckled. “Have a nice ride down the autobahn tomorrow, Colonel Frade. Maybe, now that you and Mattingly have kissed and m
ade up, he’ll loan you his Horch for the trip.”

  Frade smiled. “That would be very kind of him, but Cronley’s going to fly me in his Storch.”

  That Mattingly was not amused was evident in his voice: “And how does Captain Cronley fit into this credible-deniability scenario?”

  “In an operational sense, he will be the liaison between the monastery/Pullach, the Farben Building, and Buenos Aires.”

  “Who’ll operate the link to Vint Hill Farms?” Major McClung asked.

  “Cronley,” Frade said.

  Well, Cronley thought, that answers the question “Does McClung know about the Collins and the SIGABA?”

  Then, without thinking about what he was doing, Cronley leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his neck. When he saw that Frade, Mattingly, and Mrs. Greene were looking askance at him, he quickly lowered his arms, shifted in his chair, and moved it closer to the table. Rachel’s toes moved immediately to his crotch. After a moment, she withdrew, and then put her foot back on his instep.

  “And I’m sure you have considered the possibility,” Mattingly said sarcastically, “that when the Soviets inevitably breach the security of Kloster Grünau or Pullach, they might wish to ask Captain Cronley what he knows about Operation Ost.”

  “All Cronley has to do is say, ‘I’m the commanding officer of the guard company. Colonel Mattingly told me I don’t have the Need to Know what’s going on in the compound and am not to ask.’ And, as Mrs. Greene and others have pointed out, he’s only a captain. Captains are unimportant.”

  “And you think he could handle pressure like that?” Mattingly asked. His tone made it clear that he didn’t think so.

  “I do. But what matters is that Admiral Souers does.”

  “I’m really getting tired of all this shop talk,” Mrs. Greene announced. “I want to dance.”

  “Colonel Frade,” Colonel Schumann said, “do you think it would be useful if I took a look at your security arrangements for the Pullach operation? I know McClung is going down there in the near future, and I could go with him.”

  “I think that’s a great idea,” Frade said. “And—I don’t know how this fits into your schedule, Colonel Mattingly—but how about us all meeting in Munich after I deal with Gehlen?”