Death at Nuremberg

by W. E. B. Griffin

  “And you think that’s happened?” Cronley asked softly.

  “I think we’re further down that road than most people understand. That’s why what Jackson is doing is so important. Showing the German people what the extermination of inferior people was really like. Putting the movies of those stacks of dead bodies—only a little more than half of which were Jews—into evidence and showing that Göring and Kaltenbrunner, et al, were responsible.”

  “Do you think he’s going to be able to do that?” Ziegler asked.

  “The court is going to find them guilty, there’s little doubt about that. What I want to see is for the German people to see—to understand—that the swine hanging from the gallows were criminals, not disciples in a new religion that would have turned Germany into a Germanic Utopia had the evil Americans, French, English, and Russians not interfered.”

  “And how are you going to do that, Colonel?” Janice asked.

  She didn’t call him “Morty” or something else clever, Cronley thought. He’s gotten to her with this.

  Hell, he’s gotten to me with this.

  “I intend, Janice, to give you everything you need for your story. The more people who know about this, the better.”

  “Including a tour of this Nazi Vatican?”

  “Yes. As soon as that can be arranged.”

  “That’s all?” Cronley asked.

  “And, with your assistance, Captain Cronley—or my assistance to you—I intend to witness Odessa being not only brought down, but brought to floodlights before the German people.”

  Boy, is he serious about that!

  Cohen’s tone was changed when he went on.

  “Not only have I given everyone something to think about, I hope—the lecture is over for the time being—but my stomach tells me it’s time to eat.”

  He stood up as Ziegler distributed more beers.

  “I thought you wanted to see the SIGABA device,” Cronley said.

  “I guess that means my stomach will have to wait,” Cohen said. “Duty once again keeps me from what I’d rather do.”

  VI

  [ONE]

  The Press Club Restaurant

  Farber Palast

  Stein, near Nuremberg

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1825 21 February 1946

  It took two white-jacketed waiters about five minutes to locate two oblong—as opposed to round—tables and then move them to a suitable area, join them, and then lay a tablecloth and other accoutrements on it.

  Finally, everyone sat down. The waiters presented menus.

  A third and fourth waiter appeared, bearing towel-wrapped bottles in wine coolers and champagne flutes.

  “Wrong table,” Cronley said in German.

  “Courtesy of Colonel Serov, Mein Herr,” the waiter replied.

  “What?” Cronley asked. Then he saw two Soviet Army officers walking across the room toward them. They were in dress uniform, a light blue single-breasted tunic with shoulder boards showing their rank and branch of service. A gold cloth belt was around their waists, and both wore an impressive display of ornate medals.

  One of them, a pleasant-looking blond-haired man in his early thirties, was wearing the shoulder boards of an infantry colonel. The officer with him was wearing infantry major’s shoulder boards.

  Cronley knew the man wearing the polkovnik shoulder boards was neither a colonel nor in the infantry, which made it very likely the man with him was also neither a major nor in the infantry.

  “James, I heard you were here, and I was hoping to see you,” the man Cronley knew to be Major of State Security Ivan Serov, first deputy to Commissar of State Security Nikolayevich Merkulov, said, extending his hand and smiling warmly. His English was only slightly accented.

  “How goes it, Ivan?” Cronley replied, taking the hand. “Why don’t you and your friend pull up a chair?”

  “I would hate to intrude.”

  “Not at all, Colonel,” Cohen said. “Please join us. I was hoping to meet you.”

  And what’s that all about? “Hoping to meet you”?

  Serov made an impatient gesture to the major, who immediately set off to find chairs.

  When they were seated, Serov between Cohen, who was at the head of the table, and Cronley to his right, Serov said, “The wine is French, Veuve Clicquot, which is what James and I drank the last time we had dinner.”

  “Colonel Cohen,” Cronley said, “this is Senior Major of State Security Ivan Serov.”

  “Not any longer,” Serov said. “I have returned to my first love, the Queen of Battles, infantry.”

  You can tell by the look on the bastard’s face that he knows we know he’s lying, and doesn’t give a damn.

  “I’m very happy to meet you, Colonel,” Serov said. “We’re going to be coworkers.”

  “So I understand,” Cohen said.

  So you understand? What the hell does that mean?

  “Colonel, Major—forgive me, Colonel of Infantry—how do I say this?—Serov took care of Colonel Mattingly when he was—”

  “In the hands of Thuringian authorities for having over-imbibed,” Serov interrupted. “I wanted to thank you for coming up with that scenario, James. It solved many problems for me. Or perhaps I should be thanking Miss Johansen.”

  “You’re welcome, handsome,” Janice said.

  “You are a credit to the DCI, madam.”

  “I don’t work for the DCI, handsome.”

  “Of course you don’t. I can’t imagine why I thought that.”

  You sly sonofabitch!

  Actually, I think I’m thinking that with admiration.

  The major began to pour the Veuve Clicquot.

  “Gentlemen and lady, this is Major Sergei Alekseevich, my aide-de-camp,” Serov said.

  “Colonels in my army don’t get aides to pour champagne,” Cronley said.

  “Colonels in my army do when they are given great responsibility.”

  “Such as?”

  “Protecting the Soviet Union’s prosecutors, Iona Nikitchenko and Alexander Volchkov, from all harm. As you, James, I understand, are protecting Judge Biddle and Justice Jackson.”

  “You heard about that, huh?”

  “And I also heard what happened to your friend Lieutenant Moriarty. Please accept my condolences on your loss.”

  The only way he could know about Bonehead is from the mole, or moles, he has in the Compound. And he wants me to know he has moles.

  “Well, people should be very careful when cleaning their pistols.”

  “That’s not what I heard happened to the lieutenant.”

  “What did you hear?”

  Major Alekseevich finished pouring the champagne.

  Who is this guy?

  Really his aide, or someone the NKGB sent to watch him?

  The way Polkovnik Dragomirov was watching him the last time he bought me dinner in Vienna?

  And now that I think about it, Serov should have been in trouble when the Mattingly–Likharev prisoner swap didn’t work.

  And he didn’t manage to get Major of State Security Venedikt Ulyanov back from us before we found out he was former SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg.

  So what’s he doing here, rather than penance in Lubyanka? Or Siberia?

  Is he Commissar of State Security Nikolayevich Merkulov’s fair-haired boy? All is forgiven, my boy. Daddy Merkulov knows you gave it the old school try?

  Wild thought: Maybe Merkulov hasn’t given up on getting the Likharevs back, and sent him here for another try.

  Why here?

  Because Captain James D. Cronley Jr. is here?

  Is the sonofabitch here to kidnap me?

  Does he think I’m that important?

  I’ll be goddamned!


  Serov raised his flute.

  “Gentlemen and lady,” he said, “may I suggest we raise our glasses to international cooperation?”

  “Lovely thought, Colonel,” Cohen said.

  “I know these gentlemen from Berlin,” Serov said, tipping his flute toward Dunwiddie and Ostrowski, “but we’ve never been formally introduced. And I don’t have the pleasure of knowing this gentleman.” He tipped his glass toward Ziegler.

  “Mr. August Ziegler,” Cronley said.

  Serov offered his hand. Ziegler took it.

  “How do you do, Colonel?” he asked.

  Cronley pointed to Dunwiddie.

  “Captain Chauncey Dunwiddie, my deputy, who for reasons I can’t imagine, is often called ‘Tiny.’”

  “How do you do, Colonel?” Dunwiddie said, as they shook hands.

  “And Mr. Maksymilian Ostrowski,” Cronley said.

  Serov offered his hand. Ostrowski didn’t take it.

  Ostrowski asked in Russian, “How do you do, Colonel?”

  “You speak Russian?” Serov asked, speaking English.

  “I’m a Pole,” Ostrowski continued, this time in English. “A great many Poles speak Russian.”

  “You sound English . . . British.”

  “Probably because I spent five years in Great Britain as an officer in the Free Polish Army.”

  “Well, that explains, doesn’t it, why James recruited you for the DCI?”

  “I suppose it does. And I accepted as it would have been unwise for me to return to Poland now that you Russians have taken it over.”

  “I don’t suppose you would believe me if I said I understood.”

  “No, I don’t think I would.”

  “Before this gets out of hand, why don’t we order dinner?” Janice asked.

  “I would be honored to have you all as my guests,” Serov said.

  “What is it that they say? ‘Beware of Russians bearing gifts’?” Cronley said.

  “I rather like what they say about ‘Never turn down a free meal,’” Cohen said. “I know not what course others might take, Colonel, but as for me, I accept your kind offer.”

  What the hell is Cohen up to?

  “I go along with Morty,” Janice said. “Thank you, handsome.”

  “As for me,” Cronley said, “I’ll have a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks, water on the side, followed by a New York strip, pink in the middle, with a baked potato. Max, what about you?”

  “I’ll have the same. Except vodka, Russian if you have it, instead of whisky.”

  “And the same for me,” Serov said.

  “Why don’t we have the same all around?” Cohen asked. “That will produce our dinner quicker, and I will be saved from starvation.”

  —

  “So what brings you to Nuremberg, Miss Johansen?” Serov said, as they were having a post-dinner cognac. “If I may ask?”

  “You may ask, handsome. And since you’re buying, you can call me Janice.”

  “And I would be pleased if you were to call me Ivan.”

  Janice didn’t reply.

  After a moment, Serov asked, “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “You said I might ask what brings you to Nuremberg.”

  “I said you could ask, Ivan, but I didn’t say I would tell you.”

  “Janice wanted to visit Wewelsburg Castle,” Cohen said, “and came to see if I could arrange that for her.”

  Now what? Cronley thought.

  “The Cathedral of Saint Heinrich the Divine? That Castle Wewelsburg?”

  Cronley laughed.

  “Is that what the KGB calls it?”

  “That’s what I call it.”

  “That one,” Cohen said.

  “How many of those obscene rumors one hears about it are true?” Serov asked.

  “That would depend on what rumors you’ve heard,” Cohen said.

  “I’ve heard the one about it being the castle where Crown Prince Heinrich gathered his Knights of the SS around the Nazi Round Table. I found that one a bit hard to believe.”

  “That one’s true,” Cohen said. “There’s even a thirteen-place round table.”

  “And you’re going to write about this, Janice?”

  “If it’s true—if half of it is true—it’s one hell of a story, Ivan baby,” she replied.

  “And Colonel Cohen holds the keys to the castle?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “That, you will understand, raises my curiosity. Dare I ask why the CIC is guarding a ruined castle?”

  “Primarily to keep tourists from interfering with our search of the place.”

  “Looking for what?”

  “Two things in particular. One, to see what happened to the twelve thousand gold Totenkopfrings that Himmler ordered sent there . . .”

  “You just confirmed, thank you, another rumor I have heard,” Serov said.

  “. . . and to see if we can find out what was in the safe that Himmler built in the basement. When we got to the castle, it had been emptied under conditions that suggest it was emptied just before we got there.”

  “Fascinating. Emptied by Himmler?” Serov asked.

  “Not by him personally. And we just don’t know if the emptiers were acting on his orders, acting on their own, or even if they were SS. I presume, Ivan, you know what happened to Himmler after Hitler shot himself?”

  “I know the official version . . .” Serov began.

  “I don’t,” Cronley admitted.

  “. . . but I would love to hear yours, presuming, of course, that you would not be revealing any state secrets.”

  “So would I,” Janice said.

  “I thought I could relax after my previous lecture,” Cohen said. “But what the hell, Ivan, you’re picking up the bill.”

  Cohen’s being awfully obliging to Serov, and he obviously knows the sonofabitch is NKGB, so what the hell is he up to?

  “Before Hitler committed suicide, he named Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz as his successor—”

  “I wondered about that,” Cronley interrupted. “Why Doenitz and not Göring?”

  “Because Himmler told him Göring was trying to arrange an armistice with Eisenhower, which he was. There is an unconfirmed scenario that Hitler ordered Hermann arrested and shot.

  “Doenitz moved the German government to Plön, in Schleswig-Holstein. When Himmler, who was then Reichsführer-SS, C-in-C of the Reserve Army, Reichsminister of the Interior, and chief of police, showed up there on May 6, 1945, Doenitz, who had hated him for years, fired him from all of his posts.

  “Himmler probably was not happy getting canned, but since Doenitz had what was left of the Wehrmacht and the Navy behind him, there was nothing he could do about it.

  “On May tenth, he started for Bavaria . . .”

  “Was he headed for Wewelsburg?” Cronley asked.

  “We don’t know. Possibly. We do know that before he left, Himmler and the twelve people in his entourage disguised themselves and equipped themselves with phony ID documents. Himmler’s said he was Sergeant Heinrich Hitzinger of a special armored company, attached to the Sicherheitsdienst Field Police, who had been demobilized on May 3, 1945.

  “He put on civilian clothing, shaved off his mustache, took off his famous pince-nez eyeglasses, and put a pirate’s patch over his left eye.”

  “That I hadn’t heard,” Serov said. “Why didn’t he get papers saying he was a simple sergeant?”

  “Good question,” Cohen replied. “I just don’t know. Anyway, by October eighteenth, Himmler and entourage moved to Bremervörde, a small Dorf on the Oste River.

  “On May twenty-second, Himmler and two of his escorts, a Waffen-SS lieutenant colonel and a major, were picked up by an alert British infantry patrol suspicious of their ph
ony documents. They took them to a checkpoint run by British Field Security—the Brit version of the CIC—where they were arrested.

  “Did they know who they had?” Cronley asked, and then went on without waiting for a reply. “The reason I ask is that when I ran a CIC checkpoint . . . which seems like fifty years ago . . . we had a list from the OSS of people to look for. Himmler’s name, plus a long list of SS officers’ names, were on my list, but no enlisted men.”

  “Apparently, the suspicious identity documents were enough to get them arrested. They didn’t know who they had. The three of them were fed and put into a small building at the checkpoint. The next morning, they were sent by truck to the Civil Internment Camp at Barnstedt. On the way, they had to pass through another Field Security checkpoint.

  “The officer—a captain, I used to know his name—took a look at the phony credentials and ordered them sent to the Military Internment Camp at Zeven.

  “At 1900 that night, Himmler asked to see the camp commandant—Captain Thomas Selvester, who is my source for all this—and when Selvester saw him, fessed up. Selvester then called the G-2 at Headquarters of the British Second Army, who sent an intelligence officer to Zeven with a document bearing Himmler’s signature. Himmler signed a blank piece of paper, the signatures were compared, and they now knew who they had.

  “He was immediately—he and the other two—taken to 2nd Army Headquarters at Lüneburg, where the G-2, Colonel Michael Murphy—my source for what follows—took over. He immediately ordered a complete change of clothing and supervised two body searches. Murphy knew all about cyanide capsules and was taking no chances.

  “He next ordered up a doctor to perform a professional body search. A Royal Army doctor, a captain named Wells, showed up and at quarter after ten started his search. When he got to Himmler’s mouth, he saw a small blue object between the teeth and the skin.

  “He put his finger into Himmler’s mouth to get it out. Himmler bit the doctor’s finger, jerked his head away, and bit the cyanide capsule. Ten minutes later, he was dead.”