“I know who Cronley is, Bob. I promoted him to captain. And gave him the Distinguished Service Medal for what he did in Argentina with that half ton of uranium oxide some other Nazi bastard was about to sell to the goddamn Russians. And now you call him Super Spook? A twenty-two-year-old?”
“He’s that good, Harry. Young, yes, but remarkably good. You just said so yourself, in so many words.”
“Then why the hell isn’t he involved? Jesus H. Christ!”
“He’s in Argentina,” Souers put in.
Truman’s eyes went to Souers.
“Okay, and what the hell is he doing in Argentina? Actually, strike that. I don’t give a damn what he’s doing in Argentina. Get him back to Germany. As soon as possible. By that I mean yesterday.”
“Oh, shit,” Souers said. There was a tone of resignation when he said it.
“Oh, shit what, Sid?”
“Harry, the truth is, I didn’t tell you . . .”
“I advised Sid not to tell you,” Justice Jackson interjected.
“Tell me what, damn it?”
Souers pointed at the SIGABA message.
“It is alluded to in that,” he said. “Cronley’s op in Vienna that bagged Burgdorf and von Dietelburg. It didn’t go smoothly. One Austrian was killed and another wounded as they were arresting Burgdorf and von Dietelburg.”
“So what?” the President said, then asked, “Cronley shot them?”
“No,” Souers said, “the shooter was a lieutenant named Spurgeon. Of the Vienna CIC.” He sighed audibly. “Harry, can you hold your questions until I’m finished telling what went down?”
“Probably not, but let’s see.”
“Cronley was working pretty closely with the Austrians when he realized what they were up to, that when they captured von Dietelburg he would be an Austrian prisoner, not ours. They intended to put him on trial themselves. Cronley decided this was a bad idea.”
“Why?”
“There you go, Harry. Let me finish.”
“Make it quick.”
The sound of Justice Jackson chuckling came over the phone speaker.
Truman glared at the telephone.
“Okay,” Souers began, “I don’t know how much Cronley considered your belief that these people should be tried, and hanged, with as much publicity as possible as common criminals so that the Germans would not regard them as martyrs to Nazism, murdered by the vindictive victors. But every time I decide he’s too young and inexperienced to understand such and such, he’s proved me dead wrong.”
“Go on.”
“Anyway, he concluded that the solution to the problem was to keep the Austrians out of the actual arrest—”
“He decided this on his own?” the President interrupted, his tone again incredulous. “Without checking with his superiors?”
“And there you go again, Harry,” Justice Jackson said, followed by an audible grunt. “Let Sid finish.”
Truman impatiently gestured for Souers to go on.
Souers continued. “That’s why I wrote on the message that there was more. Including that Cronley’s relations with his immediate superior, Colonel Wallace, who sent that SIGABA message to me, are not cordial. Cronley also believes that if you think your superior is going to say no when you ask permission to do something and you know you’re right, don’t ask, just do it.”
“And beg forgiveness afterward,” the President added. “I’m familiar with it.”
“The justification that Cronley offered,” Souers went on, “for arresting Burgdorf and von Dietelburg on his own was that they wouldn’t live long in an Austrian prison—”
Justice Jackson interjected: “And he could then fly them directly to Nuremberg, on illegal airplanes, without the hassle of going through border control authorities.”
“Illegal airplanes?” Truman parroted.
“Two Fieseler Storches,” Jackson answered. “Sort of German Piper Cubs, but much better. Three-place, not just two-place. The Air Force ordered their destruction. Cronley appeared not to know about this order.”
Jackson laughed, then went on. “In his ‘innocence,’ he kept his two in a well-guarded hangar in Nuremberg. The aircraft were thus available to fly to the Compound in Munich, first with one of General Gehlen’s assets in Russia, one Rachel Bischoff—”
“Whom the Austrians wanted very much to interrogate,” Souers interjected.
“—and later Burgdorf and von Dietelburg to the same place,” Jackson finished.
“At this point, the Austrians went ballistic,” Souers said. “They issued arrest warrants. For murder, in the case of Lieutenant Spurgeon, and for various crimes and misdemeanors for Cronley, Winters, and everybody else concerned. OMGUS has issued a ‘detainer’ on everybody for illegally leaving and then entering Germany without passing through an entry point. And the Air Force is demanding that the Army bring charges: one, against Cronley for not destroying the Storches, and, two, against Cronley and Winter for flying them after the Air Force declared them unsafe. And also charges against Cronley for flying at all, because he is neither an Army aviator nor an AAF pilot.”
“Lawyer that I am,” Jackson said, “I’m finding it hard to understand the legal ramifications of a nonpilot illegally flying an ostensibly nonexistent airplane, but that’s where we are, Harry.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” the President said.
“Oscar Schultz,” Souers then said, “on learning what had happened, decided the solution to the problem was to get everybody the hell out of Dodge while he, quote, poured money on the Austrian volcano, unquote. So, everybody went to Argentina just about a month ago. Cletus Frade is hiding them in Mendoza, on one of his estancias.”
After a moment, President Truman, his tone unpleasant, said, “Is that all?”
“More or less,” Souers said. “For now.”
“I was annoyed with this situation when I first got wind of it today,” Truman went on, his voice rising. “Now that I’ve learned all this—and, more important, that both of you bastards kept it from me—I am what is known as royally pissed off.”
“Harry,” Jackson said, “both Sid and I felt that it would die down.”
“But it hasn’t, has it?” Truman snapped. “Even worse, Burgdorf and von Dietelburg, those despicable Nazi bastards, are now on the loose, goddamn it!”
“Harry, Bob and I decided that you had more important things on your plate—”
“Well, Sid,” Truman interrupted, “you were wrong. The most important thing on my plate at this time is getting those two SS sons of bitches back behind bars so we can try them and then hang them. If this Colonel Cohen thinks Captain Cronley can help him, you get Cronley out of goddamn Argentina and to goddamn Germany as soon as humanly possible. Got it?”
Admiral Souers said, “Yes, Mr. President.”
“And you, Bob, you start right now on getting OMGUS and the Air Force and anybody else off Cronley’s back—and Cronley’s people’s backs—and keep them off. They deserve medals and they damn sure shouldn’t have to be running from the law like John Dillinger’s gang of bank robbers. Got it?”
Justice Jackson said, “Yes, Mr. President.”
[TWO]
The Polo Field
Estancia Don Guillermo
Kilometer 40.4, Provincial Route 60
Mendoza Province, Argentina
1345 9 April 1946
Polo was the oldest equestrian sport in the world. It featured opposing four-man teams attempting to strike with long-handled mallets a ball between twelve and a half and fifteen inches in circumference into the other team’s goal.
The players on the Mendoza estancia’s polo field were expert horsemen mounted on superbly trained Arabian ponies. But they were not dressed in the usual manner—boots, white trousers, and colored cotton short-sleeved shirts—with seven of the eigh
t wearing the outfits of working gauchos, the Argentine version of American cowboys. It included a wide-brimmed black leather hat, a white shirt with billowing sleeves, tucked into equally billowing black trousers tucked into knee-length soft black leather boots. Around their waists, they wore wide leather belts decorated with silver studs, inserted into the back of which were silver-handled knives with blades at least twelve inches long.
The hatless eighth player wore a gray sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo of the Agriculture and Mechanical College of Texas—commonly called Texas A&M—blue jeans, and what were properly termed Western or cowboy boots.
He was a tall, muscular, blond twenty-two-year-old. On the list—classified Secret—of “Detached Officers” maintained in the Pentagon, he was listed as: Cronley, James D. Jr., Captain, Cavalry, AUS O-396754. Permanently detached to Directorate of Central Intelligence.
After wresting control of the ball from an opposing gaucho about to score a goal, Cronley then drove it at a full gallop toward the other end of the field. As he did, he saw a man waving a sheet of paper near the goal.
The man’s name was Maximillian Ostrowski. He had spent World War II as an intelligence officer with the Free Polish Army and was now a DCI special agent.
Cronley smacked the ball a final time, scoring.
But instead of returning to the field, he reined in the jet-black Arabian and dismounted.
“This just came,” Ostrowski said, handing him the sheet of paper.
Cronley’s eyes went to it:
TOP SECRET–LINDBERGH
URGENT
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
FROM: DIRECTOR SOUTHERN CONE
1945 GREENWICH 9 APR 1946
TO: ALTAR BOY MENDOZA
PASS TO GEN MARTIN
1—LODESTAR WILL PICK UP YOU, WINTERS, SPURGEON, PULASKI, AND OSTROWSKI ASAP TODAY. TRY TO STAY OUT OF SIGHT IN BUENOS AIRES.
2—I WILL SEND MY PRECISE ETA PISTARINI TOMORROW ASAP. HAVE EVERYBODY THERE.
TEX
END
TOP SECRET–LINDBERGH
“I wonder if we’re about to be let out of jail,” Cronley said.
“Either that or be flown in chains to Vienna to face the wrath of the Angry Austrians,” Ostrowski replied.
“Wallace would love that.”
“Yes, he would. What happens now?”
“We finish the last chucker, Max, and then it’s off to Uncle Willy’s guesthouse.”
Cronley nimbly mounted the Arabian and returned to the field.
[THREE]
Ministro Pistarini Airport
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1115 10 April 1946
The Lockheed Constellation came in low over the passenger terminal, and the hangars beside it, touching down smoothly on Pistarini’s north-south runway. When the Connie finished rolling to the end of the runway, it turned and started taxiing toward the terminal, where two other Constellations were parked on the tarmac.
The Model L-049, featuring a sleek fuselage and distinctive triple-tail vertical stabilizers, was the finest transport aircraft in the world. It was capable of flying forty passengers in its pressurized cabin higher (at an altitude of 35,000 feet) and faster (cruising at better than 300 knots) and for a longer distance (up to 4,300 miles) than any other transport aircraft in the world.
The Constellations at the terminal bore the insignia of South American Airways, Argentina’s national airline. The one that had just landed read HOWELL PETROLEUM INTERNATIONAL along its fuselage. On both sides of its nose, there was lettered DOROTEA.
That referred to Doña Dorotea Mallin de Frade, who was the granddaughter-in-law of Cletus Marcus Howell, president and chairman of the board of Howell Petroleum International and by far its largest stockholder.
Howell had ordered DOROTEA lettered on the aircraft the day after Doña Dorotea had given birth to Cletus Howell Frade Jr., his first great-grandson.
* * *
—
Doña Dorotea came out of the terminal as the aircraft approached and then stopped. She was a tall, long-legged, blond twenty-five-year-old, with blue eyes and a marvelous milky complexion. She was what came to mind when one heard the phrase “classic English beauty.”
She saw frenzied activity around a pair of half-ton trucks mounted with stairways. While the stairs would permit the Dorotea’s passengers to deplane, she saw, however, that no one seemed to have the keys to the vehicles.
Oh, bloody hell! she thought. Without keys, the stairs cannot be driven to the aircraft’s door.
Then, in Spanish, she exploded: “If you can’t find the goddamn keys, get the old goddamn stairs out of the goddamn hangar!”
Those who knew Doña Dorotea knew that she got her Buckingham Palace accent and profane vocabulary from her mother, an English aristocrat who had met and married an Italo-Argentine oligarch while both were studying at the London School of Economics. And Doña Dorotea had acquired her ferocious temper and profane Spanish vocabulary from her father. That vocabulary—in both tongues—had been augmented by her marriage to Cletus Frade, who not only cursed like the U.S. Marine that he was but could and often did curse fluently in the Spanish-based patois known as Texican.
The workers a minute or so later came out of one of the hangars pushing an old set of metal stairs. It was a fragile-looking contraption, one mounted on small wheels that rattled and squeaked with such volume that it appeared one or more would fall off at any moment. The stairs themselves were steep, quite narrow, and, instead of a substantial handrail, had a flimsy rope.
While this was happening, other members of the welcoming party came out of the terminal. The crowd, led by Jim Cronley, included those who had flown up from Mendoza, plus a very beautiful, stylishly dressed brunette with dark eyes in her twenties who, like Doña Dorotea, also had marvelously long legs. This was Alicia Carzino-Cormano de von Wachtstein.
She was followed out of the terminal by two nannies, one of whom held the hands of Alicia’s two children, and the other the hands of Doña Dorotea’s two children.
The passenger door of the Dorotea opened, and Cletus Frade started quickly down the dangerous-looking stairs.
Cronley looked over and saw the disappointment in Alicia’s eyes.
Sorry, Alicia. Hansel is shutting the airplane down. He’ll get off in a minute.
Cletus Frade embraced his wife, lifting her off the ground in the process, and then started to offer his hand to Cronley. He then changed his mind, wrapped his arms around him, and also lifted him off his feet.
“What the hell is going on, Clete?” Cronley asked, after breaking free of the embrace.
Frade simply pointed up to the aircraft’s door.
Jim Cronley’s mother, elegant and trim, had come out of the aircraft and was very carefully making her way down the steep, narrow stairway. Cronley’s throat tightened and his eyes watered. He could not immediately recall that last time he had seen his mother. He walked quickly over to meet her.
His mother finally made it to the foot of the stairs, then raised her eyes from the steps and saw him.
“Mein Liebchen, mein Liebchen!” she cried, and threw herself into his arms.
He picked her up and carried her to one side of the stairs.
Maybe thirty seconds later, he freed himself from her barrage of kisses.
He looked up the stairway, expecting to see his father. Instead, he found himself looking up the skirt of an adult female who was holding an infant while slowly descending the steps. He saw far enough up her skirt, before he averted his eyes, to note that she was wearing blue-lace panties.
Who the hell is that?
And why were you looking at some strange female’s crotch while hugging your mother?
His mother continued kissing and crying.
The next thing he was aware of was a han
d on his shoulder, then his father’s voice.
“How are you, son?”
Cronley freed himself enough from his mother’s embrace to get his arm around his father. The three of them hugged one another, Cronley hoping no one saw the tears running down his cheeks.
When he opened his eyes again, there was a familiar face looking at him curiously.
Jesus Christ. Unless I’m losing my mind, that’s Ginger!
That was her blue-lace crotch I was just looking at!
What the hell is she doing here?
With her months-old baby?
Dumb question. Babies are usually with their mothers, stupid!
“Hello, Jimmy,” Ginger said.
“Hey, Ginger.”
Cronley’s history with twenty-two-year-old Virginia Moriarty went back to their growing up together in the Texas Panhandle.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Cletus Frade announced as he held up a SIGABA printout, “but this is important. It came in when we were an hour out.”
“What?” Cronley said, stepping closer to him.
He took the sheet and read it.
Top Secret–Lindbergh? he thought. So Oscar Shultz forwarded Wallace’s message about Burgdorf and von Dietelburg escaping the Tribunal Prison, with Wallace saying Cohen blames Odessa. And that Wasserman says the Vienna police intel chief suspects DCI’s hand in his surveillance chief’s disappearance?
He looked at Frade. “Jesus H. Christ!”
“Yeah,” Frade said. “Initial reaction?”
“Wallace, especially with this ‘no action undertaken’ bullshit, is covering his ass again.”
“Okay, aside from that obvious part . . . ?”
“Well, for starters, the Tribunal Prison escape? With Cohen and the Twenty-sixth Infantry sitting on it? I would have said impossible.”
Frade nodded. “All right, give it some more thought on your way to the guesthouse. When you get there, get everybody lunch and start saying your good-byes.”
The Enemy of My Enemy Page 2
