Victory and Honor hb-6

by W. E. B Griffin

  “You’re at attention, Colonel!” Mattingly said, coldly furious. “You say one more word without permission and I’ll send you back to General Halebury under arrest pending trial for insubordination!”

  Dooley stood to attention.

  After sixty seconds, which seemed much longer, Mattingly asked, “Is your temper and foul mouth under control, Colonel Dooley?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Stand at ease,” Mattingly said, then turned to von Wachtstein. “Was your question about the convertible serious, von Wachtstein, or more of this sophomoric bantering?”

  “It was serious, sir. I had a reason for asking.”

  “Answer von Wachtstein’s question, Colonel Dooley,” Mattingly said.

  Dooley shook his head, exhaled audibly, and with visible reluctance said, “When we were in Tunisia, we were flying interdiction missions—shoot anything that’s moving—and I shot up a Kraut staff car on the desert.”

  “And then had it painted on your nose?” Frade asked disgustedly. “Jesus Christ!”

  “That’s enough out of you, Clete,” Mattingly said.

  Dooley went on: “I didn’t have it painted on my plane until General Halebury made it mandatory. That was much later, after we came to Europe. He said painting swastikas on the noses inspired junior officers.”

  “And you didn’t?” Mattingly asked.

  “When General Mattingly issued the order, I had four kills. What they were was that powered glider, the ME-323—”

  “The Gigant,” von Wachtstein said and, when he saw Clete’s look, added, “We saw one just now. Very large aircraft, originally designed as a glider. Then they added four engines. It carries a great deal, very slowly.”

  Clete, remembering, nodded.

  “I got my four kills on one day,” Dooley said. “They were flying low across the Mediterranean at maybe one hundred twenty-five miles an hour. It wasn’t aerial combat; it was murder. So I never painted swastikas for them on my nose. And then we’re getting ready for the invasion, in England, and Halebury issues the order to paint kills on the nose. Still, I don’t. And he sees my plane and eats my ass out. So then I painted four swastikas and the staff car on my nose.”

  “I saw seven swastikas,” Clete said.

  “I got two Messerschmitt Bf-109s and a Focke-Wulf Fw-190 after the invasion.”

  “Do you remember where you strafed the staff car?” von Wachtstein asked softly. “And when?”

  Dooley looked at him curiously, but after a moment answered: “About half past three on the afternoon of April seventh, 1943. Right outside Sidi Mansour, Tunisia. I remember that because when I got back, my squadron CO and the exec didn’t—and I got the squadron and my railroad tracks. Why do you want to know? Is it important?”

  “You made just the one pass?” von Wachtstein asked. “You didn’t go back to make sure everybody was dead?”

  “There were just two people in the car,” Dooley replied. “Both in the front seat. I saw the car go off the road and turn over. There was no need to make a second pass. Why do you need the details?”

  “On the afternoon of seven April 1943, near Sidi Mansour, while riding in a staff car, a friend of mine serving in the Afrikakorps was attacked by an American P-51 Mustang. His car went off the road and overturned. Were you flying a P-51, Colonel?”

  Dooley nodded. “You knew this guy?” he asked.

  Von Wachtstein nodded. “Quite well. We were good friends. He told me what had happened to him. His name was Claus von Stauffenberg. Oberstleutnant Graf Claus von Stauffenberg—the officer who later saw it as his duty to try to kill Hitler.”

  “The guy with the bomb under the table that didn’t go off?” Dooley asked.

  “The bomb went off,” Mattingly said. “But the force was deflected from Hitler by the massive leg supporting the table. Hitler lived, and later that day the SS stood Colonel von Stauffenberg against a wall on Bendlerstrasse in Berlin and executed him with Schmeisser submachine-gun fire.”

  “I don’t know how to handle something like this,” Dooley said. “If I’m supposed to say I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Hell, I was sorry when I did it.”

  “Colonel, for what it’s worth,” von Wachtstein said, “I can assure you Claus would bear you no hard feelings. You were doing your duty, as he did his.”

  “The details match too closely for this to be a coincidence,” Mattingly said, as if to himself. “I would say it is what happened.”

  “Yeah,” Dooley said. “His version of what happened and mine match too closely.”

  “There is one detail von Wachtstein didn’t tell you, Colonel Dooley,” Mattingly said. “Some time later, Peter’s father was executed, in a very cruel manner, for his role in the bomb plot.”

  Mattingly poured a half-inch of scotch in his glass and tossed it down.

  “Well, I hope that everybody is now very sorry for all the cruel things you’ve been saying to one another, and that we can now play nice and maybe even get on with the business at hand.”

  The comment—and the tone of his voice—made everyone smile or chuckle.

  “Which is?” Frade asked.

  “First, I tell Colonel Dooley that everything he sees or hears from now on is top secret, and that if he ever—now or ever—breathes a word of it to anyone, he will be soundly spanked, or castrated with a chain saw, or both.”

  That earned him more smiles and chuckles.

  “And to answer Colonel Frade’s question about what happens now, what happens now is that we drive out into the countryside, to Kronberg im Taunus, where after we get something to eat I will tell you what happens now. You know Kronberg im Taunus, von Wachtstein?”

  “The Schlosshotel, Colonel?”

  Mattingly nodded.

  “It used to be a club for senior officers,” von Wachtstein said.

  “It has been requisitioned as the headquarters of the Forward Element of OSS SHAEF,” Mattingly said.

  “Is that what you guys are?” Dooley asked. “OSS? I knew it had to be something like that.”

  “Colonel, I told you before that patience is a virtue right up there with chastity. This time, write it down. Von Wachtstein, can you find the Schlosshotel?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then why don’t you lead the way in Dooley’s car? We will follow you in the Horch, presuming Frade can show me how to get it out of low gear.”

  “I know the Schlosshotel,” Enrico Rodríguez said. “And how to get there.”

  “And he also knows how to get a Horch out of low range,” Frade said. “I suggest you let him drive.”

  “Splendid idea,” Mattingly said. “That will permit you and me to ride in the backseat and acknowledge the roar of the party faithful.”

  Mattingly then mimed waving regally at an imaginary crowd.

  [FOUR]

  Frankfurt am Main, Germany 1815 19 May 1945

  “Not very pretty, is it, Clete?” Mattingly asked as Enrico drove them down what was a narrow alley through the rubble of what had been a suburban area of Frankfurt am Main.

  Only some walls of a few buildings were left standing. Here and there, gray-faced men and women searched the rubble for whatever they could salvage.

  “It’s unbelievable,” Frade said.

  “And you ain’t seen nuttin’ yet. Berlin is worse.”

  “You’ve been to Berlin?”

  “I flew over it in a puddle jumper,” Mattingly said, “as the Russians were taking it.”

  He saw the look on Frade’s face and went on: “In North Africa, before I was called to the priesthood of the OSS, I was a tank battalion commander in Combat Command A of Second Armored Division—”

  “I saw the armored division patch,” Clete said.

  “—Colonel I. D. White commanding,” Mattingly went on. “I was visiting him—by then he was a major general and commanding Hell on Wheels—when he had his bridges across the Elbe and was about to head for Berlin. Ike ordered him to hold in place. The general was slightly
miffed. He kicked the windows out on his command post—you know, an office on the back of a six-by-six truck.”

  “Really?”

  “Hell hath no fury that remotely compares to I. D. White in a rage,” Mattingly said. “But eventually he calmed down a little. Then he looked at me and said, ‘I’d really like to know what’s going on there, but as I am under a direct order that not one man of Hell on Wheels is to go there, I can’t send somebody to find out.

  “‘But it has just occurred to me, Colonel, that you are no longer under my command. If you asked to borrow one of my Piper Cubs, I would of course make one available to you. And I don’t have the authority to tell you where you can or cannot go, do I?’”

  “So I said, ‘Point taken, General. General, have you got a puddle jumper you could let me use?’ And I got in it and flew over Berlin.”

  “And?”

  “One of the first things I saw was Red Army troops—they use Asiatics as assault troops—neatly lined up to gang-rape women in the streets. They are not very nice people, Clete.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “When we flew over the Reichstag, there was a large gasoline fire merrily burning in the inner courtyard, outside the Hitler Bunker. I can’t be sure, of course, but I suspect I was watching the incineration of Der Führer and his bride. Or perhaps the Goebbels family, Mommy, Daddy and the six children to whom Mommy had just fed cyanide pills. Whoever it was, the sickly smell of burning flesh was without question.”

  “I’d heard of the burning bodies but not the gang-raping troopers,” Clete said, and once again said, “Jesus Christ!”

  “At that point three MiG-3 fighters appeared and suggested, by shooting tracers in front of us, that we were not welcome, and we took the hint and flew back across the Elbe.”

  “They tried to shoot you down?”

  “They made it clear they were capable of doing so if we didn’t go back where we belonged.”

  “They’re supposed to be our allies, for Christ’s sake.”

  “General Patton suggests that we’re going to have to fight them sooner or later, and I suspect he may be right.”

  “My God!”

  “Quickly changing the subject,” Mattingly said. “Where we’re going now is to the Schlosshotel Kronberg, which—along with this car—I have requisitioned for the OSS. One of my guys had been there before the war, and suggested that since we could use it, we add it to the Don’t Hit Under Any Circumstances target list for the Eighth Air Force.”

  “You had the authority to do that?”

  “Ike now likes the OSS. Particularly Allen Dulles, David Bruce, and their underlings, including this one. Yeah, I had the authority to do that. But that’s what they call a two-edged sword. If that weren’t true, I wouldn’t have been saddled with this ‘deal with the Russians’ business.”

  “I don’t understand,” Frade confessed.

  “Why don’t we wait until we’re all together? Let me finish about the Schlosshotel.”

  “Sure.”

  “It was built in the 1890s by the Dowager Empress Victoria of the German empire, and named Schloss Friedrichshof. Her husband, Frederick III, was the emperor. Damn the expense, in other words, nothing’s too good for Ol’ Freddy.

  “In 1901, the Empress’s youngest daughter, Princess Margaret of Prussia, inherited it from her mother. Margaret married Philip, Prince of Hesse, and the castle was part of her dowry.

  “And now, so to speak, I have—or the OSS has—inherited it from His Highness.”

  He looked at Frade.

  “Did I say something amusing?”

  “No. I was just thinking you sound like a history professor.”

  “As a matter of fact, I was a history professor. Sewanee. The University of the South. Actually, I was professor of history and romance languages.”

  “I’ll be damned. How did you wind up as a tank battalion commander?”

  “You ever hear that an officer should keep his indiscretions a hundred miles from the flagpole?”

  Frade nodded.

  “Same thing applies to a professor, particularly one at an institution operated by the Episcopal Church. I solved my problem once a month by driving into Memphis, where I became a second lieutenant in Tank Company A (Separate) of the Tennessee National Guard. Second lieutenants, as I’m sure you remember, are expected to drink and carouse with loose women.”

  “You were a weekend warrior?” Frade said, laughing.

  “Indeed I was. And when we were nationalized, Company A was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky. They broke it up, and I found myself assigned to the 325th Mechanized Infantry, Major I. D. White Commanding. When they assigned him to Second Armored, Hell on Wheels, White took me with him.

  “And then one day, in North Africa, Allen Dulles showed up at General White’s headquarters—White was then colonel commanding Combat Command A—and he asked me if I would be willing to accept an unspecified assignment involving great danger and parachuting behind enemy lines. I told him I would not. General White said, ‘Bob, I won’t order you to go, but I think you should.’

  “The next thing I knew I was in Scotland learning how to jump out of airplanes and sever the carotid artery with a dagger.”

  “Why did Dulles recruit you?”

  “I speak Russian, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and a little Hungarian. That had a good deal to do with it. I’ve got sort of a flair for languages.”

  “So do I.”

  “Dulles told me,” Mattingly said.

  “Did you parachute behind enemy lines?”

  “Twice into France and once into Italy.”

  “That’s what those stars on the jump wings mean?”

  “Uh-huh. And speaking of uniforms, when we get to the castle, we’re going to have to get you some uniforms. You can’t run around Berlin looking like a doorman. And we’ll have to get you some identification.”

  They were now out of Frankfurt, moving rapidly down a two-lane, tree-lined highway. The headlights picked out here and there where trees had been cut down to serve as barriers, and where wrecked American and German tanks and vehicles had been shoved off the road.

  [FIVE]

  Schlosshotel Kronberg Kronberg im Taunus, Hesse, Germany 1920 19 May 1945

  Following Dooley’s Mercedes, Enrico steered the Horch around a final corner and suddenly the hotel was visible. The massive structure looked like a castle. It was constructed of gray fieldstone and rose, in parts, five stories high. Lights blazed from just about every window. There was no sign of damage whatever.

  “Hermann the butler—I kept him on—tells me that when I ordered the lights turned on, it was the first time they’d been on since September 1939,” Mattingly said.

  Frade now saw something both unexpected and somehow out of place. An Army sergeant, a great bull of a black man with a Thompson submachine gun hanging from his shoulder, was marching a file of soldiers—all black, all armed with M-1 rifles—up to the entrance. After a moment, Clete realized that the sergeant was changing the sentries on guard.

  “Stop right in front, Enrico,” Mattingly ordered.

  When they got out of the car, the sergeant bellowed, “Ten-hut” and saluted crisply. Mattingly returned it as crisply. Clete, at the last second, kept under control his Pavlovian urge to salute.

  People in doormen’s uniforms should not salute.

  Everybody got out of the two cars and started up the stairs.

  As they reached the entrance, a huge door was pulled inward by a very elderly man who had trouble doing so.

  “Thank you,” Mattingly said in German, then added to Frade, “Faithful retainers. There’s about two dozen of them.”

  “They don’t want to leave?”

  “We feed them, generously, so there’s some they can take home. There’s not much food anywhere in Germany.”

  Mattingly led the party across an elegantly furnished foyer into a well-equipped bar.

  Someone in the bar called “Attention” and everyb
ody stood.

  “At ease,” Mattingly called.

  Clete guessed that there were thirty or more men. All but a few were in uniform, half of these adorned with the standard rank and branch insignia. The other half had blue triangles around the letters U.S. sewn to the uniform lapels and to the shoulders where unit insignia were normally shown. There were perhaps eight men in civilian clothing, some of it close to elegant, some of it looking like it had come from the Final Reduction racks at Goodwill.

  Mattingly led them through the bar to a smaller—but not small—room holding a large circular table and its own bar. There was an elderly man in a white jacket standing behind the bar.

  “Would you please ask the general to join us?” Mattingly courteously ordered the barman in German. “And then that will be all, thank you.”

  He signaled for everyone to take places around the table.

  “This room is secure,” Mattingly announced. “I have it regularly swept. The result of that is that you’ll have to pour your own drinks—Honor System. A quarter for whiskey, ten cents for beer. There is a jar on the bar.”

  He pointed and then went on: “The rule is that when any German enters the room, you stop your conversation in midsentence and don’t resume talking until the German has left. And I don’t mean that you can change the subject. I mean not a word. Clear?”

  He looked around at everybody to make sure he had made the point.

  The door opened. A slight, pale-faced man with sunken eyes, very thin hair, and wearing a baggy, nondescript suit came in.

  “What I said before does not apply to this gentleman,” Mattingly said to the table, then raised his voice and addressed the man entering the room: “Good evening, sir.”

  The man walked to where Frade was sitting with Mattingly and wordlessly offered his hand.

  “General Gehlen,” Mattingly said, “this is Colonel Frade.”

  Frade hurriedly got to his feet and put out his hand. He was surprised at Gehlen’s firm grip as he said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, General Gehlen.”

  “I understand, Colonel,” Gehlen replied, “that you have been taking very good care of my men.”