The Assassination Option

by W. E. B Griffin

  The next development came when the postmaster told her they could neither guarantee nor insure packages to Strasbourg as they seemed to disappear in the French postal system.

  Your mother then asked me if she “dared” to ask you to help. I told her you would be happy to do anything for her that was within your power.

  Now, between us, man-to-man.

  What this woman has asked for is cigarettes, coffee, chocolate, and canned ham. According to the Dallas Morning News, these things are the real currency in Germany these days, as they were after the First World War.

  There are four large packages of same en route to you.

  This woman also asked for dollars. I told your mother not to send money, as that would be illegal and certainly get you in trouble.

  If you can deliver the packages to this woman without getting yourself in trouble, please do so.

  Knowing these people as I do, however, I suspect that if this pull on the teat of your mother’s incredible kindness is successful, it will not be their last attempt to get as much as they can from her.

  Do whatever you think is necessary to keep them from starving, and let me know what that costs. But don’t let them make a fool of you, me, or — most important — your mother.

  As I wrote this, I realized that while I have always been proud of you, knowing that I could rely on your mature judgment to deal with this made me even more proud to be your father.

  Love,

  Dad

  Cronley was still reading the long letter when Ostrowski and the CIC agent came back with two heavy packages and announced there were two more. Dunwiddie waited until they had returned with these before reaching for the letter Cronley, finally finished reading it, was now holding thoughtfully.

  “It’s personal,” Cronley said. “From my father.”

  “Sorry,” Dunwiddie said.

  Cronley changed his mind. He handed Dunwiddie the letter, and then went to one of the boxes—all of which had white tape with “Evidence” printed on it stuck all over them—and, using a knife, opened it.

  He pulled out an enormous canned ham.

  “Anyone for a ham sandwich?” he asked.

  “Does that about conclude your business here?” Dunwiddie asked Special Agent Hammersmith.

  “Sir, could I get a receipt?” Hammersmith asked.

  “Hessinger, type up a receipt for the special agent,” Dunwiddie ordered. “Get his name. ‘I acknowledge receipt from Special Agent . . .’”

  “Hammersmith,” Hammersmith furnished.

  “‘. . . of one official letter, one personal letter, and four cartons, contents unknown.’ For Captain Cronley’s signature.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Captain Cronley?” Hammersmith asked.

  Dunwiddie did not respond to the question, instead saying, “Special Agent Hessinger can arrange rooms for the night for you, if you’d like, in the Vier Jahreszeiten hotel in Munich.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Hammersmith said, adding, “Captain, can I ask what’s going on around here?”

  “No, you can’t,” Dunwiddie said simply.

  Hessinger came back into the sitting room with the announcement that the two CIC agents had gone.

  “Jim, you knew those guys when you first came to Germany, right?” El Jefe asked.

  Cronley nodded.

  “In Marburg,” he said. “And the first thing they’re going to do when they get back there is tell Major Connell—”

  “Who is he?” El Jefe asked.

  “The Twenty-second’s executive officer. But he really runs the outfit. ‘Major, you’re not going to believe this, but that wet-behind-the-ears second lieutenant you put on the road block? He’s now a captain, and . . .’”

  “That can’t be helped,” Dunwiddie said. “You are now a captain. And if this Major Connell is curious enough to ask Mattingly, Mattingly will either tell him how you got promoted or that it’s none of his business.”

  “Or tell him,” Hessinger said, “just between them, that for reasons he doesn’t understand, Jim was transferred to the DCI. Where . . . witness the black market goodies . . . he has already shown he’s absolutely way over his head and a petty crook to boot.”

  “You don’t like Colonel Mattingly much, do you, Freddy?” El Jefe asked.

  “He is a man of low principle,” Hessinger announced righteously.

  Cronley laughed.

  “Don’t laugh,” Hessinger said. “He’s determined to get you out of chief, DCI-Europe, and himself in. You noticed he sent copies of that letter to the admiral and Ashton? Showing what a really nice guy he is and what an incompetent dummkopf black marketeer you are.”

  “Where is Ashton, by the way?” Cronley asked.

  “He asked for a car to take him into the PX in Munich,” Hessinger began.

  “Christ, Freddy, we could have sent somebody shopping for him,” Cronley said. “I don’t want him breaking his other leg staggering around the PX on crutches.”

  “I offered that,” Hessinger said. “He refused. But don’t worry.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because he really went to the orthopedic ward of the 98th General Hospital in Schwabing. I told Sergeant Miller—”

  “Who?”

  “Taddeus Miller. Staff sergeant. One of my guys,” Dunwiddie furnished.

  “. . . to (a) not let him out of his sight, and (b) to call me and let me know where he really was.”

  “You didn’t think he was going to the PX?”

  “He was lying when he told me that. I could see that.”

  “You could see that he was lying?”

  “I could see that he was lying. I always know.”

  “You always know?”

  “Just about all the time, I know. You and General Gehlen are the only ones I can’t always tell.”

  “Thank you very much,” Cronley said.

  “I have to know why you think so,” El Jefe said.

  “You don’t want to know. He knows,” Hessinger said. “It’s not a criticism, it’s a statement of fact.”

  Which means he didn’t suspect a thing about Rachel until I fessed up.

  Which makes me wonder how low I’ve fallen in his estimation?

  Or Tiny’s?

  How far is all the way down?

  “Quickly changing the subject,” Dunwiddie said. “What are you going to do with your black market goodies, Captain, sir?”

  “I’m tempted to burn them, give them to the Red Cross . . .”

  “But you can’t, right, because of your mother?” Hessinger asked. “Your parents?”

  Cronley gave him an icy look, but didn’t immediately reply. Finally he said, “I don’t have the time to just run off to Strasbourg to play the Good Samaritan, do I?”

  “You might. You never know.”

  “Freddy, you are aware that we’re waiting to hear from Seven-K?” Cronley asked.

  “Of course I am. What I am suggesting is that I don’t think she’s going to say ‘Meet me at the Café Weitz tomorrow at noon.’ There will probably be four or five days between her message and the meeting. Perhaps there will be time then. Or perhaps our trip to Vienna can be tied in with your trip to Strasbourg.”

  “Got it all figured out, have you, Freddy?” El Jefe said.

  “Not all figured out. I learned about Jim’s family just now, when you did. But by the time we hear from Rahil, I will probably have a workable plan.”

  “The thing I like about him is his immodesty,” El Jefe said.

  “When one is a genius, one finds it hard to be modest,” Hessinger said solemnly.

  “Jesus Christ, Freddy!” Cronley said, laughing.

  “My own modesty compels me to admit that I didn’t make that up,” Hessinger said. “Fr
ank Lloyd Wright, the architect, said it to a Chicago Tribune reporter.”

  [TWO]

  Quarters of the U.S. Military Government Liaison Officer

  The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound

  Pullach, Bavaria

  The American Zone of Occupied Germany

  1625 8 January 1946

  When the door closed on Lieutenant Colonel George H. Parsons and Major Warren W. Ashley, Cronley looked around the table at General Gehlen, Mannberg, El Jefe, Hessinger, and Tiny and said, “Why does it worry me that they were so charming?”

  Gehlen chuckled.

  “I would say that it has something to do with a ‘well done’ message General Magruder sent Colonel Parsons,” Hessinger said. “For the time being it is in their interest to be charming.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dunwiddie asked.

  “What ‘well done’ message?” Cronley asked.

  “The Pentagon sent a request for an update on Russian troop strength, especially tanks, in Silesia. You knew that, right?”

  “And the general got it for us. Them.”

  “The general already had that intelligence on his Order of Battle. So the Pentagon asked for it one day, and the next day it was in Washington. Then General Magruder sent Colonel Parsons a ‘well done’ message. I am suggesting that if being charming to us produces ‘well done’ messages from General Magruder, Colonel Parsons is happy to polish our brass balls.”

  “I don’t think you have that metaphor down perfectly, Freddy,” Tiny said, chuckling, “but I take your point.”

  “How do you know Magruder sent the ‘well done’ message?” Cronley asked.

  It took Hessinger a moment to frame his reply.

  “I thought it would be in our interest to know what General Magruder and Colonel Parsons were saying to each other,” he said finally. “So I established a sort of sub-rosa arrangement with Technical Sergeant Colbert of the ASA.”

  “This I have to hear,” El Jefe said. “A sub-rosa arrangement to do what?”

  “Give us copies of every message back and forth.”

  “In exchange for what?” El Jefe asked.

  “You told me, when I told you we didn’t have enough people to do what we’re supposed to do, you said that I should keep my eyes open for people we could use, that you—we—now had the authority to recruit people from wherever for the DCI.”

  “So?”

  “Sergeant Colbert has ambitions to be a professional intelligence officer. She thinks the next step for her would be to get out of the ASA and join the DCI.”

  “And you told him you could arrange that?” Cronley asked. “And then, ‘she’? ‘Her’?”

  Hessinger nodded.

  “I told her—her name is Claudette Colbert, like the movie actress—”

  “Like the movie actress? Fascinating!” Cronley said. “Is there another one? Sergeant Betty Grable, maybe?”

  “—that I would bring the subject up with you at the first opportunity. And I suggested to her that you would be favorably impressed if she could continue to get us all messages between the Pentagon and Colonel Parsons without getting caught.”

  “Jesus!” Cronley exclaimed. “Freddy, I’m sure that you considered that if we had this movie star sergeant transferred to us, she would no longer be in a position to read Parsons’s messages.”

  “I did. She tells me that it will not pose a problem.”

  “Did Claudette Colbert tell you why not?” El Jefe asked.

  “As a gentleman, I did not press her for details,” Hessinger said. “But I suspect it has something to do with her blond hair, blue eyes, and magnificent bosoms. Women so endowed generally get whatever they want from men.”

  “Is that so?”

  “That is so. When Claudette looked at me with those blue eyes and asked me for help in getting into the DCI, I was tempted for a moment to shoot you and offer her the chief, DCI-Europe, job.”

  “Thinking with your dick again, were you?” Cronley asked.

  “That was a joke,” Hessinger said. “I don’t do that. We all have seen what damage thinking with your dick can do.”

  As Cronley thought, That was a shot at me for fucking Rachel Schumann, he simultaneously felt anger sweep through him, and sensed Tiny’s and General Gehlen’s eyes on him.

  I can’t just take that. Friends or not, I’m still his commanding officer.

  So what do I do?

  Stand him at attention and demand an apology?

  Royally eat his ass out?

  His mouth went on automatic and he heard himself say,

  “The damage that thinking with one’s male appendage can cause is usually proportional to the size of the organ, wouldn’t you agree, Professor Hessinger? In other words, it is three times more of a problem for me than it is for you?”

  Dunwiddie chuckled nervously.

  El Jefe smiled and shook his head.

  Cronley realized that he was now standing up, legs spread, with his hands on his hips, glaring down at Hessinger, who was still in his chair.

  “Okay, Sergeant Hessinger,” Cronley snapped. “The amusing repartee is over. Let’s hear exactly what I’ve done to so piss you off that you felt justified in going off half-cocked to enlist the services of a large-breasted ASA female non-com in a smart-ass scheme that could have caused—may still cause—enormous trouble for us without one goddamn word to me or Captain Dunwiddie?”

  Hessinger got to his feet.

  “I asked you a question, Sergeant!”

  Hessinger’s eyes showed he was frightened, even terrified.

  “I was out of line, Captain. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry’s not good enough, fish!”

  Where the hell did that come from? “Fish”?

  College Station.

  The last time I stood with my hands on my hips screaming at a terrified kid, a fish, scaring the shit out of him, I was an eighteen-year-old corporal in the Corps . . .

  He saw the kid, the fish, standing at rigid attention, staring straight ahead, as he was abusing him, reciting, “Sir, not being informed to the highest degree of accuracy, I hesitate to articulate for fear that I may deviate from the true course of rectitude. In short, sir, I am a very dumb fish, and do not know, sir.”

  I didn’t like abusing a helpless guy then, and I don’t like doing it here.

  “Sit down, Freddy,” Cronley said, putting his hand on Hessinger’s shoulder. “Just kidding.”

  Hessinger sat—collapsed—back into his chair.

  “But you will admit, I hope, that going off that way to corrupt the blue-eyed nicely teated blond without telling either Tiny or me was pretty stupid.”

  “Yes, sir. I can see that now.”

  “So what were you pissed off about?”

  Hessinger met his eyes for a moment, then averted them, then met them again.

  “You really want me to tell you?”

  “Yeah, Freddy, I really do.”

  And I really do. I didn’t say that to Freddy to make nice.

  “My skills are underutilized around here,” Hessinger said.

  “Freddy,” Tiny said, “this place would collapse without you. And we all know it.”

  “You mean, I am very good at such things as making hotel reservations, getting vehicles and other things from supply depots, et cetera?”

  “And getting us paid,” Tiny said. “Don’t forget that.”

  “Those are the things a company clerk does. So what you’re saying is that I am a very good company clerk and supply sergeant.”

  “Actually, Freddy, I think of you as our adjutant, our administrative officer.”

  “Sergeants—and that’s what I am, a pay grade E-4 sergeant—can’t be adjutants or administrative officers.”

  “
You’re also a special agent of the CIC,” Cronley argued.

  “Nobody here is a bona fide CIC agent,” Hessinger said. “You just kept the badges so you can get away with doing things you shouldn’t be doing.”

  Jesus, he’s pissed off because I promoted Tedworth to first sergeant!

  Or, that’s part of it.

  “Sergeant Hessinger,” Cronley said, “at your earliest convenience, cut a promotion order promoting you to master sergeant.”

  “You can’t do that,” Hessinger said.

  “Why not? You told me I had the authority to promote Sergeant Tedworth.”

  “Sergeant Tedworth was a technical sergeant, pay grade E-6. You had the authority to promote him one grade, to first sergeant pay grade E-7. You can’t skip grades when you promote people. People can be promoted not more than one pay grade at a time, and not more often than once a month.”

  “Okay. Problem solved,” Tiny said. “Cut an order today, promoting you to staff sergeant. Then, a month from today, cut another one making you a technical sergeant. And a month after that . . . getting the picture?”

  “That would work. Thank you.”

  “Happy now, Freddy?” Cronley asked.

  “That I will get my overdue promotions, yes, but that does not deal with the basic problem of my being underutilized in the past, and will continue to be underutilized in the DCI.”

  “And how, Staff Sergeant Hessinger,” Cronley asked, “would you suggest I deal with that?”

  “If you would transfer Sergeant Miller to me—right now I am borrowing him from First Sergeant Tedworth—that would free me to spend more time doing more important things than making hotel reservations and stocking the bar here.”

  “Presumably, Captain Dunwiddie, you are aware that Sergeant Hessinger has been borrowing Sergeant Miller from Sergeant Tedworth?” Cronley asked.

  Dunwiddie nodded.

  “It’s okay with Tedworth. He said we’ve been overworking Freddy. Miller’s a good man.”

  “That raises the question in my mind whether Sergeant Miller is anxious to solve our personnel problem, or whether Abraham Lincoln Tedworth pointed his finger at him and said, ‘Get your ass over to Hessinger’s office and do what you’re told.’”