The Assassination Option

by W. E. B Griffin

“He came to me asking if I could use him,” Hessinger said.

  “I would like to hear that he’s a volunteer from his lips,” Cronley said. “And now that I think about it, I would like to hear from Claudette Colbert’s ruby-red lips that she, too, is really a volunteer. But Sergeant Miller first. Where is he, Freddy?”

  “Outside, in the ambulance.”

  “Outside, in the ambulance”? What the hell is that all about?

  “Go get him.”

  When the door had closed on Hessinger, Dunwiddie said, “Don’t let this go to your head, Captain, sir, but I thought you handled that pretty well.”

  “Me, too,” El Jefe said.

  The door opened and one of Gehlen’s men, a tall, gaunt blond man whose name Cronley couldn’t recall but he remembered had been a major, came in.

  He marched up to Mannberg, came to attention, clicked his heels, and handed him a sheet of paper. Mannberg read it, handed it to General Gehlen, and then ordered, “There will probably be a reply. Wait outside.”

  The former major bobbed his head, clicked his heels again, turned on his heels, and marched out of the room.

  “We have heard from Seven-K,” Gehlen said. “Quote, ‘Herr Weitz expects his friend to pay him not later than the fourteenth.’ End quote.”

  “Today’s the eighth,” Cronley said. “That gives us six days to get to Vienna.”

  “Vienna’s not the other side of the world,” Dunwiddie said. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  The door opened again.

  Hessinger and Staff Sergeant Miller came in.

  Miller was as coal black as Tiny Dunwiddie, but where Dunwiddie was massive, Miller was thin, almost gaunt. He towered over Hessinger.

  Christ, Tiny’s six-four and this guy is six, seven inches taller than that. He has to be close to seven feet tall.

  Sergeant Miller marched up to Cronley, came to attention, and crisply saluted.

  “Sir, Staff Sergeant Miller, Taddeus L., reporting to the captain as ordered, sir!”

  Cronley returned the salute.

  “At ease, Sergeant,” Cronley ordered.

  “Captain Cronley,” Gehlen said. “Excuse me?”

  “Sir?”

  “Before we get into this, I think we should reply to Seven-K.”

  “Sure.”

  “And what should I say?”

  “Say ‘Ludwig always pays his debts on time,’” Hessinger said.

  Gehlen looked at him in mingled disbelief and annoyance.

  “Freddy,” Cronley said, annoyance—even anger—in his tone, “shut up. No one asked you.”

  “I know. That’s what I meant before when I said I was underutilized around here.”

  “Let’s hear what he has to say,” El Jefe said. “Starting with who’s Ludwig?”

  “Colonel Mannberg’s Christian name is Ludwig. We can safely presume they know that. So they will not be surprised when he, and not the general, shows up at the Café Weitz.”

  “What makes you think I will not be going to the Café Weitz?” Gehlen asked.

  He tried, but failed, to keep an icy tone out of his voice.

  “I would be very surprised, General,” Hessinger replied, “if Captain Cronley would expose you to that risk. I am extremely reluctant to expose Colonel Mannberg to that risk, but I can see no alternative.”

  “You are ‘extremely reluctant,’ are you, Freddy?” Cronley asked sarcastically. “You’ve given our little problem a great deal of thought, I gather? And come up with the solutions?”

  “Our problems, plural. Yes, I have.”

  “‘Problems, plural’?” Cronley parroted. “And the others are?”

  “The other is you dealing with your family in Strasbourg.”

  “That’s a personal problem that I will deal with myself, thank you just the same,” Cronley said.

  “No. The chief, DCI-Europe, doesn’t have personal problems.”

  “What are you suggesting, Freddy?”

  “That it is entirely possible that when you knock on your cousin Luther’s door, bearing the black market Hershey bars and canned ham, he will smile gratefully at you and ask you in. Maybe he will even embrace you and kiss your cheek. And the next we will hear of you is when the new Rachel sends us a message saying we can have you back just as soon as we send Colonel Likharev into the Russian Zone of Berlin. Or maybe Vienna.”

  “My God!” Gehlen breathed. “That possibility never entered my mind.”

  After a very long moment, Cronley said, “Sergeant Miller, you never should have heard any of this.”

  “Mr. Hessinger has made me aware of the situation, sir.”

  “Okay. I’m not surprised. But I have to ask this. Are you a volunteer? Or did Tedworth, or for that matter Captain Dunwiddie, volunteer your services for you?”

  “Sir, I went to Mr. Hessinger and told him I thought I could be more useful working for him, for DCI, than I could as just one more sergeant of the guard.”

  “Okay. With the caveat that I think you may—hell, certainly will—come to regret doing that, you’re in.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Okay, Freddy,” Cronley ordered. “Let’s hear your solutions to our problems, plural.”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now.”

  “Taddeus, please get my briefcase from the ambulance,” Hessinger said. “And while you’re doing that, I will get started by talking about the death and resurrection of the 711th MKRC.”

  “Why don’t you get started talking about something important?” Cronley challenged.

  “A unit called the 711th Quartermaster Mess Kit Repair Company is a sophomoric joke . . .”

  “So you have been saying,” Cronley said.

  “Shut up, Jim,” El Jefe said. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

  Cronley recognized the tone of command in Schultz’s voice and shut up.

  “. . . but within Captain Cronley’s original idea, which was to provide a cover for our vehicles, there is a good deal that can be saved.

  “For example,” Hessinger began his lecture, “while there is obviously no such organization as a Quartermaster Mess Kit Repair Company, I don’t think anyone would smile at, or question, a Quartermaster Mobile Kitchen Renovation Company.

  “What does the 711th QM Mobile Kitchen Renovation Company do? It renovates the mobile kitchens of the European Command, each company-sized unit of which has a mobile kitchen. That means that no one would question our vehicles—our former ambulances—being anywhere in Occupied Germany or Liberated Austria where there might be an Army mobile kitchen in need of renovation.

  “. . . Personnel assigned to the 711th might be authorized a three-day pass from their labors, so that they might visit such cultural centers as Strasbourg . . .”

  What later became known as “Hessinger’s First Lecture” lasted an hour and fifteen minutes, and covered every detail of both problems facing the DCI. It recommended the reassignment of more of Tiny’s Troopers to DCI duties, and replacing them with Ostrowski’s Poles. And the designation of Kloster Grünau as home station for the 711th, with signs announcing that status being placed on the fence surrounding the monastery.

  But finally it was over.

  “All of this needs polishing,” Hessinger concluded.

  “Everything always needs polishing, as we say in the Navy,” El Jefe said.

  “We had a similar saying, oddly enough, in the Wehrmacht,” General Gehlen said.

  “So what do you want me to do now?” Hessinger asked.

  “Get me an ambulance driver, and a road map to Strasbourg,” Cronley said. “I want to go there either tomorrow or the day after and get that out of the way before I go to Vienna.”

  “I will drive, and I don’t need a road map,” Hessinger replied.

>   “You’re going with me to Strasbourg?”

  “Me and four of Tiny’s Troopers. Them in an ambulance, you and me—Second Lieutenant Cronley and Sergeant Hessinger of the 711th Quartermaster Mobile Kitchen Renovation Company—in the Ford with the three hundred–odd miles on the odometer.”

  “Do I have any say in this?”

  “I wouldn’t think so, Second Lieutenant Cronley,” El Jefe said. “It looks to me that Professor Hessinger has things well in hand.”

  “There is one little problem we haven’t discussed,” Cronley said.

  “Which is?”

  “How do we get Mannberg, Ostrowski, and that fifty thousand dollars to Vienna?”

  “Yeah,” Hessinger said thoughtfully.

  “I’d like to send them on the Blue Danube, but we can’t get them on the Blue Danube because they’re not American.”

  “Yeah,” Hessinger repeated thoughtfully.

  “I have a brilliant idea,” Cronley said. “Inasmuch as I am exhausted after dealing with Lieutenant Colonel Parsons, Major Ashley, and Staff Sergeant Hessinger, why don’t we put off solving that until tomorrow morning?”

  “Yeah,” Hessinger said thoughtfully, for the third time.

  VI

  [ONE]

  Quarters of the U.S. Military Government Liaison Officer

  The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound

  Pullach, Bavaria

  The American Zone of Occupied Germany

  0755 9 January 1946

  “Sign this, please,” Hessinger said, laying a sheet of paper on the table.

  “What is it?” Cronley asked, and then read. “I’ll be damned, ‘Special Orders No. 1, Headquarters, Military Detachment, Directorate of Central Intelligence-Europe. Subject: Promotion of Enlisted Personnel.’ What took you so long, Freddy? Or should I say ‘Staff Sergeant Hessinger’?”

  “I didn’t know how to do it, so I called Sergeant Major Thorne.”

  “Who?”

  “General Greene’s sergeant major.”

  “And he told you how?”

  “Correct.”

  “I was hoping that you had spent the night thinking about how we’re going to get Mannberg, Ostrowski, and the fifty thousand to Vienna.”

  “I came up with several ideas, all of which are probably illegal,” Hessinger said.

  “Save them until the general and Mannberg get here.”

  General Gehlen, in another of his ill-fitting, ragged suits, and Colonel Mannberg, in his usual Wehrmacht uniform stripped of all insignia but a red stripe down the trouser legs, came in almost precisely at eight.

  Cronley wasn’t sure if he was impressed with their Teutonic punctuality or annoyed by it. He rose as Gehlen approached the table, as a gesture of courtesy, and Gehlen waved him back into his seat, shaking his head to suggest he didn’t think the gesture was necessary.

  By quarter after eight, the others—Dunwiddie, Schultz, Ostrowski, and Tedworth—had taken their places and begun their breakfast, and Cronley had finished his.

  “What we left hanging last night,” Cronley said, “was the question of getting Mannberg, Ostrowski, and the fifty thousand dollars to Vienna. The problem is that neither of them can get on the Blue Danube because they’re not Americans. And the one solution I see for the problem is predictably illegal.”

  “What’s your solution?”

  “Give both of them DCI-Europe identity cards.”

  “You’re right,” Dunwiddie said. “That would be illegal. And it wouldn’t be long before Colonel Mattingly heard about it. And he’s just waiting for you to screw up.”

  “Your suggestion?”

  “Put Colonel Mannberg in a Provisional Security Organization uniform and give him a PSO identity card. No one would question you having two Wachmann—Mannberg and Ostrowski—with you.”

  “That would work,” Mannberg said.

  No, mein lieber Oberst, it wouldn’t.

  “No, it would not,” Cronley said. “I don’t think this officers’ hotel . . . what’s it called?”

  “The Bristol,” Hessinger furnished. “And it’s not just an officers’ hotel. Majors and up.”

  “. . . this majors-and-up officers’ hotel is going to accommodate two DP watchmen,” Cronley finished.

  “So what’s your solution?” Dunwiddie asked.

  “I’m going to give both Mannberg and Ostrowski DCI identity cards.”

  “I don’t think that would be smart,” Schultz said.

  “Well, then the choice is yours, Jefe,” Cronley said. “Relieve me and you figure this out. Or let me do what I think is best. And giving Mannberg and Ostrowski DCI identity cards is what I think is best.”

  It took thirty seconds—which seemed much longer—for El Jefe to reply.

  “When I think about it,” he said finally, “I still think it’s risky as hell, but I don’t think it would be illegal. You’re the chief, DCI-Europe. You can do just about anything you want.”

  “Until somebody catches him doing something we all know he shouldn’t be doing, you mean,” Dunwiddie said.

  “Discussion over, Captain Dunwiddie,” Cronley said. “How are you with a tape measure?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “While we’re getting the DCI credentials filled out and sealed in plastic, we need somebody who knows how to determine sizes to take the colonel’s and Ostrowski’s measurements. Are you our man to do that?”

  “What for?”

  “So that you can go to the QM officers’ clothing sales store and get Colonel Mannberg a couple of sets of ODs and a set of pinks and greens.”

  “I didn’t think about that,” Hessinger said.

  “And get Ostrowski a set of pinks and greens while you’re at it,” Cronley said. “We don’t want anyone to look out of place in this majors-and-up hotel in Vienna, do we?”

  “I have one more thing to say, and then I’ll shut up,” Dunwiddie said.

  “Say it.”

  “I can see the look—‘I’ve got the sonofabitch now’—on Colonel Mattingly’s face when he hears about this.”

  Cronley looked as if he was about to reply, but then changed his mind.

  “I’d much prefer to put the colonel—and Max, too—in civilian clothing,” he said. “Suits and ties. But that’s out of the question, isn’t it?” Cronley asked.

  “I have civilian clothing,” Mannberg said. “Or my sister does.”

  “Your sister?”

  “And I think Max could wear some of it,” Mannberg said.

  “Your sister has your civilian clothing?” Cronley asked.

  Mannberg nodded.

  “I sent it to her when the general and I went to the East,” he said.

  “And she still has it?” Cronley asked. “Where?”

  “We have a farm near Hanover,” Mannberg said. “In the British Zone.”

  “Pay attention,” Cronley said. “The chief, DCI-Europe, is about to lay out our plans. While General Gehlen’s documents people are doing their thing with the DCI credentials, and Captain Dunwiddie is measuring Mannberg and Ostrowski and then going shopping for them, First Sergeant Tedworth is going to get in one of our new Fords and drive to Hanover to reclaim Colonel Mannberg’s wardrobe. Any questions?”

  [TWO]

  Hachelweg 675

  Strasbourg, Département Bas-Rhin, France

  1255 10 January 1946

  The olive-drab 1943 Ford Deluxe pulled to the curb and stopped. The driver, yet another enormous black sergeant, this one Sergeant Albert Finney, got out from behind the wheel and ran around the back of the car to open the rear passenger door.

  Cronley got out. He was wearing an OD woolen uniform. His shoulder insignia, a modification of the wartime insignia of Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (S
HAEF), identified him as being assigned to the European Command (EUCOM). The gold bars of a second lieutenant were pinned to his epaulets, and the insignia of the Quartermaster Corps to his lapels.

  Hessinger got out of the front seat. He was also wearing an OD Ike jacket and trousers. The first time Cronley had ever seen him not wearing his pinks and greens was that morning. His uniform now was adorned with staff sergeant’s chevrons, QMC lapel insignia, and the EUCOM shoulder patch.

  Two other of Tiny’s Troopers and the ambulance were parked down the street just within sight of Hachelweg 675. The fourth had made his way to the back of Hachelweg 675, with orders from Sergeant Hessinger to “follow anyone who comes out the back door when we knock at the front.”

  Staff Sergeant Hessinger had orders for Second Lieutenant Cronley and Sergeant Finney, as well. “Remember,” he said in German, “the only German either of you knows is ‘Noch ein Bier, bitte’ and ‘Wo ist die Toilette?’”

  “Jawohl, Herr Feldmarschall,” Cronley had replied.

  “You already told us that, Freddy,” Sergeant Finney said in German.

  He opened the trunk of the Ford and took out an open cardboard box. Four cartons of Chesterfield cigarettes, on their ends, were visible. So was an enormous canned ham.

  Hessinger opened a gate in a stone wall and walked up to the house, with Cronley and Finney following him. The tile-roofed two-story building looked very much like Cronley’s house in the Pullach compound, except that it desperately needed a paint job, several new windows, and roof repairs.

  Cronley and Finney had been given a lecture by Professor Hessinger on the history of Strasbourg on the way from Pullach. He told them that over the years it had gone back and forth between being French and German so often that Strasbourgers never really knew to whom they owed their allegiance.

  Cronley was surprised, even a little ashamed, that he had never given the subject much thought before. His mother spoke German; she had taught him to speak German from the time he was an infant. He had naturally presumed that she was a German. Or had been before his father had brought her to Midland, after which she was an American.

  But when they had crossed the border today, it had been into France. Strasbourg was in France.