The Assassination Option

by W. E. B Griffin

  “What I’m suggesting, Tom,” Cronley said, “is that you base your decision, as a professional soldier, on where you can make the greater contribution to the good of the service.”

  After a moment, Wallace said, “Colonel Wilson, in the opinion of the senior officer present, Captain Cronley has just nailed your scrotum to the wall.”

  “Or I nailed it there myself,” Wilson said.

  “Your call, Lieutenant Winters,” Wallace said.

  “Two things, sir,” Winters said. “First, Colonel Wilson, sir, I really appreciate your concern. Second, Captain Cronley, sir, is there anything in particular you want me to show the Storch pilot?”

  “Welcome to Lunatics Anonymous, Lieutenant,” Wallace said.

  “What I think we should do now is make our manners to Colonel Fishburn,” Wilson said.

  “Why don’t you do that while I get on the SIGABA and have a chat with the Navy?” Wallace replied.

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  “Mitchell has problems with the SIGABA?” Cronley asked.

  “No,” Wallace said. “According to Dunwiddie, Mitchell has been up and running since about nineteen hundred last night. Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve been wondering why you didn’t get on the SIGABA as soon as you got here. And why you’re all sitting here in the Gooney Bird. There’s a . . . I guess you could call it a ‘lounge’ in the building. Complete with a coffee machine.”

  “I was dissuaded from doing just that by Colonel Wilson,” Wallace said. “May I tell the captain why, Colonel?”

  “Why not? It may add to his professional knowledge.”

  “Colonel Wilson thought it was entirely likely that Colonel Fishburn would ask him if he’d seen you. And if he replied in the negative, that Colonel Fishburn would wonder why not.”

  “And if that happened,” Wilson said, “and I think it would have, I would have had to tell him you were flying up and down the border in one of his airplanes, which I did not want to do, or profess innocence vis-à-vis knowledge of your whereabouts. Since I am (a) a West Pointer, and (b) not in the intelligence business, I do not knowingly make false statements to senior officers. Now when I make my manners, I can tell him truthfully, repeat, truthfully, that I came to see him immediately after getting off General White’s aircraft. I don’t expect either you or Major Wallace to understand that, but that’s the way it is.”

  But deceiving him is okay, right?

  “I understand, sir,” Cronley said.

  “And if that question is asked,” Wilson said, “and I believe it will be, I can now reply that I had a brief word with you aboard the general’s aircraft.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cronley said.

  [TWO]

  Hangar Two

  U.S. Air Force Base, Fritzlar, Hesse

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1150 19 January 1946

  Technical Sergeant Jerry Mitchell and Sergeant Pete Fortin of the ASA started to rise when Cronley, Wallace, Dunwiddie, Mannberg, Ostrowski, and Schröder filed into what looked like it had once been a control tower and now was the radio room.

  “Sit,” Wallace ordered with a smile.

  “How we doing?” Cronley said.

  “Waiting, sir,” Mitchell said. “They’re usually right on time. We’ve got about nine and a half minutes to wait.”

  “Which gives us time to run over what’s going to happen,” Wallace said, “so let’s do that.”

  “Yes, sir. Seven-K initiates the contact. They will transmit, three times, a five-number block. Pete’ll type it, and hand it to me. If it matches the number Colonel Mannberg gave us, we will reply with the five-block number he gave us. They’ll check that against their list of numbers. Then we’ll be open. Protocol is that they send, in the clear, a short phrase, a question to verify that Colonel Mannberg is on this end.”

  “For example?” Wallace asked.

  “Middle name Ludwig,” Mannberg said. “My middle name is Christian, so we would send that, for example.”

  “And then,” Mitchell said, “they reply with what they want to send us. We acknowledge, and that’s it.”

  “I hate to sound like a smart-ass,” Cronley said.

  “Hah!” Wallace said.

  “But I think you forgot to turn the SIGABA on.”

  “It’s off, Captain. I was afraid that there might be some interference with the eight slash ten from it.”

  “With the what?”

  Mitchell pointed to three small, battered, black tin boxes. They were connected with cables, and what could be a telegraph key protruded from the side of one of them, and a headset—now on Sergeant Fortin’s head—was plugged into one of the boxes.

  “That’s what we’re using,” he said. “It’s German. The SE 108/10 transceiver.”

  “Seven-K has one just like it,” Mannberg said. “We used them quite successfully from 1942. The slash ten means it’s Model 10, based on the original model 108.”

  “I thought it was something you found in here,” Cronley admitted. “And were fooling around with.”

  “No, sir, that’s it. It’s a hell of a little radio,” Sergeant Fortin said. “Puts out ten watts.”

  “And that thing with the white button on it sticking out from the side is the telegraph key?” Cronley asked.

  “Right,” Fortin said.

  “Where’d you get it, from Colonel Mannberg?”

  “This one, I think, we got from Iron Lung . . . Major McClung. But Colonel Mannberg did give us a couple of them.”

  Sergeant Fortin, who had been sitting relaxed in his chair before his typewriter, suddenly straightened and began typing. It didn’t take long. He ripped the paper from the machine and handed it to Mitchell as he fed a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter.

  Mitchell consulted a sheet of paper in his free hand.

  “Send Seven Zero Two Zero Two,” he ordered. “I repeat, Seven Zero Two Zero Two.”

  Fortin put his finger on “the thing with the white button on it” and tapped furiously.

  “Seven Zero Two Zero Two sent,” he reported.

  Thirty seconds later, Fortin’s fingers flew over his keyboard for a few seconds. He tore the sheet of paper from the machine, handed it to Mitchell, and then fed a fresh sheet of paper into the typewriter.

  “Peanut dog,” Mitchell said, and then looked at Colonel Mannberg.

  “Franz Josef,” Cronley ordered. “Send Franz Josef. I spell.”

  He then did so, using the Army phonetic alphabet.

  Fortin typed what he had said, but did not put his finger on “the thing with the white button on it,” instead looking at Sergeant Mitchell for guidance. Mitchell, in turn, looked at Mannberg.

  “Send Franz Josef,” he ordered.

  “Spell again,” Fortin ordered.

  Cronley did so.

  Fortin put his finger on “the thing” and tapped rapidly.

  “Franz Josef sent,” he reported.

  And then, almost immediately, he began to type again. It took him a little longer this time, but less than five seconds had passed before he tore the sheet of paper from the machine and handed it to Mitchell.

  “Able Seven,” Mitchell read, using the Army phonetic for “A.” Then he said, “Dog Tare Tare Fox One Six Oboe Oboe.”

  “Meaning what?” Wallace demanded impatiently.

  “Sir, the protocol is coordinates first. So Able Seven is a place. Dog is D. Tare is T, and F is Fox, so DTTF, which means Date and Time To Follow. One Six is the time, 1600. Oboe is O, so OO, which means out.”

  “Acknowledge receipt of the message,” Wallace ordered.

  “Not necessary. When they sent OO, that meant they were off.”

  “Rahil is really clever,” Mannberg said admiringly. “By asking for the dog’s name,
she ascertained that Cronley was here—it was very unlikely that anyone else would know the dog’s name—and if Cronley was here, it was very likely that I was, too.”

  “And what if I didn’t remember the dog’s name?” Cronley asked.

  “Then she would have given us one more opportunity to establish our bona fides. She would have posed another question, a difficult one, the answer to which would be known only to me. And if we didn’t send the correct response to that, we would have had to start from the beginning.”

  “What’s this Able Seven?” Wallace said. “How far from here is it? Where’s the maps and the aerial photos?”

  “I’ve set them up in the room downstairs, sir,” Dunwiddie said.

  “Why not in here?”

  “There’s not room for all of them in here, sir,” Dunwiddie said.

  “Dumb question,” Wallace said. “Sorry, Tiny.”

  [THREE]

  Hangar Two

  U.S. Air Force Base, Fritzlar, Hesse

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1225 19 January 1946

  “The room downstairs” occupied all of the floor immediately below the radio room/control tower. Dunwiddie had acquired somewhere what looked like a Ping-Pong table, and it was now covered with aerial photographs. Two large maps, one of them topographical, had been taped to the walls.

  Wallace first found Able Seven on the topographical map, and then went to the table and started examining the aerial photographs of the site.

  Cronley looked at one of the photos and immediately recognized the site. It was a snow-covered field near a thick stand of pine trees. A narrow road ran alongside it.

  He then went to the map and, using two fingers as a compass, determined that it was about thirty miles from the Fritzlar Airbase in a straight line, maybe thirty-five miles distant if he flew down the border for most of the way, and then made a ninety-degree turn to the left. Site Able Seven was about a mile, maybe a mile and a half, inside Thuringia.

  He sensed that Schröder was looking over his shoulder, and turned and asked, “What do you think?”

  “I think I’d like to know what the winds are going to be,” Schröder replied. “If they’re coming from the North, it means we could make a straight-in approach from our side of the border . . .”

  “And if they’re from the South, we’ll have to fly another couple of miles into Thuringia,” Cronley finished for him.

  “Precisely.”

  “If the winds are from East or West, no problem.”

  “Correct.”

  “Well, there’s no way we could set up a wind sock in that field. Seven-K is going to come down that road two minutes before, or a minute after, we land. She’s not going to be able to park on that road and wait for us.”

  “So we pray for winds from the North,” Schröder said, “will be satisfied with either easterly or westerly, and will hope for the best if they’re from the South.”

  “Wait a minute,” Cronley said. “Ludwig, could we get a message to Seven-K, asking her to park her car, or whatever she’s driving, with the nose, the front, facing into the wind?”

  Mannberg considered the question a moment.

  “So you’ll know the winds on the ground?” he asked. His tone suggested he already knew the answer. “Yes,” he went on. “It’ll . . . the encryption of the message . . . will take a little doing. But yes, it can be done. And I think it should. I’ll get right on it. We don’t have much time.”

  “How much time do you think we do have?” Cronley asked.

  “If I had to guess, which I hate to do, I’d say Seven-K would probably want to make the transfer at first light tomorrow, or just before it gets dark tomorrow. Or—she’s very cautious—at first light the day after tomorrow. Or just before sunset the day after tomorrow.”

  “Makes sense. Then, since I have nothing else to do between now and tomorrow morning, I am now going to the O Club and drink the hearty last meal to which condemned men are entitled. Would anyone care to join me?”

  “Wrong,” Wallace said.

  “I don’t get a hearty, liquid last meal?”

  “You have plenty to do between now and tomorrow morning at the earliest.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as, presuming you can get Mrs. Likharev and the boys over the border, what are you going to do with them once they are here?”

  Cronley actually felt a painful contraction in his stomach, as if he’d been kicked.

  “Jesus H. Christ, that never entered my mind. How could I have been so stupid?”

  “Because I have been almost that stupid myself, I’m resisting the temptation to say because being stupid comes to you naturally,” Wallace said. “I thought about it, but didn’t recognize how many problems we have until Hessinger started bringing them to my attention.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Cronley repeated.

  “You’ve already said that,” Wallace said. “Now, what I suggest we do is send somebody to the PX snack bar for hamburgers, hot dogs, Coke, and potato chips, which we will consume as we sit at the Ping-Pong table and discuss solutions.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cronley said.

  “You are appointed Recorder of this meeting, Captain Cronley, which means you will write everything down on a lined pad as we speak. We can’t afford forgetting anything again.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cronley said.

  He sat down at the table. Dunwiddie handed him a lined paper tablet and half a dozen pencils.

  Wallace, Mannberg, and Dunwiddie sat down. Schröder and Ostrowski looked as if they didn’t know what they should do.

  “Please be seated, gentlemen,” Wallace said. Then he turned to Cronley. “The floor is yours, Captain Cronley.”

  “Sir, I’d rather you run this. I don’t even know where to start.”

  Wallace looked at him, then opened his mouth, and visibly changed his mind about saying what immediately came to him, and then said, “At the beginning would seem to be a good place.

  “Presumption One,” he began. “Both planes take off from Thuringia with everybody on board and make it back here.

  “Unknowns: Condition of the aircraft and the people on board.

  “Worst-case scenario: Airplanes are shot up and there are dead or wounded aboard.

  “Medium-case scenario: Airplanes are not shot up and no wounded. But Mrs. Likharev and either or both boys are sedated.

  “Best-case scenario: Airplanes are not shot up. Mrs. Likharev and the boys are wide awake.

  “Any other scenario suggestions?”

  There were none.

  “It seems obvious that there should be two ambulances waiting when the planes land,” Wallace said.

  “Inside the hangar,” Cronley said. “If they are parked outside, people will be curious.”

  “Point taken,” Wallace said. “Recommended solution: We get Colonel Wilson to arrange with Colonel Fishburn for the ambulances and station them inside the hangar. Any objections?”

  There were none.

  “Comments?”

  “Two,” Cronley said.

  “One at a time, please.”

  “What do we do if there are wounded in the ambulances?”

  “They go first to the regimental aid station here for treatment. If they’re in bad shape—where’s the nearest field hospital?”

  No one knew.

  “Tiny,” Wallace ordered, “get on the phone.”

  “And while he’s doing that, what if there are dead on the planes?” Cronley asked.

  “You, Max, and Kurt wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “That’s nice to know,” Max said sarcastically.

  “I meant, you’ve got DCI credentials,” Wallace said. “They’d get you into the hospital, dead or alive.”

  “That’s comforting,” Max s
aid.

  “The Likharevs don’t have DCI credentials,” Cronley said.

  “Army hospitals treat indigenous personnel requiring emergency medical attention,” Wallace said.

  “What’s ‘indigenous’ mean?” Cronley asked.

  “Native. German.”

  “The Likharevs are Russian,” Cronley said.

  “So we tell the aid station they’re German,” Wallace said impatiently.

  “What if one or more of them are dead?” Cronley asked. “What do we do with the bodies?”

  Wallace considered the question.

  “More important, what do we tell Colonel Likharev?” Cronley asked.

  “Whatever we tell him, he’s not going to believe,” Wallace said.

  “We fly the bodies to Kloster Grünau,” Max said. “Where we put them in caskets and bury them with the full rites of the Russian Orthodox Church. The ceremony, and the bodies in the caskets, are photographed. Photographs to be shown to Colonel Likharev.”

  “The nearest field hospital is the Fifty-seventh, in Giessen,” Tiny reported. “There is an airstrip.”

  “Photographs to be taken to Argentina by Captain Dunwiddie,” Wallace said.

  “If Mrs. Likharev, or the oldest boy, survives, Dunwiddie takes her, or him, or both and the photographs of the funeral, to Argentina,” Cronley said.

  “Tiny,” Wallace said, “have Colonel Wilson arrange for a Signal Corps photographer to be here from the moment the Storchs take off. When he shows up, put the fear of God in him about running his mouth.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Our story to Colonel Likharev,” Cronley said, straight-faced, “would have more credibility if one of us—Max, Kurt, or me—got blown away and Tiny could show the colonel a dozen shots of our bloody, bullet-ridden corpses.”

  “You’re insane, Cronley,” Wallace said, but he was smiling.

  Ostrowski, shaking his head, but also smiling, gave Cronley the finger.

  Kurt Schröder’s face showed he neither understood nor appreciated the humor.