The Assassination Option
Page 39
“Moving right along,” Wallace said. “Best scenario, everybody is standing intact on the hangar floor. Objective, to get them to Argentina. Question: How do we do that?”
“Simple answer. Load them in either the Twin Beech or the Gooney Bird, fly them to Rhine-Main, and load them aboard a South American Airways Constellation bound for Buenos Aires,” Cronley said.
“Now let’s break that down,” Wallace said. “What are the problems there?”
“Well, we don’t know when there will be an SAA airplane at Rhine-Main,” Cronley said.
“Tiny, maybe—even probably—Hessinger has the SAA schedule. Find out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Medium-bad scenario,” Wallace went on. “The next SAA flight is not for three days.”
“Can we fly them into Eschborn—and we can, in either airplane, I’ve seen Gooney Birds in there—and stash them at that hotel for the brass—the Schlosshotel Kronberg in Taunus?”
“Yeah,” Wallace said.
“Even if one or more of them is ‘walking wounded’?” Cronley asked.
“And what if Mrs. Likharev is on the edge of hysteria?” Ostrowski asked.
“And that, the walking wounded, and the possibility of Mother being hysterical, raises the question of how do we care for them while they’re en route to either Rhine-Main or Eschborn?” Wallace asked.
“Get a nurse from the aid station here when we get the ambulances,” Cronley said. “No. Get a nurse and a doctor.”
“Why both?”
“Couple of reasons. The nurse, because the presence of a woman is likely to be comforting to Mrs. Likharev if she is hysterical, or looks like she’s about to be, and the doctor to sedate her, or the kids, if that has to be done.”
“I don’t like the idea of taking a doctor—and that’s presuming we can get one—and a nurse to either Rhine-Main or Eschborn,” Wallace said.
No one said anything for a long moment.
“What about having Claudette Colbert go to Frankfurt, or Eschborn?” Dunwiddie asked. “Have her in either place when our plane gets there?”
“Permit me a suggestion,” Ludwig Mannberg said. “Have both a doctor and a nurse in the hangar when the Storchs return, to take care of every contingency. If any of them are seriously injured, he could determine whether it would be safe to take them to the hospital in Giessen, or even to the Army hospital in Frankfurt . . . what is it?”
“The Ninety-seventh General Hospital,” Dunwiddie furnished.
“Ideally, the latter,” Mannberg went on. “Instead of the Schlosshotel Kronberg. I suggest that if any of the Likharevs require medical attention, the place to do that would be in Frankfurt, where the good offices of Generals Smith and Greene could be enlisted to discourage the curious.
“If necessary, the doctor or the nurse or both could go on the airplane with the Likharevs. If their services were not required, they wouldn’t go. I agree with Cronley that the presence of a woman would be a calming influence on Mrs. Likharev, and suggest that Fraulein Colbert could fill that role.”
“I agree with everything he just said,” Cronley said.
“How could you not?” Wallace asked sarcastically. “Okay, we’re in agreement that Brunhilde can make a contribution, right?”
Wallace looked around the table. Everybody nodded.
“My take on that is, if so, why not get her up here right now? How would we do that?”
“Going down that road,” Cronley began, “we get Hotshot Billy to fly her up here.”
[FOUR]
Hangar Two
U.S. Air Force Base, Fritzlar, Hesse
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1450 19 January 1946
They went down that road, and many others, without interruption—not even to send someone to the PX snack bar for the hot dogs, hamburgers, Cokes, and potato chips Major Wallace had promised—until Sergeant Pete Fortin came into the room.
This stopped their discussion, which was then on how to get photographs of Mrs. Likharev and her sons to former Major Konrad Bischoff in Munich so they could be affixed to the Vatican passports they would need to leave the American Zone of Occupied Germany.
“What is it, Sergeant?” Major Wallace demanded, not very pleasantly.
“Two things, sir. Our next contact is at fifteen hundred . . .”
Wallace looked at his watch and shook his head in what was almost certainly disbelief that it was already that late.
“. . . and Sergeant Mitchell says there’s something funny going on at the Constab that maybe you want to have a look at it.”
“Something funny?” Wallace asked. “Okay. We’ll pick this up again just as soon as I finish taking a leak, seeing what’s amusing Sergeant Mitchell, and having our chat with Seven-K.”
He stood up and went directly to the restroom. There he stood in front of one of the two urinals. Captain Dunwiddie shouldered Captain Cronley out of the way and assumed a position in front of the adjacent urinal. Former Colonel Mannberg got in line behind Major Wallace, and Kurt Schröder got in line behind him as Max Ostrowski got behind Captain Cronley.
Minutes later, after climbing the stairs, they filed into the radio room in just about that order.
Cronley looked at where Dunwiddie was pointing, out one of the huge plate-glass windows. He saw what looked like three troops of Constabulary troopers lining up on a grassy area half covered with snow in front of the 11th Constabulary Regiment headquarters.
“Okay, I give up,” Cronley said. “What’s going on?”
“Beats me,” Dunwiddie admitted. “It’s too early for that to be a retreat formation.”
“Jesus, there’s even a band,” Cronley said.
“Regiments don’t have bands,” Dunwiddie said.
“This one does,” Cronley argued.
“Gentlemen, if you’re going to be in the intelligence business, you’re really going to have to remember to always look over your shoulder,” Major Wallace said, and pointed out the plate-glass window to their immediate rear.
The window gave a panoramic view for miles over the countryside, and in particular of the road down a valley and ending at the air base.
And down it was coming a lengthy parade of vehicles. First came a dozen motorcycles, with police-type flashing lights, ridden side by side. Then a half-dozen M-8 armored cars, in line, and also equipped with flashing police-type lights.
The first thing Cronley thought was, having seen an almost identical parade up the road from Eschborn to the Schlosshotel Kronberg, that one carrying the supreme commander, Allied Powers Europe, to a golf game, What the hell is Eisenhower doing in Fritzlar?
Then he saw the car following the M-8s. Eisenhower had a 1942 Packard Clipper as a staff car. What was in line here was a 1939 Cadillac. Not any ’39 Cadillac. A famous one, the one General George S. Patton had been riding in when he had his fatal accident.
“You will recall, I’m sure, Captain Cronley,” Major Wallace said, “that Colonel Wilson said that he would speak to General White about some sort of diversion?”
Both of their heads snapped from the open window to the side of the room, where Sergeant Fortin was furiously pounding his typewriter keyboard.
“Seven-K,” Wallace said. “Right on time.”
Fortin ripped the sheet of paper in the typewriter from it and handed it to Mitchell.
“Jesus Christ!” Mitchell said when he read it.
“Do I acknowledge?” Fortin asked.
“You’re sure this is all? You didn’t miss anything?”
“That’s it.”
“What does it say?”
“One Six Zero Zero, Oboe Nan Easy How Oboe Uncle Roger. Repeat One Six Zero Zero, Oboe Nan Easy How.”
“Sixteen hundred. One hour.” Wallace made the translation.
“Right now?”
Cronley asked incredulously. “Today?”
“They sent it twice, Captain,” Fortin said.
“And added One Hour, to make sure we understood she meant today,” Wallace said.
“Holy shit!” Cronley said.
“Do I acknowledge?” Fortin asked again.
“Jim, can you do it?” Wallace asked. “Can you be at Able Seven in an hour? In fifty-eight minutes?”
Cronley thought it over.
“God willing, and if the creek don’t rise,” he said.
“Acknowledge receipt, Sergeant Fortin,” Wallace ordered.
“Nothing’s in place,” Cronley said. “No ambulances, no doctor, no nothing.”
“Nothing at Able Seven to give us the winds on the ground,” Ostrowski said.
“I know,” Wallace said.
“Yeah,” Cronley said.
“Seven-K wouldn’t order this unless she thought she had to,” Oberst Mannberg said.
“They just sent Oboe Oboe,” Sergeant Fortin said. “They’re off.”
“Which means we can’t ask her to reschedule,” Wallace said.
“Kurt,” Cronley said, “I guess we better go wind up the rubber bands.”
Schröder’s face showed he had no idea what Cronley meant.
“Didn’t you have model airplanes when you were a kid?” Cronley asked.
Then he mimed winding the rubber bands in a model airplane by turning the propeller.
Schröder smiled, wanly, and then gestured for Cronley to precede him out the door of the radio room.
[FIVE]
Hangar Two
U.S. Air Force Base, Fritzlar, Hesse
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1510 19 January 1946
“Well?” Wallace asked, when Cronley finished his walk around his Storch.
“I don’t think anything important fell off,” Cronley said. “Is Tiny in the control tower?”
Wallace nodded.
“Where he has dazzled the Air Force with his DCI credentials,” Wallace said. “When you call, they will clear you—both of you—to taxi from the tarmac outside to Taxiway Two, then to the threshold of Runway One Six for immediate takeoff.”
“I see the pushers are here,” Cronley said, pointing to Tiny’s Troopers, who were prepared to push the Storchs from the hangar. “So I guess I better get in, and then you get the doors open.”
“I need a couple of minutes in private with you, Schröder, and Ostrowski first,” Wallace said.
“What for?”
“Over there,” Wallace said, pointing to a door in the rear wall of the hangar. “Now.”
Oberst Mannberg was already in the room when Cronley, followed by Ostrowski and Schröder, entered. Wallace closed the door.
“If you’re going to deliver some sort of pep talk,” Cronley said, “I’d just as soon skip it, thank you just the same.”
“Shut up for once, Jim,” Wallace said, and then he said, “Okay, everybody extend your right hand, palm up. I’m going to give you something.”
When the three had done so, Wallace dropped what looked like a brown pea into each palm.
“Pay close attention. Cronley, don’t open your mouth before I finish. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Those are L-pills,” Wallace said. “Inside the protective rubber coating is a glass ampoule. When the ampoule is crushed by the molars of the mouth, sufficient potassium cyanide will be released to cause unconsciousness within three seconds, brain death within sixty seconds, and heart stoppage and death within three minutes. That process is irreversible once begun. Any questions?”
No one had any questions.
“I will not insult anyone’s intelligence by asking if you understand the purpose of the L-pills.”
“We had something like this in the East,” Schröder said.
“Almost identical, Kurt,” Mannberg said.
“Is this what Hitler and his mistress used?” Ostrowski asked. “What Magda Goebbels used to kill her children in the Führerbunker?”
Mannberg nodded.
“And what a number of captured agents on both sides chose to use rather than give up what they knew they should not give up,” Wallace said. “Or to avoid interrogation by torture.”
Cronley, Ostrowski, and Schröder looked at the brown peas in their hands, but made no other move.
“Aside from shirt pockets, the most common place to carry one of these is in one’s handkerchief,” Wallace said. “The place of concealment recommended by the OSS, to Jedburghs, was insertion in the anus.”
“Really?” Cronley asked, and then began to laugh.
“What the hell can you possibly find amusing about this, Cronley?” Wallace demanded furiously.
“Excuse me, sir,” Cronley replied, still laughing, as he moved his hand to his shirt pocket and dropped the L-pill in.
“Sometimes I really question your sanity,” Wallace said furiously.
“What I was thinking, sir,” Cronley said, stopped to get his laughter under some control, and then continued, “was that the OSS’s recommendation for concealment of your pill really gave new meaning to the phrase ‘stick it up your ass,’ didn’t it?”
Then he broke out laughing again.
A moment later, Ostrowski joined in. And then Mannberg. Then Wallace was laughing, and finally Schröder.
“You think ‘stick it up your ass’ is funny, huh, Kurt?” Cronley asked. “I finally said something that made you laugh!”
“You are out of your mind!” Schröder said, and then, still laughing, went to Cronley and embraced him.
They walked out of the room with their arms around each other and then got in the Storchs.
[SIX]
Hangar Two
U.S. Air Force Base, Fritzlar, Hesse
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1525 19 January 1946
“Fritzlar clears Army Seven-Oh-Seven a flight of two aircraft as Number One to take off on One Six on a local flight.”
Cronley shoved the throttle to takeoff power and then answered, “Fritzlar, Seven-Oh-Seven rolling.”
As soon as he was off the ground, Cronley saw that his normal climb-out would take him directly over the three troops of Constabulary soldiers lined up in front of the 11th Constabulary Regiment headquarters.
That would obviously draw the attention of the Constabulary troopers to the two funny-looking black aircraft, which was not a good thing.
On the other hand, it would be a worse thing if he tried to use the amazing flight characteristics of the Storch to make a sharp, low-level turn to the right to avoid flying over the troops and didn’t make it.
He pulled his flaps and flew straight.
As he flew over the troops, he saw General White, Colonel Fishburn, and Lieutenant Colonel Williams looking up at him.
[SEVEN]
Able Seven
(Off Unnamed Unpaved Road Near Eichsfeld, Thuringia)
Russian Zone of Occupation, Germany
1555 19 January 1946
There was a small truck on the road.
As Cronley flew closer, he saw that it was an old—ancient—Ford stake body truck, and that red stars were painted on the doors.
He remembered seeing on March of Time newsreel trucks like that driving over the ice of a lake, or a river, to supply Stalingrad.
A stocky man in what looked like a Russian officer’s uniform got out of the cab of the truck . . .
He’s wearing a skirt?
That’s not a man. That’s Seven-K. Rahil.
. . . and went quickly to the back.
A boy jumped out of the truck.
Is that the old one, or the young one?
And then a woman.
Mrs. Likharev.
&nbs
p; Mrs. Likharev turned and helped a smaller boy get out of the truck.
Seven-K pointed to the approaching Storchs, and then took the woman’s arm and propelled her into the field beside the road.
Cronley signaled to Schröder, who was flying off Cronley’s left wing, to land. Schröder nodded and immediately dropped the nose of his Storch.
Cronley slowed the Storch to just above stall speed so that he could watch Schröder land.
Schröder got his Storch safely on the ground, but watching him put Cronley so far down the field that he knew he couldn’t—even in the Storch—get in. He would have to go around.
By the time he did so, Mrs. Likharev and the boys were standing alone in the field, making no move to go to Schröder’s Storch.
Seven-K was getting into the truck. As soon as she did so, the truck drove off.
Cronley put his Storch on the ground. At the end of his landing roll, he was twenty feet from Schröder’s Storch.
Ostrowski was out of Cronley’s Storch the instant it stopped, and ran to Mrs. Likharev and the boys. He propelled them toward Schröder’s Storch.
Christ, the little one has Franz Josef!
What the hell?
Christ, I’ve got to turn around.
Why the hell didn’t I think about that?
Ostrowski hoisted Mrs. Likharev into Schröder’s airplane, and then handed her the smaller boy and the dog.
Schröder’s engine roared and he started his takeoff roll.
Ostrowski came to Cronley’s Storch, hoisted the larger boy into it, and then got in himself.
Cronley turned the Storch, shoved the throttle to takeoff power, and started to roll.
When he had lifted off, he turned to look at Likharev’s elder son, thinking he would reassure him.
He quickly looked away.
He had never before in his life seen absolute terror in anyone’s eyes. He saw it now.
[EIGHT]
Hangar Two
U.S. Air Force Base, Fritzlar, Hesse
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1630 19 January 1946
The hangar doors opened as Cronley taxied up to them. He stopped and killed the engine. Before that process was over, half a dozen of Tiny’s Troopers appeared and pushed the Storch into the hangar. Then the doors closed.