Curtain of Death

by W. E. B Griffin

  Wallace saw him and walked to the car and got in the front passenger seat.

  For a moment Wallace said nothing. Then he said, “Jesus, what smells in here?”

  “That’s me. Sorry. It must have been something I ate. As I started down here, I tossed my cookies before I could make it to a men’s room. Most of it went into a wastebasket, but some of it, a lot of it, got on my trousers and shoes.”

  Wallace rolled down his window.

  “Or it could be,” Wallace said, “that you were just a little worried about what was going to happen to you now after you had, in effect, told the USFET G-2 to go fuck himself.”

  “What was I supposed to do?”

  Wallace exhaled audibly.

  “Don’t let this go to your head, Loose Cannon, but I was proud of you in there. You did exactly what was called for in the circumstances.”

  “So what do I tell General Bull?”

  “Bringing him into the conversation was an idle threat and, I think, directed more to me and Greene than to you. Seidel’s not going to go to Harry Bull. Not now. Bull’s not part of the Let’s Kill the DCI Conspiracy. What happened in there, Jim, was that Seidel took his best shot and missed. That doesn’t mean the war is over, just this one battle. What he was hoping was that the FBI would find unmarked graves.”

  “And they would have.”

  “Which would have lent credence to their theory that Gehlen was responsible for them, and that further would lend credence to their theory that he was also responsible for Schumann’s water heater and Derwin getting shoved under the freight train.”

  Which theories are right on the fucking money.

  Doesn’t Wallace know this?

  Is this where I tell him?

  Which brings us to the new question: Does Gehlen have anything to do with Mattingly going missing?

  “And finally to their theory,” Wallace went on, “that Gehlen is responsible for Mattingly going missing.”

  Christ, he’s reading my mind!

  “Seidel doesn’t give a damn about Mattingly, but if he can prove—even credibly allege—to Bull and ultimately McNarney that Gehlen is responsible for his disappearance—better yet, from his standpoint, his murder—”

  “McNarney gets on the phone to the admiral and very politely suggests that since the very young and very junior officer who is chief, DCI-Europe, obviously can’t keep the murderous Nazi General Gehlen under control, perhaps it would be the time to—at least temporarily—replace him with someone wiser, older, and senior?”

  “Or, more likely,” Wallace said, “to put DCI-Europe temporarily under the guidance of someone wiser, older, and more senior, like Major General Bruce T. Seidel. Just until the present situation is rectified. I think that’s what they call getting the camel’s nose under the tent flap.”

  “So, what do we do?” Cronley said.

  “The obvious solution is to find out who grabbed—or assassinated—Bob Mattingly, said villain having nothing to do with Generalmajor Reinhard Gehlen.”

  But what if Gehlen is responsible?

  Has Gehlen been playing me as Rachel Schumann played me?

  And why am I unwilling to tell Wallace that I think—am sure—Gehlen was responsible for whacking the Schumanns and that it’s entirely possible that he had Derwin pushed under the freight train?

  Several reasons. Maybe the most important one is that if I do, he will quite reasonably decide I should have told him long before this and be really pissed. More important than his being pissed is that he could reasonably decide that Seidel is right.

  Why do I trust Gehlen?

  Because I’m arrogantly sure—despite my youth, inexperience, and all-around proven stupidity—that I can tell whether or not the German general who successfully matches wits with the entire fucking NKGB—and was smart enough to stay out of the hands of the SS when he was up to his ears in the plans to whack Adolf Hitler—is playing me at least as skillfully as Rachel played me?

  Or because he saved my ass?

  If he hadn’t talked me out of going to Frankfurt and shooting Rachel and her husband, and then going to Mattingly and telling him why I had, I would now be under suicide watch in the USFET stockade awaiting my general court-martial for a double murder.

  Seidel and the FBI are looking for the wrong suspect in who whacked the Schumanns. They should be looking at me. Getting out of Gehlen’s way was just about the same thing as me shooting them. I knew what was going to happen to them, and since I got out of Gehlen’s way, I’m just as responsible for what happened as Gehlen is.

  “That glazed look in your eyes suggests you’re thinking,” Wallace said. “What about?”

  Okay, here’s where I confess all.

  “Well?” Wallace pursued.

  “I’ve been wondering whether I can get back to Kloster Grünau before it’ll be too dark to land. I’d really like to get there today.”

  “Why?”

  “Just before you called me, I gave the NKGB guy who’s supposed to be dead the photos of Likharev and family in Buenos Aires. He’s had time to think that over. Unless you’ve got a better idea, that seems to me the best place to start.”

  Wallace grunted.

  “And then I’ll see if my cousin Luther has tried to corrupt Sergeant Finney and see where that may lead us. Or maybe PFC Wagner will have infiltrated Odessa at the Stars and Stripes plant, and that will solve all our problems.”

  Wallace didn’t reply.

  “It’s not much, is it?” Cronley said.

  “No.”

  “But I don’t see any point in hanging around here. Augie Ziegler and Hammersmith can find out what they can about Mattingly without my expert help.”

  “You go with what you have,” Wallace said.

  He put out his hand.

  “Maybe, Jim, if you leave the side window in your airplane open, it will help with the smell.”

  He punched Cronley affectionately on his shoulder and got out of the staff car.

  Cronley drove out of the Visiting Senior Officers’ Parking Area before Wallace reached his car.

  [ FOUR ]

  Kloster Grünau

  Schollbrunn, Bavaria

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1740 27 January 1946

  It was dark when Cronley got to the monastery. Not only dark, but snowing. The snow made the headlights on the jeeps and trucks and ambulances—which had come on to illuminate the strip when he’d flown over the former monastery—into fuzzy orbs of white, when what he needed was clear light.

  That the lights had come on told him both that Major Wallace had gotten on the horn to give them a heads-up and that Max Ostrowski had set up the vehicles immediately in case Cronley was really crazy enough to attempt to land at Kloster Grünau at night in a snowstorm.

  He got the Storch onto the ground all right, which was not the same thing as saying safely. He realized this was a tribute to the flight characteristics of the airplane, which permitted him to make his approach at a speed not much faster than a walk, rather than to his flying skills.

  Cronley was fully aware that he should have gone into Schleissheim, the Munich Military Post airfield, whose runways were fully lighted. He had not done so for three reasons. He didn’t want to have the Storch seen at Schleissheim; he didn’t want the airfield officer of the day running up to the airplane when he parked it, asking, Are you out of your mind, flying in this weather? and he didn’t want to go through the hassle of getting a car, either at the airfield or from the Vier Jahreszeiten, to drive to Kloster Grünau.

  He knew he was taking a chance. He’d become used to taking chances, so far successfully.

  But as he was landing the airplane, he had another thought, this one sobering: One of these days, sooner or later, and probably sooner than later, one of the chances I’m taking is
going to bite me in the ass.

  —

  Max Ostrowski met him with a jeep.

  “You were pushing it, old chap, flying in this weather,” he greeted him in his heavy British accent. “I’m presuming there is a reason you felt you had to get back today?”

  “I really needed a shower, Your Majesty,” Cronley replied.

  “Why do I have the feeling that’s the truth? Or at least part of the truth.”

  “Because you are a PP, Max.”

  “What’s a PP?”

  “A Perceptive Pole,” Cronley said. “How’s Lazarus?”

  “As in the chap Christ brought back from the dead?”

  “See, you are perceptive. Maybe even a VPP.”

  “Let me guess: Very Perceptive Pole.”

  “Correct. Take me to the palace, please, driver. I need a hot shower and a cold Jack Daniel’s.”

  —

  “Colonel Mattingly gone missing is problem enough,” Max said, after Cronley had finished telling him of his encounter with General Seidel. “If he’s killed . . .”

  “I’m taking what comfort I can from thinking they may want to swap him for Likharev,” Cronley said.

  “Or Lazarus.”

  “They don’t know he’s alive.”

  “We don’t know that. For that matter, we don’t know who ‘they’ is. Are.”

  “Any further reaction from Lazarus to the pictures?”

  Ostrowski shook his head.

  “But there’s something about him that bothers me, Jim.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been trying to put my finger on it, but the best I can come up with is that he is remarkably calm for someone in his situation. I started thinking he was resigned to . . . his fate.”

  “Which he thinks is?”

  “Being disposed of. He knows we’re not going to turn him loose. But as I say, that thought gave way to thinking he’s confident he won’t be . . . disposed of. He’s confident that we’re not going to shoot him, that somehow he’s going to get out of the mess he’s in.”

  “Prisoner swap? Mattingly for Lazarus?”

  “Now that we know they have Mattingly, it’s certainly a possibility, isn’t it?”

  “But they—whoever they are—don’t know we have Lazarus.”

  “We don’t know that for sure, do we? What I was thinking before I heard that Mattingly had gone missing was that maybe he thinks somebody is going to break him out of here.”

  “With your guys and Tiny’s Troopers guarding the place?” Cronley challenged.

  “He becomes ill. Concerned for his safety, and unwilling to bring medical personnel here . . . and they know that.”

  “How do they know that?”

  “That brings me to that theory,” Ostrowski said. “The person—possibly, even probably, persons—they, whoever they are, have in Kloster Grünau told them.”

  “Have in here, or in the Compound. Or the 98th General Hospital.”

  Ostrowski looked at him questioningly.

  “There are more people in the Compound than here,” Cronley explained. “Yours, Gehlen’s, mine. People gossip. Everybody knows what happened with Claudette and Florence, both from Janice’s story in Stars and Stripes and what they saw—two ambulances full of your guys rushing to the hospital. The story said Dette killed three in the parking lot, and the fourth died in the hospital.”

  “So?”

  “The bodies of the three she killed were taken to the hospital for autopsy. They were photographed before they were turned over to whoever buries people. Graves Registration? The city of Munich? But what happened to the fourth body? For the sake of argument, let’s say the bodies were photographed again before they were buried.”

  “I see where you’re going,” Max said. “They, whoever they are, managed to get photos of the bodies. They would know who they were. One face is missing . . .”

  “Lazarus,” Cronley picked up. “If he’s not dead, where is he?”

  “And they’re in the hospital. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that ambulance at the NCO club came from the 98th General.”

  “And since they’re in the hospital, one might logically presume they saw Lazarus being taken from the hospital in one of our ambulances . . .”

  “Together with the hospital bed, et cetera, in another of our ambulances . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “And they would assume we brought him here. Which brings us back to my theory that since they have someone in here, they know Lazarus is here. And that they can’t assault the place . . .”

  “But can intercept an ambulance, even one accompanied by two or more of Tiny’s jeeps . . .”

  “As we take Poor Sick Lazarus to the 98th on a little-used country road in the middle of the night,” Max finished the thought.

  Cronley grunted and then asked, “Are we just making all this up?”

  “As a product of our fevered imaginations? I don’t think so, Jim.”

  “For them to go to all this trouble would seem to make Lazarus very important to them,” Cronley said thoughtfully.

  “All this trouble including the kidnapping of Colonel Mattingly. Just in case rescuing Lazarus doesn’t work.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “Seek the counsel of someone far wiser than James D. Cronley Junior.”

  “Major Wallace?”

  “Former Generalmajor Gehlen. I’ll take the Storch to the Compound at first light.”

  “Not Wallace?”

  “I don’t know how this is going to turn out, Max. But the real priority is to keep DCI from getting taken over by Seidel and Company. If whatever I do here goes wrong, and frankly it looks like it will, and I go down, I don’t want to take Wallace with me. I want him here to take over DCI. And I don’t want to take you down with me, either, so we never had this conversation. All you know is that I flew in here, asked you about Lazarus, then flew out at first light.”

  “That presumes we’ll be able to get the snow off what passes for our runway. You could drive in tonight . . .”

  “There will not be too much snow on the runway for me to take off at first light.”

  “. . . and have a late dinner with Janice. She said she’d be at the Vier Jahreszeiten until she heard from you.”

  “I can’t handle Janice tonight.”

  “That, if I may be permitted a personal observation, strikes me as a wise decision.”

  “I’m not really as stupid as I look, Max. And so far as snow on the runway is concerned, that will not be a problem. There will be no snow. God takes care of fools and drunks, and I qualify on both counts.”

  “You’re not a fool, Jim, and as far as being a drunk is concerned, you took one sip of your drink and put it down.”

  Cronley picked up the glass and drained it.

  “Okay, VPP? Now let’s have something to eat.”

  [ FIVE ]

  The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound

  Pullach, Bavaria

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  0750 28 January 1946

  When Cronley walked into the Senior Officers’ Mess, he was afraid that more people would be there than he wanted to see. His fears were realized. The table was full. Seated at it were former Generalmajor Reinhard Gehlen, former Oberst Ludwig Mannberg, Lieutenant Colonel John J. Bristol, former Major Konrad Bischoff, Captain C. L. Dunwiddie, and Lieutenants Tom Winters and Bruce T. Moriarty.

  The only people he wanted to see—had business with—were Gehlen and Dunwiddie.

  As he walked toward the table, he thought, Fuck it. This is no time to worry about hurt feelings.

  I’ll tell Gehlen and Tiny I want to see them, alone, right now, in my office.

 
And then he had an epiphany, or several epiphanies, one after the other.

  The last thing I can afford to do right now is make anybody feel that they are second-class members of DCI, not trusted enough to be told everything that’s going on.

  I either trust them, or I don’t.

  But Jack Bristol’s not in DCI, he’s the engineer in charge of building and maintaining the Compound. And related to Bonehead Moriarty.

  And they both went to Norwich.

  As did Tiny.

  And General White.

  Do I have the right to try to involve him in this?

  Bottom Line: I need all the help I can get.

  I don’t know if, or how, Bristol can help, but I know I don’t want to run him off.

  “I thought you’d be snowed in at Kloster Grünau,” Tiny greeted him.

  “When was the last time they swept this room?” Cronley said.

  The question obviously puzzled Dunwiddie.

  “I don’t know. Last night. Maybe this morning. Why?”

  “Get somebody over here right now and sweep it. And then put a couple of your guys outside to make sure nobody can hear what’s said in here.”

  It was an order, and Dunwiddie recognized it as such.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, and got up from the table.

  “Colonel,” Cronley said to Bristol, “we’re about to discuss some things in here that are not only none of your business but also, I suspect, things you’d rather not hear.”

  “I understand,” Bristol said, and got up out of his chair.

  “Having said that, I wish you would stay,” Cronley said.

  Bristol didn’t reply.

  “I’m not being polite,” Cronley said. “And I don’t want you to stay to be polite. Staying may be costly.”

  Bristol’s eyebrows rose in question, but he said nothing.

  “I’m in a jam,” Cronley went on, “and need all the help I can get. So I’m going to tell you that General White, if he doesn’t already know what’s happened, is about to learn. And he’s with us, not with those who want to either take over DCI or flush it down the crapper.”