Your face, Colonel Wallace, Cronley thought, suggests you trust her only about as far as you can throw her. Or maybe halfway as far as you could throw Tiny Dunwiddie.
“I don’t suppose anybody knows where Augie Ziegler is,” Cronley said.
“At the Munich NCO club,” Janice said. “After he decided you wouldn’t be coming back tonight—you weren’t on the Blue Danube, and you, quote, wouldn’t be dumb enough to try to fly in this weather, close quote—he took Wagner there.”
“That was nice of him.”
“He had an ulterior motive.”
“Which was?”
“To punch holes in Wagner’s theory about how the Stars and Stripes trucks are moving the bad guys around.”
“Wagner has a theory?”
“Augie calls it a theory. Casey says he knows.”
“Who the hell is Casey?”
“PFC Wagner’s Christian name is Karl-Christoph. You know, K dash C. Casey?”
“Now you’ve aroused my curiosity. Who is he?” Colonel Bristol asked.
“He’s an enormous seventeen-year-old Pennsylvania Dutchman who works for Ziegler. Translator. Janice has a Press Office jeep. So we sent . . . Casey . . . to the Stars and Stripes plant at Pfungstadt to see what he could see.”
“He’s seventeen years old?” Bristol asked.
“He looks older,” Cronley replied. “He could pass for eighteen, maybe even nineteen.”
“And he speaks fluent Hessischer Deutsch,” Kurt Schröder offered. “Not many Americans do. He could pass as a Frankfurter.”
Cronley chuckled and then looked at him questioningly.
“I took an L-4 and picked him up in Pfungstadt,” Schröder explained. “And on the way back here he told me—in fluent Hessischer Deutsch—about what he learned about the Stars and Stripes trucks.”
“And?”
“I think he’s onto something,” Schröder said.
Cronley considered that a moment.
“I’m tempted to have you share that, or go hear it from him, but it can wait until morning. Augie can tell me when he reports how he’s coming with the funerals, or reburials, whatever the hell it is.”
“Ziegler,” Bristol said, “came to me early this morning to ask if I could put him onto a stone cutter for the tombstones. I did.” Bristol then added, “He had a photographer with him.”
“Good,” Cronley said. “To prove to Comrade Serov that I’m a fellow Christian obeying his orders, I want to give him pictures of everything connected with reburying those bastards.”
“Major Wallace is taking Kurt and me to the Gloria Palast,” Gehlen said. “They’re showing Gilda with Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford.”
Wallace is taking Gehlen and Schröder to a Rita Hayworth movie?
Gehlen doesn’t seem in a hurry to discuss how to get Mattingly back . . .
“And Tom and I are going to meet our wives there,” Bristol said. “At seven-thirty. Which means we’re going to have to leave now. You want to come, Janice? Jim?”
“I saw it in Frankfurt,” Janice said.
“And I’m so tired I’d fall asleep in five minutes,” Cronley said. “But thanks.”
“Does that mean we can go back in the bar?” Janice asked.
“Janice, I love you, but if I went back to the bar and had another drink, you’d have to carry me to my room.”
“I don’t think I could carry you, but I’m sure we can get a wheelchair somewhere.”
Gehlen, Schröder, Wallace, Winters, and Bristol chuckled and smiled as they rose from the table.
“I’ll see you in the morning, Jim,” Gehlen said. “Get a good night’s rest.”
Does he know Janice isn’t kidding?
Do any of them?
[ SIX ]
Suite 507
Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten
Maximilianstrasse 178
Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0830 1 February 1946
PFC Karl-Christoph Wagner was wearing ODs bearing the blue triangles identifying civilian employees of the Army when he and Augie Ziegler walked into the office.
Cronley’s mouth went on automatic: “Where’d you get the triangles, Wagner?”
Wagner’s face reddened.
“My idea,” Ziegler said. “We went to the NCO club last night. Neither of us belonged there. We stood out like—”
“Ladies of the evening in church?” Janice asked.
“Something like that. And since I think we should move him in here, I think we better get him CIC credentials.”
Ziegler read Cronley’s face.
“He can’t go on living in the MP kaserne,” he went on. “And wait till you hear what he came up with at Stars and Stripes.”
Cronley thought: If I issue this kid CIC credentials, Wallace will go through the roof.
General Gehlen, in German, said: “Mr. Schröder has been telling me, young man, that you learned something interesting when you were at Pfungstadt. Why don’t you tell us what that was?”
Wagner looked between Gehlen, Cronley, and Ziegler in confusion.
He’s wondering who the guy in the seedy suit is, and what he’s doing here.
Schröder picked up on Wagner’s confusion at the same time.
“Karl-Christoph,” he said in German, “this is General Gehlen. You can tell him.”
Wagner nodded, and then began, in German, to tell them what he had learned in Pfungstadt.
Cronley had just heard enough to conclude, I’ll be damned. He did find something, when Wallace suddenly jumped to his feet and stood at attention. A moment later, Augie Ziegler looked where Wallace was looking and jumped to his feet.
Cronley looked where Ziegler was looking and jumped to his feet when he saw that Lieutenant Colonel William W. “Hotshot Billy” Wilson was holding the door to the office open for Major General I. D. White.
White, who was wearing ODs and highly polished tanker’s boots, marched into the office. His uniform was crisply pressed, but there were no ribbons on his breast.
“As you were, gentlemen,” he ordered conversationally. Then he saw Janice.
“Good morning, Miss Johansen. I really am glad to see you.”
“Why don’t I think that’s because of my feminine charms?”
White laughed. Genuinely, not to be polite.
“Because of your feminine charms, and also because you’re at about the top of the list of people on my See As Soon As Possible List.”
“Not at the top? I’m crushed. Who is?”
“General Gehlen,” White replied.
Then he smiled at General Gehlen, and said, “General, I’d ask for a few minutes of your time right now, but I’m getting the impression that I just interrupted something interesting.”
Gehlen smiled and chuckled.
“What?” White demanded. “Is it important?”
“Just as you came through the door, General, the Eighth Psalm came to mind,” Gehlen said.
White considered that a moment.
“‘Out of the mouth of babes . . .’” he quoted.
“I believe this young man has,” Gehlen said, nodding at Wagner, “uncovered how the Odessa organization is moving people we’re looking for around Europe.”
“How?”
“On Stars and Stripes delivery trucks.”
“General Greene told me his CIC people had looked into that and—”
“Mr. Hammersmith, whom General Greene describes as his best CIC agent, told me—told us—the same thing. That’s why, listening to this young man, the Eighth Psalm came to mind.”
“This, I have to hear,” White said, and turned to Wagner. “Who are you, son?”
Wagner, looking very uncomfortable, popped to attention.
“PFC Wagner
, Karl-Christoph, sir.”
“You can stand at ease, son. Despite what you might have heard, I really don’t bite off the heads of enlisted men.”
“Yes, sir,” Wagner said, and changed his posture from Attention to the nearly as rigid Parade Rest.
White smiled. “Even those who don’t know the difference between Parade Rest and At Ease.”
Wagner smiled sheepishly and relaxed.
“Sorry, sir,” Wagner said, and then blurted, “I’m a little nervous. I’ve never talked to a general before.”
White chuckled.
“Well, son, there’s a first time for everything. And I’ll let you in on a little secret. General officers put on their pants just like PFCs. So why don’t you tell me what you’ve learned?”
“Yes, sir,” Wagner said. “What Mr. Hammersmith—and I guess the others—missed is that the six-by-sixes aren’t the only trucks, only vehicles, that Stars and Stripes uses to deliver the newspapers every day.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Stars and Stripes motor pool sergeant, his name is Master Sergeant Gallant, they call him ‘Red Ball,’ he told me about the other vehicles.”
“Why did he do that?” White asked.
“Sir, Mr. Ziegler told me to find out everything I could, so I figured the best way to do that was to get close to the motor sergeant.”
“Who is Mr. Ziegler?”
Wagner pointed to him.
Ziegler popped to attention.
“August Ziegler, sir. Former CID agent. Now in DCI. When I came in, I brought Wagner with me. Before that, he was an interpreter for the MPs.”
“And you sent this young man to Stars and Stripes?”
“No, sir. That was Mr. Cronley’s idea.”
“And did you think that was a good idea, Mr. Ziegler?”
“Yes, sir, I did. I just didn’t want to take the credit for it. It was Cron—Mr. Cronley’s idea.”
White looked at Wagner. “Go on, son. How did you get close to Master Sergeant ‘Red Ball’ Gallant?”
“I bought him a couple of beers in the Stars and Stripes Club and asked him why they called him ‘Red Ball.’”
“And?”
“He told me because he’d set up the Stripes delivery system like the Red Ball Express. Do you know what that is, sir?”
“If we’re talking about the same Red Ball Express that rushed supplies from the ports in Normandy to the front during the war?”
“Yes, sir. That’s it. Red Ball told me how he’d started as a corporal in a Quartermaster truck company and wound up with six stripes as the battalion operations sergeant.”
“Sounds as if he’s a good soldier. Smart.”
“Yes, sir. He’s a good soldier. But I wouldn’t call him smart.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t think he has a clue what’s going on.”
“And what’s that, son?”
“He told me that the motto of the Red Ball Express was Keep the Supplies Moving, No Matter What, and that’s what he was doing with the Stars and Stripes delivery system.”
“Tell me how that works,” White said. “From the beginning.”
“Yes, sir. Well, when the papers come off the press, most of them are bundled in packages of a hundred.”
He held his hands about two feet apart to show the size of the bundles.
“Then they’re put on pallets—wooden things that can be picked up with a forklift?”
White nodded to indicate that he knew about pallets and forklifts.
“Then, for example, the papers coming here to Munich. They send twenty-six hundred papers here. So they load thirteen packages on two pallets, label them ‘Munich,’ then pick them up with a forklift and load them onto a six-by-six. You can get two pallets in a row.”
He paused. “It gets a little complicated here, General.”
“So far I’m with you, son.”
“Yes, sir. Well, on the way to Munich there are—I don’t know—say, twenty places that get newspapers. The QM gas stations, for example, along the autobahn, get one, maybe two bundles. So they lay tarps on top of the Munich pallets, and then put the single bundles, or two bundles tied together, on top of the tarp, with signs saying, for example, ‘QM Gas Station, Mile 45’ or whatever.”
He looked questioningly at General White.
“Got it,” White said. “And?”
“Well, that’s how it works, all the six-by-sixes are loaded the same way, no matter if they’re going to Munich, or Naples, or Cherbourg, in France.”
“Now I’m a little confused,” White said.
“Well, sir, Master Sergeant Gallant told me he kept the Stars and Stripes delivery trucks rolling the same way he’d kept the original Red Ball trucks rolling. Or the supplies, in this case, the newspapers, moving when the trucks broke down, had a flat tire, et cetera.”
“And did he tell you how he was doing this?”
“Yes, sir. By doing what the Red Ball did.”
“Which was?”
“By stationing a wrecker and an empty truck every fifty miles along the delivery routes. If a truck gets a flat tire, or breaks down, the driver, or the assistant driver, hitches a ride to the wrecker. The wrecker and the empty truck then go to the broken-down truck, carrying spare wheels, gasoline, and a mechanic.”
“I’m not quite following you now, son.”
“Well, what I think happens, General, is that one of the trucks carrying the Nazis we’re looking for, quote, breaks down, unquote, near the border. Borders. Between Germany and Austria. Between Austria and Germany. Between Germany and France. Those borders. The driver then hitches a ride—maybe from one of the Constabulary jeeps patrolling the highway—and goes to the wrecker. The wrecker then goes to the, quote, broken-down, unquote, truck—”
“Carrying spare wheels, gasoline, a mechanic, and one or more of the people the CIC is looking for,” Hotshot Billy Wilson said. “Who then hide behind the pallets. The truck then drives across the border. How the hell did the entire CIC miss that?”
“Pray let PFC Wagner continue, Colonel,” White said icily.
“That’s what I think, General,” Wagner said. “Except the way it’s set up, they could take people from the trucks, as well as putting them on.”
“And do you think Master Sergeant Red Ball knows what’s going on?”
“No, sir. He’s not smart enough to figure it out himself. What I think is that one or two of the drivers, maybe more, are the people smugglers.”
“You have any idea who they are?”
“One of them got Red Ball an apartment for his fräulein. I know that.”
“You didn’t say anything to the sergeant about Odessa, did you, son?” White asked.
“No, sir. My orders from Captain Cronley were to keep my eyes open and my mouth shut.”
“Do I have to tell you that you have to continue keeping your mouth shut now?”
“No, sir. I know I’m not in DCI, but Mr. Cronley made me understand how important it is to keep what goes on around here a secret.”
Cronley’s mouth went on automatic: “You’re in DCI now, Casey. And just as soon as Mr. Hessinger gets back from Berlin, he’ll cut orders making you a sergeant.”
White looked at Cronley.
“I was about to make a suggestion along those lines, Captain Cronley,” he said, then put his hand on Wagner’s shoulder. “Well done, son. Very well done.”
PFC Wagner blushed.
“And now back to my list of things to do,” White said. “Cronley, is there somewhere General Gehlen, Colonels Wallace and Williams, and you and I could have a private conversation?”
[ SEVEN ]
Suite 527
Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten
Maximilianstrasse 178
Munich,
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0855 1 February 1946
“Would it surprise you, Captain Cronley,” General White asked as soon as everyone had found chairs in Cronley’s sitting room, “to learn that in addition to feeling that you’re wholly unqualified to hold your present position, General Seidel feels—and has told General Bull—that you’re the last man he would choose—the phrase he used was ‘any rational senior officer would choose’—to be in charge of getting Colonel Mattingly back from the Russians?”
“No, sir,” Cronley said. “It would not.”
“Then you will probably not to be surprised . . .”
Well, the ax ending my brilliant intelligence career didn’t take long to fall, did it?
What comes next?
“You will probably not be surprised to hear that Admiral Souers has decided that you are to be relieved as chief, DCI-Europe, effective immediately, and that Colonel Wallace will assume that position.”
“. . . to learn that both General Bull and I are interested to hear what precisely you said to General Seidel that made him splutter like that.”
Wallace laughed.
“When the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley,” Wallace said, “the planner often splutters.”
“What plan was that, Harry?”
“General Seidel demanded that Cronley come to that meeting so he could sandbag him. If Seidel had his way, Cronley was going to agree to permit the FBI to snoop around the Compound and Kloster Grünau, in which case the FBI would find not only Lazarus—”
“Who?”
“Four NKGB agents were involved in the attempted kidnapping of Miss Colbert and Technical Sergeant Miller. Colbert killed three of them at the site, and we—actually Cronley—decided to report that the fourth man died in the hospital. He’s actually alive, under medical attention, in a cell at Kloster Grünau. Code name Lazarus. We have subsequently learned that he is Major of State Security Venedikt Ulyanov.”
“Go on,” White said.
“As I was saying, sir, General Seidel thought he was in a win-win position with Cronley. Either Cronley would agree to let the FBI into the Compound and Kloster Grünau, in which case they would find Lazarus—”
Curtain of Death Page 29
