Curtain of Death

by W. E. B Griffin

  “And the secret graves alleged to be there?” White interrupted.

  Wallace nodded. “And other things which would bolster the argument that DCI, under Cronley, is out of control and has to be taken over. Or, Cronley would deny the FBI access, same result. What possible reason but having something terribly illegal to hide would cause Cronley to refuse to accept the help of the saintly FBI?

  “Cronley then sent General Seidel’s plan agley by not only telling him that the only way he was going to let the FBI nose around the Compound was with the okay of Admiral Souers, and if the general had nothing else to ask him, he had things to do.

  “By the time this happened, I think you should know, General Seidel was already on the edge of spluttering because the parts he had planned for Generals Schwarzkopf and Greene to play in the sandbagging had also gang agley.”

  “Explain that,” White said.

  “He and the FBI guy, Special Agent in Charge Preston, had come up with really off-the-wall theories that General Gehlen was involved in the deaths of the Schumanns and Major Derwin, and was possibly, even probably, involved in Bob Mattingly’s disappearance. This was, I’ll admit, before we learned that Serov and Company had Bob.

  “Schwarzkopf bluntly called the theories nonsense and Greene backed Schwarzkopf. Which meant that Seidel couldn’t take them to General Bull to support his position.”

  White considered that for a moment, grunted, and then said: “Let’s take a look at where we—and by we, I mean everybody—are. Let’s start at the top: What I think is going on is Pentagon/Washington politics at its worst.”

  He considered that for a moment, and then went on: “The assistant chief of staff–Intelligence, the chief of Naval Operations, the State Department, and the FBI are all pressing the chief of staff to take over DCI and then—since none of them can have it—to shut it down. That’s a turf war. The only difference between a Washington turf war and, say, Waterloo is that turf wars are much nastier.

  “As chief of staff, Eisenhower has several problems dealing with that situation. The DCI was set up by Truman—and he picked his good friend Admiral Souers to head it—primarily to keep Operation Ost from becoming public knowledge. Operation Ost was set up by Allen Dulles of the OSS to bring General Gehlen and Abwehr Ost and all its assets under our tent.

  “Eisenhower could see the enormous value of what General Gehlen offered but—wisely, I believe—sought and got Truman’s permission to go ahead with it. In great secrecy, of course, under the OSS. If it became known that Operation Ost involved moving Gehlen’s Nazis and their families to Argentina, Truman’s opponents—not only the outraged Jews—would have called for his impeachment and Eisenhower’s court-martial.

  “That threat is very much still there. Very few people recognize the threat the Soviet Union presents, so the argument that what General Gehlen has done—and will do in the future—justifies Operation Ost simply will not hold up in the court of public opinion.

  “The problem was then compounded when Truman—under enormous pressure from J. Edgar Hoover, George Marshall, the State Department, and the Navy—disestablished the OSS. He thought he would be able to hide Operation Ost within the Office of Naval Intelligence if he had someone he trusted completely there. So he promoted Souers to rear admiral and gave him Operation Ost.

  “Whether or not Eisenhower told him this was not a long-term solution, I don’t know. Truman, as most people have learned by now, is much smarter than anyone thought. He replaced the secretary of State, Stettinius, who he didn’t trust, with James Byrnes, another crony he knew he could. Byrnes could have told him Souers in the ONI was not a long-range solution. Or he figured it out himself.

  “Anyway, by Executive Order, Truman established the DCI and gave it—and Operation Ost—to Souers. Appointing Captain Cronley as chief, DCI-Europe, was pure Truman. My personal view is that it was very clever. The President had just stumbled across, as a result of what Cronley had done finding the U-boat with the uranium oxide in Argentina, a young officer who was much smarter and more competent than the average second lieutenant. Said young officer already knew all about Operation Ost. The FBI knew what he had done in South America, so they weren’t surprised when Truman promoted him to captain, and gave him a little bonus, command of DCI-Europe. Truman thought people would think if he gave DCI-Europe to Cronley, it couldn’t be very important.

  “What Truman and Eisenhower apparently didn’t see, which surprised me, was that Seidel here, and the intelligence establishment generally, would decide that Cronley’s appointment would make it easier for them to do what they were determined to do, take over DCI. And they immediately began to try to do just that.

  “The disappearance—later to be determined to be the kidnapping by the NKGB—of Colonel Mattingly gave them what they saw as that opportunity. They took it, but Cronley didn’t let them get away with it. So where does that leave them? And us?

  “They went to General Bull with their complaints and theories, obviously in the hope that Bull would take it to General McNarney. Instead, Bull sent for me. He began the conversation by saying we had a mutual friend, Admiral Souers. I was surprised to hear this, as the admiral had said nothing to me about Bull being in the loop. But when Bull went on to tell me that General Seidel and Mr. Preston had come to see him, and why, and what he suggested was the best way to handle the problem, I knew he was in the loop.”

  “What was General Bull’s suggestion, General?” Gehlen asked.

  “That we act promptly on Mr. Schultz’s suggestion that we come up with proof that the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency blatantly defied the President’s order not to bring any Nazis into the United States in connection with Operation Paperclip. That was proof that Bull is in the loop. And, apparently acting as good chiefs of staff act, shielding their general as much as possible.

  “It was clear to me that his suggestion was in the nature of an order, and that Bull was relaying that order from General McNarney. So I suggest, Captain Cronley, that you take the suggestion.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cronley said.

  “General Bull,” White went on, “will, I think, accept my belief that relieving you and turning the recovery of Colonel Mattingly over to General Seidel and the FBI would be counterproductive at this time. And so inform both General McNarney and General Seidel. But I think we can count on General Seidel not giving up. And neither will the FBI man, Preston.

  “So, Captain Cronley, I further suggest that you have—that DCI-Europe has—two priority objectives. The first is getting Colonel Mattingly back—”

  “Sir,” Cronley said, “I don’t have a clue how I’m going to do that.”

  “I have learned over the years, Captain, that there is always a clue. What you have to do is go over the facts again and again and again until you find it. Let’s do that, starting with Fact One: The Russians—Serov—want to exchange Mattingly for Colonel Likharev and his family on the Glienicke Bridge at nine in the morning of February twelfth. That gives us eleven days. Is that correct?”

  “The thirteenth, sir, which gives us not quite twelve days.”

  “I don’t like to think what will happen to Bob Mattingly if we don’t get him back in twelve days, but I suggest that General Seidel and Company are going to start crowing something along the lines of ‘If only young Captain Cronley had accepted the assistance that I and the FBI offered, poor Colonel Mattingly would be free.’”

  “Yes, sir, I’ve thought of that.”

  “And?”

  “For the time being I decided the thing to do is what Serov asked me to do. I showed up at the bridge, as ordered, and today I’m going to rebury the Russians.”

  “That’s all?”

  “I’ve been hoping, sir, that Lazarus might somehow be useful in getting Colonel Mattingly back but—”

  “Swapping him for Colonel Mattingly, you mean?”

  “Y
es, sir. But, General, I was going to say I don’t think they’ll swap Colonel Mattingly for a major. What the Russians want—what they specifically have told me they want—in exchange for Mattingly is Polkóvnik Likharev and his wife and children.”

  “Do the Russians know you have this Lazarus?” White asked.

  “Sir, I think somebody who knows has told them we have him.”

  “You have a mole, is that what you’re saying?”

  “‘Moles,’ plural, General,” Wallace said. “We’re working on it.”

  “Good luck. Moles are notoriously difficult to eliminate,” White said.

  “But eventually, it has been my experience, if one keeps one’s eyes open,” Gehlen said, “they pop their heads out of the ground, permitting them to be eliminated.”

  White met Gehlen’s eyes, and nodded. Then he said, “Why do you think the Russians know you specifically have this man?”

  Cronley took a moment to frame his reply.

  “Sir, prefacing this by saying I’m a beginner in the business of dealing with senior NKGB officers, I had the feeling that Serov was much more interested in getting him back than he let on. I came out of our meeting feeling that there was more to this reburial business than Serov’s devotion to his religious faith.”

  “According to Oberst Mannberg, Jim,” Gehlen said, “you did very well in your dealings with Comrade Serov.”

  “That’s two compliments from people I respect, Cronley,” White said. “So why don’t you tell us how you thought you might use Lazarus—Major . . . Whatsisname?”

  “Ulyanov, sir. Major of State Security Venedikt Ulyanov.”

  “How might you use Major Ulyanov to get Colonel Mattingly back?”

  “My idea didn’t work, sir. What I thought might work was to infiltrate the Odessa organization, grab one or more of the Nazis it’s moving around, and offer them, plus Lazarus, to Serov in exchange for Colonel Mattingly.”

  “How had you planned to infiltrate Odessa?”

  “The head of the DST in Strasbourg, Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin, is after Odessa with a vengeance, sir.”

  “How did you come to know this Fortin?”

  “That’s a long story, sir.”

  “Let’s have it,” White said.

  “My mother is a Strasbourgerin, sir,” Cronley began. “A war bride of the First World War. She received a letter from her nephew there, my cousin, a man named Luther Stauffer . . .”

  —

  Five minutes later, Cronley finished: “. . . but when I returned from Berlin, Sergeant Finney told me that Cousin Luther made no move to corrupt him, and that Commandant Fortin later told him that Luther himself had disappeared into Odessa. So that idea didn’t work.”

  “You say your cousin was an SS officer?” White asked.

  “Yes, sir. According to Commandant Fortin, he was an SS-sturmführer when he deserted in the last days of the war.”

  “According to my information, so did SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter and his deputy, Standartenführer Oskar Müller. I think we may be onto something.”

  “I don’t understand, sir. I never heard those names before.”

  “Wernher von Braun’s rocket operation at Peenemünde required much labor support,” Gehlen said. “Slave labor, to put a point on it. Heimstadter was in charge of the labor force, and treated these people very badly. And then when it initially appeared that the Russians would reach Peenemünde first, before the Americans, he had all of them shot and buried in a mass grave, so they wouldn’t be able to tell the Russians what they had seen. And then SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter and his deputy, Standartenführer Oskar Müller, deserted and disappeared.”

  “Why did they desert?” Cronley asked.

  “They thought it might be a defense when they fell into Russian or German hands. ‘Just as soon as I could, after learning for the first time what terrible things the SS had done, I deserted . . .’

  “Then came Operation Paperclip. Every one of von Braun’s people who could be passed through one of the ‘kindly’ denazification courts that General White mentioned had been ‘denazified’ and sent to the United States. In the process, the scientists professed shock and indignation about what Heimstadter and Müller had done to the poor slave laborers—”

  “Which meant,” White picked up, “that Heimstadter and Müller didn’t get to go to America, but instead have been on the run from both the Allies and the Russians. They are trying to make their way—assisted, as Good Nazis, by the Odessa organization—first to Italy or Spain, and finally to South America.”

  “Sir, you don’t think these two—Heimstadter and Müller—have so far made it out of Germany?” Cronley asked.

  White shook his head and said, “No.”

  Gehlen said, “I would be very surprised if they’ve made it to South America. Spain, perhaps, but not South America.”

  “Why do you say that?” White asked.

  “Niedermeyer would know.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “The man I have in Argentina to keep an eye on the Nazis we sent there. Former Oberst Otto Niedermeyer.”

  “Going off at a tangent,” White asked, “what’s ultimately going to happen to the Nazis? Where are they now?”

  “Full details, or a synopsis?” Gehlen asked.

  “Try to strike a reasonable compromise between the two, if you please, General,” White said, smiling.

  “Originally,” Gehlen said, “they were all confined on an estancia in Patagonia. The estancia had passed to Cletus Frade on the death, the murder by the SS, of his father. Their confinement was supervised by General de Brigade Bernardo Martín of BIS—”

  “Which is?” White asked.

  “The Argentine intelligence service. Martín is its chief. The Nazis were—are—guarded by BIS men who in turn supervise the actual guards who are soldiers of the Húsares de Pueyrredón, a cavalry regiment which el Coronel Frade had commanded. Niedermeyer told me Martín had told him that what the Húsares wanted to do with the Nazis was disembowel them.

  “Martín himself hates Nazis. But, realizing that the people we sent there could not be held forever, they set up what could be called their own denazification program. Once they had impressed upon the Nazis that while they would eventually be released, what they should be considering was the conditions on which they would be released, and that the Argentine government did not consider itself bound by the deal struck between Mr. Dulles and myself. That, in other words, should they misbehave, they would be sent back to Germany to face trial.”

  “How did you feel about that?”

  “General, my insistence on including the Nazi members of my organization in my arrangement with Mr. Dulles was not out of concern for the Nazis, but rather their families. I knew what the Soviets would do to them.”

  White was silent a moment. Then he nodded and said, “I had to ask, General Gehlen.”

  “I understand. Well, to shorten this. General Martín and Otto Niedermeyer have released some of our Nazis, starting with those they agree will pose the least threat to Argentina. Some have been released within Argentina, where the BIS keeps an eye on them. Others were released to Paraguay and Brazil. With regard to the former, the president is Major General Higinio Morínigo, who until we lost the war and the horrors of the death camps became known, was an unabashed admirer of National Socialism, generally, and Hitler, in particular.

  “The same is true of one of his colonels, Alfredo Stroessner, with whom Martín has had a relationship over the years, and has come to believe that Stroessner has not lost his admiration for National Socialism but believes the Nazis were responsible not only for the death camps and other atrocities but for what he calls the ‘perversion of National Socialism.’”

  “That’s absurd,” White said.

  “Of course it is. But Stroessner apparently not o
nly believes it, but has managed to bring President Morínigo around to believe it’s the case. Going off on a tangent, Martín believes that Stroessner intends to depose Morínigo as soon as he sees the opportunity so that he can bring ‘True National Socialism to Paraguay.’”

  “General Buckner,” White said, “General Simón Bolívar Buckner, who was killed on Okinawa, once told me that the man for whom both he and his father had been named wrote that South America is ungovernable.”

  “One sometimes does get that impression,” Gehlen said. “In this case, this plays to our advantage. Martín and Colonel Niedermeyer—with the concurrence of Colonel Frade—have been sending ‘True National Socialists’ to Paraguay after making it clear to them that Stroessner will execute them out of hand if he even suspects they were part of the evil Nazi cabal that caused the downfall of National Socialism.”

  “Incredible,” White said.

  “So far, I understand, Colonel Stroessner has only had to do this twice. And since then, the others have been diligently trying to be good Paraguayan National Socialists. As far as the Nazis released in Argentina are concerned, General Perón has made them conditionally welcome. I don’t think they’ll cause him, or us, any trouble.”

  “I’ve heard that he had—has—Nazi inclinations?”

  “According to Oberst Niedermeyer, he was a great admirer of Mussolini Fascism. Oscar Schultz told me Perón sees himself as the future Il Duce of South America.”

  “Speaking of Schultz, how much does he know of what’s going on with Colonel Mattingly?”

  Gehlen nodded toward Cronley, who replied: “Sir, I sent him—DCI sent him—a report of what happened in Vienna as soon as I got back and, at oh-dark-hundred this morning, I sent a report of what happened in Berlin, and told him I was going to go through with the Russian Orthodox funerals and then go back to Berlin.”

  And I also sent a message via Hansel to Clete saying I will scuttle any attempt to swap the Likharevs for Mattingly.

  But I don’t think this is the time to mention that.

  “Then the ball is in their court,” White said. “Whether to exchange Bob Mattingly for the Russian or not. I’m glad I don’t have to make that call.” He paused thoughtfully for a moment, and then went on: “Well, we should know soon. In the meantime . . . what do we do, Cronley?”