Cronley could hear Tedworth posing the question.
“Yes, sir,” Tedworth reported,
“Tell her to get out her notebooks and sharpen her pencils. First order of business is to get Heimstadter and Müller talking. Are the photographers there?”
“Yes, sir. I haven’t told them what for.”
“Tell them. Get them all set up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Unless you have something else, I think that’s it.”
“I don’t have anything else, sir.”
“Break it down, Fulda,” Cronley said, and then turned to Frade and asked, “You heard?”
“I heard. The Good Lord, thanks to Ludwig, seems to be on our side.”
“Now all we have to do is get seats on the courier flight,” Cronley said. “Start praying, Ludwig.”
“For the moment, until el Coronel Perón finally gathers the courage to face my wrath by seizing it, SAA is still a DCI asset,” Frade said. “If the chief, DCI-Europe, wants to commandeer the SAA Constellation aircraft sitting at Tempelhof, I would have no choice but to comply. And everybody could go.”
“Consider it commandeered,” Cronley said. “Thanks.”
“There’s a caveat,” Frade said. “Everybody would include the eight gentlemen from BIS. I promised General Martín to give them a tour of DCI-Europe.”
“Which means you want me to let them into Kloster Grünau? What would El Jefe think about that?”
“Let me put it this way, Jimmy: When the executive assistant to the director of the DCI was in Argentina, the director of the BIS called him ‘Oscar’ and Schultz called General Martín ‘Bernardo.’”
“The director of DCI-Europe accepts your kind offer, Colonel Frade. How soon can we leave?”
“As soon as we get to Tempelhof.”
[ SEVEN ]
Kloster Grünau
Schollbrunn, Bavaria
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1505 10 February 1946
CIC Supervisory Special Agent John D. “Jack” Hammersmith walked into one of the cells under what had been the monastery chapel.
Former SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter, naked under a blanket, was sitting on a wooden chair.
He looked up questioningly at Hammersmith.
“I would like to apologize for taking your clothing, Herr Heimstadter,” Hammersmith said. “The DCI doesn’t follow the procedures of the Counter Intelligence Corps when it comes to the treatment of prisoners. I’ll see what I can do about at least getting your underwear and your trousers back immediately. And I guarantee that when you’re placed in my custody for transfer to the Russians, you will be fully clothed.”
“Transfer to the Russians?” former SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter asked. “I thought that when I was . . . detained . . . I would be sent to Nuremberg. I want the chance to prove my innocence of the unfounded accusations made against me.”
“Well, what’s happened is that the Russians have put in a strong request to USFET that you be transferred to them.”
“Why are the Russians interested in me?”
“I’ve heard they want to ask you about Peenemünde and the rocket work that went on there. That was the reason General Bull said he had no objection to your being transferred, as we know all about Peenemünde.”
“What do you mean, you know all about it?”
“I don’t know why I’m even discussing this with you. But after how badly the DCI has treated you . . . I thought you would know that the scientists, from Dr. Wernher von Braun down, whom the Nazis had pressed into service at Peenemünde were so happy to be freed from what amounted to Nazi imprisonment that they not only told us everything we wanted to know, but volunteered to go to America to help us with our rocket program. Just about all of them are now in Huntsville, Alabama. You didn’t know this?”
“I would say, sir, that you have your facts wrong.”
“What facts?”
“Wernher von Braun was not a ‘Nazi prisoner,’ for one. He held the rank of sturmbannführer in the SS.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“And I can’t think of one senior scientist at Peenemünde who wasn’t a member of the Nazi Party.”
“Give me the name of one who was.”
“I can give you the names of just about everyone who was. I suggest, sir, that you have been taken in by dozens of ‘anti-Nazis’ who were in fact members of the Nazi Party.”
“Give them to me.”
“Not if you’re going to turn me over to the Russians.”
“Frankly, I think you’re making all this up to keep from being turned over to the Russians.”
“I swear to God! I swear on the grave of my mother that I’m telling you the truth!”
Hammersmith considered that for fifteen seconds.
“Would you be willing to be interviewed by a French officer with whom the CIC has been working on Peenemünde—he has no connection with the DCI—about the Nazis you say were in Peenemünde, give him the names of the Nazis who are now in the United States?”
“If you do not hand me over to the Russians, I would be pleased to tell the whole world about these Nazis who you believe are now your friends.”
Hammersmith paused thoughtfully for a long time.
“The interview would have to be done immediately,” he said. “And it would have to be filmed. People in Washington would have to hear what you say. I can keep you from being handed over to the Russians, but I can’t have you sent to the States, at least until I know you’re telling the truth.”
“I swear to God I will tell you the truth,” Heimstadter said fervently.
“Well, let me see what I can set up,” Hammersmith said.
He then left the cell and walked down the corridor to the cell that held former SS-Standartenführer Oskar Müller and had essentially the same conversation, with the same results, with Müller.
[ EIGHT ]
Kloster Grünau
Schollbrunn, Bavaria
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0815 12 February 1946
The screen—a sheet stapled to the wall of Cronley’s office—went white as the film running through the projector ran out.
“Great job!” Cronley said. “Thanks, guys. This was really important.”
“If you want, I can make up a title board for it,” CID agent Walt “Hollywood” Thomas, of the CID photo lab, who had photographed the interviews, and then had done a rush job overnight of processing the film, said.
“Saying what?” Cronley asked.
“‘German Canaries Sing.’ Both of those bastards were really trying to stick it to the Peenemünde Krauts, weren’t they?”
He heard what he had said, and quickly went on. “No offense, General.”
“None taken, Mr. Thomas,” General Gehlen said. “I’ve heard the phrase before.”
“What did you think, General?” Cronley asked.
“I think it will splendidly serve the intended purpose,” Gehlen said.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell us what that is?” Thomas asked.
“Correct. You win the cement bicycle and an all-expenses-paid tour of downtown Pullach,” Cronley said.
“Can I ask what you are going to do with those two . . . German gentlemen?”
“Nice try, Thomas,” Ludwig Mannberg said. “But while they are German, they’re not gentlemen.”
“At 0900 tomorrow, we’re going to try to swap them with the Russians for Colonel Mattingly,” Cronley said. “And if that doesn’t work—and I don’t think it will—I’m going to turn them over to Military Government for trial at Nuremberg. If anybody deserves the hangman, those two do.”
“If you had let me interrogate them,” Konrad Bischoff said, “I’d have had them sin
ging like canaries about what they did to the workers at Peenemünde.”
“But if I had,” Cronley said, “then Thomas would have had movies of two guys with broken noses, black eyes, and lots of bruises. That would have been counterproductive to our purpose of the film. And besides, don’t take offense, Konrad, but I think Captain DuPres is a better interrogator than you are.”
Bischoff didn’t say anything, but he looked at Gehlen, obviously hoping Gehlen would defend him.
“I have to admit, Captain DuPres,” Gehlen said, smiling, “that your handling of those two Peenemünde Krauts was beyond reproach.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Please give my regards to Commandant Fortin when you see him,” Gehlen said, as he got to his feet.
“Mon General, I will be honored to do so.”
“How did you do, ladies?” Cronley asked Claudette Colbert and Florence Miller, who had both recorded the filmed interview in shorthand.
“A couple of corrections,” Colbert replied. “We can have it all fixed in an hour.”
“Great!”
Gehlen said: “Before I go back to the Compound, Jim, if it would be all right with you, I’d like to have a look at Lazarus.”
“And so would I,” Mannberg said.
“I’ll walk you over to the chapel, sir,” Cronley said. “Can I ask . . .”
“Why? I don’t know why. Simple curiosity, perhaps. Or one of those . . . what do you call them? ‘Feelings in the gut.’”
—
One of Tiny’s Troopers pulled the door to Lazarus’s cell open and motioned Gehlen to go in.
Cronley saw Lazarus sitting on a wooden chair as Mannberg followed Gehlen into the cell. He was examining what was obviously a just-changed bandage on his shoulder.
“Ach, du lieber Gott!” Mannberg exclaimed softly.
Lazarus rose from the chair, came to attention, and snapped a bow.
“The Herr General will understand that I am not at all happy to see him,” Lazarus said.
“Franz,” Gehlen said, “isn’t the attempted kidnapping of two American enlisted women a bit beneath the dignity of an SS-brigadeführer?”
“One does, Herr General, what one must to survive. May I suggest the Herr General knows that?”
“Forgive my bad manners, Jim,” Gehlen said. “May I introduce former SS-Brigadeführer Baron Franz von Dietelburg?”
“I’ll be a sonofabitch!” Cronley said.
“I have the privilege of Captain Cronley’s acquaintance,” von Dietelburg said.
“The last we heard of SS-Brigadeführer von Dietelburg, Jim,” Mannberg said, “he had been marched off to Siberia with General von Paulus after the debacle at Stalingrad.”
“To judge by that suit of clothing, Ludwig,” von Dietelburg said, “you have not only survived the collapse of the Thousand-Year Reich, but seem to have prospered. You’re now Number Two in the Gehlen Organization. Very impressive!”
“Actually, I’m Number Three,” Mannberg replied. “Then as now, Oberst Otto Niedermeyer is the general’s deputy. He’s now in Argentina.”
“Have you forgotten, Ludwig, that at one time I had the privilege of serving as the Herr General’s deputy?”
“I stand corrected, Herr Baron. I do recall that,” Mannberg said. “That was before the Herr General decided your primary loyalty was to Himmler and had Admiral Canaris have you transferred to the Sixth Army.”
“I suppose I should be expected to say something like this,” General Gehlen said, “but I have had a . . . gut feeling . . . all along that you didn’t perish at Stalingrad. Did you turn, Franz, before or after General von Paulus surrendered?”
“I began to realize that the Soviets were going to win when, because of the Fuhrer’s incompetent interference with the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, we failed to take not only Stalingrad, but the oil fields . . . et cetera. So I used my contacts to—”
Cronley’s mouth went on automatic: “This is fucking surreal.”
“Excuse me, Jim?” Gehlen said.
“This conversation, this standing around, pretending you’re all gentlemen politely discussing things of mutual interest, like a bunch of fraternity guys discussing how to get laid, is . . . fucking surreal.”
“What we are, if I may, Captain Cronley,” von Dietelburg said, “are professional intelligence officers. Are we gentlemen? Yes, I would hope we fit that term, but primarily professional intelligence officers. As such, we see a situation for what it really is, rather than what we would prefer it to be.”
“And what would you prefer this situation to be?”
“What it was before Herr General and Ludwig walked in here. I was close to thinking everyone accepted me to be Major of State Security Venedikt Ulyanov. As Major Ulyanov, I could see several ways out of my then uncomfortable position.”
“What rank did the Reds give you?” Mannberg asked.
“At first the NKGB equivalent of my SS rank. I have subsequently been promoted.”
“And do you see a way out of your now changed situation?” Cronley interrupted angrily.
“Just two. One is that, after interrogation, you will dispose of me here, and maintain the polite fiction that you had no idea that Major Ulyanov was actually Commissar 2nd Rank of State Security Ulyanov.”
“You now have a Russian name?” Gehlen asked conversationally.
“Or,” von Dietelburg went on, ignoring Gehlen’s question, “you can take me to wherever you’re dealing with Ivan Serov and see who the NKGB thinks is more valuable to them, me or your Colonel Mattingly.”
“If they would take you back, Franz,” Gehlen said, “you would probably wind up in the execution cell in the basement of that building on Lubyanka Square.”
“But ‘probably,’ Herr General, I’m sure you will agree, is a more pleasant word than ‘certainly,’ which would apply to my being buried in an unmarked grave here, or spending the rest of my life in a prison cell here in Germany.”
[ NINE ]
Glienicke Bridge
Wannsee, U.S. Zone of Berlin
0855 13 February 1946
The huge Red Army truck backed onto the bridge as usual. When its doors opened, Cronley saw that Colonel Mattingly was again sitting chained to a chair.
“Go,” Cronley ordered, and Jack Hammersmith put the Ford staff car in gear and drove onto the bridge, stopping twenty feet from the white line marking the center of the bridge.
When Ivan Serov appeared, Cronley got out of the front seat of the staff car and walked to within a few feet of the white line.
Janice Johansen trotted onto the bridge with two Leica cameras hanging from her neck and started taking pictures.
“Good morning, James,” Serov said. “Presumably the Likharevs are delayed?”
“They’re not coming, Ivan,” Cronley said. “But there’s a consolation prize.”
He raised his right hand, balled in a fist, above his shoulders and moved his arm up and down. It was the standard U.S. Army hand signal for “Join me.”
Ludwig Mannberg got out of the left rear of the staff car and walked around the rear and opened the right rear door. Captain Chauncey Dunwiddie got out and then turned to help former SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg out. When he was standing beside Dunwiddie, a shirt draped over but not concealing the massive bandage on von Dietelburg’s shoulder, Mannberg reached into the car and came out with a U.S. Army officer’s trench coat, which he draped around von Dietelburg’s shoulders.
Dunwiddie put a massive hand on the trench coat over von Dietelburg’s good arm and marched him to the white line.
Serov’s face showed no expression.
“Turn Colonel Mattingly loose, Ivan,” von Dietelburg said. “The operation didn’t go quite as we planned it.”
Serov didn’t move, and his face remained expressionl
ess.
“Get Colonel Mattingly out of the truck now,” von Dietelburg ordered coldly.
“You know how it goes, Ivan,” Cronley said. “You win some and you lose some.”
Serov flashed him a furious glance.
Then he turned and started barking orders.
Mattingly was unchained from his chair and then helped to his feet and off the truck.
As he approached the white line, Dunwiddie took his arm off von Dietelburg.
“It was good to see you, Ludwig,” von Dietelburg said.
“Good luck, Franz,” Mannberg replied.
“And I would be remiss not to thank you, Captain Cronley, for not only my treatment but your courtesies.”
“You’re welcome,” Cronley said.
As Mattingly and von Dietelburg passed each other at the white line, they nodded at one another.
Dunwiddie took Mattingly’s arm and guided him to, and then into, the staff car, and then got in beside him. Cronley and Mannberg walked to the car. Just before he got in, Cronley turned to Janice Johansen and made an obscene gesture that would guarantee the photographic image she was making of him would never appear in a newspaper.
“Wiseass!” she said.
Hammersmith started the car, made a tight U-turn, and drove off the bridge.
[ TEN ]
Page 1, above the fold, STARS AND STRIPES 14 February 1946.
CONSTABULARY ENLISTED MEN NAB WANTED SS BIG SHOTS
Constabulary Commander Lauds Three Constabulary Troopers for “Great Work”
By Janice Johansen
Associated Press Foreign Correspondent
Sonthofen February 13—
Major General Ernest Harmon, Commanding General of the U.S. Constabulary (left in photo) congratulates (left to right) Constabulary troopers 1st Sgt A. L. Tedworth, Sgt Homer B. Kelly, and Pfc Peter J. Foster for their capture of SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter and SS-Standartenführer Oskar Müller as Major General I. D. White (far right) looks on.
The long-sought SS officers were arrested by the Constabulary troopers at a remote Constabulary checkpoint on the Franco-German border very early in the morning of February 12.
Curtain of Death Page 37
