Black Ops

by W. E. B Griffin

  Castillo nodded.

  “We’re about two hundred miles—half an hour—from Flughafen Frankfurt am Main,” Torine went on.“There was an in-flight advisory just now; we are to be met by unidentified government authorities.”

  Castillo raised his eyebrows, then looked at Davidson. “Jack, make sure to remind me to remind everybody my name is Gossinger.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Oberst.”

  “Just ‘herr,’ Jack. My grandfather was the oberst. I’m the ne’er-do-well heir to the fruit of his hard labor.”

  “I knew that,” Davidson said.

  Ground Control directed the Gulfstream to a tarmac and collection of buildings away from the main terminal. Castillo thought—but wasn’t sure—that it was probably what was left of what had been Rhine-Main USAF Base.

  A number of vehicles—Castillo recognized both Otto Görner’s company Mercedes-Benz S600 and his personal Jaguar XJ—were waiting for them. Görner was out of his Jaguar and headed for the airplane before the stair door swung open.

  When Görner came up the stairs, Max growled.

  “Get your goddamned animal under control, Billy!” Görner almost shouted.

  “That’s Karlchen’s goddamned animal, Otto,” Kocian replied. “Talk to him.”

  Görner looked around the cabin, then at Castillo.

  “I thought you were coming alone,” he said unpleasantly, the translation of which was I told you not to bring anybody from the CIA with you.

  “Obviously, you were wrong,” Kocian said, then nodded in the direction of the crowd outside his window. “Who are all these people, Otto?”

  “Some are from the Bundeskriminalamt, some are our security people, and some are the press.”

  “The press?” Castillo asked incredulously.

  “The Tages Zeitung is going to offer a reward—fifty thousand euros—for information leading to the arrest of the people who killed Günther Friedler,” Görner said evenly. “And that announcement will be made by you, Herr von und zu Gossinger, as chairman of the executive committee, just as soon as you get off this airplane.”

  He handed Castillo a sheet of paper.

  “I took the liberty of preparing a few words for you to say when you make the announcement,” Görner said.

  Jack Davidson saw the look in Castillo’s eyes.

  “Easy, Charley,” Davidson said softly in Pashtu, one of the two major languages of Afghanistan, the other being Afghan Persian. “Be cool. Count to two thousand five hundred eleven. By threes. In Russian. Slowly.”

  Görner looked at Davidson, clearly annoyed that he didn’t understand what had been said.

  Castillo met Davidson’s eyes. He nodded and smiled just perceptibly. He was aware that he was furious, and had already ordered himself to put his mouth on total shutdown.

  He glanced at Görner and thought: Since I don’t think you want me set up to be killed, Otto, what the fuck were you thinking?

  Is this punishment for bringing what you think is the CIA with me?

  No. You wrote my speech before you knew I had.

  What this is, is Teutonic stupidity!

  He looked back at Davidson and said in Russian, “Two thousand five hundred eight. Two thousand five hundred eleven.”

  Now both Kocian and Görner looked at him in confusion.

  “Daddy’s proud of you,” Davidson said in Pashtu, and meant it. He had been witness to Castillo losing his temper. “You get a gold star to take home to Mommy.”

  “That’s a very good idea, Otto,” Castillo said in English. “And thank you for this.” He held up the sheet of paper. “After I announce the reward, what happens?”

  “We go to Wetzlar so that you and Billy can pay your respects to Frau Friedler.”

  “I see a couple of problems with that, Otto. One is that I didn’t know Herr Friedler or his wife and feel that I would be intruding on Frau Friedler’s time with Billy.”

  Kocian grunted his agreement.

  “Another is the dogs,” Castillo went on. “I don’t think Billy wants to take Mädchen and the pups, and I know I don’t want—”

  “Pups?” Görner asked. “You mean baby dogs?”

  “Four of them,” Castillo said, pointing down the aisle at the travel kennel. “One of them is a gift from Billy and myself to your kids, our godchildren.”

  “We can talk about that later,” Görner said.

  “And I want to get Inspector Doherty and Special Agent Yung—”

  “Who?”

  “They’re FBI, Otto. I want to get them together with the German police as quickly as possible—”

  “Karl, I don’t know about that,” Görner protested.

  “We’re going to need all the help we can get to find these murderers, Otto,” Billy Kocian said. “And Doherty and Yung are recognized experts in their fields.”

  He didn’t say which fields, Castillo thought admiringly.

  I don’t think either one of them knows much about investigating a murder. But Billy knows Otto can be a self-righteous pain in the ass unless you control him.

  And already Billy is acting in charge, letting Otto know, as I’d hoped.

  “I’ll get on the phone,” Görner said.

  “So what I’m thinking, Otto, is that it would be best if you took Billy to Wetzlar and I took Doherty and Yung to Marburg—put them up in the Europäischer Hof, where they could get together with the authorities first thing in the morning. Then I’ll take everybody else—including the dogs—with me in either the Jag or the Mercedes and the van to the Haus im Wald. That make sense?”

  “It does to me,” Billy Kocian said, his tone suggesting his opinion settled the matter once and for all.

  Görner looked at him for a long moment, made a face of resignation, and nodded.

  “Take my Jaguar,” he said. “I suspect I will need a drink—several drinks—in Wetzlar, and I don’t want to drink and drive.”

  [FOUR]

  Route A5

  Near Bad Homburg

  2210 26 December 2005

  “Please do so,” Castillo said in response to an announcement from the information operator that, having found the number he asked for, they would for a small fee be happy to connect him directly.

  Castillo was driving the Jaguar. Edgar Delchamps was in the front passenger seat. David Yung and Jack Davidson were squeezed in the backseat with Max between them. Max looked out the rear window at the Mercedes-Benz van that was following them and carrying Jack Doherty, Jake Torine, Dick Sparkman, Mädchen, the puppies, two members of the Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., security staff, and their luggage.

  “Europäischer Hof,” came over the speaker system of the Jaguar. “Guten Abend.”

  “Here is Karl von und zu Gossinger, of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft,” Castillo replied more than a little imperiously in German.

  “And how may we be of service, Herr von und zu Gossinger?”

  “I will require accommodations for the next few days for two business associates. A suite with separate bedrooms would be preferable, but failing that, two of your better singles.”

  “We will be honored to be of service, Herr von und zu Gossinger. When may we expect your associates?”

  “In about an hour. I presume there will be no difficulty in billing this directly to the firm?”

  “None whatever.”

  “We will wish to eat. Will that pose a problem?”

  “We will keep the restaurant open for your guests, Herr Gossinger.”

  Castillo’s face wrinkled as he continued looking forward and mentally counted heads.

  “There will be nine of us.”

  “We look forward to serving you, Herr von und zu Gossinger.”

  “Thank you very much,” Castillo said, and reached for the telephone’s OFF button on the spoke of the steering wheel.

  Edgar Delchamps applauded.

  “Very good, Herr von und zu Gossinger,” he said. “Just the right touch of polite arrogance. I could he
ar him clicking his heels.”

  “Well, you know what they say, Edgar. ‘When in Rome,’ or for that matter, in Das Vaterland . . .”

  “That said, don’t you think it’s about time to bring your business associates up to speed about where everybody, including you, fits into the landscape?”

  Castillo was silent a long time as he considered that. Then he made a small frown that suggested, Why not?

  “Okay,” he said. “Take notes. There will be a quiz. Think Stalingrad. The Red Army is firing harassing and intermittent artillery at the Germans. They get lucky and make a hit on a Kublewagon—”

  “A what?” Yung asked.

  “The military version of the Volkswagen Bug,” Davidson furnished. “They were selling them in the States a while back.”

  “Oh, yeah. I remember,” Yung said. “Cute little car!”

  “If I may be permitted to continue with the history lesson?” In the rearview mirror, he saw Yung mouth, Sorry. “Thank you. Said Kublewagon was carrying a light bird, general staff corps, on Von Paulus’s staff—”

  “I remember Von Paulus,” Delchamps said. “He got on the phone to Hitler, told him they were surrounded, out of ammo, down to eating their horses, and could he please surrender? To which Der Führer replied, ‘Congratulations, General, you are now a field marshal. German field marshals do not surrender. You do have, of course, the option of suicide. . . .’ ”

  “Really?” Yung asked.

  “And the next day, Field Marshal von Paulus surrendered,” Delchamps finished, “in effect telling Hitler, ‘Screw you, my Führer.’ ”

  Castillo said: “If I may continue: The light bird in the Kublewagon suffered life-threatening wounds and would have been KIA had not an eighteen-year-old Gefreite—a corporal—from Vienna dragged him into the basement of a building and applied lifesaving measures. No good deed goes unpunished, as you know. The next couple of H-and-I rounds hit the building, causing the corporal to also suffer grievous wounds.

  “The next day, the medics found both of them and loaded them—my grandfather the light bird and Billy Kocian the corporal—on one of the last medical evacuation flights back to the Fatherland . . .”

  “No shit!” Yung said wonderingly.

  “. . . where both were put into an army hospital in Giessen, which is not far from where we’re going. Billy got out first. To keep him from being sent back to the Eastern Front, good ol’ Grandpa got him assigned as his orderly. When Grandpa got out of the hospital, they put him in charge of an officer’s POW camp in Poland. He took Gefreite Kocian with him.

  “This place was the nearest officers’ POW camp to the Katyn Forest, near Smolensk, in Russia. A couple of hundred miles—”

  “You’re losing me, Charley,” Jack Davidson said.

  “When the Germans and Russians were pals, and they invaded Poland in 1940, the Russians took almost five thousand Polish officers who had surrendered out to the Katyn Forest. First they made them dig holes . . .”

  “Okay,” Davidson said. “I’m now with you.”

  “I’m so glad, Jack,” Castillo said. “After the officers had dug the holes, the Russians wired their hands behind them, shot them in the back of the head with small-caliber pistols, and dumped them in the holes, which were then covered up.”

  “Nice people, the Russians,” Delchamps said. “Anybody who knows me knows I’ve always said that.”

  Castillo went on: “When the Germans and the Russians were no longer pals, and the Germans invaded Russia, and they got to Smolensk, they found the graves. The Russians denied any knowledge, said if anybody shot Polish POWs, it had to be those terrible Germans.

  “How to get the truth out? wondered those terrible Germans.

  “One of the prisoners in my grandfather’s POW camp was Patton’s son-in-law. My grandfather was ordered to take him and a bunch of other American field-grade officers, including some doctors, to the site, and proved to them that their Russian buddies were the bad guys.

  “The story didn’t come out for years, but the Americans who had been taken to Katyn knew about it, and remembered the German officer who had taken them to see the graves.

  “Okay. So now the war is over. My grandfather and Billy are released from our POW camps and go home. Grandpa goes home and finds that all of his newspapers have been bombed and that most of his farmland is on the wrong side of the fence between the American and Russian zones. Meanwhile, Billy goes home to Vienna and finds that all of his family was killed the day we bombed Saint Stephen’s Cathedral and the Opera House.

  “Billy then makes his way to Fulda. My grandfather had become a father figure to him. And vice versa. The two of them dig into the rubble that had been the printing plant of the Fulda Tages Zeitung and put together one Mergenthaler Linotype machine from what was left of two dozen of them.

  “That machine is now on display in the lobby of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. It was used to set the type for the first postwar edition of the Tages Zeitung.

  “When my grandfather had applied to the American Military Government for permission to publish, he thought he had one thing going for him. A classmate at Philipps University—an American brigadier general—was military governor of Hesse and knew my grandfather was not a Nazi.

  “Actually, Grandpa had three things going for him. Second was that counterintelligence had found his name on a Gestapo hit list; he was involved in the 1944 bomb plot. The only reason he hadn’t been shot—or hung on a butcher’s hook—was that the Gestapo thought he was already dead. And, third, the officers he’d taken to Katyn remembered him as a good guy.

  “The first post-war Tages Zeitung was in Fulda. Then Kassel. Then Munich. Billy Kocian was sent to Vienna to get the presses up and running and then to look around for a staff, including editors, for my grandfather to vet. He was then twenty-one or twenty-two. The next time my grandfather heard from Billy was when Billy sent him the first edition of the Wien Tages Zeitung. The masthead read: Eric Kocian, Associate Publisher and Editor in Chief.

  “My grandfather in effect said, ‘What the hell, why not? Give him a chance. See if he sinks or swims.’ Billy swam.”

  “Herr Oberst,” Yung said. “Billy Kocian’s history is fascinating, but is there a bigger point to all this?”

  “Bear with me,” Castillo said. “So things were looking up. My grandfather had two children, my Uncle Willi and my mother. Uncle Willi went to Philipps, took a degree in political science, and went to work for Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, bringing with him his buddy Otto Görner.

  “My mother was the princess in the castle. Everybody thought that as soon as she was old enough to make it socially acceptable, she would marry Otto, who was being groomed to handle the business side—as opposed to just the newspaper side—of the business.

  “And then into the princess’s life appeared the evil American—in the right seat of a D-model Huey—playing war with the Fourteenth Armored Cavalry, which in those days patrolled our fence line with East Germany. And three or four days later, said evil American disappeared, never again to be seen by the princess.

  “The kindest thing my grandfather had to say when he was told he was going to be a grandfather was that he thanked God my grandmother wasn’t alive to be shamed by my mother’s blatant immorality.

  “When I asked why I didn’t have a daddy like the other kids, Grandpa would walk out of the room and my Uncle Willi would tell me—little Karlchen—that that was not to be discussed. All my mother would say was that my father was an American army officer who had had to go away and would not be coming back, and that I was not to talk about him to Grandpa, Uncle Willi, or ‘Uncle’ Otto.

  “Then, when I was about eleven, Uncle Willi, with my grandfather next to him on their way home from Kassel, drove his Gullwing Mercedes off a bridge on the A7 Autobahn at an estimated one hundred thirty miles an hour.

  “That left my mother and me alone in the Haus im Wald, the family castle, which actually looks more like a
factory. Mother again declined Otto’s offer of marriage. She inherited her one-quarter of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, the other three-fourths going to Uncle Willi and Uncle Billy and yours truly in equal parts. Uncle Willi had left everything he owned—his quarter—to my mother in the belief that she would eventually come to her senses and marry Otto. So she got that share, too.

  “But it wasn’t in the cards for my mother to live happily ever after with Little Karlchen in the castle. Six months after Uncle Willi and Grandpa went off the A7 bridge, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Terminal. Two months to live.”

  “Jesus!” David Yung exclaimed.

  “At which point, Mother, apparently deciding that the orphan-to-be needed to establish contact with his father, whether or not the father was going to be pleased to learn that he had left a love child behind in Germany, turned to the 14th Armored Cavalry for help, giving them the father’s name—Castillo—that she had steadfastly refused to give her father.

  “The Fourteenth’s regimental commander turned over the task of locating the father to one of his majors, one Allan B. Naylor—”

  “Who now has four stars—that Naylor?” Davidson asked.

  “That’s the guy,” Castillo confirmed. “He had a little trouble locating a Huey jockey named Castillo who had once maneuvered with the Fourteenth. Reason being: He was in San Antonio, in the National Cemetery there, with a representation of the Medal of Honor chiseled into his headstone.”

  “Your father won the Congressional Medal of Honor?” Yung asked softly.

  “It’s properly just the ‘Medal of Honor,’ David. And you don’t win it. You receive it.”

  “No offense, Charley.”

  “None taken. Well, this changed things a good deal. The illegitimate offspring of a Medal of Honor recipient can’t be treated like just one more bastard among the maybe a hundred thousand bastards spawned by the U.S. Army of Occupation. And Naylor, being Naylor, had also found out that I would own, when my mother died, all of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft with the exception of Billy Kocian’s quarter-share.

  “That raised the very real possibility that a wetback Texican family living in squalor on the riverbank in San Antonio was suddenly going to get their hands on the considerable fortune of the grandchild, nephew, cousin, whatever, they didn’t even know existed.