Black Ops

by W. E. B Griffin

  Against each side of the room were six olive-drab oblong metal boxes on wooden horses, just far enough toward the center so that their lids could be raised.

  On each box—on the top, the sides, and the front—was a stenciled legend, the paint a faded yellow. Castillo squatted to get a look.

  STIELHANDGRANATE 24

  20 STUCK

  BOHMISCHE WAFFENFABRIK A. G. PRAG

  It was a moment before he remembered that under the Nazis, Czechoslovakia had been the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” and that the “Bohemian Weapons Factory” in Prague was the Czech factory that the Germans had taken over.

  Kocian saw him looking.

  “Hand grenades aren’t the first thing that comes to mind when you hear ‘Bohemia,’ are they, Karlchen?”

  “No,” Castillo replied simply.

  Delchamps came off the ladder, saw the boxes, read the labeling, and said, “I was really hoping for something a little less noisy than potato mashers.”

  Castillo and Kocian both chuckled.

  Kocian went to one of the boxes and opened it with an ease that suggested this wasn’t the first time he’d opened a crate of hand grenades.

  What the hell. Why not? He was a corporal in Stalingrad when he was eighteen. He’s probably opened several hundred ammo boxes like these.

  Otto Görner, wheezing a little, came off the ladder.

  “Ach, mein Gott,” he said softly when he saw the ammunition boxes.

  Kocian took something wrapped in a cloth from the box and extended it to Castillo.

  “I considered giving you this when you finished West Point. But I thought you would either lose it or shoot yourself in the foot with it.”

  Castillo unwrapped the small package. It held a well-worn Luger pistol, two magazines, and what looked like twenty-odd loose cartridges.

  “You know what it is, presumably?” Kocian asked.

  West Point—or maybe Camp Mackall—came on automatically. Castillo picked up the pistol with his thumb and index finger on the grip, worked the action to ensure it was unloaded, then examined it carefully before reciting in English: “Pistol 08, Parabellum. Often referred to as the Luger. This one—made by Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken, Berlin, in 1913—is 9 by 19 millimeters. Also called 9mm-NATO.”

  Castillo looked at Kocian.

  “It was the Herr Oberst’s,” Kocian said. “He had that with him at Stalingrad. And before that, the Herr Oberst’s father, your great-grandfather, carried it in France.”

  “Jesus!” Castillo said.

  “It is now yours, Oberstleutnant Castillo,” Kocian said with emotion in his voice, and not a hint of his usual sarcasm.

  “How the hell did it survive the war?” Castillo asked.

  By then, without thinking about it, he had stuck his finger in the action and was moving it so that light would be reflected off his fingernail and into the barrel for his inspection.

  “It’s been used, but there’s no pitting.”

  “I have taken care of it, Karlchen,” Müller said. “Herr Kocian told me it would one day come to you.”

  “I envisioned somewhat different circumstances from these today,” Kocian said, and Castillo heard the sarcasm now was back in his voice.

  Castillo looked at Müller and again asked, “How the hell did it survive the war?”

  “When the Herr Oberst—after he was freed from the hospital—was given command of the Offizier POW Lager, he left it here. He told me the war was lost, and he didn’t want his father’s pistol to wind up in the hands of some Russian commissar.”

  “Here in the attic?”

  “No. Actually, he had me bury it in a machine-gun ammo box under the manure pile behind the stable. It was after the war that it—that all this material—was moved and placed up here.”

  “Tell me about that,” Castillo said.

  “Karl, we’re pressed for time,” Görner said.

  “Not that pressed,” Castillo said.

  “I don’t know, Otto, if you’ve ever heard this story,” Kocian said.

  “I have no idea what story you’re going to tell,” Görner replied.

  “Well, by the time the Herr Oberst and I got here,” Kocian went on, “this house was occupied by a company of American engineers. So we went to a farmer’s house—Müller’s father’s house—on the farm. The Herr Oberst then became ex-Gefreite Gossinger, as he didn’t want to be rearrested by the Americans as he would have been as an oberstleutnant. When I came back here from Vienna, he and Siggie’s father were plowing the field with the one horse that had miraculously escaped both the German Army and hungry people.

  “Two weeks after that, the Russians arrived. The border between the Russian and American Zones was then marked off, our horse stolen, and we were evicted on thirty minutes’ notice from Müller’s father’s house.

  “We came to the big house. The Herr Oberst planned to beg the American officer, a captain, for permission to live in the stable, and perhaps to work for food.

  “As we walked across the field, a small convoy of Americans arrived at the big house. Two jeeps, an armored car, and a large, open Mercedes. On seeing this, we turned and tried to hide. No luck. We were spotted. A jeep with three MPs and a machine gun caught us before we’d made a hundred meters.

  “We were then marched in front of the jeep up to the big house. As we got close to the Mercedes, we saw there was a senior officer in it. The Herr Oberst said, ‘One star, Billy, a brigadier.’

  “Then this brigadier general stood up and motioned for our captors to bring us close.

  “ ‘I am General Withers, the Military Governor of Hesse-Kassel,’ he said in perfect German. ‘I came here today in what my staff told me was going to be a vain search for an old and dear friend. Hermann, the same bastards told me they had proof you had been murdered by the Gestapo!’

  “The Herr Oberst . . .” Kocian went on, but then his voice broke. “The Herr Oberst . . . The Herr Oberst came to attention and saluted. General Withers got out of the car and they embraced, both of them crying.”

  “I had not heard that story,” Görner said. “I knew that he knew the military governor, but . . .”

  “The Herr Oberst was a proud man. He was ashamed that that friendship got him, got us, special treatment.”

  “You mean,” Delchamps asked, “permission to start up the newspapers again? Charley told us about that.”

  “That came later,” Kocian said. “That day, that very day, we were fed American rations—unbelievable fare; we had considered one boiled potato a hearty meal—and the engineer captain was told that his unit would be moved, and until it was, Herr Gossinger would look after the property. Staying in the apartment on the third floor.

  “The Americans were gone a week later. A sign was erected stating the property had been requisitioned for use by the military governor. American rations mysteriously appeared on the verandah. American gasoline mysteriously appeared in the stable, in which captured German vehicles suitable for adaptation to agricultural purposes had also mysteriously appeared. Getting the picture?”

  “What about the weapons?” Castillo asked.

  “There had been several ack-ack—antiaircraft—batteries on the property,” Kocian explained. “We found some of the weapons, and all of the hand grenades in the magazine of one of them. And others turned up. The Herr Oberst believed—as did your General George S. Patton, by the way—that it would be only a matter of time before the Red Army came through the Fulda Gap. We had seen the raping of Berlin and elsewhere. The Herr Oberst decided many would prefer to die fighting than fall into the hands of the Reds. So we moved the weapons here. Fortunately, they weren’t needed. Until now.”

  “What else is in the boxes, Billy?” Jack Davidson asked from behind Castillo.

  Castillo looked at him in surprise; he hadn’t seen or heard him coming up the ladder. And then he saw something else that surprised him. Without making a conscious decision to do so, Castillo had been feeding
the loose cartridges into his pistol’s magazine. One was already full, the other nearly so.

  “A little bit of everything,” Kocian replied. “One of the boxes is full of hand grenades. Several kinds of maschinenpistols—MP-40s, MP-43s—plus a number of pistols, mostly Walther P-38s, but some Lugers. There’s even American .45s.”

  “You just said the magic words, Billy,” Davidson said. “MP-43 and .45.”

  “Jack, you can’t go anywhere near the church—you can’t go anywhere—with a Schmeisser,” Castillo said.

  “I can, Karlchen,” Müller said. “I am licensed to have a machine pistol.”

  “Which means,” Davidson said, “we can have a couple of spares for Herr Müller on the floorboard of the car he’s in.”

  “That’s if Siggie is willing to involve himself in this,” Castillo said.

  “Ach, Karlchen!” Müller snorted, suggesting the question was stupid.

  “See if you can find a P-38 for me in there, Billy,” Delchamps said.

  “And a couple of .45s for me and Sparkman,” Torine said. “And for Charley, too. Charley is a real .45 fan.”

  “Not today, Jake,” Castillo said, in the process of slipping the Luger into the small of his back as he approached the ladder.

  [FIVE]

  “The Castle Walk”

  Philipps University

  Marburg an der Lahn

  Hesse, Germany

  1040 27 December 2005

  The castle of the Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel—now the signature building of Philipps Universität—had been built at the peak of a steep hill. What had probably been a path hacked out of the granite had been broadened over the years—most likely centuries—into a two-lane cobblestone road against the castle wall. Sometime later, an area perhaps two hundred meters long and thirty-five meters wide had been somehow added to the steep sides of the hill. A neat little wall kept people and cars from going over the edge into the city below.

  Castillo, the collar of his trench coat up and buttoned around his neck against the cold, sat with his feet dangling over the wall, clenching an unlit cigar between his teeth. Max, his natural coat clearly making him immune to the cold, lay contentedly by the wall. Siggie Müller, the drape of his Loden cloth cape revealing the outline of what had indeed turned out to be a Heckler & Koch MP7A1 submachine gun, leaned against the hood of Otto Görner’s Jaguar.

  Castillo was trying to follow his own advice—and for once being successful—which was that as soon as you have decided what to do, and put the decision into action, stop thinking about it and think of something else. That way, your mind will be clearer if you have to revisit your decisions when something goes wrong.

  What he had decided to do was send Jack Davidson to have a look at the church. Davidson was a recognized expert in being able to spot places where a sniper—or something else dangerous, such as an improvised explosive device, or IED—might be concealed.

  That decision had been implemented without even discussion. Edgar Delchamps suggested that it might be a good idea if he, too, went to the church and looked around. So both Jack and Edgar were at the church.

  It had been Castillo’s intention to send Inspector Doherty and Two-Gun Yung to das Haus im Wald. Both had made it clear that anyone refusing the services of two FBI agents—one of them very senior and the other a distinguished veteran of the Battle of Shangri-La—in these circumstances was not playing with a full deck.

  Doherty and Yung, now equipped with P-38s from the grenade cases in the attic, were melding themselves into the crowds of mourners and curious—mostly the latter, according to a telephoned report from Inspector Doherty—at Saint Elisabeth’s.

  So were Colonel Jacob Torine and Captain Richard Sparkman of the United States Air Force, both of whom had shot down Castillo’s theory that it might be a good idea if they went to Flughafen Frankfurt am Main and readied the Gulfstream for flight, in case they had to go somewhere in a hurry.

  “We’ll be ready to go wheels-up thirty minutes after we get to the airport,” Colonel Torine had said. “That’s presuming you can tell us where we’re going. And while you’re making up your mind about that, Captain Sparkman and I will pass the time in church.”

  Eric Kocian and Otto Görner and his wife and children, surrounded by twice their number of security guards, had gone to Wetzlar so they could be part of the funeral procession. Castillo was more than a little uncomfortable that Willi and Hermann were involved, but that decision, too, had been taken from him. Otto had decided there was no way the boys could be left at home without telling Helena why, and he wasn’t up to facing that.

  Otto said Helena would decide that if there was a threat to her and the boys, then there also was a threat to her husband, and he would just have to miss the Friedler funeral, something he had no intention of doing.

  What Castillo was thinking of, to divert his attention from those things now out of his control, was “the castle walk” itself.

  He had been here more times than he could count, from the time he was a small boy. He thought it was about the nicest place in Marburg. But when he had “suggested” to Otto that he have the security people bring Yung and Doherty here from the Europäischer Hof, he couldn’t think of its name. It hadn’t been a problem. Otto, an alt Marburger, had of course known where and what Castillo meant by “the castle walk.” But Castillo hadn’t heard him when Otto talked to the security people, so he hadn’t heard what name Otto had told them.

  It had to have a name—Universitätstrasse, or Philippsweg, or even Universitätplatz—and not remembering—maybe not knowing—what it was annoyed Castillo. So as he drove Otto’s Jaguar up the hill, and then onto it, he started looking for signs. He had found none by the time he’d brought the car to a stop and he and Siggie had gotten out.

  The castle walk was as he had remembered it, and he thought it had probably looked just about the same when his grandfather had begun his first year at the university. Or his great-grandfather.

  Castillo remembered sitting here with his mother, eating a würstchen, and then, when his mother wasn’t watching, throwing the sandwich over the edge and watching it fall. It was a long way down. Twice, he had managed to hit a streetcar. He had never been caught.

  “Karlchen,” Müller called softly, looking across the car and down the road.

  Castillo looked over his shoulder.

  A black Volkswagen Golf was coming up the road. The windows were darkened, and on its roof were multiple antennae neither available from nor installed by the manufacturer. It wasn’t the car that had taken Davidson and Delchamps to the church, but Müller obviously recognized it as a security car—he hadn’t bothered to move off the Jaguar, even when the Golf pulled in the parking space beside it—and Castillo was not surprised when Davidson and Delchamps got out.

  Delchamps held a large, somewhat battered briefcase in his hand, and Castillo decided that was where he was carrying the P-38 he’d taken from the hand grenade box in the attic.

  Castillo swung his legs off the wall and stood up. Max sat up, too.

  “A very interesting development, Ace,” Delchamps said.

  Castillo raised his eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Then he noticed that Delchamps was wearing gloves, some sort of surgeon’s gloves but thicker.

  Delchamps went into the briefcase and came out with what at first looked to Castillo like a small unmarked package of Kleenex, the sort found on hotel bathroom shelves and which some petty thieves, including one C. G. Castillo, often took with them when checking out.

  Delchamps went into the package and pulled from it another pair of the gloves. He handed them to Castillo.

  “Rubber gloves, Ace. Never leave home without them.”

  Castillo pulled them on.

  Delchamps went back into his briefcase and took out a business-size envelope.

  “Eagle Eye here spotted this in your prayer book,” he said.

  “What?”

  Davidson said, “Your seats—yours, Billy�
�s, and Otto’s—were in the second row, right side. There were prayer books, hymnals, whatever, in a rack on the back of the front row of seats—”

  “Pew,” Castillo corrected him without thinking.

  “Okay. Pew. A printed program was stuck in each prayer book. I saw this peeking out of the program in the center prayer book.”

  “And you opened it?” Castillo asked. “You ever hear of ricin?”

  “Edgar opened it,” Davidson said. “And yeah, Charley, I’ve heard of ricin.”

  “I stole those gloves from the lab at Langley,” Delchamps said. “They’re supposed to be ricin-proof. And a lot of other things proof. When the lab guy showed them to me, he said they cost thirty bucks a pair.”

  “Well, if we start soiling our shorts then dropping like flies, we’ll know he wasn’t telling the truth, won’t we?” Castillo said and reached for the envelope.

  “I don’t think they want you dead, Ace. If they did, they would have just put whatever on the prayer books.” Delchamps pulled, then released the wrist of his left glove; it made a snap. “But ‘Caution’ is my middle name.”

  He went into the briefcase again and came out with three red-bound books.

  “Billy and Otto don’t get no prayer books,” he said. “They’ll just have to wing it.”

  Castillo examined the envelope. It was addressed—by a computer printer, he saw; no way to identify which one—to “Herr Karl v. und z. Gossinger.”

  The envelope had been slit open at the top with a knife.

  Castillo reached inside and saw what looked like calling cards. He took them out. There were four, held together with a paper clip. They were printed, again by a computer printer. One read “Budapest”; the second, “Vienna”; and the third, “Berlin.”

  An “X” had been drawn across “Berlin” by what looked like a felt-tip permanent marker. The fourth card had “Tom Barlow” printed on it.