Death at Nuremberg

by W. E. B. Griffin

  “And?”

  “Colonel Wallace said he’s not going to drive here at night in a snowstorm, but that he’ll be here as soon as he can in the morning. And he told the major to make sure you and Winters were available.”

  “Winters won’t be. He’s flying to the Compound first thing in the morning to tell his wife what happened. I wanted her to hear it from him, not Wallace.”

  “You think she’ll still come down here?”

  “I dunno, Flo. But keep whatever you set up for her here in place.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “From now until we get this situation straightened out, I don’t want you and any of the girls to go anywhere, and I mean anywhere, alone. And take your pistols with you.”

  “I already told them. Can I ask who you think did this?”

  “Probably Odessa, but maybe the same people who went after you and Claudette.”

  “Can I tell her what happened?”

  “Why do I think you’ve already told her?”

  Florence looked very uncomfortable.

  “I thought I had made it clear that Claudette’s in the loop.”

  “I wasn’t sure.”

  “The next time you’re not sure, ask.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  [SIX]

  The Bar

  Farber Palast

  Stein, near Nuremberg

  American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  2120 24 February 1946

  Cronley more or less expected to find Janice in the bar when he walked in with his bodyguard. She wasn’t. Polkovnik Ivan Serov and Major Sergei Alekseevich were.

  Cronley pointed to an empty table, an order for his bodyguard to sit there, and then walked to Serov’s table.

  Serov stood up, smiled, and put out his hand.

  “I heard what happened,” he said.

  “I’ll bet you did,” Cronley said, taking the hand.

  “I’m glad you’re all right, James,” Serov said.

  “I’m fine.”

  I’m not fine. If I were fine, my brain would be functioning on all four cylinders and I would be able to guess whether the sonofabitch is really glad to hear I’m all right, or whether he’s sorry the assassins—his assassins—failed.

  “Sit down, have a little Johnnie Walker, and if you feel up to it, separate the facts from the rumors that are circulating through the Palast.”

  Cronley sat down.

  “I am glad you’re all right, Mr. Cronley,” Alekseevich said, and offered him his hand.

  And if my brain were functioning, I’d be able to guess if ol’ Sergei means that, or is nearly as accomplished a liar as ol’ Ivan.

  “Thank you,” Cronley said, as he took the hand.

  Alekseevich stood up and walked to the bar.

  “That’s a good idea, James,” Serov said, nodding toward the bodyguard. “One you should have thought of immediately when you lost your friend.”

  “Actually, Ivan, the bodyguard is Justice Jackson’s idea. Our roles seem to be reversed.”

  Serov chuckled.

  “That trench coat doesn’t do much to conceal his weapon, does it?” Serov asked. “What is it, a Thompson?”

  “The U.S. M1A1 Caliber .45 ACP submachine gun, commonly called ‘the Thompson’ or ‘the tommy gun,’ is a splendid weapon, Ivan. Our gangsters really love it. But it weighs about ninety pounds, kicks like a mule, and it is a bit difficult to hide under a trench coat.”

  Serov laughed.

  Alekseevich returned to the table holding three whisky-filled glasses with two hands.

  He set them on the table. Serov picked up his.

  “To assassins who miss,” he said.

  “I’ll drink to that,” Cronley said, and touched his glass to Serov’s.

  “Who do you think was responsible?”

  As if you don’t know.

  “Well, the first thing that came to mind was the NKGB.”

  “James, if it was the NKGB, they would have consulted me first.”

  I’ll be a sonofabitch! That sounded sincere.

  Serov crossed himself and then raised his right.

  “Before God, my friend, I swear on my mother’s grave, I know nothing about this!”

  My brain is really upgefukt. I believe him.

  “And then I thought it was probably Odessa. I think I’m getting close to von Dietelburg, and they know it.”

  “Thank you,” Serov said.

  “For what?”

  “For believing me. I could see in your eyes that you do.”

  Jesus!

  “Say nighty-night to your pals, Adonis. It’s get-tucked-in time,” Janice Johansen said.

  No one had seen her enter the bar.

  “I was about to ask James to have dinner with us, Miss Johansen,” Serov said. “We’d love to have you join us.”

  Janice gave him the finger.

  “Why? So you could put cyanide in his soup? On your feet, Jimmy boy!”

  Cronley stood up. Janice took his arm and propelled him toward the door.

  The bodyguard followed them out of the bar.

  XI

  [ONE]

  The Mansion

  Offenbach Platz 101

  Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany

  1005 25 February 1946

  Brigadier General Homer P. Greene was sitting with Colonel Mortimer Cohen, Max Ostrowski, and Cronley in the sitting room of the Mansion, when Colonel Harold Wallace and another officer walked in.

  “Good morning, General,” Wallace said.

  Greene answered Wallace’s unspoken question. “I drove down last night. Morty thought talking about this over the phone was a bad idea.”

  “Everybody knows everybody, right?” Wallace said.

  “I don’t know this officer,” Cohen said.

  “Sorry, this is Lieutenant Colonel Bill Conroy, my operations officer,” Wallace said. “Another OSS retread. We served together in London, then in France.”

  The two shook hands.

  “Congratulations, Cronley,” Conroy said. “You’re still alive. I just saw the Horch.”

  “My bullet-ridden Horch, you mean? The one with all the blood on the upholstery?”

  “I had it towed here,” Cohen said. “It was causing too much interest at the Palast.”

  “What Palast?” Wallace asked.

  “The Farber Palast. Where Cronley rests his weary head at night,” Greene said. “The chief of protection for Justice Jackson couldn’t be expected to sleep in a tawdry room in this tawdry dump.”

  “Sir, with respect, you seem to find some of this amusing. May I ask what?” Wallace asked.

  “Some things I’ve heard here are amusing. Cronley sleeping in the Duchess Suite in the Palast makes me smile. And Janice Johansen turning down Colonel Ivan Serov’s invitation to buy dinner for Cronley and her by giving him the finger and asking, ‘Why, so you can put cyanide in his soup?’ I wish I’d been there to see that. And some things I’ve heard are the direct opposite of amusing. Frightening. Sickening.”

  “Ivan Serov offered to buy Cronley dinner?” Wallace asked incredulously.

  “Oh, you haven’t heard that Morty, Cronley, and Serov have become pals? You’re really in the dark, Harold.”

  “I’d like to come into the light, sir. Can we start the debriefing? I’d like to get the facts to Mr. Schultz as soon as possible.”

  “Done deed,” Greene said. “I just got off the SIGABA with him. Cronley thought he’d place more credence in my report than in his.”

  Wallace gave Cronley a dirty look.

  “Obviously, Cronley didn’t think I would be interested.”

  “Sir, Major Henderson suggested that since we didn’t have any intel but the basic facts, i
t would be better to wait until you got here,” Cronley replied.

  “Where is Henderson? And where is Winters?”

  “Henderson is taking a tour of Wewelsburg Castle, and Winters is at the Compound telling his wife what happened.”

  “That obviously means Conroy and I are the only ones in the dark.”

  “You won’t know how dark, Harry,” General Greene said, “until Morty brings you up to date on Wewelsburg Castle, a.k.a. the Heinrich Himmler Cathedral.”

  “I’ve heard those rumors, General, and found them hard to believe. Is there something I don’t know?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Greene said. “Not some thing, Harold. Lots of things.”

  “So what happened, Cronley?” Wallace said. “Tell me what I don’t know.”

  “Yes, sir. When I came back from Strasbourg—”

  “What the hell were you doing in Strasbourg? You were sent here to protect Justice Jackson, nothing else.”

  “I guess one of the things you didn’t know is that Schultz told him to take down Odessa,” Greene said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Oscar told me,” Greene said. “I wonder why he didn’t tell you?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Cronley, hold off telling Colonel Wallace why you were in Strasbourg and tell him what happened when you came back,” Greene ordered.

  “Yes, sir. Winters met me in the Horch at the airport. We were taking a shortcut to the Palast on a back road. We came up behind a slow-moving truck Winters couldn’t get around. An Audi, headlights out, came up behind us. The truck stopped. Winters bumped it hard. The Audi pulled behind us, a guy got out and started shooting at us with a Schmeisser.”

  “And?”

  “I got out of the Horch and took him down.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “Yes. He’s in stable condition at the 385th Station Hospital,” Cohen answered for him. “He is former SS-Obersturmbannführer Günther Kuhn. The girl is—was—his daughter Elfriede.”

  “What girl?” Conroy asked. “And how did you identify him, them, so quickly?”

  “The girl was driving the Audi,” Cohen said. “She died during the ambush.”

  “How?” Conroy pursued.

  “I shot her,” Cronley said. “In the forehead.” He pointed with his index finger.

  “How were you able to identify them? Positively? So quickly?” Wallace asked impatiently.

  “I am always delighted to explain CIC techniques to a fellow intelligence officer,” Cohen said sarcastically. “What we did, Colonel, was check the prewar records of the Bavarian Motor Vehicle Bureau for a 1939 yellow-and-black Audi soft-top.

  “There were complete records for one hundred fifty-three such vehicles. One hundred forty-nine of them had either been requisitioned by the Todt Organization or reported as destroyed. There were four whose records said they had been stolen. One of the four was registered to SS-Obersturmbannführer Kuhn.

  “He was on your list of senior SS officers to be looked for, probably, I thought, because he had been on the personal staff of Reichsführer-SS Himmler. Such senior officers often reported their personal cars stolen just before the Todt Organization requisitioned them. Since they were senior SS officers, the Motor Vehicle Bureau took them at their word. The vehicles then disappeared under a haystack on a farm somewhere, from which they would rise phoenixlike after the Final Victory.

  “We knew that SS-Obersturmbannführer Kuhn had a farm not far outside Nuremberg, because we had gone there looking for him. So I sent one of my men, dressed as a Nuremberg policeman, to the farm. He told Frau Kuhn that her daughter had met her fate in an auto accident and she would have to identify the remains. My guy then took Frau Kuhn to the German hospital to which I had moved the body.

  “When the sheet was pulled from the girl’s corpse, Frau Kuhn screamed at my guy, ‘You stupid sonofabitch of an American lackey! This was no auto accident. My daughter was shot! Shot by your goddamned Jewish masters.’

  “Or words to that effect. At that point, Frau Kuhn was taken into custody.”

  “You arrested her?” Wallace asked. “On what charge?”

  “The German authorities arrested her. She is charged as an accessory before the fact with murder. The Germans also arrested former SS-Obersturmbannführer Kuhn for murder.”

  “But neither Cronley nor Winters were hurt,” Wallace challenged.

  “Their daughter was killed. Under German law, anyone involved in a crime is responsible for anything that happens during the commission of that crime. Their daughter was unlawfully deprived of her life, which is the definition of murder, during Kuhn’s attempt to unlawfully deprive Mr. Cronley and Lieutenant Winters of their lives. Since there is no longer a death penalty in Germany, the punishment for murder is life imprisonment at hard labor. If the Kuhns do not understand this law, their court-appointed attorneys will explain it to them at the earliest opportunity.

  “The funeral will be delayed until her parents can attend her interment. Until, in other words, we can shackle her father, who will be dressed in prison clothes, to a wheelchair, which Frau Kuhn, also shackled, and wearing a prison dress, will be permitted to push to the gravesite.

  “I will have people at the cemetery to see who shows up for the burial of a fallen heroine of the Himmler cult, and to check their Kennkarten to see if that’s who they really are. We may get lucky.

  “Following the interment, the Kuhns will be returned to their solitary confinement cells, where they will have time to think about their future. After they have had what I consider to be sufficient time to do that thinking, either Cronley or I will visit them and offer a reduction in the charges against them to manslaughter, which carries a penalty of five to twenty years if they give us former Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg.”

  “You or Cronley?”

  “I haven’t made up my mind whether they will react better to a nasty Hebrew colonel or to a nice young man who speaks fluent German with a Strasbourg accent and who looks like a poster boy for an SS recruitment poster.”

  “Thanks a lot!” Cronley protested.

  “You said, ‘Himmler cult.’ What’s that?” Wallace asked.

  “It’s the religion Himmler set up, with Castle Wewelsburg as its Vatican,” Cohen said.

  “You’re telling me you’re placing credence in that nonsense?”

  “Oh, yes. And so do persons of much higher pay grade than you and I.”

  “What persons of higher pay grade? Chief Schultz? The admiral?”

  “When I was telling Schultz what Super Spook the poster boy—”

  “Jesus Christ!” Cronley said.

  “—had come up with in Strasbourg, he brought the subject up. He said the admiral had told him Justice Jackson had told the President that he was worried that all that hanging Göring and company was going to do was give the German people martyrs to Nazism. The President said that Jackson had heard from me about what had gone on at Castle Wewelsburg and he wanted the admiral to get to the bottom of it.

  “So the admiral told Schultz to get on it. So Schultz asked me what we were doing, and I told him what Cronley and I were doing. And he said, ‘Keep Cronley at it. Give him whatever he asks for.’”

  “What else did he say?”

  “All right. What Schultz actually said was, ‘Cronley is a lot smarter than most people think. So give him what he wants and keep out of his way until he does something really dumb.’”

  Wallace obviously regretted asking the question, but he didn’t reply directly, instead asking, “What did go on at this castle?”

  “Prepared to be disturbed, Harold,” General Greene said. “Tell him, Morty. Just the high points. We don’t have time for the full lecture.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cohen said. “Harold, this is where we are in looking into Castle Wewelsburg an
d what went on there, what we think is still going on. It now seems beyond doubt that Heinrich Himmler was trying to start—hell, started—a new religion using the castle as its cathedral . . .”

  —

  “And you believe this?” Wallace asked perhaps five minutes later when Cohen had finished.

  “Yeah, I do,” Cohen said. “More important, Harold, so do the admiral and Schultz.”

  “And you think Odessa is connected with it?”

  “I think Odessa is an integral part of this. If we can shut down Odessa, we just might be able to shut down this cult. And the way to do that is to get our hands on SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg. He’s the connection between Odessa and the cult. That’s what Cronley was doing in Strasbourg.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “The floor is yours, Super Spook,” Cohen said.

  “We now know my cousin Luther was sent to Strasbourg by von Dietelburg to set up an Odessa escape route through France. And we know he was in touch with Odessa—which means with von Dietelburg—recently because when we caught him he was trying to get SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter and SS-Standartenführer Oskar Müller across the border into France. That was an Odessa operation. We also know that Cousin Luther is into this new religion business. At least to a certain degree.”

  “What do you mean by that? ‘To a certain degree’?” Wallace asked.

  “He has so far resisted answering questions posed to him by Commandant Fortin. Fortin thinks Luther could only keep his mouth shut, quote, if he was answering to a higher court, close quote, which we think is the Himmler religion.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I told him that unless he gives me von Dietelburg by half past two today, I’m going to give him to Fortin.”

  “Fortin already has him.”

  “But has not applied his full arsenal of interrogation techniques, because Cousin Luther and I are kin.”

  “What’s the full range consist of?”

  “I don’t want to know, but at the end of the list, Fortin shoots the one being interrogated in the knees and elbows with a .22 and then tosses him in the Rhine to see how well he can swim.”