“That scenario has run through my mind, Ivan.”
“And now?”
“Somewhat reluctantly, Colonel Fortin has agreed to help me give former Sturmführer Luther Stauffer a Christian burial.”
“What’s the point of that?” Tiny asked.
“I could lie and say I want to see if anybody interesting shows up for the funeral, but the truth is that I want to be able to tell my mother that after her nephew Luther—her last living relative—was murdered, I saw to it that he was buried next to his parents.”
“Your mother knows he was in the SS?” Serov asked.
“No. And I hope I don’t have to tell her,” Cronley said. “What happened was that when I first came to Germany and was a very junior CIC agent manning a roadblock in Marburg an der Lahn, I got a letter from my mother asking me, if possible, to put some flowers on the graves of my grandparents.
“She said they were buried in the family plot in the Sainte-Hélène Cemetery, in a little Dorf called Schiltigheim just outside Strasbourg. Until I got that letter, I had never considered that I had grandparents over here—or any grandparents at all. My father’s parents died long before I was born.
“Anyway, as soon as I could, I got a three-day pass and drove to Strasbourg. That’s a long ride in an open jeep in the winter. It took me some time to find the cemetery, and even longer to find flowers to place on my grandparents’ graves, but eventually there I was. It was—the Stauffer plot was—surprisingly well maintained. There’s a monastery nearby, and I guessed they maintained the cemetery.
“There were two fairly new graves, with tombstones. Josef and Maria Stauffer. Clever fellow that I am, from the dates I deduced this was the grave of my mother’s brother—and therefore my uncle—and his wife. I knew that when my mother married my father, her family disowned her, and I knew this bothered her. So, standing at my grandparents’ and my uncles’ and aunts’ graves, I shifted into Boy Scout mode . . .”
“Which means?” Serov asked.
“I decided to see if there were any other relatives. If I could find somebody, I would go to him or her and say, ‘I’m Wilhelmina Stauffer’s son, and your cousin, nephew, whatever, and I think it’s high time you and my mother made up.’
“So I went to the Strasbourg Police Station—”
“Why didn’t you go to the DST?” Tiny asked.
“Because I had never heard of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire. So I asked the cop, a sergeant, in German, which was probably a mistake, making him wonder about an American speaking German with a Strasbourg accent, if he could help me find any members of the Stauffer family living in Strasbourg.
“I could see that got his attention. He asked me why I wanted to locate such people. I told him my mother was from Strasbourg, and her maiden name had been Stauffer.
“He said he would make inquiries. So I stood there with my thumb up—you know where—for maybe twenty minutes until he came back. He had a French Army captain with him—starchy sonofabitch—and he demanded—not asked—for my identity card. So I flashed my CIC credentials and then he asked what was the interest of the CIC in the Stauffer family. So I went through the whole story again for him.
“He said, ‘Give me a minute and I’ll see what I can find for you.’ Twenty minutes later—maybe half an hour—he came back and said sorry, he couldn’t find any record of any living Stauffers, but if I gave him my address and phone number, he would look further and be delighted to let me know if he found anything.
“So I got back in my jeep and drove back to Marburg through a snowstorm. I never heard from him. I decided there were no more Stauffers and forgot about it.
“Then a couple of months or so later, I was at . . . a military installation not far from Munich—”
“The Pullach Compound or Kloster Grünau?” Serov asked.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Colonel Serov.”
“Then I guess you’re not going to tell me how one day you’re a second lieutenant manning an unimportant checkpoint in Hesse and three months or so later, you’re a captain—and chief, DCI-Europe—in Bavaria?” Serov asked.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Chum Ivan, but even if I did, I couldn’t talk about it because something like that would be classified Top Secret–Presidential.”
Serov laughed.
“As I was saying, when I was in this place outside Munich, I got a letter from my mother saying she had gotten a heart-wrenching letter from her nephew—my cousin Luther—who said he’d finally made it home to Strasbourg from the war but didn’t have a job, or any prospects, and practically nothing to eat, and if there was anything she could do to help . . . et cetera. She said she had made up some packages of food and had mailed them to me, and if there was any way I could get them to him, it was obviously the Christian thing for me to do.
“Four huge packages arrived a couple of days later—canned hams, chicken, coffee, sugar, you name it. They had been opened by the Army Postal Service and had ‘Evidence’ stamped all over them in large red letters.
“They were delivered not by the APO, but by a CIC agent who worked for Colonel Mattingly. He handed a memo—an interagency memorandum—to me with copies to General Seidel, the USFET provost marshal, the Munich provost marshal, and some other brass . . . including El Jefe. It said that the next time I felt it necessary to import such items from the States in connection with my duties as . . . with my duties, I do so through him.”
“He meant your duties as chief, DCI-Europe?” Serov asked.
Tiny answered for him: “The obvious purpose of the memorandum was to suggest to everybody on the Copies To list that Cronley was a black marketeer.”
“You mean that he meant to suggest that the chief, DCI-Europe, was—”
“Fuck you, Chum Ivan,” Cronley said.
Serov chose to ignore him.
“And who is El Jefe?” he asked.
“My boss, Chum Ivan, but that’s all you get,” Cronley said, and then went on. “My first reaction was to throw the packages away, but then I decided to deliver them. Or at least one of them.
“But then Fat Freddy and Tiny intuited something smelled.”
“Fat Freddy is?”
“You met him, Chum Ivan. Here. He’s my chief of staff. Sort of a younger version of Colonel Cohen.”
“I’d forgotten.”
“Freddy thought that we should learn more about Cousin Luther, and that showing up in a staff car with Twenty-third CIC painted on the bumpers was not the way to do that. So I put on a gold bar and quartermaster insignia, and we drove down there in one of our ex-ambulances that had 711th MKRC painted on the bumpers.”
“Which meant?”
“Originally—my idea when I thought we had to paint something other than Twenty-third CIC on the bumpers—it stood for Mess Kit Repair Company, but Fat Freddy made me change that to 711th Mobile Kitchen Renovation Company.”
Serov chuckled and said, “Clever. What could be more innocent than a kitchen renovation company?”
“So we went to Strasbourg and met with Cousin Luther and his wife, Ingebord,” Cronley continued. “And gave them two of my mother’s packages. They were suitably grateful. And then Freddy started talking about there being more PX black market goodies available, if Luther knew anyone who would pay for them and make sure no one learned about it.
“Cousin Luther said he’d see what he could come up with, and then we left.
“On our way out of town, we were congratulating ourselves on how clever we were. Cousin Luther, we cleverly deduced, was up to his ears in the black market, and we would work our way up that chain of command and at least be able to nab a serious black marketeer or two, and possibly somebody, or something, more important.
“And then we were stopped by French police militaire, who escorted us to the headquarters of th
e Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire—which even if we had heard of it, we knew next to nothing about it—and where Commandant Jean-Paul Fortin was waiting for us.
“Cutting to the chase, Commandant Fortin said he knew there was no unit called the 711th Mobile Kitchen Renovation Company because he had asked his good friend Brigadier General Homer Greene—”
“The USFET counterintelligence chief?” Serov asked.
Cronley nodded.
“So what the hell were we doing in Strasbourg talking to Luther Stauffer?
“When you can’t think of anything else, tell the truth. So I did. Fortin then showed me a photograph of my cousin Luther getting married. He was in uniform. That of a Sturmführer. We later learned the wedding took place in Castle Wewelsburg.
“Fortin said that General Greene had told him something else. That the story going around the intelligence community that DCI-Europe was sort of a joke, and not a serious intel operation, the proof being that its commander was a very junior twenty-two-year-old captain, was obfuscation.
“So, Fortin said, he was going to tell me of DST’s interest in my cousin Luther. Luther’s story was that he had deserted the SS in the last days of the war and made his way home. Fortin believed Luther had been sent there by Odessa, specifically by SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg, whom he suspected was running Odessa, to facilitate the escape of senior SS officers and other Nazis from Germany into France, and then, via Spain, to South America.
“He said my snooping around Luther was going to interfere with his surveillance of him, so butt out unless you learn something that might help me catch von Dietelburg. So I dropped contact with Cousin Luther until Casey Wagner figured out how Odessa was using Stars and Stripes trucks to smuggle Nazis into France through a little Dorf on the border called Wissembourg.
“So I got in contact with Fortin and told him what Casey had come up with. He said that was very interesting, because Cousin Luther was spending a lot of time in Wissembourg. Cutting to the chase, we caught Odessa trying to smuggle two really bad Nazis across the border, and Fortin caught Cousin Luther waiting for them on the other side.
“So he’s been trying to get Where’s von Dietelburg? intel from Luther ever since. Without much success. According to Fortin, he resisted with a ‘religious-like fervor,’ which of course made us think of what went on at Castle Wewelsburg.
“When I suggested to Fortin that the threat of the hangman’s noose might seem more real to Cousin Luther if he was in the Tribunal prison and could take his meals with Göring and company, whom he knows we’re going to hang, he agreed to let me bring him here.
“Where Odessa took him out with a cyanide capsule.”
“So where do you—we—go from here?” Serov asked.
“I don’t know about you, Chum Ivan, but I’m going to Strasbourg tomorrow to bury my beloved cousin Luther beside his parents in the Sainte-Hélène Cemetery. And right about now, I think, a Strasbourg policeman is going to visit Ingebord in her cell and tell her she’s a widow. One of Jean-Paul’s policemen, if I have to say that.
“He will tell her she will have to get Fortin’s permission to attend the interment. The idea being to see how quickly—and via whom—the word gets out that he’s dead and that there will be a funeral at Sainte-Hélène’s. Whether or not she goes, Fortin will cover the cemetery with his people to see who turns up.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” Janice asked.
Cronley considered that a moment.
“As a friend or the AP needing a ride?”
“Both.”
“Okay,” Cronley said.
“Thank you, Jim, for your candor,” Serov said.
“As I said before, Chum Ivan, the way to get me to run at the mouth is to ply me with champagne and flowers.”
[TWO]
Sainte-Hélène Cemetery
Schiltigheim, near Strasbourg, France
1605 2 March 1946
There was a small chapel Cronley hadn’t noticed during his first visit to the cemetery. The monks of the monastery were using it to perform the mass of Christian burial for Luther Stauffer.
Cronley, Janice, DCI Special Agent Max Ostrowski—who was filling in as Cronley’s bodyguard as Cezar Zieliński was in Vienna—Commandant Fortin, and Captain Pierre DuPres were standing in the shadow of a large mausoleum a hundred yards away. They had watched as the Widow Stauffer arrived in a prison van. First a wheelchair had been unloaded from the van, and then Frau Stauffer, who was dressed in a prison-gray dress. Two burly matrons had seated her in the wheelchair, then handcuffed her to it.
She had then been wheeled into the chapel past a small crowd of people—some with umbrellas against a light snowfall—gathered outside. Next, the ex-ambulance that had carried Luther Stauffer’s remains from Nuremberg rolled up. A half dozen monks took the casket from the ambulance and carried it into the chapel. They were followed by a procession of monks, and finally by perhaps the dozen remaining people who were standing outside.
“Full house,” Cronley observed.
“How long is this going to take?” Janice asked. “My tuchus is freezing.”
“Long enough, I hope,” Captain DuPres said, “for our photographers to get good pictures of the mourners.”
The mass took about forty minutes before a procession of monks preceded the casket out of the chapel. The procession headed for the burial site as the civilian mourners made their way out of the building. Finally the widow was rolled out. She was not handcuffed, but there was a matron on either side of her.
She looked around the cemetery and spotted Cronley.
Oh, shit!
She jumped out of the wheelchair, pointed at Cronley, and screamed, “Meurtrier, sonofabitch meurtrier, j’espère que vous brûlerez en enfer!”
One of the matrons grabbed her hand and shoved a hypodermic through the gray prison dress. A moment later she sagged, and the matrons settled her in the wheelchair.
“What was she yelling?” Janice asked.
“It was unpleasant, mademoiselle, not important,” Fortin said.
“Murderer, sonofabitch murderer,” Cronley softly made the translation. “I hope you burn in hell.”
“Oh, Jimmy!” Janice said.
“Let’s get the hell out of here and go home,” Cronley said.
[THREE]
The Duchess Suite
Farber Palast
Stein, near Nuremberg
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0805 3 March 1946
Lieutenant Tom Winters knocked at the door of the Duchess Suite, the expression on his face making it clear that he wished he could be doing something—anything—else.
He had to knock three times before there was a response.
“What?” Cronley called, not at all pleasantly.
“Lieutenant Winters, sir. May I come in?”
Cronley called, “Wait a minute,” and then turned to Miss Janice Johansen, with whom he was sharing the enormous bed.
“You can either make a dash for the bathroom or hide under the covers.”
“Why?” she asked. “Tom already suspects—hell, knows damned well—that I’m in here.”
She rolled onto her back and pulled the sheet up under her chin.
“Come!” Cronley called.
Winters entered the room, carefully keeping his eyes away from the bed.
“You can say hello to Janice, she thinks you already know our shameful secret.”
“Hi, Tom,” Janice said. “How’s every little thing?”
“This better be important,” Cronley said. “I had a very bad day yesterday, from which I have by no means recovered.”
Winters crossed the room and handed Cronley an envelope.
“What’s this?” Cronley asked, then took a closer look at the envelope. It was
postmarked Vienna, with the name and address of the sender, neither of which Cronley recognized. It was addressed to Herr J. D. Cronley, Offenbach Platz 101, München, which was the address of the Mansion.
“It came first thing this morning,” Winters said.
“You didn’t open it?”
“It’s addressed to you.”
“But you decided I should have it right away?”
“I had one of those ‘go with your gut’ feelings you’re always talking about.”
Cronley opened the envelope. It contained a single sheet of paper.
“Typewritten,” he said. “Unsigned. In English.” And then he read it: “‘Inasmuch as I believe I have found what you’re looking for, I strongly suggest you join me as soon as possible, letting as few people as possible know you’re doing so.’ No signature.”
“Zieliński?”
“Who else?” Cronley asked. “But why didn’t he get on the phone? Why a letter sent through the Austrian postal system?”
“Gut reaction?” Winters asked.
Cronley made a Come on gesture with his right hand.
“He probably thinks he’s being surveilled, that he doesn’t have access to a secure phone, and that there are moles both in the Austrians you’ve been dealing with and even in Colonel Wasserman’s CIC operation.”
Cronley grunted.
After perhaps fifteen seconds, which seemed longer, he said, “That gut feeling you mentioned, Tom?”
“What about it?”
“My gut tells me that we should get in our airplanes and go listen to some Johann Strauss music.”
“We? Now?”
“We. Now. Get on the horn to the airfield.”
“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going?” Janice asked.
“Because you’re not.”
He threw off the sheet covering him and marched naked to a chest of drawers in search of underwear.
[FOUR]
Suite 330
The Hotel Bristol
Kaerntner Ring 1, Vienna, Austria
Death at Nuremberg Page 32
