The Assassination Option Part 26

"So he was a collaborator?"

"So it would appear," Fortin said. "The LVF, after training, was sent to what the Boche called 'the East,' as the Wehrmacht approached Moscow. They fought the Russians there, and whether through bravery or inept.i.tude, suffered severe losses and were returned to Germany."

"You seem to know quite a bit about this volunteer legion," Cronley said.

"Keeping up with them became sort of a hobby with me while we were in England. And as I had been a.s.signed to military intelligence, it wasn't difficult."

"How'd you get to England?"

"I was with General de Brigade de Gaulle at Montcornet, and I was one of the officers he selected to accompany him to England when he flew there on June seventeenth, 1940."

"I don't know what that means," Cronley confessed.

"There are those, including me," Hessinger chimed in, "who believe the only battle the Germans lost in France in 1940 was Montcornet."

"You know about it?"

"De Gaulle attacked with two hundred tanks and drove the Germans back to Caumont," Hessinger replied.

"Where most of our tanks were destroyed by Stukas," Fortin said. "Who attacked us at their leisure because our fighter aircraft were deployed elsewhere," Fortin said. "Anyway, to answer Herr Cronley's question, a month to the day after Montcornet, I flew to England with General de Gaulle."

If de Gaulle flew you to England with him, and you were with Leclerc when he liberated Strasbourg, and then became the Strasbourg chief of police, how come you're still a major?

Answer: You're not. You just want people to think you're not as important as you really are.

Colonel Sergei Likharev of the NKGB didn't want people to think he was as important as he is, so he called himself Major Konstantin Orlovsky.

I wonder if your real name is Fortin, Commandant-probably Colonel-Fortin?

"What was left of the Legion des Volontaires Franais," Fortin went on, "was a.s.signed relatively unimportant duties in Germany-guarding supply depots, that sort of thing."

"And Stauffer was among them?" Cronley asked.

"Oh, yes. The Boche liked him. He'd been awarded the Iron Cross and promoted to leutnant for his service in the East. Then, in September 1944, a month after General Leclerc and the French Second Armored Division liberated Paris, the Germans merged all French military collaborators into what they called the 'Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS Charlemagne.'"

"'All French military collaborators'?" Cronley parroted.

"The Boche had also formed the Horst Wessel brigade of young Frenchmen. Other collaborators had had a quasi-military role in Organisation Todt, which built the defenses in Normandy and elsewhere-the defenses that had failed to stop the Allied invasion. Then there was the collaborationist version of the Secret State Police, the Geheime Staatspolizei, which was known as the Milice. And there were others who fled as the Allies marched across France.

"The Germans didn't trust many of them, but they apparently did trust Leutnant Stauffer. He was taken into the SS as a sturmfhrer-a captain-and put to work training the newcomers."

"And here is Sturmfhrer Stauffer," Hessinger said, as he handed Cronley the dossier.

Cronley looked at the photograph of a young man in uniform.

I'll be a sonofab.i.t.c.h, Cousin Luther was an SS officer.

Fortin extended his hand for the dossier, looked at it, and said, "Forgive me for saying this, Mr. Cronley, but he looks very much like you."

"I noticed," Cronley said.

"In February 1945," Fortin went on, "the brigade was renamed 'the Thirty-third Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS Charlemagne,' then loaded on a train and sent to fight the Red Army in Poland. On February twenty-fifth it was attacked by troops of the Soviet First Belorussian Front and scattered. What was left of them retreated to the Baltic coast, were evacuated by sea to Denmark, and later sent to Neustretlitz, in Germany, for refitting.

"The last time anyone saw Sturmfhrer Stauffer was when he went on a three-day leave immediately after getting off the s.h.i.+p in Germany," Fortin said matter-of-factly. "We think it reasonable to believe he deserted the SS at that time, even before his comrades reached Neustretlitz. It is possible, even likely, that he made his way here to Strasbourg and went into hiding."

"You think he deserted because he could see the war was lost?" Cronley asked.

"I'm sure he knew that, but I think it more likely that he heard somehow-he was an SS officer-what the Boche had in mind for them."

"Berlin?" Hessinger asked.

Fortin nodded.

"The remaining collaborators," Fortin amplified, "about seven hundred of them, went to Berlin in late April, just before the Red Army surrounded the city. A week later, when the Battle for Berlin was over, what few were left of them-thirty-surrendered to the Russians.

"According to the Russians, they fought bravely, literally until they had fired their last round of ammunition. I'd like to believe that. But on the other hand, what other option did they have?"

"Desertion?" Cronley asked.

"Desertion was more dangerous than fighting the Russians, as those thirty survivors learned. Of the seven hundred men who went to Berlin, seventy-two died at the hands of the SS for attempting to desert. They were hung from lamp poles pour encourager les autres."

"You have no idea where Luther Stauffer is?" Cronley asked.

"I have not been entirely truthful with you, Mr. Cronley," Fortin said. "I wouldn't be surprised if at this moment he's at Hachelweg 675 here in Strasbourg."

They locked eyes for a moment.

"And I have not been entirely truthful with you, either, Commandant Fortin," Cronley said.

He took his Directorate of Central Intelligence identification from his Ike jacket and handed it to Fortin.

Fortin examined it carefully and then handed it back.

"I'm impressed," he said. "The DCI has only been in business since the first of January, and here you are-what? a week and two days later?-already hard at work."

"And I'm surprised that the Strasbourg chief of police has even heard about the DCI."

"I'm just a simple policeman," Fortin said, with a straight face, "but I try to stay abreast of what's going on in the world. Are you going to tell me what your real interest in Luther Stauffer is, Mr. Cronley?"

"He's my cousin. I should lead off with that. He-actually his wife-wrote my mother begging for help, saying they were starving. She sent food-canned hams, coffee, cigarettes, et cetera-to me and asked that I deliver them to him."

"And?"

"When we were in his house, all three of us sensed that he wasn't telling us the truth. He said he was conscripted into the German Army . . ."

"Where he served as a common soldier, a grenadier," Hessinger injected.

". . . which sounded fishy to us, so Mr. Hessinger suggested that the police might be able to tell us something about him."

"I'm disappointed," Fortin said. "Frankly, I was hoping the DCI was working on the Odessa Organization. I'm almost as interested in that as I am in dealing with our collaborators."

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about."

"It stands for the Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehrigen," Hessinger said. "Organization of Former German SS Officers."

"Sort of a VFW for n.a.z.is?" Cronley asked.

"'VFW'?" Fortin parroted.

"Veterans of Foreign Wars," Cronley explained. "An American veterans organization. My father has been president of VFW Post 9900 in Midland as long as I can remember."

"Your father was in the First War?" Fortin asked.

"He was. And he was here in Strasbourg when the Communists tried to take over the city. That's where he met my mother."

"Which you said is why you speak German like a Strasbourger," Fortin said. "And your mother, I gather, maintained a close relations.h.i.+p with her family here?"

"No. Quite the opposite. Once she married my father, her family wanted nothing to do with her. The only contact she ever had with them was a letter before the war saying her mother had died. And then the letter asking for help."

"What would your reaction be if I told you that once I get what I want to know from Luther Stauffer about Odessa, I'm going to arrest him and charge him with collaboration?"

"Why is Odessa so important?"

"The purpose of Odessa is to help SS officers get out of Germany so they can't be tried for war crimes. I like SS officers only slightly more than I like collaborators."

"What I have heard of Odessa," Hessinger said, "is that it's more fancy than fact."

"Then, Herr Hessinger, you have heard wrong," Fortin said simply.

"I can ask General Greene what he knows about Odessa," Cronley said to Hessinger.

"And what is your relations.h.i.+p with the chief of CIC of the European Command?" Fortin asked.

So he knows who Greene is. Commandant Fortin does get around, doesn't he?

"He tells me what I want to know," Cronley said.

"I'm just a simple policeman," Fortin repeated. "So when I look at you, Mr. Cronley, I see a young man. Logic tells me you are either a junior civilian, or a junior officer. And that makes me wonder why the chief of CIC, European Command, would tell you anything he didn't want to tell you."

When you can't think of anything else, tell the truth.

"Actually, I'm a captain seconded to DCI," Cronley said. "The reason General Greene will tell me everything I want to know is because he has been ordered to do so by Admiral Souers, who speaks with the authority of President Truman."

"And who do you work directly for, Captain Cronley?"

Army captains are rarely, if ever, directly subordinate to Navy admirals. And "Commandant" Fortin knows that. So the truth-that I work directly under Admiral Souers-won't work here.

"We have a phrase, Commandant, 'Need to Know.' With respect, I don't think you have the need to know that."

"I'm familiar with the phrase, Captain."

"If you don't mind, Commandant, I prefer 'Mr. Cronley.'"

"Of course," Fortin said. "I asked you before, Mr. Cronley, what your reaction would be if I told you I sooner or later intend to arrest your cousin Luther and see that he's tried as a collaborator?"

Cronley very carefully considered his reply before deciding again that when all else fails, tell the truth.

"I don't think I'd like the effect that would have on my mother."

"But you just told me she's had no contact with him since she married."

"He's her nephew. She's a woman. A kind, gentle, loving, Christian woman."

"And that would stop you from helping me to put him in prison?"

"The way you were talking, I thought you meant you were going to put a blindfold on him and stand him against a wall."

"If I had caught him when we liberated Strasbourg, I would have. But General de Gaulle says that we must reunite France, not exacerbate its wounds, and as an officer, I must obey that order. The best I can hope for is that when I finally go to arrest him, he will resist and I will be justified in shooting him. If he doesn't, he'll probably be sentenced to twenty years. Answer the question."

"I have no problem with your trying him as a collaborator," Cronley said. And then, he thought aloud: "I could tell my mother I knew nothing about him, or his arrest."

"But you would be reluctant to lie to your mother?" Fortin challenged.

Cronley didn't reply.

"Because she is, what did you say, 'a kind, gentle, loving, Christian woman'?"

Again Cronley didn't reply.

"Allow me to tell you about the kind, gentle, and loving Christian women in my life, Mr. Cronley. There have been two. One was my mother, and the second my wife. When the Mobilization came in March of 1939, I was stationed at Saumur, the cavalry school. I telephoned my mother and told her I had rented a house in Argenton, near Saint-Martin-de-Sanzay, near Saumur, and that I wanted her to come there and care for my wife, who was pregnant, and my son while I was on active service.

"She would hear nothing about it. She said that she had no intention of leaving her home to live in the country. She said what I should do is send my family to my home in Strasbourg.

"I reminded her that we seemed about to go to war, and if that happened, there was a chance-however slim-that the Germans would occupy Strasbourg as they had done before. Mother replied that it had happened before and she'd really had no trouble with the Germans.

"So my wife went to stay with my mother.

"About six months after I went to England with General de Gaulle, the Milice and the SS appeared at her door and took my mother, my wife, and my children away for interrogation. They apparently believed that I hadn't gone to England, but was instead here, in Strasbourg, organizing the resistance.

"That was the last anyone saw of my mother, my wife, or my children. I heard what had happened from the resistance, so the first thing I did when I got back to Strasbourg with General Leclerc was go to the headquarters of the Milice. The collaborators, my French countrymen, had done a very good job of destroying all their records.

"I have heard, but would rather not believe, that when the Milice, my countrymen, were through with their interrogation of my mother, my wife, and my children, their bodies were thrown into the Rhine."

"My G.o.d!" Cronley said.

"Your kids, too? Those miserable motherf.u.c.kers!" Sergeant Finney exclaimed bitterly in English.

Cronley saw on Fortin's face that he had heard the expression before.