The Assassination Option Part 4

"Two yesterday," Hessinger chimed in.

Dunwiddie gave him a withering look and went on. ". . . directly related to security breaches, attempted and successful, of this operation," Dunwiddie finished.

"The Russians have a very good idea of what's going on in here," Cronley said. "We already have caught an NKGB colonel as he tried to sneak out of here with information given to him by German traitors. Your mission will be to augment the American soldiers-we call them 'Tiny's Troopers'-who have been guarding Kloster Grnau and are in the process of establis.h.i.+ng security at the Pullach compound."

"Sir, may I ask a question?"

"Ask away, but don't be surprised if I reply you don't have the need to know."

"Sir, I understand. My question-questions, actually-are can we expect further attempts by the Reds to gain entrance to either place?"

"I think you can bet your a.s.s they will," Cronley said.

"You said 'questions,' plural, Lieutenant?" Hessinger asked.

"Are there still the traitors inside you mentioned?"

Cronley answered carefully. "The NKGB colonel and the traitors he was dealing with are no longer a problem . . ."

My G.o.d, he means they have been "dealt with."

Which means killed.

". . . but we have to presume (a) there are more of them, and (b) that the NKGB will continue to attempt to contact them."

"I understand," Ostrowski said.

"I hope so," Cronley said.

Even as he spoke the word "understand" Ostrowski had thought that he not only understood what Cronley was telling him, but that his Third Life had really begun.

I've stumbled onto something important.

What I will be guarding here and at Pullach is not going to be what I expected-mountains of canned tomatoes and hundred-pound bags of rice in a Quartermaster Depot-but something of great importance to the U.S. Army and by inference, the United States itself.

And, whatever it is, it's just getting started.

And if I play my cards right, I can get my foot on the first step of that ladder of opportunity everybody's always talking about.

And the way to start playing my cards right is to become the best lieutenant of the guard not only in Detachment One, Company "A," 7002nd Provisional Security Organization, but in the entire G.o.dd.a.m.ned Provisional Security Organization.

Each night, Senior Watch Chief Ostrowski set his Hamilton chronograph to vibrate at a different time between midnight and six in the morning. He selected the hour by throwing a die on his bedside table. The first roll last night had come up three. That meant three o'clock. The second roll had come up three again. That meant, since three-sixths of sixty minutes is thirty, that he should set the Hamilton to vibrate at 3:30.

Next came the question of whether to get undressed, and then dress when the watch vibrated, or to nap clothed on top of the blankets. He opted in favor of not getting undressed.

When he was wakened, he did not turn on the bedside lamp. He was absolutely sure that at least one, and probably three, of his guards were watching his window so they could alert the others that Maksymilian the Terrible was awake and about to inspect the guard posts.

Instead, he made his way into the bath he shared with First Sergeant Dunwiddie-they were now on a "Tiny and Max" basis-and dressed there. First he put on a dyed-black U.S. Army field jacket, around which he put on a web belt that supported a holstered Model 1911A1 pistol. Then, since it had been snowing earlier in the evening and the ground was white, he put on a white poncho.

Then, without turning on any lights, using a red-filtered U.S. Army flashlight, he made his way downstairs and out of the building.

The Poles were guarding the outer perimeter, and sharing the guarding of the area between it and the second line of fences with Tiny's Troopers. The inner perimeter was guarded by the Americans only.

Twenty yards from the building, he saw the faint glow of another red-filtered flashlight, and quickly turned his own flashlight off. Fifty yards farther toward the inner fence, he saw that Technical Sergeant Tedworth, dressed as he was, was holding the other flashlight.

He wasn't surprised, as he knew Tedworth habitually checked the guards in the middle of the night. He also knew that Tedworth usually went to the outer perimeter to check the Poles first. It looked as if that's what he was up to now, so Ostrowski followed him.

If Tedworth found nothing wrong-one of the Poles, for example, hiding beside or inside something to get out of the icy winds-Ostrowski planned to do nothing. Tedworth would know the Poles were doing what they were supposed to do and that was enough.

If, however, Tedworth found a Pole seeking shelter from the cold-or worse, asleep-Ostrowski would then appear to take the proper disciplinary action himself. Tedworth would see not only that Ostrowski was on the job, but also that Maksymilian the Terrible could "eat a.s.s" just about as well as Technical Sergeant Tedworth.

He had been following Tedworth for about ten minutes when the red glow of Tedworth's flashlight suddenly turned white. There was now a beam of white light pointed inward from the outer perimeter fence toward the second.

Ostrowski hurried to catch up.

He heard Tedworth bellow, "Halt! Hnde nach oben!"

Ostrowski started running toward him, fumbling as he did to un-holster his pistol.

Another figure appeared, dressed in dark clothing, approaching Tedworth in a crouch. Before Ostrowski could shout a warning, the man was on Tedworth. Tedworth's flashlight went flying as the man pulled him back.

Ostrowski remembered, cursing, that he had not chambered a round in the .45, and stopped running just long enough to work the action.

He could now see three men, Tedworth, now flailing around on the ground, the man who had knocked him over . . .

He looped something around Tedworth's throat. Probably a wire garrote.

. . . and another man in dark clothing who had come from the second line of wire.

Ostrowski was now ten meters from them, and was sure they hadn't seen him. He dropped to a kneeling position and, holding the .45 with both hands, fired first at the man wrestling with Tedworth, hitting him, and then as the second man looked at him, let off a shot at his head, which missed, and then a second shot at his torso, which connected.

Then he ran the rest of the way to the three men on the ground.

The man who had been wrestling with Tedworth was now reaching for something in his clothing. Ostrowski shot him twice. The man he had shot in the torso looked up at him with surprise on his face. His eyes were open but they were no longer seeing anything.

Blood was spurting from Tedworth's neck, and as Ostrowski watched, Tedworth finally got his fingers under the wire that had been choking him and jerked it off his body.

Tedworth looked at Ostrowski.

"Jesus H. Christ!" he said, spewing blood from his mouth.

"You're bleeding. We've got to get a compress on your neck," Ostrowski said.

Tedworth reached for his neck again and again jerked something loose. It was a Cavalry yellow scarf.

"Use this," he said. "It probably kept me alive."

Then he added, disgust oozing from his voice, "If you hadn't showed up, these c.o.c.ksuckers would have got me!"

"Just lie there," Ostrowski ordered. "Hold the scarf against your neck. I'll go for help."

That didn't prove to be necessary. As he stood up, he saw first the light from three flashlights heading toward him, and then the headlights of a jeep.

II.

[ONE].

The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound Pullach, Bavaria The American Zone of Occupied Germany 1605 28 December 1945 A neat sign on the small snow-covered lawn of the small house identified it as the Military Government Liaison Office.

There were four rooms on the ground floor of the building and a large, single room on the second. The military government liaison officer-which was one of the cover t.i.tles Captain Cronley was going to use-lived there. A bathroom had been added to the second floor when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had hastily converted the village of Pullach into the South German Industrial Development Organization Compound.

The original bathroom on the ground floor and the kitchen had been upgraded to American standards at the same time. The main room on the ground floor held office furnis.h.i.+ngs. A smaller room provided a private office for the military government liaison officer. There was a small dining room next to the kitchen, and a smaller room with a sign reading LIBRARY held a substantial safe and a desk holding a SIGABA system. This was a communications device, the very existence of which was cla.s.sified Secret. It provided secure, encrypted communication between Pullach, Kloster Grnau, Berlin, Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., and Mendoza and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

There were five men in the downstairs office: Major Harold Wallace, a trim thirty-two-year-old wearing "pinks and greens"; James D. Cronley Jr.; First Sergeant Chauncey L. Dunwiddie, who like Cronley was wearing an olive-drab Ike jacket and trousers; Sergeant Friedrich Hessinger, in pinks and greens whose lapels bore small embroidered triangles with the letters US in their centers; and finally, a civilian, a slight, pale-faced forty-three-year-old with a prominent thin nose, piercing eyes, and a receding hairline. His name was Reinhard Gehlen, and he was wearing an ill-fitting, on-the-edge-of ragged suit. As a generalmajor of the Oberkommando of the Wehrmacht, Gehlen had been chief of Abwehr Ost, the German intelligence agency dealing with the "Ost," which meant the East, and in turn the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Gehlen and Cronley were sitting in upholstered chairs, drinking coffee. Major Wallace and First Sergeant Dunwiddie were seated at one of the desks as Hessinger hovered over them, like a schoolteacher tutoring backward students, as they signed sheafs of forms.

Finally, Hessinger proclaimed, "That's it. You are now a civilian and can no longer say cruel and unkind things to me."

He spoke with a thick, somewhat comical German accent. A German Jew, he had escaped n.a.z.i Germany and went to the United States in 1938. Shortly after his graduation, summa c.u.m laude, from Harvard College, he had been drafted. Physically unable to qualify for an officer's commission, he had been a.s.signed to the Counterintelligence Corps and sent to Germany, where it was believed he would be very useful in running down n.a.z.is and bringing them to trial.

He was now doing something quite different.

"Aw, come on, Fat Freddy, my little dumpling," Dunwiddie said, skillfully mocking Hessinger's thick accent, "when have I ever said anything cruel or unkind to you?"

Cronley laughed out loud. Major Wallace and General Gehlen tried, and failed, not to smile.

"Whenever have you not?" Hessinger said. "Now can I trust you to deliver these doc.u.ments to General Greene's sergeant? Or am I going to have to send them by courier?"

"Freddy," Cronley asked, "why couldn't we have done what you just did tomorrow in the Farben Building? For that matter, why does this civilian have to go to Frankfurt to have Greene pin on his bars?"

"Because you can't be commissioned the day you get discharged as an enlisted man. That's what the regulations say. General Greene's sergeant was very specific about that, and when I checked, he was right. And he said General Greene thought it would be a nice thing for him to do."

And it will also serve to remind everybody that he's a general, and I'm a brand-new captain.

"Maybe Colonel Mattingly will be there," Cronley said. "Maybe we can ask him to pin on your bars. I'd love to see that."

"Let that go, Jim," Dunwiddie said. "If it doesn't bother me, why are you bothered?"

"Because I am a champion of the underdog, and in particular of the r.e.t.a.r.ded underdog."

"You guys better get down to the bahnhof if you're going to catch the Blue Danube," Major Wallace said.

The Blue Danube was the military train that ran daily in each direction between Vienna and Berlin.

"We're not taking the Blue Danube," Cronley said.

"Why not?"

"Two reasons. One, I can't afford to take two days off just so this fat civilian can get his bars pinned on by General Greene."

"And two?"

"General Gehlen cannot ride the Blue Danube. Americans only."

"You're taking General Gehlen?"

"We're going to drive to Kloster Grnau, where I have some things to do. In the morning, we're going to fly to Eschborn. There, if I can trust Freddy, we will be met by a vehicle a.s.signed to the 711th Quartermaster Mess Kit Repair Company, which will transport us to the Farben Building. That is set in concrete, right, Freddy?"

"The ambulance will be at Eschborn," Hessinger confirmed.

"You're asking for trouble with those mess kit repair b.u.mper markings on those ambulances, Jim," Major Wallace said.

"The b.u.mpers read MKRC. It's not spelled out."

"And if some MP gets first curious and then nasty?"

"Then I will dazzle him with my CIC credentials," Cronley said. "Which is another reason I'm going to Frankfurt. I want to ask General Greene about not only keeping the credentials after January second but getting more, so I can give them to half a dozen of Tiny's guys."

"Does Colonel Mattingly know you're bringing the general with you?"

"No, he doesn't," Cronley said simply. And then went on, "After Tiny becomes an officer, we will all get back in the ambulance, go back to Eschborn, get back in the Storch, and come back here. G.o.d willing, and if the creek don't rise, we should be back before it gets dark."

When Cronley, Gehlen, and Dunwiddie were in the car-an Opel Kapitn, now painted olive drab and bearing Army markings-Dunwiddie said, "You didn't tell Major Wallace about what happened at Kloster Grnau."

"You noticed, huh?"

"You going to tell me why not?"

"First of all, nothing happened at Kloster Grnau. Write that down."

"You mean two guys we strongly suspect were NKGB agents penetrated Kloster Grnau, tried to kill Tedworth, were killed by Ostrowski, and then buried in unmarked graves, that 'nothing'?"

"If I had told Wallace about that incident that never happened, he would have felt duty bound to tell Mattingly. Mattingly, to cover his a.s.s, would have brought this to the attention of at least Greene, and maybe the EUCOM G2. A platoon of EUCOM bra.s.s, all with Top Secret clearances, all of whom are curious as h.e.l.l about Kloster Grnau, would descend on our monastery to investigate the incident. It would be both a waste of time and would compromise Operation Ost. As Captain Cronley of the Twenty-third CIC, I can't tell them to b.u.t.t out. So I didn't tell Wallace. Okay?"

"Okay. Incident closed."