CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Tarrant County Elmwood Sanatorium, outside Fort Worth, Texas, October 3, 1962, early morning

Abel sat patiently through the night listening to the rantings of the feverish old man as he thrashed about in his sickbed. He made notes of everything he could understand. The rest of the law enforcement team finally found places to sleep and agreed to wait until morning to find out what Abel would glean from his vigil.

Abel’s notes were as rambling and nonsensical as the speaker’s delirious mumblings: “Mon ami, de revenir ici…” [Fr. “My friend, get back here…”]; “Ya ne neudachnik…” [Rus. “I am not a loser…”]; “Je vais vivre ... Antoine, mon frère, un de mes oignons…” [Fr. “I’ll live … Antoine, my brother, have one of my onions…”]; “Ja, mein General, werde ich die Lösung der Untermenschen machen passieren heute…” [Ger. “Yes, my general, I will make the solution of the subhumans happen today…”]; “Don’t let them take us alive…”; “Rester éveillé, ne meurent pas die, Ne meurs pas…” [Fr. “Stay awake, don’t die…. Don’t die…”]; “My vernemsya k nim…” [Rus. “We’ll get to them…”]; “Accrochez-vous, mon frère…” [Fr. “Hang on, my brother…”].

The fake English lord began to awaken about seven-thirty. Abel felt like he was too fatigued to do the questioning; so, he prepared a report as best he could of what he had translated and delivered it to the rest of the law enforcement team to use in subsequent interrogations.

The general gist of Abel’s conclusions indicated that: “Our man did not give up his identity. He was apparently placed in what must have been a prison or POW camp and was badly maltreated. He spoke in French, German, English, and Russian. The French seemed to be directed mainly at a friend or his brother, called Antoine; and the German sounded like military orders, battle commands, references to murdering Jews, and expressed fears. The Russian was largely about his suffering and humiliation and about his determination to live on despite all of the odds against him. Look, I’m no doctor, but I would hazard the guess that this guy’s about to shuffle off his mortal coil—as Shakespeare put it—and we’d better get what we can out of him before he croaks.”

The other officers decided to have a tag-team approach to the questioning; so, they could remain mentally sharp while the mystery prisoner wore down. They drew straws to decide the order of the questioning. Major Darrin Higgins, Chief Officer MCU, Alaska State Police, and Tucker Nicholsen, SAC, 83^rd MP Det CID, Fort Richardson, Alaska—new head of the investigation of Gen. Gabler’s murder—drew the short straws and became the team to do the first round of questioning.

Major Higgins’s first question was delivered with calculated abruptness, “Look, whateveryour name is, we know it isn’t any Dennis Cunningham Lord Downfort. So cut the nonsense and tell us who you really are. It will shorten your ordeal … and ordeal it will be if we don’t start getting some truthful answers immediately. We have officers in London headed to the Corporate Offices of European International Conglomerate, No. 13 Upper Belgrave Street, London, even as we speak. We know that’s where your office is; so, cooperate and save yourself grief.”

Michaele stared at Major Higgins with a disinterested expression and then at Tucker and was mute.

“You give us the names of your helpers in the murder of Major Rick Avery Saunders, a retired US Army major right now; and we’ll put in a good word to the judge. You could spend the rest of your days in a rest home rather than a prison. Most assuredly you won’t like our prisons. A bread and water diet gets real old real fast. You’ll get three hots and a cot in our prison hospital, maybe a TV, get to play a lot of dandy games with the other geezers in the place. Nurses’ll treat you real nice, unlike the American prisoners who don’t take to foreigners,” Tucker said.

Michaele bristled at the mention of a prison. He spoke for the first time, his tongue loosened by the sedatives he had been given and in response to the pent-up anger that had been simmering just below his dogged appearance.

“I’ve been in prisons—worse ones than you can imagine. You don’t scare me.”

“Maybe this will: you won’t get treatment for that bloody cough, and we’ll see you hang and be buried in an unmarked grave out here in some dusty hillside. Like that idea, my Lord?”

A crack appeared in Michaele’s armor.

“Will I get drugs for my TB? How about plenty of pain medications? How about a little nip of some something from your Jack Daniels Company and some of that Coors beer we read about in England if I cooperate?”

“Anything within reason. So what’ll you give us?”

“I have to think on it for a bit. I’ll give you an answer tomorrow.”

The Alaska trooper and the ACIS special officer could not pry anything more out of their stubborn detainee; so, they left the room and met with their brother officers. Half an hour later, Tom Packer and Eldred Drake–the Texas rangers–went into Michaele’s room to take up the rapid-fire question format of the first two officers. They pushed the man hard about his known associates, his friends, his neighbors, and the helpers in the sniper death of Rick Saunders in Mexico.

The annoyed rangers gave it up temporarily but returned to go at him again after he had a short nap, hoping they could find his weak spot and capitalize on it. Michaele gave stubborn nonsense answers. Without even so much as a nod of one of their heads or any promise of food improvements, the two seasoned officers left the room and ignored his whining and pleas for relief of his cough, a change of venue, and a better diet.

Michaele did not get breakfast and could hear his stomach growling. He had known severe hunger during his POW days which should have toughened him against a privation technique. However, he had grown weaker instead of stronger over the years when it came to need for good food and warmth. He was coughing copious amounts of blood now and had a strong premonition that he was dying. He did not want to die alone in a strange country, and he did not think he could endure starvation or freezing again. His mind began to wander. His memories of Antoine began to narrow down to the times his fellow prisoner had stolen his food, took his blanket when he was sick and freezing, and when he berated him for being weak. He owed his superior officer nothing.

Two new officers entered the room—Dayne Brown, Tarrant County Deputy Sheriff and Sgt. Billie Wayne McAfee, Fort Worth PD Sergeant, took the shift for the late afternoon.

“Ya’ll look purty hungry,” Dayne said. “Wanna have somethin’ tah eat?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“This here’s a game of give a little and then git a little,” Billie Wayne said. “Like, you tell me where this Antoine fella is and ya’ll git a plate a gri-ets smuthed in buttah, little salt and peppah, and mebbe a little brown sugah. Sound good?”

Michaele nodded his head almost against his better judgment. He had no idea what gri-ets were, but they sounded good.

“Ya’ll unnerstan’ how this here game is suppos’ tah be played, raht, Dennis?”

“I don’t really know. That’s the truth.”

His stomach growled and began to ache. He was afraid to lie. It would not be very hard to trace Antoine’s movements, and it was only a matter of time. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I do have sort of an idea where he was going.”

“You mean after he dumped you here in this little hick hospital where you could catch some sorta deadly virus or somethin’ instead of getting medicine to help you’all beat this heah disease yuh already got? Seems like he wants to get as far away from you as possible. We think he was the mastermind for the Mexican hit, and ya’ll ah the fall guy in this heah muhdah. That about the sum and substance of it, Dennis?”

“I want to have some guarantees if I tell you about what you want to know.”

Dayne mentally clicked his fingers and shouted silently, still keeping a soda cracker expression on his face. “Gotcha!!”

Michaele paused for almost a minute.

Then, he asked the golden question: “What immunity and medical care and housing—that sort of thing—will you guarantee me if I give you everything I know?”

“Depends on what ya’ll know, how soon ya’ll get it out, and how valuable it proves to be. Ah can’t altogethah promise things; but since it looks like ya’ll ah about to go off to hell in a handbasket befoah the week’s out, Ah think immunity is on the table.”

“You might understand if I don’t feel completely trusting. I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll tell all for some guarantees; but every one of the police persons out there has to be present; and a secretary has to take down everything that is said. It has to be written down and signed by me, by the police persons in charge, and by the prosecutors—even the attorney general of the United States.”

“Ya’ll don’ want that much, huh, Dennis? Ah’ll get alla that goin’ in the next few minutes. Ya’ll get a little rest while Ah gathah up the troops and git on the horn tah the state capitol and to Washington DC. Written stuff takes a bita time. How ‘bout ya’ll make a compromise with me and agree to start talkin’ while all of the back and forths are goin’ on?”

Michaele looked a little confused.

“Sorry, but what does ‘back-and-forths’ mean?”

“Ah, shucks, pahtnah, that’s just Texas talk comin’ out. Ah mean the calls, the answers, the telegrams and all that;so, everythin’ is legal and in agreement with what ya’ll and me say tah one anothah.”

“Understood.”

Dayne made a beeline for the door to the hospital room and started all of the “back-and-forths” into motion. Abel Baird called INTERPOL, where Eugène Dentremont set up a phone tree to get agreement from the Germans, the French, the Russians, and the Argentines; Major Higgins contacted the attorney general of Alaska; Special Agent Xavier Gonzales-Soto immediately got through to DFBI Warren Brent Gaines, who passed on the message to AAG Spencer Reynolds, assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the DOJ of the US. Tom Packer ran to the hospital gedunk to call Texas Ranger Captain Reggie Cutler. Cutler contacted the governor of Texas, who called Tomás Delacruz, the governor of the State of Chihuahua in Mexico. Dayne himself had to call the Tarrant County sheriff on field phone while his partner in all of this—Fort Worth PD Sgt. Billie Wayne McAfee—dealt with the nearest locals which included getting a court recorder to the hospital in a police cruises with lights flashing and siren blaring.

It was a measure of the importance the law enforcement and prosecutorial members of the world’s governments placed on this mass murder case that the grants of immunity began flooding the Tarrant County Western Union telegraph office. Rural Texans living between Dallas and Fort Worth wondered if the cops were launching some sort of drug raid on the Elmwood Sanatorium what with all of the sirens and flashing lights converging on the sleepy little hospital.

Every officer in the hospital was waiting for the most important of all of the telegrams—that coming from the Department of Justice. It arrived in half an hour and was signed by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy himself. It was a grant of immunity for everything the “Lord” wanted, but contained a proviso that any or all of the grant could be cancelled if the subject failed to fulfill his end of the bargain.

The law enforcement officers had a quick in-family argument about who should present the writ of immunity to the suspect and conduct the formal interrogation. Because the man might be most impressed by an agent of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, the rest of the officers grudgingly agreed that Special Agent Xavier Gonzales-Soto would do the honors; and, as Dayne Brown and Billie Wayne McAfee said, have the fibbies take all the credit. Xavier signaled to Lydia Heppleweight, the court stenographer who rushed to the hospital from Fort Worth; and they strode into Dennis Cunningham Lord Downfort’s sick room.

Xavier introduced himself and told Michaele, “This is Lydia Heppleweight, court stenographer for Tarrant County, Texas. She will take down everything that you and I say to each other. Here is the grant of full immunity and guarantees of good hospital care in a pleasant location and provision of reasonable amenities for the rest of your life. Those things will occur only under certain conditions. First, you answer every question put to you honestly. Second, you leave nothing out. Third, you provide us with information that leads to the arrest and conviction of all of your confederates in the murders and other crimes we know about and any others we may not yet know about. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Michaele answered in a clear strong voice, having just cleared his throat with a prolonged bout of coughing.

“Do you agree to the terms?”

“I do.”

“Then, let us begin. What is your real name?”

“Oberführer der Waffen-SS Michaele Dupont.”

That got the FBI agent’s full attention.