[ONE]
4730 Avenida del Libertador General San Martín
Buenos Aires, Argentina
0315 11 April 1946
Cletus Frade opened the door to Uncle Willy’s bedroom, flipped on the lights, and shouted, “Drop your cock and pick up your socks—we’ve gotta go!”
Startled awake, the baby started to howl.
Ginger, naked, jumped out of bed to comfort him.
Cronley said, “Oh, shit!”
“Just to clear the air,” Frade announced, his back now turned to them, “I have just been stricken by temporary blindness. When you get your pants on, Romeo, have a look at these.”
He tossed two teletypewriter printouts on the floor and then went back out the door.
Cronley, in his birthday suit, went to the printouts and picked them up.
The first was a NOTAM—Notice to Airmen—from the U.S. Army Air Force field at Puerto Allegre, Brazil, which was just across the border. Airmen bound for Europe were warned to expect “significant headwinds within five hundred miles of the South American continent from oh-six-hundred hours.” Cronley did the mental arithmetic and concluded they had to get as far away from the South American continent as soon as possible.
The second sheet of paper was a SIGABA message:
TOP SECRET–LINDBERGH
URGENT
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
FROM: ASST DIRECTOR
TO: TEX
1—AS SOON AS EN ROUTE SIGABA CONTACT CAN BE ESTABLISHED WITH DCI-EUROPE FURNISH ETA RHINE-MAIN.
2—YOU WILL BE MET BY LTCOL WILSON WHO WILL TAKE YOUR PASSENGERS TO NUREMBERG.
3—ASAP AFTER PASSENGER TRANSFER RETURN TO WASHINGTON. ADVISE ETA.
SCHULTZ
END
TOP SECRET–LINDBERGH
Cronley looked across the room to Ginger. She was bouncing the baby against her naked bosom and looking at Cronley as tears flowed down her cheeks.
“Hey, not to worry,” he said with conviction, something he did not feel at all, as he went to her. “Clete’s a good guy. He’s not going to say anything.”
She nodded, and handed him the baby. She walked to her discarded clothing, quickly slipped into the dressing gown, and then motioned for him to give her the infant.
She met his eyes, shrugged, leaned up, and kissed him on the cheek.
She then chuckled, and said, “Is this the wages of sin that everybody’s talking about?”
She walked out of the room.
He hurriedly dressed, finished packing, and then went in search of Ginger.
As he and she started down the wide main stairs together, they immediately saw by everyone’s expression—particularly that of his mother, who glared at him, and that of Max Ostrowski, who was grinning broadly—that their secret was out.
“It wasn’t Clete,” Ginger said. “Dorotea went to my room, and I wasn’t there.”
“Well, let’s get loaded,” Cletus Frade said as they reached the bottom stair. “We have a headwind to dodge.”
As Cronley’s mother kissed him good-bye, she whispered, “How could you? What in God’s name were you thinking?”
[TWO]
Rhine-Main Airfield
Frankfurt am Main, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
2305 12 April 1946
The Beechcraft C-45—General I. D. White’s personal aircraft—that Cronley expected to see was nowhere in sight as the Dorotea taxied up to the transient tarmac. The only other aircraft there was a Gooney Bird, an Air Force C-47.
But when Cronley saw Lieutenant Colonel William “Hotshot Billy” Wilson walking out onto the tarmac, he decided he had the C-45 hidden somewhere.
Rhine-Main was an Air Force base, and the “Fly Boys” didn’t like the “Ground Pounders” to have aircraft larger than two-seater Piper Cubs. It was said that General White got to keep his small, twin-engine C-45 only because his U.S. Constabulary patrolled all the highways in Germany, especially the Autobahn. How long it took them to “inspect” Air Force trucks on the highways was entirely up to them.
Wilson was waiting for them at the foot of the stairway on wheels.
“Welcome to Deutschland,” he said, shaking hands with Cronley.
Cletus Frade, Max Ostrowski, and Tom Winters arrived as Wilson pointed to the Gooney Bird, and said, “Your chariot awaits.”
Cronley noticed for the first time that it had the Constabulary’s Circle C insignia painted both on the nose and on the vertical stabilizer.
Wilson added, “You should feel honored to fly on the first C-47 aircraft to appear on any U.S. Army Table of Organization and Equipment.”
“How the hell did you pull that off?” Cronley said.
Wilson didn’t reply but instead nodded toward Ginger, who was coming down the stairs. “Is somebody going to explain to me how the Widow Moriarty is involved in this?”
“Officially,” Frade said, “she is here to gather up her household goods. She had to leave them here when they flew her to the States with Bonehead’s corpse.”
“And unofficially?”
“You don’t want to know,” Frade said, “does he, Super Spook?”
“Fuck you, Clete.”
Wilson thought about it and decided not to pursue the question.
“You’re going right back?” he asked Frade. “Are you all right to fly?”
“Against my better judgment, I let Super Spook and Winters watch the fuel gauge needles drop as we flew across the ocean while Hansel and I slept. I’m all right.”
“Good luck, then,” Wilson said, shaking his hand.
Wilson then looked at Cronley.
“Come on, Super Spook, off to Nuremberg and the Farber Palast. You have—everybody has—an appointment with Justice Jackson at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow.” He glanced at his watch and corrected himself. “Eight hundred today!”
[THREE]
Flughafen
Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0120 13 April 1946
Captain Chauncey “Tiny” Dunwiddie, who was six foot four and weighed close to three hundred pounds, was waiting for Cronley and the others when they landed at the airfield seven kilometers north of Nuremberg.
He was leaning on the fender of the enormous Horch Sport Cabriolet touring car that Cronley had inherited from Colonel Robert Mattingly when Cronley had gotten the kidnapped officer back from the NKGB. It was parked behind a Chevrolet staff car, and two other Chevrolets were parked behind it.
The drivers of the cars hurried to relieve the incomers of their luggage and usher them into the cars. Ginger and her baby and Father McGrath were put into the one immediately behind the Horch.
Dunwiddie got behind the steering wheel of the Horch, and Cronley got in beside him. Max Ostrowski and Tom Winters got in the backseat. Dunwiddie blew the horn, and the convoy got under way.
“What’s with Bonehead’s widow and the Catholic priest?” Dunwiddie asked.
“He’s an Episcopal priest,” Cronley said. “And he’s an expert on heretical religions, like the Church of Saint Heinrich the Divine. Schultz—or maybe the admiral—found him at the University of the South.”
“And what’s with Ginger Moriarty?”
“She got Clete to bring her with us so that she can get her household goods out of the quartermaster’s warehouse in Munich. She didn’t have time to do that when they sent her to the States with Bonehead’s corpse right after he got whacked.”
“Oh. And how’s she going to get to Munich?”
“As soon as I can find the time, I’ll take her. So, leave the Horch at the palast.”
“You’re going to have a hard time finding time.”
“So far as Father McGrath is concerned . . .”
“Oh, yeah. Tell me about him.”
Cronley thought, He swallowed that household goods bullshit whole.
While it is true that to be a good intelligence officer you have to be able to lie convincingly through your teeth, it hurts when you have to lie to your friends.
And Tiny certainly is in that small and ever-diminishing category.
Cronley began: “After El Jefe found this heretical religions expert at the University of the South, the admiral sent El Jefe and Clete to talk to him. They found out that he knew Clete from his days as the chaplain of Clete’s fighter squadron on Guadalcanal. He still has his commission as a commander in the Navy Chaplain Corps. The admiral called the Pentagon and they called him up for active duty, assigned to DCI. He’s a nice—and very interesting—guy. And I think he’s going be quite useful.”
“Well, the DCI can certainly use some moral guidance,” Dunwiddie said, chuckling.
[FOUR]
Farber Palast
Stein, near Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1330 14 April 1946
“Madame, my entire staff stands ready at your service,” the elegantly dressed palace manager said, greeting Ginger. “Mr. Brewster of Mr. Justice Jackson’s office was kind enough to call and announce your pending arrival.”
“Excellent,” Cronley said. “Well then, where can you put Mrs. Moriarty and her child?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Ginger said, shifting the sleeping infant to her other shoulder, “but doesn’t Captain Cronley have a room here?”
“Yes, madame,” the manager said, smiling. “The Duchess Suite. It’s splendid.”
“I’m sure it is. Can you have someone take me—and my luggage—there, please?”
The manager looked to Cronley, who, after a moment’s hesitation, nodded.
“My pleasure, madame,” the manager said, grandly gesturing for the bellman to come to them.
Ginger turned to Cronley, said, “Don’t be too long,” and walked to the elevator bank.
The awkward silence between everyone wasn’t broken until the elevator door closed on Ginger, the baby, and the bellman with her luggage.
“Jimmy, what the hell is that all about?” Dunwiddie demanded.
Father McGrath cleared his throat, and said, “Since Jim, judging by the look on his face, appears as surprised as the rest of you, I’d better take that question.”
Now everybody looked at him.
“Ginger and I had a long chat across the ocean,” McGrath began, “while Super Spook and Tom were flying the airplane and Clete and von Wachtstein were snoring in their seats. Cutting to the chase, she confirmed what most of us suspected when she and Jim came down the staircase in Buenos Aires together. Specifically, that a substantial change had occurred in the nature of their relationship.”
Dunwiddie turned to Cronley, who arched his eyebrows.
McGrath went on. “I first thought that she had concluded what had happened was a mistake and that she had come to me for advice on how to get out of a difficult relationship. She quickly disabused me of that notion. She said she had been in love with Jim since their college days and now intends to marry him as soon as possible and doesn’t care at all what anyone—her family, Jim’s family, or anyone else—thinks about it.”
“Jesus!” Winters said.
“You want to marry her?” Dunwiddie asked.
“As soon as possible,” Cronley said, nodding. “And anyone who doesn’t like it can take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.”
“She next said that as they began their new life together,” McGrath went on, “and until they married, she had no intention of pretending she was, quote, a born-again virgin saving her virtue for wedlock, sneaking into his bedroom like a fräulein trying to earn a box of Hershey bars, unquote.”
“Colorful!” Winters said.
“Good for her,” Max Ostrowski said.
“There are some problems that I can see,” Dunwiddie announced.
“Why am I not surprised?” Cronley said.
“For one thing, I don’t think Justice Jackson is going to like this at all.”
“Fuck him,” Cronley snapped. “It’s none of his business.”
“That’s so stupid, I won’t dignify it with a reply,” Dunwiddie said. “The other problem is, getting married. This isn’t the States, where you give them two bucks for a license and then get married.”
“I don’t think I understand, Captain Dunwiddie,” Father McGrath said. “I don’t see where there’s any impediment to their marriage.”
“The Army is nobly protecting its members from wicked women,” Dunwiddie said.
“Please elaborate,” Father McGrath said.
“I got this story from Fat Freddy,” Dunwiddie said.
“And Fat Freddy is?”
“Hessinger, Friedrich, DCI senior special agent,” Cronley offered. “He’s a bit on the chubby side, thus A/K/A Fat Freddy.”
“He’s also one of many American-German Jews in the CIC who are chasing Nazis,” Dunwiddie went on. “One of them was at Harvard with Fat Freddy. Both of them got out of Germany just in time to not get fed into the ovens.
“Freddy’s friend was engaged when he fled Germany. She, however, didn’t get out. The friend figured she had been murdered. Her father was a rabbi. The SS especially did not like rabbis or their families.
“Fast-forward to Freddy’s friend coming to Germany as a CIC special agent, which means he had all the clearances to get into all the records. He starts looking for references to his fiancée. He hoped he could at least find out where she had been gassed and incinerated. Then find in which mass grave her ashes had been dumped, so he could lay a rose on it.
“But he finds her—alive—in a Displaced Persons camp outside Hannover. She had somehow come up with a Polish passport that said she was a Catholic and she had been able to dodge the ovens.
“First, he has trouble with the Office of Military Government getting her out of the DP camp. He was working for Colonel Mortimer Cohen of the CIC, who lost most of his family to the ovens. Colonel Cohen—this was long before I met Mort—used all of his considerable clout to get her out of the DP camp, then to get her a new Kennkarte in her real name, and then to run her through the De-Nazification Court, which made her a certified non-Nazi.
“So, this guy has the love of his life installed in an apartment in Nuremberg and the obvious next step is to get married and live happily ever after. He asks how he can do that, and they tell him. It required an investigation of the lady and a bunch of other crap, including getting a letter from the German government stating she wasn’t a prostitute. Even with Cohen’s clout, he had a hard time speeding things up. In the end, it took six months to get final permission.”
“I remember that now,” Cronley said. “And I also remember you had a hell of a lot to do with that, Tiny, even more than Cohen.”
“I was pissed at the stupidity of the U.S. Army.”
“Well, I need you to get pissed again and do the same thing for Ginger and me. Quickly and quietly.”
Dunwiddie shook his head. “Would that I could, Jimmy, but the way that works is, the American male who wants to get married has to go through a lot of bullshit—counseling by his immediate commander and then a chaplain, for example—and only after he gets through that can he apply for permission to get married. Then the bullshit starts for the bride-to-be. I can’t imagine that the widow of a recently deceased officer is going to need a letter from the German government stating she’s not a prostitute, but the man has to go through the bullshit first.”
Cronley looked at his feet while shaking his head angrily, then looked up, and said, “That poses a number of problems, starting with my immediate commanding officer. I damn sure don’t want to start this process by having to ask Wallace, ‘Please, Colonel, sir, I’m in love and want to get married.’”
Dunwiddie grunted. “That wouldn’t do you any good anyway. He’s not your commanding officer anymore. There was a DP—”
“A what?” Ostrowski interrupted.
Dunwiddie did not answer directly and instead handed Cronley a SIGABA printout.
“I wasn’t going to give you this, knowing what it will do to your already out-of-control ego, but I seem to have no choice. That’s a DP message”—he looked at Ostrowski—“a message from the President. DP means ‘By Direction of the President.’”
Cronley read the brief message, which was addressed to General Lucius Clay—the military governor of Germany and the commander in chief of U.S. forces in Germany—with a copy to Justice Jackson, and classified Top Secret–Presidential: “To facilitate Captain James D. Cronley Jr.’s search for Burgdorf and von Dietelburg, he and such other personnel as he may select are placed under the command, responsibility, and authority of Mr. Justice Jackson with immediate effect. —Harry S Truman, Commander in Chief.”
Cronley looked up from the sheet as Dunwiddie said, “That was to cover your asses for your escapades in Vienna. But don’t get the idea it will have any effect on your plans to get married.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, you certainly can’t go to Justice Jackson with your romantic intentions. He’s now your commanding officer.”
“Why not?” Cronley repeated. “I can see a lot of my problems going away once he meets the love of my life.”
“That’s just not going to happen. Or, to rephrase it: Over my dead body.”
“Have it your way, Tiny. I’ll deliver your eulogy.”
“Goddamn it, Jimmy, I’m serious!”
Cronley just stared at him, then glanced at the others, and said, “As much as I hate to leave such charming company, my intended awaits. Breakfast at oh-six-hundred, gentlemen. We have an appointment with Mr. Justice Jackson at oh-eight-hundred, and I certainly don’t want to be late.”
He turned and walked quickly to the elevator bank.
[FIVE]
The Dining Room
Farber Palast
Stein, near Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0635 15 April 1946
“You sonofabitch,” Ginger said as she and Cronley walked into the enormous, busy room. “You knew he was going to be here!”
She had made it clear—before and after they made love, and then upon wakening—that she had absolutely no intention of meeting with Mr. Justice Jackson, there would be no fallen woman pleading for forgiveness and compassion.
Cronley, who was occupied with not dropping Baby Bruce squirming in his arms, at first had no idea what she was talking about. But then, glancing around the room, he saw Father McGrath sitting at a table with Kenneth Brewster, Justice Jackson’s law clerk at the Supreme Court and now his deputy at the Tribunal, and, finally, Jackson himself.
When McGrath saw Cronley and Ginger, he rose to his feet and waved them over.
“Give me Bruce!” Ginger snapped. “We’re out of here!”
“No,” Cronley replied. “Master Bruce and I are going to make our manners known to Mr. Justice Jackson.”
He walked to the table.
Ginger, hands on her hips, watched. White-faced with anger, she followed.
Jackson stood up, and, after a moment, Brewster rose.
“Long time, no see, Super Spook,” Jackson said. “How’s Argentina?”
“Mr. Justice,” Cronley said. “Father, Brewster.”
“Why don’t you sit down, Jim,” Jackson said, “before you drop that precious child and make his mother even more angry than she apparently already is.”
Jackson moved around the table and pulled out a chair first for Cronley and then for Ginger.
“I’m Robert Jackson, Mrs. Moriarty, and this is my deputy, Ken Brewster.”
Ginger, who had no choice but to take the offered chair, politely replied, “How do you do?”
“You and I have something in common, Mrs. Moriarty,” Jackson said.
“Excuse me?”
“From time to time, we really want to throttle Super Spook. He can be infuriating, can’t he?”
Ginger felt herself automatically nodding.
“This morning, for example, when Ken woke me to tell me that Super Spook had returned from Argentina with a woman and her baby, I wondered if I could find some statute that would permit me to have him hanged, and then drawn and quartered, before mounting his severed head atop the nearest lamp pole.”
Despite herself, Ginger could not keep from smiling.
Jackson went on. “The reason I was so annoyed, Ginger . . . May I call you Ginger? I am old enough to be your father.”
“Please do.”
“Thank you. The reason I was so angry with him, Ginger, is that he has been charged by President Truman with recapturing two really evil men who have broken out of the Tribunal Prison.”
As Jackson returned to his chair, he gestured to the coffee service on the table.
“May I offer you some coffee, perhaps tea?”
“No, thank you,” she replied, and glanced at Cronley. “We won’t be staying that long.”
Jackson nodded, then continued. “I’m old school, Ginger. I believe that when the President of the United States asks you to do something, you have the duty to do it. Thus when Ken gave me the news, my first thought was how in hell—excuse me—how in the world does Jim expect to carry out this duty while dragging some South American señorita and her child—who, as far as I know, is not even his—along with him?
“I had no one to turn to for advice—that is, until I remembered Father McGrath. I woke him and explained the situation. He, of course, then explained to me that you were not some Argentine tootsie but rather the widow of an officer who had been killed in action—indeed, possibly murdered at the orders of the very men the President has ordered Jim to recapture.”
Justice Jackson paused to let that sink in, took another sip of his coffee, then continued. “Father McGrath also told me that he had had a long talk with you while you were crossing the South Atlantic and had been completely unsuccessful in trying to convince you that the only logical thing for you to do was to return to the United States with Colonel Frade and put your romantic plans, your intended marriage, on hold until Jim has von Dietelburg and Burgdorf back in the Tribunal Prison. He let me know, in other words, that I was stuck with you and Jim being together.
“So as much as this discomfits Ken, a calm analysis of the situation makes it clear that you two lovebirds have me in a very difficult position. The President wants, immediately, a detailed report of the escape and of our—which is to say, Jim’s—plans for their recapture. As we speak, the major players are gathering in my conference room, with the obvious exception of Jim. Since the President sent Jim here to supervise the recapture of von Dietelburg and Burgdorf, he will absolutely want to hear what he has to say.
“I certainly am not going to call the President of the United States and tell him that Jim Cronley is too busy to even think about making any plans since he is too busy with his romantic problems.
“And I don’t want any questions about you, Ginger, making their way around the gossip circuit. What I have decided to do is hide you in plain sight. The President has authorized Jim to recruit into the inner circle such persons as he feels necessary. In the report we are going to send to the President this morning, we will make you one of those persons. I don’t think he’ll question the names on the list. And if he doesn’t, it can be presumed that the President knows Mrs. Virginia Moriarty is a member of the Recapture Team.”
“What do I do?” she asked.
“You will participate in this morning’s meeting. Which raises the problem of the baby—what to do with him? I have made arrangements for you to place him in the care of a nurse from the Field Hospital during the meeting and at such times, as a member of the team, when you can’t be seen carrying a baby in your arms. Understand? Is that all right with you?”
“This is a lot to consider, out of the blue,” she said.
“I need a yes or no, please. Time is of the essence.”
“Okay,” she said after a moment. “I mean, yes.”
“Thank you,” Jackson said, and made eye contact with Cronley. “You have any problems with any of this, Jim?”
“No, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Okay. Hand the baby to Father Jack. Then eat your breakfast. Quickly.”
Jackson looked at his wristwatch.
“A car will be at the door in eighteen minutes. Let’s go, Ken.”
[SIX]
Justizpalast
Nuremberg, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
0735 15 April 1946
The Palace of Justice, which housed the War Crimes Tribunal, didn’t look at all like the palaces on picture postcards. It was a collection of plain four-story stucco buildings with two-story-high red-roofed attics.
The Compound was surrounded by fences topped with concertina barbed wire and guarded by soldiers wearing shoulder insignias of the 1st Infantry Division. The guards’ web belts and the leather pistol holsters attached to them were white. They wore white plastic helmet liners and highly polished combat boots, into which their trousers were “bloused.”
Cronley’s car was passed into the Compound without trouble after Max Ostrowski, who was driving, flashed his credentials at the sergeant in charge of the striped-pole barrier across the road.
And then they reached the building that housed the Office of the Chief United States Prosecutor. Getting into the building required that they each show identification. There, the trouble began.
Ginger had no identification besides her passport. She had thrown her Military Dependent identification card atop her husband’s casket as it was lowered into the ground.
After a good fifteen minutes, Kenneth Brewster marched out of the building. Following him was a motherly looking woman in her thirties, a nurse, upon whose uniform gleamed the silver oak leaves of a lieutenant colonel.
“What’s the holdup?” Brewster demanded, somewhat imperiously, and then without waiting for a reply gestured for the nurse to go to Ginger, who now was holding the baby.
She handed over Baby Bruce more than a little reluctantly, then everyone walked into the building, where they found Justice Jackson waiting for them.
Jackson led them to his conference room door, then said, “Ken, put someone on your desk to make sure we’re not disturbed for any, repeat, any reason.”
“Yes, Mr. Justice.”
“Pencil sharpened, Mrs. Rogers?” Jackson asked.
Mrs. Lorraine Rogers, a widow in her early fifties, wore a conservative gray sweater and dark woolen skirt. Her shoulder-length red hair, brushed tight against the scalp, had been pulled into a ponytail.
“Yes, Mr. Justice,” she said as she uncovered her Stenotype machine.
“Okay, let’s get started. This meeting of the Tribunal Prison Escape Committee is convened as of seven forty-five on the morning of April fifteenth, 1946, in the office of the U.S. Prosecutor in the International Tribunal Compound in Nuremberg, Germany. All proceedings, including the transcript of proceedings, will be classified Top Secret–Presidential.
“Present are the undersigned: Mr. Kenneth Brewster of my office; Colonel Mortimer S. Cohen, chief of U.S. Counterintelligence for the Tribunal; Colonel James T. Rasberry, commanding officer of the Twenty-sixth Infantry Regiment; and Captains James D. Cronley Jr., Thomas Winters, and Chauncey Dunwiddie of the Directorate of Central Intelligence. Also present are: Father Jack McGrath, Max Ostrowski of the DCI, Mrs. Virginia Moriarty, and others selected by Captain Cronley to assist in the recapture of the escaped prisoners—to wit, former SS-Brigadeführer Franz von Dietelburg and SS-Generalmajor Wilhelm Burgdorf.
“Colonel Cohen, will you please recount what happened here on or about April fifth of this year?”
“Yes, sir,” Cohen said, cleared his throat, then began. “At approximately oh-six-ten on the sixth, I received a telephone call from Lieutenant Lewis J. Feller, telling me there had possibly been an escape from the Tribunal Prison.”
“Who is Lieutenant Feller?” Jackson said.
“An officer of the Twenty-sixth Infantry, which is charged with guarding the Tribunal Prison. He had, he said, just come on duty as officer of the day when he found the on-duty OD, the sergeant of the guard, and maybe seven soldiers, sprawled unconscious in the guard shack just outside the prison cellblock. I asked him if he had notified Colonel Rasberry. He said he had.
“So, I put my pants on and went to the prison. When I got there, Rasberry told me he had run a bed check and found more soldiers unconscious—and that Burgdorf and von Dietelburg were missing.”
“These were prisoners awaiting trial?”
“Yes, sir,” Colonel Cohen said.
“Do you know, from personal knowledge, how they came to be incarcerated in the Tribunal Prison?”
“Yes, sir. Super Spook and company arrested them in Vienna and flew them to Nuremberg.”
“And, for the record, Super Spook is?”
“Captain Cronley, sir.”
“Let the record show,” Jackson said, “that I started calling Captain Cronley Super Spook following his outstanding intelligence efforts in the past. The fact that other intelligence officers have taken up referring to him by that nickname shows they share my admiration of his performance.” He paused to allow Mrs. Rogers time to record all that, then went on. “Now, from your personal knowledge, Colonel Cohen, was Cronley made aware of these events at the prison?”
“No, sir, he was not.”
“Again, from your personal knowledge, Colonel, why wasn’t he?”
“He was in Argentina, sir. I had heard that as rumor, and you later confirmed it.”
“Had Captain Cronley not been in Argentina, would he have been notified, and would he have participated in your subsequent investigation?”
“Absolutely. He’s thoroughly familiar with the prison. Not only that, but with the assistance of Super Spook Junior—”
“Does Super Spook Junior have a name?”
“Yes, sir. Captain Cronley calls him Casey—initial K, initial C—Wagner.”
“And Casey Wagner is?”
“A DCI agent, sir.”
“And he is called Super Spook Junior why?”
“Well,” Colonel Cohen said, “he works with Captain Cronley. He’s also very young.”
“How young?”
“I believe he’s eighteen, sir.”
“And he’s an agent of DCI? Isn’t that a little unusual?”
“Yes, sir, it is. But he is a very unusual young man. Cronley took him into the DCI after Wagner had determined how Odessa was getting Nazis on the run over the Franco–German border and then to Spain. We bagged two really bad Odessa Nazis—”
“For the record, would you please define ‘Odessa’?”
“Organisation Der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen. In English, that’s Organization of Former SS Personnel. I think it’s forty percent probable that they’re involved in this prison break.”
“And the Odessa Nazis bagged because of this young man Wagner were whom?”
“Former SS-Brigadeführer Ulrich Heimstadter and his former deputy, Standartenführer Oskar Müller. Among other things, what we wanted them for was the massacre of slave laborers at Peenemünde, the German rocket laboratories.”
“Colonel Cohen,” Cronley said, “you said it was forty percent probable that Odessa was involved in this break. Who else is suspect?”
“Let’s not go down that road right now,” Jackson said.
Cohen ignored him, and said, “The NKGB. That’s obvious. But I have a gut feeling that the AVO may be involved. That’s the—”
“Államvédelmi Osztálya, acronym AVO,” Cronley provided. “The Russian-controlled Secret Police in Hungary. Its chief is a real sonofabitch, Gábor Péter. He murdered Niedermeyer’s wife, Karol—”
“This escape was a professional operation,” Cohen interrupted Cronley while looking at Justice Jackson. “The AVO is very professional. Many of its members—including Gábor Péter—go back to the Nazi Arrow organization, which was run by the SS. My scenario here is that if the NKGB wanted people out of the Tribunal Prison, (a) they have been planning this for some time, (b) Cronley’s pal Ivan Serov figured that not only is the AVO very good but if something went wrong, better the AVO take the rap, not the NKGB, and (c) that the operation was designed to spring somebody else—that somebody-else list is long—not Burgdorf and von Dietelburg, who had been there only a short time. But when they learned that those two were in the prison, they decided they wanted them more than anyone on the somebody-else list.”
There was a lot to consider, and no one said anything. It was Cronley who broke the silence.
“That scenario makes a lot of sense.”
“Cronley’s pal Ivan Serov?” Jackson asked of Cohen.
“Colonel of State Security Ivan Serov, first deputy to Commissar of State Security Nikolaevich Merkulov. Super Spook dealt with him when the NKGB had Colonel Mattingly and wanted to swap him for Polkóvnik Sergei Likharev and family.”
“Identify those people, please,” Jackson said.
“Super Spook turned Colonel Likharev—who we caught trying to sneak out of the DCI Pullach Compound—by promising to get his family out of Russia and then did. The Likharevs went to Argentina.”
“Where,” Cronley put in, “he has proved to be a very good asset regarding the NKGB. He used to work as Ivan’s deputy.”
“Let’s get back to what happened here,” Jackson said. “You said when you went to the prison you found the guards were unconscious?”
“Yes, sir,” Colonel Cohen said. “They’d been gassed.”
“How do you know that? With what?”
“My people found a little puddle of brown liquid outside the entrance to the prison. It had solidified. They think that it’s leakage from a gas tank. Their scenario is, the tank possibly was put on the ground, with a tube to carry the gas between the door and its sill, or maybe some kind of device to spray it in the air. Then its valve was opened. When enough time had passed to knock out the guards on the other side of the door, they entered the prison cellblock itself and knocked out the guards there, who are unarmed, by spraying the gas directly in their faces.
“Sort of strengthening this scenario is the fact that the main I.G. Farben gas plant in Hungary, which made the Zyklon B that was used in the death camps, and where they still manufacture various gases and probably still does Zyklon B, had a laboratory in which other gases were developed.
“They were tested at Treblinka, as well as other concentration camps, including those in Hungary. When the Germans were first allied with Hungary, and later took it over completely, the Arrow organization got access to and used Zyklon B and other gases to murder maybe a half-million people.
“Rephrasing it, my scenario, which may be far-fetched, is (a) that the AVO staged the prison break, (b) that it was intended to free somebody other than Burgdorf and von Dietelburg, and (c) that they used some kind of gas—something pretty sophisticated—to knock out, but intentionally not kill, the guards. Thirty-odd dead Americans would have caused an outrage that they didn’t need.”
“I don’t think it’s far-fetched,” Colonel Rasberry said. “What impressed me was the professionalism of the break. I don’t think Serov has the capability to do what was done.”
“Can you amplify that, Colonel?” Jackson asked.
“They entered the Tribunal Compound in an Army ambulance,” Rasberry said. “We finally found out that it was stolen six weeks before the escape from the Fifty-seventh Field Hospital in Giessen, which is a long way from here. They were wearing U.S. Army uniforms and they spoke English. They left the Compound the same way—I mean, they had a Trip Ticket to show my people.
“The ambulance was found in the Rhine-Main–Danube Canal five days after the break, which suggests they drove directly there, where others must’ve waited, probably with clothing and counterfeit Kennkarten for Burgdorf and von Dietelburg. The ambulance was in a sort of pool, a lake, on the canal, twenty feet under. It was found by accident—something fell off a barge and the crew was looking for it. If that hadn’t happened, we’d probably never have learned what happened to the ambulance.”
“For the record, please define Kennkarten,” Jackson said.
“German identity documents.”
“Any questions, Super Spook?” Jackson asked.
“No, sir.”
“Any suggestions on what we should do next?”
“Colonel Cohen,” Cronley asked, “was Casey Wagner involved in your interrogations of the people, German and American?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And?”
“He came up with the scenario that they had driven the ambulance to a rendezvous point somewhere, either in a forest or near water, and that we should start by finding the ambulance. So, we asked General White to have the Constabulary start looking for it. Which they did, and they came up with nothing.”
“I suggest, sir,” Cronley said, looking at Justice Jackson, “that our only option is to re-interrogate the guards, the German personnel in the prison, and the prisoners. Maybe if we can determine who the AVO was originally intending to break out—”
“You think it was the AVO?” Jackson interrupted.
“Yes, sir. Because of their skill, and because Ivan Serov is a master of covering his ass . . . Sorry . . . And I’d like Wagner to be there. Where is he?”
“In Sonthofen with General White,” Cohen said, then chuckled. “General White is serving as the ad hoc chairman of the German branch of Norwich University’s Scholarship Committee.”
“What’s that all about?”
“The general thinks that Sergeant—excuse me, Special Agent—Wagner would make a fine career officer and the way to do that is for him to graduate from Norwich.”
“And Norwich is the one in Vermont?” Jackson asked.
“Yes, sir, the oldest private military academy. Its graduates are commissioned into the Regular Army the same day as West Point graduates, so they start off with the same date of rank. By coincidence, I’m sure, General White is a 1920 graduate of Norwich. I’ll call over there and let them know we need Wagner here.”
“Are there any objections to Cronley’s ideas how we should proceed?” Jackson asked.
There were none.
“So ordered. This meeting of the Prison Escape Committee is concluded at eight fifty-three on the morning of April fourteenth, 1946,” Jackson said, and then went on. “Mrs. Rogers, as your first priority please type up your notes in disposition form, then have Ken look at them, and, when he has, get on the SIGABA and send it ‘Eyes Only the President’ to the White House.”
“Yes, sir. Shall I copy to Admiral Souers?”
“No. I know the President well enough to know that as soon as he reads the SIGABA, he’ll send for the admiral to get his take on it.”
“Yes, sir,” Mrs. Rodgers said, and left the conference room.
“I would like to make amends to Mrs. Moriarty,” Justice Jackson said.
“Sir?” Cohen asked.
“Ginger, I gave you ten minutes to eat your breakfast and then I took your baby away from you. So, what I’m going to suggest is that you, your baby, and Father McGrath be my guests for lunch. Give us a little break, so to speak. And I really want to hear what Father McGrath thinks of Himmler’s new religion. How about twelve-thirty hours at the Farber Palast? Can you arrange that, Jim?”
“Consider it done, sir,” Cronley said.
“You are also invited, of course. You, Dunwiddie, and Ostrowski.”