Top Secret Part 47

"I guess Colonel Frade brought them with him from Was.h.i.+ngton."

"He didn't say anything to me."

"Maybe he had other things on his mind. I don't think you should let Mrs. Colonel Schumann know about the radios when you're in Pullach."

"You don't trust her?"

"She's a woman. Women like to talk. She gets together with the girls at the CIC/ASA Officers' Ladies Club. 'You won't believe the fancy radio I saw when I was checking on the club in the Pullach compound.'"

"Okay. Point taken, Freddy."

"I wish she wasn't going to the Pullach compound at all. But when I asked Major Wallace, he said we don't want to make Colonel Schumann unhappy, which he would be if Mrs. Colonel Schumann was unhappy because she couldn't go to the compound."

"Well, I agree with you. I'll see what I can do with Mattingly."

"I don't think he'll want to make Colonel Schumann unhappy, either. Where do you want the radio?"

"Where would you recommend?"

"Your quarters. In a closet in your room where n.o.body can see it."

"You going to tell McClung's lieutenant, or should I?"

"You go out there and tell him. Officers don't like enlisted men telling them what to do."

"I never heard that."

"I am constantly amazed at all the things you have never heard."

"Officers don't like smart-a.s.s sergeants reminding them how dumb they are, either."

"I can't help being a smart-a.s.s sergeant. I went to Harvard."

"Did I ever tell you I wanted to go to Harvard?"

"No."

"They wouldn't let me in."

"Why not?"

"My parents are married."

"That's funny. I like that. But enough of this camaraderie-since they wouldn't let you into Harvard, I will tell you that means no more friendly good-fellows.h.i.+p . . ."

"I never heard that."

"I am not surprised. Let's get back to business. How do you plan to get the NKGB-er from where he is now onto the Argentine airplane?"

"Before or after we bury him-maybe before we execute him-we load him onto a Storch. And then, obviously, I fly him to Frankfurt."

"We come back to Frankfurt in a minute, Jimmy. Let's talk about the burying of him."

"Okay. I don't have much experience in this sort of thing, and happily defer to your expertise."

"Fortunately for you, we have an expert in this sort of thing-his name is Gehlen-at Kloster Grnau. What I propose to do is work this plan out between you and me. And then, when we agree on what we think should be done, we bring General Gehlen in on it. That okay with you, Jimmy?"

Cronley thought that it was strange-even funny-that Hessinger, whom he thought of as an overeducated clerk, had even come up with a plan. But he liked him, and didn't want to hurt his feelings.

"Fine," Cronley said. "Go ahead."

"The problem is that we have to do something that will look like the real thing to different groups of people. We have to fool not only the Germans who the NKGB has turned-and since we don't know who they are, that means all the Germans-and just about all of Dunwiddie's men."

"Why do we have to fool Tiny's people?"

"Because if they know what's really going on they will talk about it, and there goes the secret."

"Point taken."

"We can't do this with just Dunwiddie and Technical Sergeant Tedworth, so the first thing we have to do-"

"Why can't we do it with just Tiny and Tedworth?"

"Who's going to dig the grave and carry the body to it? And then fill it up again?"

"Okay."

"We're going to have to get five more of Tiny's people involved."

"Five? Just to dig the grave and-"

"Three to dig the grave and two to drive the ambulance."

"What ambulance?"

"The one we're going to send to that airfield near Frankfurt, the one by the senior officers' club."

"Eschborn? Why are we going to send an ambulance . . . Oh, you mean one of the transport vehicles?"

"Of course. Why would we send an ambulance to Eschborn?"

"Freddy, why are we going to send anything to Eschborn?"

"Because that's the way we're going to get the NKGB-er onto Rhine-Main airfield. n.o.body's going to look for a Russian agent in the back of an ex-ambulance with 711TH QM MKRC painted on its b.u.mpers. But I am getting ahead of myself. We start with H hour, like they started D-day at Normandy."

"What the h.e.l.l does that mean?"

"Let me explain. We have things over which we have no control. One is when the Argentine airplane will leave Frankfurt. Another is when we shoot the NKGB-er. There we have a problem, as that has to happen in the dark, after we have the grave dug. So that is one piece of information we have to have. Three pieces. One, how long it will take to dig the grave. Two, how long it will take to carry the body from the chapel to the grave. And three, how long it will take to fill in the grave.

"So we start with H hour. That will be when we shoot him. In that connection, I suggest that there be three shots. With a .45 pistol. They're very noisy. One shot to wake everybody up and, thirty seconds later, two more shots so everybody knows what they heard was shooting.

"Now, as I started to say, the next number we need, what we have to find out, is how long it is going to take to dig the grave. When you get back up there, and I suggest you do this in the dark, take the gravediggers out in the country someplace and have them dig a grave. In the dark. Simulating as much as possible what they will do when they actually dig the grave. Say that takes an hour. Add a half hour. That means the shooting would take place at H hour minus one-point-five. You understand all this?"

Cronley nodded.

"There are a lot of other blanks to fill in," Hessinger went on. "For example, how long does it take to fly from Kloster Grnau to Eschborn?"

"We better figure on three hours."

"Then, presuming you would take off from Eschborn as soon as you could, when you had enough light to see the runway . . . You understand where I'm going with this?"

"Yeah, I do. And I'm impressed, Freddy."

"I think of it as sort of a chess game. Now, another time we need is how long it will take to drive the ambulance from Eschborn to Rhine-Main."

"Depending on the time of day, an hour to an hour and a half."

"And what time of day would the airplane take off?"

"That we could control," Cronley said. "To a degree."

"How big a degree?"

"After the airplane is refueled and the pa.s.sengers loaded, we could arrange for the takeoff to be delayed, say, two hours. But we couldn't arrange for it to take off before it was ready."

"What about this? Could we arrange for the airplane to be ready to take off at . . . I don't know what I'm asking here."

"You mean, could we arrange for the airplane to take off at, say, ten o'clock in the morning? Make that eleven-three hours after I took off from here at, say, seven? Plus an hour to get to Rhine-Main from Eschborn. Yeah. We would just have to delay it from taking off the night before. That could be done."

"How?"

"By getting on the Collins and talking to the SAA Constellation."

"I didn't know the Argentine airplanes have Collins radios. Our kind of Collins radios."

"I'll make sure the one that's coming here for Orlovsky does."

"You can see where we have a lot of work to do."

"I think that's what's known as an understatement."

"Well, we have until nine o'clock to work on it."

"Until nine? What happens at nine?"

"You call Mrs. Colonel Schumann and say, 'Good morning, Mrs. Schumann, what can I do for you this morning?' That's what happens at nine." Hessinger stood. "Let's go to the office and get this started."

"What about Major Wallace? We can't let him see what we're doing."

"If he went to the Signal Battalion officers' club last night, he won't come into work until ten, if then." He paused. "Leave money for the waiter. I read an Army Regulation that officers aren't supposed to take gifts from enlisted men."

[ TWO ].

0905 4 November 1945 "h.e.l.lo?"

"Good morning. How did you sleep?"

"You heard from Colonel Frade? We can go to the monastery?"

"No word from him yet. Would you like to meet in the dining room before we go to Pullach?"

"You mean for lunch?"

"I meant now, for breakfast."

"Meet me in the dining room at twelve-thirty."

Click.

Apparently, the bloom is even further off the rose than I originally thought.

"What I would suggest," Sergeant Hessinger said, "is that I stay here and think about what we are going to do with the NKGB-er, and you take the Kapitn and drive out to Pullach and see the ASA lieutenant. And while you're driving out there, and while you are driving back, you think what you can do to make Mrs. Colonel Schumann happy. Right now I have the feeling she doesn't like you very much."

[ THREE ].

The South German Industrial Development Organization Compound Pullach, Bavaria The American Zone of Occupied Germany 0935 4 November 1945 Cronley's Opel Kapitn stopped at the outer roadblock to the compound. It was guarded by three Polish guards armed with carbines and dressed in black-dyed U.S. Army fatigues.

One of them walked up to the staff car, took a good look at Cronley, then signaled to the others to move the barrier-concertina barbed wire nailed to a crude wooden framework-out of the way. When they had done so, he signaled that Cronley could enter.

That won't do, Cronley decided as he drove slowly to the second roadblock.

That guy saw a staff car and a man in uniform and just pa.s.sed me in. He should-at least-have asked me for my identification.